Lost Causes

by Mia Marshall

  Together, they maneuvered a gurney out of the backseat. A sleeping Luke was strapped to it.

  “Place him over there,” Deborah ordered.

  Obligingly, they carried him to a grassy spot far from the rest of us. They unstrapped him, rolled him off, then returned with the gurney.

  “I’ve upheld my end of the deal.” Deborah’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.

  Next to me, Sera tensed. She’d heard nothing about a deal.

  I asked Grams to check on him. She confirmed that he was alive.

  “My mother?”

  “Is no longer in a council cell.” Deborah’s voice was as perfectly modulated as ever, but I thought she was fighting the impulse to rush her words. “Also, we will leave Tahoe the moment you take the other man’s place on the gurney.”

  I studied her, looking for any sign she lied. So far, everything she’d said had been the truth, or at least her version of it. Even her threats hadn’t been empty.

  Sera vibrated with agitation. “Ade, please tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it does.”

  A rustle of feet told me the others were walking toward me. I glowered at them until they stopped moving.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I called.

  They paused, uncertain, hoping I had a master plan I’d forgotten to share.

  My friends were about twenty feet away, and I raised my voice so they would catch every word. “This has to happen. If you’re honest with yourselves, you’ll know I’m right. You said I got to make my own choices, Sera. This is it. I’ve chosen to hand myself in, and I’m not going to change my mind. None of you have to agree with my decision, but you don’t get to stop me.”

  They wanted to argue. I saw it on their faces, the frustration and rage and resistance to this horrible plan. It was everything I’d felt the day before. In the end, they reached the same conclusion I had. We couldn’t spend the rest of our lives running.

  Agitated magic encircled me, and the shifters’ eyes were more animal than human. Mac was already half bear, his eyes feral and cunning. He hadn’t agreed to this plan.

  I tried walking toward Deborah. The air felt heavy and thick, like it was holding me in place. It went against everything I’d fought for these last months, to give in to this wretched woman.

  I moved forward three feet, then paused. If there’d been a force field between us, it wouldn’t have made it any harder to reach her.

  Deborah wasn’t evil. She was like so many old ones, disconnected from the human world and its ever-changing morals. Josiah had been no different, and Sera and I still mourned him.

  All her threats, every act of destruction, was intended to draw me into the open. Malice had never informed her actions. No one was dead because of her, which was more than I could say.

  Deborah wasn’t unreasonable. She’d released Luke. He might be a dual, but he was also cured and hadn’t killed anyone, so far as they knew. They could ignore his existence if it meant they got the bigger prize.

  My mother had been set free. Soon, the council would give up any claim to Tahoe, leaving the shifters and elementals who lived there to build their own peace.

  My life was a small trade for an end to constant conflict, destruction, and fear.

  I wouldn’t have believed that if we were talking about Sera’s or Mac’s life, or anyone else’s for that matter, but there was a key difference between us: I deserved it.

  I didn’t deserve it because I was a horrible person. I no longer felt the need to wear a hairshirt. This wasn’t the same impulse that had placed me under the cairn.

  A drunk driver who kills someone is no less culpable because their judgment was impaired. The robber whose gun accidentally goes off when it’s waved at the victim still committed the crime.

  It was impossible to make amends by wallowing in the past. All I could do was choose my path going forward and choose it well. I stood before Deborah and the council because this was the best choice I could make. It was the choice that would do the most good, and I wouldn’t shy away from it, no matter how difficult it felt at that moment.

  I hadn’t expected it to feel quite so difficult.

  “Is there a problem?” Deborah lifted a single eyebrow. As waters aged, they went in one of two directions. They either became more flighty and easily distracted or they grew cold and merciless like the Arctic Ocean. She was solidly in the latter category.

  I forced myself to keep moving. Deborah glared over my shoulder. My friends kept their distance, but they also matched me step for step. If I insisted on doing this, they would be with me the entire way.

  “To the gurney, please.”

  The thing was fitted with straps that would wrap across my shoulders, waist, thighs, and ankles.

  “The Hannibal Lecter treatment isn’t necessary,” I said.

  Sera’s agitation flowed around me. I sent my fire backwards and found hers, pulsing in waves. I tried sending her the message to just chill already, but her magic refused to calm.

  “Precautions.”

  The more twitchy lackey held up a syringe.

  Bile rose in my throat. “Do you ever run out of that stuff?” I took an involuntary step backwards.

  Deborah’s eyes narrowed. “You should welcome it. It’s the only way we can justify imprisonment rather than your execution.”

  With Deborah’s words, a bit of Sera’s tension eased. If I was alive, there was hope.

  Her words only increased my fear. Too late, I began to think the council leader might be a liar after all. She had no reason to keep me alive.

  “If it’s not too much bother,” I said, keeping my eyes on the syringe, “could you remember that I’m here willingly?”

  “You are here under coercion,” Deborah corrected me. “Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

  I didn’t accept her logic, logical though it might be. “If I planned to destroy you, you’d already be dead. I’m in control of my power, and I have no desire to hurt any of you.”

  The man holding the syringe started shaking at the reminder of what I was, but Deborah remained unaffected. “Precautions,” she repeated.

  I didn’t move. There was no mercy in the woman’s eyes.

  “Control means nothing.” She bit off the words. “We’ve seen cured duals before who developed a taste for killing.” Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened.

  Michael studied the trees, searching for a good place to hide.

  “You’ve… seen cured duals?” I repeated, my voice flat. “You knew there was a cure.” I sifted through my mind, grabbing at memories from the last few months and finding understanding where there’d been none before.

  The council was, collectively, thousands of years old. Josiah had known about the firsts. The dozens of pets who visited the island or the Utah hilltop knew. There was absolutely no reason someone on the council wouldn’t have been aware of their existence.

  Deborah and Michael had shown no surprise when they encountered the first on the island. Vivian had needed both the files on Sera’s mom and Luke’s explanation about the first to discover where Eila lived. The council had access to Josiah’s files, but not Luke’s knowledge. Those files would only make sense to someone who’d heard about first magics—and our trip to the island would only make sense if they knew firsts could heal duals.

  We’d assumed Jet had found us through satellites, following us on an unknown path across the desert and ocean. No one thought to ask her if we’d assumed correctly.

  The council had followed me to the island because they hoped to stop me before I found a cure.

  I bared my teeth. “You’ve got some ’splaining to do, Deborah. How long have you known?”

  Her eyes darted between my friends, and whatever she saw made her nervous. “Not long,” she insisted. That could mean anything from a week to five hundred years in elemental time.

  “You can start by telling us why this isn’t common knowledge. If it was, any child of two different fulls could be healed lon
g before the madness starts.”

  Deborah’s mouth opened and closed twice without a sound escaping.

  “Next, you can tell me why there’s a death sentence on all duals, instead of an offer of a cure. Encountering a first is dangerous, but it beats a guaranteed execution, doesn’t it?”

  She spread her hands in supplication, begging me to listen. “Can you imagine the chaos if the existence of the first magics was common knowledge? Elementals would be desperate to see them. The creatures’ power would be unimaginable. We would lose our strongest to their hunger.”

  It was a compelling argument, but I found myself uninterested in any solution that relied on secrets and half-truths and a system where knowledge was disseminated only to the most powerful.

  “People should know,” I said. “They can make their own choice and, yeah, some of them will choose the wrong one. It happens every day. Hell, elementals already learn of the firsts, but they hear some ludicrous fantasy of perfect magic. If they learn it’s likely a one-way trip, a lot fewer would try to make it. Just the really stupid ones.”

  “Elemental Darwinism,” Sera added.

  I warmed to my argument. “The firsts may grow more powerful for a while, but they’re tethered to the land where they were born. It doesn’t matter how powerful they are if they’re trapped. Plus, I’ll bet their food sources stop seeking them out once it becomes obvious few survive those meetings. If I understand it right, if firsts aren’t fed, they cease to exist. That’s what we all want. Cured duals and no firsts. Once the firsts are gone, the cure will vanish as well, but maybe we’ll learn another way to fuse the magic by then.”

  Allison didn’t appear nearly as certain as she had before. Deborah hadn’t shared news of the cure with everyone.

  Ruth and Harriet exchanged wild looks.

  Panic crawled into Deborah’s eyes. She scanned the clearing, noting the position of each person and reevaluating the success of that day’s mission.

  I wasn’t done. “And finally, perhaps you can tell me why it was more important to chase me thousands of miles, to try pumping me full of drugs, to terrorize my friends and family, and to harm an innocent human man—why was that more important than telling me how to cure myself?”

  The henchmen stepped away from the gurney. They seemed to realize they weren’t going to need it that day.

  “Sera, will you…?” I mimed the action.

  She rolled her eyes at my ineptitude, then put her fingers to her mouth for a shrill whistle that caught the others’ attention. My friends closed the remaining gap between us.

  I turned so that I could see both my friends and the council. “We all know it’s about power, Deborah. Healthy duals disrupt the elemental hierarchy, don’t they? They could bring about some real change.”

  Next to me, Sera grinned. When Mac appeared at my side, he wore the same expression, and his bear had been reined in. In fact, every single one of my friends and family looked pretty damn pleased.

  I was a bit slower to understand what they’d already figured out. I wasn’t going anywhere. None of us were.

  I spun back to Deborah. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s why you never really cared about Trent Pond. He was under your control. You could have offered me the solution ages ago, but I was already too dangerous. If I was cured, I’d be one of the most powerful elementals in the world—and I’m friends with shifters. Unlike the old ones, I believe the races are equal and don’t mind saying so. How long till you would have gone after Luke again? He’s also fond of shifters, you know.”

  Deborah’s lips thinned. I laughed, loud and harsh.

  “We’re stronger than you are. It’s not because we have more power, though we do. It’s because we have more knowledge. We can tell elementals about shifters and firsts and dual magics. If I’m free, we’ll change everything, and you’ll do whatever it takes to prevent that.” I pointed toward the other old ones. “Are you willing to fight for her now that you know what she’s done?”

  Ruth Strait held her head high and sneered at the shifters, but it seemed more a habit than a deeply held belief. Harriet Lake bit her lip, uncertain.

  A low moan carried to us. Luke was waking up.

  Allison moved away from the council and stood next to Sera. I wasn’t certain she was welcome, but I appreciated the gesture.

  “Go,” I told Deborah, my voice more tired than triumphant. “Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. We can figure out the rest later.”

  Deborah hesitated, undecided.

  “Aidan?” My stomach dropped. The voice was as familiar as my own.

  A tall blond woman was being carried out of the SUV by the twins. Fiona Brook. My mother. I should have asked more questions when Deborah told me she was no longer in a prison cell.

  I took back everything I’d thought earlier. Deborah really was evil.

  It didn’t appear that my mother had been harmed. She did, however, look so angry one could be forgiven for thinking she was the one with a fire side.

  “Aidan Brook, don’t you dare give into this woman.” She glared at Deborah. “She…”

  A hand clamped over her mouth. My mother continued to struggle, kicking out and connecting with more than one shin. It occurred to me that maybe all my temper hadn’t come from Josiah.

  “Deborah.” I broke her name into three careful syllables. I would not shout. I would not throw things. I would not incinerate people. “What is this?”

  “This isn’t what I wanted,” Deborah said. “Truly. I only asked that you come in. I would have freed her.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “Insurance. I’ve discovered you are more compliant when those you love are at risk.”

  The twitchy lackey placed the syringe against my mother’s neck. Each time his hand shook, my heart jumped.

  The sullen one withdrew a tranquilizer gun from the vehicle and leveled it at me.

  I didn’t know what I expected next, but I sure didn’t expect Vivian to step forward. The movement was uncertain, and her voice shook when she spoke. Deborah barely turned her head enough to acknowledge the weak earth requesting her attention.

  “How much of the serum do you have?” Vivian pointed toward the man with the gun. “If we add the number of syringes we had in the case—the ones we grabbed from the Brook family’s island—to the ones you left behind in the other tranq gun, and the ones required to keep Luke unconscious for a day, and the ones shipped to Trent Pond’s facility in Eureka, then calculate the time you’ve been making the drug and factor in the weeks required to source the ingredients and produce a quite complicated serum, I don’t see how it’s possible for you to have more than one vial left. That tranquilizer gun isn’t loaded.” By the end of her speech, her voice didn’t wobble in the slightest. “Math,” she said to me.

  “How could you…?” Deborah’s eyes narrowed. Vivian had her complete attention now.

  “Your lab shouldn’t keep the serum’s formula and its operations schedule online. Anyone could find it.” Vivian’s lips turned up, the bare beginning of smile. “If my calculations are right, and they always are, you have enough for Aidan. If I forgot to carry the two, which I didn’t, you may be able to get Fiona as well. Even if you could knock them both out, which you can’t, that would leave you in a lopsided battle against us. If you could somehow defeat a full and another dual and several angry shifters long enough to escape with Aidan, you won’t be able to control her without the drug—and I suspect her offer to be compliant has expired. If you hurt her, you wouldn’t be able to stop us when we hunted you down and destroyed you, which we would.”

  “We can always make more,” Deborah lifted her chin, fixing on the smallest part of Vivian’s argument.

  Vivian rattled off an address in Tacoma.

  “What did you do?” The words were strangled.

  “In the future, I recommend not pissing off people who can access shipping, health and safety, and property records. Between all the illegal ingredients an
d the workplace violations, it was only a matter of time before the lab was shut down and sold to new owners. They were quite efficient. It only took a few hours this morning.” The small smile was now a triumphant grin. “The neighborhood will welcome the new community center they’re about to get.”

  Deborah wasn’t the only one gaping at her at this point.

  Then Vivian, the quietest, gentlest person I knew, said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Aidan is my friend, and you are kind of a bitch.”

  Before anyone could respond, she took a confident step backward.

  “How many times are we going to go through this, Deborah?” I tried to sound bored. Boredom was a better negotiating position than fear, even if it was impossible while they threatened my mother. “You don’t have the strength. You don’t have the people. Apparently, you no longer have the drug. Despite what you think I am, I don’t want to kill you. We only want to live in peace.”

  A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Someone must pay, and not just for David. For Lana Pond, who will never recover from what she witnessed. For the council lives lost because of Josiah’s search for your cure.”

  “A search that wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d shared your knowledge.” My attempt at a bored facade shattered. “If you’re going to blame someone, remember this all started when a dual magic needed to hide from a council that would rather kill her than cure her.”

  I marched to my mother. I was done with this. With all of them. We could talk in circles all day, or I could end it. I liked door number two better.

  The man holding my mother refused to release her, so I set his arms on fire. He let go pretty damn fast. I glared at the second man. He dropped the empty tranq gun with no further urging. Only when my mother was far enough away did I douse the flames. Magic whispered around me as he pulled on the water in the air to heal his burns.

  Deborah stepped toward me, and I snarled.

  I wrapped an arm around my mother, supporting her. When we reached the group, I pushed her forward into Grams’ arms. For the first time in my life, I watched my mother accept comfort from another.