Infinity Son(22)

Life’s funny that way.

I’m making my way back to base when I catch the reflection of the disguise I’m currently wearing. Dark blond hair, pretty enough, and most important, the pale skin that lets me coast by during charged moments. The impression is not a perfect match, but it doesn’t have to be. I can get by with a misshapen nose, shorter eyelashes, hazel eyes instead of brown. It’s the key targets that have to be studied carefully. The crow’s-feet, the gnawed-on nails, the birthmark on the neck, everything in place so loved ones don’t ever second-guess me. Tonight didn’t require a deep morph, so I lifted the look from someone swiping his way into the train station while I was on my way out. I needed to get far away from those enforcers after Orton broke code.

Luna is going to have his head if he’s still out there.

Mine too, maybe.

I’m not unfamiliar with great housing, but our current stay in lower Manhattan’s Light Sky Tower with the other Blood Casters is something else. Security for the city’s tallest building is intense, but as long as I have my password, they’re instructed to let me in at the back entrance, no matter what I look like. “Breath of wraith,” I say. The guard eyes me like he’ll be able to see past my disguise if he squints hard enough before letting me into the elevator that shoots me up to the one-hundred-and-tenth floor.

The penthouse is the only place in this skyscraper where I’m allowed to drop my morph. Only the gang knows who I am; the rest of the world can’t find out. Blessing and a curse. It’s worth it if it means the people I’m hiding from won’t ever find me, but it also guarantees no one will ever know the real me. Whoever that is these days.

I wish morphing were as effortless for me as it was for the shifter whose blood Luna stole to give me these powers, but unfortunately, holding a shape weighs on me. It’s tougher than holding in a piss on a full bladder. I feel lighter as my disguise falls. The pale skin finds its natural brown complexion. Hair turns dark and shrinks on the sides and curls on the top. My mother’s amber eyes are restored; I miss her, but I’m relieved she’s not around to see who I’ve become.

Blessing. Curse.

I cross the empty living space. Dione has been out for days gathering intel on the hydra shipment, but I don’t know how Stanton is keeping busy tonight. I go to the balcony, expecting to find Luna gazing at the Crowned Dreamer through the massive telescope. But the only ones out here are June and that awful alchemist, Anklin, who reeks of days-old corpses. I was raised to maintain straight posture whenever I’m in the presence of people I should respect, but I relax my shoulders now because I wouldn’t move a muscle if Anklin or June fell over the railing. Luna swears June is a miracle, but I believe she’s the end of everything we know. Still not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

“Good evening,” Anklin says to me as he studies June.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” I say. “Would you, June?”

June is still as a mannequin. She doesn’t answer, of course. She never speaks. Luna is probably the only one who has ever heard her voice. She’s short like the first girl I kissed and has the same dead-eyed stare as the first boy I admitted having a crush on. It’s chilly tonight, especially way up here, but June isn’t shivering, even with all the goose bumps running along her white arms. None of the Blood Casters are natural, but June is the strangest of all. Maybe she’ll be the one tasked with taking out the Senator before November.

“Ness,” a deep voice says from behind me, with a hint of a hiss.

Stanton is as stealthy as the basilisk he personally hunted to steal its blood. Well, stealthier since he beat it. Before his days of oily blond hair, yellow eclipse eyes that narrow like a serpent’s, and dark green veins glowing beneath his white skin like poison, he charmed tons of people into following him home so he could kill them. A little harder these days.

“What’s up?” I ask.

Between his muscles, his powers, and his past, I try to stay on his good side.

“Luna wants to see you in her quarters,” Stanton says.

I’m quick, because you don’t keep Luna waiting.

The room is dim, and the glowing tablet lights up Luna’s features—tired green eyes, wrinkled moon-white skin, long silver hair. “I am designing new life from which we all stand to benefit, but that’s only if I live,” she says. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, my queen.”

One day I better be able to serve myself instead of others.

“I want the boy from the train.”

I tense up. Has she had me followed? I’m the one tasked with following her targets.

“You understand you were being recorded, yes?” Luna flips her tablet toward me, and there’s a video of Orton’s fight.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“I don’t care if there are eyes on you as long as you are aware of them. It would be a great loss should you become exposed. . . .” Luna coughs violently and wipes her lip with a silk handkerchief.

“No one will ever know who I am,” I say.

Fusing someone with shifter blood is complex, and she worked extra hard to make sure I didn’t lose myself to the powers—or die—but if I want to live past the average curtain call of a Caster, I have to step up my game.

Everything about this objective is the oddest coincidence considering I’m in the business of never being seen as the same person more than once. I’m uneasy running into the same stranger twice in a gigantic city. But all that matters now is finding and delivering him to Luna to save my own neck.