“Okay.” Command? Train? I mentally recoiled from the harsh words. I’d hesitated to demand Jamie cut out atrum partially because I didn’t want him to think I didn’t love him for who he was, atrum and all, and partially because I had no means to reinforce such an order. But Pamela said my strategy of leading by example was taking us both down the wrong path. If anyone would know, it was the inspector.
Or maybe she was exaggerating to scare me.
Jamie scurried out of the bathroom with his gloves between his teeth, shaking his wet hands wildly.
“I think there’s a frost moth in the sink pipes,” he announced after taking his gloves from his mouth.
I mimed blotting his hands on his legs, and he chose to misinterpret my gesture as an invitation to dry his hands on my pants. Disapproval radiated off Pamela, but rather than confronting Jamie about such a trivial matter, I scooped up his discarded scarf and beanie, giving both a shake to remove the dirt. Jamie shoved his fingers into his gloves and the beanie on his head, then wrapped the scarf into a misshapen knot. My fingers twitched to help him, but I stopped myself, sensitive to Pamela’s scrutiny. She’d probably misconstrue the gesture as coddling.
“We should find another moth so we can warm up,” Jamie said.
I mentally dropped my head in my hands and forced myself to admit maybe Pamela was right; maybe I had no control over Jamie. But even without her warning, I wouldn’t have said yes to the frost moth. I had no desire for another drunken interlude.
“It’s not true warmth. The moth tricks your brain,” I said. Channeling my dad, I added, “Jump around a little and you’ll warm up.”
“You don’t have to give reasons, Madison. Give orders,” Pamela said as she watched Jamie bounce beside me.
“Should we go kill drones?”
The inspector’s arched eyebrow said she saw my question for what it was—the most blatant diversionary tactic ever—but she let it go without comment. She signaled to Summer, and we regrouped in a quiet patch of ivory lawn behind the stadium, out of sight of most of the norms.
“Before we go out there, I want to see what we’re working with,” Pamela said. She drew a palmquell from her pocket, gesturing for us to do the same. I retrieved my balsa wood gun, simultaneously checking the others’, pleased to find them as hideous as mine—Summer’s in shades of pink and Pamela’s an eye-watering teal and yellow.
“Nothing attracts the attention of norms quite like waving around a gun, so keep your palmquell hidden in your hand and do your best to disguise your shooting. You don’t want to alarm the public, for their sake and because we don’t have time to waste persuading the police that we’re harmless.”
Aha. That answered the question about the palmquells’ hideous colors. With its mustard-yellow tones, norms were far less likely to mistake my weapon for a real gun.
“You’re going to need to hit a drone’s thorax to do any good. Let’s see your aim. Show me how close you can get to my target.” Pamela discreetly shot a lux lucis bullet into a boulder fifteen feet away.
Summer aimed, sighting down the barrel of the palmquell. It looked like she was pointing, which, although rude, wasn’t typically frightening. When she fired, a lux lucis splat landed a few feet from Pamela’s.
“I’m a little rusty,” she said.
“Have you fought tyver before?” Pamela asked.
Summer shook her head. “I did some training in Truckee two winters ago, but we only encountered drones.”
I examined my palmquell, looking for a port for ammunition and not finding one. Brad hadn’t given me any bullets, either, which meant the gun must work similarly to my other weapons. In other words, I was the ammo.
Wary of burning out the palmquell, I eased lux lucis into it. The white energy sank from my hand into the balsa wood, collecting inside.
“Any day now,” Summer said.
Pressure built inside the palmquell until it held almost as much lux lucis as my pet wood could, and a subtle pushback of resistance warned me its internal chamber was nearing full. Satisfied, I lifted the gun, aimed, and fired. A beam of white light like a colorless burst from a laser gun in a sci-fi TV show streaked through the air and hit the ground ten feet to the right of the target.
“Try again,” Pamela said.
My next shot landed eight feet to the left. My heart sank, my hopes of being a natural markswoman dying before they’d fully formed.
“My goodness,” Pamela said.
“I’ve never shot a—” I glanced around and lowered my voice. “I’ve never shot a gun, palmquell or otherwise. I’ll get better with practice.” I would have to. I couldn’t get much worse.
Pamela gave me two minutes to practice, and I peppered the ground around the boulder in a flurry of lux lucis splatter, only a handful of lucky shots landing closer than five feet of the target. After the first few misfires, Summer proved a natural, stacking shot after shot atop each other.
As far as olive branches went, I hoped the humility of my pathetic performance might start mending the rift between us, and I asked Summer for shooting pointers.
“Try harder,” she snapped.
Pamela stared at the sky, tracking two new drones incoming from the north. “We can’t wait any longer. Let’s head in. Remember: aim for the thorax. Just do your best, Madison, and try not to get zapped.”
Jamie jogged to the boulder we’d used for target practice and swept away the lux lucis with a fan of atrum. Summer and Pamela froze. I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Jamie! Leave it!” I ordered as he stepped to the side to clean away the last traces of my wild shots.
“But this is inanimate,” he said, perplexed.
Our first day together, when I’d been laying out my ground rules, I’d explained that since lux lucis and atrum didn’t exist in inanimate objects, part of my job involved wiping out all residual atrum left behind by evil creatures. Jamie had agreed with my reasoning, and using the same logic, had started removing lux lucis from inanimate surfaces, too. I hadn’t pushed the issue since doing so would have undercut my own argument. I had hoped over time, Jamie would see merit in leaving lux lucis untouched, where it had the potential to positively influence whoever came in contact with it. It had been part of my drip campaign to bring Jamie around to my way of thinking, but Pamela had scared me. If she was right, taking it slow could actually hurt him.
“Today we’re leaving lux lucis where it lies.”
“But why?”
I glanced at Pamela. She expected me to assert my authority and prove I was in control—and an enforcer in control of her pooka didn’t offer reasons.
“Because I said so.” This is me, putting my foot down, hoping I’m not trampling Jamie’s trust in the process.
I tried to take comfort in Pamela’s approving nod, but all I saw was Jamie’s bewilderment.
Pamela marched for the stadium, Summer at her side. Like a good enforcer, I fell into step behind them. I didn’t let the slumped slope of Jamie’s shoulders or his betrayed expression pierce my resolve.
“Come on, Jamie,” I said, jaw locked so tight it was hard to push the words out. After a hesitation, Jamie trotted after us, and by the time he caught up, the noise of the crowd made it plausible for me to pretend not to hear him whisper my name like a question.
Twenty minutes later, I reentered the stadium with Jamie and Pamela after my drone-prompted dash out, fighting the urge to slouch. First, I couldn’t control Jamie. Now I couldn’t control myself. One strike from a drone, and I’d fled.
Way to be impressive, Dice.
“We’ve left Summer alone far too long,” Pamela said, picking up the pace. “The drones are getting stronger. We need to take them out while they’re still relatively weak—and before they return to feed the tyv controlling them.”
The band on the field finished in the formation of OHV as we crested the walkway at the front of the bleachers. The crowd went wild before the last note died, half the stadium leaping to their feet
to celebrate the home team, and the drones flitted in a frenzy above them, eating with abandon.
“Bloody hell,” Pamela cursed.
Summer was missing.
Pamela shoved through the throng of people milling at the railing and squeezed up the stadium steps. Jamie and I pressed into the gap behind her. When it came to spotting people in crowds, my eyes tended to blur all the faces together, and I had to concentrate to see individuals. I’d make a dreadful FBI agent. Fortunately, I was an enforcer, and I had the advantage of Primordium.
In a sea of gray faces and blotchy norms, Summer’s bright white enforcer soul shone like a beacon. Legs braced for balance, arms extended above her head, she stood atop a bleacher seat halfway up the stands and shot straight up into the drones. Her proximity meant she hit more than she missed, and fierce glee pulled her features tight. To the casual observer, she looked like one of the cheering throng, even if she didn’t always face the field.
Pamela slowed when she spotted Summer, and she pulled me close so I could hear her above the cheering.
“This is why enforcers always work tyver in pairs. If one of you gets struck, the other protects until they recover.”
“She looks fine to me,” I groused under my breath.
Summer’s hands fell to her sides and she blinked at her surroundings like a woman waking in the middle of a sleepwalking episode. She gave her shoulders a shake and checked the sky for nearby drones, then eased from her perch.
Great. Summer had been struck by a drone, and she’d charged deeper into their midst. She’d been so focused on killing them, she’d put herself right in the heart of where they were feeding. Whereas when I’d been struck, I’d fled the stadium.
I wished I could blame Summer for making me look bad, but I was handling that just fine on my own.
“The moment they notice you, start walking,” Pamela ordered Jamie. She pointed to the far side of the stadium. “Head that way, and don’t stop until you’re in the baseball field.”
Beyond the track encasing the football field, a carpet of white lawn bulged into a vague square configuration defined by four charcoal baseball diamonds at the outer points. A quick, blinding blink to normal sight confirmed the stadium’s halogen lights didn’t illuminate the far field.
“You want me to lead the drones out there so you can kill them?” Jamie asked.
“Of course,” Pamela said, shooting me another of those pointed looks. She trotted down the steps to meet Summer at the railing without looking back.
The crowd quieted as the next band took the field, and a handful of people rustled in the stands, collecting items and pushing toward the exit. I allowed an elderly couple to precede me, intentionally distancing myself from the inspector before turning to Jamie. Pamela’s instructions be damned, Jamie deserved an explanation.
“These people are innocent and can’t do anything to defend themselves. It’s up to us to protect them.”
“Why? The drones don’t hurt them.”
“How do you know? They hurt me.” I rubbed my chest, remembering the sharp pain.
“All it does is free them.”
“Free them? The drones take away their self-control. They make people do things they don’t want to.”
Jamie flinched. “So earlier, you didn’t want to save me?”
The soft question tore my heartstrings.
“Of course I did. That’s all I wanted to do, because I was afraid you were in danger.” I reached for his hand, giving it a shake to make him look at me fully. “But you said the drones aren’t a threat to you, so now you can help me. I need to save all these people. They can’t fight back, and they don’t deserve to have pieces of themselves stripped away.”
Jamie roved indifferent eyes over the norms, unconvinced.
“Drones exist to feed and protect tyver, right?” I asked, trying a different tack. “Tyver that would happily steal my soul and leave me brain-dead. If we kill the drones now, it increases my chances of survival.” My words chased a shiver down my spine.
Jamie took a deep breath and let it out before he turned back to me and nodded.
“Let’s go.” Elbowing my way through a knot of teens, I hustled to the inspector’s side as a pair of drones darted toward us.
“They’ve spotted the pooka,” Pamela said, tracking the drones but not shooting. “Keep going, Jamie. We’ll follow from a distance.”
Jamie glanced to me for confirmation.
“Come on,” I said, leading the way.
Pamela clamped a hand on my bicep. “No, Madison. Jamie goes ahead alone. We need room to work without getting zapped by those suckers.”
“If I’m beside him, I could use my pet wood again.” Which would increase my chances of killing a drone by one hundred percent.
“No. You need to learn how to take them out before they’re close enough to touch. Go on, Jamie.”
Jamie took in the inspector’s grip on my arm, then my face. I nodded, trying to look encouraging while grinding my teeth. Shoulders hunched, Jamie threaded around a couple carrying nacho platters and trudged toward the far end of the stadium.
Pamela released me and gave me a pat on the back, as if to say, See, that’s how you give orders.
Jamie’s dejected posture grated, and it took all my self-control not to race after him. I blamed the bond for making me so sensitive to his emotions. After all, I hadn’t asked him to do something painful or wrong. All he had to do was walk a few yards ahead of us . . . luring creatures he saw as harmless to their deaths.
It’s for his own good, I told myself.
The first drone buzzed Jamie. I raised my palmquell and fired a shot that, unsurprisingly, landed nowhere close to the drone’s slender body. Pamela pushed my hands down before I could take a second shot.
“We don’t want to scare them off. Wait until more gather. With luck, the pooka will make this easy for us.”
I squirmed, fighting to obey the inspector when every instinct clamored for me to protect Jamie. Only his reassurance that the drone couldn’t hurt him enabled me to master my body and stand idle while the drone’s needle proboscis sliced through his arm.
The pooka turned toward the drone, lifting a hand to pet its leg. He didn’t look in pain. I let out a gusty sigh of relief, which Pamela echoed a moment later when the drone flew away unchanged, proving he hadn’t allowed it to feed from his soul.
Hunkering deeper into his scarf, Jamie resumed his plod toward the baseball fields, but not before I caught sight of his sorrowful expression. My heart constricted.
This is for his own good, I repeated to myself, but the hollow words provided no solace.
7
I'm Like a Candy Bar: Half Sweet, Half Nuts
Pamela didn’t let me move until Jamie was more than halfway to the other side of the stands, and even then, she insisted on going first, setting a much slower pace than I would have. I bounced behind her, a squirmy, sharp sensation tugging me back to Jamie. Our bond prevented us from getting too far apart, but I couldn’t blame the distance for this compulsion. This had everything to do with the slump of Jamie’s shoulders and the downward curve of his mouth. The bond was manipulating me. If Jamie had been happily frolicking with the drones, I wouldn’t have suffered this compulsion to rush to him, which was probably why Jamie and I had been able to separate much farther last night without a problem. Last night had been all about fun: Jamie had gone out with Sam, his only normal friend—or at least his only friend who was also a norm—and I’d gone on my date with Alex.
In the freezing cold, squeezing through a throng of strangers, with the marching band blasting Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and drones bombarding us from above, I suffered a pang of jealousy for my past self. Dinner last night with Alex felt as if it had happened to another person in another lifetime. I tried to recall the nuances of our toe-curling farewell kiss, hoping to siphon a fragment of joy from the memory, but Jamie’s despondent plod smothered the reminiscence with guilt.
&
nbsp; What I wouldn’t give to be out with Alex again tonight instead of here!
“Look out.” Summer’s monotone caution came a second before pain punctured my shoulder. Too late, I flinched and jerked aside. The drone blasted past, sweeping up the bleachers, snacking as it retreated. I gave myself a quick pat-down, finding my phone in my jacket’s left pocket.
“What are you doing?” Summer asked. White bullets danced from the tip of her palmquell, and she crowded me, pushing me toward the railing as if herding me.
Using my teeth, I pulled off a glove and thumbed through my contacts. “I’m calling Alex.”
“Alex? Who’s that?”
“He’s hot stuff,” I said, listening to the phone ring. And if I play this right, I can ditch this miserable event and spend a much more pleasurable night with him.
“That’s what you were thinking about? A guy?” Summer removed her hand from my arm, a wicked smile curving her lips. “This should be good.”
The phone rang three times. Alex answered just as my reasoning brain kicked back online, and my stomach dove to my toes.
“Hello?”
“Uh.” I jerked the phone from my ear and stared at it. I should hang up.
“Madison?” Alex’s voice sounded tinny and small.
I smacked the phone back to my ear. “Alex! Hey. I hope it’s not too late to call.”
“How old do you think I am? It’s barely seven.”
“Oh, right.” I banged my forehead against my palmquell, hoping I’d shake loose something witty.
Summer brushed past me, her ugly chuckle audible between drumbeats. “Real professional, idiot.”
She caught up with Pamela in a few strides. Scowling, I ducked behind two rail-thin teens before the inspector turned and caught me on the phone. My stealth was likely pointless. Summer had probably already ratted me out.
Every instrument in the marching band bleated and banged at once, kicking off a tune I didn’t recognize and all but drowning out Alex’s next words.
“Where are you? Are you at a concert?”
A Fistful of Frost Page 8
