by India Arden
“Blaze needs to be stopped,” I said, “and the only one strong enough to do it is my father. I’ll talk to him.”
The guys all shot one another a look.
“What?” I demanded.
They all hemmed and hawed—even Zephyr, who was never at a loss for words. And finally, Sterling ventured to tell me whatever it was none of them wanted to say. “Blood is thicker than water—and air, fire and earth—but that doesn’t make your father a good man. There’s a possibility he’s being lied to…but what if Blaze has his full support? After all, the whole purpose of having a legacy is to watch them flourish. If his son is the one who figures out how to make multiple Tetrads, won’t all the reflected glory belong to the House of Fire?”
“Torch can be intimidating,” I said. “He wasn’t an easy man to grow up with. But it’s not like Arcanum can be extracted from thin air, like the Distillation process. Forced extraction kills people. And he’s no murderer.”
“Guys!” Zephyr shuffled through the remotes and unmuted one of the TVs. “Check it out.”
…sources say the group has yet to come forward with their demands….
The kidnapping story was the same. It would be reworded and regurgitated by various news outlets all day long. But the title at the bottom of the screen? That was something new.
Fire Legacy Abducted by Arcane Rebels
Ember shook his head in disgust, and Rain groaned. Sterling cocked his head and considered the headline with his subtle almost-smile. Zephyr said, “Aw, c’mon. Admit it. Arcane Rebels has a pretty cool ring to it.”
“It’s ridiculous and sensationalistic,” Ember said. “It’ll never stick.”
But by the time I got through to my father…it did.
23
To say the phone call tanked was putting it mildly. Once I finally got my father on the line, he’d talked right over me. “Tell me where you are. Let those Arcane Rebel cockroaches know if they hurt you, I’ll flush them out and burn them to a crisp.”
“It’s not like that—you have to listen—Blake is dangerous. He made a machine that—Dad, stop yelling and listen to me.”
It was no use. No matter which angle I tried, he just plowed on ahead, spouting threats and demanding my location. All too soon, time ran out and I had to hang up on him mid-rant.
I handed the old flip-phone to Sterling, and he pried out the SIM card and snapped it in half.
Ember and Sterling had driven me a few miles from the Rebel hideout to make the call, since the cell signal could be traced no matter how brief I kept the conversation. We sat three-across the bench seat of an old pickup truck with rusted holes in the floorboards and a heater stuck on full-blast, with Sterling again at the wheel, Ember at the passenger door and me pressed between them. Sterling started the truck, drove a couple of miles to a fast food drive-through, and dropped the SIM card in the trash.
When he continued to meander through the streets, it was probably to make sure he wasn’t leading anyone back to the hideout. But it felt like our failure was too heavy to return home with.
After a long silence, Ember said, “I’m sorry.” His sincerity was heartbreaking.
I blinked back useless tears and said, “I can’t believe he wouldn’t listen.”
Sterling asked, “Did he listen to you before?”
Of course, I almost said. But immediately I knew it wasn’t the case. “With everything that’s at stake, you’d think he would.” Just this once. I had to make him see. If I could just look him in the eye, show him how serious I was. Grab him by the regalia and shake him, if it came down to that. “For all we know, Blaze was right there staring at him, feeding him a bunch of lies.”
“Aurora,” Ember said, and if I didn’t already know the warm flicker in his eyes meant he was gearing up to be especially persuasive, I would have guessed by the gravity of his tone. “Torch is your father, and of course he has a place in your heart. But there’s another side to him you don’t see, and it’s not known for its mercy. I’m guessing what you know about the Riots amounts to the same stuff you see on the mainstream news. The textbook version that was spun to make the Arcane Masters out to be some sort of saviors. But look around you.” He gestured, not at any one thing, but the neighborhood in general. It was dirty, and tainted, and gray. “It wasn’t always like this around here. Sure, some people couldn’t afford their house’s upkeep and plenty of folks kept an old hooptie in the driveway, but it wasn’t utterly destroyed. Not like this.”
Evidently, I hadn’t been imagining the pall hanging over the poor neighborhoods.
“I don’t see what my father has to do with it. Sure, he’s powerful….”
“See that green?” Sterling pointed to a tiny city park, one block square. “There’s one just like it every ten blocks. They radiate from the city center in a grid. And back before the riots, the Masters would visit each park at least once a month and purify the earth, water and air. Every single one. Never on a set schedule—even then, before the corruption, they couldn’t afford to be a target.”
“When you say ‘corruption,’ are you referring to the land, or the Masters?”
The shadow of a smile flitted across Sterling’s expression. “Yes.”
We passed a property with grass that had yellowed and faded to the sickly color of parchment. The very air around the house was gray. A “For Sale” sign stood on the front lawn. It looked as old as the house itself.
Ember said, “The Riots changed all that. After people revolted over their living conditions, the official story is that the Masters had been wasting energy purifying areas of low population, and the grid was obsolete. They solved the issue by re-zoning the city. But pretty soon people figured out population density had nothing to do with it. The areas where support was withdrawn were the places with the highest number of riot arrests. Ingenious, when you think about it. Impose sanctions on entire neighborhoods, and suddenly everyone’s policing their neighbors.”
“Ironic, too,” Sterling added. “When the riots started as a protest that the Masters were visiting certain greens more often than others. The ones in the wealthy neighborhoods where more powerful folks lived.”
Ember said, “And now people are forced to live in the blight. They spend so much of their income on air filters and water filters and medicines that the quality of life is still deteriorating, even now, twenty years later. Short of winning the lottery or robbing a bank, there’s no way to move out. The people who live in neighborhoods like this are stuck where they are.”
This was all news to me. I wanted to deny it. Imagine presuming that the air you breathe is free, only to discover that everyone else has been paying an air tax you never knew about. I’d never known about the purifications, or the sanctions, or the true cause of the Riots. As far as I’d been told, they were fueled by the desire to loot and destroy, and the people who’d done the looting were now stuck living with the damage they’d done.
I’d never known what sparked the whole thing to begin with.
I’d also never known my father to make the rounds of the city with the other Masters for the purpose of purifying the land.
We passed by a home with a slimy pit where the lawn used to be…and someone lived in that house, just a few yards away from all the muck. I thought of the Earth Master pouring all his power into his weird, useless bonsai collection and my stomach turned. I said, “But you’re a full Tetrad. Now you can start putting things right. Can’t you?”
Ember said, “Maybe. We’ll need to figure out how. There’s still so much we don’t know. And now there’s a price on our heads.”
We drove in silence. A house at the end of the block looked cheerful from a distance, with a vibrant green lawn. But as we passed, I saw it was fake plastic grass with brittle weeds creeping out around the edges. Sterling broke the silence with, “Does the extractor necessarily draw all the Arcanum out of a Master? What would happen if they treated it more like a blood drive? A little bit here, a little bit there, th
en give everyone time to recover before the next donation. Extract maybe a single dose a year, divided among all the sources. Within four years, you’d have another new Tetrad to start working the city greens. And eventually, restore the balance.”
“If it even works that way,” I said, “and you didn’t see it in action. As long as it’s in Blaze’s hands, it’s nothing more than a lethal weapon.”
Sterling shrugged. “So, what’s the plan?”
With a tone of voice that implied he didn’t like any of our options, Ember said, “If we go to the authorities, not only do we end up behind bars, but innocent cops get themselves killed trying to pry the extractor out of Blaze’s grasp. As much as I have no trust for him, Torch is our best bet. He’s the only one strong enough to face his son.”
Sterling aimed the blast of the heater up at the ceiling. “Even if he did manage to get the extractor, it’s not as if he’d surrender it.”
“No,” Ember agreed. “Not unless he had to—for instance, if the situation were public when it all came to light….”
“Why would that matter?” I asked. “It’s not as if anyone can take it away from them. The Masters are the final authority on all things Arcane.”
Ember said, “We claim it’s a weapon…then the authorities can’t just let it slide. So, the challenge is, how to tell your father about the extractor somewhere public, with police listening in.”
Both he and Sterling looked at me, then looked at each other. Sterling said, “At least tell me I get to make an old-school ransom note with cut-out letters and a glue stick. It’s on my bucket list.”
“There’s no time,” Ember said. “Pick a location and plug in a fresh SIM card. I’ll make the call.”
24
“A million dollars in unmarked bills and a getaway vehicle,” Ember barked into the cheap phone. “The green at Fifth and Lincoln. Three o’clock. You show up alone and unarmed, or you never see your daughter again. Understood?”
On speakerphone, my father said shortly, “I’ll be there,” and hung up.
Funny how he didn’t talk over Ember like he talked over me.
“Aren’t you butch?” Sterling said, almost smiling.
Ember said, “I think he bought it, but obviously the square’s going to be crawling with cops.” He pulled out his real phone, got Zephyr on the line. He laid out the plan’s basics, then added, “Our best bet is to lose them in the alleyways afterward. Can you arrange to have the doors open for us?”
“Done. We’ve got inside folks at almost every business in that neighborhood. But we’ll need a distraction. Gee, I dunno…wouldn’t it be handy if one of us could start a fire without explosives?”
Ember shook his head grimly. “This isn’t like working a burn crew. People live there.”
“Not directly in the park, they don’t. There’s not enough cover and nowhere good to sleep. You could keep it contained to the green. The dead arbor, for instance? That’s practically tinder, it would go up like nobody’s business. Or a hay bale. Or maybe something more strategically placed, like a dumpster. C’mon, dude, how can you resist a good dumpster fire?”
“Fine. Mark the dumpsters and the doors so I know what’s what, and we’ll take position in the utility shed in an hour. And no weapons. If things go south and any of us gets caught with so much as a pocket knife, we’ll never make bail.”
“Who needs weapons?” Zephyr said lightly, and hung up.
Ember didn’t like the plan, it was obvious, but it was the only one we had. Sterling asked, “Shall we get settled in the shed?”
Ember worked his jaw a few times, then said, “If everything implodes out there and one of us has to go down for this, I take the fall. You grab Aurora—and the other guys—and drive. Just drive. Get clear of this place and don’t look back. Start over.”
Sterling gave him the side-eye, then shrugged. “How could I possibly deny you the opportunity to play the martyr?”
There was an edge to the guys thick with history, evident in everything both spoken and unspoken. Whatever connection they had, it ran profoundly deep, and seated between the two of them with our thighs pressed together, I felt the tension sing between them like I was a conduit, and they were a spark. The feeling wasn’t just metaphorical, either—it was physical. So physical I found myself chafing goosebumps off my forearms.
We parked the old pickup truck a few blocks from the green on a commercial block lined with storefronts, then snaked our way there through the alleyways. The unpurified miasma hung thick over the buildings, and even though the alleyways were free of stray garbage, the air between the buildings was so putrid, just breathing it coated the back of my tongue with the smell of rot.
Ember didn’t seem to notice. He pointed to a door scrawled with graffiti. “See this star?” He turned the doorknob, opened the door an inch to prove it was unlocked, then shut it again. “It’s not just a gang tag.”
Sterling said, “Or, more accurately, it’s the Arcane Rebels gang tag.”
Ember groaned over the cheesy title. “Not you too.”
“Admit it—the name does have some cachet.”
Ember let the matter drop as we came to the mouth of the alley, pointing out the most covert route to our hiding place. We slipped across to the shed, a dilapidated old structure next to a sad picnic area, and crouched behind the drinking fountains. I scanned the area. To call it a “green” was a stretch. The old arbor was a scraggly stand of dead trees, the grass was yellow, and the picnic tables had weathered to an indeterminate gray. A set of monkey bars stood at one corner with a listing swing set beside it, and a sandbox on our other side was dotted with broken plastic toys.
A squeak of metal startled me as a couple of workmen in coveralls wheeled a dumpster out behind the swing set, then turned and walked away. I spotted a five-pointed star among the dumpster’s other graffiti, then noticed another dumpster already in position by the sandbox.
All my life, the people I’d grown up with had done their best to hold me separate and apart. Yet, here I was, being helped and supported by people I didn’t even know. True, it was the Arcane Rebels they were actually supporting. But once I’d sold my plan to Ember, he’d seen to it that everything else fell into place. Impulsively, I slid my hand into his and squeezed. His head snapped around to look at me, and the light behind his irises gave a brief flicker. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Don’t thank me yet. This can all go sideways.”
I knew it wouldn’t. I wasn’t thanking him for solving all my problems, anyway, but for listening to me when no one else was willing.
When Rain and Zephyr rounded the shed, I dropped his hand, vaguely guilty, as the memory of the three of us huddling together in the sewer tunnel flared hot in my mind, my body pressed between theirs. It was ridiculous to feel guilty for touching Ember in front of them. And yet, when I saw Zephyr’s gaze track my hand…maybe not.
“It’s almost time,” Ember said, and we all formed a huddle. I was pressed between Ember and Zephyr—and what the hell was wrong with me? It was definitely not the time to fantasize about either of them…or both of them. Not now. “If Torch comes alone, we let him and Aurora talk. But if he does anything that looks iffy, take down anyone with a weapon first. Zephyr, can you handle that?”
He gave a cocky grin, and as if he was actually itching to prove himself, said, “Not a problem.”
“Fine. I distract, Zephyr disarms, and the rest of you get Aurora out of here. We rendezvous in our regular spot. Any questions?”
Where was this regular spot? I almost asked, but then I realized, if nobody was left to take me there, it wouldn’t do me any good to show up. Besides, it didn’t matter. Once I really talked to my father and made him understand about the extractor, he’d get the situation at the compound back under control.
As the black town car pulled up, my heart started to pound. I realized I’d never seen my father drive, not that I could remember. And yet, when the car pulled up and the door open
ed, the figure who stepped out of the driver’s seat was grim. Suited. Limping ever so slightly. And carrying a briefcase that looked fairly weighty.
Part of me wanted to rush over to him. But the knowledge of everything my new friends were risking on my behalf was sobering. I checked every line of sight—nothing unusual whatsoever—then stepped out from behind the shed and approached him with caution.
“Dad.”
“Aurora,” he replied, with an odd inflection. I’d expected happiness, relief. But he only seemed puzzled.
“Dad, there was no kidnapping, I’m here of my own free will. I needed to see you. Blake made a machine that can pull the Arcanum right out of someone—like an extractor. He’s Transfigured himself and he’s trying to do more, to make his own Tetrad. Dad, please, don’t shake your head like that. It’s true. I’ve seen it. And you’re not safe….”
My voice wobbled as I realized my words had no effect whatsoever. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t believe me. He wouldn’t heed a warning from me any more than he’d take a hot stock tip from a random email in his junk folder. Belief wasn’t the issue—he thought I was too sheltered and naive to understand what was really going on. And he felt sorry for me.
“I know what I’m talking about,” I croaked, pleading with my eyes, fighting back those goddamn tears that had been threatening for so long, welling up now in my useless frustration. Bad enough I couldn’t elicit any sort of serious reaction from him. If I started blubbering like a little girl with a dropped ice cream cone, any semblance of credibility I might have would be gone for good.
I stepped onto the footpath, an old cobblestone thing cracked with weeds, hoping that if he could see my eyes, see how serious I was, he’d listen. Maybe he wouldn’t buy everything, but he’d hear something that rang true, just enough to warn him, to help him figure out for himself what my brother had done. But before I reached him, all around me, sirens blared.
A dozen cop cars flooded out of the alleys and side streets, surrounding the green. I suddenly realized that Ember had been wrong—entirely wrong. Not when he’d said I wouldn’t be able to sway my father, but when he offered to be the one to take the fall. I was the one the Arcane Masters wanted. Just me. And the smart thing to do would be for me to let them haul me back to the compound and bide my time until I could leave. I was no prisoner. I’d gather up my things, call a cab….