by Sarah Fine
“Hang on for me, baby.”
I couldn’t get my fingers or hands or arms to work. In fact, all of me was numb except the knife in my chest. “It hurts.” The only thing that felt right was knowing Asa would handle it.
“Is that what was supposed to happen?”
The pain cut my foggy confusion right down the middle and parted it like a curtain. “Ben?”
“Yeah, I’ve got you.” I was in his arms, my head lolling against his shoulder.
I’m honestly not sure how Ben got us out of that hotel. I had the impression of footsteps on carpet, then metal clanking, then my head bumping against his chest as he lugged me down a long bright-white hallway. I caught the muffled echo of shouts behind us and the frantic rush of Ben’s breath from his throat as he ran with me in his arms.
The next thing I knew, I was in our car and he was buckling my seat belt. “What are you doing?”
“It wasn’t safe to stay there.”
I clutched at my head and gasped as the sharp pain in my chest intensified. “Something’s wrong.”
“You can say that again.” He put the car in gear and peeled out of the parking garage, tossing money at the gatekeeper and shouting for him to let us out because I needed to get to the hospital.
“We can’t go to the hospital.” Memories of the Sensilo magic were coming back to me. “There were naturals in the hotel. They might have been—”
“Zhong’s spies. Marcus was right to be cautious.”
“If they find him, they’ll question him.”
“He wasn’t in any state to answer questions. And don’t worry, we’re not going to the hospital.”
I cracked an eyelid open to see that Ben was driving quickly down a busy thoroughfare. Night was falling fast, and the city was streaked with neon. I squinted to read a road sign through the glare of a streetlight. State Street. I closed my eyes again as harsh reality hit me like a wrecking ball. “Now I know how Grandpa died. Debbie wasn’t really a nurse, was she? She was a conduit like Marcus.”
“I know how this looks, but I was only thinking of our future. And that’s all I’m thinking about right now.”
“You overheard him telling me about the relic.”
“It was too valuable to throw away. Grandpa agreed. He wanted you to have it.”
“You’re lying. That’s the opposite of what he wanted.”
“He changed his mind!”
“You killed him!” I shrieked, but it came out as a broken squawk.
“I had no idea it was that powerful, all right? Please, Mattie. Debbie made it sound easy, and I had no idea what would happen. I was just so desperate—”
“Not desperate enough to swallow your pride and borrow from my parents.” The pain of the betrayal on top of the magic made me draw my knees up to my chest, which is when I realized I was barefoot and clad only in the hotel robe. “I can’t believe you did this. You killed my grandfather. You broke two conduits. And even after you saw what happened to Grandpa, even after you knew how dangerous it was, you forced this magic into me!”
“Mattie, your grandpa was nearly ninety years old and in the last days of his life—a stiff wind could have killed him. And you—you’re strong. I knew you could handle it, and you trusted me to make the decision. So I did. You needed me to be strong for you. So I was.”
It was such twisted reasoning that I couldn’t even think around it, especially because it was all I could do to cope with the pain. “You weren’t strong. You were greedy.”
“I’m not! I just wanted us to be able to—”
“There is no ‘us,’ Ben. You’ve made sure of that.” Something was very wrong inside me. What had been an annoying stab before the transaction now felt as if someone were trying to tear my lungs to shreds. “You don’t even understand what you’ve done.”
“I can fix it. I swear. I’ll get us through this!”
“Stop saying that,” I mumbled, but every word hurt.
His fingers were tight over the wheel. “I’ve arranged a meeting for tomorrow morning just outside of the city. Mr. Brindle’s best people will be there to escort us to Vegas. Whatever you need, they’ll get it for you. You’ll feel better soon.”
The betrayals just kept coming. “You’re taking me to Brindle?”
“We’ll get that magic out of you, Mattie. And we’ll walk out of there with millions. Reza said if it was the real deal, we’re talking eight figures.”
Reza. My stomach felt like I’d swallowed nails. “Maybe I do need a hospital,” I muttered, glancing again at the street signs, which were blurred by my tears. Disbelief was clawing at my thoughts, making it hard to form a coherent plan or sentence.
But I had to try. “Ben, I’m not joking. There’s really something wrong with me. That magic—it’s not like normal magic.”
“You’ve carried stuff like that before. Reza told me so before he left to go rescue you and Asa in Utah. He really respects you. So does Frank. You’re one of the strongest known reliquaries in existence.” He reached over to touch my leg, but I scooted away. “Mattie, I have confidence in you. You can do this.”
“I’m not the same person I was last year.” I winced as I rubbed at my chest. “And circumstances were different then.”
Ben glanced over at me as he breezed through a yellow light. “Which circumstances?”
My fingers closed around the door handle as I recognized the silhouette of a building a block away. I knew this area. “Too many to name.”
“How about I name one,” he suggested, his voice hard. “Because you already have. You were saying it over and over again as I carried you out of the hotel.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Not for the first time, by the way. You say it in your sleep sometimes.”
“Don’t you dare go there right now.” The pain nearly made me retch. My muscles were knotted, adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“Is there a better time to ask if you’re in love with my brother?” he yelled.
I groaned. It felt as if my rib cage were about to explode, and the pressure pushed all my words right out of my head.
He glanced over at me, and his grimace softened. “We’ll get you some healing magic when we meet our contacts. It’s amazing how well it works. Shit!” He braked and laid on the horn as a delivery truck double-parked right in front of us, blocking an entire lane of traffic.
Just what I needed.
I flung open the door and jumped out. Rough, warm asphalt scraped my feet as I sprinted to the sidewalk. Ben shouted my name, but I didn’t stop. I had only one thought, one hope. Wide-eyed stares hit me left and right as I staggered down a side street and kept running, stumbling every few steps as my legs threatened to give out. I glanced over my shoulder to see Ben trying to steer around the truck and follow me. Panic propelled me forward. I hooked left onto another side street, went up a block, turned right and right again. My thoughts were those of a reptilian brain—survival, escape. No room for anything else. I aimed my body toward safety.
I was panting and wheezing by the time I reached it. My palms hit the glass doors of the building and slid along the surface to tug at the handle. It swung open, but the inner doors were locked. My fingers fumbled at the intercom. Which floor was it? Five? Six? I started punching the buttons. “Daria?” I asked as soon as anyone answered, and over and over again the person on the other end hung up on me.
“Daria?” I asked for maybe the twentieth time as a low female voice answered, just as I was starting to wonder if I was wrong about the building. It had been almost a year. For all I knew she could have moved. “Daria?”
“She’s 514, honey,” the lady said, then hung up.
Sagging against the wall, I punched in “514.” My head was spinning and my lips were tingling. A tiny voice in the back of my head whispered that I was about to faint.
“Hello,” said a familiar voice.
“Daria. It’s Mattie Carver. We met—”
The door buzzed open, and I stumbled thro
ugh it, noticing with numb dread that I was leaving dirty, blood-smeared footprints on the tile behind me. I summoned the elevator, working hard to catch my breath. I shrank against the wall as a dark shape passed by outside, but the man just kept walking.
“He can’t find me here,” I whispered as I dove into the elevator.
By the time I staggered into the fifth-floor hallway, a familiar face was already poking out of apartment 514. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what happened to you?” Daria cried as she ran forward and caught me against her lean, hard body. Her hair smelled of strawberries and coconuts when it brushed across my face. She half carried, half dragged me through her front door. “I can feel every single one of your ribs, girl.”
“I’m in trouble.”
“No shit, darling. I’m actually not sure I want to know.” She flipped her wavy black hair over her shoulder and guided me onto her couch. Even though my vision was sort of blurry, I could tell that she was wearing makeup, perfect cat eyes accentuated by thick black lashes, blush on her hollow cheeks, contouring to soften the hard edge of her jaw. She was probably getting ready to go out, and here I was ruining her Friday night.
“Then I won’t give you details. But I need your help.”
She gave me a wary look, and I suddenly felt bad for bringing this to her doorstep. “What is it?”
“I need—” I nearly screamed as another bolt of pain zipped through my chest. My fingers clutched at Daria’s forearms, balling in the silky sleeves of her dress. Part of me didn’t want to do this. It was dangerous, for so many reasons.
But the rest of me knew what it needed to survive. Or, to be precise, who it needed.
My eyes met hers. “Asa.”
CHAPTER SIX
Daria looked me over. “He’s not an easy one to reach, honey.”
“But can you try?”
“Haven’t heard from him in months. I think he’s been out of the country.”
I grabbed a tissue from her end table and pressed it over my eyes, embarrassed to be losing it in front of her. “Please,” I whispered. “I need him.”
“He said you’d gone back to your fiancé. That you were done with our happy little underworld for good.”
“I suppose you could say I was forced out of retirement.” I pulled the tear-soaked tissue away from my face.
Daria’s immaculately plucked eyebrows went halfway to her forehead. “You’re loaded up?”
I nodded.
“Something big?”
I winced. “The biggest.”
Her eyes went round, and she looked me over again. “Who’s chasing you?” she said, her voice sharp with alarm. “Did anyone see you come here?” She cursed and threw up her hands. “Do you have any idea what Zhong would do to me if he caught me with stolen magic?”
Crap. The last thing I wanted was to put someone else in danger. “I’ll leave,” I said hoarsely, pushing myself up off the couch. “But—can you try to reach Asa? Or tell me how I can?”
Daria caught me as I swayed. “Oh, damn it all. My heart is too freaking soft.” Her sigh was full of exasperation. “You stay put while I make a few arrangements.”
She lowered me back onto the couch, where I floated in my little bubble of agony until she returned. It hurt to move. It hurt to stay still. It hurt to breathe and it hurt to hold my breath. And most of all—it hurt to think.
I jerked as Daria plopped a shabby satchel down next to me. “I don’t have much that will fit you, but I tried,” she said. “There’s a toothbrush in there, too. And some moisturizer and eye cream, because baby, you need it.”
“Um, thanks. And did you reach—”
“I called a friend of a friend who worked with Asa a few months ago up in Alaska. He said he would try to get a message to him.”
“Because of course he doesn’t have a permanent number.”
Daria let out a squawk of laughter. “Oh, honey. That’s cute.”
“E-mail address?”
Daria gave me an amused look.
I swallowed the urge to start sobbing again. “Okay,” I whispered. “Thanks for trying.”
She knelt next to the couch and nudged my chin up. “If it’s any consolation, I think he’ll come if he knows it’s you.”
“What makes you say that? Did he say something about me?” And why did my heart have to kick into high gear at the thought?
“Nothing apart from what I just told you. He’s not exactly an open book.”
“Oh, so you’re just guessing.”
“I’ve known him a long time, honey. Trust me.”
Gratitude and hope dampened the pain for a moment. “Where should I go now?”
“I got you a room at the Amber. It’s down in the South Side and a little rough, but well clear of Chinatown.” She gripped my elbows and pulled me up, letting me lean against her. “If there’s even a chance they know you’ve got something hot, they’ll be on you.”
“I think they already are,” I mumbled apologetically. “I never should have come here.”
She squeezed me. “We girls have to help each other.”
I smiled as she pressed some clothing into my hands. “Thanks, lady.”
Daria let me use her bathroom to change and wash the smeared makeup off my face. I scrubbed myself clean and tried not to stare at the blue-black circles under my eyes, the sallow tint of my freckled cheeks. Slowly, gasping with every stab and slice of the knife in my chest, I changed into what she had given me—probably a short dress on her, but it hit me midcalf and hung from my now-scrawny frame. I looked like a child trying on her mother’s clothes. A terminally ill child.
She’d given me flip-flops, too, which were several sizes too big. I wore a size six, and Daria had to be . . . jeez. She was well over six feet tall, and her shoes probably had to be custom-made. But I was grateful as I cleaned off my scraped-up feet. At least I wouldn’t be barefoot anymore.
I emerged from the bathroom to hear Daria talking sharply into the phone. “Thanks for the heads-up. Yeah. We’re leaving now.”
“What is it?” I asked as she ended the call.
“You were right. Zhong’s after you. Apparently because you left a freelance conduit for dead in the Waldorf. Marcus,” she hissed. “Zhong’s people found him before police did.”
“Oh.”
Daria strode to the door. “No idea what happened there, darling, but can I give you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“You should have killed him.”
I blinked at her. “But . . . you’re a conduit. I would have thought—don’t you guys have a code of loyalty or a union or something?”
“Most of us protect each other, yeah. Marcus, though . . . how did you get mixed up with him? He’s a pit viper, honey.”
A wave of nausea crashed over me. Marcus’s face rose in my mind, him leaning over me, strapping me down, his dead weight crushing me to the table . . . Saliva filled my mouth and I rushed for the bathroom, making it just in time to retch into the toilet. Sweat prickled along the back of my neck. Daria pulled my hair away from my face and offered me a glass of water. “I guess that subject is off-limits, then,” she said quietly. “We’d better get going. Marcus must have given Zhong some info about what you were up to, because Zhong has alerted all his agents.”
“Crap,” I whispered. If he got hold of me, he would find a way to tear the magic out of me whether I wanted to give it up or not. And with the way I was feeling, I was pretty sure I would end up like Grandpa if that happened.
“So here we go. Just a quick ride on the El.”
With her arm hard around me, we made it all the way to the closest station. As she made to walk in with me, though, I pushed away from her. “You’ve done so much for me, and I’m so grateful,” I said. “But I can’t ask you to do more.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I was stupid enough to get myself into this.” Because I had loved. Because I had trusted. And apparently I was the worst jud
ge of character on the planet. “If you got hurt because of me, I couldn’t live with myself.”
Daria bit her lip. “Mattie, you look bad. Are you sure you can make it on your own?”
“Absolutely.” I sounded more confident than I was.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a phone, then punched something in before handing it to me. “Just texted myself, so you have a number to reach me.”
I looked down at the flip phone. “Is this a—”
“Burner phone. Won’t be traced back to me. Just toss it when you’re done.”
“For real?” I’d seen this kind of thing on TV, but never in real life.
“We all have to stay safe, honey. If I reach Asa, I’ll make sure he has the number to reach you. And don’t worry about calling me—it’s a burner, too.”
My fingers closed over the phone. “You’re amazing.”
“There’s enough cash in the bag for a few nights at the Amber. The room is under the name Karen Funkhouse.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the alias—it reminded me of some of Asa’s. “Perfect.”
She enfolded me in a tight hug. “Be careful.”
“You too. I’m sorry for ruining your night.”
“Oh, honey. A little excitement never killed nobody.” She let me go and glanced around nervously. “Good luck. Call if you need me. I’ll do what I can on my end.” She gave me a quick wave, then walked briskly away.
I watched her go with a lump in my throat. “You’re a big girl, Mattie,” I whispered. “You can do this.”
I shouldered the satchel, trudged into the station, bought a ticket with Daria’s money, and caught the Green Line heading south. I leaned my forehead against the window as I counted down the stops. I tried to stay on the lookout for possible agents, but I had to keep closing my eyes to keep from puking on the shoes of the guy next to me. Fortunately, the train wasn’t all that crowded—it was pretty late. Normally, I would have been nervous about getting mugged or something, since I hadn’t taken the train very many times before, but tonight I had bigger worries.
