by SM Reine
He turned and walked out of the house.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she asked, scooping her most important backpack off of the ground and chasing after him.
Lincoln got into a car parked on the curb, which clearly did not belong to him. She couldn’t imagine him as the kind of man who would drive something so tiny and rusty. Then again, Sophie did not know what kind of car a man like him would drive, since she could not think of any other cars off the top of her head. She had usually used a bicycle back on the farm.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Sophie asked again when she got into the driver’s seat. “Whatever attacked me in the Middle Worlds is likely to track me here. We must prepare to fight if you hope to defend me.”
“I’m working on it,” Lincoln said. “Put on your seatbelt. It’s the law.”
Sophie twisted to find an actual seatbelt hanging beside the door. She’d read all about people riding in cars, of course—books had always been her primary entertainment and her way of connecting with the outside world. But this was her first time pulling it across her chest to insert it into the buckle with a satisfying click. She squirmed with delight.
Lincoln was staring at her.
“What?” Sophie asked.
He put the car into gear and pulled out.
This little sedan clunked on every turn, accelerating sluggishly and coughing aggressively. Yet somehow it carted them through the streets of Reno and beyond the last of the houses. Civilization soon turned into dusty desert, peppered with pine trees and sagebrush.
Lincoln remained silent. Sophie grew antsy.
“Do you still see her?” she asked as his car swung around a bend, revealing a lonely gas station and chocolate shop in the valley. “Are you having visions of Inanna?”
“All the time,” he said.
A thrill of excitement rolled through Sophie’s gut. “Remarkable.”
His gaze sliced toward her. “You could call it that.” Though he clearly would not.
“Tell me everything that’s happened since I last saw you,” Sophie said. “You were going to seek answers in regard to the other Remnants. Have you found more pieces of Ereshkigal or Inanna?”
“Searching isn’t free,” Lincoln said. “I hooked up with followers of NKF locally. People who believe in these new gods. We’ve been working together so I can save up money.”
“You sound like you don’t believe in the new gods, which would be an interesting development, as you’re carrying a piece of an old god inside of you.”
“I don’t know what she is. All right? She’s not a part of me, that’s for sure,” he said.
Disappointment radiated from her belly. “You still doubt the gods, after everything you’ve seen?”
“I’ve never doubted God.” Lincoln flicked a rosary dangling from the rearview mirror, the Christian crucifix swinging with every bump in the road. “There’s a lot of weird preternatural shit Inanna could be. I’ll know more once I’ve got answers, but I don’t got them yet. All right?”
“I didn’t mean to antagonize you,” Sophie said.
“But you’re good at it.” He hunched over the wheel, and she was grateful that his glower was focused on the road for now. “We’re meeting a police officer from the state capital. He’s agreed to sell me surplus equipment at a low price, and we’ll need it to fight any kind of monster that’s after you. We’ll meet him on the shoulder of 395 in Washoe Valley. I am gonna protect you, Miss Keyes.”
“Excellent,” she said. “It would be shameful if the one and only Historian died on your watch.”
“Your secret history is the last thing I’m worried about. I’d do this for any lady in trouble.”
“Of course.” It was impossible that Lincoln could acknowledge anything that defied his biases. He wore blinders, capable only of perceiving what he wanted.
“Were you telling the truth about that weird attack?” Lincoln asked. Sophie nodded mutely. “And you really don’t know who did it?”
“I may have a guess,” Sophie said.
“I figured you did.”
“Given what we experienced in the Summer Court with Inanna and Ereshkigal, I fear I may have attracted divine attention. The effects of the attack were too surreal to have anything but divine origins.”
Lincoln snorted. “Why would the gods want to kill you?”
“Not everyone is so unimpressed by the Historian’s knowledge. I know things nobody else does, and that is a threat to the old ones.”
“You can’t threaten gods that don’t exist.”
“After all this time with Inanna, can you really, definitively say there is no chance that she is a god?” Sophie asked.
“If she is a god, and if you think the gods wanna kill you, is it a good idea to come to me for protection?”
“You would never hurt me,” she said. “I know that much about you.”
Lincoln grunted in acknowledgment.
The stretch of land Lincoln called Washoe Valley was lovelier than anything Sophie had seen among Reno’s crumbling buildings and barbed wire fences. The road was bordered on the left by a shallow lake and on the right by unoccupied pastures. Had the trees grown taller and more colorfully, Sophie almost thought the valley could have been suited to the Summer Court.
The road was empty, making it easy to spot the police cruiser parked behind the bridge.
“Wait here,” Lincoln said. He left the car running and got out.
Sophie watched as Lincoln approached the police cruiser. He was met by the trunk by a man in uniform. With her window rolled down, Sophie could hear them talking faintly over the wind blowing through the Valley.
“Officer Nootenboom,” greeted Lincoln. The men shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulders. A friendly masculine greeting.
“Mr. Marshall,” said the officer. “I heard about your score with the demon at Meadowood yesterday. You did a good job.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lincoln said. “How much did you get off my wish list this time?”
“I think you’ll be pleased.”
While they haggled over the unseen equipment, Sophie drank in the sight of the dashboard free from Lincoln’s judgmental gaze.
She suspected that the technology on the dashboard must have been many years old—not that she spent enough time around such technology to tell what was new. She only knew that the labels had worn off the buttons, rubbed smooth by years of dirty hands.
Sophie poked a couple of those buttons. Air blasted her in the face. The windshield wipers swept back and forth. Quiet music played from the stereo. It sounded like something with guitar and drum and angry vocals, and Sophie liked it. She left the music playing and the fans running as she twisted to look at the backseat.
A pair of firearms with trigger guards rested across the leather cushions. Her backpack was crammed behind her seat, and Lincoln had a backpack behind his seat, too. A colorful piece of paper stuck out of a pocket. She glanced at Lincoln, who was still absorbed in conversation with Officer Nootenboom, before extracting the paper.
It was a plane ticket dated for the next day.
Lincoln appeared to be prepared for a trip, but he hadn’t given any indication that he had other plans when he agreed to help her.
Sophie returned the ticket to his bag. She punched the music off and sat nicely with her hands in her lap, hoping that Lincoln hadn’t spotted her snooping.
“And then there’s this,” said Officer Nootenboom, lifting a small box from the trunk. “This is a Taser modified to put out a greater electrical charge. These were used during the Breaking against nightmare demons, incubi, that kind of thing. You can hook it to an external battery to make it stronger, or you can use the internal battery and just get one or two shots off.”
“Nice stuff, but I didn’t request the Taser,” Lincoln said.
“I know. Just thought you might want something less than lethal against mortals. And if your reputation’s anything near truth, you could use firepower tailored
against demons.”
Even from the car, Sophie could see that Lincoln tensed all over.
“What’s my reputation?” he asked.
“I’ve just heard you’ll fight anything,” Officer Nootenboom said. “That you’re the guy the OPA wants to call in if something happens in Reno.”
Lincoln relaxed, but only slightly. “Hope to God they never do that. How much for the Taser?”
“No charge. Frankly, I’m just grateful that we’ve got guys like you on the ground. Much respect.”
“And to you, sir.”
The men shook hands again. Officer Nootenboom slammed his trunk shut. Lincoln strode to the car and loaded a black duffel bag on top of the shotguns in the backseat then got behind the wheel.
Without goodbyes or pleasantries, the officer got into his car, turned around, and drove away.
“It’s considered polite to ask before looking through someone’s personal effects,” Lincoln said, putting the car into gear.
Sophie jolted. Damn. He caught me.
“Why are you taking a trip on an airplane?” she asked.
“I got a call from my cousin yesterday. My dad’s dying. I was gonna go see him.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sophie said.
Lincoln’s expression may as well have been carved from stone. “I didn’t want to go on that trip anyway. I’ll see if I can schedule it for later, after we’ve worked out your stuff.” He pulled the car onto the road, swinging a one-eighty to return to Reno.
“You can’t delay seeing your dying father for anything, even to protect me,” Sophie said.
“It’s not like I can take you with me,” Lincoln said.
“Are you afraid I would embarrass you in front of your family?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Don’t think it would go over well, though.”
“I can speak as little as possible to prevent them from learning how strange I am,” Sophie said.
“It’s not how you talk.”
Prickles spread down the back of her neck. She had accepted the idea that Lincoln would have acquired his biases from his environment in passing, acknowledging that racism was often generational without further thought to what it meant. “I won’t abide stripping your opportunity to visit with a loved one on the brink of loss, and nor should you. I would rather seek alternative protection than obstruct that.”
“Seriously?” he asked, shooting her a sideways look. “You think it’s that big a deal? I’m not that sentimental.”
“He’s your father,” Sophie said.
Lincoln rested his head on his hand, elbow against the rattling door of the car, glaring into space at nothing at all. “Are you close to your parents?”
“A Historian’s knowledge passes along the bloodline. There is only allowed to be one Historian at a time. My grandfather was the Historian before me, and he died when I was born. I don’t know who my parents were, as they’ve never been present. Historians aren’t raised in families. We’re raised by our guardians.”
That was how Sophie had always referred to them: her guardians. Lincoln had mostly envisioned skilled fighters. He hadn’t thought of them as her nannies, her surrogate parents, the only thing she had like a family. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? This is the reality that I’ve grown up with,” Sophie said. “It’s not as though I dwell upon it. I live in the distant past all others have forgotten and take very little time to pity myself in the present.”
“Then why do you care about me seeing my dad?”
“Because you do have one. I will find other protection, Mr. Marshall.”
“You won’t,” Lincoln said. “I said I’m gonna protect you, and I’ll protect you. And I’ll take you with me back home if it shuts you up.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“It’s all about you, shortcake,” he said. “Until I make sure you’re safe to live out your book nerd life however you want, everything’s about you.”
Chapter 6
When Lincoln and Sophie returned to the house, they found all the men except Javi in the kitchen again. They silenced when Lincoln entered the room. But it was Sophie they watched warily—Sophie in her swallow-tail jacket and the boots that molded to her calves and the braids that fell below her shoulders.
“Did I miss a group meeting?” Lincoln asked. “Someone talk to me.”
Li stepped forward. Swaggering Li, shorter than the others with triple the attitude to make up for it. “Gotta say, man,” Li said, “you’ve done a great job scoring bounties. You’re good at what you do. Most of us wish you’d stick around.” He offered an envelope to Lincoln. It was Lincoln’s share of the bounty on Ba-Set Mal.
Lincoln flipped through the bills, and his eyebrows climbed as he mentally counted. “You guys didn’t take your cut from yesterday’s kill. There’s only a few hundred missing.”
“That’s Javi’s cut,” Spencer said. “He wasn’t down with the plan the rest of us agreed on. We wanted to send you off with a nice bonus.”
Sophie peered over Lincoln’s elbow. “Is that a lot of money?”
“Before Genesis, it was a fortune,” he said. “With inflation the way it is, it’s still enough to buy a car.” Not a new one, but a used one without too many broken parts. Lincoln waved the envelope at the men. “Why?”
“We know that you would skip your trip to protect someone who needs help. But you shouldn’t have to.” Spencer jerked his chin toward the envelope. “We gave it to you so that you can afford to take care of two while you look for your girlfriend.”
Lincoln hadn’t even told them that he was going to see his dying father instead of his ex-girlfriend, but they were trying to help them anyway. He didn’t know what to say. “I can’t take this. We have an agreement.”
“Forget the agreement and see it as incentive to come back someday.” Esteban’s mouth slanted into a rakish grin. “You take a hit well for a human.”
“We could kill a lot more people and earn a lot more money together,” Li said.
Lincoln nodded and stuck the envelope in his pocket. He’d make no promises. If he had his way, he’d never come back to these guys. But his mom had taught him never to reject a gift—it was beyond rude.
“My gods above, this is indescribable kindness,” Sophie said. “Surely none of you can afford such generosity, yet you do this for one as sullen as Lincoln Marshall. It speaks volumes toward your collective character. I only hope you won’t judge Javi severely for neglecting to participate. His character must too be strong to resist the weight of peer pressure, and I’m sure his reasons are moral.”
Lincoln nudged her with his elbow. She’d promised to talk as little as possible with his family, but it should have applied here too. She sounded much too cute to scare anyone off. “Watch it.”
“Do you object to being described as sullen?” Sophie asked.
“He’s pretty sullen,” Esteban said, grinning at her. His teeth were crooked and half of them were silver, having been replaced by bridges after too many fights. Sophie grinned back at him.
Her mouth twisted. It looked like it was a tornado viewed from orbit.
“What’s happening to your face?” Lincoln asked.
His words twisted and spiraled too, as surely as if he could see his voice orbiting a drain.
That’s not possible.
The wild thought struck him that he may have been having a stroke. Lincoln turned to see if the other men had noticed the strange spinning in the room. But when he turned, he kept turning, and the room spun even faster. The walls rippled. His roommates blurred together.
The world pitched and yawed.
And then, pop.
Everything returned to normal.
Spencer looked pleasantly surprised to see Lincoln, rising from the kitchen table to greet him. “Whoa, you sneaked up on us. I didn’t hear you coming inside. Did someone finally oil the hinges on the screen?”
“What are you talking about?” Lincoln asked. “We�
�ve been here a few minutes.”
But Sophie was indeed stepping through the porch behind him, seemingly unaware of the distortion. Her mouth wasn’t in that twisted smile anymore. She looked startled to find Lincoln at the table as well.
“When did you get ahead of me?” she asked.
He jerked away when she stepped too close, disoriented by the dimensions of the kitchen. They had expanded and contracted, and Lincoln felt his stomach clenching again.
His elbow bumped the table. Li’s mug slid off the edge and struck the linoleum.
It fractured.
It froze.
The cup reformed and reappeared on the table. Lincoln’s head swirled with blood.
A shattered teacup.
Sophie had described seeing the world fragmented and placed in front of her, and that was what Lincoln saw now. He saw the whole, unbroken mug as it was filled with old coffee and stuck into the microwave to be reheated. He saw Li burning his tongue on it because he tried to drink too fast. He saw a thousand tiny ceramic shards scattered across the linoleum, and the three largest chunks spinning under the table where they’d landed.
He saw Sophie outside. By the table. Wrapped in one arm, held against Lincoln’s body so that he could protect her from…something.
Bodies fell to the ground. Blood spattered on the mug’s shards, painting cream ceramic scarlet.
Simultaneously, he saw Li handing him the envelope of money again.
The money fell into pools of blood. Spencer’s hand was limp on the envelope.
Not just the world unfolded in front of him, but time.
“Draw your dagger,” said Inanna.
She was the only stationary thing in the midst of this bizarre assault. The entire kitchen was jerking around her, subtly shifting as though they were rapidly speeding through the same ten-minute period on endless repeat. Yet Inanna was calm. Her hand was on his wrist, guiding it toward his boot, where the pearlescent falhófnir dagger was nestled.