Preface

Hi everyone! I wanted to drop an FYI here to prevent any potential misunderstandings.

A chapter or so into this book, a small number of you may find yourself thinking, “This is incredibly familiar. Did this author plagiarize this story???” The answer is an unequivocal NOPE! I wrote a book very similar to this one, but on my journey of transitioning, I realized I couldn’t continue to write from a female point of view.

This led to me rewriting the entire thing with a male main character, which is something I’ve been secretly wanting to do for a long time. I got to take the first book I ever wrote, pour all the skills I’ve learned over the past few years into it, and make this puppy into something worth reading. And wonder beyond wonders, I’m actually happy with how it turned out. Shocking, no?

Anyway, thank you for getting my book and giving it a chance. I truly hope you all enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed writing it.

Cheers!

Chapter 1The Boy

If it got any colder, his bloody feet were going to start sticking to the pavement. On a good day, touching his bare feet to the urine-scented ground of the alley behind his efficiency apartment would have been unthinkable. But today wasn’t a good day—it was a running day.

The Boy couldn’t believe he had been so careless as to forget his shoes, but it had been worth it. If his choices were capture or cold, sore feet, he would always choose the latter.

They were getting better at finding him and figuring out how to lure him in. He thought blending in with the norms would keep him safe, but that had only worked for so long. His family wouldn’t be at the top of the food chain if they weren’t adaptable, and as of tonight, it was obvious that they were now as adept at navigating nonmagical society as he was.

He wondered how they had figured out the finer points of norm society. It was doubtful it had been the way he’d done it. For longer than he wanted to contemplate, he’d had nothing but norm books to keep him company. Mother had said teaching him about witchcraft would be a waste and that he could make do with the garbage norms read.

Fortunately for him, the books and magazines, so carelessly shoved at him by the servants, were his salvation. From spy novels to Shakespeare, from gossip rags to cooking magazines, all readable discards from the world of normal humans had kept him from going insane. As long as it didn’t teach him about the society that was his birthright, he was allowed to read it. It was from these books that he learned how to pick a lock, how to sneak past a guarded perimeter, and how to assimilate into a crowd.

He didn’t blame his family for locking him away. How could he fault them for wanting to protect the rest of the world from his unfortunate disability? He often questioned the gods in their decision to make him. Why on earth make someone whose sole power was to enrage others?

There were a few exceptions—some of the servants managed to remain (almost) normal around him—but since he turned seven, no one in his family could stand to be around him for more than a few minutes without going nuts.

It was a good night for sneaking around if one didn’t mind the cold. The cloudy sky kept the moon and stars from exposing his position. Creeping around the edge of a building, he did his best to stay out of the lamplight. It wasn’t hard—the residents of the neighborhood had busted most of the bulbs in the alley. Apparently, The Boy wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be seen.

He’d had to abandon most of his things this time—most notably his shoes, a battered paperback copy of Much Ado About Nothing, and an iPod he’d found on the sidewalk. It had a broken screen, but it worked even around his magical interference, which was rare since technology and magic didn’t play well together. There had only been enough warning to push open the window of his efficiency apartment and climb down the fire escape before they shattered his door. If he was lucky, they would think he wasn’t home. If he was unlucky, they would be fanning out to find him.

Not that he’d had much to leave behind. Today he’d spent the last bit of money he managed to get from selling his necklace—the last gift he received before his magic had manifested. His books may have taught him how to escape and how to cook, but finding a job that wasn’t terrifying hadn’t made it into the rotation. Cooking skills didn’t mean much without food to cook.

He pulled his thin hoodie around himself, glad he’d chosen dark clothing to wear that day. It would make getting away from his family’s goons easier—if you could call sneaking past an unknown number of people who’d been taught battle magic from an early age easy. They had all the magic his powerful and influential family could muster, while he had a black hoodie and no shoes. He was going to need a miracle.

“You hear that, gods? If you made me for any reason other than a joke, I could use some help right about now.” He kept his voice low, but the hopelessness in his tone was clear even to him. “Footwear would be a good place to start if you’re interested in suggestions.”

Hearing a shout behind him, he had no choice but to run blindly, hoping he could find enough darkness to cover his retreat. The sound of gunfire coming from his only avenue of escape let him know, without a doubt, that the gods were assholes.

Chapter 2Fourteen

Agent Fourteen was having a night. He no longer had good nights or bad nights. They all blended together at this point. Everything that happened to him rolled off his mind like it was made of a hard, rubbery substance. He could still feel, but what he felt no longer mattered to him, as if it were happening to another person.

Nothing was wrong with his mind, though. No matter what they had done to him, his mind was as agile as ever. It was what made him such an asset to The Company. No morals and a quick mind—how many times had he heard that? Usually, right before a mission they’d have to make him forget.

He rubbed the scar on his left hand absently. One day he’d woken up, and it was just there without any explanation.

There had been something inside him once. He didn’t know what, but there was a hole that had been empty for so long that he didn’t notice it anymore. Thinking about it made his stomach roll, so he’d stopped that train of thought long ago.

What Agent Fourteen was thinking right now was that his handlers were idiots.

Only they would think of scheduling an assassination with the intended target. They claimed to have wanted a meeting beforehand to get intel, but Fourteen knew the truth. They’d wanted to gloat. Unfortunately for them, it turned out the target wasn’t as stupid as Steve and Frank had hoped and had brought snipers of his own.

Fourteen had managed to eliminate the target because he knew how to do his fucking job, unlike the two rapidly cooling meat suits who used to be his handlers. There was still the small matter of being currently pinned down by gunfire behind a trash bin, but it was manageable. He was nothing if not creative.

As he was weighing his options, a small body came barreling toward him, nearly landing in his lap. His knife was at the person’s throat before he even considered the action.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize this hiding spot was taken.” The soft voice was at odds with the situation. Paying no attention to the knife, the person looked around, possibly searching for a less-populated part of the alley.

“Are you with the smugglers?” Fourteen asked slowly, not relaxing his grip on the knife.

“The only thing I’m smuggling right now is me.”

There was just enough light for him to see the person crane their neck and survey their surroundings. Fourteen was used to being ignored. It was something he usually cultivated, but, at the moment, he found it irritating.

He was fairly certain the tiny, hooded figure crouched next to him was not part of the mission, just a random child in the wrong place. In his line of work, fairly certain wasn’t good enough, but he didn’t hold weapons on children. He tucked the knife back into his jacket.

Fourteen gestured with his gun hand to the dead bodies littering the alley. “Go smuggle yourself somewhere else. This is no place for a kid.”

The moon came out from behind a cloud, throwing the bloodstained corpses into sharp relief.

Fourteen could tell when the kid’s eyes landed on the heap of bodies two yards in front of them because they let out a squeak and hastily scooted backward until they hit the wall next to him. The movement knocked the child’s hood free of their head, allowing a shower of long, baby-white hair to cascade past an androgynous face.

“You’re right, I should probably go.” The kid pulled their hood back up, stuffed their hair inside, and made to stand up, but Fourteen knocked their legs out from under them with the butt of his rifle just in time to keep the kid’s head from getting blown off by a flurry of renewed gunfire.

“For fuck’s sake! Stay low,” Fourteen snapped and returned fire with more gusto than he usually did—children didn’t belong on the battlefield regardless of what The Company thought.

“Sorry! Sorry.” Sprawled out on the asphalt, the kid struggled to pull themself back to a crouching position.

“This isn’t part of the mission. This isn’t what I do,” he muttered to himself.

“What isn’t your job?”

“Keeping people alive.” Fourteen’s hand gripped his rifle tightly, and he wondered why he had even bothered to knock the kid out of harm’s way. If he’d done nothing, they would be dead, and he would be free to complete protocol and present himself for debriefing.

“Oh. That’s okay. I wasn’t asking you to.” The kid made as if to creep off in the opposite direction they had come from.

Again Fourteen stopped them with the butt of his rifle. “Not that way, idiot. That’s where the bullets are coming from.”

“True,” they conceded. “But it’s also where my pursuers aren’t coming from, so I’m going that way.”

In the patchy darkness, Fourteen could see the kid’s shoulders shaking, but from their tone of voice, they could have been telling him directions to the post office. They were an odd little thing.