Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  “Whatcha gonna do? Track me to death?”

  The soft classical was replaced with a throbbing beat.

  Zion jerked in her seat. “Absolutely not! My car is a ‘Tainted Love’–free zone.”

  Andy was braver than I was.

  I looked out the window and tried to concentrate. Asidhovisom, asidhovisoh, asidhovizey, asidhovisad, asidhovizyo, asidhovizy — a knife whose blade has two cutting edges.

  Andy dumped a shovelful of dirt into a hole in the ground and tamped it down.

  We’d left Zion’s car in the garage beneath Cordus’s house. Zion had headed upstairs right away, no doubt to plot her radio-related revenge. Andy and I had stepped outside to bury the rat kings.

  “You did a good job tonight, Beth. I’m glad Mr. Yellin sent you our way for a day.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad too. Really glad.”

  Andy grinned.

  Yellin was my tutor. He’d taken over my training when Cordus left town. It’d been mostly language study ever since. That and memorizing the names of the powers, their lands here and in the S-Em, their in-laws, their third cousins thrice removed, the names of their childhood pets, their favorite kind of fish … the man was obsessed with the nobility of the other world. But helping me learn to recognize the presence of workings, like the barriers Andy had made? No, he wasn’t interested in that. It was frustrating. If Cordus were still handling my training, I might be seeing through fully by now.

  Andy shifted another shovelful and then looked up at me, smirking. “You want to dig the second hole?”

  “Sure.” I reached for the shovel.

  He pulled it back. “Shut up. I was kidding. Girls can’t dig holes.”

  “I dig holes just fine.”

  “Didn’t know you swung that way, hon.”

  I groaned. “That was painfully bad, Andy.”

  “You lay a belt-high floater over the plate, I gotta take a swing.”

  “Am I supposed to make a joke about ‘floaters,’ now?”

  He looked pained. “Please, don’t even.”

  I laughed, and he grinned at me, shaking his head.

  I hung out while he buried the second rat king. Then we put the shovel away and headed around to the front of the house. We climbed the broad white marble steps that led from the driveway up to a tall portico. Andy pushed open one of the twelve-foot-tall double doors and we walked into the mansion’s towering entry hall. A great silver chandelier — a replica of a tree limb studded all over with tiny lights — glimmered above us. Twin staircases curled up the sides of the room. It was all done out in white marble.

  As soon as I stepped on that floor, I could feel the cold seeping into the soles of my feet. A lot of the mansion was like that: frigidly opulent.

  Fortunately, we were allowed to alter our own living spaces as we saw fit, and over the last few months, I’d done as much work on mine as my limited stipend allowed. It had begun to feel homey.

  And I had friends. That made the place a lot nicer.

  “Wanna have a beer before bed?” Andy asked. “Theo said to give him a call when we got in.”

  “Yeah, beer. Definitely.”

  We didn’t have to call Theo. We found him sprawled on one of Andy’s leather couches, reading a novel. He had a bottle in the crook of one arm and was using a working to pull a ribbon of beer out of it and into his mouth.

  Theo could do amazing things with water and water-based fluids. I’d seen him ice over a pond so we could go skating in July. I’d also seen him boil a pot of soup without using the stove. But his combat skills were what made him valuable to Cordus — shields and blunt weapons made of super-dense water, jerking all the liquids out of someone’s body, that sort of thing.

  I admired the thin golden spiral of beer. That he could pull off delicate work like this was particularly impressive. It meant he actually practiced instead of just relying on what came naturally through his gift.

  He glanced up at me, and the beer ribbon started running through a complex series of loops. It took me a second to realize it spelled “Hi Beth.”

  Andy snorted. “Show off.”

  Theo grinned. “Damn straight.”

  Andy dug a couple beers out of the fridge, and we sat around chatting and eating nuts and popcorn. Mostly I listened as the guys gossiped about the state of the organization. I knew they were worried about how things were going in Cordus’s absence. I tried to pay attention, but I was tired, and they were mostly talking about people I didn’t know — folks stationed in the south, the west, up in Canada. I found myself zoning out. Whatever the problems, Cordus would fix them when he got back.

  That thought prompted a little shudder. His ways of fixing problems were disturbing.

  “You okay?”

  I looked up. Andy and Theo were both watching me.

  “Yeah, sure. I’m just tired.” I shifted uncomfortably under their gazes.

  Andy and Theo were big, tough-looking guys, but assuming they were nothing but bruisers would get you in trouble pretty quick. They were both plenty smart. They’d each been drafted into Cordus’s organization at age sixteen. That meant finishing high school was out of the question, much less going to college. But they both went ahead and got GEDs, and Theo had applied to colleges too — just to prove he could get in, I guess. Andy made fun of him for it — said it was a waste of money. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Andy’d applied to a few places himself, on the sly.

  That’s all to say, it was pretty hard to put one over on them. You could distract them, but fooling them outright was tough.

  I yawned. “What time is it, anyway?”

  Theo glanced at his phone. “Almost midnight.”

  “I have to get to bed.” I stood, brushing bits of almond skin off my jeans. “Mr. Yellin’s taking me out visiting early tomorrow.”

  “My sympathies,” Andy said.

  Theo shot him a don’t-badmouth-the-Seconds-in-their-own-home look.

  Andy shrugged.

  “’Night, guys. Thanks for the beer.”

  They both stood and walked me to the door. I could almost hear my mother saying, Their mama raised them right. She’d have been right, too. I’d met Andy and Theo’s mother. She was a force to be reckoned with.

  It took me a few minutes to walk to my room — the house was that big.

  My door was unlocked. Everyone left their doors open. Lock-opening was such a common working that keys were sort of pointless. Besides, Cordus wouldn’t take kindly to stealing and could easily identify a thief. When he was around, that is.

  I swung open the door and stepped into a large room — my home, now.

  It had once been decorated in dark wood furniture and rich, pale fabrics. Now multicolored braided-rag rugs covered the floor, and the walls were decorated with family photos and my nieces’ artwork. My great-grandmother’s quilt had replaced the original silk duvet. It had been made for a double bed, so the sheets and blankets stuck out comically on the sides. I’d kept the massive mahogany desk but had covered it and the wall behind it with corkboard.

  The graceful Queen Anne living room set was gone, replaced by a mismatched pair of couches I’d found on Craigslist. One had a coarse brown-and-orange paisley design, and the other was a faded moss green all over. The green one had a large water stain on the seat. I hoped it was water, at any rate. They were unattractive as individuals and looked awful as a set. Zion had declared them “vomitous.” But they were comfy.

  I wasn’t done with the place. The TV was too big, mile-high cream damask drapes still covered the windows, and I hadn’t yet found a way to put my mark on the huge, marble-coated bathroom. But the place had started to feel a bit more like me.

  Back in my home town, I’d known I wanted to keep living in my mother’s house after she passed. I couldn’t have told you why, except for something vague and cliché: it was familiar, it reminded me of her. On some level, though, I must’ve understood that a place can be a companion in its own right. I’d felt terri
bly alone a lot of the time, and my mother’s house, my house, had been a friend of sorts. The whole town had, really. The kind of friend that drives you bat-shit crazy a lot of the time — lord knows, small-town Wisconsin has its downsides — but a friend nonetheless.

  Maybe I was stuck here, now. Maybe Cordus was never going to let me go. But that didn’t mean I had to focus on what I’d lost. Instead, I focused on what I could control, and if that meant dumping Cordus’s expensive furniture in a probably offensive way, well, bonus.

  It’s not like I never mourned what Cordus had taken from me: my home, my job, my best friend, my brother, my four little nieces. Even my clothes. I did mourn. I just tried to keep it to a minimum. It was pointless.

  Plus, my current situation had some advantages. I’d met some great people, like Andy and Theo. And Kara. And Zion. I was a lot less lonely than I’d been before. And I’d stopped having the panic attacks that had plagued me for most of my life. That was huge.

  I pulled off my boots, then crossed over to the closet and stripped off my filthy jeans and sweatshirt. For a moment, I considered just throwing them away, but clothes cost money, and I didn’t have much of that.

  I balled the jeans up inside a towel before sticking them in the hamper, then headed to the bathroom. I needed a shower. Big time.

  The bathroom looked like it belonged in a four-star hotel: massive Jacuzzi tub, separate shower, double sinks, and a bidet, with beige marble on every possible surface. I thought it was sort of silly looking, but darned if the place didn’t have great water pressure. And I didn’t pay the utility bills.

  I got in and closed the glass door. The water was wonderfully hot. I stood under the pelting stream long after I’d scrubbed away the tunnel grime, letting the heat soak down into my bones.

  Finally I climbed out, put on my PJs, and got in bed. I lay there fingering the quilt. Maybe I could get Suzanne, my next-door neighbor back in Dorf, to send me the little cross-stitched throw pillow I’d kept on my bed. I’d made the pillow-cover for my mother when I was twelve.

  Too bad the old house didn’t have any spare curtains.

  I lay there, thinking about other things I might ask Suzanne to send, until my thoughts grew fuzzy and I drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 2

  I was dreaming that he was with me.

  I was in Callie’s king-size bed, back in Dorf. Everything looked different — different colors, different shapes — yet the place was unmistakable.

  Callie was out in the kitchen, making tea for me. She would come in and find me with him. That couldn’t happen.

  Under the covers, a hand touched my stomach, just beneath the ribs. Fingers traced down to my navel, circled, and then moved to my hip, pausing for a long moment where the skin was thin over the bone.

  I became aware of the bed sheet lying across my breasts, scraping softly as I breathed.

  It’s just a dream.

  The hand found the furrow where my thigh met my body. A single finger slid slowly inward.

  I stared at the ceiling, my eyes welling. In the kitchen, the water had boiled. My tea was ready. Callie would open the door. She would see.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath and turned my head, meeting brown-and-golden eyes intent with desire.

  I came awake with a gasp, heart racing, body humming. After a few seconds of shocked paralysis, I sat up in bed and looked around.

  I was in my suite. The gray light of very early morning showed around the edges of the drapes. Everything was just as I’d left it the night before.

  I drew up my knees and rested my head on them, trying to regain my equilibrium.

  I didn’t dream of Cordus every night, but it happened often enough. At first, I’d been convinced he was invading my thoughts as I slept. He could probably do that sort of thing if he wanted to — he had a gift for manipulating the minds of others.

  The exact nature of the dreams eventually changed my mind. I never touched him. We never actually had sex. Things never progressed beyond some moment of possibility without certainty.

  Like in this one, where he hadn’t actually touched …

  I stopped that thought.

  And there was always dread, always the sense that I was doing something horrible and was going to be caught.

  Eventually I had to admit it all added up to my own psychodrama — my mind working over my own desire and the feelings of shame that came with it. The man wasn’t manipulating my mind from afar. They were just dreams, plain and simple. Dreams about the taboo, about wanting something I absolutely should not want.

  Not dreams, I told myself. Nightmares.

  I couldn’t be attracted to Cordus. He was beautiful, but he was a monster.

  But I was. There was no way around the fact. When he got back from wherever he was, I was going to have a hell of a time saying “no.”

  When he got back …

  No one knew where he was — no one who was talking, anyway. At first, we assumed he’d gone into the Octoworld isolate to hunt down Graham. But as weeks went by, that explanation seemed less and less plausible.

  I’d decided he must be investigating the matter of Limu and Eye of the Heavens. I’d felt a lot less worried after that. But I was the only one Cordus had confided in about that whole thing, so I couldn’t share my theory with anyone else.

  Now four months had passed with no word of him. That’s why Andy and Theo were worried. Cordus might be a monster, but at least he was a known quantity. If he didn’t come back, some other Second Emanation power would seize this territory and snap us all up as servants. I’d seen some of the others and wanted nothing to do with them.

  Especially Limu.

  My throat tightened. I hadn’t had a panic attack in months, but the thought of falling into Limu’s hands was almost enough to do it. In truth, I’d probably shoot myself if I thought that was about to happen. Better to eat a bullet than be burned alive.

  I shook my head.

  Cordus would come back soon. He had to.

  At the thought of him, an image from my dream swamped me, rich in sensory detail.

  I gritted my teeth, swung my legs out of bed, and padded toward the bathroom. Good thing I’d had a nice hot shower the night before because I was about to take a cold one.

  The breakfast choices in the estate’s dining room were quiche Florentine and waffles with real maple syrup.

  I love waffles. Real maple syrup? Not so much. It’s sort of thin and strange.

  And no, they didn’t have the fake stuff. It’d taken me weeks to work up the courage to ask one of the waiters. I’d been afraid I’d get a snooty look in response, and I did. Well, it wasn’t an obvious look. I’m sure it was there, though.

  I set my waffle atop my coffee cup and started stirring sugar into the puddle of syrup I’d poured onto my plate.

  “That’s not something you see every day,” Andy said. “What’s the word I’m looking for? ‘Disgusting’ — yeah, that’s it.”

  “Shut up. It’s not sweet enough.”

  Andy and Theo laughed at me. Even Gwen, who was more reserved, chuckled.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, at least I wasn’t up all night staring at my Gene Kelly poster.”

  Gwen let out a startled bark of laughter.

  Theo went, “Ooooooo.”

  Andy pointed his syrupy knife at me.

  “Sweetheart, your sexless existence is the source of all your problems.”

  I flushed and looked down. He didn’t know the half of it.

  Theo shook his head. “Beth, you’re throwing slow-pitch. When’re you going to learn?”

  Andy wrinkled his brow in mock concern. “You’d think all these months hanging out with the brute squad would’ve taught her.”

  I focused on floating my waffle on the pool of doctored syrup.

  “Must be because the brute squad isn’t all she hangs out with,” Andy continued.

  Gwen shot him a warning look.

  “Yeah, yeah. You know he
doesn’t come to the dining room. All these worthless-peon cooties.”

  They were talking about Yellin. I’d be spending the day with him.

  I really would rather have buried rat kings.

  Twenty minutes later, I knocked on a door in Cordus’s wing of the mansion. A reedy, heavily accented “you may enter” wafted through from the other side, and I went in.

  Lodovico Yellin sat behind a heavy wooden desk at the far side of the room. It was a spacious office — not as large and opulent as Cordus’s, but nice enough.

  Yellin was a tall, slender man. He wore fashionable little glasses, and his brown hair was liberally mixed with gray.

  He looked me over with an expression of distaste.

  “If you will excuse the observation, Miss Ryder, the cut of those slacks does not flatter you. The rise is too low. In addition, your hair is unevenly parted.”

  Yellin was a Second, like Cordus. Well, sort of like him. Cordus was an émigré and one of the great powers of the Second Emanation, Earth’s multilayered parallel world. Yellin might be from that world, but he was no prince. Near as I could tell, he was some kind of courtier.

  When Cordus claimed his First Emanation territory in North America, he brought a handful of people with him from the other world. People like Yellin. They lived in Cordus’s wing of the mansion and rarely came out to mix with the rest of us — never by choice, so far as I could tell. They pretty clearly held us in contempt. I’d never laid eyes on any of them until Cordus left. Then three came out of the woodwork to run things in his absence. But the other two, Kibwe Okeke and Elanora Wiri, had made themselves scarce, of late. I hadn’t seen either of them in weeks, actually.

  I suppose it’s not surprising. The Seconds had realized only in the last few decades that Nolanders — people like me, born in this world but able to manipulate essence in a small way — had some use-value. That’s when they started collecting us. Before that, they’d enjoyed hunting us. That’s what a friend told me, anyway.

  I got the idea that Yellin missed the good old days.

  Well, maybe that was unfair, but he certainly wasn’t happy about having to be out among us hoi polloi with our ill-fitting pants and ill-parted hair.