“There. We did what you asked,” the woman said in a quivering tone.
“You can go. We don’t need you anymore,” I said, before stepping inside. The woman and her coworker ran off as my friends and I entered the vault.
Everybody went dead quiet, and my friends paused once we were inside. None of my partners stepped forward, or evenbreathed.
“So? Get the key,” I ordered.
“Charlie…” Ava said, but her sentence faded away. Marcus and Kallie didn’t add anything.
It was like nobody wanted to tell me what they saw.
“Oberi, describe the room,” I ordered.
The vault is a fairly large area,he said.It’s empty, save for a rotary phone attached to the wall, and a pedestal in the middle of the room that has a glass case display on top of it. Inside is an ivory box— open, with a silk pillow where I assume the key was kept… but it’s empty. The vampire key was definitely here a few hours ago— I can feel its resonance. We just missed it. Someone must’ve gotten here first.
“Fuck!” I screamed. I kicked a wall, absolutely enraged we’d done all this to get shit in return.
Ava told the others what Oberi said, and Kallie noted, “Who has the key?”
“Probably Esther. She must’ve gotten here first,” I snarled. “We need to get it back from her.”
“We can figure that out later—” Ava started, but her voice was cut off as a blaring noise resonated through the com in my ear.
“It’s the fucking feds!” Chancey roared. The sounds of noxite guns went off, and shots fired from a regular pistol Ivy was carrying. I heard both of my friends scream before the com faded into static.
“Ivy?Ivy?!” Ava yelped. “Fuck! We’ve lost communication.”
“Which means we have no idea what’s going on out there,” Marcus panted.
“They might’ve gotten caught,” Ava said weakly.
“Feds can only mean one thing. The United Supernatural Union is here,” Kallie said. “They must’ve ordered all the Union police who work for them to?—”
“Put your weapons down, and come out with your hands up! We have the place surrounded!” A voice on a megaphone boomed so loudly, I could hear it through the walls.
Yeah, the cops had definitely shown up. My mind raced to come up with a way out of this, until Kallie said, “Hold on. If the key was just here, I can reverse time up until the point that it left. Then we can take it and leave.”
“Do it, then,” I snapped. We were cutting this too close.
Kallie snapped her fingers. Then a second time.
I didn’t feel anything happen. No dip in my stomach, no shift in reality. It was as if an invisible hand wrapped around my throat and cut off my access to air.
“No,” Kallie groaned, and she snapped her fingers a third time. “No,no!”
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked.
“I can’t reverse time,” Kallie gasped. “It’s not working.”
“Is there inferichite somewhere in the bank?” I asked in a panic. We should’ve felt it.
“No,” Kallie said in horror. “This… this is me. I don’t have any access to my time powers.”
I struggled to understand what she meant, but Ava got it first. My wife’s understanding of the situation rushed across our connection, and it hit me so hard I almost fell over.
Shifters were weak if their bonded partners left them in limbo for too long. Marcus’ failure to either accept or deny Kallie as his mate was draining her magic, and now she couldn’t access it without the help of their bond.
I realized Kallie putting the shield on the bank had drained up what magical reserves she’d had, and it needed time to replenish. Power was supposed to flow equally between two bonded partners, like it did between Ava and me, but with Marcus blocking his half of the bond off, Kallie couldn’t access what she needed.
