We wear a lot of labels in our lives, and it’s so very easy to be defined by them. We have grown somehow accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a size eight or a size fourteen, as a capricorn or a taurus, as single or in love.
She pulled away and looked at him. ‘I kissed you and you left.’ When Kat heard the pounding, she thought it was the beating of her heart. It was too loud, she thought. Hale was going to hear it; he was going to see it; and he was going to know how much power he had to hurt her.
It felt as if maybe the curse had lifted, the tide had shifted, but then the breeze picked up and a skeet took a very unfortunate turn. Seconds later, Angus was pulling his shot far to the right, shooting a large hole in the second-story galley not ten feet above Marcus’s head.
If anything happens, Marcus will save you. Won’t you, Marcus? Hale asked, looking up at the man, who nodded. It would be an honor, Miss.
I think the canary left some feathers in there after you ate it.
What are you looking at? Hale asked. Why are you smiling? I worry when you smile.
All these years I’d thought being a spy was challenging. Turns out, being a girl is the tricky part.
That’s for me to know, and for you to find out.
It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can’t really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach.
And that’s how the Peacock saved the Chameleon.
Even though Kate had only known Hale for a little more than two years, she had seen him in a lot of situations.
Waiting. Like it or not, it’s a skill all spies have to master eventually.
You might think being the target of an international terrorist organization, an amnesiac, and a girl with hair dyed in the middle of the night by Macey McHenry would make people stare at you. Well, try walking into the Grand Hall with seriously puffy eyes while holding hands. With a boy.
You should always trust the instincts of children.
But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed. And, of course, completely fake.
Hamish’s right arm was around Angus’s waist as the two of them tangoed past.
Kat had been picking things up since her third birthday, when Hamish and Angus’s father took them all to the circus because he needed to “borrow” an elephant.
Sure, this was where her father had planned the De Beers diamond heist when she was three. It was the very room where her uncle had orchestrated the hijacking of eighty percent of the world’s caviar when she was seven.
But I wasn’t the girl I’d been when I left, and I knew it.
Maybe wrist corsages cut off circulation to the brain? I mean, is that why so many girls do stupid things on prom night? I was really going to have to investigate this further, I decided.
They were both totally laughing, and he was twirling her, and her hair was flying around like she was in a shampoo commercial. Seriously. She could have sold conditioner to a bald man the way she looked out there.