Except this one: Julian moving out for the duration, and coming back when the coast was clear.
He knew as well as I did that my protest was my heart talking, not my head. He took my hand in a reassuring grip. “It won’t be for long. And you have enough to deal with already; you don’t need the extra trouble.”
Knowing he was right didn’t make me any happier. “I hate this,” I mumbled, gripping his hand hard in return.
Julian didn’t answer that. What could he say? We both knew it couldn’t be fixed with words. “Come on,” he said instead. “Guan and Neeya will be waiting for us.”
~
The apartment felt empty with Julian gone.
It wasn’t a matter of physical absences. Most of what he owned was in storage at Welton, awaiting the university reopening or, more likely, him leaving school for good. The rest wasn’t much: clothes, a few books, his port. It barely filled a suitcase.
But I’d grown used to having him there. I’d come to rely on it. I didn’t realize how quickly I’d adjusted to the little casual touches until they were gone. I felt cold and alone, and melodramatic for feeling that way. And I resented my mother for depriving me of that support, all in the name of her own comfort.
It wasn’t fair, and I knew it. She hadn’t asked Julian to move out. She hadn’t known to ask. Maybe I was wrong; maybe she would have coped with it after all. But I couldn’t bring myself to test it.
At least she was helping as much as she could on other fronts. “I’m optimistic,” she said her fourth night in town, over dinner at a local Tibetan restaurant. “The vote itself will be a nightmare, of course. Enormous bills always are. People can agree on ninety-five percent of the substance, and fight like wet cats in a sack over the remaining five. But it doesn’t sound like Ramos needs to trade anything to get your part of the law included. She just needs to not trade you in exchange for something else.”
The prospect twisted my stomach. I poked at my spicy laping, trying to muster the appetite for it. “Do you think she’s likely to?”
“Of her own free will? No.” My mother paused for a bite. No amount of stress ever seemed to kill her appetite. She’d even kept on eating when Noah was in the hospital, dying of psi-sickness. I’d hated her for that back then, thinking it meant she didn’t care. “But it’s possible she could be pressured into it by other members of her party. The Progressives may be sympathetic to you, but if they have to sacrifice your happiness for the greater good of the nation, they will. Our job is to make certain they don’t.”
By which she meant, her job. I hated being so useless.
But I could work on things other than my own problem. “What about the Unseelie? Are we really going to be making nice with them?” I hadn’t told her that Falcon had approached Julian. I didn’t have to. It was enough that the Unseelie were out there in public.
My mother said, “I honestly don’t know. But Kim, you have to bear in mind that what happened last fall may have been the work of individuals, not sanctioned by their leadership. You can’t assume the entire Unseelie Court is like the ones you dealt with.”
So much for eating more of my dinner. “I can’t? I was one of them. They’re not—not robots or anything, or a hive mind. But being Unseelie wasn’t just an issue of eye color, either. It was attitude, goals—” I fought for words, tried to remember how I’d described it before, when agents and other officials were questioning me from dawn to dusk. The phrases wouldn’t come. “Where did that come from, if not from some kind of controlling force across the whole Court?”
“That was your experience of it,” my mother said, with surprising gentleness. Not that it did much good. “Are you certain the same is true for the sidhe?”
I was, down to the bone. But I didn’t have any proof other than gut instinct, and the lack was driving me up the wall. “Has their leadership said it was just a few rogue agents going after us? Staged a few show trials, made an example of them to please our observers? Who the hell is their leader, anyway?”
She shook her head, then sipped her tea. It was a stalling tactic, a chance for her to choose her next words. “I can’t talk about that, Kim. But I promise you, I share your concerns.” She fixed me with a sharp gaze. “Have you had any more trouble recently?”
Even if I’d wanted to keep the Metro attack secret, Lotze would have told her. Attorney-client privilege covered what the two of us said to one another, but not incidents that got me investigated by SIF. Full disclosure was the safer course. “Not that I’ve noticed,” I said, sagging back in my chair. “Sorry, that sounds sarcastic. I don’t mean it to be. I’ve been trying to keep an eye out in nine different directions at once, but nothing.” I wasn’t about to tell her how many times I’d jumped at a shadow, and had to restrain myself from doing something that might make me look bad. Guan had taught me more subtle ways of scanning my surroundings — both magical and otherwise — which helped.
“I hope you’re being careful,” my mother said. “Not being out in public alone, that sort of thing.”
“I’ve mostly stayed inside,” I said, in perfect truth. She didn’t need to know that Toby and Marcus’ townhouse was one of my refuges. Ever since my manifestation, she’d wanted me to study ceremonial magic . . . but I didn’t think she’d be happy to know I was learning it from wilders now.
So many damned secrets. I hated keeping this from her. As soon as my legal situation was settled, I vowed, I would tell her what was really going on. Once I could spare the energy for a new source of stress.
She paid for dinner and walked me back to the apartment. I breathed a private sigh of relief that Julian had moved out. Just as I unlocked the door, though, my port rang. A quick glance showed me Toby’s number. “I need to take this,” I said to my mother, trying to think of an excuse to keep the conversation private. “It’s work. You go on in; I’ll be there in a sec.”
FAR dealt with sensitive cases often enough that my mother didn’t question my need for privacy. Once the door had shut behind her, I went a little distance down the hall and thumbed the call through, voice only, and put the speaker to my ear.
Part of me thought it might be Julian, using Toby’s port to avoid having his name on my screen. But the voice on the other end was Toby’s. “Kim? Can you spare a moment?”
“Um, sure—though if you can make it quick, that would be good. My mother’s waiting for me.” Would she listen at the door? I told myself that was just paranoia talking.
Toby seemed to be thinking along similar lines. Or maybe the paranoia was habit for him. “In that case, keep your answers as bland as you can. You’re aware the Fiain are trained in divination, right?”
Wilders were trained in everything, at least to a point. “Mostly cards and runes, right?”
“Yes. You performed a divination recently on a certain topic—one that shall remain nameless, because it’s classified. Imagine that information on this topic was subsequently passed to the Guardian Corps, and they conducted their own inquiries.”
Fairy dust. Now I understood why Toby had warned me to be circumspect. “Okay, I follow.” My fingers cramped around my port.
“I was searching for flash-points,” Toby said. “Places where trouble might start, where a timely intervention might head it off at the pass. What I got was a warning. About you.”
My pulse sped up before he said it, as if anticipating the words. “What did it indicate?”
“The runes—I think they’re warning me that what you experienced before isn’t over. Its effects aren’t finished. And what follows next will be worse.”
I sagged against the wall, slid down until I was crouched on the carpet, curled around my port. Worse. I still woke up sometimes in the middle of the night, body twisted in remembered agony. I had burned for centuries when the Unseelie put that drug in my system. When I’d come out the far side, I’d been their faithful ally, almost to the bone. What could be worse than that?
If Toby was right, I might be about to
find out.
I should go to the hospital. Except that doctors had checked me out already, a dozen of them, from an army physician before I left Welton to a trio of specialists from the CDC. They’d scanned my brain, tested my blood, run the Krauss test again to calculate my new rating. What could they possibly have missed that they would find now?
Through numb lips, I said, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Be careful,” Toby said. “I wish I could be more specific. But yes, I think you can avoid it—if you’re careful.”
Some instinct for secrecy was still alive, because I didn’t say, Thank you, that’s very fucking helpful. Or maybe it was just manners. Toby was trying to help, even if he wasn’t doing a very good job. Wilders learned only the basics of divination. It wasn’t a surprise he hadn’t gotten more.
Maybe I could do better.
Not tonight, though. I needed to get a bit of distance before I attempted anything like this personal of a question—or maybe ask somebody at FAR for help. I pushed myself back to my feet. “Okay. Thank you; I’ll see what I can do.”
“Would you like to talk to Julian?”
Of course I would. It wasn’t a good idea, though, not right now, with my mind still reeling and my mother waiting inside my apartment. “I’ll call him later.”
“All right,” Toby said, and then, “I’m sorry, Kim.”
I didn’t even say good-bye. I just hung up.
I crouched a moment longer in the hallway, gripping my port in stiff fingers. Should I tell my mother? I’d be an idiot not to—but what happened to me last fall had triggered all her old protective instincts, the hurt of a mother who’d lost a child to the psi-sickness. Half the tension between us now was because of the conflictbetween her grief and her aversion to wilders. She’d kind of lost her shit when she heard how close I came to dying. To tell her the risk wasn’t gone . . .
And I would have to tell her how I knew. Even if I had the wits to make up a story right now, the last thing I needed was another lie to keep track of while I dealt with this. “Fuck it,” I muttered, then shoved off the wall and went into my apartment.
I stopped in my tracks, just inside the door.
My mother was standing in the middle of the living room, hands clenched at her sides, practically vibrating with tension. Her shields were buttoned up tight and her face was like a mask. Had she been listening after all? I didn’t think I’d said anything to Toby that would sound suspicious from the outside, but—
“You lied to me.”
I closed the door with one blind hand, unable to take my eyes off my mother. “What?”
“He’s been here. He’s been living with you.”
Julian.
Anger brought me forward; I had to stop myself from getting right up in her face. “You went snooping while I was out in the hall?”
“I’m not an idiot, Kimberly,” she snapped, iron-hard. “I suspected you were hiding something from me. I’ve suspected for a while.”
“And that gives you the right to take a psychic sniff around my apartment?” Outrage almost strangled the words in my throat.
“You’re my daughter, Kimberly. If you aren’t going to talk to me, then I have to do what I can. And now, to find this —” She flung one hand out, taking in the entirety of my apartment. The traces Julian left behind weren’t physical, but they were there if you looked — and she had. Auras of warmth, of intimacy. Everything we had become to one another, especially in the last week. Voice raw, she said, “You’re sleeping with him.”
My own shields were disintegrating, fraying under the chaos of my emotions, and I knew I needed to stay controlled but I couldn’t find my center. A sea of betrayal had drowned it. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but yes, I have. I don’t give an iron damn what society thinks about him, Mother. Or about me, for that matter—or have you forgotten that I’m like him now? I love Julian and I trust him. That should be all you care about, not his gods-damned Krauss rating.”
“He’s the one who got you into all this trouble in the first place!”
“And he got me out of it, too,” I shot back. “If it weren’t for him, I’d still be Unseelie.”
“If it weren’t for him, you would still be normal!”
Silence landed like a stone. We stared at one another, frozen in place by words that never should have been spoken. But they had been, and she couldn’t take them back.
Her mouth trembled. “Kimberly—”
“Get out.”
“Let me—”
“Let you do what? Tell me that I’m a freak now? That I’m a changeling?” I spat the word with all the venom I could muster. “Be honest, Mother. That’s what you see what you look at me now.” I dropped what was left of my shields, seized her wrist, shoved all the inhuman force of my nature against her mind. Her own shields cracked beneath it, and I realized with a vindictive chill that I really was stronger than her now. The fear in her eyes was there for a good reason.
She wrenched her arm away from me, stumbled back a few steps. “Get out,” I said again, gathering energy around me. I’d throw her out telekinetically if I had to. “Go before I do something I’ll really regret.”
She went. The door slammed shut behind her. Then the rush of it hit me, turning my bones to water. I dropped to the floor, shaking, and began to cry.
~
Julian didn’t allow himself to pace. Toby and Marcus wouldn’t have commented on it if he had, but being around other Fiain made it clear how much his old habits had slipped, after years spent living by himself among ordinary bloods. The first step toward controlling an emotion was controlling its outward signs. So he kept his impatience to himself, and didn’t pace. Instead he focused on his breathing, recited a mantra in Irish Gaelic, his ritual language, and waited for his port to ring.
By the time it did, he had himself well enough in hand that he didn’t even lunge for it with noteworthy speed. The call came through as voice only.
“You might as well come home,” Kim said.
The words were flat and dull with exhaustion. Julian rose to his feet and went out onto the front step, shutting the door behind him. “What happened?”
“While I was talking to Toby, my mother read the traces in the apartment. She knows about you. And she—she said—”
He listened with growing fury as the broken pieces of the story came out. Julian had known for years that Dr. Argant hardly approved of him, and Kim had made no secret of the fact that her mother was adapting badly to having a wilder for a daughter. But he’d never guessed at how deep the rejection went.
This was why the Fiain had no family but each other.
He couldn’t say that to Kim. It wouldn’t comfort her, not now. Instead he said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do you want me to stay on the line until I get there?”
“No.” Kim sniffled, steadied her voice. “No, I’ll be okay. Sort of. Just—I really kind of need you right now.”
If he could have teleported himself to her side, he would have. “I’m on my way,” Julian said.
He didn’t bother going back inside. Gathering his belongings could wait for tomorrow. He sent a telepathic ping to Toby as he headed down the sidewalk to the Metro. Going back to Kim’s. I’ll explain later. And I’ll watch out for her, I promise.
~
I was a zombie the next morning. I’d slept like shit, reliving the confrontation with my mother a hundred times over while I stared at the ceiling, then dozing off only to dream myself back in that cave in the Arboretum, the Unseelie holding me trapped and bringing that powder pipe toward my face . . .
“You could stay home,” Julian said softly.
I was sitting at the counter between the living room and the kitchen, staring vacantly at the bowl of cereal slowly turning to mush in front of me. I shook my head and made myself take a bite. “No. I mean, I could. But all I would do is sit here and—” The cereal felt like lead in my stomach. “I’d rather be at work. It’ll gi
ve me something to think about.” And if I collapsed to the floor with a fairy-dust-induced aneurysm, well, there was a hospital just a few blocks from the office.
Julian drew in breath, held it, then expelled it with a grimace. I could tell he didn’t want me to be out of his sight. But he also couldn’t do much to help me. Not short of going into my mind and installing a block that would make me forget the entirety of last night.
Part of me was tempted to ask him to do it.
I knew what Liesel would say to that. Gods — just then I would have given my left arm to talk to her. But she was still out in the Black Forest on that retreat, cut off from all technological contact. And even with my amped Krauss rating, I couldn’t boost my telepathy all the way across the Atlantic. She’d be home in a few days; until then, I would have to cope on my own.
My port beeped the arrival of a message. For one delirious instant, I thought that maybe it was Liesel, that some psychic intuition had warned her of my need and sent her home early. Before I could get up from the stool, my port flew into Julian’s hand.
It roused me a little from my stupor. I’d seen some of the other Fiain at Toby’s do things like that, small, casual uses of power — but not Julian.
He saw my surprise and shrugged, almost apologetic. “I broke myself of the habit before I went to Welton. Didn’t want to unnerve people.”
It put an unexpected lump in my throat. Another difference between wilders and the rest of us. Between him and me. Should I start telekinetically whisking things into my hands? There was no point in not doing it, if everybody was going to treat me like a wilder anyway.
Liesel hadn’t come home early. The message was from my mother. I almost didn’t want to open it, but now that I knew it was there, wondering what it said would eat at me until I looked. Once I did, I sagged with something that wasn’t quite relief, but could pass for it at a glance. “She’s gone back to Atlanta. Changed her flight to this morning.”
“What does that mean for you?” Julian asked. He stood with one hand on my shoulder, a comforting weight—and a reminder that I had his support.
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