by K W Quinn
The charming, friendly, and weird target was also willing to betray everything for his best friend. Was he able to escape the Dome because he had inside knowledge? She found herself unexpectedly disappointed to think this target might be as duplicitous and manipulative as most of the rest of the souls she’d collected.
In an expensive building, on a high floor, Reyah knocked on the door of the apartment. She swung her hair over her shoulder, thankful that her casual clothing was just stylish enough to pass for a rich kid on a day off. She fiddled with the end of her braid. Besotted crush who’d been duped? No, the target didn’t seem the kind to give out a fake address, and especially not a friend’s. The out-of-town ruse might still work here. Better than going in hard with the truth.
She knocked again and held her breath until a muscled girl in workout clothes opened the door. She was sipping on some sort of green smoothie but smiled a thankfully green-free, toothy grin.
“Can I help you?”
Reyah dropped her chin a little, tugging on her braid, and smiled. “Hi. I’m so sorry to bother you. This is weird, but I’m hoping you can help me? Um, so, I got your name from the manager down at Starbucks in Hutchings? I live up north, and I had a chance to visit a friend. But he’s not at home or at work, and I wanted to surprise him, and I know this is a long shot, but his boss said that sometimes he hangs out here?”
“Oh. That sounds like Cass.” Taking another long sip of smoothie, she adjusted the neckline of her tank top, exposing more dark skin and muscles. Reyah didn’t want to have to fight this one.
Reyah pulled her phone from her pocket. “He’s not answering, and I don’t want to totally bug him or whatever. I was just hoping maybe I might find him? Here?”
“Sorry. He kinda goes on little brain breaks sometimes. Says he has to clear his head or something. But come on inside. I’ll see if maybe I can ping him, yeah?” She scrubbed a hand along her scalp, her close-cut curls barely moving.
“That would be so great. Thank you so much. I know this is totally weird, but I really appreciate it,” Reyah gushed. Her gratitude was genuine. The kindness of strangers was always a welcome boon in her job.
Ms. Smoothie opened the door and ushered her in. “I’m Juji, by the way.”
“Kaida,” Reyah said and stepped into the foyer. It meant little dragon and had been her alias so often she could slip it on like a second skin. She wasn’t sure she needed it, but better safe than sorry.
“Nice to meet you. Always happy to meet a friend of Cass’s. He’s got such a big heart; he seems to attract good people. Anyway, have a seat if you want. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll grab my phone and give him a buzz. I’ll be back in a minute.” She stretched a sculpted arm toward the living room.
“Sure. Of course. Thanks again.” Reyah walked to the couch, eyeing the expensive TV and speakers. Must be nice to have this kind of money, she thought.
Sitting with her hands tucked between her knees, she thought she might chance another peek at the soulprint. With some distance from the escape path, it would be less intense.
Had Tarone ever dealt with a print this compelling? She wasn’t about to ask and reveal her ignorance. Tarone had dealt with everything. Reyah was probably just being weak. She had wanted an interesting job.
She opened herself to the pull of the soulprint, and then she was swept away by a flood of emotions. Fear, determination, guilt, shame, and anxiety all wrapped around with thin tendrils of hope. It punched the air from her lungs and sent tingles rushing to her fingertips. The light engulfed her, swallowing her mind until she wasn’t sure where she stopped and the target’s seductive pull began.
She dropped her hands to her knees, sucking in deep, cleansing breaths and letting them out in a shaky rush. She tried to clear the clinging threads of the soulprint from her mind. He’d been here.
The target had been in this apartment recently. The night of the escape, if she was reading the mix of emotions right. Her heart raced, and her mind turned the pieces she knew over and over to try to make this one fit.
Running from the Earth, a broke, hopeless Air ran straight to the center of Earth power? To the friend he’d been manipulating from the start? Something didn’t add up.
“Hey, sorry to keep you waiting,” Ms. Smoothie said. “I can’t get ahold of Cass, either. He’s probably put his phone on silent or left it in a pair of pants on his floor or something. I left him a message, though. Hopefully, he’ll be in touch soon.” Her hands were tucked in the pockets of her shorts, and Reyah stared at her inky kneecaps.
“Yeah, thanks. I did the same, so . . .” Reyah let her voice trail off with disappointment. “So, you haven’t seen him at all recently?”
“Nah, but don’t worry. He does this sometimes, like I said. Usually I find him on some corner of his little town, drawing trees or trying to take pictures with that ancient camera of his. He’ll turn up soon. He always does.” Ms. Smoothie shrugged and rocked back on her heels, still smiling. Her white teeth were dazzling against her dark skin.
“Well, thanks for trying,” Reyah said.
“No big deal. I’d offer to give you a ride back to wherever, but my partner Marv’s car is in the shop, and I don’t think you’d like to ride on the handlebars of my bike,” she said with a chuckle. She shrugged her impressively broad shoulders.
“Right. Thanks again. I appreciate it.”
“Seriously, don’t mention it. It was nothing. When Cass turns up, let’s all go get some grub, all right?” Ms. Smoothie held open the door, and Reyah slipped outside.
“Sure. Sounds great. Thanks again.”
She waved her thanks away and closed the door. Reyah could feel that she wasn’t lying but knew it wasn’t the truth, either. Psychic impressions were one thing, but the soulprint didn’t lie. The target had been there, less than seventy-two hours ago and in a panic.
She needed to talk to this Marv person. He must have been the culprit who helped the Bonded and the target escape. Part of her conscience nagged her. They had names, but she knew better than to think of them as people.
She needed to do her job, not get caught up in the emotional echo from a stranger. The target’s fear of failure wasn’t her own. His need to prove himself worthy, to find a place to belong—all that was his problem. Not hers. Just because she’d felt the same things in her own life didn’t mean anything.
They weren’t rare and unique feelings. Everyone felt like that sometimes. She’d felt the same things from other targets, so what made this one so overpowering, so deeply familiar? She shook her head and took the elevator down to go find out whatever she could from Ms. Smoothie’s partner in crime.
Lost
Marv’s car was painfully out of place in the gravel parking lot of the little hippie surf shop where the witches kept their getaway van. Even the road dust and grit from their escape couldn’t disguise the fact that it was sleek, expensive, and had been bought in this decade.
The witches had assured Cass that they’d protected the car so no one but Marv would be able to see or touch it, but it still drew his eyes like a beacon.
The van was an entity unto itself. An airbrushed mural wrapped all the way around it, showing a sunset beach in vibrant orange and purple. Or it would have been vibrant if it were new, but decades of sandblasting it from the coast had turned the sunset to sherbet.
“The benches unfold into a bed because of course they do. The witches even put a set of sheets and blankets in a rubber container under the passenger seat,” Andy said.
“Home sweet home?” Cass asked.
“It’s mobile. It’s free. It’s clean. I think it’s the best thing to happen to us so far.” Andy tossed the bags into the back and settled into the passenger seat.
Cass chuckled and pulled out onto the road.
“No, north,” Andy corrected, and Cass attempted a U-turn, which became a three-point turn because Cass forgot he wasn’t driving a sports car anymore. Then it was a five-point turn because the va
n was a whale.
With lazy waves on one side and rocks and trees on the other, he drove the path that split them, stomach churning with worry and the taste of salt on his lips. Cass tried to appear calm. On the run from a destiny worse than death in a leisure van with his best friend. His mind bounced between guilt and gratitude faster than he could keep track.
The radio was full of static, no matter how many times Cass twisted the knob. Ancient van. At least the air from the vents was cool and didn’t carry the humidity that was wearing Cass out.
Andy stared out the window at the trees that gripped the rocky soil. Or maybe he didn’t see any of it. Before too long, he pulled his phone out and began playing the only game left after Charly’s magical intervention. He seemed normal enough, but a silent Andy wasn’t normal.
Cass shifted in the driver’s seat, scanning the horizon and the rearview mirror. He didn’t see anyone following, though he wasn’t sure he would recognize a true spy if he was face-to-face with one, if he was honest with himself. Being honest with himself right now involved too much uncomfortable truth.
He needed to hear that he’d done the right thing, that all this was better than the alternative. He knew it was, but he needed to know that Andy knew it too.
Andy’s home life might have been a pile of ash, but Andy was still the homebody type. Cass had ruined all that. He’d saved him from one kind of hell and put him in another. A better one, but still hell.
The rocky crags began to fade to more rolling hills as the mountains stretched away to the east of them. The road slipped away from the beach, and the uninterrupted green and beige began to change from waving grass to crops.
The corn and wheat and other crops made patterns stretching to the horizon. Andy’s dad had threatened to send him to an Ag town all the time when they were kids. Some kids feared boarding school. Cass grew up afraid of losing his best friend to forced labor on a corporate farm, trapped in a greenhouse, used as a night-light.
Andy asked, “Are we lost?”
“How can we be lost when our destination is ‘ice cream somewhere’?”
“All right. Fine. But are we still heading north?”
The fields and trees made neat rows on either side of them. “I have no idea which way is north, but I’ve been following the same road the whole time.”
Andy sighed and smashed his fingers on the screen of his phone. He held it up to the window, shook it, and glared at the screen. Then it went back in his pocket, and he pulled out a map from the glove box. “We can’t even use the GPS because somehow you’ve managed to find a place with no signal. But I’ve got to find some way to get us back to where we should be,” he grumped.
“There is no should be. There is only the journey,” Cass said in a low, rumbly singsong.
“Well, Amel did say to stick to the coast, and I can’t even see water from here.” Andy spread the map out on his lap, stubby fingers tracing the creases.
“It’s back that way,” Cass said, waving over his shoulder.
“Then we should be going that way.” Andy’s voice was clipped. He hunched over the map.
“You want me to turn around?”
“I want you to at least try to stick to the meager plan we have, yes. Bloody ash, Cass, how hard is it to stay next to the flaming ocean?”
Cass put on his blinker and pulled into the next available driveway to turn around. He’d been waiting for Andy’s temper. Andy needed the outlet, and Cass knew that he fully deserved to get the sharp side of his tongue.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
Andy sighed. “Just see if you can backtrack to the coast. I’ll try to figure out where we are. I hope this map is at least from this century.”
Cass nodded and gripped the wheel with both hands. He deserved this. It would blow over when Andy was done, but in the meantime, he would endure it. Every gripe and grumble and cuss word.
“I’m gonna need a double-scoop sundae by the time we reach that ice cream shop,” Andy said. A smile twitched at the corner of Cass’s mouth. “And you’re paying, puffer.”
Yes, it would pass, and then there would be ice cream.
Coincidence
Reyah walked toward a tall stone building, glittering with glass and polished rock. The city seemed to sprout from this spot, spreading up the walls of the valley. Here in the heart of Earth’s business district, no one would take her seriously wearing an oversized hoodie and torn jeans. So for now, it was high heels, braid pinned up in an elaborate knot, and a face full of makeup designed to look like no makeup at all. She glanced at her reflection in a window and tilted her head quickly to the side. She tugged on the cuffs of her starched shirt and smoothed her skirt down. It would have to do.
Time to put the lovelorn persona aside and get down to business. Especially since it turned out that Marv was actually Mardav Rowan, son of Jedrek Rowan, the Mountain himself. The target had gone straight to the top to find a way to undermine the Earth.
She still couldn’t see how a shiftless Air had managed to weasel his way into the confidence of the most dominant family on the continent, but she was confident that piece of the puzzle would be found in time.
Standing outside the Conglomerate’s headquarters, she took a moment to solidify her objectives. Get information from Marv, in the center of the Conglomerate, to complete this job quickly and find the target. Get out of the city and track him down. Avoid using the soulprint.
The soul blade was concealed against her inner thigh, a comforting weight. She gave the door a firm pull, ready to get things moving, but she stumbled backward as the door yielded with no resistance.
“—shop called to say my car is ready. I’m going to catch a cab. Have a bite for me,” someone was saying, pushing through the door. Reyah tried to right herself. Everything was harder in heels.
“Oh, miss, I’m so sorry.” A slender young man in an obviously expensive suit rushed to assist her. He placed a polite hand on her elbow. His wine-red hair was styled back off his high forehead, the color strangely complementary to his olive complexion. If it weren’t for the striking color of his hair, she might not have even recognized him from the coffee shop. What was he doing here?
“Oh, hello again,” he said with a bemused smile. “You certainly do clean up nicely.”
“As do you,” Reyah replied, pulling her elbow away and patting her hair. Several men filed through the door, eyeing her suspiciously. “What a coincidence.” She gave them her most appropriate smile.
“A delightful one. There aren’t many dragonkin in the city, and none as lovely as you. It’s a pleasure to see you again,” the man said.
“Kind of you to say, but, if you’ll excuse me . . .” she said, stepping toward the door he was blocking.
“Just a moment,” he said to her before turning to the men he’d been chatting with. “So, anyway, you go ahead, and I’ll catch up with you at the board meeting.”
They nodded and spoke their agreements while he turned back to her.
“I’m sorry. Are you still looking for Cass?” he asked. “Because he doesn’t work here. In fact, he never comes here at all.”
Reyah noted the sharp undertone in the question and straightened her spine. “No, I have other business here, thank you.” She moved to the door again, but his hand on her elbow returned, somewhat less polite this time.
“All right. Let me help you. I know this building well, and it can get kind of confusing if you’re not careful.” He leaned forward, ushering her through the door.
Once inside, Reyah turned, breaking his grip. “No, thank you, sir. That won’t be necessary.”
He laughed. “Ugh, don’t call me ‘sir’ just because of the suit. Call me Marv.”
Only her years of training kept Reyah’s mouth from popping open. What were the odds? “Marv? As in Mardav? Mardav Rowan?”
“Does my reputation precede me?” he asked with a playboy grin. He straightened his broad shoulders. The suit fit him well.
“Not exactly, but you are the man I was looking for.”
“I love to hear that. Here, let’s sit.” He gestured to a set of beautiful sung-wood chairs in the lobby. Matching low tables with inset gems or glass glittered in the light streaming down from the greenhouse-like ceiling.
“Mr. Rowan, I need to be blunt,” she said. She sat, crossing her long legs. She didn’t miss his unchecked appreciation.
“Are you actually looking for Cass, or is your real goal reclaiming Andy?” the charmer said. All the playfulness was gone from his face now. Suddenly, he was wearing the suit with all the authority it suggested. “It was a decent tactic, but let’s cut the sap and get to the point. You can’t be working for my father because he wouldn’t bother sending anyone to talk to me, and you’re not the average Shark out on a collection trip. So why the subterfuge?”
Reyah gave him a thin smile. “You’re very perceptive, Mr. Rowan. I don’t work for your father or any of the Conglomerate at the moment. My goals, however, are sympathetic. I am looking for Calisto. The Bonded only interested me as a means to an end, but—” She paused and licked her lips thoughtfully. “That lead has proven useless, so I’m here.”
He squinted and rubbed his long fingers on the arm of the chair.
“Who but the Conglomerate would want to track down Cass? I get that he broke out a Bonded and there’s going to be punishment, but why send you? What makes you so special?” He leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin.
“So very much, but I don’t have the time or inclination to explain my qualifications to you. They were at your house the night of the escape. Where are they now?” Reyah watched the barest tightening of his eyes, the clench of his jaw, the tapping of his handcrafted leather shoes.
“I can honestly say I don’t know.”
“Aiding a runaway has its own price to pay, Mr. Rowan.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you more information. I just don’t know. If they’re smart, they’re far away from here. Probably southeast to the desert. Andy always did want to visit the red rocks.”