The Stolen

by Celia Thomson

  Brian had never chosen to be part of this world of Tenth Bladers, unlike Richard, who chose to join of his own free will. There was something about secrecy, rituals, devotion, and danger that seemed to draw people in at every age, Brian reflected bitterly.

  Brian never would have chosen this life for himself. If he’d ever had any choice, that is. That was how he’d somehow wound up at a committee meeting determining the fate of the only girl he’d ever felt strongly about. Maybe even loved.

  “She is not directly—or even indirectly responsible for his death,” Brian repeated tiredly for the thousandth time since that night, when he had returned home from the fight on the bridge. He ran his hand through his dark brown hair, normally full, now lank with exhaustion and sweat. “Alexander Smith came to kill her, and she defended herself. What’s more, when he slipped off the bridge by his own actions, she put out a hand to save him.”

  “I find that highly unlikely,” Richard said primly.

  “Shut up,” Brian snapped at him. “You weren’t even there.”

  “Easy, Novitiate,” Edna said. “You are almost out of line.” But she said it with a faint smile. “While I, too, find it hard to believe that anyone, Mai or human, would try to help someone who just tried to kill her, the only witness we have at present is Brian.”

  “Whose views are obviously prejudiced,” his father stated in the rich, stirring tones of a leader. “Let it be noted that I will not allow love for my own son to interfere with the facts of the proceedings.”

  Like it’s ever interfered before, thought Brian.

  “There is no proof of the Rogue’s death,” Ramone, the minute-taker, offered. He was a tall, gaunt young man, every inch the Librarian he was supposed to be—except for his healthy skin tone and fairly radiant brown eyes. He wasn’t much older than Brian but already sounded ancient. “I have gone through police and hospital records. No bodies have washed ashore, or been trawled, or—”

  “That means nothing,” Brian’s father said again. “He fell. Defending himself.”

  “From a girl who was defending herself!” Brian protested.

  “Strike that last statement,” Mr. Rezza ordered Ramone. “It is of no consequence and out of order.”

  “You know, it was you people who first put me onto her case,” Brian said angrily.

  “Yes, and we expected you to follow, befriend, and observe the Mai in question. We did not ask you to become her advocate!”

  “Let us turn to the mother,” Edna interrupted politely, clasping her hands on the table. She too wore a ring of the Order, but it was smaller, in an orange gold that was different than that of Brian’s dad’s. “Is she safe?”

  “For now.” Brian didn’t miss the look his dad gave Edna: We’ll discuss it later, it said.

  “Well, that is one thing we can be grateful for.” The old woman leaned forward, spreading her hands. “Let us continue tracking Chloe, much more closely this time, using someone, ah …” She glanced in apology to Brian. “Not directly involved with her heretofore. As long as we know where she is, we can make our decision at any time, and meanwhile, we can watch to see if she does anything else violent.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Ramone said.

  “All right,” Brian’s dad said. “Agreed. Brian, you are off the case. Really. If you are caught anywhere near Chloe King again—there will be consequences.”

  Like what? You’ll dock my allowance? You’ll ground me? You’ll somehow let Mom get killed again? Brian’s dark brown eyes burned with a rusty fire deep within. His father had punished him enough already for an entire lifetime. He couldn’t possibly do any more.

  “Where was she last seen?”

  “Running away from the bridge. The National Guard was alerted to the Rogue’s presence by her friends,” Brian mumbled.

  “Her human friends,” Edna said. Brian nodded.

  “She wound up on the Marin Headlands, but I lost her there.”

  “Was anyone else with her?”

  His father looked him straight in the eye. His were a rheumy old blue like a dark sky with clouds; Brian had gotten most of his looks from his mom.

  Brian thought about Alyec, the drop-dead gorgeous “other” boyfriend of Chloe’s, the high-school student, another Mai. One who could touch and kiss Chloe and not die from doing it, unlike Brian.

  His nemesis.

  “No,” he said slowly. “She was completely alone.”

  “Take these over to Misha,” the feral receptionist flatly ordered Chloe, dropping a stack of contracts into her arms.

  Chloe sighed and began the task of trying to find yet another hidden office in the archaic complex that was Firebird. It was strange to go from a halogen-lit bright copy room with faxes, computers, copiers, and phones, for instance, to a tiny bathroom with a pull-chain toilet and a steam radiator that took up half the room.

  Sergei had followed up his own suggestion that she intern a bit around the office to alleviate boredom and was paying her a fairly decent ten bucks an hour. Fine, she couldn’t actually go out and spend anywhere, but the thought was nice. And she was learning a lot about the business of real estate, most importantly that this was one thing she definitely did not want to do when she grew up.

  She knocked on a door she thought was Misha’s, one of the in-house paralegals, but instead walked in on Igor and his gorgeous blond fiancée, Valerie, staring at each other starry-eyed on a couch.

  “Uh, sorry,” Chloe muttered, hastily closing the door. She was looking up and down the hallway again, trying to figure out where she was, when her cell phone rang. She had accidentally left it on after checking her voice mail, listening to more messages from Amy. Well, at least she’s properly worried. Teaches her for ditching me for so long, Chloe couldn’t help thinking.

  She looked at the caller ID and sucked in her breath.

  “Hello?” she asked quietly. No one had said anything explicitly against her using the cell phone, but somehow she suspected they wouldn’t be particularly thrilled about the idea, either.

  “Chloe? It’s Brian.”

  From his voice it was obvious he didn’t know what to expect; he sounded hesitant but urgent. The scene at the Marin Headlands flashed through her mind again: running with Alyec, Alyec falling, a throwing star sticking out of his leg. Above the two of them Brian, with another throwing star in his hand.

  “What do you want?”

  There was a long pause; she heard him swallowing, could picture his brooding, handsome face as he tried to come up with the right thing to say. She could practically see him frowning a little, his brow knitting over his dark, bottomless eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asked.

  “I’m fine. I’m with some people who are protecting me.”

  “You … found the Pride, then.”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised by his deduction; who else would it be? The police? The federal witness protection program, as Sergei had told her mom?

  “Yes,” she answered evenly. “And they’re going to try to find out who my parents are, too. What happened to my biological family.” Why am I telling him this stuff? Why do I still want him to know about my life? About me?

  “Oh.” There was another pause. Chloe was a little disappointed, but after all, he couldn’t really say, “That’s nice,” or “Good for you,” when the people involved were outright enemies of his organization. Whatever his personal beliefs were, the group he belonged to had only one intention: to wipe out the Mai or keep them under control. It was still hard for Chloe to understand.

  “Chloe, I really was trying to help you on the bridge.”

  “Really? By almost cutting Alyec’s hamstring in half?”

  “I told you,” he said impatiently. “If you two had kept running that way, you would have wound up right in the middle of an outpost. And believe me, there may not be many members as psychotic as the Rogue, but there are more than enough members of the Tenth Blade who wouldn’t think twice about taking dow
n a pair of Mai. Especially one that was somehow involved in the death of the Rogue.”

  “I didn’t …” But she trailed off when she realized what he’d actually said. He hadn’t said that she had killed him. He hadn’t even said that she was responsible for his death. “Well, you had no trouble targeting Alyec. Why weren’t you able to get the Rogue in the throat?”

  “Chloe,” he said a little pleadingly, a little sadly. “Do you think it’s easy to just kill another person? Even if they’re doing something awful? Especially if he’s a … friend of the family?”

  Chloe didn’t want to listen to this. He should have just wanted to save her and not given a thought to anything else. That was what she wanted—or at least that was what she wanted to hear.

  “Even you weren’t ready to let him die,” he said quietly. “I saw you give him your hand.”

  He had a good point. Why had she tried to help save her own assassin? Because it seemed like the right thing to do. So why did she blame Brian for not automatically coming to her aid and killing for her?

  “I have never killed anyone,” he added. “Not human, not Mai, not anyone. And I don’t want to start.”

  “You could have done something,” Chloe muttered, feeling childish and not knowing why.

  “It looked like you were doing a pretty good job yourself.”

  She could hear the smile in his voice, beyond the sadness. For just an instant, she wished she could see him. She could just imagine him reaching over and stroking her cheek at that point or touching her hand….

  And suddenly she realized something.

  “I know why you didn’t want to kiss me,” she said slowly, not caring that it had nothing to do with what they were just talking about. She remembered her conversation with Sergei that morning and with Alyec, days ago, when he’d first seen her with Brian.

  “You haven’t done anything with him.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah? How would you know?”

  “He’s still alive.” Alyec grinned at her. “You would tear a boy like that up and spit him back out when you were done.”

  He had been deadly serious, not speaking metaphorically at all. She thought about what had happened to Xavier and the time Brian had almost thrown her away from him when she was trying to steal a kiss.

  No wonder Alyec wasn’t jealous of Brian! He knew there was no future in it.

  “I’m sorry. I really did want to. I mean …” He paused. “I do.”

  “Was it all an act?” she whispered. “Just so you could keep an eye on me?”

  “No, Chloe, I swear it wasn’t,” he said desperately. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you.”

  And there it was, hanging in the air. He sort of choked out the last bit quickly, at the end, as if he hadn’t meant to say it, as if it had just come out of nowhere.

  Chloe opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came. Her ears twitched; familiar footsteps came stomping down the hall.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “I—” He seemed to know that now was not the time to push. “I’ll talk to you later. Be careful, okay? You’re a … wanted woman these days.”

  Chloe smiled at the double entendre.

  “I will.”

  She flipped the phone closed just as Alyec barged into the room.

  “Chloe! Love of my life!” he cried, flinging his arms open dramatically. Chloe flinched; this was a poor time for him to be throwing words like that around.

  “Hey, who were you talking to? Paul? Amy?”

  Hearing their names come out of his mouth was strange. Their weird double date a couple of weeks ago aside, the four of them had never really hung out. They weren’t two couples, or four friends, or anything like that. Paul had the comics thing with Alyec, but Amy absolutely hated him. Chloe wondered if he even knew how she felt about him.

  As Alyec put his notebook and books down on a chair, Chloe couldn’t help staring at his perfect body. Not too muscled, but broad shouldered and well defined. It was like he might fall into a fashion magazine without even realizing it. Alyec was probably the hottest guy in her school. But Alyec’s bodily perfection so soon after a talk with Brian was only distracting and even a little upsetting.

  He noticed her mood immediately.

  “Talking to a secret lover, maybe?” he asked, grinning. He cocked his head knowingly at her, coming close as if to take her in for a kiss. Then he grabbed the phone from her.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “Give it!”

  He laughed and danced around her, holding it high above his head, at least two feet out of her reach. She jumped and leapt in a completely human fashion, pulling at his arms and forgetting all of the cat training he had led her through on that mysterious night when Chloe first learned what she could do as a Mai.

  “Let’s find out who you were calling … if you have another boyfriend….” Just as he flipped it open and started hitting the menu keys, Chloe made one last desperate leap to stop him. The phone was almost in her grasp….

  “Hey! Catch!” he shouted suddenly to Igor and Valerie, who were walking by. As Alyec tossed the phone, Igor reached out and caught it gracefully. Catlike reflexes, Chloe thought. He and Valerie smiled at the other couple. Chloe ran at them. Igor spun and tossed the phone back to Alyec seconds before Chloe reached him. Valerie laughed and they walked on.

  “Give it,” Chloe growled, beginning to lose her temper.

  Alyec responded by flipping open her phone and looking through the incoming calls list. He danced away as she frantically tried to throw herself against him. But when he saw Brian’s name, he hesitated. Then he closed the phone and handed it back to Chloe, trying to maintain a cheerful, playful look on his face. But Chloe hadn’t missed the moment of hurt.

  “I wasn’t telling him where I was or where your secret base camp is,” she said defensively.

  “I didn’t think you did,” he said, a little sadly. Silence hung between them for a moment. “I’m hungry. Let’s go see what’s around,” he said, trying to muster up a little bravado. He picked up his books again. “You really should call Paul and Amy,” he added quietly. “They’re worried about you.”

  There it was again, those two names out of his mouth. Like he really was a close member of her life now, someone who had met her mom, taken her out on dates, and fed her chocolate during her period, and not someone she had done everything to keep her mom from meeting, who had taught her how to extend her claws, to climb trees, and run on rooftops at night.

  Chloe put the phone in her back pocket and followed him out of the room.

  Paul was happy just staring at Amy.

  They were at Cafe Eland, and his girlfriend was animatedly talking about her day. He never really got over how she sparkled. Chloe was pretty, too, but different. Sort of reserved, held closely inward. Though she would be the last to admit it, Chloe King was an introspective person, prone to occasional insight and moody sulks, which was why her semi-disappearance from his and Amy’s life—before her real disappearance three days ago—didn’t surprise or upset him as much as it did Amy.

  But with Amy, what you saw was what you got. If she was feeling something, no matter what it was, you knew it immediately. There was no guessing her moods or mind games. And even if some of her ideas and leanings were passing beyond the border of eccentric and well into the country of the insane, at least she had amazing amounts of energy to put into it.

  Her dark red hair—almost back to its natural color, Paul noted—was framing her face and bouncing gently as she waved her hands around and spoke excitedly. He looked deep into her beautiful marble blue eyes, smiling, his harelip scar barely tugging his skin.

  “And then he put his hand over my mouth and dragged me into the room!”

  She said this so loudly that not only did Paul come to, but half of the cafe stopped for a moment to listen.

  “Wait, what?” He shook his head. He knew he should have been listening, but Amy talked a lot. All the ti
me, in fact. He couldn’t help tuning out once in a while.

  “Alyec!” she repeated with exasperation. “When I told him that he had better not have hurt Chloe. He grabbed me and dragged me into the music theory room.”

  “Why did you do that? Why would you do that?”

  “Blame the victim, why don’t you?” Amy huffed. “Typical male.”

  Even though he was confused and impatient to find out exactly what had happened, Paul thought over his next words carefully. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No,” Amy admitted grudgingly. “But he grabbed my arm and put his hand over my mouth!”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “Yes!”

  Paul waited, staring steadily at her with his dark brown eyes, raising one of his perfectly rectangular eyebrows.

  “No,” Amy finally said under his scrutiny, looking down at her coffee and kicking the table leg like a little girl. “But he might have. If there hadn’t been other people nearby.”

  “So wait—you accused him of doing something to Chloe in the hall in front of other people?”

  “No, I’m not an idiot. There were just some band geeks walking by.”

  Paul sat back and stirred his tea slowly, not wanting to look her in the face while he digested everything. Paul could be enigmatic, but sometimes he was just so stunned by what Amy said or did that it took a moment for him to adjust.

  “But he knows something about what’s going on,” Amy said desperately, unable to bear his silence. “When I told him what we saw on the bridge, he got all surprised and weird and stuff.”

  Paul reached for the zipper under his neck and loosened it a little, playing with the tag as if it were a tie. It was his new Puma running jacket, sleek, with red stripes going down the sides. When he wore it, he fit in perfectly with the older, “real” DJs at the clubs he liked. It was like his personal superhero costume.

  “Amy,” he finally said, “you shouldn’t have done that. If he’s innocent—and let me remind you that you still don’t have any real proof of anything—then it was crazy and mean. And if he is involved somehow, how is confronting him like that going to help?”