by Jamie Davis
Winnie turned toward the sound of an opening door and saw Cricket, his stern expression speaking volumes about their troubles.
“Winnie, come with me. Your friends can stay here.”
“We keep no secrets,” Winnie said. “They can come with me.”
“Your friends aren’t in our crew and Cleaver invited you, not them. Now, come with me.”
She looked at Cait, Tris, and Morgan, who was pasty white with fear. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Stay here and keep calm. Everything will be fine.”
Cait snorted a nervous chuckle, but said nothing. Morgan and Tris nodded. Winnie turned and followed Cricket out of the room.
He led them towards the front of the club. The thumping bass from the music swelled with their approach. Winnie followed him upstairs to a short hallway, and eventually, a door where one of Cleaver’s goons stood guard.
Cricket waved him aside, opened the door, and made way for Winnie to enter. They were in a broad office with a glass wall overlooking the dance floor below. Cleaver stood there, looking down at the patrons below. He ignored her arrival for a while, watching the revelers losing themselves in the music.
Something tugged at Winnie’s attention. She turned to see a stack of military crates off to one side in the office. She didn’t have to look inside to know they were filled with the world’s most dangerous Sable. Winnie could feel the magic inside. It made her blood pulse loud enough to hear, despite the booming music.
Cleaver finally spoke. “I’m losing patience with your little schemes and plans. Cricket’s convinced me to stand back and let you see the light on your own, but I’m beginning to think he was wrong.”
“What good would it do, Cleaver? You have me. You have all my friends. You have my sister.” Winnie pointed to the crates. “You have everything you wanted. I think our deal has concluded to our mutual satisfaction. Our joint interests have all been served.”
“You think so, eh?” Cleaver gave her a predator’s smile. “I know you tried to double-cross me. You may have your sister on the inside to inform you, but I’m not without my resources. You had no intention of my keeping the gear you stole, or so you assured the guard when he let you into the armory to steal it. Am I right, Winnie? That you told him it would all be back under lock and key within a week?”
“I had to tell him something or he would’ve never agreed to the plan. I knew once we had paid him off to let us steal the gear, he’d be in our pocket forever, no matter what happened.”
Cleaver considered Winnie’s words, then slowly nodded. “Be that as it may, it does nothing to resolve our underlying problem. I don’t understand your continued loyalty to Merrilyn. He has his own agenda as much as I do, and believe me when I tell you his schemes make mine look like a child’s puzzle by comparison. He will never tell you what he has planned. I, on the other hand, have always been up front with my intentions.”
“It’s not about you, Cleaver. I don’t want to work for you or anyone else anymore, Artos included. You’ve all given me reason to run from your so-called protection. I just want to be left alone.”
“There’s no room for another Sable boss in Baltimore. Artos will work for me, same as you. It’s inevitable.” Cleaver tapped his temple. “I’ve seen it.”
“Ah, yes, your so-called sight. But it’s not a sure thing, right? You’ve seen things that didn’t come to pass for one reason or another.” She waited for Cleaver to nod, then said, “So why this obsession over me? What do you think I’ll do that you can’t do for yourself?”
The intercom chirped on the desk, then a voice came through the speaker. “We’ve another uninvited guest. You want I should run him off?”
Winnie felt a sudden, familiar tug pulling her toward the dance floor. She knew what she’d see before she turned toward the glass — a pair of bouncers holding a thrashing Danny between them.
Cleaver looked through the glass, then turned to Winnie with a smile. “Another friend of yours? And how, I wonder, did he manage to find you?” Cleaver walked to the intercom, pressed the button, and asked the bouncer to bring the intruder upstairs. “I think we’ll ask him directly.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence while Winnie waited for Danny to get ushered upstairs. Winnie could only think of one reason he would be searching for her like this. Surely his headaches were back.
Winnie felt that familiar itch. She wanted to heal him, even if it meant Cleaver would discover her addiction.
The door opened and Danny was shoved into the office. He stumbled, only staying upright by grabbing at Winnie. She caught his weight while he steadied himself. He looked like crap, his eyes sunken, slitted to invite only the scantest light. The bright room was likely a hammer to his head. Without even trying, Winnie began to draw the magic around her, healing him, lost in the coming rush of euphoria as …
“Stop!”
Winnie looked at Cleaver, standing a few feet away, holding a gun in one hand, his other extended to draw magic like Winnie. He stared in horror.
“What do you think you’re doing, girl? You just drew in more Sable than I thought possible for one person to hold. I thought you were preparing to attack, until you directed it all toward our intruder. What are you doing?”
“I’m healing him, Cleaver,” she said, without moving her eyes from Danny. “He was a prisoner of Kane’s. They experimented on him, left him broken so that now he gets these horrible headaches. I’m the only one who can fix them.” Winnie swallowed, and stole a defiant glance at her host. “I have power that you know nothing about.”
“That may be, but I can see what you’re doing, putting a temporary wall around some spell that’s already set in this boy’s brain. Whoever put it there is dabbling in the worst Sable I’ve ever seen. But what you’re doing is nearly as bad, and that’s not even counting what it must be doing to you.”
“Don’t worry about me, Cleaver. I can take care of myself,” Winnie hissed through clenched teeth and waves of pleasure. She barely heard the intercom chirp with the now familiar voice.
“Boss, it’s Hal again. There’s a Red Leg Inspector here to see you. Claims he’s here to talk. He’s alone and isn’t wired so far as we can tell.”
Cleaver keyed the intercom. “He let you search him?”
“He insisted. He knows the Durham girl is here and wants to see her.”
Winnie was still swimming in euphoria and barely registered what was said. What would a Red Leg inspector want with her beyond an arrest?
She was too distracted to think it through and, in her current state, didn’t care. She heard Cleaver invite the inspector upstairs. From the corner of her eye, she saw him take a dark blanket from a shelf and drape the crates. It wouldn’t hide them from a thorough search, but it would suffice to hinder a casual examination of the room.
She finished her spell work on Danny, then drew her magical tendrils from his mind with what felt like a bottomless sigh. Like always, Winnie was spent from her healing, her pleasure centers still tickled by his proximity.
Danny collapsed to the floor. Winnie leaned against a table for support as the door opened again and Inspector Victor Holmes entered the office.
He looked around until his eyes found Winnie. “Where is she?”
“Where is who?” Winnie asked, most of her mind still fixed on Danny.
“Morgan. What have you done with her?”
Winnie waved towards the door. “She’s fine, with Cait and Tris last I saw her.”
Victor turned toward Cleaver. “I think you have one of my constables, Mr. Yorke. I came alone in a show of good faith to retrieve her.”
“I suppose you’ll swoop back in and take me in for kidnapping once I hand her over,” Cleaver said.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I just want her back and will leave once I have her.”
“He’s sweet on her, Cleaver. That’s why he wants her back so bad,” Winnie purred. “He turned her against me, then made her his personal Red Leg officer. I
sn’t that right, Victor?”
“I’ll talk with you another time, Winnie, when you’re not high.”
Cleaver considered Victor’s offer. Winnie could see the wheels spinning behind his dark eyes as a question nagged at the back of her mind.
“How did you find us, Victor? Is Morgan wearing some sort of tracker?”
The inspector turned to glare at Winnie. “No. I figured she was with you. I rounded up lover boy here and sent him to find you. I simply followed.”
Winnie tracked Victor’s line of thought. Danny did seem to turn up in the oddest places. She looked over at him, dazed in the aftermath of her therapy.
“That’s right,” Victor said. “Your boy has been turned into a perfect bloodhound by Director Kane. He can find you wherever you are. All Kane has to do is trigger the spell he placed in Barber’s brain and the headaches start. You’re the only one who can stop them, with predictable consequences for you both. It was always Kane’s plan to incapacitate you enough to keep you from interfering with his plans.”
“Why tell me all this?” Winnie said. “And why should I believe you?”
Victor laughed. “You can lie to yourself all you want, Winnie. But don’t lie to me. You know I only tell the truth. Friend or enemy, I stand by my word. Kane set this whole thing up to keep you out of his way while he solved the problem you started after destroying Harvester.”
Victor crossed to where Danny was slumped in a chair, put a hand on Danny’s head, and, with a grasping motion, seemed to pull something imaginary away.
Cleaver gasped. She switched her vision to the magical spectrum just in time to see Victor’s fingers peel away both her barrier spell and the deeper enchantment put in place by Kane. Peeling was the only way to describe it. Victor tugged at the edges of each spell until it started to tear from its anchor, then wove the spell’s knitted threads into wisps of translucent energy. Winnie knew from her discovery that the magic preferred to follow its own path. Victor was setting it free.
“How did you do that?” Winnie whispered. She could undo a spell she had cast, and sometimes repair broken weaves in other people’s work, but he was dismantling the threads like one would unravel the frayed cuff of a sweater.
Victor looked up at Winnie. “I don’t know how or why I can do this. I just can, ever since that night at the steel mill. You need to know something else: Neither Morgan nor I knew what Kane was doing there. It was as much a shock to us as it was to you. By the time they had you in custody, neither of us could do anything to help you … not that you needed it, in the end. But you must understand, Morgan had no idea what Kane was up to.”
“It doesn’t matter. She still betrayed me, and I’m not sure I can ever recover from that, even if she had a change of heart and came to warn us about tonight’s raid.”
“Morgan had nothing to do with that. We didn’t know about your plans until Artos called and told us that you were planning on selling it all to Cleaver.”
Winnie stared at Victor, shocked. She couldn’t believe that Artos turn her over like that. It had been his plan, too. But Victor was right. He didn’t lie. It was an irrefutable fact. If he said that Artos had called in the raid on tonight’s operation, then she believed in that truth and whatever struggle accompanied yet another reversal in her loyalties.
It was almost too much to bear. She pushed off the table she’d been leaning against.
She had to clear her head and stand on her own two feet. So much had changed in the space of minutes. So much of what she believed to be true was now undeniably false. Her world was upside down.
She looked at Cleaver. “We need to go back down to the others. Victor will want to see Morgan and I have some things to say that everyone should hear.”
Cleaver nodded and opened his office door. Winnie followed him down to the storeroom along with the others.
It was time finally time to set things right.
CHAPTER 45
When the door to the storeroom opened, Winnie saw Tris and Cait on one side of the room with Morgan standing opposite them, alone. They wanted nothing to do with her. Their obvious surprise when she entered with Cleaver, Victor, and Danny might’ve been amusing if the circumstances weren’t so dire.
Morgan ran to Victor’s side. The way she clung to him, Winnie realized that there was a relationship there that she hadn’t suspected before. It forced her to reconsider her opinion of Victor. She’d always seen him as heartless, bound only to his job. But he’d come here alone, risking his beloved job to rescue Morgan. It made so much more sense in light of this new revelation.
Cait and Tris had a world of wonder in their eyes. Surely, they thought that Victor’s presence meant they were back in custody, somehow betrayed by Cleaver Yorke. Winnie shook her head, forestalling their questions. She cleared her throat and looked at the New Amsterdam boss.
“I’m through with Artos, Cleaver. He’s always had his hidden agenda. And while I knew that, I would have never imagined that he’d turn us in like he did tonight.”
“Winnie,” Cait said, confused by her revelation. “Artos helped you make tonight’s plans. You think he betrayed us?”
Winnie nodded. “I do. We sure as hell didn’t call the Red Legs to raid us. If Morgan hadn’t warned us, we’d have been picked up with Cleaver and his men. Think about it. Who stands to gain the most if we’re all locked up? Who reclaims the throne with no one left to challenge his power?”
Tris stepped forward. “But Winnie, you were on his side in this.”
“Maybe my new abilities forced Artos to reconsider how he dealt with me. I could do things he said hadn’t been possible for a century or more. I think he saw the way people reacted to what I could do and realized I was the hero of the chanter community. Not him. That makes me a threat to his standing.”
She pointed to Victor, who was standing with Morgan.
“He confirmed that Artos called in the raid. He also has some strange power that allows him to dismantle magic spells, says he’s had it since the steel mill.”
Morgan shot Victor a questioning glance. He half-smiled. The inspector probably hadn’t revealed his newfound power to anyone until tonight, after removing Kane’s spell from Danny’s mind. She filed that away for future reference and turned to Cleaver. She needed everyone to understand what she was about to say.
“Cleaver, you’ve always said that we were supposed to work together, that you’d seen us standing side-by-side against whatever is coming. Is that still true?”
“Nothing’s changed there, Winnie. You and I must stand together against the coming apocalypse.”
“Then I accept your offer, at least in part.”
Tris and Cait gaped at their friend. Cleaver looked pleased with himself.
Winnie waved them all off. “I said in part because we’re partners, Cleaver. I’ll not be working for you. I’ll work with you, if you’ll accept that.”
“Partners are bad for business. They always cheat each other in the end. I’ll make you a captain.”
Winnie shook her head. “I’m not Cricket, and this isn’t a negotiation. If anything, I’m offering to let you work with me.”
Cleaver laughed, then fell to a hush when he realized that Winnie wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious.”
“Don’t worry. I have no interest in your business. I just need your help to fight whatever is coming. I can do more than I’ve done if I don’t have to worry about you and Artos or anything else. I’m in my corner, and looking for allies. You need me more than I need you. I don’t know why and I’m not yet sure how, but it’s somehow my fate to stop the Director. For some reason that I don’t understand, and probably don’t even want to know, I might be able to stop the world from crumbling around us.”
Cleaver exhaled, deep and heavy. “So, you’ve no eyes on my business?”
“You run New Amsterdam. I’ll keep Baltimore. When the time comes, I’ll give you instructions. Follow them to the letter and everything will work out.”
<
br /> “How do you know what to do all of the sudden?” Tris asked. “You’ve managed to temporarily return things to normal, but the problems always returned.”
“Victor gave me the idea when he peeled the magic from inside Danny’s head. He picked apart the fibers and returned them to their natural state. They dissolved, back to wherever they came from. I think we’ve all been working magic the wrong way all these years. It isn’t something we control, or stitch into our bidding. The magic is alive, vital, almost aware. It can best be used when you work with it, let it to do as it wishes with only the faintest direction. That was how I doused the fires and killed the storms. Magic doesn’t seek chaos and destruction. It wants to fix what’s broken.”
Victor looked puzzled. Then he said, “That makes what I’ve seen at the crater fit a whole lot better.”
“What do you mean?”
Victor described the grassy bowl with the magical pool at its center. Everyone listened as he related his conversations with Seelie and how the crater seemed impervious to the local tremors and storms.
“It’s almost as if the magic there has healed the land,” he finally finished.
“That’s an example of what I think is wrong with the world. We’re bending magic to our will. It’s meant to shepherd the natural world, but we’re abusing its power and forcing it into unnatural things.”
“So, let me get this straight: You wanna set the magic free so it can do whatever it wants in the world, even though that violates everything we believe about working magic?” Cleaver laughed, a bit too loud. “And you want me to work for you.”
Winnie nodded. “I think this is what happened to Europe. More and more of their public works projects were put under magical control, until they sucked the natural world dry. It’s why every major city here in the United Americas is surrounded by wasteland. We’ve ripped the fabric that holds nature together. We have to return it or suffer Europe’s fate.”