by J. J. Green
“Okay,” Reyes said. “I understand there are things you don’t want me to know, Carina and family. But don’t forget I helped save your lives back there. You don’t have to treat me like an enemy.”
“Reyes,” said Carina, “you’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me find my sister and brothers. I couldn’t have done it without you.” Then she said, “Ferne, if you’re feeling better, can you raise your seat? We can hardly move in here.”
After some more shuffling around the star racer was still cramped but more comfortable. They couldn’t stay in it forever, though. More to the point, they had to find Parthenia. “Reyes, can you turn back to the spaceport? I think my other sister might be there. She left to go and get help but she didn’t come back.”
“Return to the spaceport?” Reyes asked, incredulous. “I was lucky I wasn’t arrested. If this spacecraft was registered Mother would be pulling a lot of strings for me right now.”
“I thought Dirksens could do whatever they wanted,” Carina said.
“He’s a Dirksen?” Oriana exclaimed, her voice laced with disgust. She tried to ease away from Reyes’ seat but there was no room.
“He says he’s leaving his clan,” said Carina.
“I am leaving them,” Reyes said. “I would have thought what I just did would prove that to you.”
“I do appreciate it,” Carina said. “But we can manage by ourselves from here. So if you wouldn’t mind landing and letting us out?”
“You said you think your other sister might be at the spaceport?” Reyes asked. “Let me see what I can find out.”
“You can check official comms as well as your clan’s?” asked Carina.
“Official comms are easier.” Reyes set the star racer to automatic flight and began to search again on his interface. This time, he found the information within a few minutes. “A young woman was detained at the spaceport on suspicion of smuggling. She was transferred to the Illegal Migrant Holding Facility around an hour ago.”
“That has to be her,” Carina said. “Can we get her out? You can use your influence, can’t you?”
“Not so keen to get rid of me any longer?” Reyes asked sarcastically. “I don’t know. Maybe. Mother’s comms have been building up for hours. She’s going crazy but I don’t think she suspects what I plan to do yet. She probably thinks I’m rebelling a little but I’ll come home soon. So if we turn up at the facility I’ll still be a Dirksen to be feared, rather than one to be reported. I guess it’s worth a try.”
“Thank you,” said Carina.
“I hope you’ll accept I’m on your side if I manage to do this,” Reyes said as he input a new destination to the star racer’s navigation.
Carina sighed but didn’t say anything. The problem was, she and her siblings didn’t belong to a side. She only wanted to gather them together so she could protect them and decide what they were going to do next. She didn’t know what vision Reyes had of his involvement with them once they’d found Parthenia, but she had no intention of having anything else to do with him. He already knew her name and was probably wondering about Ferne’s mysterious unconsciousness and how that fitted in with the comm that stated a child had been shot. It was far too much dangerous information.
They landed outside a dark, one-story building. Black, unmarked hover vehicles were parked outside, and the whole place exuded a depressive air. Carina hoped that if Parthenia had been taken here, they could get her out as soon as possible.
A guard was leaning nonchalantly against the wall in the lobby when they went inside, but he quickly stood to attention when he spotted them. Carina wasn’t sure if it was because he recognized Reyes or because they were strangers.
Reyes walked up to a woman in uniform who was sitting behind a transparent screen. She glared at him. “Yes?”
“I’m Reyes Dirksen.”
The woman’s expression softened a little but not much. “Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for a young girl. She was brought in this morning from the spaceport.”
“Do you have a name?”
Reyes looked over his shoulder at Carina, but she didn’t know what to tell him. She doubted that Parthenia would have told anyone her real name, especially her surname, but she didn’t know what name she would have given.
“Penny Sharp,” Oriana called out.
The woman checked her list. She looked up, frowning. “We did have a Penny Sharp here this morning but she was taken away.”
“What?” Carina said, stepping forward. “Where did she go? Who took her?”
“Well, I’m surprised you don’t know,” said the woman. “She was checked out by a Dirksen.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ferne, Oriana, and Darius waited outside Reyes’ star racer while he combed through the Dirksens’ personal comms once more, this time trying to discover which of his relatives had removed Parthenia from the Illegal Migrant Holding Center. Carina sat next to him, watching over his shoulder in case he missed something.
The back hatch of Reyes’ vehicle was up, allowing in the noises of the busy street. Hover vehicles hissed passed, and every so often a large, unmarked, multi-passenger van stopped to unload or pick up detainees at the center. Carina would glance at these scruffy, unkempt individuals just to check that, by some miracle, her sister hadn’t been returned. She was clinging to the hope that whatever Dirksen had taken Parthenia hadn’t known about the girl’s powers, and that she’d been removed for some other reason.
But Parthenia didn’t appear, and though Reyes searched for hours he couldn’t find anything that alluded to Carina’s sister.
“It’s odd,” he said. “We do use people from the center for various things, but there’s nothing in the official record about someone being picked up today and no mention of it in any personal comms.”
“What do you think that means?” Carina asked. “Could the receptionist have been lying?”
Reyes shook his head. “She wouldn’t dare, even if she had a reason to lie—which she didn’t as far as I know. It’s very strange.”
Outside the star racer, Darius suddenly burst into tears. He wailed, his face pressed into his hands. Carina jumped out and went to him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, putting an arm around his shoulders.
“I’m hungry,” he sobbed.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Carina. Her concern about Parthenia had made her forget that her other siblings had spent the night and probably the previous day in the forest without anything to eat. And Ferne had spent a lot of that time severely injured.
Carina stuck her head inside Reyes’ vehicle. “I have to buy some food. Do you know where I can go? Is there somewhere nearby?”
Looking up from his interface screen, Reyes replied, “I can do better than that. You’re all going to need somewhere to sleep as well as food and clothes and everything else. If you all squeeze inside once more, I can take you somewhere.”
“Er… ”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Maybe it’s better that we part ways now. You need to continue with breaking away from your family.” Carina didn’t want Reyes to know where she and her siblings were staying and she didn’t want him to get to know them well. She might be able to hide her abilities from him but she wasn’t confident that her sister or brothers could.
“You’re never going to get your other sister back without my help,” Reyes said, his expression grave. “I can assure you. The fact that I can’t find any mention of her probably means the security surrounding her is very high level. You’ll never breach it alone. I can’t force you to stick with me for a while longer, but you would be stupid if you didn’t.”
Carina hated it but what he was saying made sense. She called to Darius and the others to climb inside Reyes’ tiny vehicle.
***
The apartment Reyes showed them to wasn’t much better than the one Carina had rented from the old man, but it was sparsely furnis
hed. There were two bedrooms.
“Great,” said Ferne. “One for boys and one for girls.”
“I’ll sleep on the sofa, thanks,” said Reyes.
Carina stared at him. “You’re planning on staying here too?”
“Why not?” Reyes asked. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? That way I can help you more easily. And I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Uh, okay,” said Carina. Reyes had paid their landlord from his own money, so Carina felt it would be ungrateful and churlish to refuse him, yet she remained deeply uncomfortable about the Dirksen man’s proximity to her siblings.
Ferne had declared which room belonged to the boys, and he and Darius were already bouncing on the bed, Darius’ ravenous hunger of less than an hour previously apparently entirely forgotten.
“Come and eat,” Carina called to the boys. She opened the bag of takeout food that Reyes had bought on their way over and began to open the lids. “Ferne, check in the kitchen for bowls and cutlery,” she said to her brother as he pulled out a chair at the rickety table.
Darius didn’t wait on niceties. He reached for piece of meat poking out from a dish. “Wash your hands,” Carina admonished.
“Yes,” Oriana said. “Come on, Darius.”
As Carina was laying the table, she could hear Oriana speaking in a hushed tone to Darius in the bathroom.
“I know,” the little boy exclaimed.
Carina winced internally. Her sister had undoubtedly been reminding their brother not to allude to anything to do with Casting while Reyes was around.
There were only four seats at the table, so Reyes took his food to the sofa to eat. Carina sat down and waited while her brothers and sister filled their bowls. For the first time since she’d found them in the forest, she could stop what she was doing and simply appreciate the fact that most of her family were reunited. She resolved to do her damnedest to prevent them from being separated again.
When everyone was eating, Carina also spooned some food into her bowl. The cereal was white grains and the main dish was meat in a sauce. Carina ate a mouthful, but as she was chewing, she stopped and put down her spoon.
“Don’t you like it?” Ferne asked, his mouth full. “I think it’s great.” Before he swallowed he piled another spoonful of grains and sauce into his mouth.
Carina had stopped because she had the same sense of deja vu she’d experienced at Asha’s apartment. The flavor of the food was familiar. The last time she’d eaten it, however, she’d been living with Nai Nai. Like the noodle soup, the dish they were eating had been another of her grandmother’s specialties.
“It is good,” Carina said. She continued to eat. If Reyes hadn’t been present, she could have told Ferne and the others about her discovery, but she hesitated to mention anything personal around a Dirksen, no matter how strongly he professed that he no longer wanted to be a part of his clan.
After everyone had eaten, Carina insisted that the three children go and lie down. Though they were excited to be reunited with her and anxious to find Parthenia, they could hardly have slept the previous night. Also, though Carina didn’t know what had happened after she’d Transported them from the Sherrerr shuttle, she doubted it was anything good. They would need time to recoup their energy.
As she’d predicted, Oriana, Ferne, and Darius quickly fell asleep. She closed the blinds in the bedrooms and went out into the lounge, where Reyes was searching for information on Parthenia once more.
She sat down beside him. “Still nothing?”
The young man’s long, fine hair hung over his face as he leaned forward. “Nope.” He sighed, leaned back against the sofa, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “There isn’t a single reference that I can see. I’m sorry. I’ll continue to look after I’ve had a rest.”
“Thanks,” said Carina. “I do appreciate what you’re doing for my family.”
“Consider it my way of trying to put things right. When I think of all the things my clan have done over the years… And I’m probably not even aware of half of it. It was only a couple of years ago that I began to realize that what Mother and other Dirksens were doing was wrong. Up until then I accepted that was how life was. I thought that we deserved everything we had and that if people didn’t have anything it was because they’d didn’t deserve it—like they hadn’t worked hard enough. The sheer evilness of what we were doing went over my head.”
“Well, it’s good you realized it finally,” Carina said. “It’s a shame the rest of your family haven’t arrived at the same insight.”
“Yeah.” Reyes frowned. “You know, I’ve been putting something off that I really ought to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I should read Mother’s comms. I won’t reply. I want to make use of my status as long as I can to help you, so I’m not going to declare anything to her. But I have to face up to what I’m doing.”
He leaned forward again and lifted his screen. Even from her position Carina could see he had tens if not hundreds of messages waiting from his mother. Reyes began to open and scan them, spending no more than a few seconds on each. Carina could imagine what they said—variations on Where are you? and When are you coming home?
But then Reyes opened a message that seemed to occupy a lot of his attention. He read it top to bottom, then his fingers flicked as he quickly opened the next message, and then the next. He let the interface fall to his lap.
“Is everything okay?” Carina asked, wondering what Langley Dirksen had said to her son that could be so devastating.
Reyes turned to her. “My mother has her—your sister. I’d swear it.”
Chapter Thirty
The estate Castiel had brought Parthenia to reminded her of her home on Ithiya, only it was far larger. The house was at least three times as big and the grounds stretched so far she couldn’t see the boundaries.
Castiel had wanted to walk in the grounds while they waited for someone. He hadn’t said who. Nahla trailed a little behind Parthenia and their brother. The little girl hadn’t spoken a word since Parthenia had arrived. A man called Harmon walked even farther behind the group. He was large, with broad shoulders and a thick, muscly neck.
Parthenia guessed that he was there to prevent her from running away. Yet in fact his presence wasn’t required. She wouldn’t have dared to run from Castiel—not after he’d demonstrated that he could now Cast.
He’d used Nahla as a subject for his demonstration. In a room inside the mansion, Castiel had sipped some elixir that he must have made himself, and he’d Cast Transport on their little sister. Parthenia had thought he would do something simple like move Nahla from one side of the room to the other, but instead he’d lifted her up to the ceiling.
Poor Nahla had hung there, plainly terrified but uncomplaining. It had been Parthenia who had begged Castiel to put their sister down, and safely, knowing that Castiel could release Nahla and let her fall. In the end, he had lowered the little girl rather than dropped her—until she was a meter above the floor, when he did allow her to drop.
Castiel had smiled with satisfaction at the cry of pain from his sister when she hit the floor.
Later, as they walked across the lawn, Castiel said, “I know how sentimental I must sound, but I’m glad to see you again, Parthenia.”
“Really?” she replied. “I can’t say that I feel the same.”
“Oh, now that’s unkind. Did you hear that, Nahla? Parthenia doesn’t like us. She isn’t happy to be reunited with her own flesh and blood.”
“I don’t know why you say us like that,” Parthenia said. “I am pleased to see Nahla, or maybe relieved is a better word. Relieved that you haven’t seriously hurt her, yet. Though that demonstration in the house just now tells me you’re perfectly capable of it. Probably looking forward to it, in fact.”
Castiel’s expression darkened. “If anything bad happens to Nahla, it will be entirely justified, I’m sure.”
Parthenia made a noise of disgust. “You
sound just like Father.”
“I certainly hope so. He was a great man, and he was in the prime of his life when he was cut down by our evil bitch of a mother—with your help.” Castiel turned to face Parthenia, malevolence simmering in his eyes. His voice was soft, which made his words all the more terrifying. “And believe me, I haven’t forgotten it.”
“Huh,” Parthenia said contemptuously. “Full of bravado after the fact, aren’t you? I don’t recall you doing anything to help him at the time.”
Castiel drew himself up and clenched his fists. Between his teeth he said, “That was because I wasn’t sure if I could Cast at the time. Now that I know I can, I won’t allow anyone to do anything I don’t want them to.” His rage abated and he walked on. “Besides, I wanted to get away from our clan. We never received the respect we deserved from them. After everything that we did—turning around their failing businesses, increasing their power and influence—we were still treated little better than slaves or chattel. They should have been bowing down to us, asking for our help and giving us rich rewards instead of locking us away and only bringing us out whenever they needed their performing monkeys.”
Parthenia inwardly smiled at Castiel’s words. Once more he was using “us” incorrectly. He had personally done nothing whatsoever to help the Sherrerrs and he’d enjoyed favor and numerous privileges that hadn’t been allowed to his mage siblings. Also, it had been their father who had treated the mages like slaves—the very man Castiel had just been praising. From what Parthenia could understand, the other Sherrerrs were either disinterested or uncaring about how Stefan Sherrerr used his children, providing the clan could benefit from Parthenia’s and the others’ abilities.
However, Parthenia was careful to show no sign of her wry amusement to Castiel. She had already angered him once and gotten away with it but she might not be so lucky again. It was a lesson she’d learned well at the hands of their father.