Siren ate it up.
“Oh, poor, poor Ponytail,” she said, shaking her head. “I hope that girl knows how to take care of herself while you’re busy blushing in the corner.”
That only made me blush harder—though from embarrassment or anger, it was hard to say.
“How did you even get in here?”
She gave me another one of those Have you been licking softsteel? looks and turned her head between me and the window.
“I’d better not find out you hurt anyone getting over here.”
“Or else?” she asked, taking a step closer. Her satisfied smirk only grew when I took an involuntary step back.
“What about the other night?” I asked, giving her a light telekinetic nudge to let her know I was ready to stop her. “I need to know how you got on base. Did someone let you into my room?”
She stepped forward and found herself pressed firmly into my telekinetic barrier. She didn’t seem to mind. “You mean aside from your ginger guard pup?”
She leaned into my barrier, tracing her fingers lightly over its surface. I’d never seen anyone do that. It freaking tickled. I almost shuddered—with what, I couldn’t have said. All I knew was that even holding her telekinetically felt too intimate right then. I released her, stepping aside.
“My sincerest thanks, goodfellow,” she said, reaching to stroke my cheek as she passed and only grinning wider when I leaned away from her touch.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Haldin. Are you really so scared to be touched by a woman?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She shot me a sickeningly sweet smile. “Well that must be just so frustrating for you.”
“I could make you answer.”
She held my gaze, unflinching. “I bet you could.”
She began to fade from sight, starting with the legs, her arcane shroud rising slowly this time, as if to highlight the fact that, whatever else had happened between us today, she was the one who was in fact going to be leaving me hanging at the end.
“How do you do that?” I asked, not really expecting an answer, nor willing to force anything else out of her at the moment. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
With nothing but her shoulders and head remaining visible, she gave a huff of bitter amusement. “Sweetling, I can’t even begin to imagine the scope of the things you haven’t seen.” She started to turn for the window, paused, then faced me with a sneer. “You wanna know my secret, Demon? Here it is. I’ve been invisible my entire gropping life. Sometimes I just put energy into it.”
And with that, she blew me a scornful kiss and vanished.
But she didn’t leave. Not immediately. I felt her lingering there, one hand on the window sill, hesitating.
“I didn’t even need to work my charm on him,” her voice came from the seemingly empty room. “One look at me and he would’ve been slobbering to let me in even if the High Cleric hadn’t already ordered him to.”
“Who?”
Silence. But still she lingered.
“Six, please.”
“Six? What happened to my nickname?”
“Siren, then. Please, Siren.”
I could hear the smile in her voice. “I like that you call me that. Fitting, I guess. You be careful, Demon.”
I felt her start to climb through the open window and teetered there, wanting to stop her and force the answer but feeling somehow that it would be the wrong move.
Outside the window, she paused. “And while you’re at it, you might wanna ask your General Auckus what he was up to the night we first met.”
Then she was gone.
I stared at the open window for what must’ve been five minutes before finally dialing my cloak out to make sure she was actually gone. Then stared some more, wondering what in demon’s depths had just happened.
32
Gray
“Raish?” The legionnaire’s eyes came more focused and alert as he took me in and realized I was standing outside of the apartment I was supposed to be confined to. “Raish? You’re… and that woman, she…” He looked around, noting the open window I’d climbed out through, and I could see him struggling to remember what had happened.
“She’s gone,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t hurt anyone out here.”
“Scud,” he finally muttered. “I didn’t even see her coming. She just…” He frowned, clearly coming to the memory of something that seemed not quite right—like a voluptuous blond assassin swirling into existence out of thin air, maybe.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, offering him a hand and nodding over to where the guard by my living room window was likewise laid out. If it was anyone’s fault aside from Siren’s and maybe the High Cleric’s, it was probably mine. Yet another reminder that I’d failed to protect the Legion against telepaths—not that my cloaks would’ve saved them from Siren’s charms once she’d ghosted in close enough, as I’d found out all too intimately.
“Just hit me outta nowhere,” the guard muttered to himself once I’d helped him to his feet. He looked around again before remembering himself and fixing me with a closer inspection. “Are you okay?”
“She wasn’t here to hurt me,” I said, thinking back to how she’d hesitated at the end, and how she’d ended up deciding to tell me what I wanted to know.
General Auckus.
Had he really been the one who’d helped her on base for her near-lethal medica visit? Or had Siren merely been stirring the Haven pot with a clever lie because that’s what she liked to do—or, worse, had been ordered to do by the High Cleric? Maybe I should’ve just broken into her mind and found out for certain.
When I noticed the odd look the guard was giving me, I quickly added, “Doesn’t mean she won’t be back to finish the job.”
The last thing I needed were Haven rumors about the Demon of Divinity sneaking around with the mysterious Sanctum girl.
I gestured to the other passed-out legionnaire. “You got him?”
The legionnaire nodded, blinking the last of his disorientation off and shifting back into proper soldier mode.
“Good. Then I think you’d better put me back under arrest before you make your report, soldier.”
He showed me the trace of an abashed grin. “Sir, yes sir.”
I climbed through the window back into my bedroom, went straight to the front door, and invited the squad leader inside to calmly—and privately—fill her in on what had just happened. She wasn’t happy. Understandably. But at least she was on the same page that we should keep the incident quiet and report straight to Glenbark.
I didn’t argue when she left to make her report and to tighten the defenses on my windows and any other potential points of ingress. I opened my palmlight and swiped out my own message to the High General.
Perhaps it would’ve been fairer to add that the breakthrough had nothing to do with cloaking runes, but I needed to get her attention on the Auckus lead as quickly as possible. I added Johnny to the message and sent it out, trusting he could help expedite things and would also be wise enough not to immediately cue Elise in. Not that I intended to keep her in the dark. I just needed a minute to clear my head and figure out how to explain to her what Siren had been doing in our bedroom.
As soon as I sat down to take that minute, though, I was nearly overwhelmed with the urge to slip my guards, run straight to Therese’s lab, fall down at Elise’s feet, and tell her then and there. Tell her that I was sorry and that I loved her and that the memory of her had been the only thing that had let me break free from Siren’s telepathic head games in the end.
I’d like to say it was the house arrest and the threat of potential execution for bad behavior that kept me rooted in place. But, if I’m being honest, I think I was just scared. Scared that I’d fumble the words and grop everything up. Scared that I’d tell the truth too completely, and do the same.
Because
what if Siren actually hadn’t been working some strange telepathic mischief at all? What if I was simply that weak for a warm touch and some soft curves?
No. That was bullscud. I knew the difference between desire and mind control. My first time with Elise, I’d been so consumed that it hadn’t even occurred to me to stop, but thinking back on it, I was sure I could have stopped if there’d been good reason. If I’d wanted to. But earlier today… wanting to stop only to find my body unresponsive… that had been something different. Something externally imposed on me.
Right?
I crossed my legs, plucking a practice pendant from the floor, and tried to settle into some manner of focus. I felt dirty—to the extent that I almost wanted to take another shower. Which in turn only reminded me of Siren in my shower robe.
I let out a heavy sigh and woke my palmlight, pulling up my running messages with Elise.
I stared at the incomplete message for a few seconds then cleared it, positive that any mention of an incident, large or small, would have her storming the apartment with the cavalry. And much as I would’ve loved to feel her arms around me right just then, I wanted a couple hours to cleanse my pallet and maybe even get something done so I could stop feeling so damned guilty.
Her reply wasn’t long in coming.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that even that would pique her curiosity. She was truly her father’s daughter.
That was enough truth to see us through for a couple hours. Tonight, though…
Her reply buzzed through the gathering clouds of my thoughts.
A ripple of delicious anticipation shot through me, followed almost immediately by an even bigger wave of dirty guilt.
Alpha be damned, I was really starting to hate how complicated my life had become.
Hours later, after my guard detail had been doubled and the windows had all been reinforced to the extent that I could no longer see day passing to dark night outside, I was still sitting on the floor, alone in our quarters, toying with my runes and trying not to think about all the wild scud that had happened that day. Looking around at the mess of etched and drawn runes scattered about the room—and at the melted decorations and copious scorch marks on the couch table—I decided I’d been less than successful on both fronts.
Empowering runes, at least, was becoming quite doable. I’d made at least a dozen successful heat sinks that night, hence the scorch marks in the table. I’d firmly established that a given rune did not necessarily have a set purpose and could in fact be made to hold whatever effect I empowered it with. I’d even managed to link two runes together—one that drew thermal energy from the air, and another that expelled it like a big, cozy heater. Or, it turned out, like a small, focused death beam. Hence the melted decorative orbs.
At one point, I was even pretty sure I’d technically succeeded in empowering a linked rune combo to draw thermal energy and produce my island-method cloaking effect. It just hadn’t lasted long enough for me to confirm. Which was exactly the problem.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t get a single damn rune to function for more than a minute or so before the effect just bled out and died.
Re-empowering the same rune again worked. I could do it for hours. Had done it for hours. But it was like filling a leaky basin. Over and over again, no matter how hard I tried, how carefully I focused, the effects simply wouldn’t stick. And I didn’t know what to do about it.
I glanced at my palmlight for what must’ve been the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, starting to worry. Probably, Elise had simply gotten caught up in the thrilling contents of yet another data drive, but from her last message nearly an hour ago, I’d expected her to be back by now.
With a sigh, I rose to go get a much-needed glass of water. The thought of her walking through the door any minute pretty much nullified any chance of my finding the deep focus required for more rune work. Mostly, it made my insides crawl with apprehension.
I was just going to tell her what Siren had done. Straight up. There was no other option. No option but to tell the girl I loved that a madwoman who’d recently tried to kill me had somehow turned around and damn near seduced me.
This was going to be a tram wreck.
I was surprised I’d managed to get anything done at all today, as aggressively as the whole situation had been eating at me. I’d tried and failed to discreetly ask Johnny via message about his own experience being incapacitated by Siren. He’d assured me her touch had been positively unnatural—like a triple IV dose of NitroSteel, in his words—which had made me feel a bit better. But then, of course, he’d wanted to know why I was asking.
I was still going to have to explain that one at some point.
For the time being, I occupied myself staring at my half-full water glass, studying the way the light passed through and thinking about Siren’s phenomenal little invisibility trick.
Had she actually meant to let me live back in the medica? I was honestly starting to wonder, but after today, I was also hesitant to trust anything my gut had to say about the woman.
After a few worthless minutes of speculation, I decided it didn’t particularly matter right then and plucked the cloaking pendant from my chest to return to the all-too-familiar ritual of studying it. Johnny and Elise had both informed me that the amount of time I spent staring at the runes had officially reached full-on-creepy status, but how could I not stare?
There it was, the answer to our most pressing problem, sitting in the palm of my hand, just waiting to be understood.
The flowing, nested design of the interconnected runes had made it somewhat hard to determine where one ended and another began, but after my creepy amounts of studying and sketching, I grown fairly certain there was a grand total of five runes on the cloaking pendant. One to generate the cloak, and another to pull the requisite power from the air—those two seemed to be a given. And given that Johnny’s non-adjustable cloak only had four runes, one of the five on mine must be controlling the range of the cloak.
That still left two runes unexplained.
I obsessed over those two runes. The more I thought about them, the more I was sure at least one of them must be the key to keeping their fellow runes powered up for good—or for at least eleven years, seeing as Elise’s had apparently been working that long. But if I was right, and one or both of those runes was preserving the others, then what the scud was keeping them going?
It was like the old riddle some casual worshippers loved to pull out when they’d been too long at their drink. If Alpha created Enochia and everything that we know, then who made him?
Lucky for them, they got to just keep drinking until they forgot their questions. No one was depending on them to figure out where the infinite loop began.
I wasn’t so lucky. All I could do was resign myself to thumping the back of my head against the cabinet, waiting for inspiration to jiggle loose. At the apprehensive jolt that shot through me, I actually thought for a second that it might have. Then I realized my palmlight had buzzed.
My stomach fluttered at the sight of Elise’s name.
I smiled at that, then grimaced at my own audacity in smiling. My fingers hovered over the palmlight.
I paused. Started to delete my words. Paused again.
Gropping scudbuckets, I wished I could just go over there now. A nighttime stroll through Hav
en sounded indecently tempting. For a few seconds, I even considered asking the ordo outside my room if she might run it up the chain, just this once.
Please, sir, I know it’s a matter of Enochian security and everything, but I’m REALLY scared my girlfriend’s gonna be mad at me…
As if.
“Whatever,” I muttered to myself, swiping at my palmlight.
Alpha, with wit like that, how would she ever bear to be without me?
I glanced at the door, wondering if the ordo might at least be amenable to sending someone for flowers. Because nothing said romance like flowers someone else had to fetch for your house-arrested public enemy boyfriend, right?
I’d just crawled back over to my pile of practice pendants—literally crawled, because that’s where I was at that point—when someone knocked at the door. Had someone been in the room with me, they probably would’ve gotten a kick out of my jerky reaction and the position I ended up in, sprawled across the floor with my sidearm trained on the door.
Alpha, I was losing it. I let out a deep breath and confirmed with a quick mental sweep that it was only one of the guards. They knocked again right before I reached the door. I pulled it open and was greeted by an unfamiliar face. Her insignia marked her as belonging to the 122nd Wolf Company.
“We’ve got a potential Code Gray on base, sir.”
Code Gray. I rifled through dusty memories. “Intruders?”
“It’s probably nothing, and we’ve got this place locked down tight out here, but Ordo said to let you know to keep an ear open, just in case.”
I nodded uncertainly, my mind filling with thoughts of Siren and her friends sneaking around on base—or other Seekers, even, dispatched by the High Cleric to come find them. But it was probably actually nothing. Just a confused courier or a jumpy watchman on the wall. It happened.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, thanks. Will do.”
I started to retreat into the apartment, then paused.
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