by Gwenda Bond
At least they would be human.
I will rely on no gods, not even Legba, after the discord revelation. I don’t want any confusion. I want a simple postponement. That I might be able to pull off. And the beauty is, only I will be in jeopardy.
Well, and Dad, but that can’t be helped. Mom’s left out of it, Oz and Justin mostly are, and Tam and Bree will be entirely. The rest of the world can’t be mine to worry about. Not right now. Not when this is more than enough.
When I make it back into the hallway, shutting Bronson’s door the quietest way, I hear footsteps on the stairs. If it’s Ann, I’m sunk. She’ll know by looking that I haven’t been anywhere near the gift-a-palooza in my room. I move as fast as I can, but stop after I get a clear view of the stairs.
It’s Justin, so I wait at the banister post. I figure that will be less suspicious than streaking down the hall to my room. I begin to question this choice at the frown he gives me when he reaches the top step.
“Were you looking for me?” he asks.
“No.” I aim a finger-gun at my temple. “Just being ditzy. I got a snack and then managed to forget which way my room is.”
“Oh.” He points to the end of the hall. When I start to leave, he says, “Hey…”
“Yeah?” I wait.
“Did your dad tell you what he’s trying to do? Did he mention who he was working with?”
Why is he asking me about this? Carefully, I say, “Bronson says he must be working with a god or gods. Dad doesn’t share with me. Not his treason plans.”
“But Set attacked you. Why did your dad go to the Sumerians? Are they working together, do you think?”
“Dad and the Sumerians?” Anzu is in the backyard. You do the math. They at least like each other.
“No,” Justin says, dismissing that. A lock of hair falls over his pale forehead. “Not them. Enki and Set.”
I look at him like he’s crazy, and for good reason. “Even I know those two pantheons don’t mix. Doesn’t the Society have to force them to play nice? Or is that not right?”
“No,” he says, “they don’t get along.”
Something about the way he says it makes me curious about where this is coming from. Especially since he was down in Bronson’s office. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I shouldn’t be. I just… Oz trusts you and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. All the answers will come tomorrow.”
Oz trusts me? The situation between us is more than dangerous. “They will?”
He closes his eyes for a moment, sighs. He opens them and steps past me. “I can’t tell you. Ask Bronson. Don’t tell him I told you.”
Still shaking his head, he goes into a room two up from mine. I guess that answers my question about whether he stays here too.
I almost want to hole up somewhere else in the house for a while, but I’ve put it off long enough. I have to visit my room.
Ann was understating things. There are shopping bags everywhere. Recycled bags mainly, but everything inside them is way too new and neat for my taste. Mostly. I do find a drawer of black T-shirts and regular jeans. I have my leather jacket and boots, so those are acceptable. I add a couple of each to my backpack, which is extra-roomy without the cash. Opening the closet, I find it packed with Society outfits – including a uniform or two. But no stripes on them.
The posters Ann picked up are hilarious. A couple feature manufactured boy bands I’ve never even heard of. Another is a checkerboard assortment of baby animals (ostrich, tiger, sloth, kitten) that I admit are adorable, though I let the sheet curl back up into a tube and leave it on the floor. But the piece de resistance involves a unicorn with rays shooting from her horn to form a day-glo pyramid. Ann even left a roll of tape.
Since I don’t want to seem ungrateful, I hang the unicorn on the wall.
I spend the rest of the time until dinner staring at it. Waiting.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dinner turns out to be nothing worth waiting for. The four of us are gathered around the overly long dining table with its perfect white linen table cloth. Bronson sits at the head and is talking nonstop about, from what I can tell, such vital topics as the weather, what was in the paper today, whether his administrative assistant should be transferred to the UK so he can get a better one.
It’s the very definition of meaningless chatter.
The food is fine – or it would be if I knew what these small chicken-shaped things are. I’m afraid to offend Ann or reveal myself as some untutored barbarian by asking. (Though I may be just that. Mostly I don’t want to hurt Ann’s feelings.) There’s asparagus. Not my favorite, but identifiable, and thus edible. And bread, though I have a feeling I’ll be fighting Oz for the last roll if I want it. He hasn’t touched his mini-chicken either.
The strained atmosphere makes being enthusiastic about eating difficult, anyway. Every clink of a fork against a plate or plunk of a water glass being returned to the table seems loud as a full orchestra, interrupting Bronson’s symphonic babble. I begin to worry that something has already happened to Dad. They wouldn’t have tried him early, would they?
I can’t ask. All I can do is wish I could ask.
“And so how was your afternoon?”
I miss the question the first time Bronson asks, judging by the way Oz nudges my shoe with his boot under the table. I shoot him a look. “Great,” I say. “I unpacked some new stuff. Put up a poster.” I tap Oz’s shoe back, pushing it away from mine. He doesn’t react.
“Good,” Bronson says. “Excellent.”
Oz and Justin give every appearance of being as thrown by Bronson’s stiff behavior as I am. It’s as if this really is a dinner party and he’s being forced to entertain us, instead of a quiet “family” dinner at home. I finish the last of my roll and my asparagus as quickly as I can.
“I should go finish my room,” I say.
If I can slip out and call Bree later, she’ll have heard if something’s happened…
When I get up, so does Bronson. He asks, “Kyra, can we talk?”
What have you been doing for the last half-hour? “Of course.”
Bronson puts his napkin (cloth too) on the table, and abandons his half-eaten food. I can’t help but try and decode whether his lackluster appetite is a guilty conscience or excited nerves for his upcoming treachery. I might be about to find out.
I catch Oz’s eye, a question in mine about whether he knows what Bronson wants as I leave the room. He shakes his head no. I follow Bronson out and toward his office, and we pass Ann coming back in with dishes of ice cream for both boys. It looks like real ice cream and I mouth to Oz: No. Fair.
He shrugs.
At least he’s acting semi-normal again, with the foot nudging and ice cream hogging. When we first sat down to dinner, he was as stiff as Bronson and silent as a ghost. He hasn’t said a word to me all night. Maybe he regrets telling me about his parents. We barely know each other.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Bronson says, which is a surprise because I assume we’re going to his office. I have to backtrack, and he lets me go up the stairs first. What could this possibly be about?
I pad up the hall to my room. “It’s a work in progress,” I caution.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Ann loves a messy room. It’s why she was so happy when Osborne moved in.”
He doesn’t mention Justin, because I’d bet anything his room is as tidy as his mind.
“When was that?” I ask, curious.
I flip on the light and settle on the bed, awkward. He closes the door and pulls over a chair from the corner I hadn’t even noticed. At least I don’t have to worry about any contraband. There’s nothing for me to hide from him.
“Four and a half years ago. As soon as things settled down enough for him to travel here.”
“And Justin?”
“Oh,” he says, easing into the chair. “His parents asked if I might get him some extra training… thre
e years ago? I thought it would be nice for Oz to have someone else his own age. It’s been good for them both.”
Whose parents sent them off to the head of the Society for training? People who were in the Society. Obviously.
“What did you want to talk about?”
I can’t believe how nervous I am. There’s no way he could know why I’m really here, or what I’m thinking of doing. I haven’t given myself away to anyone. In theory maybe the oracles could rat me out, but wouldn’t they protect me for Mom’s sake?
“Your father,” Bronson says. “I don’t feel right about you being here and not knowing. And you’ll find out anyway, so I’d rather it be from me. But I also… I really do like you, Kyra. I like having you here. I want you to stay, and us to be a family. I want that to be for a long time. And I’m afraid once I tell you this you’ll change your mind. So… I’m asking you not to make any hasty decisions.”
I nod. “Oz and Justin… They already told me no one ever gets off for treason.”
“That’s true.”
“And that the penalty’s death.”
“Also true,” he says. He leans forward, arms on his knees. “One thing they may not have told you is that Society courts aren’t like regular ones. There’s no long delay. No lawyers. A representative or three of the Board and, in this case, the Tricksters’ Council will hear the evidence. Then a decision will be made. A final one.”
I know all the important parts of this and yet it still hurts to hear it said out loud. Ironically, that only helps me react how he’s expecting. As if this is news. Terrible news. The worst news.
Because it is.
“When?” I whisper.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “We could go now. See your father tonight, if you like. I wanted to give you one last chance. There won’t be time tomorrow.”
I want to say yes. Because what if I screw everything up? What if tomorrow goes sideways? What if he dies and I never get to tell him anything I want to? What if he dies before I get the chance to prove myself to him?
“No,” I say. “I can’t. I just… I couldn’t stand it if he yelled at me.”
Bronson nods.
“And,” I say, “I couldn’t stand it if he didn’t. If he cried… I don’t want that memory. I have enough pain to last me a lifetime already. He wouldn’t want me to see him that way.”
Bronson keeps nodding. Slow. He gets it. “Don’t we all? But don’t give up hope. You never know. You might see him again someday. Anything is possible. Maybe he’ll be acquitted.”
Sixteen times, Justin says, and no one ever has.
“Don’t start lying to me now. You know he won’t be.”
“So you accept the reason he stole the relic as a fact?”
Since I know more about Dad’s reasons now, I am able to look straight at him and say, “Yes.”
After a long moment, Bronson reaches into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulls something out. He holds his hand so I can’t see what it is, unsure.
“You don’t have to give me anything else,” I say. “All this is enough. And the reliquary key.”
“I’m not saying you can keep these,” he says. “If Henry is acquitted–”
I shake my head. Stop lying.
“He would get them back,” he finishes. “And they do have to be our secret for now, regardless. You can’t use them until after your vows. But you won’t need them until you’re a uniformed operative in the field. I’m giving them to you because I have always drawn strength from mine. Even though I no longer wear them often, they’re always right here.” He pats the breast pocket he took the eye from earlier.
I extend my hand, not daring to hope. Barely breathing. But when he drops the metal into my hand, it’s what I think. Stripes. Gold bars that shine like sun rays, and it’s as if they’re working their magic already. I’m paralyzed.
“You have a place,” he says.
I close my fingers around them, unable to speak. Stripes. I have stripes.
One element of the plan just got way easier, but no grin bubbles up. Because every piece that falls into place means I have to do it. This is going to happen. My grandfather and I look at each other, solemn for entirely different reasons.
Bronson rises, then. But he stops in front of the unicorn poster, the question on his face plain. He’s perplexed by it. If Mom and Legba hadn’t warned me, I’d be completely charmed by him.
“Ann picked it out,” I say, and it startles me how weak my voice is. “It’s growing on me.”
“We’ll redo the room. You can paint it black, if you want.”
“Like my soul,” I say.
“I don’t think so.” He smiles, a sad one. “Know that I’ll do what I can to make this as painless for your father as possible.”
No, I think, you won’t. “Thanks.”
When he reaches the door, I stop him. “Wait.” I need to play at normal – or something as close as I can sell to it. “Will you send Ann up with some of that ice cream?”
He lowers his voice, confidentially. “My guess is she’s waiting in the hallway already. She may not be a genius decorator, but she makes the ice cream herself.”
After he opens the door, he steps aside to let her enter. She has a metal tray gripped in both hands with a giant bowl on it. “You hardly touched your Cornish game hen,” she says. “And Oz said you were jealous of the boys. We can’t have that.”
I still don’t know if that means dinner was a chicken or not. Somehow, even though it’s been years since I’ve had good ice cream, I know I won’t taste that either. Not while I’m thinking about my dad in a cell beneath the Jefferson and picturing the long shadow of tomorrow, looming over us both. Dad must believe I blew town at last, left him to his fate. I hold the stripes in my hand tight, like I’ll never let them go.
“No,” I say, and muster a weak smile. “We can’t have that.”
I memorize every shade and angle of the unicorn poster. Really, it’s amazingly detailed.
I don’t have anything else to do while I wait for the rest of the house to quiet, everyone to visit dreamland. After a while, trying to count the number of points on the prism above the horn makes me pass out. I’m still telling myself I have to stay awake when I nod off.
But my dreams are the usual predictable, unicorn-less dark. I wake, as always, with a light coating of sweat, breathing hard, shaking, my mother’s voice in my ears. For once, I’m glad I have an internal nightmare alarm clock. Turns out it’s 3am. No one else seems to be stirring when I crack the door and listen. Perfect timing.
I make my way down the stairs, start to go in Bronson’s office, but have to scoot past the door. He’s not there, but a light is on. Justin is sitting at a table and chairs at the far end of the bookshelves, reading something and making notes.
So I decide to visit the kitchen and wait him out there. On the way, I pass a sliding door that looks out onto the yard. I can’t miss the creature right outside it. Anzu sits, staring in. I walk to the door, and press my hand against the glass.
On the small patio, he takes a step closer, and another. Until he’s so close his breath fogs the glass above my head. It evaporates immediately in the too-warm D.C. summer night. I peer up at him, glad for the barrier. His eyes are liquid gold and unreadable, and I wish I knew whether he could answer questions for me. Can Anzu talk? I wish I knew if between the two of us, we could get into the Jefferson and get my dad out. But I remember he’s a guard, not a conspirator.
Big difference.
I hear soft footsteps behind me. “Don’t worry,” Oz says. “It’s just me.”
Anzu… grimaces… if that’s the word for it. He doesn’t growl or roar, that we can hear through the glass anyway, which I’m assuming means he makes no sound. When he does either, it’s not subtle.
“Why shouldn’t I worry?” I say.
“Because it’s just me,” he says, again. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He stands at my shoulder, and I can feel him
there even though he’s not touching me. We stare out at Anzu together, and he stares back in at us. Considering us.
“Nightmares.”
“Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be. I always have them.”
“That sounds like something I should say more than sorry for, then.”
I turn my head to the side, despite it making me nervous to not be watching Anzu when he’s right there on the other side of the glass.
“Nah,” I say, “nothing to be done about it. History. Ancient. I’m not the only person in the world with nightmares. Not even close.”
“Still sucks. I thought maybe you were up because of what’s happening with your dad.”
“Doesn’t help,” I agree. “But, hey, shiny new life. Unicorns and tiny Cornish chickens.”
“Unicorns aren’t real,” he says. “Just a few gods that look like them.”
“But are they chickens? Those Cornish things?”
“Tiny, more expensive chickens.”
“Well, that’s one mystery solved.”
“And you also had ice cream.”
“I did, but I felt too guilty to eat it.”
Anzu yawns wide and the motion drags my attention back to him. He turns from us and stalks back into the yard. Oz takes my shoulder with a gentle hand, “I think that’s a sign we should go back to bed.”
The word bed is another word I need to add to the list of things he should stop saying, along with my name and the word nice.
When I face him, I realize how close we’re standing. Closer than we were in his reliquary earlier. He has on a T-shirt, plain and blue, with his pajamas tonight, which is less distracting. I start to ask him what Justin is doing in Bronson’s office, but instead I flinch when his fingers find mine. It’s not as if he’s lacing our hands together in some cheesy pop song way. He’s just taking my hand to tug me up the hall toward the kitchen. Casual. No big deal.
Only I know this is dangerous. Not for me, for Oz.
I want to warn him off. Tell him he should have a chat with Tam if he doubts me. But, for now, any interest he has helps. So I feel bad about it, but I don’t say a word.
He releases my hand when we get to the kitchen. Relief.