Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies by Annie Bellett Read Free Book Online

putting emphasis into the word. With an exaggerated wink he brushed off his trousers, picked up his bag, and scrammed like the coward he was. I glared after him, unable to really be mad. A little warning would have been nice, but eh. Friends. What can you do.
    Alek held the door for me like a gentleman. I started to walk through, doing the automatic check for keys even though I hadn’t driven, and realized that my phone was missing from my jeans pocket. Probably fell out near the pool. I swear that phone was possessed, never around when I needed it. Maybe it knew my rough history with phones. I stopped and turned back.
    Which meant that the bullet that should have turned my head into fine pink mist instead cleaved off part of my braid before chunking into the wall and pinning my hair there in an explosion of concrete dust.

Sniper . First thought that went through my head. Watched too many war movies, I suppose. But I wasn’t wrong.
    I dropped flat as Alek sprang over me. He turned into a tiger in mid-leap and charged the upper parking lot, where the shot likely came from. I blinked dust out of my eyes and squirmed backward into the doorway.
    “Alek,” I yelled. A car engine roared to life and I heard squeals as it peeled out. Risking a look, I raised my head and crawled forward again, just enough to see up into the lot. The sun was in my eyes but I made out a giant tiger charging after a small SUV. The SUV floored it out of the lot, which fed into the main artery of the school and out onto the highway running away from town. Even Alek couldn’t keep up.
    He stopped and shook himself, as though only now realizing that he was a twelve-foot-long white tiger standing in an Idaho college parking lot in broad daylight. Then he looked around and turned back to a man in a blink.
    I pushed what was left of my hair, which was most of it, thank the universe, out of my face and gathered magic into a shield around me, hardening it to turn away bullets, just in case that car had been a distraction from the real shooter. Then I made myself get to my feet, fighting down the panic. A bullet in the head wouldn’t kill me, but I had no idea how long I would take to regenerate from it, and I really, truly didn’t want to ever find out. Getting shot hurts like a motherfucker.
    I made my way toward the upper lot as Ezee came running back down the hill.
    “Was that a gunshot?” he called out.
    “Yeah,” I said, my ears still buzzing. “I think someone just tried to kill me.”
    He looked wildly around, sniffing the air.
    “They took off in a car,” I added. “I think we’re okay now.”
    For now, but how much longer? Pushing that fun thought away, I walked to meet up with Alek, who was standing over something where the car had been parked.
    “He left a note,” Alek said, crouching down and breathing deeply, mouth half open as though he could taste the air.
    A piece of parchment paper lay curled on the asphalt, a single bullet holding it down. There was something written on the paper, brush strokes that looked like Kanji, but I couldn’t see enough to make out the word. An odd tingle, a bitter taste of foreign magic like the afterburn of gunpowder on my tongue, warned me just before Alek touched the note.
    “Wait,” I yelled as I threw my shield bubble around the note, locking it down with as much power as I could pour into it in the fractions of a second before the paper ignited and then exploded.
    The blast, even contained within my shield, rocked all three of us off our feet. I fell on my ass, concentrating only on holding all that horrible force inside my magic. Alek and Ezee twisted and rolled, each regaining his feet quickly and gracefully. Damn shifters.
    The blast force had nowhere to go but down. The asphalt buckled and split, tar melting and concrete turning to powder. The bullet fired as the force and heat ignited it, shards fragmenting and smashing into my shield, pinpricks of additional force that stung as I