by R. L. Naquin
He eyed my hand a moment, then shook it with his wounded one. “Hello...” He paused, tasting the word. “Hello, Zoey. It’s nice to meet you.”
I smiled up at him. “Better.”
I gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. To his credit, he didn’t wince. “Get somebody to bandage up your hand.”
Sara met me halfway across the grass.
“Well, that went well,” she said.
“It was lovely while it lasted.”
“I saw the Leprechaun Mafia slink out a side door and leave. They coming back?”
“I don’t think so, no. Not with all their mojo gone. I imagine it’ll take time to replace the charms we stole, then I expect they’ll hit a different town. I think they won’t come back here.”
She shook her head. “No wonder you’ve been acting so freaky the last few months if this is the kind of stuff you’ve been dealing with.”
I ran my fingers through my damp, smoky hair. “Surprise. You wanted to know what was going on.”
“How’d you get their pins off of them?”
“Gremlins. The little guys saved the day.”
She picked a piece of plaster from of my hair. “I guess you’re an Aegis now.”
“I guess I am.”
We looked across the lawn filled with milling elderly. She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I’m going to go help. Try not to save the world again until I get back.”
I nodded and watched her run across the grass in her designer heels without a wobble or missed step. Sara was an amazing woman in so many ways.
I took a moment to gather myself together before wading in to the aftermath to offer a hand. I reeked of smoke, and my fluttery yellow and blue sundress no longer fluttered. It stuck to my thighs and water dripped down my legs, puddling around the daisies on my shoes. The whole outfit was probably ruined. I plucked at the fabric and wafted it around in a lame attempt to dry off. The hem caught and tugged. I looked down.
Three gremlins, shimmering with camouflage, looked up at me with enormous eyes.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “You did a very good job in there today.”
The one holding my skirt swallowed hard. “The lady is not mad?”
“No, sweetheart. You did the right thing. Those were bad men and you took their protection shinies so they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.”
A second gremlin stepped forward, his hands cupped together and held out to me. Inside were all six gold shamrock pins. “Bink says we give the shinies to the lady.”
I looked at the one gripping the hem of my skirt. My Christmas scarf hung around his neck in loops.
I held out my hands, and the shamrocks trickled into them. Bink rummaged in his scarf and came up with something else.
“Also, this,” he said, dropping the object into my palm.
The little thief had taken back my gargoyle rock for me. “Thank you very much. You guys are heroes today.”
They looked surprised and delighted. “Bump has never been a hero before!”
Gremlins I hadn’t noticed came together, forming a circle. They held hands and danced with silly, kicking steps. It made me smile to see them so happy.
Bink stayed by my side and watched. I crouched down next to him. “You were all very brave,” I said. “Thank you for saving us.”
He patted my knee and nodded knowingly. “If the lady is safe, everyone is safe.”
Art and Riley strode toward me, looking as smoke and water damaged as I was. The gremlins scattered and disappeared.
“Some party,” Riley said, taking my hand to help me up.
“Well, I’m a professional. It’s my job.”
“Nicely done.”
“Thanks. I’m thinking of setting fire to all my events after this.”
“Everybody needs a calling card. Yours could be catastrophes.”
“Sounds like a gimmick, but I’m willing to give it a try.”
He kissed my cheek. “You ready to go?”
“Go?” My already chilled skin erupted in gooseflesh and my heart beat faster. “I still have things to do. I have to help clean up. People need blankets and water.”
I looked around at the crowd scattered across the lawn and parking lot. Emergency personnel and staff from the retirement home had it all well in hand. Andrew’s grandparents spotted me and waved, their faces cheerier than I’d have expected under the circumstances. Andrew stood next to them with Sara nearby wiping soot from a man’s glasses.
They didn’t need me. Everyone was safe. Nobody had to die.
Art took my elbow and led me to Riley’s car. “Clean breaks are easier. And we have a plane to catch.”
“No, I have to say goodbye.” I offered a weak resistance as he led me across the parking lot. I shivered in the cool breeze. Cold, wet, and exhausted, there wasn’t much left in me to fight him. He gave me a gentle shove and I folded into the backseat.
Riley slid in next to me and took my hands in his to warm them. Considering how wet he was, it didn’t help much.
“I’m sorry, Zoey,” he said. “He wouldn’t listen to me. I told him to wait.”
“Can we at least go home for a shower and change of clothes first?”
He shook his head. “Art went by your house this morning and made Maurice pack you a bag. You can change out of your wet clothes on the plane.”
“This is bullshit,” I said. I shoved Riley away and instantly regretted it. My teeth chattered. “At least turn the damn heat on, Art.”
Art flicked the heater on without comment.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, Sara’s wide, blue eyes met mine. I pressed my palm against the glass, unsure if I meant it as a plea for help or a wave good-bye. I was excruciatingly tired, and truth be told, absolutely terrified.
Chapter Twenty-Four
An hour later, I was warm and dry and on a surprisingly luxurious private plane. I suppose I hadn’t taken into consideration how big a budget or how much real influence the Board of Hidden Affairs might have, despite their recent ability to thoroughly screw with my life.
It was an awkward flight. Though Art and I had come to a less hostile understanding of each other, he’d bullied me into getting in the car and leaving town before I could even say goodbye to my friends. I also couldn’t forget that he’d been involved in my mother’s disappearance, and I couldn’t forget that he’d declined to give me any information about it.
The seats on the plane were comfortable, at least, and I had Riley by my side. Once we landed, though, I would be on my own. I couldn’t let him take any more hits on my behalf. I still wasn’t convinced they hadn’t tortured him or worse while he was away for six weeks.
The skin on the back of my hand itched where the invisible mark had been. For two weeks, from the time Art tagged me up until it expired, I hadn’t felt a thing. Now it was tingly, as if I were having an allergic reaction. It drove me nuts.
The small cabin wasn’t conducive to conversing with Riley, since Art would be able to overhear everything we’d say. Besides, my stomach was too clenched up in frayed knots for me to be very good company. I worried if I opened my mouth to say something normal, the hysteria bottled inside me would bubble up and come spilling out, betraying my calm exterior.
I had to be a rock. I had to be like Sara. When we landed at the Board’s headquarters, I had to barge in there, metaphorical guns blazing.
I had to be stronger than my mother had been.
Riley moved to the seat facing me and leaned forward. He stared down at his hands for a moment before placing them on my knees.
“Zoey, I need to tell you something.”
His gray eyes were sad and worried, as if he were afraid of what he had to say. It made me afraid to listen. “Okay.”
“Art said your mom was—is—a necrofoil.”
I nodded. “Right.”
“When he talked about her, it got me to thinking about my sister.”
“She was in a train accident, you said. And the Board saved her, in exchange for your becoming a reaper.”
He squeezed my leg. “They brought in a necrofoil to do it. One with dark, curly red hair, a lot like yours.”
I felt the blood rush from my face. “What was her name? Was it Clara?”
“They never told me her name. They led her into the room my sister had been moved to, and she brought Izzy back from the edge of death. The woman smiled at me and told me it was going to be all right. Then they took her away.”
I didn’t know what to make of this information. If it was my mother, did it really matter? Riley had been a reaper for eight years. My mom disappeared twenty years ago. So, if she was the one who saved Izzy, it meant that Riley had seen my mom more recently than I had. It meant she was okay. Or at least, she had been okay eight years ago.
“It might not have been her, though,” I said. “Who knows how many necrofoils are out there.”
Art snorted over his newspaper. “Don’t be stupid. Necrofoils are even harder to come by than Aegises. And a necrofoil who’s also an Aegis? There’s only one. Trust me. It was her.”
“So that’s how reapers do job recruitment? They use my mother to coerce people suffering through tragedies into becoming reapers?” I’d wanted a showdown with the Board before for screwing with my life—now I wanted to march in there and dismantle their entire bureaucratic structure. With a chainsaw.
Art must’ve seen the anger flashing in my eyes. He folded his newspaper across his chest in a protective gesture. He was probably missing some chest hair from the last time I grabbed him.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a lot of red tape involved in utilizing an Aegis outside her departmental parameters. Reapers fall under the Division of Human/Hidden Relations. Aegises belong to the Social Services department. It doesn’t happen often. Departments cooperate, of course, but there has to be a real need before they share personnel, especially one with such a high-demand job as an Aegis.”
Riley’s hand tensed on my leg. “Why me, then? Why was I deemed important enough for all that paperwork?” he asked.
Art swallowed hard and stammered before forming words. “It wasn’t you, exactly. They just needed someone like you. Clara was being difficult again, making demands.” He scowled. “That woman. She wanted someone to keep an eye on her daughter in case she, too, was an Aegis.” He waved his hand in my direction, turning his gaze from Riley. “She worried that the mind wipe we did when you were a little girl would cause problems, now that you were getting older.” He shrugged, looking at Riley again. “We needed a new reaper in the area, one who didn’t know anything about all this, so he wouldn’t be tempted to interfere. One about your age and attractive...”
I didn’t know which part of this revelation to touch first. The mind wipes? The fact that my new boyfriend was a plant?
The fact that my mother was still keeping tabs on me?
“That’s stupid,” Riley said. “Why would you keep me in the dark if I was supposed to look out for Zoey? I was in town for years before I even met her.”
Art sniffed and opened his newspaper. “It worked, didn’t it? The minute the Hidden came back into her life, she landed in your lap.” He buried his nose in the paper and ignored us.
My eyes met Riley’s. Neither of us knew what to say. It was too much information too fast. My head swam. He pulled away from me, and we both settled into our seats.
None of us said another word for the rest of the flight.
The landing was a little on the terrifying side. We left California from an airport, so I expected to also land in one. The runway where we put down was in a field in the middle of nowhere. Out the window I saw a lot of nothing on one side, a single landing strip with a few lights along the edges, and in the distance, a group of small buildings.
A jeep met us on the tiny tarmac, and Riley and I piled into the back, with Art up front by the driver. My suitcase, small as it was, got shoved under my legs.
“Nice place,” I said, trying to tamp down the urge to vomit and speak in high-pitched sentences.
Riley put his arm around my shoulders and scooted closer to me. He leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “They aren’t going to bite you. Don’t worry. And I’ll be right there with you.”
I shook my head. “No. You’ve already been caught in the middle of this. I have to do this alone.”
I ignored the hurt in his eyes. This was a battle I had to fight on my own. Riley could not be a casualty. And honestly, I was still a little wigged out that he was someone chosen for me by the Powers That Be.
Art turned in his seat. “We’ll be getting you settled into your room for the night. The Board will make arrangements to meet with you when they have an opening. Riley’s presence will not be required.”
“You’ve dragged me here like it had to be done immediately, and now I have to make an appointment?” The knots in my stomach loosened a little. Amazing how anger can dissolve nervous tension so quickly.
“They’re very busy, Miss Donovan.”
So, it was “Miss Donovan” again. That didn’t bode well. Any progress I’d gained with Art died on the way here, apparently. I did a check of the people around me in the car. No one was having any truly strong emotions, so I eased open my filters and reached out to try to get a better sense of what was going on.
I skimmed over Riley first. He felt like nervous sweat. Past that, I could sense how much he cared about me, and I withdrew my prying as quickly as possible. Checking how he felt about me by supernatural means came too close to crossing a moral line.
I checked Art, and he too felt nervous and sweaty, but there was also a sharp smell of glee to it, and a little bit of sadness. I didn’t have a clue how to piece those emotions together into a coherent story.
The driver, when I switched my attention to him, was both more interesting, and less. I got no real feelings from him. He was an average looking, middle-aged guy who introduced himself as Terrence, then said nothing more. Terrence felt like an absence in my head, an echoey room at the end of a long hallway, or a deep hole in a ground strewn with rocks. There was nothing there. Whether that meant he had no emotions or was shielded with twenty times the strength of what Andrew could do, I wasn’t sure.
I gave up and tightened my filter. I decided reading people’s emotions was a useless gift, and reading thoughts would have been a hell of a lot more helpful. I wasn’t getting anything worth a damn out of any of them. There was no point in leaving myself wide open and susceptible to a migraine. I had enough problems ahead of me.
“Welcome to Lebanon, Kansas,” Art said, waving his hand in a grand gesture. “This is the geographic center of the United States, and therefore the headquarters of the Board of Hidden Affairs for this country.”
I still saw a whole lot of nothing. Blue sky. Rocks. Overgrown fields. “You’d think they could have chosen some place a little more interesting.”
“Oh, no,” Art said. “Its location is important. Many ley lines cross here. It’s a very powerful place.”
I shrugged, unimpressed. “I don’t feel anything different.”
He sniffed. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
I found that insulting, though I wasn’t sure why. I refused to give him the satisfaction of a comment.
We drew near the buildings, and I realized it was more of a compound than the office complex I was expecting. I’d noticed the barbed wire along the road. It enclosed everything on the grounds, including the air strip, and I wondered if the fence was electrified. The buildings themselves were situated in more or less a circle, and we pulled into the courtyard in the center. Some of
them looked like squat little houses, others were a bit bigger, like the kind of place the Elks might call home. There were no trees, only some scrawny bushes and weeds. The siding on the boxy houses looked worn and tired. Perhaps the Board wasn’t as influential as they wanted everyone to believe.
Terrence grabbed my bag from the back and nodded at me to follow. He led us up a set of rickety porch steps and into a smallish house. Once inside, my eyes widened, and my feet stopped moving. The walls were a rich, deep burgundy, the floors covered in expensive, hand-woven rugs. Antiques lined the walls in dark mahogany and shiny gilt. A winding staircase, far too big to fit inside the building I thought I’d entered, led upstairs, its banister polished to a mirror sheen.
Honestly, it was a little tacky and overdone to my taste, but it was still impressive.
People moved through the house like silent movie stars, dusting, carrying things on silver trays to other rooms. No one said a word, either to us or to each other. They didn’t even look at us or acknowledge our presence.
Terrence didn’t pause to let me take in the interior decorating. He trudged halfway up the stairs before I realized I had to keep moving. The three of us caught up, and he led us down a long hallway of closed doors. At the fourth on the left, he opened the door and stepped aside, again, without a word.
I took my bag from him and peered in. It was lovely, in a gothic horror movie sort of way. I went in, and Riley moved to follow me. Terrence stuck his arm out and shook his head.
“Looks like this is where we part company for now,” Riley said. “Can I at least say goodbye?”
Terrence, his face as devoid of emotion as ever, shook his head again.
Art came forward and moved Riley aside. “Riley has business to attend to,” he said. “You should have everything you need here for now. You have a private bathroom, a nice comfy bed to rest in, and if you get hungry, pick up the phone and someone will bring you whatever you want.”
I looked at Art, long and hard. Something didn’t feel right. “Why can’t Riley at least hug me goodbye?” Riley was behind Art, looking far more nervous than he’d been in the car.
