“Shut up,” Cass responded, leaning in for a kiss. Zach shut up and pulled her closer, running a finger up her bare spine.
Cass rolled off and popped up onto her feet.
“Break time’s over,” she said. “We still have six or seven miles to go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Zach replied, getting to his feet a bit more slowly. He groaned a little and then looked at his torn sleeve and brush-burned elbow. “Ow,” he added, “can I get a kiss for this?”
“Yes, if you can catch me.”
And with that, Cass was off like a shot, laughing.
Cass didn’t get very far, though, before it was obvious that if she didn’t slow down, Zach wasn’t going to catch her. She was too fast. So she started to bleed off some of her speed, attempting not to be obvious about it. Zach, though, was rumbling along with sufficient effort and concentration that she needn’t worry about him noticing.
Just as Zach was about to catch up, the trail once more broke free of the tree line and skirted the edge of a dramatic cliff that overlooked the rest of the valley, giving them a clear view of the monastery. Cass came to a halt and Zach happily bumped into her from behind, reeling her in as if she was going to fall to her death without his protection.
The drop was vertiginous. But that wasn’t what bothered Cass.
In addition to the heat from Zach’s body, she could feel a faint, almost magnetic pulse call out to her when she fixed her attention on the ancient well at the center of the monastery compound. She’d felt the pulse frequently, at varying degrees of strength, in the months since she’d first seen it.
She didn’t like the way it tugged at her now, insistent, calling after her.
She needed to look into that.
Chapter Three
Cass looked ridiculous. She hated the traditional blue fighting garb that Kumiko insisted on her wearing when they trained. There was a time and place for looking like a cross between a sixteenth-century Smurf and a ninja—wait, was there?—but Cass didn’t see why they needed it for sparring. The next thing she knew, Kumiko would insist that she wear one of those upside-down wicker baskets that traveling samurai sported on their heads.
Cass tugged at her sleeves uncomfortably and adjusted the robe’s belt.
“Focus, Cassandra,” Kumiko instructed, “or I will insist that you also wear a takegasa on your head.”
Cass frowned. Can this witch read my mind?
Dogen smiled and nodded. He seemed to like the idea—though Cass suspected that he would smile and nod along with anything Kumiko said.
Dogen was her sparring partner today. He beckoned Cass forward, inviting her to attack him. His massive body cast an even larger shadow across the ring. Cass’s job was to learn how to intentionally engage her powers as a Seer, instead of just stumbling into them when she got lucky in a moment of peril.
“Time,” Kumiko intoned from the sidelines, “is the truth at the heart of reality. Everything real arises and everything real passes away. To ‘see’ the truth as a Seer, you must grasp the truth of time.”
Right, Cass thought, see the truth of time. Also, do that while fighting a three-hundred-pound man who would smile with affection while squashing you like a bug.
Dogen positioned himself at the center of the sparring ring so that Cass would never be far from his reach. Cass danced at the edges of the circle, postponing their clash. She was supposed to practice the most basic physical manifestation of her powers: getting time to slow and expand so that she had more room to operate.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing her attention on the recess behind her weak eye. She could feel the tiny flicker of heat back there that was associated with engaging her powers. She tried to feed the fire by willing it to grow—Fire, grow! she thought to herself—but nothing really happened. Time marched on at its regular, mad pace.
In the meantime, however, Dogen’s patience had run out and he’d decided to get things started. He took a swing at Cass’s head with a fist the size of a coconut. Cass ducked and rolled. Except, rather than rolling away and trying again to engage her powers, she simply followed her old fighting instincts and rolled between his legs, kicking Dogen in the back of the knee and knocking him off balance. Unfortunately, Cass hadn’t really considered the consequences of this move because, as she now plainly saw, she was about to be flattened by Dogen’s giant, looming ass.
You’d make a terrible lumberjack, Jones, Cass thought to herself as she squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the impact.
But a moment later, when she found that she hadn’t been flattened, she snuck a peek and saw that she was surrounded by a shimmering green shield of light. Kumiko had saved her. The look on Kumiko’s face, however, said that she may have saved her so that she could take a shot at Cass herself.
The green light died away and Dogen, having regained his balance, reached down to offer Cass a hand up.
“Smooth move,” he joked, smiling.
“Thanks,” Cass said sarcastically, dusting herself off. She couldn’t help but offer a little smile in return. Dogen’s good nature was infectious.
“Dogen, you’re dismissed for today,” Kumiko said, frowning at them both.
Dogen shuffled off and Kumiko joined Cass in the center of the ring. Kumiko, not even five feet tall, gestured for Cass to sit down so that she could look her in the eyes. Cass complied, though she was reluctant to accept the reprimand she guessed was coming her way.
“That is not what we agreed to practice,” Kumiko began.
Yada, yada, Cass thought. With great power comes blah, blah, blah.
But Kumiko surprised her. What came next was diagnostic, not accusatory. Kumiko took Cass’s head in her hands and turned it gently to the side so that she could look directly into Cass’s cloudy, wandering eye.
“I do not understand,” Kumiko said, looking into the eye from different angles, “why access to your powers has anything to do with your weak eye. There are no reported cases of this ever being true for any other Seer.”
Cass shrugged. “I’m just special, I guess.”
“Be still,” Kumiko said, her grip on Cass’s chin hardening. Kumiko leaned in very, very close to get an even better look. She was so close that Cass could have puckered her lips and kissed her if she’d wanted.
She didn’t.
“Your eye,” Kumiko continued, “appears to function like a circuit breaker, interrupting the normal flow of your power . . . unless perilous circumstances force the eye into alignment so that the energy flows.”
Kumiko paused for a moment, weighing her words. “I don’t think you were born this way. I think this was done to you—intentionally. I think someone deliberately rerouted your powers through that wandering eye, short-circuiting your access to them.”
Kumiko gestured for Cass to stand up. Cass did, rolling her liberated head and popping bones in her neck.
“Also, I have a strong hunch that both your weak eye and this short-circuiting of your powers are deeply intertwined with how your emotions have been locked away.”
Without warning, but with surgical precision, Kumiko jabbed three rigid fingers right at Cass’s solar plexus. Reflexively, Cass jumped backward, dodging the blow.
“Good,” Kumiko said softly, advancing on Cass again. Apparently, they were back to sparring.
Cass settled into a defensive posture, giving ground and maintaining some distance. Keeping that distance would be worlds easier to do, she assumed, than it had been with Dogen.
“Tell me,” Kumiko asked, “about your weak eye. You weren’t born with it, were you?”
“No. It happened right before my mother’s death—Before Rose’s death,” Cass added, recalling that Kumiko and her mother had been close. “I had an ‘accident’ of some kind. I don’t remember the details, and my dad always refused to talk about it.”
“I see,” Kumiko said as she feinted to reposition Cass, then moved with uncanny speed to pinch a nerve in Cass’s neck. Cass stepped
right into it and her knees immediately buckled when Kumiko applied pressure. Kumiko let go and, almost involuntarily, Cass popped back up onto her feet.
“Tell me about your emotions. When did you lose contact with them?”
Cass cocked her head, thinking. “I was always … a bit off. Different. But then things got worse around the same time my mother died. I always assumed that the distance between myself and my emotions was a result of my grief—that I just kind of shut down my feelings to protect myself from the pain of losing her, and never quite found my way back to those feelings as I got older.”
Cass stopped and connected the dots. “But you don’t think this is a coincidence, do you? You think there’s a reason why the injury to my eye, my walled-up emotions, and my mother’s death all happened around the same time?”
Kumiko’s tiny, ancient hands dropped to her side, and she instantly looked like an innocuous octogenarian again—her slightly humped back stooped, her white hair pulled in a tight bun. And as she reverted to harmless old lady mode, Cass could have sworn that a look of sorrow and compassion flickered across Kumiko’s face before she swiftly reimposed control.
Cass bristled at this pretense. Why couldn’t Kumiko just show that she cared? Why did they have to play these games? Why did Kumiko have to be such a hard-ass?
“You are correct,” Kumiko said, her face now a stiff mask. “This is no coincidence. Your eye, your powers, your emotions, and your mother’s death are surely four loops in a single knot.”
Chapter Four
Cass fell off the tiny bed in her tiny room in the monastery. Compared to this closet, her studio apartment back in Oregon was a palace.
“Damn monks,” she cursed, rubbing her bruised bottom, “why do their rooms have to be so . . . monastic?”
Zach laughed.
The fact that the room had a western-style bed was itself a concession, though the mattress was rock hard and unusually narrow, which meant meant the concession didn’t amount to much. As it stood, the frame and mattress took up more than three quarters of the room. This meant that, when Cass wasn’t in bed, there was almost room to stand.
For the moment, Cass gave up on standing and tried to crawl back onto the bed with Zach. Though they were both dressed and it was the middle of the afternoon, the mood was flirtatious and, despite the cramped quarters, this was one of the few places in the monastery where they could count on being alone.
But the afternoon’s romantic vibe took another hit when, climbing back into bed, Cass “accidentally” shoved Zach off the edge and onto the floor. Cass collapsed with a sigh into the space he’d vacated. She fluffed her pillow and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.
Zach, with his back to the door and his knees up around his ears, settled for the floor—for now.
“It’s been a good couple of months, Cass,” Zach offered, a more serious note in his voice. “We’ve been safe here. We’ve learned a lot. And we’ve mostly been together.”
Cass couldn’t deny that. As much as she chaffed against some of the costs, she now knew as much about herself and the shape of this world—both the Underside and the Overside—as she ever had. And, for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t alone.
She nodded, her eyes still closed, and reached out a small but strong hand. Zach took it in his own and kissed the back of it.
“How did the sparring go today?” he ventured, with a hint of apprehension.
Cass buried her head in her pillow and mumbled something.
“That good?” Zach asked. “You’ll get it. You just need time.”
Cass turned over and stared at the low ceiling. “Time, it turns out, is exactly the thing I don’t have a grip on.”
Zach gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. Cass turned back onto her side, her head half-buried in the pillow with only her weak eye exposed. Zach looked directly into it. The hint of Japanese ancestry in her face gave Cass’s eye a charming tilt. For Cass, though, looking at the world through just this eye, everything appeared cloudy and blurry. She could barely distinguish Zach’s dark complexion from the wood paneling on the wall.
Watching him closely through this fog, Cass continued, “Kumiko did say something else. She thinks that someone put a . . . curse on my eye, short-circuiting my powers.” She took a deep breath. Despite her growing intimacy with Zach, it was still awkward to talk feelings. “And she thinks that this same curse is connected to . . . you know,” she cringed, “the distance between my mind and my emotions.”
“Huh,” Zach nodded thoughtfully. He didn’t look away or seem remotely uncomfortable. “What does that mean? What are you going to do about it?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” Cass sighed. “But for the moment, I know what I need.”
Zach raised an eyebrow, hopeful.
“I need to get out of here,” Cass countered playfully, deflating his smile. “I need a break from this place. I need a little vacation. I need to sleep in my own bed and spend a few days not thinking about how the world may need me to save it with powers I can’t even control.”
Zach cocked his head to the side, listening.
“I need to go home.”
“I doubt Kumiko’s going to agree to that,” Zach said, pushing himself up off the floor and perching on the edge of the bed. He smoothed an errant lock of Cass’s jet black hair behind her ear.
“True. But I didn’t plan on asking for Kumiko’s permission.”
Zach’s jaw dropped, forming an exaggerated “O.” “Cassandra Jones!” he teased.
“I’m sneaking out tonight,” she said. “Are you coming with me?”
Before he could answer, Cass pulled him close and trailed a series of kisses down his neck.
Zach gulped.
“Yeah. I’m in,” he said.
Chapter Five
Maya Krishnamurti wove through the busy streets of Singapore, navigating the tight scrum of cars, bikes, and pedestrians. The evening was hot and humid. The streets were packed. The crowds were pressed shoulder to shoulder. But Maya, as always, sailed through the throng like a shark through a school of minnows. At every turn, people instinctively made room for her, shuffling out of her way.
Maya was used to power and deference. In fact, she was so accustomed to power that, though many people thought of her as Richard York’s second in command, Maya was decidedly not one of those people. She never thought of herself as second to anyone.
Richard had found her on the streets of Mumbai, almost two hundred years ago. He had immediately seen something in her. When she’d learned what Richard was—powerful, cooly rational, unfettered by emotions, essentially immortal, Turned—she didn’t hesitate. She begged to join him; she wanted what he had. And since the moment he’d granted her wish and turned her, she’d considered herself his equal.
These days, though, Maya was no longer sure that this equality held. Richard was a shadow of his former self. After being crushed in the collapsing debris of Judas’s ruined castle, he’d been crippled for months and slow to heal. Even more worrisome to Maya, though, the clarity of his thinking and the normally clinically impersonal character of his logic had been compromised. To Maya, the root problem was obvious: Cassandra Jones was ruining him.
Maya bit her lip at the thought of it. Undeniably, Jones had a certain appeal—Maya herself felt the pull of attraction—but she wasn’t worth the price Richard seemed nearly ready to pay. Maya wouldn’t let the girl poison him. She would do what needed to be done. She would keep the bigger picture in focus. She would take matters into her own hands when the need arose.
She would protect Richard from himself and ensure both of their futures.
Maya took a turn down a side alley, spotted the blinking “Sushi” sign she was looking for, and descended below street level to the entrance. The sushi place, though it looked like a dive, served a very exclusive sort of clientele. Maya wasn’t here for the food, however. She was here on business.
Maya pushed through the door
, ringing the bell hanging overhead, and paused to get her bearings. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at her. Maya had intended to be inconspicuous. She’d traded her normal sleeveless power dress for a headscarf, a sleeveless blouse, and slacks, but there was only so much she could do. Her black, waist-length hair was still visible, her eyes still smoldered, and her biceps were still imposing. She offered a thin smile to the room, her lips pressed tightly together, as if to forgive the fact that they could no more avoid looking at her than she could avoid commanding their attention.
The room was much larger on the inside than one would expect from the tiny entrance. Some of the folks in the room were Turned, some were Lost, but all of them were vampires of one kind or another. A host offered to seat her, but Maya had already spotted, in the back of the room, the man she was looking for. She brushed the host off, strode to the back, and slid into the man’s booth.
The man looked up from his sushi, feigning surprise, as if he hadn’t already noted her entrance. He was visibly struggling to project some air of confidence and control.
Good, Maya thought, I’ve got him right where I want him. First some flattery and then, if necessary, some threats.
The man had a plate of sushi in front of him. He was a fat and balding Malay, wore a pinstriped suit with an open collar, and radiated a mercenary air. Maya looked him in the eye until he blinked and looked away. She tapped one manicured fingernail on the table’s Formica surface.
Their server hurried over with a menu. Maya accepted it and asked for a scotch. Perhaps some protein would do her some good—the menu included your standard kinds of Maki rolls and sashimi, but then trailed off into rare delicacies that included other kinds of raw flesh. This was a vampire joint, after all.
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