by VK Fox
In her mind, Jane instinctively conjured an image: the opening to a cave. A tiny crack in the rock face just large enough for someone of her build to slip through. Two men, Ian and Dahl, helped her, directing the way. They hurried her along the path, pointing her to the opening, assuring her she’d be safe. No one would find her inside. She saw herself climb into the dark and dusty shelter. She was hidden.
“Jane. Stand up right now, leave the building, and get in the car.” Ian’s voice was sharp, and it jolted her back to reality.
Her eyes focused. So much light. Where had it all come from?
“Jane! Now.”
Jane stood automatically and started toward the front doors. The light followed her. Oh shit. She was lit like a beacon. In her mind, she shoved away the image of the cave, the darkness, her friends. The light faded.
Ian was striding through the lobby, his hand on her back, guiding her, his voice gentle but focused. “It will be okay, but we shouldn’t hang around. Time to move on, anyway. We’ll figure out the details on the road.”
Jane slowed. “How can I trust you? Why should I get in a car with you and drive away from people? From witnesses?”
Ian’s feet stuttered to a halt, his voice catching on the first few words, but growing stronger. “Yes, I can see why it would seem that way. I wish I could tell you there wasn’t any danger. The only thing I can tell you is this: I promise to stand in front of it with you. You don’t have to come, but if you do, I’ll be by your side.”
Jane hesitated for a half second. Then she took his hand and booked it toward the car.
Chapter Twelve
Dahl joined them ten minutes later. He’d packed their few possessions and checked out of the hotel in record time. Jane sat in the back seat of the Land Rover as they sped toward O’Hare airport.
She hadn’t healed anyone or caused a lightning strike, but here she was, trying to control growing panic as huge black-and-purple bruises blossomed under her skin. It sucked. Ian and Dahl discussed “phantom contusions and internal bleeding” academically for a few minutes until the blood pouring out of Jane’s nose and the hyperventilating noises escaping her lips prompted them to refocus their attention.
Dahl yelled at Ian to watch the road, and Ian kept asking for updates on Jane’s condition. Dahl’s opaque answers solidified her intense sense of doom. After years of not being able to breathe, Ian pulled the car over, and Dahl grabbed a clamshell case from his backpack, popped it open, and injected her with something wonderful. Ian and Dahl kept talking but switched to some foreign language, and Jane let their quiet nonsense wash over her. Dozing off in the back seat, everything was a lot less urgent and scary.
They were back on the road when her eyes fluttered open. Jane was leaning against Dahl, her head lolling to the side. She wiped drool from her cheek with the back of her hand and sat up.
“Sorry.” She self-consciously dried the back of her hand on her shirt.
The corner of Dahl’s mouth fluttered. “Glad you’re awake. You look much better.”
Jane took stock of her phantom bruises. They were smaller and yellow around the edges. Almost disappearing under her real bruises.
Ian reached back and gently squeezed her knee. “You had us worried for a minute there. Are you feeling all right? We weren’t ready for that, I’m sorry.”
“I’m okay. What did you give me?”
“Ketamine. It didn’t help with the bruising, of course. It’s a sedative for the panic attack.” Dahl rubbed his forehead. “You didn’t mention this side effect. Is it new?”
Jane’s face burned. Leave it to her to have a panic attack. She licked her lips to moisten them and tasted blood. “It was new.” Her mother had said something in the hospital about the EMTs thinking she had internal bleeding, hadn’t she? And her revival friend had thought she was beat up. “Maybe.”
Dahl rolled his eyes. Ian’s voice, calm and friendly, filled the silence. “Do you know what magic you worked?”
“No.” Jane deflated further. “You didn’t see anything happen?”
“No. You lit up, but nothing else. It drew some attention, but I doubt anyone will make a fuss. Reporting someone glowing in a hotel lobby isn’t credible or newsworthy, and we were able to exit fairly quickly.”
Jane was quiet for a moment, replaying the conversation in her head. Ian had implied he and Dahl might be ordered to sever her link.
“We didn’t finish talking.” Jane twisted the bottom button on her flannel.
Ian paused for a few seconds before he responded. “Right, do you have more questions?”
“Have you killed anyone before?” Jane already knew the answer. She knew Sana Baba would not send a seven-foot, muscle-bound giant and a heavily medicated, Excalibur-wielding boy king on missions to cuddle orphaned puppies. She’d never met anyone even a little bit like them. Her cousin was in the Air Force, but she didn’t think of him as a killer. He was a soldier. These two men, traveling secretly through a peaceful nation with their magic and their agenda and their devil-may-care dispositions, were disturbingly different. Dahl stilled. Even over the noise of the road, the faint click of Ian opening his mouth and drawing in breath intensified her fears.
“Don’t answer her.” Dahl’s voice cut in.
Ian’s voice was calm, if a little sad. “Dahl, it’s okay. It’s natural to ask.”
“She’s my student, and I’m telling you not to answer.”
“What?” Jane exploded. “You don’t decide what I get to know!”
“The fuck I don’t.” Dahl matched her volume. “You just woke up from sedation because you flipped out about the last scary thing. How dare you question him? You have no idea what you’re asking, and you’re certainly not ready to hear the answer. You can’t control your magic, you can’t control your curiosity, and I don’t know which is going to get you in more trouble. This is not the time for that discussion.”
“I should know who I’m with!” Jane couldn’t keep her voice down. “I should know what’s going on!”
Dahl became infuriatingly calm in an instant. “Why should we discuss previous missions while we are focusing on succeeding in our current one?”
“That’s just an excuse not to tell me. If the answer was no, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Well, aren’t you clever. Fine, Jane, of course the answer is yes. We both have. I was fifteen years old when I took a life for the first time, so be grateful you were blessed with an additional decade of cushy childhood and stop acting scandalized and superior. You aren’t exactly lily white.”
Jane balled her hands into tight fists, fingernails digging into her palms. “I would never. I heal people. I would never kill.”
Dahl’s laugh was abrasive. “Do you think Reverend Amherst survived the nine hundred and fifty million volts of electricity you shot through his body? Do you think he went home to his wife and kids after the EMTs gave him a big thumbs-up?”
“Dahl, stop.” Ian’s voice had an edge.
“No.” Jane’s hands clenched and unclenched. Her voice sounded odd, high-pitched. “No one said . . . I didn’t think . . .”
“Of course no one said, because your reaction to everything unfamiliar is to act like a scared little girl. We can fucking rule out Joan of Arc, because you wouldn’t even have the backbone to get on the horse, let alone lead the charge.” Dahl leaned toward her, his face dark with temper. “And now you’re going to cry about it and need a hug, and I have to be in the car and listen to this shit for two more hours.”
“Michael!” If Ian had slapped him, Dahl’s reaction could not have been stronger. His head jerked around to stare out the window and his body went rigid. He didn’t turn away quickly enough for Jane to miss his wide eyes and trembling lips before he rested his hand against his forehead, shielding his face from the rest of the car. Jane listened as he tried to get his breathing under control. She gritted her teeth and swore to herself she would not cry. She held on to the fact that Dahl was trying t
o hide his face while she was collecting hers. Since it sounded like he had led a pretty difficult life, it gave her only the grimmest kind of satisfaction, but she wasn’t in a position to be choosy. Jane stared out the window into the bright sunlight, anywhere but at Dahl and Ian.
Lord, give me something else to say. Anything.
“Who burned down my apartment?” The words popped out, surprising and calm.
“What?” Dahl’s tone was clipped, but she could see his head tilt to the side slightly, his hand twitch. Thank God, something else to think about.
“I guess I kind of assumed the reverend did it. But if he died in the parking lot, it couldn’t have been him. Right? The apartment bomb was almost a week later.”
Ian responded, his voice still low but much gentler. “We don’t know. Ordinarily we would inform Sana Baba, and they would send a follow-up team to investigate while we took you to safety, but since we’re not looping them in, we have fewer people to cover the same ground. Dahl and I need to stay focused on your safety and training as we continue on to our next lead.”
“I want to find out. Do you know anything from when you were there?”
“A bomb threat was called in about ten minutes before the explosion went off, causing the fire. Some kind of nonexplosive accelerant was spread around that ignited in the blast. So the goal was probably to turn your specific apartment to ash.” Ian paused for a few heartbeats. “The phone call was odd, though. Why call in a threat without a demand and then detonate?”
“No ransom? Or whatever you call it when you’re holding an apartment hostage?” Who had the know-how and malice to pull something like this off? No one except the deceased reverend came to mind.
“Not that I know of, but my information is from the Times and the six o’clock news. Still, it seems like the kind of detail that would have made it into a story.”
Jane lapsed into silence. Had the reverend really had a wife and kids? She couldn’t bring herself to ask. She’d acted in self-defense. Self-defense was not murder. She hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, but more than that, she’d wanted to live. She hadn’t started the fight, but she would not lay down while her life was stolen from her. Not if she had the strength to resist. Now she had to live with what she’d done, but at least she was still alive.
“Screw him.” Jane hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
“What?” Dahl narrowed his eyes. His gaze flicked briefly to Ian.
“The reverend. He was an asshole. I would say he didn’t deserve to die, but he lost my sympathy when he had his goon smack Frank around with a tire iron. He was going to put me in the trunk of the car, like a body, like I was already dead. His wife and kids are better off.”
Dahl laughed. The sound was beautiful, joyful and pure, utterly contradicting everything running through Jane’s mind. For a minute, all he could do was hold his sides and shake his head. Jane found herself grinning. Where had that come from? Giggles were contagious, and she couldn’t help it. When he was finally done gasping, he reached over and gently squeezed her hand.
“I take it back, Saint Jane. You’re all right.”
For the remainder of the ride, they flipped through some of Dahl’s books. A few tales sounded familiar, but nothing matched any of her powers or side effects, and after several hours of trying to balance motion sickness from reading in the car with stories of torture and martyrdom, Jane was ready to call it quits.
O’Hare International Airport was huge and overwhelming, but the boys were undaunted, and Jane followed their lead.
Flying was something new, but it wasn’t much more difficult than taking a Greyhound. Ian would return the rental Land Rover, get tickets, and check the guns. Jane mentioned she didn’t have any money for a ticket, and Dahl waved aside her concern. They had a credit card for travel expenses. Ian always purchased multiple seats for himself, so no one reviewing the bill would wonder about the extras.
A few hours before boarding, Dahl insisted he and Jane take a taxi to a nearby Hair Cuttery. Apparently, long hair was a disadvantage in a hand-to-hand fight, and she should cut it short. Without consulting her, he also told her stylist to bleach it. While her stylist was getting products together, Dahl explained it would be easier for them to pass as siblings, which was a nice, innocent assumption for people to make about how she fit into their little trio.
“If I get the chance to speak with someone, I can convince them of almost anything. But the closer it is to what they already believe, the less power it takes.”
“That doesn’t sound kingly.”
Dahl shrugged. “It’s a leadership thing. Force of personality.”
The stylist returned, and Dahl ducked outside to smoke.
“Your boyfriend’s an asshole,” the stylist commented. “Do you need help?”
Jane raised both eyebrows. “No, thanks.”
The context didn’t click until a few minutes later as Jane sat in her styling chair and stared at her bruised and scraped reflection while her treatment processed. She was beat up. Maybe she’d be wise to help people make innocent assumptions about her and the boys instead of the kind where they’d call the police.
Jane stared blankly at her cinnamon locks lying on the floor. A week ago, she would have choked up. Now, it was just hair, not something worth losing a fight over. She left an hour later with a platinum-blonde pixie cut.
They took a taxi back and started toward the gate, hiking almost the full length of the airport. Jane’s sore hip told her the distance should be measured in miles, or leagues, or hectares, or some other equally ridiculous unit for a building.
“Did you tell the driver the wrong place to drop us?” Jane puffed a little, attempting to keep close to Dahl’s mile-eating stride through the endless hallways of fluorescent-lit linoleum lined with Starbucks, sports bars, and little convenience stores. Dahl, blessedly, stopped at one and picked out a few candy bars, a magazine, and a couple packs of cigarettes.
“Of course not. We’ve been in the car for hours, and we’re about to get on a plane. We need to stretch our legs.”
“I hate you.”
Dahl smirked. “You want anything?”
Jane eyed the candy and cigarettes. “I’ll have what you’re having.” She added a bottle of Dr. Pepper, a small stack of granola bars, and a pitiful banana to make up for skipping breakfast. No way she was being thrifty with Dahl acting like money was a number someone else had to worry about. After a minute’s hesitation, she grabbed an “I Heart Chicago” canvas backpack, a small first aid kit, and a poncho. Not a well-stocked go bag like her old one, but a start she could build on it as she went. Dahl scrutinized her selections.
“Are you provisioning for a hike?”
“I need some basics. What if we get separated? What if you both die? It doesn’t hurt to be ready.”
Dahl assessed her for a few seconds, his brow slightly puckered. Jane squirmed a little.
“Yes, that makes sense. We should make sure you’re ready to take care of yourself. Let’s see what we can find.”
They spent the next half hour going from shop to shop on a scavenger hunt for useful items. Gifted money didn’t spend easily, and Dahl was preoccupied and easily distracted, but after the first few attempts to view gift store items as emergency survival equipment, they both started smiling and joking as they filled her backpack with matchbooks, an emergency blanket, painkillers, a water bottle, a tiny flashlight, and the ultimate find: a walkie-talkie with extra batteries. Dahl promised they would upgrade the cheap, short range gadget at the first opportunity.
They tested it out along the airport corridors, and it seemed to do the trick—short range without elevation—well enough for Jane to hear three dozen ridiculously corny jokes. If she didn’t laugh or groan, Dahl would repeat the punch line with increased volume and diction. When they concluded testing, he handed her a hundred dollars cash, a roll of quarters for pay phones, and a card with his and Ian’s pager numbers.
“You keep a lot of cash o
n hand for someone who can charge all of their expenses to their employer,” Jane noted as she tucked everything away in the back zipper pouch of her bag.
Dahl grinned. “We only charge items that we don’t mind becoming public knowledge. We always bring cash for under-the-table expenses.”
“Have you and Ian been working together long?”
“All the years I’ve been with the organization. I was eight when I joined—an advanced age for a new recruit. Ian took me in from the beginning, made the whole thing bearable. He didn’t handle my training, but I lived with him, and he finished raising me. When I started doing fieldwork, they paired us up. I think they’re worried about what would happen if they put me with someone else. Annoying, to be treated like I’m so fragile, but I like the arrangement, so it works for me.”
“Eight is an advanced age? Where were you before you joined?”
Dahl’s pace slowed and his voice quieted. “I lived in Quebec with a woman named Emilie Lévesque. She was my foster mother. We were going through the adoption process, but she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Sana Baba found me a few months later. This particular link, King Arthur, is tricky. A King Arthur lived in our reality, and that complicates things. They have a hard time keeping someone in this position. When they find a candidate who meets a high number of the predisposition markers, they are willing to make exceptions, like taking in an eight-year-old instead of starting with an infant or toddler. They adopted me when things fell through with my foster mother. I usually find myself wishing it had gone the other way.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Dahl shrugged. “Me too. We still talk on the phone and write. I usually manage to visit for Mother’s Day. My birthday is May 1, so it’s a combined celebration. She’s gone downhill a lot in the last ten years, but she’s still managing with help.”
