by India Arden
And what if I still tasted of ozone?
The hall was lined with pallets. Ember counted the stacks, got his bearings, then thrust his hand into one and came out with a gun. He shoved it at me. “Take this. And be careful, it’s a Glock. No safety. Keep your finger off the trigger until you mean to shoot.”
My hands closed around weapon. It felt stiff, and cold, and unexpectedly heavy. “I can’t—”
“Take it,” he said. “For me.”
I thought I’d been worried he’d kiss me and taste Zephyr on my lips. But maybe it was more like disappointment.
When we headed back into the warehouse, Zephyr and Sterling were back, bickering, though without any real heat. About me? No, of course not. I couldn’t possibly see Sterling caring what I’d done with Zephyr and Rain. Would he?
Once I was close enough to hear, I could pick up what Sterling was saying. “…and if the hard drives don’t make it to our next place, that’s as good as destroying them. But if they work, we won’t need to rely on cloud backup. Which means no wasted time scrounging for an internet connection.”
“And if it falls into the wrong hands, there’s all our research on the Arcane Bastards for everyone to…uh…oh, hi, Aurora. Hope you slept…well?”
I sighed. “Yes. And don’t worry about it.” The reigning Masters deserved that name, and worse.
We gathered in the center of the warehouse and formed a loose circle. The sacred geometry chalked on the floor was scuffed now from all the comings and goings. Funny, how different the room felt now that I knew we were abandoning it. Ember said, “We found an old school building down by the docks. Second floor totally untouched. Plumbing still works. Good cover on three sides. We’ll have to figure out a power source, but….”
“Here’s the thing,” Sterling said, tucking his black bangs behind his ear. “On our way back here, we ran into at least three people who recognized us. Four, if you count that girl at the coffee shop Zephyr’s been trying to talk to for the past year and a half. None of them looked like they were calculating the effect of a hundred grand on their bank account. But chances are, at some point, we won’t be so lucky.”
Ember planted his hands importantly on his hips and said, “We need to kill that reward.”
“Okay,” Zephyr said. “I’ll bite. How?”
Ember turned to me as if it pained him to make the suggestion. “There might be nothing we can do to counter the accusation that we killed those men in the compound. But that’s not what the reward is for. Aurora goes public and says there is no kidnapping—”
“No way!” The voice did not even sound like Rain’s. I’d never heard him angry before. “If the Masters get hold of her—”
Ember held up his hands. “I know, I know, I don’t like it either. But we need to remove the monetary incentive if there’ll be any hope of the five of us falling off the radar. We visit our contact at PKTV, Aurora speaks her piece, and that’s that. No more bounty on our heads. A better chance at regrouping and figuring out a plan with no collateral damage.”
Did the other Rebels feel the flex of Arcana in the air when their teammates used it? Or were they only attuned to the aspect that glowed on their bodies? Maybe I was the only one who noticed when Ember was fueling his persuasion with something more than just pretty words. I found myself nodding along with his plan anyway—because, really, it did make the most sense, whether he was pushing it with Arcane power or not. I wasn’t wanted for anything. I was the one who supposedly had been abducted against my will. And my word could very well be the one that convinced everyone that things had gone down far differently than they’d been told.
“Too dangerous,” Zephyr said. “Way too dangerous—”
“The time for playing it safe is over,” I said. “Maybe it never existed. Yes, we’re a democracy, but I’ll be the one putting myself on the line. Me. And I deserve to actually contribute to our cause. Don’t deny me that chance.”
“I hate this,” Zephyr said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Rain agreed with him, shaking his head, but he didn’t challenge me.
“Then, it’s settled,” Sterling said. He plucked a bit of packing foam from my hair in one of his oddly unexpected gestures of tenderness, and said, “Are you ready for your fifteen minutes of fame?”
Our plan was in place, but we were all on tenterhooks. Borrowing a car felt too risky. What if we were being watched? It would be easy enough to park something under a hidden security cam and flip down the passenger visor. We went on foot instead, me with my hair bundled under a knit cap, Ember with a baseball cap hiding his striking cinnamon-colored hair. Zephyr and Rain slouched inside hoodies, while Sterling swaddled his face and hair with a gauzy black scarf and hid his eyes behind a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses…all of which made him look even more like himself. Though that would probably be fine, since he was the only one whose photo hadn’t made the news.
He checked his watch and said, “ETA ninety seconds,” then strode to the curb and looked up the street. “Right on time.”
Ember turned and handed me something—a pair of dollar bills. I could only imagine the baffled look I gave him in return. “Sometimes the best way to hide is in plain sight,” he said, as a city bus wheezed up to curb and its doors hissed open.
I wasn’t about to announce that I’d never been on a bus before—and, thankfully, I didn’t have to. The Rebels might have treated me like gentlemen, but they didn’t wait for me to board the bus first. As if by instinct, they kept me in the center of the pack, Sterling and Zephyr leading the way, Rain and Ember bringing up the rear. I was able to follow their lead, feed the dollars into the machine, and use the same handholds the guys did as the bus lurched away before I even found a seat.
There was no seat to find. But in an unexpected echo of what we’d done the night before, Rain pressed me against Zephyr, and the two of them shielded me with their bodies while they kept me upright.
And even with the pair of them shoring me up, I still felt horribly exposed.
So many people were packed onto that bus. So many. The smell of body odor and onions mingled with cheap floral perfume, and the heat rattling through the vents was stifling. How could these people stand it, riding this way, packed like reeking sardines to their awful jobs, only to have a return ride at the end of the day and get ready to do it all again? No wonder these people looted their own neighborhoods during the Riots. They had nothing to look forward to and nothing to lose.
Most of the riders had their focus turned inward, with earbuds in and eyes closed. A few talked on their phones. Some dozed. But an older man was looking at me—right at me—and he didn’t look away when my gaze flickered over to him. He recognizes me, I thought. And all he needs to do is whip out a phone, and our whole plan is finished.
He was a shabby guy, with salt-and-pepper stubble and a navy work jacket marbled with old grease. A hundred thousand dollars would most definitely change his life. When he did raise his arm, I swayed on me feet, frozen with panic, powerless to stop the call. Reflexively, Rain and Zephyr tightened against me, but they didn’t see where I was looking—didn’t know that we were right on the verge of everything falling apart. But the man’s hand was empty.
I stared, uncomprehending.
Holding deliberate eye contact, he raised his first two fingers to his mouth in a V, then waggled his tongue lasciviously between them. Disgusted, I turned away and pressed my forehead to Zephyr’s shoulder.
“S’okay,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
We spilled out the back door none too soon. I hadn’t realized exhaust could smell so refreshing. “PKTV is that way,” Zephyr told me, and grabbed my hand. It felt right. I squeezed, and he squeezed back in reassurance. “You’ve heard of Tiana Frost?”
I had. Usually in the context of Torch complaining that she represented everything that was wrong with Corona, filling people’s heads with nonsense and entitlement. I used to regard the reporter with a mixture of aversion and dread.
Now, I was actually curious.
Zephyr was excited, to say the least. Excited…and probably anxious, too. “Tiana’s my hero,” he said. “I want to be her when I grow up. Remember that whole scandal with the water processing plant? She broke it. And you heard about that evil business with the pharmaceutical company and the patent? She cracked that wide open, too. She’s righteous.”
Probably so. In more ways than one. But even if she was prepared to face the Arcane Masters, they were no longer the men she expected to go up against. My father’s cohorts might have held themselves apart from the world, but they didn’t get what they wanted by attacking people with Arcane force. They used old-fashioned methods like money and persuasion and decades of political sway.
But we were dealing with a new Tetrad now.
The TV station felt exposed, surrounded by parking lots and mowed fields, flanked by generators and giant black satellite dishes pointing up toward the sky. But it was off the beaten track, if only a few blocks, and there was no real foot traffic around it, just light traffic rolling by and a dog barking in the distance. We looped around back, past the massive satellite dishes, to a stark concrete patio with a pair of benches and an overflowing ash tray. A staff door opened, and a youngish guy with an official-looking lanyard gestured for us to hurry. “That’s Lucas,” Zephyr told me. “He’s okay. We’ve known him forever. Grew up just down the block. In fact, his older brother was in the same homeroom as—”
“She doesn’t need his life story,” Sterling said with an eye-roll. “Let’s go.”
We clustered in the doorway, and Zephyr gave Lucas a quick fist-bump. “You really got us in to see Tiana?” he loud-whispered.
“Dude. When she heard Fire’s daughter wanted to talk, she bumped the freakin’ Deputy Mayor off her show.”
While I’d never been on television before, other than standing in the background while my father rattled off some nonsense about what the Arcane Masters were doing to enhance the welfare of the city, I had been in plenty of green rooms. Enough to know that the one Lucas led us to was operating on practically no budget. A pitcher of tap water stood in the center next to a stack of paper cups, and a few packets of cookies and chips were arranged in a basket to look more bountiful than they actually were. I was too nervous to even consider eating, but the jitters didn’t have any effect on Sterling. He tore open a bag of barbecue corn chips and upended it into his mouth. Maybe someday I’d learn to live like a Rebel, to leave whatever home I knew at the drop of a hat, and take food and water and sleep where I found them. Then again, maybe the process had already begun. I’d already left home. Not once, but twice. If you could consider the compound a home and not a prison, anyhow.
The makeup crew consisted of a gray-haired woman in thick framed glasses with a few shades of pressed powder and some bronzer. She sat me down in the corner—not even a dressing room—and proceeded to make me phenomenally matte.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, honey,” she said. “We keep it real around here. Focus on the news, not what color lipstick you got on.”
Lipstick. Right.
The Green Room looked out on the studio through a pair of soundproof glass doors. Out on the floor, cameras rolled, and crew wove among the equipment in a spontaneous choreography. Tiana sat at her news desk, which looked smaller in person than it did on camera, where it took up the entire bottom of the screen. While her assistant let her in on the fact that we’d actually shown up—with lots of very enthused gestures toward us—a stylist hovered behind her, spritzing her no-nonsense short afro with product and patting any potential stray hairs into place. Tiana scanned the documents the assistant handed her, then glanced up at the Green Room door.
At me.
Our eyes met across the studio floor as we each took stock of one another. I’m not sure exactly what she expected to see. Not a bedraggled woman in returned clothing, most likely. Not if she was looking at the official photo of my family from my father’s Wikipedia page. But whatever it was she saw in me, she didn’t disapprove.
Yes, this plan was risky, and I wasn’t entirely sure I would’ve agreed with the idea if Ember hadn’t been the one to sell it, but this reporter had something that was rare these days. She had integrity—and that was precious, indeed. Other news stations might be in the pockets of the Arcane Masters, but Tiana would allow me to tell my story, and finally, I would have my say. And while it might not put things right, not immediately, it would be the first step in the right direction.
And then the commotion began. Her assistant turned first, body language panicked. And then the stylist dropped her hairspray, put up her hands, and fell back a step. When Tiana rose from her desk, it wasn’t to cower away, but to stand her ground with authority. I couldn’t hear what she said, not through the soundproof glass, but I read her body language well enough. She was demanding to know what was going on. And she wasn’t happy about it.
Without hesitation, Zephyr took off, bursting through the doors, to go to Tiana’s side. “Zeph,” Ember called after him, but it was too little, too late. Hesitation was not in Zephyr’s vocabulary, and short of physically restraining him, there’d be no way to stop him from stepping in once he saw Tiana facing a threat.
Noise traveled through the open door. Chaotic. So many voices. Zephyr might be impulsive, but he wasn’t stupid. He skirted the crowd, looking for the best angle with the most cover, slipping as close as possible to Tiana without being seen.
Someone brushed past me—Rain. No big surprise he wouldn’t let Zephyr take on a threat alone.
“Goddammit,” Ember muttered. “Come on. We can’t form the Bonding if they’re halfway across the floor.”
Sterling said, “That’s assuming we can Bond at all.” The three of us piled out the door behind Rain and flowed into the growing crowd.
I hadn’t noticed security at the station when we came in, but I saw it now…or what passed for it. A couple of middle-aged guys in navy baseball caps with pepper spray at their belts, yelling for everyone to take a breath and calm down. They were no match for the real cops who were still pouring into the studio.
And they were definitely out of their league with the Arcane Masters.
Up until the recent Transfiguration, Strike, the Air Master, had been the youngest of the reigning Tetrad. Still, the idea was practically unthinkable that, as a child, I’d known him once as an Aspirant. Although he was still in his forties, his hair had gone white, more like an albino’s than an old man’s, and his irises were eerily pale. I’m not sure if the Arcane aspect had transformed his personality, too, or if he’d always been seething with anger. His temper was legendary among the staff, who often cowered in the servants’ passages to avoid crossing his path directly.
Maybe his reputation preceded him. Or maybe he wore his aspect like the stifling stillness of a rapidly approaching storm. Cops peeled away from him as he headed directly for Tiana. Cops were threatening enough. But Strike? It wouldn’t end well.
Who betrayed us? Not Tiana, who was doing her best to hold her ground in the face of the onslaught. And not Lucas, cowering in the corner as if he expected one of the cops to beat him down with a nightstick. But in an organization as big as PKTV, I supposed it would be foolish to think nobody there could be paid off. And it was also clear, in retrospect, that my father would have anticipated the usefulness of having a plant in place.
As Strike approached Tiana, the atmosphere shifted, thick with the flow of Arcane energy, spiking so suddenly it seemed to crackle when I breathed. It wasn’t Strike ramping up to do the damage, though—it was Zephyr.
“No,” I said, it came out as barely a whisper, with all the air in my lungs straining to do Zephyr’s bidding, not my body’s. I knew there was no hope of stopping him, but Strike had so many years under his belt, so much time spent shaping and molding his Arcane aspect and then using it to lash out at others, that watching Zephyr go head to head with him was like seeing a baby toddle out into the street to stop an oncomi
ng steamroller.
But then Rain was there, the two of them clasping forearms like a pair of gladiators. When they turned to face down Strike, they did it together. They weren’t Bonded—not in the Arcane sense of the word—but the two Rebels were clearly a team, and not just between the sheets. They both half-turned toward Strike and raised their free hands, and a pane of ice sprang up from the floor, dividing him from Tiana as effectively as the sound-proof glass partitioned off the Green Room.
Matter isn’t created from nothing. The aging HVAC system groaned from the theft of its freon, and everyone gasped and swallowed against the sudden and startling dryness in their throat, while the pitchers of tap water instantly evaporated. Yet the fact that my Rebels had used their Arcane aspects not to attack, but to protect, ignited a spark of pride in me that came precariously close to re-kindling my dormant hope.
Let the reigning Tetrad send out their most rabid attack dog. The Arcane Rebels had teamwork and compassion on their side. And we had the heart to see it through. I turned to Ember, hoping to share a moment with him, a brief glimpse of pride.
But you know what they say about pride. Thanks to all the hubbub and jostling, it was no longer Ember pressed up behind me, not at all.
It was my brother, Blaze.
“Impressive,” he said. “But it takes more than a dose of Arcanum to make a Master.” I looked around wildly for Sterling and Ember, but the only faces I recognized were ones I hoped I’d never see again—Flood. Chad. Gus.
And with a sickening lurch, I felt the telltale strain of Arcane energy erupting as the world around me went syrupy gray, and my brother and his wretched friends summoned the Bond.
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