Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (29 page)

A low hissing sound, like steak on a
grill, interrupted my vision. Followed by a loud pop and the acrid
odor of melting plastic. Suddenly, my knuckles smarted.

“’
Ey, Kelley, calm
yourself, boy!” the pilot, Agent Miles DeSanto, exclaimed. “Even if
we don’t need to fight, this hunk of metal still needs to fly us
out of here.”

I blinked several times to get my
bearings. The cockpit of a UNITED H340 came into focus. Smoke
wafted up from the copilot control panel in front of me. Sunlight
danced off the shards of glass covering both the dashboard and my
pants. The fifteen-inch radar screen had a fist-sized hole through
the center.

“
Sorry, Miles,” I mumbled,
brushing the glass from my lap before tending to the pieces
embedded between my knuckles.

“
Look, kid,” Miles began,
shifting in his seat to face me. Agent DeSanto was only like ten
years older than I was, but seemed to believe that his prematurely
gray hair gave him the right to call me “kid”. It seemed to be a
common occurrence these days, referring to me that way.

“
The Poachers piss me the
hell off, too,” he continued. “I’ve wanted a shot at these prigs
for years. And for me,” Miles cocked a thumb towards his chest,
“it’s personal, mate. They took my sister, Lilibet, when she was
just fifteen. Not a clue what’s become of her. But you best
believe, if we get a chance to fight today, I’m gonna find
out.”

Damn. Now I did feel like a kid. Here
I was, breaking electronics because guilt over Kenly’s current
predicament had my anger hovering too close to the surface, and
this guy’s sister had actually been sold into slavery. At least
Kenly was going to leave that auction house a free girl. Even if it
was only to then be placed in containment. But containment had to
be better than whatever the Poachers’ clients had in mind for
her.

I slunk down in my seat, crossing my
arms over my chest to hide the bloody evidence of my
tantrum.

“
Miles, man, I’m so sorry,”
I said.

“
Don’t apologize, kid. I’m
just saying that all our blood is running hot, you know? But you’re
a UNITED agent now. You gotta distance yourself, or you won’t get
through this with your sanity intact.”

I huffed. Sanity. I wasn’t sure I
still had mine, but there was no need to let Miles know that.
Already others, besides Talia, were starting to wonder. It was the
real reason Victoria hadn’t wanted me as part of the undercover
team. She hadn’t come out and said it, not exactly. But when we’d
spoken after the morning briefing, the councilwoman had expressed
concern for my mental state. Which was definitely not a great
thing.

Opening up all the channels in my
mind, I let Miles’ emotions wash over me. Grief mingled with guilt
and fear nearly smothered me. Losing his sister to the Poachers
weighed heavily on his mind. Revenge whispered in his every waking
moment, a constant reminder of the real reason he’d joined UNITED.
My thoughts immediately drifted to how I would feel if one of my
brothers or, God forbid, Talia was ever kidnapped and sold as a
plaything.

Stop it, stop it, stop
it,
I chastised myself.
Head in the game, Kelley.

From the seat behind me, Janelle
placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I patted her fingers in
thanks and smiled at her over my shoulder.

“
What’s happening in
there?” she asked, her way of gently guiding me back on
track.

I closed my eyes and tried to tune
back in to Talia and what was happening inside the auction house.
But now that I’d opened myself up to Miles, I was having a hard
time blocking his thoughts. So, instead, I decided to pump the guy
for information.

“
So you’ve known about the
Poachers for a while?” I asked Miles.

“
My whole life,” he
replied.

My brow furrowed. His whole life? The
guy didn’t have an accent, which suggested he was American. But the
McDonough School hadn’t offered a class in
arrogant-assholes-who-think-they’re-better-than-everyone-else-and-can-therefore-sell-Talents,
so where had Miles learned about the Poachers?

Sensing my confusion, Miles
explained.

“
My parents are American.
But we moved to Germany when I was three for my mother’s job.
Lilibet was born in Hamburg five years later.”

“
Where did you go to
school?” I asked, actually curious.

“
Boy’s school, Whallings,
in London. It wasn’t a Talented school. Just a regular one. Got
recruited by UNITED a couple of times, but didn’t take them up on
it until after Lilibet was taken. It’s been about ten years
now.”

“
And you have no idea where
she is now?” Janelle asked softly from the back.

“
Nope. Got a couple of
ideas. I think maybe a collector has her. She’s like
you.”

I opened my eyes to find Miles staring
pointedly at me. In my experience, whenever anyone uses the words
“like you” when referring to me, it’s not a positive
comparison.

Sitting up straighter and already
feeling defensive, I shot back.

“
What’s that supposed to
mean?”

Miles smiled wryly, seemingly immune
to my snarky tone.

“
They warned me about you.
Said you’re volatile. I believe the exact phrase was ‘an unstable
bomb set to explode’. I reckon they weren’t far off.”

He paused then, gauging my reaction as
if I might actually spontaneously combust beside him. When flames
didn’t shoot from my ears, he continued.

“
What I meant, though, was
that Lilibet is a Mimic. That’s your natural-born gift, is it
not?”

Shocked into silence, I nodded mutely.
Mimics aren’t like other Talents. We don’t give off brain patterns
that identify us as Talented, let alone ones specific to our gift.
Even Talia, who is more sensitive to other Talents than anyone else
I’ve ever encountered, hadn’t known what I was when we first
met.

Janelle voiced my question, sounding
just as suspicious as I felt.

“
How’d you know Erik was a
Mimic?”

“
Mimics are really rare.
People in this organization talk. Besides, before I agreed to get
on a hover with a Created, I wanted to know what I was agreeing to.
So, I read your file. The way I understand it, you being a Mimic is
why that drug worked so well on you,” Miles replied.

I hated being labeled as a Created. It
was a stigma that clung to me like a skunk’s spray. The other
agents judged me, gossiped behind my back, and suggested Victoria
contain me before I killed someone. All that gossip did was tempt
me to flip my shit and show them how freaking dangerous I actually
really was.

But Miles seemed interested, rather
than judgmental. He was genuinely curious about the rare genetic
anomaly that had made me—and Penny, for that matter—the perfect
hosts for the Creation drug. So perfect that it was our blood,
Mimic blood, that had finally allowed the Creation drug to be
effective. Prior to that discovery, the drug had worn off in a
matter of weeks, at best months, in most people. In rare cases,
like Talia’s, the drug stayed in the host’s system much longer,
without the levels decreasing. But for most, repeated injections
were needed in order for the Created Talent to sustain his
manufactured powers.

“
Collectors love rare
gifts,” Miles continued, either oblivious or unconcerned with
whether he’d offended me.

“
What’s a collector?”
Janelle asked, as if the name wasn’t self-explanatory.

Apparently Miles agreed with
me.

“
Just as the name implies,
darling. They collect Talents. Simply because they can. Collectors
don’t use the Talents they acquire to gain an advantage in business
or political dealings. They don’t put them to work in their
nightclubs and sideshows. They have them just to have
them.”

“
That’s disgusting,” I
spat.

Electricity crackled in the air,
causing Miles’s hair to stand on end. He looked like he’d stuck his
finger in a light socket and, as inappropriate as the reaction was,
I laughed. Miles scooted farther towards his side of the cockpit
and Janelle slid back in her seat.

This time, Miles didn’t need to warn
me to watch my temper. I gritted my teeth and reined in the anger
all on my own.

“
It is. But the
alternatives are worse,” Miles said, when he was sure my temper
tantrum was over.

“
What exactly are the
alternatives?” Janelle asked.

Fortunately, since I had zero desire
to hear Miles enumerate the atrocities the Poachers were
committing, we were interrupted. Brand’s voice came through both
the comm unit in my ear and the speakers in the cockpit.

“
Auction is starting,”
Brand announced, at the same time Talia echoed his words inside my
head.

HENRI HADN’T SEEN
a ghost. Not exactly. Because Ernest Tate had
never officially died.

Brain-dead was the
not-terribly-specific medical diagnosis TOXIC’s doctors decreed,
after I’d fried his mind. Ernest’s condition was supposedly
permanent, according to those same doctors. Yet, somehow, the
brain-dead Higher Reasoning Talent was standing in an auction house
in England, with a cocktail in one hand and communicator in the
other. As if all of that wasn’t peculiar enough, Ernest was using
said communicator to bid against us. It was a tossup as to what was
more shocking: Ernest’s miraculous recovery or that he was
continually trumping our bids.

The auction had begun. Bidding was
underway for the first unfortunate soul. My horror at seeing the
fiasco in action was dulled slightly by Ernest’s presence. In a
way, seeing him there was a blessing. It gave me a new problem to
focus on, allowing the outrage over the proceedings as a whole to
find a home behind the forefront of my mind.

Pain shot through my hand and I looked
down. The champagne flute was now in two pieces, cracked along the
stem. Jagged glass had cut a small slice in my palm. Okay, so maybe
that outrage wasn’t locked away quite so well.

Delicate fingers pried mine loose from
the broken glass. Frederick handed it off to a passing waiter,
grumbling about the shoddy glasses they were using. When the man
rushed forward with apologies, Frederick simply took the napkins he
was offering, and waved him off to fetch another drink. Blood
welled up in a crimson line on my skin, but the cut didn’t appear
too deep. Engrossed in the auction, no one was paying attention to
me and Frederick.

“
I’m fine,” I snapped in
response to my fake boyfriend’s quizzical gaze. Frederick’s jaw
stiffened at my harsh tone and I immediately felt bad for being an
ass. In a softer voice, I added, “Really, I’m fine.”

Our group had decided to disperse
within the crowd to remain inconspicuous and hopefully make it
slightly less obvious that we were only bidding on Created. Penny
and Brand were standing just behind the VIP area, approximately
twenty feet in front of Frederick and me. Henri was standing off to
one side, near a bar, with Angus shadowing his every move. Agent
Canary’s team was scattered throughout the arena, reporting details
and observations over the comm units.

After Penny’s failed attempt to buy
Kenly before the auction started, I’d tasked Riley with figuring
out where she was being held. He was also trying to locate the
holding area for “purchased” merchandise. If everyone, both
Talented and Created, were in the same place, there was still a
chance of freeing them all without, technically, violating
Victoria’s orders.

“
The current bid is 500,000
Globes to bidder 2641,” the auctioneer announced. Our master of
ceremonies was a severe looking woman who radiated about as much
warmth as a snow pile.

Penny was bidder 2641. The “item” she
was bidding on was Francie Owens, a girl I recognized from my time
at the McDonough School. I was also pretty sure she was a friend of
Kenly’s. From the specs the auctioneer read off prior to calling
for bids, everyone in the auction house assumed Francie was
Created, both because of her numerous Talents and her American
heritage. And the globe amounts being offered up confirmed that
people were willing to pay obscene amounts of money for the
privilege of owning such a rare creature.