Page 65 of Old Secrets

“Sounds good to me. What else are you missing?”

“That’s a very, very good question, Jake. Let’s hope we don’t find out until after the dust has settled.”

SEVENTEEN

My fox wanted blood.

The Chinese wanted to set a trap using me to do it while witches disguised my parents. I wore my mother’s clothes, and as we didn’t sound the same nor did I speak the languages she did, my job was to remain quiet. Jake, disguised to resemble my father, had the same orders.

As we weren’t certain we could see the auras, we would prance around through numerous Chinese airports while members of the Chinese Inquisition made use of a few marked targets to bring Greenwich out to us.

They hoped the heavy surveillance in the airports would result in us being stalked rather than openly attacked, as Greenwich worked to keep its presence within the Chinese government a secret. I loved the duplicity of the situation.

We hunted them as they had hunted us, and the plan had good odds of working. As we masqueraded as my parents, we would be targeted for capture rather than death, or so the Inquisition believed. With my parents on guard, who wore the same style of clothes as the other delegates and had taken on a more stereotypical Chinese appearance, I thought we had good odds of something going right. We might learn something, we might make a live capture or two of our own, or we might even lure out the heart of the matter. We might fail completely, but if we did, we still came out with something of use: they weren’t monitoring the Chinese government as closely as some believed.

Our first stop was in Shanghai, where we prowled around the airport and pretended like we’d never seen a terminal in our lives. We played at making common airport blunders, heading for the wrong gate to our next destination, which would be Hong Kong. When we did talk, we did so in low voices in the noisiest sections of the airport to help prevent anyone from realizing we weren’t my parents.

Every now and then, I spotted someone from the Inquisition prowling around. While I couldn’t distinguish faces well, I’d been an FBI agent long enough to recognize the way they moved as someone on guard, watching for trouble. I’d need to remind the Chinese they had to do better about disguising their activities, although I appreciated being able to spot those seeking our adversary.

The flight from Shanghai left without incident, and we reached Hong Kong after a bout of rough air, which had resulted in my mate bonking his head. Had he been a regular human, I might have considered dragging him off to the hospital, but I’d learned my wolf would shake off the discomforts of a concussion in record time. Unlike him, I’d managed to escape injury, as my tendency to white-knuckle through flights had kept me from being bounced around as much.

He’d even had his seatbelt on, although he’d been contorting in his effort to reach for his bag.

In Hong Kong, upon reaching our gate for our next destination, the city of Beihai, I learned I could spot those my parents had marked. A black and red, twisting aura surrounding the woman, American born and raised judging from her attire and appearance. She spotted us, and with a predatory grin, she came our way.

My fox wanted blood.

According to my nose, Jake held on to his fury by the thinnest of threads.

As my mother never smiled upon meeting someone, I regarded the woman with as much cool disdain as I could muster, hoping it would fool my target.

“You’re absolutely beautiful,” the woman gushed, and she bounced to a halt in front of us.

According to her appearance, she couldn’t have been any older than thirty, although I knew better than to trust my eyes. Makeup, good skin care, and genetics could allow even a sixty-year-old to pass off as someone younger. My nose informed me I dealt with a Normal, so I assumed she used the oldest trick in the book to put us at ease.

Makeup could work almost as well as magic at disguising someone.

As I had been briefed to do, I issued a short little bow, one that could be perceived as gratitude for the compliment. If I needed to speak, I’d have to do my best to pitch my voice and way of speaking to match my mother, something I worried would betray us all.

“Can I take a picture with you?”

I pegged her as seeking out information, and as I was to play the role of someone just learning technology, I retrieved the small, low-end phone I’d been given, a prop to make it appear as though my mother struggled to join the modern world. I nodded, and after unlocking the device, I held it out, hoping my expression was inquisitive.

“I can take one for you, too,” she chirped.

Good. My parents would enjoy making use of the photo to find out my target’s secrets. As Jake and I weren’t supposed to know how cameras and photos worked, we fumbled about, and the woman behaved as though she expected such things, as she helped us get into position before taking selfies with her phone and then with mine.

Once done, I took care to handle the device with cloth rather than skin, as it would be processed for her fingerprints along with any other evidence we might be able to get from the device.

After returning my phone, she scampered off.

I checked over my shoulder to determine the selfie had likely caught the boarding gate so that her accomplices might track us down at our next stop. As we’d been briefed to do, I shuffled off to the bathroom, where an Inquisition member would meet me.

My nose identified her as a witch, and we took stalls beside each other. Unlike in the United States, the stalls in the airport bathrooms barely had space to slip anything beneath, which offered a great deal more privacy but complicated what I needed to do.

She passed a plastic bag and a pair of gloves through the gap, and I eased on the gloves, removed the SIM chip, and put the phone into the bag before passing it back. She gave me an identical phone, and I reinstalled the chip before removing the gloves and returning them to her.

Then I handled the expected business, grateful I’d kept hydrated so I could pull the ruse off. If I ran into another Greenwich operative, I’d repeat the same process with a new Inquisitor, gathering as much intel as we could on them while they attempted to do the same to us.