Fate's Edge te-3

by Ilona Andrews

  Oh well. Why not. “My parents were grifters. I don’t think either one of them earned an honest dollar in their entire lives. Every day there was a new con or a new heist. Sometimes we’d have a ton of money. Dad would check us into a great hotel, we’d have steak and lobster, and he’d buy Mother jewelry. And the next week we’d be sleeping in some abandoned car. It was chaotic, but it was fun.

  “My brother was eight years older than me. He was handsome and so funny, and I thought he could do anything. All the girls fought over him.” Tears heated her eyes, and she blinked them away. “Alex could teleport short distances. That was his special talent. He was a really good thief, too. He would steal ice-cream bars for me from gas stations. I thought he was so cool.

  “We worked a lot, my brother and I. We’d steal things, and our parents would sell them. And then, when Alex was twenty, it all went to hell. He became a drug addict. And it was our own father who got him addicted. Dad was always looking for that big score. Every con was supposed to make us rich for life, just like the one before it.” Audrey paused, then asked, “Do you know what the Internet is?”

  George nodded.

  “People in the Broken sometimes use debit cards instead of money. They’re small plastic cards with a magnetic strip. When you swipe one through a card reader, it subtracts the price of whatever you bought from your bank account. Criminals steal the debit-card numbers and the little code you have to use to authorize the money. It takes some technical skill to do it. Then they sell the card numbers on secret forums on the Internet. You can buy the numbers, sometimes for ten or twenty bucks each, and you can make your own cards. You can take these cards to ATMs—do you know what those are?”

  George nodded again. “Automated banks that give out money. They’re very heavy.”

  “That’s right.” Audrey nodded. “I once tried to steal one, and they have to be made of lead, because we tried to winch it onto our truck and the winch broke. But anyway, if you have fake cards loaded with debit-card numbers, you can go to ATMs and withdraw money straight from the people’s accounts. You could clean out one ATM, then go to the next, for several days even, until the banks caught on. You could make thousands. My dad loved this idea. In his head, it was ridiculously easy free money. You see, the bank insures people’s accounts, so if the money is stolen, the insurance company replaces it. My dad thought it was a victimless crime. Oh, if only we’d get in on this scam, we would all be rich and happy forever.”

  KALDAR paused behind the wyvern. Audrey’s voice carried over. She was talking about her parents. She kept it light, but he heard the underlying tension in her tone.

  Kaldar put down the two buckets of water he’d carried from the stream and held up his hand. Behind him, Gaston stopped, and murmured, “What?”

  “Shhh. I want to hear this.”

  Gaston shrugged, set his buckets on the grass, and sat near the wyvern, his long, dark hair spilling down his back.

  Kaldar leaned against the wyvern’s scaled side. The boy had talent. Getting Audrey to talk must’ve been difficult. She was smart, and she guarded herself carefully.

  Her reaction to the Hand’s magic might have played a part. The Hand’s agents were so twisted by the magic, they emanated it. Magically, they stank like roadkill left to bake in the sun for a few days, and most people “gagged” when they came into close contact with them for the first time. The reaction lasted a few hours, depending on the intensity and brand of magic and how sensitive the victim was to it. Some exposed felt invisible bugs on their skin; some panicked; some went into convulsions. Audrey was the burn type: they reported the feeling of being set on fire and the sensation of being skewered or chewed on. That reaction came coupled with lowered inhibitions. Whatever brakes Audrey had were malfunctioning. She was hurtling out of control down an emotional highway, and Kaldar wanted to be there for that ride. Curiosity was killing him. He wanted to know what she liked, what she didn’t like, what made her happy. He wanted to know why she lived in the Edge by herself.

  The more he knew about her, the easier it would be to impress her. The more impressed she became, the more she’d like him. And he wanted Audrey to like him. Standing next to her was like standing in the sunlight.

  AUDREY’S voice caught a little, and she cleared her throat.

  “My parents never understood the Internet. They didn’t realize you couldn’t just go on to the debit-card forums to buy the numbers. You had to be introduced or get a password from someone.

  “Dad found this guy—Colin—a real scumbag. Colin was a big shot on one of the forums, so Dad told Alex to make friends with him and get the password. He told him to do whatever it took. ‘Get the password, Alex. Just get that password.’”

  She sounded so bitter. Audrey felt bitter too, bitter and angry. “Colin was a cokehead, and the only way to get to him was to supply him with drugs. So Alex would sell him coke, and Colin wanted him to sit there and do it with him, so that’s what Alex did for two months. Finally, Colin ODed. He took too many drugs, and they killed him. We did get the password to the forum, and Dad bought a bunch of numbers. Drained our reserves completely. And then on the fifth ATM he hit, an off-duty cop noticed him feeding a bunch of cards into the machine, and Dad got arrested. It was a huge mess. When Dad got out three months later on some technicality, he and Mom put Alex into rehab, but it was too late. He likes . . . liked being an addict. It was an easier life than being Dad’s errand boy all the time, and he would guilt-trip Dad into buying him drugs. He never stopped after that. All we did from that point on was work to get enough money to put Alex into a new rehab.”

  Audrey paused. She didn’t want it to sound all “oh-poor-me,” but there was no help for it. “Sometimes I went to school, but mostly I didn’t. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t get to do any of the normal things twelve-year-old girls do. I guess I still had hope that my brother would come back to us. Then, when I was almost seventeen, Alex sold me to a drug dealer. He wanted some prescriptions, and he didn’t have the money, so he told the guy that he could do anything he wanted with me. The guy cornered me as I was coming back to the Edge. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

  SO that was it. Kaldar clenched his teeth. How could you trade your own sister? How could you trade Audrey? Beautiful, sunshine Audrey. His mind understood, but the part of him that was a brother and an uncle seethed at the thought. That was not done.

  In the Mire, he would’ve put Alex Callahan down like a rabid dog.

  “The drug dealer took everything I had on me,” she said. “And then he told me that I could either steal more drugs for him, or he would rape me and kill me. So I did it. He took me to a bad neighborhood to a drug house owned by a gang. I snuck inside, stole the drugs, and gave them to him. Then he beat me. The first punch knocked me to the ground, and he kicked me for a while. Broke two ribs. My face was messed up for months. Still, I got off easy.”

  “That’s fucked up,” George said.

  The profanity startled her, coming from him. Audrey cleared her throat. “I came home and told my parents about it. My face was all black-and-blue. I couldn’t have hid it if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t want to. They did nothing. That night I decided I had to leave. From that point on, I saved up my money. I had to hide it very carefully because Alex was very good at finding whatever money we had. I actually left a few bucks hidden somewhere obvious so he’d find it and not look for my stash. Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the cross. “This was my grandmother’s. She gave it to me when I was little. I stole it back from the drug dealer when I made up my mind to leave. It took me almost two years, but I finally escaped.”

  “What about your mother?” George asked.

  Kaldar shook his head. George needed more experience. With a conversation like this, you didn’t push. Audrey might catch herself and stop talking all together.

  “My mother liked pretty things,” Audrey said. “We moved a lot, and in every new place, she’d plant flowers a
nd hang pretty curtains. She liked jewelry, makeup, and nice clothes. She’d make herself up just as pretty as she could be every morning: hair brushed, war paint on. We’d be stuck in some hovel, but she’d make it all spotless, plant flowers, and send us out to steal pictures to put over the holes in the walls. She would always make sure that my clothes were clean, and I had my hair just right, and my makeup was perfect. But she couldn’t really deal with any kind of crisis and ugliness. She just pretended it didn’t exist. When Alex hit rock bottom, it got really ugly. She’d let him have one room, and the rest of the house would still be perfect.”

  “She wasn’t much help,” George said.

  “No. She ignored me until my face healed. When I finally gathered enough money and escaped, I went as far as I could and started to build my own life. It took me three months to get the house up, and when I did, for half a year I didn’t do anything. I was just happy. By myself in my little house. Then I worked and got enough money to apply for a driver’s license, and eventually I bought a car, and then I got a better job. I kept making improvements to the house. I was perfectly happy for years, then my father showed up. For the first few moments, I thought maybe he had come to tell me he was sorry, but no, he just wanted me to do a job for Alex. So I told him that either he could have me do the job for the very last time, or he could have a daughter. Well, we all know what he picked.”

  “I’m sorry,” George said.

  “Thank you,” Audrey told him. “I didn’t tell you all this as a play for sympathy. My life wasn’t that bad. Many people have it way worse. My parents never beat me or abused me. I never had to sell myself on the street. No matter how low we fell, we always had food. I just . . .” She hesitated. “Gnome was my neighbor, and now he’s dead because of me. That’s a terrible thing, and I’ll have to live with it. It’s tearing me up inside. I just wanted someone to understand why.”

  “I understand,” George said. “You didn’t steal the diffusers because you were greedy.”

  “Right. I stole them because my father made me so mad, I couldn’t think straight. I was selfish and stupid. I had daddy issues and a chip on my shoulder, and I wore all of it like a badge. It seems very small now, compared to Gnome’s life.”

  Kaldar picked up the buckets and retreated a few steps. Gaston watched him with an amused grin on his face.

  Pretty Audrey. Honed into a tool. Used like one, then shoved into a drawer and forgotten until she was needed again. He had the strong urge to punch the entire Callahan clan in the face one by one.

  Snap out of it, you fool. A pretty face and a sweet smile, and you’ve lost all common sense.

  Kaldar kicked some bushes, forcing them to rustle.

  “Hurry up, Gaston!”

  His nephew pushed to his feet, swiped the buckets off the ground, and croaked in a choked-up voice. “Yes, master.”

  Kaldar rolled his eyes and carried the buckets to the wyvern’s mouth to feed him.

  EIGHT

  KALDAR squinted at Magdalene Moonflower’s lair. The Center for Cognitive Enhancement and Well-being occupied a large three-story building in northern San Diego. The white stucco walls rose, interrupted by huge windows. The whole structure nearly floated off the pavement, sleek, modern, and somehow light, almost delicate. The salt-spiced wind blowing from the coast less than a mile away only strengthened the illusion.

  He’d given Gaston a pocketful of money and sent him out on a fishing expedition with the locals. If Magdalene had dealings in the Edge, he would soon know all about it. But in the meantime, they had to approach her directly. The wheels of time never stopped turning; sooner or later, they would bring the Hand and the blond blueblood closer to them. The blonde troubled Kaldar. She wasn’t on any of the Hand’s rosters he had in his possession.

  “Magdalene’s building looks like an ivory tower,” Audrey said next to him.

  “Pretty much. You see it?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Just beyond the tower, the boundary shimmered, cutting off a section of the building. A person with no magic would see only the tower. Kaldar and Audrey saw the tower and the long two-story-high rectangle of the rest of the building behind it. Magdalene operated halfway in the Edge.

  “Clever,” Audrey murmured.

  “It is. The Edge Gobble.”

  “Yep.” Audrey nodded.

  The Edge wasn’t a stable place. It shrank and expanded, sometimes forming bubbles in the Broken—holes in reality, invisible to those without magic. The Edgers called the bubbles the Edge Gobble. San Diego had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese, and this one was of a good size, at least as large as a football field. Normal passersby would just walk by it, completely unaware it existed.

  “You think if you crashed a car into that hole, chunks of the building would fly out into the Broken?” Audrey asked.

  “I don’t know. They might bounce off the boundary back into the Edge.”

  “We should test that theory sometime.”

  Kaldar snuck a glance at her. Her clothes from yesterday had been too bloodstained to salvage, so after they had stolen a car, they drove to an outlet mall. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. He’d thought she would choose something similar, but no. She came out in pale capris that molded to her behind in a very interesting way and a light, blue-green, teardrop blouse. The blouse tied at the clavicle with two cords, and the teardrop cutout fit perfectly between Audrey’s breasts, promising a glimpse but never giving one. He was focusing way too hard on that teardrop, and it was screwing up his concentration.

  Audrey’s red hair gleamed in the sunlight. Her makeup was barely noticeable, except for her lipstick, which was a shade lighter than raspberry and gave him an absurd impression that her lips would taste sweet. Her face wore an easy, carefree expression, as if she skated through life completely unscathed and untouched by any tragedy. Considering that they had just buried Gnome—well, what was left of him—and she had cried her eyes out, her control was impressive.

  “Admiring my blouse?” Audrey asked.

  “It’s a nice shade of sea foam. Goes well with your hair.” A potato sack. He needed to put a potato sack over her, then it would be fine.

  “Most men wouldn’t know that sea foam is a color, let alone what it looks like.”

  Kaldar shrugged. “For one of my assignments, I had to be a butler to a blueblood noble. The Mirror put me through two months of intensive preparation. If you show me a gown made in the Weird in the past five years, I’ll tell you in what year and what season it was made.”

  Audrey laughed. “Were you very proper as a butler?”

  All the tears, all of the hurt, where did it all go? He had to give it to her: she hid it well. She had a lifetime to learn how to do it. He just had to pray it didn’t boil out of her again under the pressure.

  He slipped into a clipped, upper-class version of Adrianglian English. “I was simply a very competent butler. It was, after all, what my employer deserved. Would my lady care to cross the street?”

  “She would.”

  They crossed to the other side. “How shall we play this?” she asked.

  “Straight.” He held the glass door open for her.

  She grimaced.

  “You disagree?”

  “It’s your show.”

  He fired a test shot. “Oh, come on, Audrey. You know I need you to pull this off.”

  She glanced at him. “Kaldar, I told you I’d help you. I still think it’s a stupid plan.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Ha! I’d rather give all my money to a snake-oil salesman.”

  They walked through the long lobby to the counter. Kaldar took a mental inventory of the place. Let’s see, floor of gray tile streaked with softer brown, calming white walls, large, enhanced photographs in gallery frames: vast Arizona vistas, serene mountain lakes, tangled green forests. At the counter, a deathly pale young man looked up at them. His hair was long, brushed to the side in a ragged cut that
probably cost an arm and a leg, and his clothes, designer khaki pants and a high-end olive shirt, would’ve set him back two weeks of a normal receptionist’s pay.

  The man smiled. “Hello. My name is Adam. How may I help you today?”

  “Hello, Adam.”

  Audrey gave a tiny wave and smiled. “Hi!”

  Adam’s gaze snagged on her blouse. Kaldar hid a grin. At least he wasn’t the only sucker out there. He brushed against Audrey, slipping the cross from her pocket, palmed it, and pulled a blank business card from his pocket, black on one side, white on the other. “Say, friend, do you have a pen?”

  Adam produced a pen. Kaldar took it and wrote “Morell de Braose” on the card. “Do me a big favor and deliver this to Magdalene. We’ll wait.”

  Adam retreated behind the door for a moment, then resumed his post behind the counter. Kaldar held the cross in his hand for luck. Just in case. Not that he doubted himself.

  Two minutes later, the door opened, and another man stepped out, this one older, with a careful gaze of an Edger. He didn’t just expect trouble; he knew with absolute certainty it was coming. “Come.”

  They followed him through the first door and out the other. A long hallway stretched between them, severed by the shimmer of the boundary. Kaldar stepped into it. Pressure clasped him, and, a moment later, magic bloomed inside him, surging through his veins in a welcome flood. Kaldar smiled. Audrey kept her pace. A few more steps and they were through, neither of them breathing hard.

  The man kept walking. They followed him up the stairs and into a large rectangular room. Tall walls, white and pristine, rose sixteen feet high, adorned at the top with an elaborate white lattice that cascaded down, like rows of falling snowflakes. The tiled floor swirled with a dozen shades of beige and brown, supporting a long white rug shot through with streaks of gold. Clusters of white furniture sat here and there, chairs, small sofas, all overstuffed and soft. Eggshell and white planters hung from the lattice, containing emerald green plants, mimosa, and Edge vines dripping down to meet palms, carefully trimmed shrubs, and flowers growing in large planters on the floor. Finally, the ceiling of translucent glass sifted sunshine onto the entire scene, setting the lattice and walls aglow.