I nodded.
“What did he say?”
I hesitated, but I needed to tell Brad—because I needed his guidance and because I needed to no longer be alone with the knowledge. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that by speaking the words aloud, I gave them more power.
“He said, ‘The next time we meet, one of us will die. You will be the one to choose who lives.’”
Brad sank into the nearest chair, his meaty hand covering his mouth. I thrummed my nails against my thigh, tension tightening my shoulders.
“It doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means, right? Because I don’t want Jamie to die and I don’t want to die, either.”
Brad rubbed his hand up over his forehead, his eyes refocusing on me. “The wording of prophecies can be tricky. They don’t always mean what you think they mean.” He didn’t sound convinced. “You’ve had no contact with him since?”
“What do you think?”
Brad didn’t respond to my sarcasm. I paced away from him and back.
“You need to prepare yourself,” he said softly.
“Prepare . . . ?”
“It’s going to happen soon.”
“But Jamie can see a year into the future—”
“Your bond won’t last a year in its current fragile state. If it breaks, we’ll know exactly where he’s at, and we’ll have to . . .”
I glanced away from my boss’s pitying look. How was I supposed to prepare myself for that? Draft up my will or sharpen my knife?
A cold sweat broke over my head, sluicing down my body, and I wobbled to a chair and collapsed. The stifling heat of the office compressed my lungs. I yanked off my coat and scarf, tossing them atop the desk. Massaging my forehead, I concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths until the urge to vomit subsided.
Pamela strode into our headquarters, her keen eyes bouncing between me and Brad. My stomach flipped. Last night’s shouting match in the club’s restroom replayed in my head, and I didn’t come out looking rosy. Then again, neither did the inspector. An echo of my former indignation sputtered to life, enough to enable me to straighten my spine and meet Pamela’s gaze.
Rose trailed after her. Dark circles underscored the empath’s eyes, and her steps lagged despite it not yet even being ten.
“Prophecies are private,” Brad whispered. “There’s no rule that says you are required to share a prophecy. With anyone.”
I jerked to look at his face, but he’d already turned away to greet the inspector. Was he cautioning me not to share the prophecy with Pamela? Or had he merely been telling me my rights?
Pamela stopped on the other side of the table, scrutinizing my face. I wondered if I looked as sick as I felt.
“I’m glad to see you’re here, Madison. It saves me a trip. Any sign of the pooka?”
I shook my head.
Her lips tightened, but she didn’t state any unnecessary cautions. Pulling out her phone, she sent a quick text message. I folded my hands in my lap and Brad waited patiently at Pamela’s side. Rose marched to her desk, grabbed a water bottle, and downed two aspirins. The inspector’s phone chimed, and we all watched her read the text.
“Good. Doris says she’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Pamela announced, putting her phone away. “She’s your backup today, Madison. Where you go, she goes. We don’t know what state the pooka is in, and I’m not letting you out alone.”
“But—”
“As long as you’re with Doris,” she continued, overriding my hesitant protest, “I won’t need to do any purity tests on you.”
“Some company would be great,” I said.
Pamela smiled a genuine smile that contained no malice and didn’t disguise the worry in her eyes. “I thought you’d agree. However, the moment the sun sets, I want you here at my side. No excuses.”
I nodded, not quite believing she was letting me off so lightly. If not for the impending doom of Jamie’s prophecy, I might have felt genuine relief.
Pamela turned to Brad. “We’re going to need every prajurit available once we figure out where the tyv has been laying her spawn. How are the peace talks coming along?”
“About how you’d expect,” Brad said. “Every queen feels she deserves as much land as Madison promised Lestari. None will concede they’re not yet ready to rule, not even those who can’t muster four warriors to attend them during the negotiations. Plus none of the strong queens want to allow a weaker queen into their clan for fear of future mutiny.”
While he talked, he ambled toward the back of the office, taking Pamela with him and leaving me in relative peace.
Rose shoved her chair across the aisle to sit next to me. I glanced up, making a feeble attempt to rein in my rioting emotions. The empath didn’t need to be subjected to the mess tangled between my head and heart. Judging by her sympathetic expression, my attempt to exude calm fell flat.
“I thought you were avoiding the office during the peace talks,” I said.
“Pamela asked me to come in this morning.”
We both glanced toward Brad and Pamela, who had their heads bent together, deep in a strategy discussion that I didn’t strain to hear; they’d tell me what I needed to know when it pertained to me. The prajurit had fallen blissfully quiet, and the throbbing in my head receded, the sharp pain becoming a dull ache behind my eyeballs.
Rose broke the seal of a second water bottle and passed it to me. When I took a breath to thank her, a cloying lavender and vanilla scent lodged in my throat. I swished a mouthful of water, but even after I swallowed, the heavy odors coated my tongue.
“New perfume?” I asked, striving for a polite tone that didn’t sound like I was choking.
“Last-ditch coping strategy.”
Ah. Vanilla and lavender were calming scents. Rose must be desperate if she was relying on aromatherapy to distance herself from other’s emotions.
“Is it working?”
“It’s better than popping aspirin every twenty minutes and dying from liver failure before Christmas.” Rose flapped the top of her apricot blouse and grimaced.
I took another drink and scanned the parking lot for Doris. If I sat in this pathetic office much longer, I’d become mired in its depressing atmosphere.
“I’m just going to say it: You look like hell,” Rose said.
I huffed a laugh, glancing toward the ceiling and blinking back the tears stinging my eyes. “You would too if you’d bonded a pooka turning evil.”
Rose’s commiserative hum opened a floodgate, and my problems tumbled out.
“I’ve tried everything with Jamie. I followed Pamela’s instructions to the letter. She said be firm. She said not to let him use atrum. But when I laid down the rules, he didn’t listen. It’s not like I could force him, either. He’s got all the power and the worst I can do is get mad and yell. It’s like trying to discipline a child without being able to follow through on the threat to spank them. I have no leverage, no ability to enforce any rule. Then he ran off, and when I tried to talk to him, he threw . . . he threw it all back in my face. Maybe I need to be stricter with him. When I get my hands on him, I’ll lock him down and not let him up until he sees things my way.” Somehow.
“What about affection?” Rose asked softly.
I blinked, straightening in my chair. “You’re not suggesting . . . ?” Rose knew my relationship with Jamie was platonic. The thought of trying to win him back by sexual means made my insides want to curl in on themselves.
“No! No, nothing like that.” Rose swiped her hands down her thighs and shuddered. “I mean, you’ve tried being strict with him. You’ve tried yelling. You’ve scolded. Maybe that’s not what he’s going to respond to. Maybe he just needs someone to talk to, some attention that isn’t demanding or controlling.”
“But Pamela knows about pookas, and she said—”
“Who cares what she said?”
“I do!”
Rose cocked an eyebrow at me. “That’s not what I heard.”
&
nbsp; “Fine. I should care. She could teach me a lot. She has experience and—”
“And no idea what it’s like to be bonded to a pooka.”
I flopped back in my chair. Rose wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought.
She leaned forward. “Have you considered Jamie might be acting out because he doesn’t feel welcome or . . .” She hesitated. “Or loved?”
I opened my mouth, but the truth of her words stole my breath. I’d been so determined to stick to the inspector’s rules to prove I was a good enforcer that I hadn’t allowed myself to dwell on how cruelly I had been treating Jamie. I was his anchor, the one person around whom his world revolved. He didn’t have a support network of friends to turn to for advice or comfort; he had me. And I’d stopped treating him as if his opinions and emotions mattered. I’d changed up the rules, gone back on my word, and turned every moment together into a test. In doing so, I’d been telling him he wasn’t good enough, that he needed to change to be worthy of my affection. In words and deeds, I’d told him that despite his half lux lucis soul, I didn’t trust him. I’d acted as if I expected him to become evil—as if he already was evil.
No wonder he’d rebelled and run away.
It’d been exactly what I’d done, too. Pamela’s repetitive purity tests had hammered home her lack of trust in me and her belief that I would turn evil at any moment. Just like Jamie had with me, I’d struggled to prove Pamela wrong, and when I’d failed at an impossible task, I’d rebelled and run off.
“Oh, Rose, what have I done?” I swiped a tear from my cheek with the back of my hand, not quite meeting my friend’s eyes.
“You’ve been human. You made a mistake.” She lifted a hand to forestall my self-recriminations. “It’s no longer about what you’ve done; it’s about what you’re going to do.”
I nodded. It sounded so easy and logical coming from her, but— “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Try doing what you normally do.”
“Make a mess of everything?” My joke fell flat, and I swiped another tear from my cheek.
“Follow your heart and your instincts. It’s worked for you in the past. Now pull yourself together. Pamela’s going to come back over here and want me to report on your emotional state, and it’ll go better if you’re not crying.”
“You’re going to tell on me?” This had been another test?
“Don’t give me that. I care about your emotional well-being, and so does Pamela. She’s worried about you. We all are. If Jamie turns dark and gets to you . . . You’re a very strong enforcer, Madison. You could do a lot of damage, and we couldn’t predict the harm the atrum would do to your psyche.” Rose glanced toward Pamela and Brad, then leaned closer and whispered, “You scare her, or your potential to make everything go sideways scares her. Which is why she’s doing everything she can, including using me, to keep control over this situation.”
“She does like to be in control,” I agreed, bitterness twisting my mouth.
Rose shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
When she leaned back in her chair, Brad and Pamela broke off their conversation and walked back to our table.
“How is Madison?” Pamela asked.
I fisted my hands under the table and glared at the inspector. She could have pulled Rose aside or waited until I left. Instead, she spoke as if I weren’t there, making a point of letting me know she didn’t trust me. Brad gave me a small nod that I didn’t know how to interpret, but he didn’t intervene.
“She’s about how you’d expect: Frazzled, irritated”—Rose delivered the understatement with a small smile—“mourning her broken relationship with Jamie and eager to fix things.”
Pamela studied me, searching my eyes as if she were trying to peer inside my head. “Do you sense any darkness in her?”
“Traces of self-loathing and heaps of guilt, but nothing worse.”
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, both that Rose could feel my shame and that she’d given voice to it.
Pamela nodded, apparently satisfied. “Good. Go with Doris today, Madison. Your strategy yesterday was sound: Tire the pooka so he won’t be a problem for us tonight. Coordinate with Brad, and be back here in time for hunting the tyv at sundown—if we can find her.”
“Are you here to capture Jamie if he shows up?” I asked Doris after our first stop as we walked back to the car. We’d burned through a moderate swarm of frost moths congregating behind a 7-Eleven, and I had just enough moth-enhanced anger to consider tackling the older woman and wrestling my keys from her if she gave me the wrong answer.
Doris snorted. “I’m here to make sure you don’t die. I’m your bodyguard.”
If she’d said that to anyone else, they would have collapsed with laughter. Doris’s short, wiry frame, permed gray hair, and wrinkled face were the antithesis of a stereotypical bodyguard. But I could see the tensile strength of her soul, and I accepted her words at face value.
She halted and spread her arms wide, tilting her head back to belt out the chorus line from the song Whitney Houston made famous. “And I-I-I-I-I will always love you!”
I scanned the horizon, ever hopeful that I’d spot Jamie—and dreading seeing him, too. The next time we meet, one of us will die.
“Not even a clap? No smile?” Doris poked my ribs. “Child, you’re in a bad way.”
Don’t I know it.
Lunch came and went without spotting Jamie. Determined to make Doris’s presence superfluous, I attacked each new cluster of evil with single-minded fervor. When I was slicing through herds of imps or burning through flocks of frost moths, my thoughts quieted. For those limited seconds or minutes, I floated in a cocoon of purpose, free from worries and regrets, and I became ruthless in achieving those moments of peace.
As had become my habit, I kept the palmquell in my left hand and used every opportunity to practice my marksmanship. Most of the time, I hit what I aimed at, even vervet swinging from eaves and trees above us. Doris offered a few pointers and the occasional praise, but for the most part she left me alone with my thoughts and stayed out of my way.
Though we never encountered anything stronger than a small wraith, the nonstop activity sapped my strength. I slouched into our shabby headquarters shortly before five that night, pausing on the threshold for one last inspection of the parking lot and sky. During our day zipping back and forth across my region, I hadn’t once felt the stretch or pull of the bond. Not once. Either Jamie had kept close, or our tenuous connection had thinned too much to matter.
“I’ve worked with enforcers who had decades more experience but who weren’t half as dedicated as Madison,” Doris said, drawing my attention. The retired enforcer stood in the middle of the office, reporting to Pamela. “She’s understandably preoccupied, but otherwise a model enforcer.”
I tried to keep the surprise from my face, never having expected to hear such high praise from Doris.
“Good to hear, especially after her actions last night,” Pamela said.
Doris gave me a pat on the shoulder as she left. “Good luck tonight.”
I waited near the door, searching the sky and stretching knots from my calves. Dancing in three-inch heels last night, then being on my feet all day today had done my legs no favors. Sharon’s flat gaze bore into me, mistrust written across her stoic features.
“Have you eaten?” Pamela asked.
I shook my head, not wanting to explain my loss of appetite. “Any sign of the tyv?”
“It’s too early to tell. You should rest while you can. I plan on keeping us moving all night.”
Oh joy. The throbbing ache in the soles of my feet encouraged me toward the nearest chair, but relaxing under Pamela’s suspicious supervision was out of the question. Besides, despite my attempts to lose myself in my work today, I’d had a lot of time to think—not just about my relationship with Jamie, but also about my actions in general. I owed more than the pooka an apology.
“I think I’ll get a snack.” I to
ssed my jacket and beanie on a table and ambled to the break room for privacy. Pamela trailed after me, forcing me to open and choke down an entire yogurt to maintain my ruse. The inspector fussed at the coffee maker, taking her time doctoring her cup of coffee, then sipping it while staring out the door, as if by not looking at me she could fool me into thinking she wasn’t monitoring me. Did she expect me to make a break for the back exit and run out? Then what? I still wore the tracker. She could pinpoint my location no matter where I went.
I headed for the bathroom. The inspector followed, stopping to lean against the wall when she noted my destination. I gave her a flat look through the gap of the closing door and made sure to snap the lock with extra force. A box of a room, the bathroom fit right in with the rest of the office: drab, uninspired, and tired. The overhead light flickered on and a fan roared to life.
Cocking a hip against the sink, I slid Val from his strap and opened him.
It had been twenty-four hours since I’d last cracked his spine. Leaving him closed had been a passive, quiet cruelty, one that turned his cover into his own prison of solitary confinement. I expected his first page to be filled with a justified rant or maybe some much-deserved insults in all caps. Instead, a blank page stared back at me.
“I’m sorry, Val.” I kept my voice low, below the drone of the fan. If Pamela were so crass as to press her ear to the door, I didn’t want her listening in on my side of this conversation. “I’ve been self-centered. It was wrong of me to treat you so poorly and ignore you.”
I didn’t like it. The words printed small and prim across the center of the page.
“I know. I shouldn’t have let my anger get the better of me.” I hesitated. As much as I wanted to blame all my thoughtless behavior on losing Jamie and the bond’s emotional manipulation, I needed to accept responsibility for my actions with Val. Clearing my throat, I continued. “I was . . . I am jealous of how highly you speak of Pamela. It made me act petty. But it’s okay for you to like other people more than me.”
I waited, but Val didn’t jump in with a polite protest and a proclamation of his love for me above all others. His silence stung my ego.
A Fistful of Frost Page 33
