"Valid point. But why the hell do you care about that kind of thing?" Potts asked. "If you want soda, the only place is the Chinese restaurant."
"No way I'm going back in there after what Z announced to the room," I replied.
"Don't try to change the subject," she snapped, leading me off the sidewalk and across the nearly bare parking lot. "Why do you care if the cops hear what you say?"
"Why do you think?" I didn't bother answering such an obvious question.
"Hayley Dunemark!" Potts’ tone turned scolding. But she didn't stomp off. And she didn't say anything more than that. She pointed across the street at a gas station, wordlessly telling me our destination.
I rolled my eyes at her attempt to adult. As if I thought she was the hallmark of maturity anyway. "I'm not leaving my brother there for the slaughter. You know that's gonna be the end game here."
She didn't respond, because there was nothing to say. It was the truth. She just gently took my arm and led me toward the stoplight. We had to wait on the corner as cars buzzed past, people in them going about their days as normal. I couldn't remember the last time my life had been normal.
"They look like they don't know what it's like, don't they?" Potts reflected, as she stared out at the drivers too. "So innocent with their worries about bills and deadlines and dance recitals."
I nodded.
Potts turned and stared at the side of my face for a second. "How badly do you want to save Matthew?"
"More than anything," I confessed.
She stared at the six-lane road as cars darted by, her expression thoughtful. "Cross the road and I'll give you the spells I used."
"We're about to—"
"No. Cross now. While the light's still red."
My stomach dropped and my brow furrowed. She had to be joking right? "Through traffic?"
She nodded, face set and grim.
Fuck my life. But this woman was crazy. She wasn't the nice, normal therapist type.
Did she know what she was asking? I bet she did. I bet she'd asked because she knew it was harder for me. I wasn't a Tock. I couldn't speed through the road. I didn't have damn Force power; I couldn't stop the cars from crushing me by blowing air at them. I wasn't an Icefire, I couldn't erect a sheet of ice thirty feet back that would make drivers skid and slam on their brakes. I could blind them. But that wouldn’t do a hell of a lot of good.
Unless ... I held up my hand and made every damn light go red. Cars slammed on their brakes, tires screeched. Two cars nearly wrecked and one of them—an orange Sentra—spun out into the intersection, wheels smoking. As soon as that car stopped spinning, I stomped into the street, shaking my head.
Internally, I was ranting at the old kook and wondering if it would have been faster if I'd just spent the day with Evan trying to figure out the spells she’d written on our own.
"Wait!" Potts’ voice made me freeze. I turned back, only a lane and a half through the road. I hadn't even gotten to the median.
She stood on the corner of the sidewalk, midday sun beating down on her and turning her features into dark smudges on her face. "Come on back," she commanded.
I released my control over the lights, letting the direction parallel to me turn green just as the little orange car hit the gas and sped across the road, sticking a hand out of his window and screaming, "Fuck you, witch!" He flipped me the bird.
Several other cars honked in what appeared to be agreement. I ignored them and the magical slurs they hurled my way, focused on Potts as I stomped back toward her.
She stared at me and her brows fell. Her mouth sank down and she almost appeared ... disappointed.
What. The. Hell?
I'd done exactly what she wanted!
I bristled, my posture stiffening.
The midday sun beat down on us both as she stared at me. "When you want something so badly that you'll do anything to get it, break the rules, endanger others... you've crossed a line. You’re willing to make other people a means to your ends. That’s no better than Detective Muller.”
She might as well have blackened my eye. “That’s not true and you know it. He just wants—”
“He wants to catch a killer. Which is a good thing. But he’ll do anything to get there. Which is a bad thing. What are you willing to do to get to Matthew?” Potts asked.
I didn’t answer. Because we both knew the answer was anything.
“Goodbye, Hayley Dunemark."
And with that, Potts turned her back on me, striding away and leaving me on the side of the road like a piece of trash.
19
I stood on the corner of the street, dazed by Potts’ rejection, while the sun beat down on me just like she had. When the top of my head started to feel sunburned, I turned back toward the parking lot and I pulled out my new burner phone for the day. I dialed the “Old Lady” number that Gray had programmed in this morning. Good thing he was a rich bastard, with all the phones he wanted us to have. But the leader of Crush insisted it was part of why he and his gang never got caught.
Z answered on the second ring. “Sorry. Had to leave.”
“Are you okay? What happened?” My irritation at Potts bled through in my tone, which was gruffer than I intended.
“I said sowwy, Hawey,” Z slipped into baby voice. “But I don’t wike the big bad man. He awwested me before.”
Guilt smacked me like a brick across the face. “Shit. No. I’m sorry. That didn’t even occur to me.”
“It’s fine,” his voice went back to normal. “I’m sorry. I saw him through the window. And normally no big deal. But he’s a Tock. It’s not like with an Icefire where I could get in and out and past them without them ever knowing.”
I put a palm to my forehead. Duh. I’d realized that but hadn’t put two and two together. I was off my game. “Yeah. I get it. Where are you? Do you need me to come pick you up?”
Z blew a raspberry into the phone. “Nah. I’m good. I’m with my cuz. I left your helmet by the bike.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone and strode quickly toward the bike, blowing out a breath and trying to keep my to-do list straight in my head so that I could focus on it and not the fact that Potts had just abandoned me.
“Figure out her Illusion Spell and then a spell to unravel it. Figure out how to help an Unnatural shift from an animal into human.” I didn’t think we could administer the serum to my brother if he was in bat form. “Look up how to safely catch bats. And vamps.”
Fuck. That was a list full of awful. And I had to add avoiding Detective Muller to it. And a funeral.
Pile on the fact that no vamp who’d ever been locked up had ever gotten out—until now. It seemed almost impossible.
But I’d done the impossible now. I’d broken into the Pinnacle and walked back out. I’d make this Institute my bitch. I’ll break in and walk out with Matthew in twenty minutes. It’ll be a piece of cake, I reassured myself. Potts didn’t know what she was talking about. She was wrong. She was being her lecture-y, life-lessony counselor self when all I had needed was a friend and a damned spell.