Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  Chapter 25

  Everything moved at three times the normal speed. The three of them bolted to action, each doing some necessary thing without communicating, without being told. And in a matter of minutes, Niko found himself trekking down a path of the jungle forest behind Preston, his duffel on his back, Cobalt following behind him. The cabin, already vanished behind the trees, was clean and clear of indication anyone but Preston had ever been there.

  Overhead, the sky lightened to a bright blue in the patches along the canopy. The chuffing of helicopter blades grew louder and louder now, drowning out the rushing of the river and the soft chirping of the forest. Leaves gave under their dogged footsteps, and the wet humidity of the denser jungle closed in on them. Niko counted out his own breaths, his own heartbeat as they progressed, saying nothing. He couldn’t process much else at that time. He wasn’t sure how to feel about his present moment.

  “This is where I leave you,” Preston said, coming to an otherwise unremarkable patch of trees. If Niko squinted, he thought he could make out the slightest signs of a path branching off to the right, but every other direction seemed to give way to tighter and tighter packed trees.

  “What are you talking about?” Niko asked. Preston had brought his own pack with him, and Niko had just assumed he meant to join them on their trek back toward the city. “Aren’t you going to help us stop Phoebe? You have to come with us.”

  Preston’s eyes moved past Niko, over his shoulder, to stare back where they’d come from. The whomp of blades cutting the air was loud enough to be overhead now. The Werewolf pulled his pack off his shoulder and pulled something out of it. At first Niko thought it was some kind of walking stick, but very quickly he realized his mistake. How a fishing rod fit inside the backpack, Niko didn’t know. But a fishing rod is what Preston was now holding.

  “Plausible deniability, Niko,” Preston said carefully. “I don’t know what your backstabbing little sister might have told the hotline,” he said to Cobalt, who glowered at him. “If she mentioned me at all, I need to be present to convince the police it was a prank, and I haven’t seen you or anyone for months.”

  Cobalt looked as though he wanted to say something, perhaps to defend his sister, but he thought better of it and held his tongue. Niko brushed aside mention of Coral.

  “But you will help us,” Niko said, leaning further on the side of statement than question. Preston looked between him and Cobalt.

  “I can’t be caught with you,” he said. “I want this shit to end, but I won’t die for it.”

  “Then wear your own damn disguise,” Niko snapped, reminding him of the collar and cuffs. “But come meet us. At the address Uri gave. I know you know some way to get there unnoticed. Meet us there. Tonight.”

  A rough wind blew through the trees, the sound of snapping wood following it. They would be on the cabin soon. Niko and Cobalt needed to go. Preston’s eyes flew to the path they’d walked again, as though waiting to catch sight of an officer hunting them down.

  “Niko, we must go,” Cobalt said, and Niko nodded, his eyes still on Preston.

  “Go that way,” Preston said, pointing to the left of a gnarled old tree. “Follow the path the monkey brush vines draw out. It’ll lead you to a narrow stream that should get you where you need to be. Go.”

  Cobalt pressed onward in the direction Preston indicated, urging Niko along, but Niko held back, still staring at Preston. He met the Werewolf’s gaze for a long moment, pouring out his intent in that single look.

  “You better show tonight,” he said, snapping back to urgency when he heard the snap of a branch nearby. Holding Preston’s gaze to the last moment, Niko turned and rushed along with Cobalt.

  The monkey brush vines were strange tufts of yellow-orange plants that sprouted along tree branches. Blinding in colour and looking oddly like grass, they grew in scattered intervals. But as Niko searched from one to the next, he saw what Preston meant. They did seem to trace out a kind of path in the branches, guiding them through the overgrowth of the jungle-forest.

  Noise from the helicopter faded quickly, but Niko was uncertain if it was that they were moving far enough away or that the helicopter had been turned off. In its place, the ambient sounds of the jungle rose up to fill the void. Monkeys chittering, birds twittering, and the slow, deep breath of the trees wrapped around Niko. He panted through the heat and dampness of the air, struggling in his boots to get a proper grip on any ground. They did not speak to one another, not for however long it took to reach the stream Preston had mentioned.

  When they did come across it, it was a welcome rest. Niko and Cobalt both stooped to fill their filtered bottles with water, drinking deeply. Cobalt splashed the crystal-clear water onto his face and smoothed it over his arms, leaning so far over Niko thought he could tip over into the stream at any moment. After a few minutes of drinking and resting, Niko pulled out his map and studied the details, trying to place their position. He knew the stream would lead them toward the address Uri had given them—the safe place he and Starla had apparently holed up together since Niko and Cobalt had left—but he needed something to do. He couldn’t let his mind be empty of purpose for too long, or he might start thinking over the impossible task ahead of him and the very real betrayal that sprouted in his core.

  “May I?” Cobalt asked, holding his hand out for the map. Niko’s lips formed a thin line. He shouldn’t have admitted he was useless with maps; he hated relinquishing control of a case. But there was no arguing now, so he handed over the map and pulled out a protein bar to munch on. He needed to replenish his energy and keep a better watch on his body’s needs. Cobalt studied the map only a few moments before saying, “We can follow the stream for a few miles, but nearer the city we’ll need to branch off and travel further east if we want to catch her.”

  Niko stopped, one eyebrow raised. “What?”

  Cobalt looked at him, confused. “The stream feeds into the ocean further south than—”

  Waving his explanation off, Niko asked, “Catch who?” Cobalt’s expression faltered, and he hesitated. By the time he opened his mouth, Niko already had the answer. “Fuck no. We’re not going after Coral.”

  Jaw set, Cobalt’s eyes seemed to take on the colour of slate. It was darker than they usually were. “We must,” he said. “She is alone and—”

  “Of her own damn will, Cobalt,” Niko said sharply. Anger bubbled now, perhaps unleashed by Cobalt’s inability to see reality. He tasted bile in his throat. “She fucking sold us out.”

  “She is confused,” Cobalt argued, as though that made sense. Coral wasn’t a small child; she was more than capable of coming to her own conclusions. Niko glared. “She does not understand—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Niko asked, and the anger in him grew. It rose up in his chest and throat, turning from molten metal to something harder and less yielding. “She’s a grown woman, Cobalt. She understands perfectly fine. It’s not just me she betrayed, by the way. She sold you out to the police too.”

  Cobalt stood back from Niko, and Niko had the distinct impression he was literally holding himself back. He worked his jaw a moment, his eyes cast down the stream. “She will die, Niko, if she goes back,” he said.

  Niko’s mouth tasted of venom. “If Starla hadn’t caught her, hadn’t warned us, we would have too,” he said. “The officers would have killed us. You know that, right? You know she knows that.”

  To that, Cobalt said nothing. The truth hung between them in the air, like a rotting corpse from a hangman’s noose. Then Cobalt’s expression changed by microns, and he said, as quietly as possible, “She is my sister.”

  And Niko couldn’t hold it back. “And what am I?” he snapped, louder than he’d intended. His question echoed, bouncing off trees and rocks and carrying down the stream. But he couldn’t care, for that moment, about who might overhear. His eyes stung, his chest ached, and Niko was tired of the back and forth. He was tired of the bungee cord pulling him back up an
d dropping him, never knowing for sure what his heart really knew, what Cobalt really meant.

  The Selkie’s body stilled, his eyes flat, searching Niko. “You are my Soul Mate,” Cobalt said. “You are my family. When will you believe it?”

  The wound in Cobalt’s words was clear to Niko, but Niko’s anger and hurt were stronger than his desire not to harm Cobalt. “I don’t know. How many more times are you going to drop me to run after Coral?”

  He flinched. Niko saw it, though Cobalt had never visibly reacted that way before. And Niko felt it in himself. He didn’t like that feeling at all. He didn’t like the way it seemed as though he’d sucker punched Cobalt. A voice in him yelled, screamed, vilified him. Why was he doing this? But the pain that hadn’t dulled a moment since Cobalt had disappeared from his life refused to let him be.

  “Are you asking me to choose between you and my sister?” Cobalt asked.

  Rage spoke through him. “I think it’s clear you’ve already made your choice.”

  Cobalt gazed at him with a determination unlike the power Niko had witnessed before. It was a hard look, unyielding and resilient and empty of softness. It raked across Niko’s soul and heart, but Niko thought maybe he deserved that.

  “I have made my choice,” he said. “I told you before; I will not leave you again. You are my choice.” He paused a moment, and Niko couldn’t breathe for the length of it. “But I wonder if you really want that. If you want me to choose you over her. And if you want to bear the weight of that regret in you. Do you really want her to die?”

  The storm broke, and Niko felt a torrential downpour in his own body. His face crumpled, his head falling, and everything threatened to come out. All the emotion and loss and grief and loneliness he’d been holding, pent up for years and years, threatened to drown him. But he was incapable of allowing it, even then.

  Catching himself, Niko forced it all back, swallowing his own sob and shaking his head. “No,” Niko whispered, the forcefulness gone from him. “I don’t.” He swallowed again, against the rock in his throat and the vise gripping his chest. Eyes to the clear sky, Niko tried to shake himself loose of the chaos in his mind. “Let’s go get her.”

  ***

  For the second time in a week, Niko found himself waiting amid the roots of a massive mangrove tree. His feet submerged in ankle-deep water, he hovered behind the shade of roots and moss, waiting as Cobalt watched for his sister. The sun shone bright and unobscured in the sky, an unusually clear day for winter in Maeve’s Court. It meant more people would be at the beach, most of them likely tourists. More people, whatever their background, meant more eyes. Niko tried not to shift too much in his position. In the distance, on the water, a small ship floated by.

  It was a relatively new beat, the coastal round, but ever since Selkies made themselves known to Fae, people like Phoebe and Lucius Linden had insisted it was necessary. A guard for their coastal border. Forget that no one had agreed on where the border was drawn in the water. They simply wanted police—none of whom were trained on the water—to keep an eye out for illegals trying to filter into the Court. There was, however, only one ship available for the rounds, which meant the majority of the coastline was unguarded at any given time. That the ship was so near to where Niko and Cobalt were now was unsettling.

  “What makes you think she’s going to come here?” Niko asked, his eyes still on the ship. “Surely there are easier places to get to the water.”

  Cobalt watched the ship too, but he seemed much less ruffled by it than Niko was. Perhaps Selkies found the whole idea of Fae guarding their borders from above the water rather funny. Niko thought it was stupid as fuck, but he wasn’t the one giving orders.

  “She’ll know the way here from when Uri instructed us to meet him,” Cobalt said, turning his attention back toward the rocky area down the way. “A stretch of surf unpatrolled by police will suit her better than trying to inconspicuously disappear amid swimmers.”

  Niko weighed this out. If the officers on patrol along the beaches were paying close enough attention, a swimmer going under and never resurfacing might be suspicious. But by then it would likely be too late to stop them. And Niko also doubted the keenness of the beach patrols. Though he supposed they might have set up magical barriers by now anyway.

  “The pebble beach where you came in was unpatrolled,” Niko offered. “And given that’s where she entered Maeve’s Court, wouldn’t it be instinct to go back out that way?”

  Cobalt nodded. “But there is an entire city of police officers and potential threats between her and that beach. This is much closer to the address Uriah gave us. She is tactical in her thinking.”

  Niko ran his tongue over the front of his teeth. “Then won’t she also anticipate you trying to come stop her if the cops didn’t catch you?”

  Cobalt nodded. “Indeed, she will,” he said but did not elaborate.

  Eyes narrowing, Niko was about to press for an explanation when Cobalt suddenly emerged from the shaded roots of the mangrove to face someone down in the surf.

  “What are you doing, Cor?” Cobalt asked. Niko had to catching himself to stop reaching out and yanking Cobalt back into the shadows. Cobalt was standing in full sight of the patrol ship, without cover of any kind, and he seemed unconcerned about it.

  “What does it look like?” Coral answered, and Niko just managed to catch sight of her through the roots of the tree. She wore nothing but swimsuit bottoms in that strangely iridescent material Cobalt wore when he first appeared out of the ocean. The bottoms smoothed down her legs like shorts, but did not cover anything above her navel. She wore nothing at all on her top half, leaving her breasts exposed to the sun and air.

  “It looks like you’re about to do something phenomenally stupid,” Cobalt answered, his tone almost bored. “Again.”

  Coral sucked on her teeth and made a face. “Fuck you,” she said. “You think you know everything, but when it comes to that boyfriend of yours, you’re fucking blind.” Hair flowing around her in a wild cloud of curls, she looked as fierce as Cobalt ever had. “I only did what you all should have done a week ago. I listened to the tape. That boy is guilty, and they’re not gonna stop until they track him down. I just saved everyone time and pain.”

  “Don’t be fucking daft, Cor,” Cobalt shot. “You know that tape’s a fake. I never got a call from him. How could I? I wasn’t even here yet when the call was supposed to happen. I was with you.” Coral said nothing, her jaw set in a tight line, her eyes travelling out to the ocean. “You don’t believe he did it. I can see it on your face. You’re just scared—”

  “I’m not scared,” she snapped immediately. “No Land Cop’s gonna scare me.”

  Cobalt gave her a pointed look. “Dugong shit,” he said. “You’re fucking swollen as a puffer fish.”

  “No fucking Land Cop’s got shit on me,” she cried, lunging closer to Cobalt, getting in his face.

  “So why you running?” Cobalt cocked an eyebrow.

  Coral glared. “Ain’t running,” she said. “Just going home.”

  “Forget something, did you? Toothbrush?” Cobalt mocked.

  “Just some unfinished business to attend to,” she said, her expression full of venom. But despite the hostility in her face, something in her words struck Niko as odd.

  Cobalt sighed and shook his head. “Are you kidding me, Cor? You’re really going back for your fucking stash? You think I don’t know about the book you stole?” He threw his hands up. “That shit’s dangerous! It’s what got Indy killed, Cor. And he’s not the only one. Why can’t you just leave that shit behind you?”

  Coral’s eyes narrowed, something passing over her face as Cobalt scolded her. Niko blinked.

  “You think—” she started, then bit her tongue and dropped it. “You don’t know shit, Cobalt. You never did.” She shook her head, looking out to the water again. Her Soul Stone was entirely visible to Niko for the first time, and he noted the differences in it compared to Cobalt’s. It
was rounded in shape, but narrower in its oval than Cobalt’s Stone was. And where Cobalt’s Soul Stone was a shining green and blue, hers tinted deeper, more purple. It glowed oddly as she thought. “I’m going back for my toothbrush or for that book or some other stash—it doesn’t fucking matter. I’m going back, and no one can fucking stop me.”

  “Are you really that dense? You think they just let you out because I asked?” Cobalt said, his arms tense but tight at his sides.

  “So what if you made a deal with them to get me out of their hair? They’re Selkies, not Fae. Can’t hold me to a deal I didn’t make.”

  “The deal wasn’t to take you to Maeve’s Court,” Cobalt snapped. “It was to kill you.” Coral fell silent, words stolen from her. She froze, as though considering the likelihood Cobalt would try to kill her on the spot. But Cobalt only rolled his eyes. “They were going to kill you. That was your sentence. I made a deal with them to release you to my custody to do away with you, but I was unclear on the means. As far as they’re concerned, you’re dead. If you go back now, they’ll execute you.”

  For a time, wind crossed over the water, time ticking away, but no words were spoken. Coral and Cobalt seemed to be locked into a silent exchange. Niko saw the moment cold reality hit Coral, her green eyes shading dark along the path of a minute hand. But when the darkness ebbed, she sighed and shook her head.

  “I can handle the Guard,” she said, her voice low, full of resignation. And Niko thought he began to understand.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cobalt snapped, grabbing for her arm. “You’re going to risk your life for some stupid score? Are you boiled? What the—”

  “Cobalt, stop,” Niko said, suddenly stepping out of his shaded place without even thinking. Understanding crystallised before his eyes. The look on Coral’s face, the way she kept glancing to the water, the resignation, the determination to go back no matter the cost. It all made sense to Niko now. “She’s not going back for a stash or a score.” He studied her a moment, out in the open, as her eyes searched his face with a wariness he realized was only fair. She owed him nothing, and he had given her no real reason to trust in him above the police and the news. “She’s going back for someone.”