Bait & Switch Read online

  Shut up, Marge. I cleared my throat, fighting the urge to fake a loss of balance and fall against him. “Thank you, but really, I’m okay. I think I can take it from here.”

  “Did they rob you?”

  “No,” I said, brushing myself off.

  “No?”

  “No, they just came out of nowhere and attacked me. Thank you. That was almost...” Really, truly, catastrophically life-ending. “Bad.”

  He let go of my arm. I was still staring into his eyes, and he flashed a small smile. I wondered if my stare was making him uncomfortable and blinked, looking away.

  When I looked back, it was clear that he wasn’t uncomfortable. He stood straighter than before.

  “I’m Nick,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay, but you should call the police. Who knows where those guys are off to next. I’d feel a lot better if you’d at least let me see you inside.” He shrugged, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. He flashed me another smile. “Let me buy you a drink. Dinner. Anything.”

  My gods. Seriously? I’m not usually a confrontational person. But some days, certain people just need a verbal bitch slap. “I was just attacked. You’re really doing this?”

  Nick frowned. “What?”

  “You’re hitting on me. Two guys just jumped me in an alley—”

  “Oh, I was not hitting on you!”

  “—and now you’re trying to get me drunk!”

  “Come on! I was not—”

  “Liar! Yes, you were!”

  Nick pressed his hands together, his index fingers held to his lips. “I was just trying to be sure you were okay. You just got attacked. You might be in shock. Now you’re accusing me of something I would never do. I apologize for any offense. I just thought, with the way you were checking me out—”

  “I was not checking you out!”

  He snorted. He was smiling again. “Oh, now who’s lying?”

  I took a deep breath. Damn his perfect teeth.

  When I failed to respond, Nick nodded, once again putting his hands in his pockets. “Just let me walk you in.”

  I cocked my head. I had wasted too much time with this arrogant ass already. “I can walk myself in. Thanks.”

  I turned to go. Nick walked in step next to me. I stopped and sighed, glaring at him in exasperation.

  “Seriously. Leave now, or you’re going to find out exactly how little I needed your help a minute ago.”

  Nick held up a hand, shaking his head. “Sorry. I was going to eat here, too. I wasn’t walking in with you.”

  Now he was being childish. “I don’t need your help.”

  “I’m aware. I’m just going to walk in with you. I’m not walking in with you.”

  “Really,” I insisted, “I’m fine. Thank you. I’ll get in my car now and go somewhere else. But this is where we have to part ways.”

  “Really,” Nick said. He grabbed my wrist, and I prepared to cut loose. Again. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

  That’s when he slapped the handcuffs on me.

  “Jette Driftwood. You’re wanted by the Bleak for treason and theft. The sentence for these crimes is death.”

  Chapter 4

  “OH. For fuck’s sake!” I yelled it, but I didn’t mean to.

  I swung at him with my free hand.

  Whoomf.

  He didn’t even touch me, except for my wrist. With one swift and strong twist of my arm, he had me pinned to the ground.

  My face was buried in cold gravel and alley mud and my left arm twisted painfully behind my back in a restraint hold. I tried to use my free arm to push myself up, but Nick put a knee on my back as he cuffed my hands together.

  “Stay down,” he warned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  As if I had a choice. My shoulder threatened to break as I tried to twist out of his restraint hold.

  I fell flat again, gritting my teeth and hissing in frustration as I tried to unload a fireball right in his face. I didn’t care if I singed off all my hair in the process if this jerk took it on the nose.

  I closed my eyes and pushed the magic outward. From my core, to my arms, to my hands...

  Nothing.

  My eyes shot wide open.

  “Janet Drifter, a.k.a. Jette Driftwood.” He pulled me to my feet before pushing me into the back seat of my own car. “I’m taking you in.”

  Oh, this guy is good. No one was going to know I’d even been here if he took the car, too.

  Cuffed and awkward, I struggled as I tried and again failed to summon even a spark. Keys in hand—he must have pulled them from my pocket when I was down—he got into the driver’s seat. He adjusted the mirror to look at me. “I was warned you were a criminal genius and a very dangerous woman. Your reputation is vastly overstated.”

  I stared into his laughing hazel eyes. Letting a handler pick me up—the right handler—had been part of my plan all along. Getting caught in the midst of a murder, and thereby appearing to be the prime suspect, was not part of the plan.

  I was screwed.

  I was a bruised-up muddy mess from my various fights that evening, and the magic that had plagued my every living moment was suddenly gone. The weight of the cuffs on my wrists told me they were to blame. I sneered. “How do the cuffs work? What kind are they?”

  He cocked an eyebrow as he turned the ignition. “Custom blend of enchantments made by someone who works off the books. I’m sure my results will excuse my methods when the Bleak gets you back, though. They usually do.”

  Now that he mentioned it, the eerie silence that surrounded us hung in my ears. The world was filled with small pockets and threads of magic. To me, they made up the white noise of my life, and most of them were as harmless as buzzing flies and wind in the trees.

  Now, it was as if we were living in a world without magic, and the ever-present pulse of the stolen power in my being was silenced. Unsettling, to say the least.

  We started to drive, the tires crunching on the gravel.

  I swallowed. For all that this guy was telling me he was taking me to my own execution, I had to know. “It’s gone? The power’s all...gone?”

  His eyes flashed at me, questioning. “No. It’s just contained.”

  I sat up and leaned my head back against the seat. Of course it wasn’t gone. I had tried something like this before. When these cuffs came off and the floodgates reopened, I was going to be in a world of hurt.

  “The great Jette Driftwood,” he went on. “Right up there with Mordley and Clark on the list. You should really be grateful I picked you up before your old friends got to you. I’ve seen their work. That was a hell of a heist, and while the Bleak isn’t happy, I know your former crew has got to be pissed that you made off with their share of the goods.”

  “Yeah. I’m incredibly grateful that the Bleak is going to do me in instead of my former crew.” Gods, I wanted to smack him. I settled for kicking the back of his seat. “It’s a real blessing!”

  I cringed right after I kicked. Temper. The plan. Remember—your fate is in his hands.

  I swallowed my rage, quietly grateful for the lessons ingrained in my childhood.

  “Keep that up, and you’ll be losing more than your magic. You know, they said you were the best breaker to ever apply to the program. Nice family. Father was in the service, too. What drives a girl like you to do something this stupid?”

  I shook my head. We were done talking. His whole manner made me want to dump the plan in favor of lighting shit on fire, and that did me no good in the long run.

  “Money?” he prompted. “Are you selling your skills now? I know you didn’t do it for the power. Power junkies have lackies, and I can’t help but notice that you’re a lone wolf. You live alone, you shop alone, you eat alone...”

  Crap. How long has he been following me?

  “Did you do it for the love?” he asked. “That’s my theory. Gifted kid, needed a challenge, thought you’d prove that you were the best by stealing something no one else was good enough to steal.”

  I scoffed and shook my head, staring out the window and trying to ignore him. Garish business signs and traffic lights lit the night. There had to be a way to get the cuffs off.

  “I just don’t get it,” he went on. “Smart kid like you, with everything you had going for you, and you had to go and do something like this? You get that your life is over now, right?”

  My life had been over for a long time. “You really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”

  “Do you even know what this must have done to the people around you? Your friends? Your family?” He paused. “I can’t even imagine what’s going through your old man’s head right now, seeing his little girl go from the top of the world to the Bleak’s most wanted...”

  I sneered, sitting forward. “Okay, and you’re not my father, so you can stop with the lecture. You think you’re so smart? Did you even read my file? Whatever the Bleak has on me, because I’m sure it’s in there.”

  Or maybe not. They might have decided to revise the details right out my history. Nick’s eyebrows raised in question.

  “My dad is in prison,” I spat. “I never knew my mom. She left us.”

  He exhaled a quick breath through his nose. “Well. Not such a nice family, then.”

  My outrage was getting the better of me. I stuffed it down in my mind, making my surface waters smooth again. “It was pretty awesome, actually, because my dad was in the service of the Bleak. We lived in this great house in Maine with an ocean view and our own dock. I had a good school, and friends, and pretty much everything I needed. And then one day some asshole like you shows up saying my dad was wanted for treason, and my dad tells me it’s a mistake and not to worry. They took him away. I never saw him again. Three da
ys later a government official showed up to tell me they were seizing his assets, and she had to explain to me that it meant I didn’t have a home anymore. And you know what else she told me? She said I couldn’t ask the humans for help. Going to the human government for assistance is forbidden because it risks exposing the Bleak, and if I did it, I would disappear forever like my dad. She gave me a case number and let me pack a backpack, and then she locked the doors and left me on the porch.”

  Once again, the unnatural silence filled the car.

  “Wow,” he finally said.

  “Yeah. Wow. I was fifteen. So yeah, I did it for...” I stopped and swallowed. I had almost said “the power,” but that wasn’t part of the plan. I had a plan for a reason, and I wasn’t about to make things go from bad to worse because some hired gun shook my cage. “I did it for revenge. My dad is still in prison. Maybe before you judge me, you should stop and think about who you’re working for. I did it to get back at the Bleak. My dad never did anything wrong.”

  “Says you?”

  I was seething. My voice betrayed nothing. “Says every page of his case file, which I read. Because I worked for the Bleak and I had access. They said he was working with the Packs. They had a witness that saw him meeting with someone near our house in June of that year.”

  “And?”

  “And we were in Alaska that June. We took a cruise for my birthday.” I looked around the car, vaguely aware that I could open the car door, if only I could reach the handle.

  And then run down the street in the dead of night, still wearing my magic handcuffs. Because that wasn’t likely to draw attention.

  Nope. I couldn’t escape with them on. I couldn’t take them off. This guy wanted the money that was on my head.

  Someone had just been murdered with magic, and I knew it was about to get pinned on me.

  This wasn’t part of the plan.

  There had to be another way. Think, Jette...

  “Wizards know how to teleport themselves. The good ones, anyway, and I have to imagine your father was damn good if the Bleak employed him.”

  He stared at me intensely in the rear view mirror, daring me to challenge him again.

  Teleportation left a strong signature, and the Bleak would have known if my father had teleported himself. I knew in my heart that he hadn’t, and they had to know it, too.

  My old man had been set up, and everyone knew it.

  I was going to find out why. Right after I broke him out, I was going Count of Monte Cristo on whoever had done this to us.

  But right then, I couldn’t think too hard on it.

  Handcuffs. Death sentence. Asshole handler. Those were the things that needed my immediate attention.

  Nick threw me a sideways glance. “So your solution to your wrongly accused father—allegedly wrongly accused—is to become the criminal he was accused of being? I’ll say it again: he must be so proud.”

  I exhaled through my nose, hardly containing my disgust. If I couldn’t work his pity, I’d try his wallet instead. “Take the cuffs off and I’ll give you an extra fifteen grand.”

  Even with only his eyes visible, I could tell he was smirking. “Fifteen? You’re worth a lot more than that. And you haven’t got it.”

  “I said fifteen extra. And you’re right, I haven’t got it. The Bleak does. That’s what they pay for murderers, right? Fifteen? As it happens, one just moved in here.”

  His eyes flicked to me in the mirror before returning to the road. I could practically hear the cogs turning in his head, and they promptly stopped when he looked back.

  “I live here,” I said without blinking. “If I have to get turned in, I want to go knowing this lowlife is off the streets.”

  “You’re going to try to run,” he accused.

  “You caught me before,” I taunted. “Are you a gambling man, Mr...?”

  He hesitated. “Warren. Nicolas Warren.”

  I knew the name. I had seen it over and over in various case files. This man was a living legend, and for as young as he looked, he must have been really good to bring down so many criminals. Better than good.

  I remembered looking it up, twice, because I thought his success rate was an error in the system the first time I came across it.

  Nicolas Warren never missed a hit. Now I was wearing his cuffs, and he was right: after what I’d done, the Bleak would excuse just about anything if it meant taking me out.

  I licked my lips. He was watching me, analyzing me, waiting for me to speak.

  So, he’s good. I’m good, too.

  “Gamble much, Nick? Willing to bet fifteen grand that you can hit two birds with one stone?”

  “You’ll try to kill me.”

  “If you touch me again, I will defend myself. If I kill you, it will be an accident. You’ve followed me long enough to know that I’m a thief but not a murderer. I could have killed those thugs back in the alley, but I didn’t.”

  “You were worried about blowing your cover. Now your cover’s already blown.”

  We drove on. I stared out the window at the lights passing by.

  “Nick?”

  “I think you’re lying,” he said quickly.

  I sat back, once again eyeing the door handle and planning to roll out of a moving vehicle. It would probably kill me, but hey, it was a faster death than I would get from the Bleak or my former crew.

  “I think you’re lying, Driftwood,” Nick repeated. “But let’s see what you’ve got. Where’s your proof?”

  I tried to keep my sigh of relief quiet. I smiled as the cool sweat on my brow started to dry, because I could totally slip this guy. I was good under pressure.

  “52 Low Fennel Street.”

  Chapter 5

  NICK PARKED THE CAR two blocks away. He put a silencing ward on the car and paralyzed me before he went to check the house.

  I lay there in the dark for what felt like an eternity, listening to the quiet excellence of his magic. It snuck right beneath the dampening spell, barely detectable but still so effective.

  That was talent beyond anything I had. I could break things, sure, and even fine-tune the creations of others. But to engineer spells like this was something rare and inspired. How a man this talented ended up hustling as a handler was beyond me.

  I thought about my life and how I had felt standing on the porch the day I lost my home. It wasn’t so different from how I felt now. There was confusion and fear, and beneath it all, something that cut deeper.

  Resentment. A desire for vengeance, no matter how long it took, and justice for the wrongs that had been dealt to me.

  Nick Warren was an obstacle in my path, but there had been many others. With my father gone and almost no assistance from the Order of the Bleak, I had bootstrapped myself from a penniless child to a world-renowned breaker in only five years. The whole time, I had kept my goal secret. I didn’t tell anyone that it was my intention to get good enough to break the spells on the Bleak’s prison. And when I learned that one witch could never have enough power, and I decided to turn to crime, I didn’t tell anyone that, either.

  From a scared child, I had become a mastermind. A woman like that could do anything.

  Nick Warren didn’t stand a chance.

  Somewhere, I hoped Marge was having the relaxing evening she deserved right now.

  I started to make my plan, because I couldn’t make a move to slip Nick too quickly. He would be wary of my movements this early in our arrangement. Right now, the CSIs were either still collecting evidence or wrapping up. After that, a crime scene cleanup crew would be through.

  No one without an ID and a damn good reason to be there was getting inside that house, Nick Warren included. That gave me leverage.

  When I told him about the evidence and the case report, he would send me in to bring him copies.

  There was no time to take me to the Bleak if he wanted that fifteen grand. News of murder traveled fast, and every handler in the state would be here in two days.

  I had time to wait for him to become careless in his pursuit. For now, I could wait.

  The car door popped open, and my heart leapt in my chest as the rest of me stayed rigidly frozen.

  “Finis,” Nick muttered once he was in.

  My whole body relaxed and I sucked in a deep breath. I sat up.

  “You’re right. Someone was doing magic in that house. Murder weapon?”