The Final Formula by Becca Andre

the waist. Apparently his slow stalk had been for fun—or the vial of chicory extract really had deterred him. It wasn’t deterring him now, so I tucked it in the front pocket of my jeans.
    Two men dressed in black rose from the glass-strewn floor, and a second pair crawled through the shattered windows. I recognized their clothing and gasped. My kidnappers from the night the Alchemica burned had worn the same black fatigues. If not for Rowan’s grip on my waist, I would have bolted for the stairs.
    Rowan pulled me against him, my back to his chest. “They here for you?”
    I drew a breath, trying to get a handle on my fear. I certainly didn’t want Rowan to see it. “I don’t—”
    “We found the alchemist.” The man on the far right raised a hand to his ear, and spoke into a hands-free radio.
    My breath caught. They were the same men from the Alchemica.
    “Guess I’m not the only one you pissed off,” Rowan said, his breath warm against my temple.
    A crash sounded from the stairwell followed by raised voices. Oh no, please don’t let them be trashing the shop. I didn’t like James’s brothers, but that’d be a hell of a way to repay them for giving me this job.
    All four men were armed, their guns trained on us.
    “Hand over the alchemist,” the man with the radio said.
    Rowan’s grip tightened on my waist. “No. The alchemist belongs to me.”
    I opened my mouth to voice my annoyance when the men’s eyes widened.
    “What the hell?” Radio Man muttered.
    I suspected that Rowan had done his eye-glow trick.
    A faint pop and the radio headset went flying from the spokesman’s head. He cried out and spun away from us, clearing my line of sight to the window. James crouched on the broken seal with a gun of his own. He fired and clipped the man’s gun, knocking it from his hand.
    The three remaining men whirled to face him, guns coming up as they turned. I gasped, but James didn’t even blink. He shot three times, the pop from his silenced pistol almost a single report, disarming each man as he had the first. I swear the boy hadn’t even aimed.
    “I have five bullets left,” James said. “I only need four.”
    I didn’t wait to see what they would do. I armed my grenade and tossed it. It exploded in a white puff of powder before it hit the ground. The men scrambled away from the window as the cloud grew, obscuring my view.
    Crap. “I knew it needed greater range,” I muttered. “If I increase the ratio of propellant—”
    “Addie, move!” James waved me toward him.
    The cloud was drifting our way, gradually filling the entire room.
    Rowan shoved me toward James, but I didn’t need encouragement. My backpack, still loaded from my trip to Cincinnati, lay on a chair near the window. I snatched it up on my way past. Rowan took the pack from me and then hoisted me up onto the sill beside James. I didn’t get to comment on the unnecessary manhandling before James picked me up and leaped from the second-story window.
    The alley rushed up to meet us and I cried out, wrapping my arms around his neck. James’s shoes smacked the asphalt with an impact I could feel and hear. Our momentum dropped him into a crouch. A pause and he straightened and set me on my feet.
    “Are you o—” James started to ask when a thump sounded behind us. We turned to find Rowan rising from a crouch as unfazed as James.
    James pulled the gun from behind his waistband and trained it on Rowan. “Leave.”
    Suddenly James no longer held a gun, but a ball of white-hot flame. An instant later, he fisted his empty hand. Rowan had vaporized the gun.
    “I said, leave,” James repeated, his voice low and devoid of emotion. A glow kindled in his green eyes.
    “We don’t have time for this.” Rowan waved a hand at the windows above us, his gaze setting on me. “That looked like a PIA SWAT team. What have you done?”
    I glanced up and noticed the ropes dangling from the roof. “They can’t be PIA.” Lawson would have taken