by Z. J. Cannon
Sometimes I hated my father’s blood, and the heroism compulsion it had cursed me with.
“So,” I said, trying to push my plate away without being too obvious about it. “Carroll agreed.”
“He did. Thanks to you.” Delaney cleared her throat. “Which is why I wanted to do something for you to mark the occasion. I know things have been tense between us.”
She did have a gift for understatement, at times. “Understandably so.” And clearly that tension wasn’t all in the past—she still hadn’t loosened her grip on her fork—but I didn’t see what good could come of pointing that out.
“But I know what it took for you to do what you did last night,” Delaney continued. “And I wanted to show my gratitude.”
I wished she would go ahead and shove me out the door. “Thank you,” I said, and forced myself to take a bite of chicken. My stomach did a somersault. I chewed and swallowed, and tried to smile.
“Abner is coming back for a strategy session next week,” said Delaney. “We’d both be happy to have your input as we figure out our next steps.”
I shook my head. “Thank you. Again. But if all goes well, I should be long gone by then.” I met her eyes across the table. “You do remember our agreement.”
Delaney dropped her gaze to her plate. “Right.” She still had her fork in a death grip. She hadn’t taken a single bite.
My grip on my own fork tightened. Some distant part of my mind found room to be grateful for the fact that this house had belonged to one of the fae, which meant it had come stocked with silverware made of actual silver, and not the steel I was used to. That meant the only pain in my hand came from the way I was squeezing the fork like I was trying to choke the life from it. “You are still planning to give me the names of your Arkanica contacts, aren’t you?”
Delaney hesitated a few seconds too long for my comfort. “I’ve been doing some thinking. It may be prudent to wait and see if we can find a more subtle way of handling Arkanica. We can bring it up with Abner next week, see if he has any ideas.”
“That wasn’t the agreement,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. But then, she was human. She didn’t have magic in her blood, forcing her to honor her agreements. She could break a promise and think nothing of it.
Delaney flinched back at my tone. But she recovered quickly. “The more I think about it,” she said in an almost-normal voice, “the more I think you would be a valuable member of our team going forward. Especially if you’re willing to do for others what you did for Abner last night. And if you’re not willing to go that far, even just keeping you on as security would be helpful. You’re clearly more effective than most human security, judging by last night.” She gave an uneasy laugh.
I set my fork down slowly, my movements tightly controlled. “I could have gone through the portal for Lucien. I stayed here to destroy Arkanica. And that’s what I’m going to do.” I tried to keep my voice mild. But my true feelings must have escaped into my tone, because Delaney flinched again.
She took a deep breath and faced me across the table. Something about the way she was looking at me made me squirm. Despite the badly-hidden fear in her eyes, she looked like a teacher confronting a student who had been caught cheating. “What exactly is your plan for Arkanica?” she asked.
“I thought you didn’t want to be involved.”
“I’m beginning to think I should have asked a few more questions. About Arkanica, and other things.” She pushed her untouched plate aside and laced her fingers together in front of her. She leaned forward, lips thinned. “I approached Stanley Beauchene two months ago. He was one of my top choices for a liaison with the outside world. A former senator with good connections, and willing to admit on national television last year to being a believer in UFOs. You remember our meeting, don’t you?”
I froze at the mention of his name. I forced my muscles to relax, hoping she hadn’t seen. “I remember,” I said, my voice carefully neutral. “He seemed intrigued by what you had to say. He didn’t call you crazy, at least. But nothing ever came of it.”
“I’m not so sure ‘nothing’ is the right word,” said Delaney. “I happened across a news article about him a few days ago. Apparently the reason we haven’t heard anything from him is because he’s dead. He died suddenly, on his way back from his vacation home. Brake failure.”
I knew I shouldn’t have had Skye get Delaney that phone. I forced myself to meet Delaney’s gaze levelly across the table, and didn’t say a word.
“Two weeks ago,” Delaney continued, “I met with Gillian Rossi. She didn’t have the political connections I would have preferred, but considering she used to run the largest and most trusted online source for environmental news, her media connections more than made up for it. I looked her up the other day, and wouldn’t you know it, she’s dead too.” Now Delaney’s lips were nothing more than a thin white line.
I took a deep breath of my own, and laid my hands flat on the table. Apparently we were doing this. “The day after your meeting with Rossi,” I said, “she was on the phone with CNN, trying to sell them a story about how you faked your own death. It’s lucky for all of us that they didn’t believe her. But that’s not to say the next news outlet she tried wouldn’t have. As for Beauchene, I got my hands on his phone while I was keeping an eye on him for you the day after your meeting. Less than an hour after the two of you parted ways, he was in contact with someone I can only assume was from Arkanica, offering you up to them for a tidy sum. They had already started haggling over the price.”
“You didn’t tell me you were following the people I met with.”
“Would you rather I had let them expose you? Or lead Arkanica to your door?”
“I would rather,” said Delaney, her voice rising despite the fear in her eyes, “you had talked to me about other solutions.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And what other solutions might you have suggested?”
I watched her try to think of an answer. And I watched her come up empty.
“You didn’t tell me about any of this,” she said instead, “because you knew how I would react.”
“What I knew was that you still don’t fully understand that moral purity is a luxury you can’t afford when you’re at war.” I let out a quiet sigh. “Believe me, I get it. I didn’t let myself see it myself until recently—and I’ve fought in more wars than I can count. But I did learn eventually. Once I found myself alone against an enemy as powerful as Arkanica, forced to use every resource at my disposal. And you’re starting to learn, too, even if you won’t admit it to yourself.” I smiled without warmth. “Some part of you must know moral compromise is necessary—because here you are, offering me a permanent place in your plans, while accusing me of murder in the same breath. But then, your offer isn’t really about how useful I can be to your cause, is it? It’s about wanting me where you can keep an eye on me.”
“What are you going to do once I give you those names?”
“Exactly what I said I would do. I’ll use your contacts to get to their bosses. The people running the whole show. And after that, I’ll cut off the head of the beast.”
“And how do you plan to get from my contacts to the people signing their paychecks?”
“I’ve grown to favor the direct approach.”
Delaney shook her head. “I thought I was prepared to do whatever was necessary. Especially after what Arkanica did to me.” Her fingers, still laced together, clenched tighter. “But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to forget that when you make a deal with the devil, he invariably asks for your soul in return.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Am I to take it that I’m the devil in this scenario?”
“You know what I mean. We’re the good guys here. We have to make sure we stay that way. After all, what separates us from Arkanica, a company that wants to end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels? Methods. That’s all.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. We’ll keep on being the
good guys. We’ll do it by saving the tens of thousands of fae prisoners that would have ended up locked in Arkanica’s labs so Arkanica could sell their blood by the pint.”
Delaney shook her head. “I’ve made my decision. We’ll talk to Abner as soon as possible, and do what we can to think of alternate solutions.”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I pulled out my phone. I opened the file where I had been collecting snippets of relevant news. “‘Rumors of new miracle fuel sweeps European markets, drawing investor dollars away from traditional green energy,’” I read. “That’s from last month. Two weeks ago: ‘Unnamed clean-energy company signs deal with Russian government, after weeks of closed-door meetings.’ Or how about yesterday? ‘Who is Arkanica? The mysterious company promising the world a brighter—and greener—future.’ That one actually mentioned their name. That’s not a good sign. They’re getting ready to come out into the open, and they’ve already started laying the groundwork.”
“A few headlines don’t mean anything.” But she was worried. I could tell. I had seen her draw back at that last one.
“It’s not just a few.” I slid my phone across the table toward her. It skidded down the polished wood until she stopped it with her hand. “And once you’ve read through those, think about this. Arkanica stopped kidnapping fae from the Drunken Scarecrow after I destroyed their headquarters. Now they’ve started again. Why would they take that risk if they’re not getting ready to ramp up faelight production?”
“So something did happen at the bar. I thought you left before—” She stopped as something on the list caught her eye. She started scrolling, and scrolled some more. Her frown deepened as she mouthed the words.
“Now tell me,” I said once she had stopped scrolling, “can we afford to do this the slow and scrupulous way?”
It took Delaney a long time to answer. “I’ll give you the names, and you can ask Skye to find their bosses from there,” she finally said. “Then we’ll decide together what to do about the people at the top.”
I shook my head. “I’m not putting Skye at risk like that. Bad enough that I’m having her run virtual errands for me. I won’t send her poking into Arkanica’s secrets again. The last time she went up against them, she barely survived. And everything I’ve done to hide her will only work as long as she doesn’t draw attention to herself.”
Delaney pressed her lips together even more tightly. “All right. I’ll give you my contacts, and you can choose how to use them. On one condition. I want your promise that you won’t harm the people whose names I give you. Lie to them, go through their houses and their phones, whatever you like. But no physical damage.”
“I can’t promise that.”
Another long pause as Delaney thought. “You won’t do any unnecessary harm to them,” she amended, sounding less than happy about the compromise.
I couldn’t say I was thrilled with it either. But I had a feeling it was the best offer I was going to get. “You’re learning to negotiate like one of the fae. That’s good. You’ll need that skill if this plan of yours and Lucien’s ever gets off the ground.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I promise I will do no unnecessary harm to anyone you name as one of your Arkanica contacts,” I dutifully recited, and felt the weight of the promise settle over me. “Now let’s talk about where I’ll be going tomorrow. What will I need to pack?”
Chapter 8
Dwight Conley had a modest house in the suburbs on the outskirts of DC. At least he probably thought of it as modest. A landscaped lawn, an inground pool in the backyard, but no ostentatious touches to make him stand out from his similarly well-off neighbors. The neighborhood was quiet; when I drove down to the end of the cul-de-sac at two forty-five in the morning, and slowed to a stop two houses away from Conley’s driveway, I didn’t see a single light on in any houses. Even the streetlights were dim—not the flickering yellow of a dying bulb, but the soft glow of candlelight. Some sort of specialized bulb, probably. A classy touch.
I crept along the shadow of the ruthlessly trimmed trees that lined Conley’s yard. Not that I needed to bother; the lights were off in his house just like in all the others, and from the pictures I had seen of Conley and his wife on social media, I couldn’t imagine them owning anything as messy as a dog. Even their daughter had been a surprise to me. Although from the look of her, tight-faced and miserable in her private school uniform, they had spent her six years of life trimming her down to the proper specifications with as little mercy as they had shown the trees.
They didn’t have a security system. Probably didn’t see a need for it, in a neighborhood as quiet as this. I let myself in through the back door. I waited for a moment just inside the doorway, just to be sure I had been right about the dog. No barking, no clicking of nails on the hardwood floors. I let out my breath and walked into the house.
I didn’t risk turning on a light when I entered their magazine-showroom kitchen. I didn’t know how deeply the family slept, and I didn’t want to risk being discovered before I was ready. I fumbled through their cabinets, as quietly as I could, until I found a big stew pot. I filled it with water and put it on to boil. Next I did a quick but thorough sweep of the kitchen, gathering anything that could be used as a weapon—from steak knives to frying pans—and tucking them carefully away in the darkest corner of the walk-in pantry. Then I sat down at the kitchen table, dialed Dwight Conley’s number, and waited.
From above my head, I faintly heard his phone buzz. Then, through my own phone that was resting on the table in front of me, his voice, thick with sleep, mumbled a garbled, “Hello?” I didn’t say anything. Instead, I hit the button that would end the call.
Above me, the floor creaked as he rolled out of bed. Heavy footsteps clomped down the hall, and a moment later, a toilet flushed. Then the footsteps headed my way, the stairs groaning under his feet.
His eyes were still half-closed when he stumbled into the kitchen. That was probably why he didn’t see me on his way to the sink. He fumbled for a glass, and filled it from the tap. Then he poured the contents down his throat in one long swallow. When the glass was empty, he slammed it down on the counter. “Fucking robocalls,” he grumbled, his voice a little clearer than it had been on the phone, but not by much. “Three in the morning. Be lucky if I get back to sleep after this.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said mildly.
His backwards leap would have been downright hilarious if I had been in a laughing mood. His arms flailed out as he struggled to keep himself upright. One arm hit the glass, sending it crashing to the floor.
He didn’t even look down at the broken glass. His eyes were fixed on me. They were wide open now, and round with blind fear.
I had a feeling his fear was about more than simply finding an intruder in his house. “I take it you recognize me.”
“You’re…” He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and settled for shaking his head. Apparently he was the superstitious type, and thought saying my name would give me power. I could have told him it wasn’t my real one anyway.
“From the news,” he finally said. “You set off that bomb up in Massachusetts. Killed that congresswoman.”
I filed that reaction away. So he knew me as the human criminal, then. Not as the half-fae who had been hunting down everyone associated with Arkanica. I was willing to bet that meant he didn’t know about the more uncanny side of their operations.
That meant I was going to have to fill him in on the reason for my visit. On the bright side, it also meant he hadn’t been expecting me. “Kieran Thorne,” I confirmed for him, and watched him flinch.
He tore his eyes away from my face long enough to spot the phone on the table. “You called me.”
“I considered making an appointment with your office, but I thought a more private meeting would be more appropriate. But of course, I didn’t want to disturb your family. I thought waking you up just enough to get you out of bed
was the best option. Lucky for me, you like a glass of water when you wake up in the middle of the night. So do I. Of course, it’s mostly nightmares for me.” I pocketed the phone.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t seem to appreciate my attempt to find common ground. He patted the place where his pocket should have been, but he was only wearing a pair of faded gray boxer shorts. He had left his phone upstairs.
“Thinking of calling the police?” I asked. “I wouldn’t recommend it.” I inclined my chin toward the other item on the table. My knife. I had placed it there purely for show—I had no intention of using it. But weapons did make effective props, for people who were used to fighting their battles using nothing but money and power.
He stared at the knife, then back at me, like he couldn’t decide which he needed to watch more closely. “What do you want with me?”
“I’ve introduced myself,” I said, “but you haven’t returned the favor. Let me do the honors. You’re Dwight Conley, senior liaison—whatever that means—with the Center for Freedom of Innovation. You work with a number of companies in the technology sphere to… well, I read the verbiage on your website, but let’s call it what it is. You funnel your clients’ bribes to various politicians to ensure taxes and regulations in their industry stay low.”
Maybe his initial burst of panic was beginning to fade, because he found it in himself to be offended. His face darkened. “All our work is perfectly legal.”
“Tell yourself whatever soothes your conscience. But you should think more carefully about what you tell me. I don’t appreciate being lied to.”
“As if you have any room to play Ghost of Christmas Whatever. In June, no less. I’m making sure this country stays on the forefront of innovation. You, on the other hand… I watched that special on the news last month. Don’t you have other things to do besides break into my home in the middle of the night and judge me? Prisoners to torture? Babies to sell?”