The Harder I Work, the Luckier I Get Read online

“Search the area,” Liam commanded, yelling loud enough to draw every eye in the vicinity to us. “Let’s hurry up and find anyone involved. Maybe we can stop them from starting the fire.”

  We were making assumptions based on Joseph’s nose, which I had every confidence in. There was no reason why the place would suddenly smell like kerosene.

  As Liam finished speaking, I got a flash of a loud explosion and the arena igniting into an inferno. I blinked my eyes a few times and saw that the building was still in one piece. I was never good at word association, and adding in visions of future events didn’t make it any more fun.

  “Don’t worry about the warlock yet,” I said. For some reason I was certain that it was warlock driven and not anti-unique driven, even if those could technically be lumped together. “The building’s going to explode. We need to make sure everyone is cleared back from it and no one is inside. Is anyone picking up any life signs from the building?”

  “My readings say it’s empty, except for a strong force, which must be the person with the kerosene. I can’t believe I didn’t pick it up before. I was so focused on the jinn that I didn’t feel anything else,” Liam said.

  “Who knows when the warlock arrived on the scene. Right now we need to work our way around the building and make sure people are cleared away. I think we have a couple minutes before things get really bad. I want to try to do everything I can to control the fire, but I don’t think we can stop it from happening,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on. “That means you guys have to hurry to rescue any humans you can get to in about a block radius.”

  My words caused everyone to take off in a run to make their way around the building and hopefully get everyone to safety. I was a little surprised they left me alone, but they knew in my mind, the humans’ lives came first.

  “Avery, we have a problem,” Nate messaged me from his location. He’d only been gone five seconds, he shouldn’t have found a problem bigger than the one I foresaw that quickly.

  “You’ve been gone a second, what kind of problem did you run into already?” I asked.

  “I found someone who says his wife just ran in the building because she forgot her purse. She wasn’t in there when Liam did his scan, but she is now. Do you think she’ll be able to get out in time?” he asked.

  What in the world kind of idiot ran into a building with the fire alarm going off? I didn’t need to ask whether she was one of the uniques who’d more than likely been in the audience. There wouldn’t have been any urgency in Nate’s voice if she would’ve been able to live through a blast.

  When he finished speaking, I could feel the fire I’d been searching for ignite within the building. I could see that the warlock was on a suicide mission and was trying to blow the boiler, thinking we were still in the building.

  Wait, no, not suicide, he’d fireproofed himself and was planning on zapping himself out once he dropped the match. I tried to focus on the fire on the match to gain control of the situation, but it must have been charmed. I couldn’t put it out remotely.

  “Nate, I have time to get her, just make sure everyone is away from the scene,” I told him before I tried to come up with a plan.

  The woman inside didn’t have any time, which meant my plan didn’t either. I searched for her mental signature as quickly as I could. It was difficult for me to do since I didn’t know her. The second I felt it, I said a spell as quickly as I could to teleport myself to her location.

  She screamed when she saw me appear out of nowhere. She had her purse and was on her way back outside. I didn’t bother explaining things and instead said a combo spell that would transport her to Nate’s location, which I believed to be a safe distance away, because he was with her spouse. The other part of the spell took me back to my original location, so I could try to control the damage.

  By the time I got there, only a second or two had passed, but my head was pounding from not having the time to give a proper sacrifice. It was just going to have to wait, because the match was heading to the ground and the warlock had done something to make the kerosene ignite quickly. It was already heating up the boiler. I could tell that the warlock had left to find a safe place to watch the fireworks. Once he’d lit the match, he glowed on my radar.

  Before he left, I was able to get a glimpse of the boiler pressure gauge and it seemed to be building faster than I expected, which since I didn’t want it to build at all, wasn’t saying much. He must have done something to the pressure relief valve, at least I thought I’d heard it called that the few times I’d heard someone talking about a boiler in my life.

  Without him at the scene, I couldn’t see what was happening, or get a good look at the boiler to try to release the valve with my telekinesis. I could feel the fire and I’d already doused it, but whatever the warlock did to the boiler, I couldn’t fix from where I was.

  Believing I didn’t have time to grab a knife, I quickly bit the tip of my finger hard enough to draw blood. I let the blood fall to the ground and quickly said a spell to get me into the boiler room. No one ever said I was smart.

  The gauge on the front of the boiler was almost to the red danger zone, and as I arrived on the scene, a rivet went flying past my head. Not good, really not good. I didn’t know much about boilers, but there had to be a way to release the pressure, and I doubted stabbing it with one of my knives was the way to go.

  I found something that looked like it might be the valve I was looking for. I attempted to unscrew it, but the little handle piece fell off in my hand. I heard more rivets flying around and decided I’d seen enough of the boiler to try to unscrew the valve on the boiler from outside. My bite wound hadn’t closed, so I dripped more blood on the ground and hightailed it out of there.

  Once safely outside, I pictured the boiler in my mind and worked to undo the valve I had been looking at. I couldn’t really tell if I was accomplishing anything, so I concentrated intently on righty tighty, lefty loosely and screwing that bolt to the left. My head was still pounding from doing two teleporting spells back to back improperly.

  The time on my imaginary clock was probably up to a full minute, and the building was still in one piece. With as close as the gauge was to the red area, I had to believe it would’ve blown by then if it was going to, so I thought things could be over.

  I hated not knowing anything for sure. Standing around imagining things in my mind shouldn’t have solved a problem, but it had worked for me in the past.

  I heard sirens in the background. Someone must have called to make sure backup was in place if things had gone according to plan. I was glad someone was on their toes.

  “Is everyone okay?” I tapped my communicator to get a message out to everyone.

  “Yes, dollface,” Kyle reported back. “After you did your initial rescue, your new friend transported all residents close by a couple of blocks away. It seemed he took your instructions as an order and saw it through immediately.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to be an order, just an idea of where we needed to start in case the building blew like I saw,” I said. I made a note to be careful about what I said in the future.

  “He didn’t mind. You were trying to save lives and he was happy to help. How are things on the scene?” Liam asked.

  “I’m pretty sure everyone can come back. I think it would be best if one of us goes in before the first responders. I don’t think the warlock did anything else, but I don’t want our efforts to go to waste and have a human end up getting hurt.”

  I wasn’t sure anyone should go in the building. The fact that people believed me when I said the building was going to blow up was a little farfetched, but they trusted my mind more than I did.

  “I’m almost back to you,” Nate said. “You’re not going back into that building alone. You nearly gave me a heart attack when you went in to try to fix the boiler.”

  “I’m not particularly looking forward to going back in there anyway, so I’ll enjoy the company,” I replied a
s I saw him running towards me. “Rick, Charlie, I want you two to take care of the first responders. Hold them back long enough that we can give the all clear.”

  “Will do. Just think, tomorrow the papers are all going to be reporting what a shero you are,” Rick replied, using the term he’d started calling me ever since I took over as a spokesperson for the uniques.

  “We’ll have to tell them something, but I don’t want to focus on me,” I told everyone over the airwaves, as if they needed to know I didn’t want more publicity.

  “Too bad. You were the only one of us who could have done anything to help. The rest of us don’t have your cool teleporting ability and the woman you saved is probably already talking to reporters,” Joseph said.

  “Yeah, Mom, sorry, but you’re the hero in all of this. It will be good PR for us, so just go with the flow,” Charlie replied.

  “I’m sure the Humans Unite group will say we did this ourselves for the publicity. How are we going to get around that?” I asked as Nate and I entered the building.

  “I’m sure the building has cameras. This is on a college campus, after all. It will show us leaving and possibly be able to catch the warlock on tape if he entered the building the old-fashioned way. Who knows, they may even have had cameras in the basement. The exits seem more logical, but you never know,” Nate assured me as we made our way to the basement.

  “Take your time. We’ve alerted the fire crews and cops about what happened, and they’re more than willing to let you guys take on any booby traps that the guy might have left,” Rick informed us.

  Good, I was glad they were listening. I didn’t think there’d be anything to run into. When I was in the warlock’s mind, he was so sure the explosion would work that he wasn’t thinking about any back up plans.

  When we got down in the basement, we saw water damage everywhere. It looked like there was going to be some big-time clean-up, but I didn’t think anything was permanently damaged.

  “You did a really good job today, my little butterfly. Even though I was worried about you getting injured, you were extremely calm under pressure, no pun intended. Rick and I stayed tuned in with you the whole time, but we didn’t want to interrupt for fear it would delay your reflexes. How’s the head feeling?”

  There was no mention of shackles, so I was happy to hear Nate’s compliments. Other than a little ache in my head, there wasn’t anything that indicated I’d put myself in a dangerous situation. I hadn’t really ever felt in danger, which was weird after I’d seen the building blow up.

  “It still hurts, but I didn’t see a lot of choice. With us being under the microscope right now, we can’t afford to allow a human to die under our watch.”

  “I know. I wasn’t trying to chastise you for doing it. I just wanted to check on you. We’re probably going to be stuck here a while with the authorities, but if you’re injured, we may be able to get you home sooner, so you can sleep it off.”

  So far, everything looked to be in order and nothing had popped out at us. “Let’s head back up to the surface and try to get the questioning over as soon as possible. I used a lot of abilities today, and I can’t remember if they’re all ones that people were aware of,” I said, heading back to the stairs.

  “With you, I think we’ll be okay. It’s the moving the local residents a couple blocks away all at once I worry about,” Nate said. “I don’t think anything we’ve listed could possibly explain how we were able to accomplish that feat.”

  “People would probably assume it was me, because we’ve mentioned I can teleport, but I’d prefer they didn’t,” I said, clicking on my communicator. “Anyone have any idea on how we can explain the mass move of the residents? We really need everyone to be able to just forget it ever happened, but yet let the ones who were close by believe they were moved away from the perimeter by us.”

  “Taken care of, my queen.” I was taken back for a second, that was Mak’s voice. He wasn’t supposed to have a communicator yet.

  “Mak, how did you get a communicator?” I asked, ignoring for the moment that I accidentally issued another order he felt he had to respond to.

  “Vinnie carries extras in case of malfunction during your outings. He let me have one,” he replied.

  “When you said it was taken care of, does that mean you waved your magic wand and adjusted people’s memories?” I asked him, wanting a little clarification.

  “Yes, they’ll now remember things just as you requested. We have to make sure the authorities aren’t wise to my mistake of actually moving the people. If I had been thinking more clearly, you just said to rescue the people and I could’ve probably accomplished that without moving them,” he answered.

  “You did great, Mak. I’m just sorry we won’t be able to tell anyone your exact involvement, because they may start to take a closer look and realize uniques aren’t all shifters,” I assured him. “My biggest problem is that I need to learn how to word things so they don’t sound like an order.”

  When we made it outside, Nate and I informed firefighters where to go and settled in to start telling the cops what happened. It took a couple of hours, but they finally released us and we headed back to our house. There, I went straight to my room, took my chopsticks out and collapsed on the bed in hopes of getting rid of my still mild headache.

   

  CHAPTER 7

  Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness