by Bryn Donovan
“Like blood,” Gabi said.
Jonathan said, “I still don’t understand why I can’t be here.”
“She controlled it once against you.”
“No I didn’t,” Cassie complained. “He had to go to the hospital.”
Val’s long-lashed gaze flickered to her. “After he was attacked by the bear, when you were driving him to Morty Silva’s. You became angry with him again when he told you about Manus Sancti justice. He asked you not to get upset, and you managed your emotions.”
She was right. Jonathan had forgotten about it, but Val had pulled it up in her memories. “Then she can control it,” he said. Cassie’s face brightened.
“Against you,” Val said. “She could probably do the same around her family and friends. Controlling it against those she doesn’t know well, or dislikes, is an entirely different thing.”
“I barely knew him then,” Cassie pointed out. “And he’d attacked me!”
“True. But you also had…other feelings.”
Hearing this warmed Jonathan from within. He touched Cassie’s arm. “See you soon.” She nodded, her upturned face softening with affection. It didn’t seem as though she regretted what had been a rash first encounter. When was the last time he’d felt hopeful like this? Not since Michael’s death. No, longer than that.
As he went out the door, Val turned to Gabi. “Maybe you can leave, too? I don’t know why there are bad feelings between you and Cassandra, but they’re distracting.”
Gabi folded her arms. “I have orders to stay.”
Cassie didn’t feel like she was any threat to Val, but then again, she didn’t know what the woman was going to do. Objectively, she couldn’t really blame Capitán Renaud for not leaving Cassie alone with anyone who wasn’t a Knight.
Val sat down on her furry chair. Today, she wore another polka-dotted dress, but this one was aqua, trimmed with lace, cinched at the high waist, and flaring wide at the knee. White stockings covered her plump calves, and lavender patent shoes shone on her dainty feet. When Cassie sat down on the couch, she realized the polka dots on Val’s pastel dress were actually grinning skulls.
“I’m going to talk a little about the anger response, and all you need to do is listen and watch the movement of my hands.” She held her hands up, palms facing inward, and began moving them up and down, slowly, fluttering her fingers.
Cassie would have scoffed, except that it was, in fact, relaxing her.
Val’s hands lifted upward. “Whether they are very small movements…like the thumb touching the forefinger…or the thumb touching the middle finger…or they are movements that face in your direction…” Her palms turned toward Cassie, the fingers gracefully curved. “Or whether they are simply…fluttering, like the leaves in the lightest of breezes, the gentle motion can bring peace to your heart.”
Cassie’s brain was sparkling. The sensation traveled down her back and chest, blossoming into a feeling of tingly warmth. It wasn’t sexual. Having just been with Jonathan, she could easily compare the two. Tension she hadn’t even been aware of released from her jaw and her shoulders.
Val’s hands never stopped moving, fluttering, flexing, and waving, utterly fluid. She kept speaking in that soft voice, the kind one might use with a sick child—gentle and filled with love. “When we are angry, we are afraid. We face…some kind of threat. A person’s words or actions…may make us fear that we’re not loved, respected, or cared for—that we will never be loved, respected, or cared for.”
Tears jumped into Cassie’s eyes. She didn’t expect or want them.
“And sometimes…we become angry because we want to protect someone we love. We can’t bear to see them hurt…and so we lash out. To want love and respect…is a valid intention. To want to protect…is a good intention. And with a calm mind…we can begin to realize…that we can want these things…and achieve these things…in peaceful ways.”
This went on a while longer. Cassie felt as though she were falling asleep, though her eyes remained open, watching Val’s hands. Val talked about breathing deep from the diaphragm and had Cassie practice with her.
“Another thing that can help when you feel yourself becoming angry is to repeat a word in your head.”
“I already do that sometimes,” Cassie said, though thinking fuck over and over had never helped anything.
Val smiled only slightly, making it clear that she expected her to stay focused. “It should be a word you never say otherwise.”
Well, fuck was out, then. “Like a safe word. Except for your temper.”
“Exactly. You can try the word Shanti. Have you heard it before?” Cassie shook her head. “Some Americans know it from yoga class. It means ‘peace and tranquility.’ Because of the peaceful state of mind you’re in right now, it’ll be especially effective. Say it with me, three times…Shanti…shanti…shanti.” She nodded. “We’re done for now. Though it may not seem like it, this kind of training can take energy.” Her voice was less whispery and sing-songish now, though still high and sweet. “When you came in here, you were already…emotionally charged.”
Because she’d been boning Jonathan. As an empath, Val had probably picked up immediately on the fact that they’d just been together. In a place like this, Cassie felt lucky that she wasn’t a more private person.
Gabi said, “I’m supposed to take you back to your quarters.”
When they reached the elevators, surrounded by the trees, Cassie said, “Listen, I’m sorry I was stupid about your sister’s job. I’ve done all kinds of jobs. I cleaned out my parents’ stables for, like, ten years. I don’t look down on any work.”
Gabi punched the elevator button. They waited in silence until it arrived.
As they got on, Cassie ventured, “My last job was at a company that was terrible for the environment. And now I’m unemployed. It must be nice for all of you to believe in what you’re doing.” Gabi stared straight ahead. Well, at least Cassie had tried.
When they got off on their floor, Gabi said, “We’re not like most of the world, where a few people make millions of dollars and other people bust their asses and stay poor. My sister has the same kind of quarters and the same pay as Capitán Renaud.”
“Really?” Cassie didn’t disapprove of the arrangement, but how would that even work?
“Knights and Mages and Scholars have more power,” she acknowledged. “But not everybody wants to be them. To become a Knight, you learn how to fight early. Some of us serve in the toughest military outfits in the world, just to train. It’s why I emigrated to Chile when I was a teenager. I went into the special forces of the Chilean Army.”
“Jesus. You guys are all such badasses.”
She smiled, just for a second. “And then when you are a Knight, you’re getting yourself almost killed all the time.” That much Cassie knew, at least. She could see why some people would prefer to water the plants. “Scholars study so much it’s a wonder their eyeballs don’t fall out. And Mages can eventually lose their minds, like Jonathan’s mother did.” Cassie took in a sharp breath. Gabi looked back at her. “You didn’t know that?”
Cassie shook her head. He’d only said she’d died. She hoped his mother hadn’t killed herself. He’d obviously not wanted to talk about it… Shit. She probably had.
They reached Cassie’s door. Gabi put her hip close to the panel next to it and it unlocked with a click. “Being a Diviner isn’t easy, either. It’s no wonder lots of people prefer to be a Steward. About eighty percent of people are. And we need them to keep things running. Mission runners, maintenance crews, doctors, lawyers, investors, you name it.” She patted the doorframe. “Don’t get all mad, but I’m going to lock you in here now.”
“I’m not mad.” Gabi was doing what she was supposed to do. And Cassie felt relieved that she was being more or less friendly now. “But I’m kind of going stir crazy in this metal shoebox. Is there any way I could go outside sometime soon? Do you guys ever leave?”
“Every
one here has a few days off every month, if they want to.” Who wouldn’t want to? Val, maybe. She seemed as at home in her office as a colorful tropical fish in an aquarium. “Not all at the same time. The sonámbulos have no idea how many people are actually down here.”
“Where do people go on their days off?”
“Wherever they want, as long as they stay out of trouble,” Gabi said. “They can go hunting, motorcycle riding. Into Albuquerque or Santa Fe to shop or eat out. Val always goes to a spa in Santa Fe.”
“What for?”
Gabi shrugged. “Haircuts, massages, pedicures?”
“Sounds expensive.”
“It’s paid for.” While this sunk in with Cassie, Gabi added, “I went with her once, but nobody there did black hair. Andre and I usually go out to dinner and the movies and stay at a nice hotel.” It sounded pretty nice, having a big, fat supernatural warrior expense account. Gabi inclined her head, indicating Cassie should go into her quarters. “You could at least go with Jonathan to the shooting range. Work off a little energy.”
“There’s a shooting range?” It sounded good, but then the obvious occurred to her. “No one’s going to let me hold a gun.”
“You can use the simulators. And ask Jonathan to take you to el huerto. Get some fresh air.” Before she could ask what el huerto was, she shut the door.
Jonathan came over not ten minutes later.
Cassie asked him, “How did you know I was finished?”
“You have that tracker. I can look up where you are on my phone.”
She peered down at her hand. “Can anyone here look me up?”
“Only the security team, and me, because I’m responsible for you.”
Cassie bristled at this. “No one’s responsible for me but me.”
“I am while you’re here. If anyone gets hurt because of you, that’ll be my failure.”
“Well, no one’s going to,” she said, sounding more sure than she felt.
“How was your session with Val?”
“Weird. But I think it’s going to help,” she admitted. “And I apologized to Gabi. She’s not mad at me anymore.”
“Good.”
“She said there was a shooting range. With fake guns or something?”
“There is,” he said. “I’ll show you sometime if you want.”
“How about now?”
The shooting range was divided into two parts, one with actual guns, and one with fake ones. Jonathan explained that people mostly used the latter. It didn’t waste ammo, and it allowed for more realistic scenarios. He’d led her into a small glassed-in enclosure with a huge, empty, square white room in front of them. She picked up one of the guns, which was extravagantly fake, rendered in bright orange plastic.
He touched a few buttons on the panel on the wall, and the lights dimmed. Two three-dimensional, disembodied human faces appeared, floating in mid-air. “That’s your team,” Jonathan explained as they flickered out again.
A holographic scene filled the room around them. A bombed-out city, half in rubble. A soldier darted from behind a building, aiming his gun more or less in Jonathan’s direction, and Jonathan picked up his plastic gun and fired. Clutching his chest, the computer-generated soldier fell.
Cassie aimed a practice shot in the middle of the screen. After she pulled the trigger, she whipped her head around toward Jonathan. “This feels like a real gun!”
“I know.” He attempted a shot with the gun in his left hand and missed. Cassie gave him a curious look. “After Las Cruces, I figure I need to get better with my left,” he explained and grazed the next target.
A vibration went through her chest, and Cassie looked up at the screen, startled to see the figure of a triumphant shooter gloating. “Ah, I’m dead. That’s so weird.”
He restarted the game. On the screen, another soldier ran from behind a pile of bricks, though not in their direction, and Cassie shot him. The whole room filled with bright red light and went dark. “What happened?”
“That was one of our guys. Remember him?”
The faces at the beginning. “Shit.”
“It’s all right, you’ll get it.”
“How many scenarios are there?’
“More than a hundred.” He switched it to another one in a thick nighttime forest. “This one’s more of a waiting game. It takes forever, and then they come at you when your guard is down.”
“What are ‘they’?”
“Animated corpses.”
“Cool,” Cassie said with satisfaction.
“Not so cool in real life.”
For all she knew, an animated corpse had killed a buddy of his or something. “I’m always saying the wrong things.”
“No, you’re not.” He put down the plastic gun to face her. “You know, what I said before… I wasn’t trying to insult you. I just meant you weren’t raised like we were.”
She nodded. “What’s that word you guys use? Somna-something?”
“Sonámbulo. It’s, uh, Spanish for sleepwalker. But we use it to mean anyone who’s not Manus Sancti. Regular people.”
Cassie put her own toy gun down. “It’s not very flattering.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But our whole job is to protect them.”
“Why do you guys use foreign words? I mean, even when you’re speaking English?”
He squinted as if contemplating how to explain this. “It’s jargon. At your company, didn’t they have corporate-type lingo?”
“Sure.”
“It’s kind of like that. There are some words and phrases that everybody uses.
And sometimes we use words a little differently. Just like sonámbulo isn’t literally a sleepwalker.”
“I guess I can see that,” she said. “At work, we’d say ‘moonshot’ for big projects that had nothing to do with the moon.”
“What kinds of projects?”
“Boring ones.” She peered at the hologram forest of the game. Still nothing. “What other words do you use?”
“Mm, corín and corina. They’re…terms of endearment, I guess?”
“Like, romantic?”
“No, not at all. It’s like, uh…my brother, my sister,” he said. “But you don’t have to be related by blood.”
“That’s pretty nice. What language is it?”
He shrugged. “It might be just ours. I don’t know where it came from.”
“Is there a romantic term of endearment?”
A smile played at his lips. “People say all kinds of things. The one that’s only ours is almeris.” He sobered and turned his attention to the fake forest in front of them. “You only say that to someone you’re really serious about. It means someone who owns your soul.”
“That’s dramatic,” Cassie quipped and immediately regretted it. His explanation made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t really mean to make fun. “Is that one the same for a man or a woman?”
“Yeah.”
Branches crashed, and half-rotting people loomed in on them. Cassie and Jonathan scrambled for their weapons, but they swarmed and filled the screen, which went black.
He laughed. “Now we’re both dead.” He went to the panel to reset it, and then paused and turned to her. “These sims aren’t going to make you mad, are they?”
“No! It’s just a game.” They played a while longer. When they got back to her room, Cassie looked down at their joined hands. “What are we going to do tonight?”
His fingers curled tighter around hers. God, she loved his hands. So large and strong. She wanted him to touch her again, everywhere. He said, “It’s Sunday night. I have a…commitment.”
“What kind of commitment?” His sudden vagueness unsettled her. She couldn’t help but add, “That wasn’t a one-time thing, was it?”
He looked bemused, his forehead wrinkling. “You know better than that.”
“I guess now I do.”
He drew even closer to her. “You know, I’m not… I’ve only dated, I should say b
een with, a few people. I told you about Sophie. And I had a girlfriend back in Florida for most of the time I was at West Point.”
“Was she in Manus Sancti?”
“Yeah.”
“People must hook up all the time here, though,” she mused. “You’ve had two serious girlfriends, but you must have…”
He shook his head. “I dated a Mage in Buenos Aires for a few months when I was outposted there. And that’s it.” His relative chasteness shocked her. Honestly, after the first time he’d brought her to screaming orgasm, she figured he’d had a hell of a lot of practice, not that she was going to complain. “What about you?”
“You mean, before I was married for five years?” Cassie shrugged. “I had a few boyfriends. Did my share of slutting around.” His grin reflected hers. She was glad he didn’t judge her for that. She added, “So we’re exclusive, right?”
“Yeah.” This was the whole reason for the conversation, she realized. To let her know that for him, sex wasn’t just a casual thing.
“Good.” For her, being with him was nothing close to casual. She doubted anyone else at El Dédalo would have gone near her anyway, between Jonathan’s obvious possessiveness and the fact that she was a strange sonámbula. But under any circumstances, she wouldn’t have been able to think of anyone but him. “Sure you can’t stay over?”
His gaze heated. “I can stay a while.”
He left her room two hours later, with her sprawled out naked, her body vibrating all over. It hadn’t been fast and furious like the first time. His more thorough attentions were a beautiful devastation. She only worried that she hadn’t given enough to him in return, though he’d hardly allowed her the chance. The next time they were together, she’d make it up to him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Several days passed at El Dédalo while Lucia pored over the translations. Cassie worked with Val in the afternoons and spent hours every day with Jonathan. They told each other stories from childhood and compared Cassie’s high school days in Phoenix with his in Cairo. Jonathan got the stitches taken out of his healing back. They played pool in the cantina.
Cassie also read the translation of her great-grandfather’s journal. After she complained to Lucia about not being able to read it in the original language, one that her own father spoke, Lucia loaned her educational videos.