“And don’t you forget it,” he whispered into my ear.

The image in my head popped, but the feeling of intense longing lingered on. I was standing there, in the hallway where anyone could see us, my leg wrapped around Nero, my nails drilling into his back. I cleared my throat and stepped away from him.

Nero leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips. “I have work to do. See you later.”

Then he turned and walked back down the hall, leaving me in that raw, senseless state of arousal. He loved playing games all right.

“I’m going to get you for this,” I called out to him. Then I took a deep breath and entered Nerissa’s lab.

She sat behind her desk, bent over her computer. She was so absorbed in her work that I had to call out her name a few times before she looked up. On the bright side, at least that meant she hadn’t seen or heard me and Nero making out outside her office.

“How’s it coming?” I asked, trying to clear my head of Nero. Except thoughts of my revenge. I was going to get him good.

“These samples from the infected supernaturals are baffling,” Nerissa said. “I’ve never seen anything like Angel Fever.”

She’d been stuck in this lab for days, and she still knew the name? Well, she wasn’t known as the Legion’s queen of gossip for nothing.

“The cocktail of supernatural powers in Serenity was positively baffling,” Nerissa continued. “That is, until I had a good look at Charlotte. The witch’s body is changing. The magic in her blood is changing.”

“Evolving?”

“Yes, just like you said. Your instincts were dead on.” She rolled her chair to the other end of the desk. A collection of labeled vials were stacked there. “I have been tracking her. She is slowly getting new powers. One-by-one, they are changing her. Sound familiar?”

“Like a Legion soldier gains powers, one by one.”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying that some infection is changing supernaturals’ magic like Nectar or Venom does to us?”

“Like I said before, it’s not Nectar or Venom. There isn’t any of either in their blood. And no natural infection works like this. This is engineered. It is a spell designed to rewrite their magic, very similar to Nectar or Venom.”

“But who is behind it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How can anyone have this kind of power? And what are they trying to do?”

“I don’t know.”

My hoped deflated. “Well, let me know if you find out anything else.”

I left Nerissa’s office, my mind swimming with possibilities. I sure had a lot to mull over. When I entered the ballroom, the supernatural leaders were already trading insults. Or still trading them. I didn’t know. Nor did I care. I slammed the door shut behind me.

That got their attention. They stopped bickering and turned to stare at me.

I debated how much I should share with them. The Legion wasn’t big into sharing because that tended to tip off the bad guys. But sometimes you had to go against the grain.

“Charlotte, the witch we’re holding, has been going through some changes,” I announced. “She is gaining powers one-by-one, going madder with each new boost in magic. This isn’t a natural occurrence. Someone has engineered it.” My eyes panned across my captive audience. “I invite the culprit to step forward and confess. You know the Legion will find out eventually.”

Shockingly, no one spoke up. I considered following Nero’s suggestion and using my siren magic to compel them. No one was wearing an anti-compulsion amulet today.

The doors to the ballroom burst open and Toren, a guy who’d been in my initiate group, rushed inside. “Angel Fever has spread to the Legion,” he told me. “Alec Morrows is infected.”

I just stared at him in shock. How could that be? The Nectar in our blood was the poison of all poisons. It should have made us immune to Angel Fever.

“How is Alec handling it?” I asked Toren.

“The angels have him contained. He’s obviously trying to fight it, but he’s losing the battle.”

“Do they know how the spell spreads?”

“They believe it might be spread through blood.”

The wild vampire had bitten Alec. Oh, shit. He’d bitten Drake too. I had to check on him. I rushed past Toren, sprinting down the hall and up the staircase. Drake had to be in our apartment. He was going there to change before his mission.

I kept running. Almost there. I zigzagged down the hallway, cutting around everyone I passed. I reached for the knob.

My apartment door exploded in my face.

20 Just Another Day

I rushed through the missing door into my apartment. Debris littered the floor. The sofa was in pieces. Ivy’s lovely moon charm decorations that had amused Nero lay burning on the floor. I stomped out the flames and made my way further inside.

My bedroom door was hanging off its hinges. Pretty much everything inside my room had been destroyed. Pillow feathers floated in the air. Torn shreds of clothing decorated the carpet like confetti. Some of my leather uniforms appeared to be intact. So they didn’t just look badass; Legion uniforms could also survive an explosion.

I worked my way through the apartment, looking for Drake. And for Ivy. She always changed out of her sports clothes before going to work. She had to be here somewhere. I had to help her before Drake hurt her.

My eyes felt like there was glass in them. Feathers and dust filled the air like a thick fog, mixing with the wild magic. I choked on the stench.

I followed the sounds of a fight spilling out of Drake’s room. Ivy’s voice was strained. She was in pain. I closed in carefully, my sword drawn.

But when I passed into Drake’s room, I realized it wasn’t Drake who’d been infected. It was Ivy. She was hurling elemental spells she shouldn’t possess at him, one after the other. Crazed, tormented by the monsters inside of her mind, she didn’t stop.

Drake tried to tackle her to the ground, but he was not aiming to kill. Ivy was. She shot a stream of fire at him, and he ducked behind what remained of his overturned dresser.

I crouched next to him. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know. My best friend is infected with a contagion that’s made her gain scary new magical powers and lose her mind. Just another day at the Legion.” He was trying to sound casual, but I could hear the worry in his voice. And the fear.

“We have to knock her out. Then we’re going to save her. I promise.”

“How do you intend to stop her?” he asked me.

“Do you happen to have that Magitech trap lying around?”

“No. It’s in the garage.”

“I need you to go get it,” I told him.

“It’s too heavy for me to move alone. I’ll need to find Alec first.”

“Alec is infected too. Find someone else to help you carry it.”

Drake’s expression hardened with determination. “I’ll figure out something.”

“Go. And hurry. I’ll cover your retreat.”

As Drake ran away, I leapt over the toppled dresser and shot a swirling ball of dark fire at Ivy. She cringed and jumped back, cradling her burned arm, snarling like a savage wounded animal. If there was something of my friend in there, I didn’t see it. I just hoped Nerissa found a cure, so I could get her back.

I hit Ivy with magic again, and I didn’t hold back. I knew she could take it. All of the infected supernaturals had resilience to spare. That was the problem.

Ivy hissed at me, patting out the flames in her hair.

“Stings, doesn’t it?” I said.

She rushed forward, tackling me. I projected my shifting magic, animating the furniture to look like me. Since the chairs and tables weren’t alive, I had to infuse a lot of magic into the spell.

Together with my army of lookalikes, I closed in on Ivy. The shifted furniture couldn’t do much besides circle around her, but they were a decent distraction. Ivy froze, perplexed, not sure which of my lookalikes to go after. So she attacked everything that moved. She punched through one of my lookalikes. Shards of wood splintered off of her arm.