by Bryn Donovan
“It’s okay,” she told them. “I’ve got it.”
*
Cassie rode with them to the city to catch her commercial flight. “I wish I was going on a private jet,” she marveled as they got closer to town. She was sitting in back between Jonathan and Val while Michael rode shotgun. “Have you been on it before?”
Val and Nic shook their heads.
“Michael and I were on one once, but not this one,” Jonathan said. “We were kids. It was after my mother’s mission…we all moved to Granada to see if the Mages there could help her. Mrs. Vega went with us.”
“I forgot about that,” Val said. “We’d just moved to Tokyo, but then my mother left for two weeks. She was so sad, and she told me your mother was very sick. I didn’t really understand it for the longest time.”
“You were still little,” Jonathan said.
“Well, that all sounds horrible,” Michael said. Val knew he wasn’t even trying to be rude. He hated learning that the life he couldn’t remember was such a hard one.
To change the subject, she asked Nic, “Who do they think our plane belongs to?”
Nic shrugged. “A retired Mexican billionaire.” They had several fictional but plausible tycoons, scattered across the globe. “When Capitán travels, he takes it. He needs extra security.”
Capitán also needed extra accommodations for a medical condition. Even Nic, who always managed to know things, probably wasn’t aware of that. The few people who did know—Val and Jonathan among them—didn’t discuss it.
“Wow, yeah, I’ll bet,” Cassie said. “What would happen if something happened to him? Would it be chaos?”
“Probably not,” Nic told her as he changed lanes to get to the airport. “There are protocols in place.”
“But it would help a lot if he’d name a successor,” Jonathan added.
“Oh, calm down. Everyone knows it’s going to be you.” Nic looked at Jonathan in the rearview mirror and flashed a smile.
Val had heard others speculate the same, but she felt Jonathan’s surprise. As a teenager, he’d aspired to become a comandante at one of the guarídas, like his father. More recently, he’d told Cassie he never would, since he could neither be away from her nor be the one sending her into danger. But maybe no one had ever talked to him about the highest position.
He laughed, genuinely amused. “There’s no chance of that.”
Cassie asked, “So every capitán names their successor?”
“The successor is the temporary leader until we hold a vote,” Jonathan explained. “A capitán can name one or not, but it does make things go more smoothly. If they do name one, they try to make sure it’s someone everybody’s heard of and respects.”
“So I’m guessing that person usually gets voted in, anyway,” Cassie said.
Jonathan nodded. “Most of the time, they’re unchallenged.”
“How do you know the voting isn’t rigged, though? I guess that’s a super-American thing to ask,” she added.
“Not really. Most countries have rigged elections,” Nic said. “Ours are hard to hack, though.”
“And the penalty for coercing votes is death,” Jonathan said.
Cassie gaped. “Holy shit.”
“That’s not extreme at all,” Michael said.
Cassie asked, “So Capitán was someone’s successor?”
“Actually, no. But he had a stellar record as a Knight, and he was a hero during the attempted coup. He was voted in unanimously.”
Nic pulled up to the terminal entrance. “Feliz Navidad,” he told Cassie.
“Thank you, you too,” she said as Jonathan got out of the car to let her out. Val gave her a quick hug. “I’ll miss you!” Cassie said.
She and Jonathan took a few minutes at the curb to say goodbye. Val didn’t stare, but when she glanced out the window once, their heads were bent close together, and Jonathan was pressing his lips against the back of Cassie’s hand.
The driver in a car behind theirs honked, and Nic ignored it, but looked at the clock on the dashboard. When Jonathan finally got back in the car, Nic asked, “What did you do, propose to her?”
“Yeah, I wanted to make it special,” Jonathan said, his voice dry. “So I asked her at the Southwest Airlines terminal.”
Nic glanced at the clock again. “I think we’ll still be on time.”
Jonathan’s lips twitched upward. “It’s a private jet, Nic. It’s not going to leave without us.”
As they drove on, he packed his gun and ammo in a hard plastic case for the flight. Michael frowned. “Nobody needs to travel with weapons.”
“We do,” Jonathan said, latching the case shut.
“Why didn’t you pack it before, then?”
“Because I was still carrying it.”
“This is ridiculous.”
The Knights always carried guns and knives. They didn’t even feel comfortable being unarmed during a flight. The Diviners had designed a few ordinary objects for self-defense on commercial planes. Any steel pen was a potential weapon, but they’d improved it by fitting it with a sharp point instead of a rollerball. They’d also designed a taser that looked like a phone and could pass through security. The hair dryer that was actually a plastic gun still needed finessing.
“If you knew who you were, you’d never travel without a gun,” Nic told Michael.
“Then maybe I don’t want to know who I am.”
Jonathan was visibly gritting his teeth. “Then this whole trip is pointless.”
They parked at the airfield, and the pilot, one of their own, met them on the tarmac. The plane had a luxurious interior with white padded chairs and a long sofa, but as Val buckled in, the renewed tension between the brothers made it anything but comfortable.
If only Jonathan had showed Michael a memory from their childhood, things might’ve gone so much better. Dr. Holst had recommended early memories, after all. How could she persuade both of them to try again? Maybe in a couple of days, when they had cooled down…but by then, Michael would be taking Dr. Holst’s new drug with its unpleasant side effects and, apparently, might be too busy defecating and vomiting for another psychic experiment. Sometimes she believed the drug would work, and at other times it seemed impossible.
To her relief, Michael soon fell asleep, his head resting near the little window. With his eyes closed, it was easier to see how long his lashes were, and the sunlight turned the stubble of his jaw into a dusting of gold. Tenderness bloomed in her chest, and she said a silent little prayer to Isis, one healing aspect of the Goddess, that the treatments wouldn’t be too hard on him.
He jolted. She expected that he’d dreamed of falling and was shaking himself awake. But he didn’t wake up. He flailed as tremors of pain and panic emanated from him.
“Christos,” Jonathan cursed under his breath, unbuckling his seat belt to get up and go over to him.
“Let me,” she murmured and ghosted into Michael’s psyche.
He stood in the middle of his city street, holding his head as cracks divided the pavement under his feet. When he saw her, he yelled, “It’s happening again! I’m trying to stop it—”
“You’re doing it,” she gasped. A large gap sealed itself back up again. “It’s not as bad as before.” He was still on his feet. There were fewer fissures, revealing only slivers of that terrible nothingness in between. She took him by the hand. “I can help.” She focused her will on healing the largest crack, and then another. By the third one, the chain reaction began, with all the little fissures healing themselves up again.
He took in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m going to get out now, and then I’m going to wake you up.”
When she pulled back into the normal world, Jonathan was leaning over her to see Michael. “He was coming apart again? Is he all right?”
“Yes,” she said, answering both questions.
Michael stirred and opened his eyes. He looked from Val to J
onathan and grimaced in self-disgust. “Shit.”
Tuning her voice a little sweeter, she said, “It wasn’t as bad as last time. When I went in, you were already putting yourself together. You’re learning.”
“I’m useless,” he muttered. It took her a moment to catch it.
“That’s not true,” she snapped, her sweet tone gone, but the delay of her response made it sound unconvincing.
“You’re right. I’m worse than useless. Not only do I not have a purpose, but it takes three people to look after me.”
“You were blown to bits,” Jonathan said quietly. “Give yourself some time.”
CHAPTER NINE
In Jacksonville they picked up a rental car, and Nic drove them in the direction of the ocean. Nostalgia welcomed Val as they reached the iron front gates of the estate.
Nic stepped out to stand close to the sensor that would read the tattoo on the inside of his hip. The gates opened. The six-foot-tall iron fencing surrounded all two hundred acres, but the place was far enough from the resorts to be left alone most of the time.
When they pulled up to the Spanish-style estate, Michael’s eyes went wide. “This is your headquarters here?”
“No, this is Anantara,” Jonathan said. “The guarída is in Saint Augustine. It looks like a regular building.”
“Okay.” Michael’s gaze swept the large stone courtyard. “So what is this, exactly?”
Nic glanced up at him in the rearview mirror as he pulled up to the front door. “People come here for vacations and weddings.” He turned off the engine. “And guests like us stay here.”
“We came here a few times for vacation when we were kids,” Val told him. “Your family and mine.” They’d done so once when she was little, when their mother had still been with them, and twice when they’d all lived in Cairo, escaping the stultifying heat of summer in that city. Not that Anantara was cool in the summer, but it had a pool, the ocean, gardens, and no smog or litter.
Val’s mom had been a little like a mother to the West boys then. Val recalled searching for shark teeth on the beach by day and cooking bananas—split down the middle, filled with chocolate and hazelnuts, and wrapped in foil—over fires at night. At the very least, she could tell Michael about their times there.
As they got out of the car, Michael said, “It’s a definite upgrade from the rat maze.”
They grabbed their suitcases out of the trunk and went up to the oversized double doors. “We’re on the third floor,” Nic said. “The guarída’s having a Christmas party here tonight.”
“We’ll get to see Claudio and Cato,” Val said. The twin Knights had been moved from El Dédalo to Saint Augustine last year after a Knight had died in Savannah, having contracted a supernatural strain of typhoid from a ghost.
Nic shook his head. “All but two of the Knights are on missions. It’s been busy here.”
“My mother always said the South had too many ghosts,” Val said.
“How many Knights are here?” Michael asked her.
She shrugged.
“Ten,” Nic said.
Paranormal evil was hard to staff for. El Dédalo covered a large enough territory that someone was always dealing with some disturbance or another. But at the guarídas, weeks could go by with nothing to do—right before being slammed for two or three months at a time.
They stepped into the large lobby with a terrazzo tile floor and Spanish colonial furniture. Sheer curtains hung on the lower half of the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, while the upper half revealed the blue sky.
Val felt a little sparkle inside her upon seeing the place again. Nothing had changed. The best parts of her past hovered near, promising more of the same in the future.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Michael hoisted her large suitcase on his shoulder, carrying his own in his other hand.
Val went into their suite with Michael. A sofa and chair sat in front of the enormous flat-screen TV in the living area. White linens covered the two queen-sized beds in the adjoining room. Trompe l’oeil sunset clouds, golden and violet, floated on the blue walls. It was often used for a honeymoon suite. Did Capitán Renaud want them to be together? Perhaps so Michael wouldn’t run, or perhaps because he simply thought they were a good match?
In a few minutes, Jonathan came over, saying the Spanish football game was on. Val couldn’t help but wonder if he was interrupting on purpose, chaperoning them. He and Michael had always watched football together, though. Michael didn’t pretend to be enthusiastic about the plan, but he went along with it.
Val picked up on Jonathan’s wistfulness and regretted thinking uncharitable thoughts. He was missing his brother, even though Michael was right there.
As the brothers watched in the living area without talking, Val picked out a dress for the party—burgundy velvet with chandeliers embroidered in gold thread around the bottom of the skirt. It was a new creation from her dressmaker in Japan. She put on fresh lipstick and powder.
By the time they went down to the courtyard, about fifty people had gathered, and Nic came over to join them. A loud hip-hop song played over the sound system, and some people danced. Others sat at little tables, eating and drinking.
At a huge grill nearby, a man barbecued shrimp and lobster tail in wire baskets, and at a long table, people served themselves dates wrapped in bacon, spinach salad, chicken and rice, grilled vegetables, platters of fresh tropical fruit, rum cake, and almond crescent cookies. Two beverage dispensers at the end held red wine sangria.
They grabbed plates. Jonathan caught sight of someone in a nearby table and called out, “Aquario!”
A Knight she didn’t know, with shoulder-length brown hair, a trim beard, and a moustache, strode over with a smile. He exchanged a brief hug with Jonathan and then said to Nic, “Salaam. Aquario Cruz.” He spoke with a slight accent—Mexican, she was pretty sure.
Nic bobbed his head. “Salaam.” He shook the man’s hand. “Dominic Joe. We talked on the phone once. The cursed Porsche?”
“Ah, yes! Welcome to Florida.” The Knight turned to Michael. “We haven’t met before.” He must’ve been debriefed about the amnesia. Val guessed him to be maybe forty. He had heavy-lidded eyes and an easy air of natural gallantry. She liked him.
“Wouldn’t matter if we had,” Michael quipped. He shook the good-looking Knight’s hand.
Michael liked him too; arousal flared between them. But the sexual interest on both sides extinguished almost as soon as it lit, one of those fleeting emotions she picked up from people all the time. A flash of anger, a moment of fear, a tickle of desire—they could pass by without leaving a trace. She’d learned that sometimes, even the person himself wasn’t aware of them. She allowed herself to breathe again.
Aquario asked her, “And you are?”
“Valentina Vega. I’m a Mage at El Dédalo.”
“Of course. Mucho gusto.” He held out his hand to her, and she shook it.
Aquario asked Jonathan and Nic about Palimpsest, a protocol they were developing at El Dédalo to erase a communal memory of an event. Val bit her lip and looked at Michael. Considering his circumstances, it seemed tactless.
Michael didn’t seem to be listening carefully, however. He looked across the courtyard at the gliding and spinning couples. He asked Val, “Want to get out there with me?”
“I don’t know how to salsa. Do you?”
He paused to consider the question. “Yeah.”
“You went to college in Miami. You probably learned it at one of the clubs.”
A smiling woman approached their group. Mellie Demir, a Steward, Val remembered; she was a little older than Jonathan, and she’d always been in Saint Augustine. She’d put blond highlights in her brown hair since Val had seen her last, and it had gotten longer.
“Nic!” she said, and he was already standing up and smiling. She held her full wine glass away from them as they hugged. “It’s been so long since Paris,” she said when they pulled apart again. T
hat same kind of desire flashed between them, there and gone again. “Are you going to dance with me?”
He laughed. “You know I don’t dance.”
She mock-pouted. “But somebody’s got to.”
“Ask this one.” Nic jerked his head in Michael’s direction. “He loves it.”
She set her glass down on the table and suggested to Michael, “Let’s go.”
It didn’t trouble Val; he wanted to get out on the dance floor and, for whatever reason, there was no spark between him and Mellie. Attraction wasn’t always predictable.
Michael got up, and the two stepped a few yards away from the group to dance. After a few moments, Michael went the wrong way and bumped into Mellie. He looked back at Jonathan, Nic, and Val, who were still watching, and raised his hands. “I thought you said I was good at this.”
“I said you loved it,” Nic said. “You were never good at it.”
But Michael did fairly well for the rest of the song. He spun Mellie around, and a couple of times, she threw in some effortless intricate footwork.
Why hadn’t Val ever learned to dance? She lived too much in her own head—and in other people’s heads. Two people joined their little group, and the conversation turned to a Mage’s ailing grandmother.
When the song ended, Michael and Mellie moved back to the table, and the woman picked up her glass of wine again. “Hey, Aquario. How’s your new pup?”
“He’s good! Let me show you.” He pulled them up on his phone and handed it to her.
“Aww. What’s his name?”
“Tom.”
She looked up at him. “You can’t name a dog ‘Tom.’”
“Why not?”
“Tom the dog,” she said, her voice droll.
Michael reached for the phone, and she relinquished it. “Yeah, he looks like a Tom. Is he missing a little of his ear?”
“Yes, he got in a fight with a big dog before he came to the shelter,” Aquario explained. “He’s all healed up now.”
“But he’s so little!” Mellie said.
“And he’s sweet,” Aquario added. “The woman at the shelter said even the sweetest dog will fight if they’re cornered and they don’t have another way out.”