“In the flood?”
“No. Years before. They closed doors, went out of business after the Black November financial crisis in ’52. Apparently they sent out notices to everyone who had stored material there and gave them a time window for retrieval, but I never got my notice. Daniel kept it back, because my past, my sins, my…daughter were all things he held against me, held over me, to make me do what he wanted.”
“So since he didn’t have that whip anymore, you left him.”
“Oh, worse than that. I killed him.”
Kellen didn’t say anything. He was tomb-silent as she told him the rest. How she’d funded the contract. How she’d given Heron the green light to go ahead with the job, knowing that mech-Daniel was with her in Guadalajara the whole time and safe. How she’d written the contract in such a way that it would point to Vallejo, even mentioned him specifically in supersecret subcontract riders. How she’d thought that setting up Vallejo, starting a war with Texas, and using that war to spur Zeke’s reelection would all bundle together to save her from the consortium’s wrath.
How, basically, she was a worse villain than Vallejo ever could be. Surprise, you just fucked a murderer and might even love her a little. As a bonus, she’s the mother of your might-have-been child. Tell me, how does that make you feel?
“Were you specifically trying to get Mari to take that contract?” he asked in a voice much tighter than usual. A voice that scared her, but she didn’t want to analyze it right now.
He was probably asking how far down the evil-machinator hole she’d gone. And she couldn’t really give him a depth estimate. She was still falling.
“I didn’t know she was trying to find her father,” she said. “So no. When you mentioned her name, I was surprised.” Surprised enough to accept Kellen’s bargain. To agree to get Mari off the hook for murder. Which, incidentally, had covered Angela’s own tracks nicely.
Except for Zeke. He must have figured it out. He must have realized what she’d done. And he knew why, too. He’d gone with her to Tamil Nadu. Both times.
So, fine, she killed his friend, he needed payback. That might explain his attempts to kill her—she knew a thing or two about revenge and respected the clean justice of it—but it didn’t excuse all the attacks he’d made on mass populations. It didn’t excuse his warmongering or willingness to be the consortium’s goddamn sword of awfulness. She still had plenty of issues with Zeke’s behavior.
And her own.
“I didn’t set Mari up specifically, but, Kellen, somebody was going to take that contract. I didn’t know who, but I was leading someone right into capital murder. Right into a life sentence. When you told me that the feds would chase her down and kill her ugly and put it all in disaster-porn vids, I almost threw up. Because you’re right, that would have happened. And it would have been because of me.”
The horror of it washed over her again. The cold slink of blood circulating right after she made a tough decision, a wrong decision, but did it anyway. She’d known there was no forgiveness for her. But also, there was no going back to Daniel. And he’d never accepted that.
The pain was good now, though. The guilt was good. She had done terrible things, and her motivations and reasons didn’t excuse them. Justice might be blind, but it wasn’t eye-for-an-eye, not in practice. The things Daniel had done to her didn’t confer a right to kill him. She was bad. She could spend the whole rest of her life trying to right all wrongs in this world, and none of it would wipe her ledger clean.
They might have lain for hours in the bed, wrapped around each other, Kellen and her. His heart beat steady beneath her ear. He didn’t stroke her back again.
After a while, he moved, shifted their tangled limbs until she rolled to her side, and he faced her. He looked at her, at her chin, her mouth, her nose, her eyes, like he was memorizing her features. He kissed her between the brows.
“I love you,” he said. “I gotta go walk off some thoughts.”
In almost looking-down-the-barrel-of-winter Colorado, with a foot of new snow on the ground? Right.
She watched him get up and pull his clothes on. God, he was beautiful. And he was leaving. And he needed to. And she deserved it.
She didn’t beg him to stay. She let him go. And she cried. And she slept.
• • •
Kellen wasn’t in bed when Angela woke. He wasn’t there when she breakfasted. He wasn’t there to calm her nerves about today. Yoink had gone, too, sometime in the night. None of this stark aloneness was unexpected, but it did hurt fresh every goddamned second, the constant shriek of a wild violin when all she wanted was silence.
Her team arrived, and the updates started rolling in, and she forced nose from navel. Her hodgepodge rebel media group, led by Fez and Rafa, all crowded around Fez’s big portable dinosaur monitor and watched the live-stream inauguration. They could have logged into a holocast and VR’d the whole thing, but cramming themselves around a screen, all pressed up together and munching overnuked popcorn, was a whole lot funner. Plus, it gave them a sense of being on the same side, on the same mission. As, of course, they were.
Astonishingly, Angela, sans gloves or any other bio-deterrents, did not catch cooties.
During the middle of the swearing-in, one of the high justices interjected, saying the election was being investigated for irregularities and that going beyond this point could in essence give legitimacy to a fraud. A huge chunk of the in-person audience standing around the cold Denver Capitolina cheered like crazy people. But ultimately the ceremony had continued.
Damn it. That had been one of her potential pause points. If things had gone differently there on the capitol steps, she could have stood down, let time and government take their course.
Fucking justices, going through with it anyhow, despite the petitions and the congressional special session. Now she had to get dressed.
The process of costuming for this ball felt very vintage. And by that, she meant a shitload of work. By the end of it, the sun was about an hour from setting, Angela looked terrifying and commanding—a pretty trick for someone her size—and Rafa was a mess of self-congratulatory and gorgeous tears. She also had a lot more respect for, say, Queen Elizabeth I. Vid makeup and costuming professionals. Cinderella’s poor overworked godmother.
The gown was backless, fitted, with a double row of shiny, useless buttons down the bodice, a point-collared, abbreviated Lolita jacket, and LED-backlit ebony Kuba velvet to the floor, worn snug. Whoa snug. Uncomfortably snug. Rafa had literally sewn her into this rig, and she was never allowed to piss again.
“You look…” he began, kissing forefinger to thumb, but trailed off in adorable sobs.
She handed him a hanky, pulled from a pocket that, strictly speaking for a dress this tight, should not have existed. “I know. Magnificent. Now, let’s go bring down a government.”
• • •
Entrances are important. All the best queens realize this. Thank the makers, then, Angela had expert guidance. Fez arranged for a helicopter to transport them from the airfield to the wide plain of the Colina Capitolina, in case there was traffic. Which there was. Also, protesters had packed themselves in near the capitol complex thick as fleas, so anybody trying to get to the inaugural ball overland was going to be embarrassingly late.
Angela timed her arrival just after the bulk of guests had arrived but before they’d been admitted to the event. While the privileged class, those who hadn’t come in underground via pods, stood in the sec-check line out front, bundled against oncoming winter, her helicopter touched down like a dewdrop, and her team helped her out. Fez and Rafa and the rest fanned out to either side, live-streaming everything, working for good angles and light. The psych-emitter beneath her scalp heated and hummed. Transmitting.
Determination. Beneficence. Resolve. Don’t fuck with me.
She walked the full length of the
mall alone, beneath the weight of all those gazes. All those expectations and hopes. Hundreds right here, millions across the world. Billions, maybe—Fez was just that good.
The pressure hurt, physically hurt, but it wasn’t new. She had been trained for this.
The building towered, a marvel of sustainable architecture and big-area additive manufacturing. It was meant to look vaguely Romanesque, hence the name, but really, it reminded her of an obscenely large wedding cake topped with a nipple and a flag. It was lit by a gazillion light cans of free-fae.
Chloe would have a fucking field day with this thing.
She smiled at the thought, let it wick away some of her nerves, and strode on. The sec-check line was just starting to realize who she was and what that might mean for the evening’s festivities. A rumble of whispers begun behind fans and coat sleeves rolled out across the twilit mall. She couldn’t see their individual faces yet in the twilight and the weird free-fae shadows, but she hoped they were shitting bricks.
Right on the verge, where the fake grass met faker marble and she struggled not to show her bone-deep chill, suddenly, she wasn’t alone.
He was there. Kellen.
In a tuxedo. Black, white waistcoat and tie. No tails. Slim fit.
Holy all-the-fucks. No one in the entire history of hotness had ever worn one of those things and looked so goddamn fine.
He winked and extended an elbow. She threaded her black-gloved hand through it. He was wearing gloves tonight, too. How adorably proper. Made a girl want to peel them off. With her teeth.
He arced his long body over hers, his mouth way too close to her ear, heating up her whole shivery self, and said, “True beauty dwells in deep retreats, whose veil is unremoved till heart with heart in concord beats, and the lover is beloved.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not in so many words. Other, better words were support. Partnership. Care. Him. Love?
She knew she ought to continue forward, but it was so hard not to look up at him and just stare. For hours, she could do this. (No, probably not. Not unless he let her take the tux off, have a nice thorough peek, put it back on, take it off again, and so on. For a long time.)
He was impossible and amazing and heart-stoppingly gorgeous and most importantly here and hers, her very own, and for the whole rest of their hike up the capitol steps, right past the dinky UNAN sec-check crimp, that’s about all she could manage. The thinking, and the looking. Then her brain caught up and she stopped, paused momentarily, and asked, “Wait, Wordsworth? Again? And also, how the fuck did you get here?”
Chapter 19
Well, he’d gone for a walk, just like he’d said, last night. In the cold. With his brain on fire. Had to stop a few feet out the door and go back to fetch his coat and cat. Yoink didn’t much like the snow, but she wasn’t willing to let him out of her sight. For once she didn’t complain, though, just followed. He walked fast, head down, hands deep in his pockets.
Stuck to the shoveled path between the condo units. Walked. Besieged with feeling.
A baby. Theirs. Gone. For a while just the knowledge, that she’d existed, or even almost did, and he hadn’t gotten a chance to know her…well, the weight was too much. Thoughts like that could crush a man flat.
He felt like he’d been tied up and now some giant supernatural prize fighter was taking shots at him. Whump, right in the gut. He firmed his muscles up to endure it, but the blow hit hard. Wet pricked his eyes. He shoved a harsh breath out. Get out of your own brain, you dumb fuck. What, everything gotta be about you? This world’s on fire, and here you are, nose in navel.
Fact was, none of this was about him. He wasn’t the only one who hurt.
That time must’ve been hellish on Angela. She’d been raised all her life to believe that a strong woman did not define herself by her relationships but by her accomplishments. It was a weak woman, a disposable woman, who was only somebody else’s wife, only somebody else’s mother. That wasn’t and had never been her fate. She was meant for better things.
He’d listened when she wove her guilty secrets in the dark, how much she adored fairy tales and bad romantic poetry and pretty dresses and stolen kisses: all things that did not progress her career path. Unworthy things and shameful wants.
She had wanted that baby. He knew it clear as daylight. And he mourned the might-have-been and all her pain.
It must’ve torn her in two, seeing a possibility play out in her mind’s eye and then having fucking Zeke Medina tell her she couldn’t have none of it. That she needed to “get her shit together.” Eyes on. Focus. Solve for X. That she needed to wipe the bad wants off her soul and become his little bespoke political weapon. Alone, though, or on her own. He couldn’t even imagine how abandoned she must have felt, buried by responsibility and with no structure to hold it up. That’s what mentors were for, parents and partners, too, but none of hers stepped up.
He shouldn’t have left her, no matter what she said, sure as hell not right then. But nineteen, right? They hadn’t either of them been fully done yet.
If Angela Neko had grown up to be a killer, and she had, some others shared responsibility for that. Some others needed punishing. He sagged beneath the prize fighter’s onslaught, knowing he deserved all he got. By the time he got down to the road, though, he knew he couldn’t just keep thinking. Thoughts didn’t fix nuthin’. Some action was required here. He tapped his com, and Mari pinged back, and he requested a voice chat rather than text.
“Hey, Doc,” she came on through the com. “You okay? And your scary little senator?”
“I’m…” Not okay. Whump. “How’s the family? How are you?”
“I’m fucking pissed is what I am,” she said, still wet-voiced. Her twang rode her hard, a testament to the tumult she must be going through.
“Your auntie Boo…?”
“Yeah, she’s probably gone. Thanks for the rats and stuff. Yer cat’s keeping us updated better than the goddamn GNN. But there’s something else. Kellen…shit, this isn’t a good way to do it, but hang on to something, honey. Mama Adele took a turn. Delayed bleeding on the brain, and nobody knew. We lost her right at dawn.”
Whump. Hardest yet, too close to his heart. How long could he stand up? He stopped walking, right there in the middle of the road, with snow seeping through the old leather soles of his boots. He wanted to sit down, right there in the slush, and give up. Let the giant pound him into the earth, stop thinking and caring and feeling anything.
But that wasn’t him. And he could not.
“How’s Heron taking it?” he asked Mari.
And Fan. She was gonna be out of her mind. Every cell in his body yearned to get on a landjet and go to them, right now. Screw the government, screw the president, screw all of them.
Except…Angela. She needed him still, now more than she had in a long time. He knew she wouldn’t hold it against him if he ran. Practical Angela, she’d see the logic. But they’d moved way beyond logic, into that wild world of trust. He belonged to her now, and he was man enough to know what that meant. This time, if she was gonna go into the fire, he was fucking going with her.
“Oh, I’ve got Heron,” Mari said. “And Fan. And Garrett. And Chloe. We all lean on each other, and somehow, we all keep standing. Even my asshole dad can be a comfort when he really puts his mind to it. We’re…talking stuff out. How ’bout you? What you need, Doc?”
“A gun, I think.” He’d returned the one she’d given him before he’d left for Texas. He hadn’t thought he’d ever want to use something like that. He’d considered himself tested back on that sub, considered himself a victor over vengeance. Had been real proud of himself. For the restraint. Discipline. But that was yesterday, and today looked a mite different.
“You ever even used one?” Mari asked.
“Put a cow down with a .45 once, when the CASH knocker didn’t work.”
“Yo
u planning on a clean slaughter this time?”
“I dunno. Might get messy.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He told her. The scene that had been playing in his mind since Angela had laid that first revelation on his ears.
“I had a bad thought, Miss Mari,” he said. “Pure bad, and I can’t stop thinking it. What you just said, well, I think it even stronger now.”
“Tell me.”
“I keep seeing myself showing up at the inaugural shindig, and I find that fucker. Medina. I hit him bloody till he apologizes, to the country and to my family and to her, for what he did, and then I stand over him with your gun in my fist, and I tell him this part’s for my other girl, the one she never told nobody about, and I put a bullet in his head. That scene comes on, and fuck, it feels real. Feels necessary. You know what I’m saying?”
She let out a long exhalation, almost a whistle. “Lord, do I, and I feel it right along with you, believe me, but that’s your darkthing talking. You gotta shut that thing up.”
“I know.” Somehow he’d just known she’d get where he was coming from. A killer like her ought to. She called it a darkthing; he called it monster. Tomato, to-mah-to. Maybe it was like God, everybody had one but called it different things. Demons, short fuse, bad temper, darkthing, monster.
“Seriously,” Mari said. “I know Senator Neko’s about to get her little-dictator on, but not even she can save you if you go down this path. You assassinate the president of the unified continent at his inaugural ball in front of a zillion folks watching, that’s a problem.”
“I know.”
She was quiet for a bit, and he heard voices in the background. Maybe just one voice. Maybe just Heron. That was okay. He didn’t have a lot of secrets from his best friend and didn’t mind passing this latest along. Kellen had mostly expected Mari to rat him out anyhow. Those two were tight.
“So we’ve been scheming and have some plans in the works. For right now, you sit,” she said when she came back online. “You just settle and sit, and we’re on our way.”
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