Jamie walked past me to the fence, hooking his fingers through the links and staring at the place of his origin. His expression remained closed, but the bond had given me a good idea how the sight would make him feel. I had to cross my arms to prevent myself from reaching out to touch him.
I’d been angry when I arrived, but the only emotion I felt now was the need to reassure Jamie that everything would be okay and I’d protect him.
You want to coddle him, Pamela’s voice whispered in my head.
How much of my feelings were the bond and how much was me?
“I want you to come back with me,” I said.
Jamie turned his head to look at me, his expression closed. I blinked to Primordium for insight into his emotions. The dual energies of his soul shifted and reshaped beneath his skin like a kaleidoscope, spinning fast and irregular.
“I’m afraid,” I continued. “For you; for me. I want you to be safe, and I can’t protect you when you’re not with me.”
“I’m doing fine on my own.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want ‘fine’ for you. I want so much more.”
Jamie turned to face me fully, arms limp at his sides, eyes clouded.
“Come home with me. We can sort this out between us and fix the bad decisions you’ve made.”
He stiffened. I’d said the wrong thing.
“You only think I’ve made bad decisions because I’m not doing exactly what you want.”
“You’re helping the tyv. The same tyv that would love to eat my soul and leave me comatose or dead.” My earlier anger broke through the bond’s suppressive strength, but I tried not to let it show. “Explain to me how that isn’t a bad decision.”
“I’m going where I’m wanted.”
“What does that mean? I want you. It’s you and me, tethered together, through good and bad, not you and a tyv. I’m here to guide you and help you be a good pooka. Doesn’t my advice matter?”
Jamie sneered, and I flinched from the foreign expression on his face.
“Your advice? Don’t you mean Pamela’s?” Cynicism warped his voice into a stranger’s.
“She knows what she’s talking about. She’s worked alongside a pooka before. She knows the right way to—”
“She doesn’t know me.” Jamie jabbed a finger into his chest. His soul frizzed from his body like static-charged cat hair.
I didn’t back up, but I modified my tone, stripping away the anger so he could hear my sincerity. “Pamela knows what’s right. I just want you to be a good pooka, and she can help.”
“You don’t want me. You want something that looks like me on the outside but not on the inside. You want a happy pretend-Jamie who will follow you around like a pet Illuminea.” He spat out the word like an insult. “You don’t even like me.”
“That’s a lie!”
“I know. I see.” Jamie tapped his forehead. “You’re fixed to one future now. I can give you a prophecy.”
A jolt of fear rooted me in place. He’d said he couldn’t see a prophecy for me before because we were too closely linked. How much separation had grown between us? Not enough to stop the bond from messing with me, but any weakening of my connection to Jamie scared me.
Jamie glanced down the alley to the construction site. When he looked back, the sorrow in his eyes unlocked my muscles, but he spoke before I could.
“The next time we meet, one of us will die. You will be the one to choose who lives.”
Goose bumps raced down my body. I could see it in his eyes: He believed he spoke the truth.
“That can’t be right.” I reached for him when he turned away.
“Stay away from me,” he snarled.
Atrum swelled in his palm, and he hurled the energy at me. Too dumbfounded to dodge, I took the brunt of it in the stomach. The chill of evil coating my soul stole my breath, and I stumbled backward, staring at my blackened chest in disbelief. Wild-eyed, I jerked around, seeing atrum splashed ten feet in every direction. Sputtering in shock and indignation, I spun back to Jamie, but he hadn’t waited for me to recover. Shoulders hunched, he strode around the corner and didn’t look back.
Jamie had attacked me.
My heart cracked inside my chest and I crumpled. The soul breaker swung forward, smacking against my forehead. The collision rang through my brain, the pain shattering my anguish-stricken shock. Swallowing a sob, I straightened and flared lux lucis through my chest, stomach, and thighs. The atrum burned away with startling ease, and my front flared beacon-bright before I regained control. Suspicious, I turned and ran a finger through the black smut on the wall, effortlessly tracing a clean line through the darkness.
Jamie hadn’t been trying to hurt me; he’d used the atrum as a diversion so he could escape. The realization settled a soothing patch over my broken heart. His betrayal still hurt, and we were further from making amends than before, but he hadn’t declared war on me. All hope wasn’t yet lost.
I considered leaving the atrum and chasing after Jamie. He didn’t have more than a minute head start on me, and if he remained human, I stood a chance of catching him.
The atrum made the decision for me when it bubbled from the wall, swelling into the shape of a chinchilla. The imp opened glossy black eyes, spotted me, and leapt from the vertical surface to sink its fangs into my shoulder. Light coat or not, the atrum couldn’t be ignored. Left unchecked, it would fester into much stronger and worse evils.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, playing the opening chords to “Sweet Home Alabama.” I dug it out with cold-numb fingers even as I killed the imp with a pulse of energy. After clearing my throat to make sure my voice sounded normal, I crouched at the rim of the atrum puddle and answered the phone.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Madison. How are you? My mom senses are tingling.”
If her “mom senses” weren’t wrong as often as they were right, I might have been shocked by the timeliness of her call. “I’m good, Mom. Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m just tired.” I planted a hand on the freezing cobblestones and rolled lux lucis from my fingertips, pleased when the rush of energy ate through twice as much atrum as it normally would. Jamie really hadn’t tried very hard.
“You sure it’s nothing?”
“I’m sure, Mom.” I’m losing control of one of the most dangerous creatures in my region and simultaneously destroying one of the most important relationships in my life, and I just found out I am either going to be dead soon or Jamie is. No crisis here.
“In that case, your father and I are coming over.”
“Now?” I jerked upright, lost my balance, and fell on my butt. Ice cracked beneath my backside, and I scrambled to the balls of my feet before moisture could soak into my jeans.
“No, we’re in Reno, remember? The train doesn’t leave for another hour. We’re waiting it out at a diner with track-side seating.” She paused and sniffed audibly. “Ugh. Everything I brought smells like cigarette smoke. It’s in my hair.”
“There won’t be any smoking allowed on the train,” Dad said, his voice faint.
“Right, dear,” Mom agreed.
“Just think of how beautiful the return trip will be,” he said. “The fresh snow will transform the tracks into glistening ribbons, like endless diamond necklaces strung across the wild mountainside.”
I pulled the phone from my ear to stare at it, then pressed it to my face and whispered, “Is Dad okay?”
“He can smell the grease of the tracks,” Mom said, her voice droll. “It’s messing with his brain. His head will clear when the coffee gets here.”
“Has he been like that the whole trip?”
“More or less.”
My mom was a saint.
“So we’ll see you this evening? We can’t wait to meet our new granimal.”
“Um . . .” With any luck, I’d be out killing drones and a tyv by the time they got home.
“Did you notice when we went thro
ugh the mountain tunnels that the engine sounded like the prehistoric roar of a sabre-toothed tiger?” Dad asked. His voice got louder; he was either shouting or he had leaned toward the phone. “I’ll make you a recording, Son.”
“I think Dad needs a psychiatrist,” I said.
“After this trip, we both might,” Mom said. “See you tonight. I’ll text when we disembark.”
“Uh—” But she’d already hung up.
I was still banging the phone against my forehead when it started playing “Hail to the Chief.” I shoved another handful of lux lucis through the atrum before answering.
“What happened?” Brad demanded. “I felt a flare.”
“Jamie and I had a fight.” I decided to keep the details vague. I recognized Jamie’s use of atrum as a rebellious diversionary tactic, not an attack, but Brad might not see it that way, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to call Niko. “Can you tell me where he went?”
“He’s gone again? Sugar sticks on fried Snickers!”
I took that as a no.
“Madison, this can’t go on. You need to get control of him or—”
“I know,” I said, cutting him off so I wouldn’t have to hear the rest of the sentence.
On the other end of the line, several high-pitched voices escalated in volume, the individual words all piled on top of each other and unintelligible.
“This is a peace talk,” Brad bellowed, his voice partially muffled. “The first person to draw another’s blood forfeits their rights—or their queen’s rights—to any territory. Nonnegotiable!”
A flurry of voices swelled in response, then faded. Brad must have walked out of the room.
“How do you plan to find Jamie now?” he asked me.
The next time we meet, one of us will die. I rubbed a cramp in my stomach. “I don’t think I can, not unless he wants me to.”
“I think you’re right. But we may not need him to come to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“We just need to keep Jamie from helping the tyv tonight.”
“How am I supposed to do that if I can’t even get him to talk to me for five minutes?”
“We simply need him too tired to meddle,” Brad said. “You need to keep moving. If he’s too exhausted to fly, he won’t be able to mask the tyv. I’ll text you the address of your first destina—”
“Brad Pitt!”
Lestari’s sharp, high voice blasted through the speaker, piercing my eardrum, and I jerked the phone from my ear.
“We have reached an agreement,” she continued at a volume a carnival barker would envy. “The foul odors of this moldy building are offensive to us all. You will need to make other arrangements for the peace talks.”
“I’m glad it took only an hour to come to a consensus about the smell of the room,” Brad said, his voice laden with sarcasm. “It bodes well for the negotiations, which will happen here—”
Lestari attempted to interrupt, but he talked right over her.
“I will concede to bringing a rose to each queen to mask the unpleasant scent. However, I will choose the rose size, color, and variety. The roses will all be purchased by me from the same florist at the same location. All roses will have the same number of petals and length of stem, and all thorns will be removed.”
I scoffed at his specificity, thinking Brad was taking the sarcasm too far until Lestari responded.
“So long as the rose color does not favor the clan colors of any queen.”
“I will select bloodred roses, a color you all favor.”
“Humph. Now about the platforms. They are made from inferior wood—”
“They are all the same material,” Brad interrupted.
I swiped the last of the atrum from the wall and returned to the courtyard. Even knowing Jamie would be long gone by now, I paused to look for his unique soul among all the norms. When I didn’t find him, I trudged to recharge among the cluster of trees near the parking lot. In my ear, Lestari and Brad continued to argue.
“Very well, I will bring a rug—”
“All platform adornment is forbidden.”
“But—”
“To everyone,” Brad said.
“The platforms are too small for those of us with a larger clan—”
“The number of warriors acceptable to accompany each queen is limited to four, per the 1929 peace talks of San Antonio and the 1877 peace talks of Montreal.”
“Um, should I hang up?” I interjected.
“One moment, Madison. Sunan Lestari, I request a two-minute recess, as is allotted to all mediators once an hour.”
“You have already been on recess for longer than two minutes.”
“Yet you interrupted it, negating . . .” Brad trailed off with a sigh. “She’s gone. Tomorrow I’m hiding the lemon drops. The queens don’t need extra sugar.”
I tried to summon sympathy for his plight, but my own worries edged out any other emotion.
“How accurate are pooka prophecies?”
“Why?” Brad asked after a brief charged silence, and I knew I had his full attention again. “Did he give you someone’s?”
“I’m curious.” And the Understatement of the Year award goes to Madison Fox.
I expected Brad to press for more information, but after a pause, he said, “One hundred percent accurate.”
My heart plummeted.
“But only because he foretells all possible outcomes,” he continued. “Most prophecies are so convoluted that people don’t know they’ve reached the prophesied moment until they’ve already passed it.”
How many possible interpretations of One of us will die could there be?
I walked to my car in a surreal haze. Maybe Jamie hadn’t seen the future correctly. Maybe he’d misinterpreted it because we were too closely linked. Except we didn’t feel close.
His soul had been so jumbled today, it’d been impossible to judge if his inner energies had tipped toward a greater mass of atrum. If it had . . . If the next time we met, he was more evil than good, irreparably evil, then he would have to die. . . .
Unless he embraced evil and killed me first.
A car horn bleated next to me, and I jumped, not realizing I’d stopped in the middle of the parking lot. I gave the driver a distracted wave and jogged out of the way.
Jamie had said I’d choose who died. That implied he wouldn’t kill me, right?
Wait! Jamie’s soul couldn’t have turned darker yet. The only reason he could see those prophetic image bubbles he’d described was because of the balance of his soul. My relief flared, then collapsed in on itself: If Jamie’s soul remained unchanged, then his prophecy was accurate, and one of us was destined to die. Soon.
I rubbed my temples with icy fingers, hoping to dispel the budding headache. Damn it, this was worse than the first time he’d run off. This time, he had embedded doubts in my thoughts, making me hesitant when I should have been acting. Maybe that’d been his goal all along. Maybe the prophecy was a lie, another way for him to buy time to escape. If so, it worked.
However, remembering the expression on his face when he’d delivered the prophecy made it impossible to dismiss it as a diversionary tactic. Jamie had believed one of us would die.
I braced a hand on the trunk of my car, taking deep breaths of frigid air.
Jamie said people’s prophecies change. Nothing is fixed. Maybe by the end of the day, I’ll do something to alter the future, and Jamie’s prophecy will be erased.
Fortunately, Brad’s plan didn’t involve any interaction between the pooka and me today. Jamie’s prophecy would never need to come into play.
The slender hope didn’t make me feel any less nauseated. Nor did the bond, which vibrated beneath my skin, irrationally urging me to run to Jamie despite his prophecy—and without knowing which direction to go.
I shut myself into the chilled cocoon of my car and rested my head on the steering wheel. Closing my eyes, I counted my breaths. On the fifth, the person wa
iting for my spot honked their horn. On the eighth, a squeal of rubber on pavement announced they’d given up.
On the tenth breath, someone knocked on my window. I jumped, whacking my knee against the steering column. Pamela leaned close to the window, her shock of auburn hair peeking out of a stylish off-white beanie. The sight of the stern lines of her mouth and her hard eyes twisted my stomach into a knot of dread.
How had she found me?
Oh, right, the tracker.
I pushed open my door and stood, the press of the tracker against my bruised ankle throbbing with renewed pain at the reminder of its existence. Pamela scooted back to give me room. She held shiny silver cuffs in her left hand, looped over a thumb, and when she caught me staring, she tucked them into the back pocket of her pale jeans.
Had those been for me?
“Is something wrong?” I asked, my tone aggressive in anticipation of her answer. It wasn’t a coincidence that she had shown up just after my confrontation with Jamie. If Brad had sensed the pooka’s diversionary atrum assault, Pamela would have, too.
“You need a purity test.”
I crossed my arms. “We did one less than an hour ago. Nothing’s changed.”
“Since then you’ve made contact with an out-of-control pooka. You also failed to call me when you had him in your sights, or afterward. Your behavior is suspect.”
“There wasn’t time! Not to call you and not for Jamie to taint me.” The tracker squeezed my ankle when I curled my toes inside my tennis shoe, and I shook my foot in frustration. “Look at me. You can see I’m still pure lux lucis.”
“You helped bring down a rogue warden. You of all people should know corruption can be hidden. Make a net.”
I clenched my teeth and glared at the inspector. Arguing my innocence only made me look guiltier and prolonged the inevitable. I flared my soul above my heart, hating myself for capitulating and giving her power over me. Drawing in a deep breath, I braced a hand against the Civic to stop myself from backing up when Pamela reached for me.
There’s nothing wrong with showing the inspector I’m clean. I’m not giving her any power she didn’t already have as my boss. This isn’t a violation any more than a lie detector test would be if I worked for the mundane CIA.
A Fistful of Frost: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox Adventure Book 3) Page 28