by Mindy Klasky
Instead, I stood up straight and looked the judge directly in the eye. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
Judge Finch pursed her lips, as if she tasted something bitter. “Very well, then. We’ll docket your preliminary hearing for…” She flipped the massive pages of a calendar that nearly filled the desk in front of her. “For Wednesday, the first of May,” she finally said. “Get a lawyer, Ms. Anderson. You’re free to go until then.”
Me? An accused murderer? Free to go? Wasn’t I a threat to the community? Or a flight risk? Wasn’t she supposed to demand an ungodly amount of money as bail? “E— Excuse me, Your Honor?”
“I’m releasing you on your own recognizance.”
I nodded, too stunned to speak. I was through with bureaucratic restraints. I could find Chris. My steps grew faster as I reached the swinging gate that led to the gallery.
Only as I passed the first wooden bench filled with spectators did Judge Finch speak again. “Ms. Anderson!”
I turned back, dreading the authoritarian note in her voice. I suddenly knew I’d been right to fear justice in this courtroom. “Your Honor?” I asked, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking.
She planted her hands on her desk and leaned forward. “You can pick up your personal possessions from the booking clerk downstairs. We only need to keep your insignia.”
That was it—the sound of the other shoe dropping. My fingers automatically clutched my bare wrist. “Your Honor—”
She cut me off. “Or you could, of course, return to your cell.”
No. No I couldn’t. Not with freedom dangling so close. Not with my boyfriend lost and unaccounted for, somewhere beyond the courthouse walls. I stammered, “N— No, Your Honor.”
Her nod was so minute I might have imagined it. “Very well, then. That’s decided. And you might as well take the rest of the night off. Bailiff? Notify Acting Director Wilson that Ms. Anderson will be back at her desk on Monday night.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, my voice melting with relief.
Judge Finch had giveth and she had taketh away. On the one hand, I could avoid Angelique Wilson for another night. Short on sleep, long on anxiety for Chris, I wasn’t sure I could stay silent for my boss’s cock-eyed canine curses. On the other hand, my fingertips already itched at the thought of going without my insignia for five full days, until my preliminary hearing. Longer, if my eventual lawyer couldn’t work out some satisfactory alternative arrangement.
But there was nothing to be done about that. My insignia guaranteed I wouldn’t skip town, better than any dollar amount of bail. Gritting my teeth, I speed-walked to the booking desk. One short detour to grab my purse and phone, and I could find out what had happened to Chris.
I couldn’t imagine what had motivated the judge’s generous offer of a paid day off. But nearly four hours later, I understood.
The sympathetic gnome of the night before was no longer on duty. Instead, a bear shifter was processing new cases. I knew the calendar said it was late April, almost May. But watching the man behind the desk, I could almost believe he was still hibernating. He moved so slowly, my own exhausted joints ached.
It was a Friday, two nights shy of a full moon, and all sorts of imperial mischief had broken out. Three different EBI agents brought in new defendants. Each of them was processed before the bear shifter turned his attention to me.
The sky was softening to grey by the time I staggered out of the courthouse. I had my purse and my cell phone and a headache that threatened to make me see double. I was in no shape to take the subway, much less to walk. I summoned an Uber and gave the driver Chris’s address.
Calling his name as I walked in the front door, I already knew he wasn’t home. Not a light was on inside the house. No smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafted from the kitchen. The Banner had rested on the front doorstep, still inside its plastic sleeve.
Fighting a rush of foreboding, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Chris’s office was empty, his laptop missing from his immaculate desk. Across the hall, his king-size bed looked like a display model in some ultra-high-end department store. The bedspread hung in perfect folds, as if no one had ever slept there.
Doubling back to the kitchen, I walked over to the sink. A dessert plate rested on the counter, cookie crumbs littering its surface.
My stomach lurched.
In the ten months I’d been with Chris, I’d never seen him leave a plate on the counter. Sure, he ate cookies as a before-bed snack every night, three Lorna Doones, always taken out of the package and centered on a salad plate before he carried them to the table. After eating them, he washed the plate and placed it in the dishwasher. He sealed the bag of cookies. He wiped down the counter. Everything was in its place. Always.
The plate and crumbs were the equivalent of a burglar’s rampage in anyone else’s home. They shrieked of wrongness as much as slashed couch cushions, shattered drawers, or torn books strewn across the floor.
My phone was out of my pocket before I got to the sidewalk. It only took a moment to call another Uber, this time heading into Georgetown. Every traffic light sent a new surge of adrenaline through my exhausted body.
By the time I arrived at the Den, I expected to find a smoldering pile of ruins. Instead, I stared at a perfectly balanced red-brick façade behind a high stone wall. A familiar wrought-iron gate swung smoothly on its hinges as I entered from the sidewalk. The scanner beside the entrance registered my retina. The front door glided open.
“Liam!” I gasped to the unflappable young sphinx behind the security desk. “Is Chris here?”
“Good morning, Ms. Anderson,” the guard said.
I didn’t have time for social niceties. “Where’s Chris?”
“He’s in a meeting, Ms. Anderson.”
Not murdered by Richardson then. Not kidnapped without a trace. Not indicted. My relief was so intense my knees buckled, and I grabbed onto Liam’s desk for balance.
“Mr. Gardner asked you to wait for him in the front study.”
Wait for him… Then Chris had known I would show up. What the hell was going on?
But I’d been a sphinx for long enough that I recognized an order when I heard one, even if it was delivered politely. I headed down the hall.
The study was exactly as I’d last seen it. An overstuffed sofa sat between two armchairs. Fringed throw pillows filled the corners of the sofa, each turned to a precise angle. The brocade curtains were still drawn against the night.
I walked over and slipped a finger past the heavy silk. A watery beam of sunlight leaked through the sheers. The gravel courtyard beyond looked bleached.
My body twitched, resisting my need to wait patiently. I thought about rushing back to Liam, about demanding that he page Chris. But the Sun Lion had issued his command. I had to wait.
One times two is two, I thought, taking a deep breath and pressing my right thumb against its matching forefinger as I studied the immaculate courtyard. Two times two is four. I exhaled slowly and pressed my middle finger. Four times two is eight. Inhale. Ring finger, bare of my coral ring. Eight times two is sixteen. Exhale. Pinky.
I counted off the series, forcing myself to slow down, to breathe in for five, out for five. In my exhausted state, the roof of my mouth began to buzz. My fingertips tingled.
Calm. Peace. Order.
The hell with that. I had just calculated 16,777,216 when the study door opened. I recognized Chris’s presence without turning around—the sound of him or the scent, something about his very essence.
I heard him close the door. I felt him cross the carpet. And then his arms were around me, and his chest was pressed to my back, and his lips were warm against my temple.
I relaxed into the solid, steady strength of him, letting the curtain slip back into place. His arms tightened around me, pulling me close, keeping me safe.
This was the way I’d always felt around Chris. Even before I knew that he and I were sphinxes, that he lived h
is life with the same compulsions I did, that he understood the constant restless drive that pulsed in my blood…
Chris made me feel centered. He made me feel right.
“Where were you?” I asked, whispering the words to keep my voice from breaking.
Instead of answering, he spread his fingers across my belly. Warmth flowed through me, soft and sweet and comforting.
I turned within the circle of his arms, smiling when I saw his familiar chestnut curls. His eyes were more gold than brown behind their horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a crisp blue shirt and khakis with a crease that could have cut glass. He was calm and controlled and perfect. He was Chris.
I settled my lips on his. I meant the kiss to be something casual, a greeting, but he was the one who deepened it. His fingers tangled in my hair. He murmured my name against my throat. He did distracting things with the zipper on my skirt, and I wondered if he’d locked the study door when he’d come into the room.
“I was so worried,” I said, pulling back just enough to settle my palm over his heart. “When I saw the plate on the counter…”
His fingers tightened around my waist. “The Pride called.” The committee that managed all sphinxes in the Empire. “It was an emergency.”
I should have heard the warning in his words. Instead, I continued with my own concern. “I called you too. I need a lawyer, a—”
Before I could say “sphinx”, the door to the study swung open. A cadaver of a man walked in, looking like the love child of a stork and an oil derrick. Ronald Mortenson was a teacher at the Den and a member of the Pride. And he’d been one of my greatest critics from the first moment I entered the Georgetown mansion.
“Excellent!” he said to Chris, actually rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain. “Then she already knows?”
“Knows what?” I asked.
Chris’s face was pale. I suddenly realized how exhausted he looked.
No. Not exhausted.
Afraid.
I’d never seen Chris afraid.
I whirled on Ronald and repeated, “Knows what?”
I saw the instant he realized he’d spoken out of turn. His eyebrows peaked. He smirked at Chris, a wry smile that might have been an apology. Or maybe it was a reprimand.
“Knows what?” I repeated, trying not to panic.
Ronald finally answered my question, clearly relishing every single syllable. “You’re banished, Sarah. Kicked out. You’re excommunicated from the Den forever.”
4
Rage. Hot as desert sand. Quick as a striking cobra.
One moment, I was a dazed sphinx, standing by a curtained window, trying to make sense of three simple sentences.
The next, I was a murderous weapon. My thoughts sped up until I couldn’t parse them word by word. Every muscle in my body tensed. My vision shifted.
I wanted to destroy Ronald Mortenson, to crush his throat with a strangling grip.
Agriotis. The word came to me, my thoughts flying faster than my body could follow. I was suffused with the perfect rage of a sphinx, the bloodlust that had sustained my ancestors in brutal battle.
Agriotis. My fingers stiffened into a set of ten matched knives.
Agriotis. My legs flexed, my knees bent; I was ready to soar across the room.
Through my widened eyes, I saw that Chris’s mouth was just beginning to open. His throat was only now beginning to vibrate around a syllable: Sa—. His lips pursed as he formed the rest of my name: —rah.
In that instant, I realized my rage wasn’t reserved for Ronald. I was furious with Chris, too. He’d known I was cast out before he’d entered the study. But rather than tell me, rather than give me a chance to prepare some sort of logical response, he’d allowed me to be disgraced in front of one of my greatest enemies in the Den.
Sekhmet’s blood ran in my veins, making me a killer, urging me to destroy the sphinxes before me.
“No!” I cried, forcing the word past the crimson sand dune molten rage. I clapped my palm down on my wrist, where I should have worn my hematite bracelet.
But I’d lost my insignia. The court had taken it because I’d executed Judge DuBois.
That night, standing with Judge DuBois’s blood literally on my hands, I’d vowed never to succumb to agriotis again. I knew the danger. I understood the cost. I’d promised myself and the Den that I would find a way for all sphinxes, everywhere, to be forever free from our blinding fury.
“No,” I repeated, forcing my body to take a breath. I wouldn’t use my power. I wouldn’t use my force. Not today. Not here. Not against Ronald and Chris.
I glared at both of them, slower now, sane now. “No,” I repeated a third time.
“Let’s talk, Sarah,” Chris said, his voice steady, as if he hadn’t just faced down a murderous sphinx. He was even brave enough to take a step closer. “The Pride called an emergency meeting last night, the instant they heard about the indictment.”
“That’s impossible! I only found out when I filed the paperwork!”
“The Inquirer had a reporter outside the grand jury room.”
Of course. The Imperial Inquirer was a newspaper, a daily that reported on Empire business. A sphinx accused of murdering a vampire judge—that was a big case. I’d probably made the front page.
“So you knew about the indictment?” I had to be sure.
“Within five minutes of it being issued,” he said grimly.
“And you didn’t tell me?” He’d been my one phone call. I’d needed him. And he hadn’t thought to warn me of looming disaster.
“It isn’t that simple,” he said.
“What isn’t simple? I’ve been accused of murder! Murder and a hell of a lot more. I called you because I need a lawyer so I don’t go to jail for the rest of my natural life. I’m a sphinx. So I need a sphinx lawyer. I don’t see anything complicated about that. I don’t see—”
“You aren’t necessarily a sphinx.”
He caught me mid-tirade, literally knocking the breath from my lungs. I glanced from Chris to Ronald and back to Chris before I managed, “What?”
Chris’s voice was impossibly gentle. “The Pride isn’t convinced you’re a sphinx.”
Once again, ten months disappeared in the blink of an eye. I stood on the plaza in front of the Jefferson Memorial, staring at the spot where Judge DuBois had died. At the same time, with the impossibility of magic, I walked with Sekhmet, surveying an ancient battlefield.
Mother Sekhmet had shown me the truth that night. She’d told me my father was Sheut, not Ptah, like all the other sphinxes. Sheut—a shadowy figure so ancient he wasn’t even recorded in the Den’s archives.
I was special. I was different.
But ten months ago, Chris had promised me it didn’t matter. The Pride had approved my belonging to the Den. I’d passed their tests. They’d accepted me.
“I don’t understand,” I said, even though I was terrified I understood perfectly well.
Ronald’s lips pursed, as if he’d sucked on a lemon. “Really, Sarah. It’s not complicated.”
“Shut up!” I shouted. I didn’t want to hear from Ronald. I wanted Chris to tell me the truth. I wanted him to explain how he’d known about the indictment, he’d known I’d been thrown out of the Den, and he’d still come into this room and found the time to kiss me, to make me think everything was all right, that I was safe and he was there for me, even though he’d known I was cast out.
I couldn’t stay inside the Den, surrounded by sphinxes who thought I was a monster. Surrounded by creatures I longed to kill with the red-hot fury of barely restrained agriotis.
I scarcely registered Chris’s chagrined expression as I pushed past him. I didn’t bother to look at Ronald. Liam’s face was a blur as I fled across the foyer. Somehow, I opened the front door and then the iron gate. I fled down the sidewalk, beneath the oak trees with their new yellow-green spring leaves.
I left the Den forever, and I walked.
I walked with t
he energy that could have shredded two adult male sphinxes. I walked with the determination to save myself, to spare my soul from the cost of agriotis. I walked from Georgetown to the National Mall, along the Potomac River, past the Lincoln Memorial, past the Washington Monument and the low, modern temples to knowledge, the Smithsonian.
I climbed Capitol Hill, and I skirted the Senate office buildings. I angled down side streets, automatically lifting my feet over broken sidewalks, maneuvering past scattered trashcans and recycling bins.
Each step burned a little more of my madness. Every footfall brought me back from the brink of agriotis. Each stride saved a little of my soul.
I could breathe again.
I could think again.
I could speak.
Ordinarily, after an agriotis-fueled battle, I would ground myself with food and drink. But having throttled my instincts, I didn’t want the customary centering meal, no water or wine or the beer that had first been brewed to dull Mother Sekhmet’s battle-lust.
I wanted the impossible. I wanted to be a sphinx, and I wanted to be welcome at the Den, and I wanted to love Chris and marry Chris and bear Chris’s normal, everyday, healthy sphinx children.
I wanted to belong.
I’d spent my entire life looking into groups from the outside. I’d never had the easy camaraderie of my peers, the simple grace to laugh at the right jokes, to cry over the right commercials, to feel simple, healthy rage at the correct slights.
I’d slipped from grade to grade in school without ever truly belonging. I’d weathered college with the same sense of disillusion. I’d started law school, believing I worked for some sort of common good, but I’d left after two years, confused and lonely and…empty.
I’d worked a series of meaningless jobs—collecting signatures for the Penguin Rescue Campaign, making overpriced fruit bowls at an artisanal juice bar, distributing free samples of drinkable yogurt at subway stations around town… None of it had mattered to me. None of it had been important—until I arrived at the District Court for the Eastern Empire.