by W. J. May
“Fine. I’m sure she wouldn’t notice.”
Yeah, that sounded more like Angel.
She nodded swiftly and swung her feet over the mattress, shakily getting to her feet. He, Julian, and the rest of them had obviously been healed by Alicia after she’d left for the bus stop. But Rae was still sporting every painful injury from the night at the store.
Devon followed her wincing progress with a concerned frown.
“Do you want me to…” He took a step forward, then caught himself. “Do you want me to call a doctor? Some of those burns look pretty bad—”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine.” She flashed him a quick smile. “That’s what scarves are for, right?”
Devon had once told her the exact same thing, after she’d gotten splashed with a wave of silver nitrate in a training session. The doctor was off-campus, dealing with an injured agent, and she was scheduled to be a student greeter at an alumni dinner later that evening, looking like she’d just crawled her way out of a bomb site. Devon had soothed away her panic attack with a time-tested solution. Long sleeves, long pants, and gloves. Throw on a scarf, and no one would ever know.
“Uh…yeah,” he muttered, suddenly looking confused. “That’s right.” He stared at her for a second longer than was normal, then stuffed his hands into his pockets. “So, did you come up with some kind of plan? Do you know where you’re going to go from here?”
Nope. Nada. Not a freakin’ clue.
“Yeah,” Rae said quickly, averting her eyes. “I have a little money saved up, so I think I’ll camp out at a hotel for the next couple of nights while I try to find a place in town.”
It wasn’t actually a little money at all. It was about five thousand euros—the maximum amount she’d been able to drain out of Kent’s various ATMs before the bus had arrived.
“You’re looking for a place in London?” Devon sounded surprised. “Why don’t you just go back and stay wherever it was you were staying before the morning we found you?”
Rae stared at him patiently, waiting for it to click. She couldn’t do that because the place she had been staying before happened to be the exact same place that he was staying before. Which happened to be dangerously off-limits right now.
His brow tightened as he ran his question against her story, and came up blank. After a second of watching, Rae provided a gracious conversational escape.
“I think it’s time for a fresh start. What better place to do it than in the city?”
Devon’s face cleared with an honest smile. “It’s a great city. You know, I always imagined settling down here myself. Once things slowed down for Jules and me with the Privy Council.” His eyes softened with a wistful sort of nostalgia before cooling abruptly. “But then came Cromfield, and…well, you know.”
Awkward. She certainly did know. She knew a lot more than he thought she did.
Desperate to keep the conversation going, but not wanting to spook him in the process, she innocently tilted her head to the side. “Well, Cromfield’s gone now, and I think that’s a great idea. Is that why you and Julian bought this house together?”
Another shadow of confusion darkened his beautiful eyes as he was confronted with yet another inconsistency. Yet another problem with the new life narrative forced upon him.
“I don’t…I’m not sure exactly…” His voice trailed off with sudden hesitation. “Julian and Angel are going to have their own place together, so I guess I’ll just…”
Rae’s heart broke as he made up his mind on the spot.
“I guess I’ll just move out. When the time is right.”
He’ll move out. Of his perfect dream house. He’ll give it to Julian and Angel, because it’s too big a space for one person to live in alone. And he was very much alone.
“That’s…” Rae glanced around as she struggled to find the words, “that’s too bad. This is a beautiful place. I couldn’t imagine leaving it…”
“Yeah…” Devon followed her gaze. “Me neither.”
There was an awkward beat of silence. A silence made more awkward when Julian shattered it by calling upstairs.
“Dev! You ready? I’m starving.”
Devon jumped guiltily, then called back down. “Yeah, just a second!” A desperately conflicted look flickered across his face before he pulled in a deep breath and turned back to Rae, suddenly out of time. “So, listen, the others and I are going to be staying in Kent for the next few weeks.”
Rae nodded slowly, not really understanding his point. “Yeah, I figured.”
He paused.
“It’s over an hour’s drive from here. Way out in the country.”
She blinked. “Yeah, I was there yesterday. I know where it is.”
An awkward quiet filled the room.
Devon glanced nervously towards the door, then looked back with a touch of amused impatience. “No one has any reason to come back to the city. For weeks.”
Cryptic much?
Rae just stared blankly, then shook her head. “Okay, well, do you want me to give back the key, or just put it under the flower—”
“Rae!”
Their eyes locked.
“Keep the key.”
There was a beat of silence. The kind of silence that seemed to swallow you from the ground up. At first she waited for him to take it back, or amend it. Or to pull out his Privy Council-issue handcuffs, yell Psych! and lead her away in chains.
When he did none of those things she took a step back, sure she’d heard him wrong.
“Keep the…” A wave of inexplicable frustration washed over her, and before she knew what she was doing she strode forward and swatted him upside the head. “Are you crazy?!”
With a burst of supernatural speed he flew back a step. Staring as though, while he wasn’t crazy, he suddenly wasn’t so sure about her.
But Rae was just getting started.
Like it or not, both she and her fiancé had a deranged psychopath delightfully ruining their lives. A sixteen-year-old lunatic who, for all intents and purposes, had already won the fight. So, whether it would help Rae’s case or not, both she and her fiancé had to adjust their actions accordingly. That meant not letting perfect strangers sleep in their beds. That meant not getting overcome by the sight of bare legs at the cost of all better judgement.
No matter how much she might want him to…
“You woke up on a hillside the other day, with no idea how you’d gotten there, covered in scrapes and bruises, with me—spouting off that I was your long-lost fiancée.” She tried to lower her voice, but wasn’t sure how well it was working. “Since then I broke into your house, took a bath in your body wash, and slept in your bed. And now you’re telling me to keep the key?!” She smacked him again. “What the bloody heck is wrong with you?!”
Devon’s mouth fell open and one hand lifted slowly to the back of his head. At first, he simply looked terrified that she might have alerted Julian. Then, he turned back to her in shock. “I thought you looked trustworthy…”
Rae facepalmed. “You thought I looked trustworthy?!”
The old Devon would have kicked this new Devon’s ass!
He shrugged mildly. “I thought you didn’t have a place to stay—”
“Of course I don’t have a place to stay, but that’s not the point!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “You don’t give a girl like that the keys to your house. Think, Devon!”
Throughout the lecture, Rae was vaguely aware that she was whisper-shouting against her own interests. She was even aware that she was quite possibly re-establishing the ‘crazy stalker’ theory in Devon’s mind. But she couldn’t help herself. Of all the times to get lax about security! And Julian! Why the hell wasn’t the all-seeing psychic clueing in to what was going on?!
A throat cleared softly, and she looked back up to see Devon frowning at the floor.
“So, do you not want the key—”
“I want the key.”
His lips twitched, and he
looked up with the faintest twinkle in his eye. “You’re the weirdest girl I’ve ever met.”
Rae bit her lip and looked down with a hidden smile. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that somewhere before…”
* * *
Throughout the course of Rae and Julian’s friendship, they had slept in the same bed many times. Being covert agents sometimes required it. Being best friends sometimes encouraged it. Whether it was due to convenience, necessity, or simply after having passed out during one of their epic movie-wine-transcendental-discussion fests, it was an all-too familiar scene.
Needless to say, it wasn’t the first time she’d been in his room. Things were rather different, however, now that he was living with Angel.
Rae proceeded inside with caution. The front door had long since locked behind the two men as they made their way out into the city. It wasn’t fear of being discovered that was hesitating her step. It was the unfamiliar wasteland that lay before her.
Julian liked things neat. He’d grown up in foster care. Lost his mother. Was virtually estranged from his father. And spent the rest of this time straddling the delicate line between two cosmic worlds. He liked to take control where he could.
This…was not neat.
“What is this?” Rae murmured to herself as she moved across the floor, pausing every now and then to survey the destruction.
Bras were thrown over lampshades. Cracked CDs were littering the floor. A stack of empty wine bottles was piled up in the corner like a particularly risky game of Jenga, and from the looks of things Julian’s entire wardrobe had been dumped out to make room for Angel’s. “Does anyone really need this many shades of lip gloss?”
Julian may have liked things neat, but Angel was raised in chaos. A strange, severe kind of chaos that was oddly sparse and lethal in its consequence. When Cromfield died and she moved out of the cave, she had compensated with a series of odd little quirks.
Shoplifting, hording, what can best be described as a mild tendency to buy everything advertised on late-night television. Together, the two of them made an interesting pair. Rae had just never known quite how interesting until today.
“At least the girl’s got style.”
It was true. In fact, it was one of the only things that she and Molly had bonded over, aside from their mutual love for Julian. Both girls spent the majority of their funds on continually endeavoring to make sure that they walked around like a billboard come to life. Granted, Molly was a little more Park Avenue Princess, while Angel ironically dressed like an undercover spy.
Works for me.
With the words ‘I don’t want this crazy chick in my house’ echoing in her head, Rae decided to take the best of everything. Black leather pants. Low-cut black silk shirt. Black leather jacket, cut at all the right angles. Fortunately, the two girls also happened to be the same shoe size, and knee-high combat boots were the next to go. Then Rae got started with the jewelry…
About twenty minutes later she was standing on the front stoop, looking like some cinematic badass with an attitude to match. Decked out in head-to-toe perfection, holding a Devon-approved house key, it was a lot easier to put her problems into perspective.
She was going to beat Samantha. She was going to get her life back. And she was going to take it all in stride.
Why? For one simple reason. You see, the rest of the world may have forgotten—but she never would. She was Rae Kerrigan.
It was time they had a little reminder…
Resisting the urge to strut in slow motion, Rae stomped down the sidewalks of London. For the first time, her head was swirling with the beginnings of a plan.
First she would get some breakfast to recharge. Then she would go to the bank and take out even more money to fund her little hiatus. Then she would figure out a way to track down Samantha Nielson once and for all. If anyone could do it, she could.
Except, as usual, fate had other plans.
She was so focused and determined, she didn’t even see the man in the heavy overcoat walking towards her. When he bumped into her shoulder, she assumed it was an accident. She was in the process of apologizing when he pulled away.
It wouldn’t be until another hour or so later that she’d realize she’d gotten mugged…
Chapter 6
Still riding on a wardrobe adrenaline high, and secretly hoping that someone might recognize her, Rae skipped over all the hundreds of little cafés in town and hopped onto the subway instead. Fortunately, her old metro card was still tucked deep in her purse pocket, and only about twenty minutes later she was walking into Jake’s Grill.
Hot steam made her hair waft up, salty oil was slick beneath her shoes, and the smell of strong coffee brought all her synapses back to life. She slid into a corner booth with a nostalgic smile.
The first time she’d come for fish and chips—London’s finest—had been back in her Guilder days. Jake’s was one of the closest diners to the campus, while still technically being in the city, and had already been long- established as an unofficial hangout for the tatùed.
She remembered thinking that it was a little grimy, but had character. The décor hailed back to that 1950s Americana theme that British countries were obsessed with and, more often than not, either Elvis or Muddy Waters was crooning away on the jukebox.
Ironically enough, no one had ever figured out why the diner was named Jake’s. Randall, the man who owned the place, was easily twelve feet tall. He ran things with crisp efficiency and a smile, never asking questions about the droves of hyperactive teenagers, all of whom seemed to be living the same inside joke, who frequented his establishment. Over the years, he had come to know Rae and the gang rather well. She and Molly had sent him a Christmas card just last year.
“Morning, Randall.” Rae lit up with a bright smile as he walked past her table with an empty mug and a pot of coffee. She gazed up hopefully as he set it down in front of her and began to pour. “Crazy rain out today, huh? I thought the tunnel was going to flood.”
He glanced down at her with a curious frown, blinked twice, then shook his head. “Yep…the weather’s been like that all week in these parts.” Without cracking a grin, he pulled out his notepad and clicked open his pen. “What’ll it be this morning?”
She decided to go out on a limb. Hoping beyond hope that her troubles were limited to the tatùed world. “Just the usual, please.”
He looked up in confusion, and she stifled a sigh.
“Blueberry waffles with bacon on the side.”
The pen flew over the paper. “Coming right up.”
She sank miserably into the vinyl seat cover as he headed back to the kitchen to put in the order. Really? Even Randall? Could Samantha leave her nothing?
How the freakin’ heck had she been able to reach so many people? The kid was sixteen years old, for bloody sake. It had taken Rae months of practice to develop some of her more difficult hybrid ink. By all accounts, Samantha hadn’t even had her abilities that long.
Just my luck…the girl’s a natural.
Rae was still fuming when Randall returned and set a steaming hot plate down in front of her. He took in her abruptly sullen mood with silent curiosity, then shook his head with a hidden little smile. Kids these days.
“You want anything else?”
Rae stared despondently at the cheerful-looking blueberries, then promptly drowned them in a river of syrup. “No thanks, Randall. This looks great.”
He nodded briskly and walked away, chuckling under his breath.
As Rae half-heartedly dug her fork into her food—deflating, as all her fresh resolve vanished on a dime—she couldn’t help but glance about the diner. It was mostly empty at this hour. Few people came for breakfast, preferring it instead for lunch and dinner. But in a few hours, no doubt, the place would be crawling with students from Guilder. In fact, seeing as how the joint cooperation to take down Cromfield had created stronger than ever inter-agency ties, there would probably be a few Knights here as
well.
Those are the things I’m supposed to be dealing with. The duties of the Privy Council. Our newfound alliance with the Knights. Public perception of what happened at the factory. The continuing liaison with the palace.
I’m the freakin’ president! THAT’S what I’m supposed to be doing!
She poked glumly at her pancakes, utterly depressed and frustrated all at the same time.
Not this. Eating my emotions. Plotting my revenge on a sixteen-year-old girl.
Come to think of it, Rae had no idea who was currently running their secret government, seeing as how she had been effectively erased from the history books. Customarily, there were votes and contingencies set into place in case the person in charge happened to die, as Presidents of the Privy Council had a nasty habit of doing. But if they believed there wasn’t anyone to replace…? What then?
Realistically, it was probably Louis Keene. He was the one who had stepped in when Carter defected and Victor Mallins killed himself. He was a good man, a strong man, and more than capable. Or better yet Commander Fodder had taken over, finally merging the two agencies and saving Rae the headache of having to govern one of them.
Not that I have that problem anymore…
The waffles were delicious, but Rae found that she’d suddenly lost her appetite. She pushed the food around on her plate for a while, anything to feign normalcy for even a few moments longer, before finally throwing in the towel.
“You sure you’re done?” Randall appeared from out of nowhere and started clearing things away. “You didn’t eat much…”
“I’m done.” Rae groped around in her purse for her wallet. “It was really good, I guess I’m just not that hungry.”
Might have something to do with the fact that you don’t know my name.
He shook his head with a purse-lipped smile. “You know, you kids these days walk around like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. It wasn’t like that back when I was growing up. You should see some of the types I get in here.”
Rae snorted sarcastically as she continued looking. She had gone to school with most of the types he got in here. And, yeah, they were an odd bunch. “I’ll bet.” Her fingers scraped the bottom of the leather satchel, but came up empty. A faint line creased her forehead as she dug around some more. And then some more after that. And some more after that.