Eli and Dawn met in the upper west wing, an angular maze of high walls and bold canvas. As he stood surrounded by gleaming white plaster and garish brushstrokes, Eli was glad this wasn’t where DuPont had agreed to meet Rochere.

Nor where he had sent Beake.

“You follow up on your lead?” Dawn muttered, shifting below a tall frame of nauseatingly red acrylic. Eli turned his back to the eyesore and kept his gaze roving over the empty room.

“Beake thinks his target will be in the lower east wing. We’ll trap him there.” He flipped open a museum map and pointed to a photo gallery. “But I can’t tell if his team is going to follow him. Lorenz hasn’t spotted any other movement in this place.”

Footsteps echoed on the polished wooden floor, and they both froze. It was difficult to tell where the sound was coming from as it ricocheted from wall to wall. How close, how far, what direction…

A server walked past the entrance, facing away from them, empty platter in hand. Eli relaxed his shoulders. Dawn nodded to the map, her voice lowered. “So you want all of us heading to that wing?”

“Not all.” Eli pointed to another gallery in the far back of the museum. A new exhibit, some artist name he didn’t recognize—but it was the name DuPont had muttered to Rochere earlier. “I want you to keep an eye on where his target’s actually going.”

Dawn raised an eyebrow. “What if Beake figures out your trap and shows up at the real place?”

“Then it’s a good thing I’ll have you there.” Eli let a half-smile slip onto his face. “Don’t have too much fun without me. Call me, keep him contained, and only shoot if you have to.”

“Copy that.” Dawn pocketed the map with a smirk. “Minimal amount of fun.”

#

Despite the dry, frigid air of the museum, sweat dripped down the back of Eli’s neck as he took his position in the lower east wing, the false location meant to lure in Beake.

He re-mapped where his agents were—one behind him, one hidden around the wall, one covering the emergency exit. His disguised servers had slipped in with the celebrities on the floor, in case Beake tried to use civilians as shields. And the agents that remained were covering all other exits, ensuring the man couldn’t go far.

Eli exhaled as he waited. Beake would show, he had to. Why else would he have Eli track DuPont? Why dance with him just to hear about his single observation, if he wasn’t actually going to use the intel?

“Valenz,” Dawn’s voice hissed through his earpiece, sharp and urgent.

Eli’s heartbeat jolted, and he gave a silent curse. “Is he there?”

No response. Perhaps she was too close to him. Giving her a second to reply, Eli shook his head at the agent behind him, then rushed towards the back of the museum, mentally sifting through the most direct route to DuPont’s gallery. Even if he ran—and he couldn’t, not without attracting too much attention—it would still take him a few minutes, his agents even longer if they went around to cover the back alley—

“He’s here,” Dawn replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Have you confirmed it’s not an illusion?”

A pause. “Confirmed.”

“Details?”

“He’s on the other side of the room,” Dawn said. “Heard him take a step.”

Eli nodded to himself. If past reports were accurate, Beake’s illusions could never imitate accurate sound. This was good—he didn’t need more tricks from the man, much less copies of him running around. “Keep your eyes on him. You have a clear shot?”

“Civilians, middle of the room.”

Eli mouthed another curse. He had nearly forgotten about Beake’s target. “DuPont and Rochere?” he asked, nodding to the last agent following him. The agent veered right to cover the back alley outside.

“And DuPont’s bodyguard,” Dawn said. “Just got here.”

Eli picked up his pace, his palms going cold. “Be there in two.”

#

As Eli approached the gallery, he noted that DuPont at least had some sense of atmosphere. The walls in this wing hung heavy with richly painted oils, all shades of slate on charcoal on obsidian. Dark shapes and figures within the paintings shifted, then disappeared as Eli passed them, generating the unnerving sense that someone was standing just out of the corner of his eye.

“Lorenz?” he whispered. “Anything from Beake’s team?”

“Still not picking up any other movement in the area,” the agent in the tech van responded. “No signals, no glitches in the security feed, no unusual activity apart from our agents…”

“Just tell me I’m not walking into a trap.”

“You’re…probably not walking into a trap.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna work on your tone of confidence after this,” Eli muttered, then set his shoulder against the wall and glanced around the corner.

Dawn was covering the parallel corner of the floating wall, looking in on the main room. Dressed in black and hidden in a shadow, Eli almost mistook her for one of the mysterious figures in the paintings. She gave him a tiny nod, then flicked her gaze across the room.

Beake had taken the corner opposite Eli, and was barely visible behind the wall. If he knew of Dawn’s location, he made no sign of it. Instead, he stood perfectly still, frowning behind his mask as he listened in on the conversation in the middle of the room.

“Mr. DuPont,” Rochere purred, still slick and shining in her peacock-feathered dress. She stood directly between Eli and Beake, a silver briefcase dangling from her manicured fingers. Eli took a second to analyze her, then DuPont, then the guard. He let out a breath. They seemed unaware of the three extra guests attending their rendezvous from the shadows.

“I expected this over two weeks ago,” DuPont said, hands in his pockets. Now that he was no longer rubbing elbows in the lobby, the smile had dropped from his face, leaving nothing but drooping wrinkles and a sour countenance. His pale skin, contoured by the low overhead light, was bone-white against the art surrounding him.

“But I have it for you now.” Rochere held out the briefcase, her smile and tone strained. DuPont let her stand there in her discomfort for a moment, then gave a brief nod to his bodyguard.

“Check the case,” he said, his grainy voice scratching the air around him.

“Valenz, how do you want to proceed?” Dawn murmured from her corner. Eli raised his hand an inch—it was as much movement as he dared.

“Hold on,” he said, eyes fixed on the briefcase as the guard took it from Rochere. Across the room, Beake’s gaze was locked on the same object.

“Valenz…” Dawn warned. Eli lifted his hand higher.

“Hold.”

The guard opened the briefcase with a click, then tilted it towards DuPont for his review- but the glimpse Eli had gotten was enough to recognize the contents. Vials of icefall, nestled in a tight grid, haloed in the white light required to keep the contents stable. The key ingredient in Beake’s illegal potions.

Beake stiffened as the guard tilted the case in his direction.

“Okay, he’s focused on his target,” Eli rushed his words. “Move around to the other side and-“

But DuPont had other plans. He closed the briefcase with a knobby hand and nodded to the guard. “Kill her.”

The onlookers’ motions all happened too late.

Eli stepped around the corner, hand on his gun—but it was only half-pulled when the shot went off.

Dawn rushed out of the shadows, her eyes trained on Beake. Her advance gained her nothing, for Beake was already moving towards DuPont. No, not towards DuPont—towards the bodyguard, hand at his temple, eyes blazing white. But not even his potion was fast enough.

The guard’s hand whipped from his jacket out to Rochere. One shot, and she was bent over, clutching her middle, red blooming into brown across the greens of her dress.

Eli halted, Dawn stumbled. The guard froze in a flash of white light, gun still pointed at Rochere.

DuPont staggered back at the flash of the spell. “What—?”

Then Beake was in front of him, crashing his knee into the old man’s gut. As DuPont gasped and doubled over, Beake grabbed his shoulder and threw him to the floor. The man’s wafer-thin frame crashed onto the wood with a crack.

“Hey!” Eli found his wits again, gun swinging back up to his target—but there was no clear shot. Half-hidden behind the guard, Beake ripped the briefcase out of his grasp and sprinted down the hall with his prize.

“Please,” Rochere choked, wide eyes fixated on Eli. As he watched, she crumpled into a heap, crimson spilling around her.

Eli’s breath stuttered, and he knelt down to grab her shoulder, his other hand at his earpiece. “Medic, we need a medic—“

“Eli, go!” Dawn’s voice at his side made him jump. She was kneeling next to him, pushing on his arm. “I’ve got them, go after Beake!”

They locked eyes for a moment, then Eli nodded and scrambled to his feet.

#

“Back exit!” Eli barked into his comm. “Anyone not with Kerighin, I need you headed towards the back exit!”

He frantically estimated how many agents could get there in time. There were already two, maybe three in the alley, but Beake had been known to evade crews twice that size. If he were to have any chance at catching him here and now, he needed as many hands as possible.

Running ahead of him, Beake glanced over his shoulder, then downed a vial with his free hand. Eli tensed instantly.

“Caution, he just took a new potion,” he warned the others. “Effect unknown, I repeat, effect unknown—“

Beake burst through the emergency exit door ahead, blinding light spilling from the back alley into the dim museum hall.

“There!” a voice shouted from outside. Three shots rang out—but Ambrose’s silhouette didn’t flinch. The emergency door closed behind him, blocking Eli from seeing the action beyond.

“Shield!” someone crackled into the comm. “He’s got a shield!”

Eli grinned and forced himself to run faster. Of all the potions Beake could have taken, this was the perfect one. “Single use, that spell is single use. Mitchell, get him again!”

No response, no shots. Eli’s grin disappeared, and he slammed his shoulder into the door to dive into the light himself.

He made the mistake of looking left first—left, for his three silent agents, and not right, where Beake stood.

His agents were all frozen mid-shot. Eli held his breath and whirled around to his right. He could take the shot for them, he could take it right now—

But then he froze, too. Ice shot into his veins again, and his gun stopped a foot from Beake’s chest. As Eli’s gaze locked on the man’s face, a car rolled up in the side street behind Beake. The driver tapped the horn, but Beake didn’t respond.

“Idiot,” Beake snapped instead. The veins in his temples glowed white along with his eyes. “Absolute fool.”

Then Beake walked past him, away from the getaway car. Eli heard clothing shift, once, twice, three times.

“Walking right into their line of fire, what a…I thought you were a clever man, Elias.” Beake’s voice moved around him, and then the man was back in his line of sight, taking hold of his wrists. Eli’s gun remained leveled at his chest, but his fingers were frozen. He couldn’t pull the trigger.

The car blared again. Beake still didn’t respond.

“Now listen to me,” he said, matching Eli’s furious gaze with his glowing eyes. “I have never used mind control. Do you understand me?” His grip on Eli’s wrists tightened. “Not once. Not ever.”

He pushed Eli’s arms up so the gun pointed at the sky, then finally turned and slid into the car, briefcase in hand. With one last look out the window, he tapped at his temple.

Eli unfroze, and his shot careened far above the car as it peeled away. Behind him, three more shots fired. He whipped around—the other agents were also aiming skyward, their arms pushed up like Eli’s.

Eli turned back and sprinted out to the street, but it was too late. The car—silver sedan, no plates, tinted windows—had already disappeared into traffic.

Eli did curse this time, as loudly as the back alley would allow.

Pearce was going to kill him.