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We stopped at a closed door. The security guard pressed his badge up to the lock. It gave a heavy shudder and clicked open. We entered into the small room, drenched in sunlight from the domed crystal ceiling, golden rays being thrown in a hundred different directions. Across from us was a simple white wall where the paint had been torn off, creating the perfect shape of a wide frame.
“You have ten minutes.”
“The lady at the front told us fifteen,” I said, arching a brow.
“The walk here took us five.” He rested his hands on the hilts of his blades. I narrowed my gaze but decided not to argue, even though it would only take me seconds to have this guy bent over and crying from the spanking I’d give him with my ice blades.
I turned to Caleb. I’d seen him use his blue threads of mana to create an illusion, which meant he could also do the reverse and use those blue threads to enhance what was already there. Those who were experts at manipulating mana could reconstruct entire scenarios from a few fingerprints left behind at the scene of a crime. “You’re a Marvel—go ahead and use your powers. See if something was missed in the initial investigation.”
Caleb winced as if I’d just asked him to swallow a handful of cockroaches. “I would rather just look around first.”
That made me pause. “Huh? We only have—eight minutes now.” I gave a quick circle. “And there’s not much room to look around.”
Caleb ignored me and turned back to the security guard. “Are there any cameras in here?”
“In each of the four corners,” the guard said. “All the cameras were down the day the theft happened, though.”
“Of course they were,” I said under my breath. “Marvel. Powers. Now.”
Caleb shot me a look. He walked over to the wall where the painting had been stripped. He put a hand against the peeling paint, but no threads formed. He still wasn’t using his magic. I glanced down at my watch, the gold-and-blue face glittering in the light. Five minutes.
“Caleb, I’m being serious. I think it’s best if you use?—”
“I don’t like using my powers, alright?
“Wait… you’re a Marvel and don’t like to use your powers?” I searched Caleb’s gaze before he flitted his eyes down to the ground. This guy was proving to be more and more interesting by the second. “Why?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Caleb replied. He looked back up at me, and I could see the conversation was over. There was something that twisted his neutral expression, wrinkling the space between his brows and making his jaw twitch, as if he ground his teeth together.
“Three minutes,” the guard said, moving to the door.
“Shit,” I said and rubbed a hand over my face. “You used your magic when we first met. What’s different now?”
“My life isn’t in danger now, obviously.”
I made a small dagger of ice form in my hand. “Would you like it to be?”
He rolled his eyes and turned to the wall, his back to me. The ice melted to cold water in my palm. He barely knew me, and yet he knew enough to understand that the threat was meaningless.
I couldn’t help but smile as I saw a navy blue thread of mana twine with a sky-blue thread around Caleb’s extended arm, floating toward the wall and recreating a staticky image of the painting. He stepped back as another flickering image of a hand appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the frame, yanking it off the wall. The hand’s owner began to slowly form, Caleb swishing his wrist and freezing the image before the thief ran out of the room.
“This is it,” I said, watching as everything but the head appeared. “We’ve got hi?—”
The image sputtered and vanished. I turned to Caleb, looking for an explanation, and instead saw him beginning to wobble. I opened my arms and caught him just as he passed out.
Chapter 10
Bonnie & Clyde
Caleb
Fuck.
I knew I’d made a mistake the second a wave of light-headedness washed over me when I tried weaving those two threads together. It wasn’t even an extremely advanced technique, but I was so out of practice that it took an intense amount of concentration and energy out of me to reconstruct the events of that night. It wasn’t even guaranteed to be entirely accurate and wasn’t as clear as a camera would be, but the room had been cleared out and shut down the very next day, meaning the energies had remained primarily intact shortly after the theft. The flickers and stutters proved that the quality was beginning to wane the more time passed, but still, I had hoped we had something.
And then it was lights-out. Curtains drawn. My body just gave out.
I came to in the arms of the burly and annoying ice dragon who put me in this position in the first place.
