Mystics 3-Book Collection (23 page)

With his fingers curled into fists, Agent
Vargas paced around the room.

“I don’t even know where to begin? This is
so outrageous, such unbelievable recklessness. I must be dreaming?
How can my
own
operatives act so irresponsibly? How could
you be so foolish—so senseless? Did you not think how this would
reflect on the hive? No! Of course not! You were only thinking
about yourselves!”

Zoey looked up and found her voice. “This is
all my fault, Agent Vargas—”

“SILENCE!” bellowed the agent. He was silent
for a moment, as he tried to control his anger.

“Imagine the state of panic your parents
went through when they discovered your empty beds? Their
children—vanished—gone. They thought their boys had been
kidnapped!”

Zoey wasn’t sleepy anymore. The intensity of
the situation sent adrenalin soaring through her—or was that her
overwhelming guilt? She was sure it was going to get a lot worse
any second now. She tried to get Agent Barnes’ attention, but he
avoided her gaze as he watched Agent Vargas. She felt isolated.

“They called the agency right away,” he
continued, “and asked if we knew anything about your
disappearance.”

His eyes turned to Zoey. “I had my doubts,
but when we searched
your
room and found you gone—then I
knew where the three of you had disappeared—where I
specifically
told you
not
to go—where even agents are
not allowed! You disobeyed me! You turned your back on the agency!”
His voice rose and his face reddened even more.

He placed his hands on Zoey’s desk and
looked down at her. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples. “Am I
to suppose that
you
were the instigator in this mess? I
never had any problems with Tristan or Simon until
you
came
along.”

Zoey’s bottom lip trembled, and tears
swelled in her eyes.

“Yes. It’s all me. All of it.” And then she
added quickly, “It’s not their fault Agent Vargas. I forced them to
come with me. They didn’t want to come, but I blackmailed
them.”

“You forced them and blackmailed them?
Really, how so?”

“I told them if they didn’t come—we wouldn’t
be friends anymore,” she lied.

The words pained her as they left her lips.
Tristan turned to look at her and shook his head, mouthing the word
no
. But she ignored him.

“So you see—they’re innocent. I’m the one to
blame. I did this, not them. I’m the rule breaker. I only thought
of myself.”

She took a deep breath. “I’ll accept any
punishment you give me. I won’t complain.”

Agent Vargas raised his eyebrows. “Oh you
will, will you?”

“Yes,” said Zoey. “You can lock me up in a
prison and starve me and torture me—I deserve it.”

“Stop your nonsense,” said the agent.

His voice softened, and he seemed to relax a
little. “We don’t torture little girls—even if they disobey the
rules and endanger the lives of their fellows. What were you
thinking? You could have been killed.”

“I needed to know if what Agent Scott had
told me about my mother was true,” she answered.

She inhaled shakily. “I had to find out. I
couldn’t help myself.”

Zoey saw an opportunity and took it. “But we
survived, and we found out some really important stuff.”

“What stuff?” Agent Barnes walked towards
them slowly, his arms still crossed. “What stuff are you talking
out, Zoey?”

Both Simon and Tristan nodded their approval
as she spoke. She took a deep breath and told the agents about the
swamp Grohemoths, the leprechaun gang, and more importantly about
the imprisonment of the woman, Elizabeth, and the role of the Alpha
Nation.

Agent Vargas wasn’t buying it.

“First you tell us an absurd story about a
strange deformed looking woman who has the stolen interloper—and
now this! Why are you making up these lies? What purpose do they
serve?”

Zoey shrank back in her seat. Her words
wouldn’t come. She wanted so desperately for them to believe her,
but she knew it was a lost case.

Tristan raised his hand. “Wait a second,
Agent Vargas, what Zoey is saying is—” he began. Agent Vargas
silenced him with brisk a wave of his hand.

“You are not permitted to speak, until
spoken to, Tristan.” Agent Vargas looked as if he was about to
sprout horns.

“I vouched for you, Zoey,” said Agent Barnes
suddenly. “What were you thinking? How could you let me down like
this?”

His words were like knives stabbing her in
the heart. Her eyes burned, and the room got hazy. She didn’t
understand why she cared what Agent Barnes thought of her. He
wasn’t her real father. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been scolded
a million times by her foster parents—why was this any
different?

“But it’s the truth,” was all she was able
to say without letting go of the tears that threatened to flow down
her cheeks. She looked at Agent Barnes, but he was staring at the
floor with a frown.

“Truth? Do you even know the meaning of the
word?” Agent Vargas started pacing again.

“I don’t know what to make of all of this.
Understand this, Zoey, management will be advised of your actions.
We have a meeting about this shocking episode this morning—and I
doubt it will turn out in your favor.”

He pointed a large hand at Tristan and Simon
who shrunk back in their seats, looking guilty. “You two are to
return home today to your families. You’re both suspended for one
day.”

And then he turned to Zoey. “And you, Zoey
St. John, are suspended indefinitely.”

Zoey stared out her bedroom window
longingly. She watched the other operatives on their lunch break as
they lounged on the vast hive grounds. They were laughing and
eating like normal kids, enjoying the last warm days of October.
She saw Tristan and Simon shooting their S9 slingshots at a line of
plastic water bottles on a picnic table. Tristan hit every bottle.
Simon purposely stepped over the target line when Tristan’s back
was turned, then yelled out in delight at the fallen bottles.

She ached to be with her friends, but it was
impossible. She was on lockdown in her room, a prisoner. She had
been restricted to the
Wander Inn
for four weeks now, and
had been forbidden to have contact with any other operatives,
especially Tristan and Simon. Even her beloved golden boomerang had
been confiscated. That hurt.

Management’s final decision regarding her
fate with the agency was still unresolved. The waiting was
excruciating. From what Agent Barnes had told her the
one
time he had come to visit, she understood that management was
divided about whether she should be reinstated or sent to live in a
secret neighborhood with a Seventh’s family.

It seemed that no one believed her story.
Management and the agents seemed convinced that she had made it all
up to gain attention. They claimed it wasn’t her fault—that her
behavior was the result of being an orphan and tossed from foster
home to foster home since she had been a baby.

While Zoey was reckless and headstrong, she
wasn’t a liar. And she was determined to prove it to them, if it
was the last thing she ever did.

But for now all she could do was wait, and
it was making her crazy. It was a miracle that she had actually
obeyed her instructions to stay inside the
Wander Inn
and
not broken out already. But there would come a time when she would,
and she knew it was going to be very soon.

She was still preoccupied with what had
happened to Elizabeth, and why she had been imprisoned in Troll
City. If Elizabeth was truly her mother, she needed to find her no
matter what. She couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. That wasn’t
who
she
was.

With nothing to do but think for the four
weeks she had been imprisoned, she concluded that Elizabeth
must
have been an agent who had discovered something so
important that she needed to be silenced. That was the only thing
that made sense—you didn’t imprison ordinary people for no apparent
reason. No, Elizabeth must have known something dangerous—and they
had locked her up to keep her from talking.

Zoey knew that orphanages kept records about
every child who had been in and out of their facilities going back
for decades. The agency must keep records about
all
their
agents, too. And she had a pretty good idea where they would
be.

Zoey figured that the longer it took
management to make a decision about her case, the smaller were the
odds that she would remain in the program. It was pretty obvious
she was going to get kicked out—so why not go out with a
bang
? Bangs are good.

Zoey sighed and rested her forehead on the
window. Stuart walked casually across the grounds with Claudia at
his side—the way they were walking so close to each other they
almost looked like they were dating. She couldn’t understand how
anyone—even Claudia—could stand Stuart. There was something
different about him. He seemed to know things the others did not.
It gave him airs, and she hated him for it. What could he know?

She watched them as they joined another
group of operatives at a bench. Stuart’s lips moved, and they all
started laughing. Then one by one they looked up and stared at
Zoey’s window. Even from a distance she could see the evil smile on
Stuart’s triumphant face. It was almost as though he already knew
her fate, and by the self-satisfied grin on his face it could only
mean that she was on her way out. He lifted his hand and waved.

Zoey closed the curtains and stepped away
from the window. She picked up a blueberry muffin, yelled in
frustration, and hurled it into the wall in an explosion of crumbs.
It wasn’t very helpful, but she felt a little release.

It wasn’t over yet. Zoey had a plan, and it
started tonight.

At the stroke of midnight Zoey rolled out of
bed in a t-shirt, hoody sweater and sweat pants. She pulled on her
sneakers and grabbed the flashlight she had nicked from Aria’s
kitchen at dinner. She tiptoed out the door and down the stairs. As
silent as a cat, she closed the front door behind her and crept to
the front entrance of the hive. She pulled open the door and looked
around. The main hallway was empty—her timing was perfect. She was
not about to get caught again. She pulled off her sneakers and hid
them in a large plant pot near the entrance door.

She sprinted towards the main stairway on
the right, and after sliding and slipping up the stairs, she
reached the fourth floor. She held her breath and peeked around the
corner. The corridor was empty. She made her way down the corridor
and found a gray metal door with a sign at the top which read:
Supernatural Affairs, Room 4A.

This room was off limits, and she would
definitely get kicked out of the program for breaking in here. But
finding the truth about Elizabeth was more important to her. She
didn’t care anymore. She
had
to do this.

If she was right about Elizabeth being an
agent, then she might be lucky enough to find out information about
her
father,
too. Maybe he had also been an agent? But she
didn’t want to get her hopes up too high just yet. For now, she
focused exclusively on her mother—the rest would follow.

With her nerves fluttering in her belly, she
wrapped her hand on the handle and pushed in carefully. The room
was dark, and she waited for her eyes to adjust. She didn’t want to
use the flashlight just yet and shoved it in her front pocket. The
room was as large as the entire main hall. Thick drapes hung from
tall windows at the opposite end. Shadows slowly took solid forms,
and she could make out a long rectangular table in the middle of
the room, with chairs around it and a large screen. There was a
seating area with couches and chairs. Pictures lined the walls, but
it was too dark to make out what they were. She crept inside. There
were two other doors on the far right.

She opened the first door—a kitchenette and
a small bathroom. The other door revealed a small office. A
computer sat on a wooden desk, waiting to be hacked. But she wasn’t
a hacker, and it would take forever to figure out the password. She
didn’t have the luxury of time. A large high-back upholstered chair
stood in the corner, and three large file cabinets backed against
tall bookshelves that wrapped the right side of the room.

“This has to be it,” Zoey whispered to
herself. She could feel that she was very close to discovering
something. She closed the door to the office behind her and
switched on her flashlight.

The metal-gray filing cabinets were about
four feet tall with three large drawers. She read the front labels
on the first cabinet:
Headquarters - London Affairs, AN, Mystic
Treaty
.

The second cabinets’ drawers read;
Sevenths, AD - BC,
Census - 1295 – Present.

And then on the last cabinet she stuck gold.
The labels read:
List of active agents
,
List of retired
agents
, and finally,
List of MIA agents or Deceased
—if
her mother was still in hiding, then this was the only drawer that
her file could be in.

She pulled out the drawer gently and began
to finger through the alphabetical labels. There were hundreds of
missing-in-action agents. She put the flashlight in her mouth and
searched, but after half an hour she had gone through every
name—and nothing.

Then at the very back she found a picture of
a woman with fire-red hair and large green eyes. Zoey’s blood
turned to ice.

It was as though she was looking at an older
version of herself—the woman in the picture even had the same tiny
little dimple in the middle of her chin. She knew this had to be
her mother. The name at the top of the file read: Elizabeth Steele.
Trembling all over, she pulled out the file, ran over to the desk,
flattened it out, and read.