by A. M. Pierre
There it was—an opening. Kaia grabbed it with both hands. “That reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about what Dice said. Do you think any of it might be true?”
Connor gave her a studied look. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It’s definitely weird, and it seems like something’s going on. I just don’t know what.”
“But in there it sounded like you didn’t buy any of it.”
Connor leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, and then rested his chin on his hands in turn. “That’s not it. Dice is very good at finding things that are wrong. Pieces that don’t fit. The problem is, once he gets going—I mean really gets going—it consumes him. He was like that when we first met. Every single solitary thing around him was part of a conspiracy. Broken air conditioning in his hotel room? A plot to create a more hospitable environment for engineering biological weapons. Busted traffic light on the corner? A plan to assassinate the mayor in a car accident, all orchestrated by the Illuminati. It never ended, and it practically drove him insane.” Connor looked over at her. “I saw that old look in his eyes today. It’s not that I think his theories are out of the question, it’s that I’m afraid of him falling into that hole again.” He smiled. “Though I’m not quite sure I’d lend much credence to his ‘Ms. Smith is actually a man’ theory. I’ve thought many things about that woman, but I’ve never thought that.” He stretched. “I’ll look into all the things he mentioned—the other operatives, the bomb-maker, all that stuff. I may not look it, but I’m not half bad at investigations.”
“And what if you find something? If The Company’s hiding stuff, would you leave?”
“I don’t know.” Connor raised his hand and traced out a shape in the sky. “That is my constellation version of Britain. Which means,” he poked at a spot near the southwest corner of his imaginary map, “my first home would be right about there. If I did leave, it’s probably where I would go.”
“Which explains why you don’t have an accent. So did your parents move there before you were born?”
Connor looked confused. “As far as I know, my guardians had always lived there. And what do you mean about my accent?”
“I mean, they moved to Britain from Wales, wherever that is, so that’s why you sound British instead.” His eyes opened wide, and she realized he was trying hard not to laugh. “What?”
“Do they even try to teach you anything in American schools, or do they just pat you on the back if you can manage to write your name on your paper?”
Kaia scowled. “It’s not funny.”
“It really is. I thought you liked history.”
“That is not history.” She pointed emphatically at his sky map. “That is geography.”
He held up his hands in mock defeat. “All right, all right. I’m not blaming you, you know. It doesn’t matter how clever you are if your teachers don’t teach you things.” Wait—did he say he thought I’m smart? There was no time to dwell on that shocker, though, as Connor had already moved on. “Okay, so here’s your very quick British geography lesson.”
He pointed at his star map as he talked. “On the big island, the largest section is England. The area along the southwest coast is Wales, and the top bit is Scotland. I was born in Wales to Welsh parents, making me Welsh. I spent most of my childhood in Northern England near Manchester, and I hung out in south London for a couple of years, too. Add in my tendency to mimic people, and I ended up with a bizarre Northern-with-a-dash-of-Welsh-and-Cockney accent. Bizarre to a Brit, that is. You Americans never can tell our accents apart. Once I found that it made my life easier if I sounded more ‘generic,’ I started putting on more of an RP accent. You know, what Americans tend to think of when they think ‘British.’” He grinned cockily. “All clear now, class?”
“Yes, I think so. But why did you leave Manchester?”
Connor held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t think for a second I haven’t noticed you’ve suddenly and conveniently become a bubbling fountain of questions.” He leaned slightly toward her. “You’re still avoiding my first question: why have you been acting so strange lately?”
“. . . No reason.”
His smile was infuriatingly smug. “I’m laying odds my first guess was right. You do fancy me.” He kept smiling through her glare. “You know you’ve got to tell me, or else I’ll keep ragging you until you’re barking.”
Kaia rolled her eyes. “Fine. But if I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh. And you have to let it go and never tease me about it or mention it to anyone else. Ever.”
Connor scrunched up his face like he’d eaten something rancid. “That’s so unfair. It’s going to be something good, I know it.”
“You have to promise.”
“. . . Fine. I promise.”
“Okay.” Kaia took a deep breath. “Did you read the reports from our mission?” He nodded. “Did you read about how, near the end, I shattered all the glass in the building?”
“Yes. That was brilliant, by the way.”
“Uh, thanks. Anyway, right before that, I thought we were going to die. I couldn’t do anything, and then, right at the last moment, I could. And it was all because I thought of you.” She saw the look of pure glee spreading across his face. “Don’t get the wrong idea—it wasn’t you per se, it was a memory of when we were in the training room and you were helping me calm down and focus on hearing my element.”
“You mean when we were holding hands.”
“When I was touching your hands to help synchronize our breathing, yes.”
“When you were staring deeply, longingly into my eyes.” Connor bit his lip with the effort of not laughing.
“Would you shut up? What you’re doing right there is ‘teasing,’ and you just promised not to.” She stared out over the gardens. “You can be so annoying.”
“You mean when I’m not helping girls regain their powers by letting them gaze upon my gorgeous countenance?” She scowled at him, and he laughed. “All right, that was the last of it, I promise.” He slid his chair over a little closer. “It’s nothing to get worked up about, you know. The first time I found myself in a life-or-death situation, I thought back to this wonderful chippy near my old school.” He caught Kaia’s questioning look. “A fish and chips shop. I mean, their chips were amazing, but who wants to admit fried food was the last thing you saw before you died?”
Kaia found herself smiling. “So what did they say about that? You know, Dice. Gabriela. The rest of the guys.”
He was looking away over the gardens. “I don’t know. I never told them.”
Kaia stared at his profile. “But you told me.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why?”
Connor waved the question away with a flick of his hand. “You seemed like you felt bad and needed some cheering up. What’s a little humiliation next to that?” After a few seconds of silence, he turned to look at her. “You’re not going to get weird again, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good.” The cocky smirk was back. “I like you much better when you’re feisty.”
She broke her eyes away from his as her face burned. Her hand rubbed her pendant. Why am I reacting like this? It’s absurd.
“I know I probably shouldn’t pry, but why do you do that?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking at first. Then she saw his finger pointing at her hand. A lot of people had asked over the years, but she’d never told any of them. “It was my mother’s.” Wait, what just happened? Her mouth had acted without any involvement from her brain at all.
“Did she give it to you when you were little?”
Her mouth was still open, albeit with shock. Connor hadn’t sounded sarcastic or cocky or bratty at all. He had sounded . . . sympathetic. “I guess you could say so.” Why was her mouth still talking? “When they found me outside the hospit
al as a baby, I had it with me. Maybe it’s silly, but I’ve always felt certain it was hers. I don’t remember her face or anything, but sometimes I hear her singing in my dreams.” Her mouth paused for a second, waiting for confirmation. Mouth: Permission to proceed? Brain: Despite our initial misgivings, this feels oddly good. Permission granted. But don’t do this again without asking first. “The other day in the training room when I lost control and, uh, caused a sandstorm, I heard it. The same voice from my dreams. It soared through my mind, glowing with warmth and love. She was singing for me. Only for me. It made me feel,” she searched for the right word, “safe.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s why my pendant helps me. It makes me feel the same way.”
“Is that why you play with your hair a lot, too?”
“Are you always this nosy about things people don’t want to talk about?”
Connor grinned. “Nope. You’ve had the misfortune to hit me on one of my particularly meddlesome days.”
“You know, when I told Ezio I didn’t want to talk about it, he let it go.”
“That’s not exactly surprising. I mean, he’s not the most forthcoming person when it comes to talking about himself, so it follows he wouldn’t want to discuss other people’s personal affairs, either.”
Kaia’s jaw set in a stubborn pose. “That’s not true. He talked to me.”
Connor looked openly skeptical. “Really.”
“Really. When we were alone together in that crate, he told me things about himself. Things about his past.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that’s—that’s really rude, actually.”
Connor’s mouth smiled, but his eyes were tight. “A brand-new recruit, someone he barely knows? He wouldn’t tell you about himself. It’s nothing personal, but he wouldn’t.”
“Maybe it’s because I listened to what he had to say instead of being sarcastic and annoying.” Kaia stared at him defiantly. “People like to talk to people who listen.”
“Ezio doesn’t.” He looked at her sideways. “Wait a minute. I remember now. You had to sew him up, didn’t you?” He grinned. “He was cabbaged, wasn’t he?”
“What?”
“High. Tripping. Doped to the gills with painkillers which turned him into a chattier version of his usual taciturn self.” Kaia didn’t say anything but stared resolutely ahead. “Ha! I was right, wasn’t I? What did he tell you?”
“Not much. But enough.”
“Come on, spill it out. It’s not like you’ll be telling me anything new. I just want to know how drugged up the poor guy really was.”
The irritation was building, like it always did around Connor. “He told me he was homeless and—” Truthfully, it had been kinda vague. She was pretty sure she had figured it right, but . . . oh, forget it. “He found other kids on the street—kids even worse off than him—and he watched over them. He protected them. And he would have told me anyway.” Connor’s face hadn’t changed. That infuriating cocky smirk was still there. “You don’t have any right to be so . . . so . . . condescending.”
“Ooh, nice vocabulary word. Makes me suspect you were reading the dictionary last night so you could tell me off in a more Ezio-like way.”
“See?” She pointed a finger at his face. “That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t have any right to talk down about him. He’s kind, and caring, and—”
“Broken?”
That caught her completely off guard. “What?”
Connor leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head and looking up at the starry sky. “Girls always seem to love the broken ones. It’s like the ultimate project for them—finding the wounds so they can kiss them better.”
Kaia sat a little straighter in her chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” He leaned over closer, a sly grin on his face. “You found out how he worked to protect all of his little homeless friends. Quite the white knight, don’t you think?”
“Stop it.”
“He may not have told you all the details, but you can imagine them, can’t you? So gallant, really, almost romantic—the lone fighter striving against the cruel world, sacrificing his own needs and wants to care for those weaker than himself?”
“Shut up! I meant what I said—you don’t have any right to talk badly about him.”
“I’m not talking badly about him, love, I’m talking badly about you.” Connor’s face was completely serious, his voice soft. “You’re looking at his story all wrong. It’s not ‘romantic.’ It’s not ‘cool.’ And it’s certainly not something he talks about to hit on girls. His past is sad and terrible and tragic and full of things no kid should ever ever have to deal with.”
As Connor talked, Kaia realized his eyes were completely open—not physically, but really and truly open. For an instant she could see straight into his heart, and the pain and empathy she saw there hit her like a punch to the gut. And then the instant was gone, and his normal flippant cockiness took over again. “I can tell you fancy him,” he said. “Most of the girls who come here do. I wouldn’t bother if I were you, though. You’re not someone he’d be interested in.”
It wasn’t anger she felt, or fury. It was hurt, and, deep down inside, down in the places where she couldn’t tell herself convenient lies, she knew it wasn’t the words themselves that had hurt so much. It was the fact it was Connor who had said them. “You don’t know anything. Even before the mission started, he—” A thought occurred to her. “You know what, you can think what you like. I’m not imagining things. He even bought me a gift after we got back—a set of CD’s I told him I liked.”
Connor’s eyes opened wide. At first she thought it was from surprise, but on a second glance she decided it looked (bizarrely) like barely-contained rage. “He did what?”
“You heard me.”
His normal smug, irritating, smirky expression tried to reassert itself, but it ended up as a strangled imitation. “Doesn’t change the facts. He never goes for the ‘nice ones.’”
“‘Nice?’ Don’t do me any favors. Next you’ll be saying I have a ‘great personality.’”
“Well, great might be pushing it a bit, but I guess it’s not too bad.”
That was it. She was done. Kaia stood, trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill out onto her cheeks, and marched for the door. As she took hold of the handle, she could only think of one thing to say, and it wasn’t anywhere near enough. “You are such a jerk.” She slammed the door behind her and marched down the stairs. She hoped the distance would start to help, but she heard his words with every step, and every time they hurt more.
That stupid, idiotic, insensitive moron with all the manners of a pig. Why should I be upset about anything he has to say? Why should I be the one trying to hide that I’m crying?
Kaia barely registered that Dice said “hello” as she passed him in the hall. She barely registered anything until she had slammed her bedroom door behind her. She put one of her new CD’s into the old-school stereo on her nightstand and flopped down on her bed. She kept her eyes shut tight and tried to focus on the music, but a few tears still managed to squeeze their way from between her lids to glide messily down her cheeks.
* * *
That unthinking, block-headed, dimwitted gimboid with all the perceptive abilities of your average garden slug. Why should I be so upset when it was partly Kaia’s fault for seeing things that weren’t there? Why should I be stomping down the hall to Ezio’s room to have it out over something that honestly isn’t any of my business?
Connor barely registered that Dice said “hello” as he passed him in the hall. He barely registered anything until he found himself pounding on Ezio’s door. “Oi! You in there, mate?”
The door swung slowly open. Ezio looked rather perplexed. “Connor. Are you all right? Can I help you with something?�
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Connor didn’t wait for an invitation but stormed past him. “No, I’m not all right, and I don’t know if you can help me or not, but I do know I need to talk to you.”
Ezio closed the door softly. “Please,” he said with a wry smile, “come in.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Perhaps if you tell me what ‘it’ is referring to, I may be able to tell you.”
Connor threw his hands up. “The CD’s! Why did you give Kaia the CD’s?”
“I don’t believe she has Internet privileges in her room yet, so physical media seemed the best choice.”
“What . . . are you seriously that thick? Who cares what format they were? I’m asking why did you give her a gift at all?”
Ezio sat down on an overstuffed chair. He looked even more confused than before. “I wanted to thank her for saving my life. I do not see what is wrong with that.”
“Of course you don’t, and that’s the problem.” Connor massaged the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to ward off the building headache. “How can I put this simply? You gave a shiny new prezzie to a girl who’s completely enamored with you, thus making her think you’re besotted in return.”
“Now, Connor, I think you are jumping to conclusions here . . .”
“No. No, I’m not. Every girl that comes into this place latches onto you like they’re dying of thirst and you’re the world’s last cup of water, and yet you never see it. They swoon and gape and bat their eyelashes, and you never notice but still always manage to make it worse. It has to stop.” Connor paused mid-thought. “Wait. You don’t actually fancy her, do you?”
“No, of course not. I thought . . .” Ezio looked flustered. “I thought you were aware I was involved . . .” His voice trailed off.
“With the firebrand. Yes, I’m aware. I just didn’t know if you were shopping around. Considering a change of scenery, as it were.”