“Come on, Jamie.” I had to jostle him to break his staring match with Pamela.
The inspector stepped off the sidewalk to give us plenty of room to pass. I nudged Jamie through the door, following close on his heels, our hands clenched tight enough to cut off circulation. I didn’t turn my back on Pamela until Brad stepped between us.
Heat rolled over me, and I broke out in an instant sweat. I’d dressed for the elements, complete with long johns beneath my duct-tape-patched jeans, whereas the office had been set to tropical temperatures for the prajurit. The tiny, winged people swooped close to the ceiling, milling in discreet groups. Several dipped down to greet me and Jamie. I made sure to be polite, but I didn’t let Jamie stop walking until we stood in the small open space at the rear of the office. The back door remained ajar for the prajurit, and I positioned us near it. If Pamela tried to cage Jamie or harm him in any way, we were out of here.
Was I being irrational? I didn’t think so, but if I was, I didn’t care.
Unzipping my coat, I tugged my scarf loose with one hand, then stuffed my beanie in an overcrowded pocket.
“How are you feeling?” Brad asked, stopping to lean his butt against the closest desk, his pose more forced than casual.
“Fine.”
“We need to determine if you’re being unduly influenced,” Pamela said, squaring off in front of me. Her gaze flicked to my hand locked with Jamie’s, then back to my face. “The purity test is as much for your good as it is for the pooka’s.”
I could either argue and make a fuss or I could submit and we could all move on.
“Fine. But I’m through with the ankle tracker.” I tugged Jamie to the nearest desk and grabbed a pair of scissors. Bracing against the pooka for balance, I lifted my foot, pulled up my snow pants and jeans, and severed the strap of the hateful contraption.
Brad’s indrawn breath hissed softly, and I glanced in his direction. His round face remained stoic, but a flush crawled from his collar to his crown as he took in the ugly bruise circling my ankle.
An alarm squawked in Pamela’s pocket. She pulled out her phone and swiped the screen, cutting the sound off midnote. I resisted the impulse to pulverize the tracker beneath my heel, tossing it atop the desk instead. When I pulled my pant leg back down, I felt thirty pounds lighter.
The front door bleated its broken-bell clank, announcing Summer. The enforcer murmured a greeting to Sharon, then strode in our direction, stopping next to Brad. She didn’t greet anyone, in deference to the obvious tension, but when she spotted my hand joined with Jamie’s, a small smile curved her lips. More surprising, it didn’t disappear when she met my gaze. Something last night had changed her opinion of me, and of Jamie, too.
“You cannot be touching for the test,” Pamela said.
I squeezed Jamie’s hand, then relaxed my fingers. “It’s okay.”
He let go but didn’t step away from me. Nodding to herself, Pamela pocketed a strange little prism and gestured for me to make a net.
Gritting my teeth, I suffered through the longest purity test to date. Despite holding a net a fraction of the size I had created to heal Jamie, I strained to maintain it while Pamela’s hand rested inside my soul. The vertiginous pulses of her energy through mine tightened cramps in my stomach, making me regret indulging in a fourth cookie.
“Clean,” Pamela finally announced.
The prajurit broke into conversation, speaking a foreign language and conferring in small circles. I reached for Jamie, finding his hand extended to me. The instant we connected, my disjointed lux lucis settled.
“I think Madison and Jamie should sit tonight out,” Brad said, directing his words toward Pamela. “They need time to recover.”
“No,” Jamie said. “I have to kill the tyv. Tonight.”
I blinked at the ferocity of his tone. “You do? You want to take part in bringing the tyv down.”
“She’s my responsibility.” Anger tightened his face, but his soul swirled with no more agitation than when Pamela had inflicted her purity test on me. “She killed you, even after I told her you were off-limits. Tonight, she dies.”
I gave his hand a shake to loosen his grip. “I’m not dead. I’m right here.”
Pamela snorted. “Maybe she was confused, since you were leading drone attack after drone attack against Madison.”
“I could handle the drones.” I glared at the inspector. If she wanted a fight, I’d give her one.
“I knew you could,” Jamie said. Worry furrowed his brow and he looked at his feet when he added, “I wanted to see what you’d do after you recognized me. I wanted . . .”
“Proof that I still loved you. I know. I understand.” It was exactly this vulnerability that had enabled the tyv to prey on him. She had used his confusion and yearning for a place of belonging to her advantage. Or maybe sjel tyver didn’t have such complex thoughts and she’d only capitalized on the opportunity Jamie had presented. Either way, the blame for last night’s events—for all the screwups with the tyv—fell on my shoulders.
“What are we up against?” I asked.
“Summer and I whittled down the tyv’s drone support after you went home, but not enough to starve her anytime soon. We’d be better off tonight if we hadn’t wasted so much time searching for the pooka. You should have reported in immediately, Madison.”
I gave the inspector a flat look. “I was busy.”
Summer cleared her throat. “Can the tyv be killed?” she asked.
“Everything can be killed.” Pamela crossed her arms, her expression grim.
“The tyv is stronger than you think,” Jamie said. “She’s been using my energy. Before she attacked Madison, I gave her power—enough to evolve her eggs.”
His words went through Brad and Pamela like an electric shock, rippling outward through the prajurit. For a second, the only sounds in the office were the hum of prajurit wings and the clacking of the break room refrigerator.
“What does that mean?” Summer asked before I could.
Jamie tugged me to face him, his expression pleading. “I wanted to balance out the region. I thought if there was more atrum, I wouldn’t look so bad to you.”
Oh, Jamie. “You look perfect to me.” I owed him a hundred apologies. A thousand.
“How much time do we have?” Pamela asked.
“Hours.” Jamie squared his shoulders and turned back to the group. “She’s almost done laying eggs. She’ll wait as long as she can, but the weather’s going to warm up fast over the next few days, and she’ll have to take her offspring north.”
“How would she know it’s going to get warmer?” Summer asked.
“Nature sings about her rhythms and changes, and weather is just another language to sjel tyver.”
Who knew my pooka was a poet?
“Are you certain they’ll hatch tonight?” Brad asked.
Jamie nodded.
“Someone explain what’s going on,” I demanded.
“Thanks to the pooka, all the eggs he kept hidden from us won’t hatch as drones,” Pamela said. “They’ll hatch as sjel tyver. Their accelerated evolution will make them ravenous. If dozens of tyver sweep through Roseville at once . . .”
My imagination filled in the rest of the horrifying scenario. Sjel tyver stole memories from norms. A horde of tyver unleashed en masse on the citizens of my region would result in an epidemic of amnesia, followed by a rash of fear, and humans were prone to unfathomable acts of stupidity when scared. Homicidal mobs, riots, war. Roseville wouldn’t be the only area affected, either. As the tyver fled north to their colder breeding grounds, they’d wreak havoc on every town and city in between. And if a clutch of newborn tyver saw one of us? I didn’t want to contemplate the odds of surviving against multiple sjel tyver intent on stealing my soul. One tyv had been more than I could handle.
“The prajurit have poisoned thousands of chimneys,” Brad said. “How many eggs could they have missed?”
Jamie hesitated, then w
hispered, “Hundreds.”
My warden blanched. His gaze darted to Pamela, and I saw the moment he acknowledged the death of his dreams of expanding our region. The inspector would never grant Brad more responsibility after this catastrophic bungle. His shoulders slumped and he rubbed his forehead with one meaty palm. He allowed himself two deep breaths and one resigned glance around the shabby headquarters before drawing himself up straight.
“Every egg we kill is one that can’t hatch,” he said. “I’ll get a map and we’ll grid out where—”
“The tyv is more important than the eggs,” Jamie interrupted. “I must kill her.”
“Last night already proved you’re no match for her,” Pamela said.
“Last night, I was weak—”
“And she’s gotten stronger.” Pamela glared down Jamie. “She’s only going to get more agile once she’s done laying eggs. Brad has the right strategy: The clock is ticking and we need to destroy as many unborn tyver as possible. I’ll call in extra enforcers to defend areas where the eggs are most likely to hatch. Any tyv that makes it out of a chimney alive, I want an enforcer there to kill it.”
“You don’t understand.” Jamie dropped my hand so he could emphasize his point. “The sjel tyv guides the eggs’ rapid metamorphoses. Their minds are all linked to her. If she dies before they hatch, they die. Or they devolve to drones.”
“Is that true?” Summer asked, looking to our superiors for confirmation.
“I’ve never heard that’s how it works.” Pamela glanced to the prajurit, who all shook their heads, then to Brad.
“Jamie is the one who can transform into a tyv,” he said. “If anyone would know, it’s him.”
“We’re going to trust the word of a pooka?” Pamela seemed to be talking to Brad, but she maintained eye contact with Jamie. “Not twenty-four hours ago he was working with the enemy and nearly got his enforcer killed.”
“Did get his enforcer killed,” Jamie said softly.
Summer’s eyebrows danced to her hairline.
“Still here.” I waved my hand, and the movement broke Pamela’s fixed stare. “Ready to kill a tyv.”
The inspector eyed us all, even the prajurit. Finally, she nodded. “We’ll need Niko.”
“I already texted him. He’s a few minutes out,” Brad said.
“If I’m in the field, I won’t have time to coordinate the additional reinforcements we’ll need.”
“I’m on it.” Brad finished punching the surface of his cell phone and raised it to his ear. After a second, he barked, “Rose. Call Joy and Will. I need everyone at the office ASAP.”
He hung up and turned to the prajurit. “My esteemed queens, the time for talk is over. My region and your future territories are under attack of an extreme and undeniable nature. I claim Power of War. Do you accept?”
Wings hummed and tiny hands dropped to sword hilts as the queens assessed each other. Tense seconds dragged by; then the first queen dipped into a bow.
“I accept,” she said.
One by one, the others agreed, each regal and measured in her response and in no way hurried. Brad bounced on his toes with impatience, barely letting the last queen speak before he barreled on.
“I’m honored to have you all as allies.” He called forward four queens, Lestari among them, and designated them as clan leaders. The rest of the females and their warriors he divided between the newly elevated clans. When they protested, he overrode them. “I expect full cooperation and peace within your ranks until the security of my region and your territories is fully reinstated. At that point, you are free to work out conflicts among yourselves. The peace talks are officially dissolved.”
Judging by the prajurit’s open scowls and hands clenched around sword hilts, the peace Brad had instituted wouldn’t last long. But at least they’d agree to put off killing each other until after we destroyed the tyv and her offspring. Now all we had to do was survive a battle against the strongest evil creature any of us had ever encountered. One who’d already killed me once.
Piece of cake. Right?
Right?
“Jamie and clan queens, with me,” Brad ordered. “We have seventeen minutes until sundown, which means we have half that time to disseminate territories, grid out infected neighborhoods, and build a battle plan.” He hustled into his office to stand before the wall map of our region. Four queens broke away from their clans and zipped over the top of the office wall. Jamie shuffled after Brad, his shoulders hunched. Since the office couldn’t accommodate another person, I shifted to stand where Jamie could see me through the open doorway and I, him; if we couldn’t maintain physical contact, visual contact was the next best thing.
“How did you find him last night?” Pamela asked. She’d followed me, keeping Jamie in her line of sight, too.
“I didn’t need to. He came home to me.”
Her eyebrows flickered in surprise. “Good. We can work with that. He’s more connected to you than I thought. You’ll have a much easier time keeping him under control now.” Pamela lowered her voice. “The key is to not give an inch. He’s angry with the sjel tyv right now, but it’ll be up to you to make him see that all atrum creatures are just as bad. You have the advantage right now. Don’t lose it.”
I pinched my lips and nodded, as if I put any merit in her advice or had any intention of following it.
Inside his office, Brad drew careful lines across his laminated map, divvying up our region for the prajurit while Jamie drew Xs in clusters over residential districts to denote egg locations. The pooka’s marks darkened a daunting portion of the map.
The front door clanked opened and Niko entered, immediately stripping off his puffy black coat and beanie. Normally the sight of him gave my heart an extra patter, but our last encounter had left me sour. I turned away and crossed my arms while Pamela brought him up to speed. Outside, snow settled on the bushes and limned the cracks in the pavement, but it wouldn’t present a problem driving. The string of freezing days and anomalous snowfall had chased most Roseville residence indoors, too, which would make our jobs easier and deprive the drones of fresh food. For a fleeting moment, I wished I were one of the norms, curled up inside under a blanket, but then I remembered the tyv holding Jamie down, and I tuned back in to the conversation.
“She went to ground along the southern border of the region. I lost track . . .” Pamela paused, her attention turning inward.
I examined the contorted lines of her soul. Despite last night’s perpetual use of lux lucis, she hadn’t lost a shred of definition. If Brad were to attempt to do the same, his soul would blur back into his body’s shape. It took a special person or a special kind of control for the inspector to be able to maintain the structure of her soul while actively using its energy.
Whatever she felt stir in the map of her soul wasn’t apparent to me, but when she refocused on us, Pamela announced, “The tyv’s awake.”
Anticipation, sharp and nauseating, squirmed through my stomach. I gave my body a quick weapons-check pat-down.
Niko touched my arm, drawing my attention to his face. Worry kinked his eyebrows as he scrutinized me. “Are you up for this?”
Way to make me look weak in front of the inspector, Niko. Glowering, I leaned into his personal space. “Are you going to try to stop me?”
Surprise flickered across his face; then he broke into a grin. I bared my teeth at him, keeping my growl checked.
“There’s the Madison I know. Good to have you back.” He had the audacity to clap me on the back. Worse, his mild approval settled in a warm glow in my gut. Pathetic.
Brad barreled out of his office. “The wardens to the north of us have been warned, and they’ll spread the word. I’ve got six enforcers coming in from Sacramento and Elk Grove, and Rose will be here any minute to cart the prajurit to the farthest locations. The rest have left. Where’s Jamie?”
Brad’s shoebox office was empty. I spun to check the larger room, catching Sharon’s eye in the mirr
or on her podium. The stoic receptionist twitched her head, her eyes flicking to look over my right shoulder—her version of screaming and pointing. I whirled and raced for the back door. A wooden wedge held it ajar for the prajurit, and the blazing interior lights transformed the twilit landscape beyond it into an impenetrable shadow.
Jamie better not have . . .
I burst through the door and stumbled as my feet caught in a soft bundle. Jamie’s clothes. Dread constricted my lungs.
Blinking to Primordium, I scanned the sky. An empty black void stared back at me.
She’s my responsibility.
“Damn it, Jamie!” He’d gone after the tyv. Alone.
28
Without Me, It's Just Aweso
Niko jostled me aside and sprinted to the far side of the back lot. I already knew he wouldn’t find my pooka, but a kernel of hope rooted me in place.
How could I have been so oblivious? Jamie must have walked right by me. I should have recognized his guilt and kept a closer eye on him. He’d barely healed from his last encounter with the tyv. He wasn’t up for another one-on-one battle with her. She would kill him.
When Niko shook his head and trotted back to the office, I took one last look at the sky, then scooped up Jamie’s clothes and hugged them to my chest.
Hang on, Jamie. I’m coming.
I barreled back inside, swerving to avoid a collision with Pamela. “Let’s go. You can ride with me.”
Pamela seized my arm and pulled me up short. “I thought you had control of him.”
“That’s what you’re focusing on?” I jerked free. “Jamie needs our help. We don’t have time to waste on this bullshit.”
Ignoring me, Pamela turned to Brad. “This changes everything. We can’t trust anything the pooka said. For all we know, he just set us up for a trap.”
“He wouldn’t!”
Pamela shook her head. “No one blames you, Madison. You were tricked like the rest of us. He made you think he’s not evil—”
“He didn’t make me think he’s not evil. I know it.”
“That’s the bond brainwashing—”
A Fistful of Frost Page 39