Upon entering the other side of the portal, Kim's bright orange hair and Lilyanna's yellow eyes stood out sharply against her deep, earthy brown skin. It was more golden than Kim's own amber eyes—a mark of remarkable bloodline and birth.
And without the glamour hiding and softening it, she looked absolutely unnatural, even by non-human standards.
That, and the way her physical presence carried itself.
Out of the three of us, Kim was the shortest, followed by me, and then Lilyanna—toppling over me by an entire head. That, and the fact that she looked like a sculpture of the great golden dragon itself.
Well— with the added one percent constructed by Kim, that is.
Lilyanna van Clive could easily land herself an athletic modeling career. She had the abs for it.
"You're a song," I praised with a smile.
She narrowed her eyes for a second in confusion, before a smug little grin captured her lips and a prideful Elvis smile appeared. Tugging invisible hair strand behind her ear.
"Yeah, I know," she said, practically dismissing the idea of ever being less—when she was Edrulian.
Kim cleared her throat loudly for both of us to stop whatever was taking center stage right in her face. Her lips dipped down, forming a creased frown and clear disgust. Her arms wrapped over each other.
"Seriously, people. Keep it in your pants."
She walked ahead, her black top having crept higher than it had been before we left the house.
"Don't be so jealous. We'd happily let you watch," I taunted, quickening my steps to catch up with her.
She only kept trying to slip farther away.
To the point she was eventually fast-walking.
She might have even started jogging.
"Ew, you weirdos," she said to me, pointing a finger at me to really drive the weirdo part home.
"All right, girls. Settle down. We are here for a mission," Lily said finally, clapping her palms lightly together.
And like trained dogs, both of our legs halted mid-step, twisting away from our original direction to face Lilyanna.
"Yes, ma'am," we both said in a horrifically unified voice—slumped and completely devoid of the humor we had just a second ago.
"Mira," Lily said, raising a half-flat hand toward me. Ignoring the obvious mocking of our tone.
I nodded and started.
My hands twisted and turned as if I were doing an invisible card trick. I snapped my fingers—finger guns in her direction—followed by a small, puffy, thick but translucent blue smoke cloud that cleared just as quietly and quickly as it had appeared.
And in came a black duffel bag, filled to the brim.
Mostly Kim's stuff.
But some of mine too.
"Wow. So blown and bamboozled," Kim's dry voice came from beside me.
The audacity, when I was the one in charge of bringing her back to life.
"Careful, Fox. I hold your little life in my hands," I warned her.
She snapped right back.
"And I hold your rent in my little hands."
I sucked the back of my teeth.
I had nothing to say to that.
Lily, on the other hand, was more than willing to ignore us. She dropped to one knee—on my pants—and pressed it into the concrete ground as she shuffled through the duffel bag's outer pocket.
I could feel Kim's foxy grin next to me.
I really needed to get those pants back in good shape.
I was going to use it for my next broom race.
Lily pulled out a small but long bag and harnessed it around her waist, then stood and let Kim dig through the duffel for her own equipment.
Kim took out a pair of brass knuckles and a small device that looked like a plastic cylinder—a holographic projector.
Once she was done, I snapped my fingers one last time, letting the duffel bag sink back the same way it had appeared, swallowed by the magic circle that formed on the floor.
Deliberately removing the special effects—just so Kim could see I was doing real magic and not my silly little performances.
She only rolled her eyes, barely acknowledging it, and walked farther away toward the spot where the incident had taken place.
It didn't really take us long to find anything.
Kim taking a site at the ground and hacking her way into a hidden camera, making me jump there to plant one of her little instant bugs on it before connecting.
We stood near a corner shop, people coming in and out without being able to see us—except for the few who felt something standing there and stared at what they thought was empty space.
In truth, they were making direct, unseen eye contact with me and Lilyanna, while Kim worked on tracking the cameras back to when the kidnapping took place.
"Do you think it's magic related?" Lily asked, her tone clearly asking me to make a quick reading.
I wasn't in the mood.
So I just shrugged.
"There's no magic lingering around here, so I doubt it," I told her, my eyes scanning the ground and then the air around us.
Both of us saw nothing.
Silence settled again.
It didn't last long, thanks to Kim.
"Here. Check it," she said, lifting the hologram so both of us could see.
The video showed a young white-haired girl—early twenties—walking out of the convenience shop we were standing in front of, holding a white plastic bag.
A slick black commercial SUV stopped right in front of her.
Kim paused the video.
"Who kidnaps people in a commercial SUV with their plate number showing?" she criticized, clearly offended by the poor attempt at kidnapping.
"Maybe it's their first time?" I offered.
Lily swatted Kim's hand away and pressed play again, sending us a glare to behave ourselves.
The video continued.
Nothing important—except the girl struggling, two men dragging and shoving her into the van before driving off.
"Track that plate, Kim," Lily ordered, far more focused than either of us.
Maybe that was why she was the captain.
And we were followers.
She sent the holographic video to the smartwatch on her wrist—and mine—replaying it again and again to analyze it for whatever smart-girl plan she was already building.
While those two worked, I opened the file she sent me.
Not to analyze like Lily.
Not to look for the plate.
That wasn't my job.
I played the video and stopped it the moment the girl came into view.
My eyes scanned the three-dimensional image.
My job was to know why it happened.
Not how it happened.
Not how we would move forward.
I studied her face, the light in her hair, her age—any reasonable explanation.
"If I'm not wrong… she's one of the thirteen, right?" I asked.
"Yeah," Kim answered.
I zoomed in on the girl's face until it almost pixelated.
"Found it," Kim said. "It disappeared near a warehouse in Aleea Livezilor. They handed the girl to a red-haired man and his… goons."
She sounded unsure about the last part.
Neither Lily nor I responded right away.
Both of us were busy with our own work.
"One of you, my girlies," Kim said loudly.
Lily answered first.
The rest of their voices blurred together for me—bleeding into the background, turning into nothing but noise.
For quite a few minutes, I hadn't added anything to their conversation—only picking up on a few words that slipped into my ears and managed to register in my brain.
A horrible habit I picked up from Kim—ignoring things as they happened around me. And I'm pretty sure Lilyanna picked it up too, a long time ago.
"All thirteen abducted girls have a few things in common, it seems," I suddenly interjected into their conversation.
Two pairs of golden-yellow eyes—one brighter than the other—looked up at me.
I hadn't even noticed Lilyanna sitting down next to Kim.—My pants are so not coming back to me in one piece.
"White hair, except for two of them. They all seem to be around late teens to early twenties. But they all have moles on their faces. This can't be isolated incidents—they seem to be looking for someone specific," I said, pulling up holographic images of the thirteen girls.
"These two were kidnapped in Xi'an and have black hair, but—" I explained, zooming in on their faces and focusing on a particular dark beauty mark. "Moles on the face. Same as the others," I concluded.
"That seems to be the three things linking them together. All live in different countries, but share those traits," Kim added, having seemingly come to the same conclusion as me.
Which wasn't surprising, considering we'd kept bouncing ideas off each other before I left for Mu yesterday, after being summoned by Her Royal Highness.
I had left her to finish up loose ends.
Just in case I didn't make it back in time for this mission.
"The red-haired guy has also appeared in six of the thirteen kidnapping sites, from what I gathered," Kim continued, her hologram displaying the man barely being caught on camera, as though he was actively avoiding them.
"So he's our guy?" Lilyanna asked. Kim nodded."Seems so."Her words didn't lack conviction, even if they sounded like they did.
It felt like that was the conclusion of it all. That it was a human problem—and that O13 had nothing to do with it. Aside from the supernatural angle, there really wasn't much we could do.
My eyes didn't want to leave the girl's image. She was around our age. Somewhere close. In that moment, I wanted to help. I always did. More than the other two. At least when it came to actually voicing the need to help people.
"We won't leave her, so quit sulking around, Mira," Lily dismissed me.
I wasn't sulking… was I?
"I just want to help the poor girl," I mumbled.
Kim closed the holograms and jumped to her feet.
"Then it's settled, right, Captain?" she said—wanting to help, even if it meant breaking some laws against the Order of Merlin.
Lilyanna paused, weighing the risks and the aftermath. Lady Yo would probably reprimand us. But it was worth the trouble.
"Send those files to the authorities, along with the location. We'll clear everything out for them," she said, one hand resting on the small bag she had strapped around her waist earlier—feeling the weapon inside.
"let's play heros."
And in a flash, I teleported us to the outskirts of a secluded warehouse.
Stone walls and a large brown metal door were still visible, thanks to the single street lamp still working in this dead stretch of road.
"…"
I stared at the building, confused as to why I had teleported us outside instead of inside—like I had intended.
—But then again, my teleportation had never been straight.
Kim was the first to move. Her eyes swept over the building and landed on a window. She ran for it—unseen and undetected by both human and machine.
On cue, just before she could slam into the concrete wall, I reached my hand forward, palm flat, then clenched it.
Blue light wrapped around the ground beside the building, tearing it up into small chunks and shaping them into detached, floating stair-steps for her to use.
She vaulted up and crashed through the window.
Lilyanna followed.
But unlike Kim, she didn't need to take any big steps or make any jumps—I simply aligned the platforms neatly for her to walk up.—She only jumped down from the window to get inside the building.
Once they were in, I returned most of the broken earth to its place—leaving one last piece floating beneath me.
I knelt down to the ground and tapped it.
"Thank you," I murmured softly.
Then I used that final slab to lift myself up to the window, placed it carefully back into the ground, and jumped down after the other two, getting chough by Kim's stretched out hands like she always did.
" thx" I almost mocked as she gently placed me down on the floor.