Peri took a breath to tell them to get out, but it faltered when Rachel dropped the peeled wax into the bowl. In her hands was the accelerator. It was dull with wax smears, and dark, but it was unmistakable. “Close?” Rachel said as she set it into Peri’s grip.

Peri jiggled it, reluctant to hold the prickly thing, but immediately she realized it was dead. It might look the same, but it didn’t feel the same, and somehow that was reassuring. It wasn’t the accelerator. “It doesn’t feel alive like the real one,” she said, and Jenks landed on her hand, his dust making it glow.

“That’s because it isn’t the real one,” he said, kicking it once before looking up at Peri, his head cocked. “So, we doing this, or do we go down to the post office for some change-of-address forms?”

Peri’s pulse quickened. They might be rival agents trying to get her to steal the stone back for them, but somehow she couldn’t force herself to believe that. “Yes. Let me get my keys.”

Chapter 4

4

The three-lane road to the front gate of Opti Health was well maintained and brightly lit, the clandestine government agency hidden in plain sight in one of Detroit’s new tech industry parks set out among a mix of old and new trees. The regular rise and fall of the land showed where there had once been homes, and the largest trees were in regular rows where streets once ran. Nothing but the sewer and underground electric lines remained, having been repurposed to industry.

The remaining road was heavy with cameras, and Peri drove through the wide, multilane, general entrance with an unusual quickness, appreciating that there was no traffic at this hour. The light was brightening at the horizon, but it was still dark, and fatigue tugged at Peri, pushed aside by practice and a lingering worry.

Jenks had perched himself on the rearview mirror almost as soon as they had gotten in the car. He’d been silent most of the way, watching the droneway lights with an intent curiosity that begged Peri to ask what he was thinking. The fake accelerator was in her purse on the passenger’s seat. Rachel was in the trunk. Convincing her to get in it hadn’t been easy.

Jenks’s wings hummed for balance as Peri took the soft right that led to Opti’s small cluster of buildings where an elementary school had once been. The small man was swinging his feet, which were wrapped up in a tissue to ward off the cold, and somehow managing to look like he was all that—with caramel sauce and sprinkles.

“Rachel says you have a lot of kids,” she said, not comfortable with the silence as they wove through the trees and Opti’s technological, hidden fence. On average, it killed three deer every year, mostly in the winter.