I felt pitiful, scared, feeling the true dread of Omega, of what was coming, in a way that I hadn’t since the arrival of Wolfe had forced me to hide in a cell here in the basement, hoping he would eventually leave town, leave me alone. Henderschott hadn’t scared me, not really. He had hurt me once or twice, but not enough to drive the fear into me the way Wolfe had. Same with the vampires they sent, and Mormont, whom they turned from the Directorate’s service. None of them scared me like Wolfe did, none of them hurt me like Wolfe did.
Except Fries. That little rodent. Exempting Wolfe, they couldn’t beat me in a fight, not even with Bjorn, who was a bruiser. But Fries came at me sideways, touching on all my insecurities at a time when I was vulnerable. Then he betrayed me and twisted the knife, the snake. The hallway seemed narrower now, the air thicker, and the chill had left with Old Man Winter. I started toward the stairs, the beige walls blurring together. Now they were after me again, maybe after Old Man Winter, too. If they wanted to topple the Directorate, knocking over Old Man Winter seemed like it would be the way to go about it. Who’d step up after him? I liked Ariadne, but I got the sense that she relied on him to do more than was obvious on the surface.
My legs carried me up the stairs, through the lobby and out the door. I hit the crisp air and took a breath. All the feelings of confinement began to fade, that tightness in my chest as if I couldn’t breathe for what I had to contemplate. Breaking a man’s arm off out of fear for what was to come, for what he knew but wasn’t telling…I don’t know that I would have had it in me to harm even Bjorn in such a way.
But I didn’t know that it was totally wrong, either. Not when we were dealing with the same people who sent Wolfe, the man who tried his best to rape and torture me. It sounded as though Bjorn was cut from the same cloth.
I cut across the campus on the way back to the dormitory; heading to the training room was my first instinct, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I needed quiet. Operation Stanchion bothered me. Who named their little plans in such a grandiose and evil way? A stanchion was just a pillar, after all, a post, and what did that have to do with me? Or did it refer to Old Man Winter, the pillar of the Directorate?
The leaves were packed to the ground, and a frost had come with morning, turning everything a silvery, shimmering white when the sun hit it. The blades of grass crunched under my boots in a way that was almost alien to me, so different from their sweet give in summer. The frost was in the air, too, crowding into my sinuses and nose, freezing the little hairs inside. It was bitter—too bitter by far for October.
The entry to the dormitory was quiet; the younger students were in their classes. It wasn’t close to lunchtime with the bustle of all the administrative employees coming to the cafeteria in droves. I wondered how much they knew about what we did here. There were hundreds of employees, after all, and most of them lived off-campus. I doubted most of them even worked with the metas, which left me curious. There was a divide between the admin and school business, I knew that, and I supposed a person could even work in the administration building without ever knowing that the kids at the school had anything different about them; it wasn’t as if any of them had scales, or had snakes growing out of their shoulders, or anything like that. The most bizarre thing on campus was Clary, and that had more to do with his personality than his power, except when he shifted his skin.
On the other hand, seeing Eve Kappler flying past a window might be a hint that something was not quite what it seemed on campus.
I inserted my key card in the elevator and rode up to the third floor. When I arrived, I stepped off and walked down the white hall, noticing a few potted trees that hadn’t been there before. Decoration to brighten up the dull landscape with winter coming, I supposed.
I paused as I reached my door. The one next to mine, the one that belonged to Kat, was open, the card reader’s bar an angry red, and a buzzing noise coming from it, the quiet sound of low-voltage electricity arcing. I walked toward it tentatively, the thought that I might be walking into trouble only a faint idea in my mind. I lay my hand on the door, which was half open, and I could see the light flooding in from the windows. It was a sunny day and the room was lit like mine, bright and pleasant. I took a quiet step inside, then another. The living room and kitchen were silent, nothing moving as I came around the wall and got a full look.
Kat’s furniture was roughly the same as mine and in the same layout. All her appliances were Directorate standard, though again, she had taken some effort to spruce up the walls with the posters I didn’t care for. I heard a faint scratching from the bedroom, and I walked through the middle of the apartment on my way to the bedroom door, which was drawn at a forty-five degree angle.
With a touch I sent it open, the oiled hinges allowing it to move without making a sound. The bed was against the far wall, and someone was sitting on it, a man in jeans and a black t-shirt that went perfectly with his darker, more tanned complexion—something I had always thought bizarrely out of place in Minnesota, especially going into winter. “Scott,” I said quietly, and he looked up, his blond curls bobbing, his eyes only slightly puffy. I would honestly have expected more emotion, but it was possible he had been here for a long while.
“Sienna,” he said, and his voice was scratchy, like a needle run over a record. He cleared his throat and tried again. “How are you?”
“How am I?” I looked at him with incredulity. “I’m fine. I’m a little worried about you, though.”
“Dr. Perugini said I’m okay.” He held something in his hand, and I realized after a moment it was a CD, and he lay it on the bed, the clear plastic case catching the light.
“I kinda doubt she examined you in the way I’m talking about,” I said. “I realize you’re fine, physically—”
“Well, we don’t have a psychiatrist anymore to make sure I’m gonna be all right mentally, so…” He shrugged fatalistically. “I guess I’m just gonna have to limp on in my own way, kinda like every other teenager who just lost a girlfriend.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” I edged a little closer to him. “Kind of a healthy way, too, I suspect.”
“Well, I’m all about my health here,” he said, waving vaguely to his body, which I admit, was well sculpted. In spite of being unserious about almost everything, working out and eating right was something Scott did almost to distraction. And it showed. Not that I noticed, of course, but because others had told me. And I saw him with a shirt off, once, at the beach. Maybe more than once. And not always at the beach. Anyway.
“I don’t think too many people have had their girlfriend completely forget them,” I said. “That might be new territory. Something you could stake your claim to.”
“Why does that matter?” he asked with a shrug. “Lots of people wish they could forget their breakups.”
“But Kat wasn’t breaking up with you,” I said. “She sacrificed her memory of you to save your life.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said, and I saw a flush hit his cheeks. “She’s brave and self-sacrificing, and now she can’t remember me, or any of our little inside jokes, or that we slept together every night, or anything…at all…from the last nine months. I might as well not have existed in her life.”
I swallowed heavily. “I’m sorry, Scott.”
“Why are you sorry?” he asked, and his eyes were narrowed in genuine confusion. “You didn’t make her lose her memory.”
“It was my mission.” I sat down on the bed, leaving a few feet of distance between us. “I was in charge. It’s my fault that—”
“Listen to me,” Scott said, and all the brittle was gone from his voice. His eyes were lidded, puffy, but they burned with inner fire. “I want you to hear this, and maybe it’ll make me feel better, too. What happened at the safe house wasn’t your fault. You took a beating to keep us from dying, and without you, we’d all have croaked, I’m sure, after tangling with that big bastard. What happened in Iowa was Clary’s fault, because he’s an idi
ot. And we knew he was an idiot, that there was nothing but rocks in his damned skull. We would have been better off without him.” The last part was spat out like a curse. “No one on that mission could have controlled Clary. No one.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying—”
“But you’re gonna blame yourself anyway?” He looked away, and his hands came behind him so he could lean back, legs still draped over the edge of the bed. “Might as well. Plenty of that going around.”
“It wasn’t your fault either, Scott.”
“Nope,” he said, staring into the window on the far edge of the room, to the blue sky beyond the tinting that made looking out bearable. “Doesn’t stop me from blaming myself, though.” He shifted position a little. “Would you mind leaving me be? I kinda just want to be alone right now.”
“Sure,” I said with a perfunctory nod. “If you want to talk, later, I’ll—”
“ If I want to talk, no offense but I’ll look for a more sympathetic ear,” he said, looking at me almost pityingly. “You’re a lot of things, Sienna—leader, badass, friend—but camp counselor you’re not.”
“Pretty sure friends listen to each other when they have problems.” I felt that curious clench in my jaw. “I want you to know…I’m here for you if you need—”
“Please don’t get sappy for the first time in your life, ever,” he said, and he looked at me with a hint of pity. Then after a pause, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, easing my way back to the door, which I drew closed behind me as I made my way out of the apartment.
13.
Technical services called me on my new cell phone an hour later, a secretary with a perfunctory message asking me to come to Ariadne’s office immediately. It was a bit of a puzzler, honestly, because usually she either called herself or a messenger slid a paper note under my door if it was considered to be an unholy enough hour to give someone a phone call that wasn’t urgent. I made my way into the Directorate lobby and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, the lift filled with administrative employees coming back from lunch. I’d skipped mine (again), not really in the mood for conversation after running through everything in my mind for an hour straight.
Ariadne’s door was ajar when I arrived, and already filled to near capacity. Clary was sitting in one of the chairs, his bulk slumped over, not as jovial as usual. His head was down, as though he couldn’t bear to look at me. It didn’t seem to be a reaction solely to my entry to the room, either; he was quiet long before I walked in. Eve Kappler was in her usual position, leaning against the hutch behind Ariadne. I had a feeling Ariadne’s skin was ready to crawl from her casual lingering there. Ariadne was not the sort given to public displays of affection, or even association, and her relationship with Eve was an open secret, much gossiped about in the halls of the Directorate. While she tried to keep it quiet, Eve did everything in her power to subtly remind every one of us that she was sleeping with the second-in-command. I wouldn’t have wanted that sort of political game played around me, but I wasn’t Ariadne, so I didn’t have to worry about it.
Roberto Bastian was looking dark as ever, leaned against the wall just past the door. “Ma’am,” he said with a nod to me. I liked Bastian; he was a pro, always respectful, and he never disregarded anything I said just because I ran the junior league version of his team. Parks was next to him, and the grey-haired older man gave me a nod as well when I came in. Reed was hanging in the corner behind Clary. Every one of them had been in these exact positions in this office before when I’d come in, as though we had fallen into some bizarre sort of rut. The only thing missing was Kat to sit in the chair next to Clary and Scott to stand behind her. I usually lingered in the corner with my brother, which was where I went now.
“Get J.J. in here and then shut the door,” Ariadne said, not even acknowledging my arrival. We waited in silence until a minute later the fuzzy haired hipster walked in, his dark, heavy-rimmed glasses hanging over the edge of his nose, his flannel shirt and skinny jeans putting him at odds with the appearance of everyone else in the room, except Kappler, who habitually wore skinnier jeans than anyone but Kat would be able to squeeze into. The whole room smelled strongly of shaving gel and masculinity, though neither Eve, Ariadne nor I were the most feminine of specimens to offset the boys, nor were any of us the perfume-wearing sort.
“Good morning, all,” J.J. said by way of greeting, surprisingly chipper.
“Stow the sunny optimism and get on with the talking,” Eve said, arms folded, drawing an impatient and measured look from Ariadne.
“Righto,” J.J. said. “So, I told the Director I found some irregularities in the U.S. Customs systems, some people coming through that we flagged for being part of a batch of passports all issued from the same center on the same day, that contained a few familiar faces.” He paused and lifted up the screen of the tablet computer, showing it around to us all in a slow pan. When it came around so I could see it, I bristled. A very familiar face was on the screen—Wolfe. “Oh, yes,” he said, “but just like a bad infomercial, wait—there’s more.” He used his fingers to flip the screen to the next one, revealing another passport photo which he held in position for me to see. A scarred, horrific face was visible on the screen, something that looked familiar, but only slightly so.
“Henderschott?” I asked, drawing a nod from J.J., who flipped to the next screen, pausing for just a second. “James Fries,” I said and he flipped to the next one, a dark haired man who was trying his best not to smile. The photograph was color, but something about the eyes was off. He flipped to the next picture, a blond-haired man, and once I saw it, I realized who they were. “Spike and Angel, the vampires they sent after me.” I blinked at the pictures. “They didn’t look anywhere near that human when I fought them. They had red eyes…”
“Contact lenses,” J.J. said. “They were groomed up for the photos.” He stole a look at the screen. “Probably had their hair done before travel, kept their mouths shut to keep the fangs from showing. I’m guessing they did that with Wolfe, too, based on the before and after nature of this passport picture compared to the newsreel stuff I’ve seen from him. But there’s actually more still in this batch.” His fingers slid along the screen again, and another face appeared. “Look familiar?”
“Bjorn,” I said, recognizing the brown hair and blunt face more than anything else about his bearing. “The guy who’s sitting down in the cells right now,” I said to Reed. “How many of these passports are there?”
“Hundreds in the batch,” J.J. said. “It was from one specific facility in the UK over the course of a few weeks. Kinda hard to believe they’re all British citizens, but it’s possible. Anyway, so we got this whole batch, and I’m sifting through it with the Director for familiar faces, but that’s kind of a losing proposition because his sight isn’t what it used to be and a lot of these people don’t look anything like metas, and some of them don’t look like…well…anything.”
“Can you track any of them right now?” Reed asked.
“Yeah, and that’s kind of the point of this meeting,” J.J. said. “We got a good line on one of them, one of them in the batch that just landed in Minneapolis yesterday, came in from London via New York.” He held up the pad again, this time showing a female face, a dark-haired, serious woman who looked to be in her forties with a short bob haircut. “Eleanor Madigan,” is the name on the passport…but of course Wolfe was in the system under Eugene Dellwood, so…” he looked up and blinked, his twitch magnified by his glasses, “probably an assumed name.”
“Now in Minneapolis?” I asked. “So if she’s part of this Operation Stanchion, it looks like they’re moving pieces into place in the area now.”
“Probably more than you think,” J.J. said, and tapped away at his tablet for a minute before pushing it toward me to see again, holding it in the air between us. “This is Des Moines Police Department’s report on what they found in the house after you finished demolishing i
t.” I cringed, but J.J. paid no mind. “Looks like Bjorn had a Google Map leading him up to a hotel near the airport here in Bloomington.”
“He was coming here?” Parks spoke up at last, the voice of wisdom. “If he already had the map, let’s assume that he was going to travel within the next day or so after the attack. That puts it about now. You thinking he might be meeting up with Madigan?”
“I don’t know for sure,” J.J. said, surprisingly smug for a guy who really had nothing to be smug about, looks-wise, “but an Eleanor Madigan checked into that very hotel just last night. Room 1117.” He smiled wide, and then it vanished. “That’s the eleventh floor, by the way, and it’s one of those hotels where the rooms are all centered around a big open-air courtyard, so you might wanna…” he shrugged, “I dunno, use some discretion or something. Unless you want to do an eleven story plunge in public. Might not hurt you too much—”
“It would kill most of us,” Parks corrected him.
“Well, it’d make a hell of a scene for the news, too, y’know.” He nodded at me and Reed. “They’re still talking about the gangland house crashing down in Iowa.”
“That’s because it’s the most exciting thing to happen in Iowa in six decades,” Parks said.
“I want caution,” Ariadne said, cutting across all other talk in the room. “Bastian has lead on this, Sienna and Reed, you’ll be answering to him. I want everyone working together, no lone ranger BS—got it, Clary?” She waited until Clary picked his head up, gave her a silent nod, and then she continued. “Whoever this Eleanor Madigan is, I think we can expect she’s trouble if she’s truly with Omega.”
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