Kat Dubois Chronicles

by Lindsey Sparks

  “That explains the excellent upkeep,” I said, glancing back at Nik.

  He breathed a laugh, but no hint of a smile touched his lips. He had his game face on. Not surprising—Mari wasn’t his favorite person, and she was one of the few people whose sheut power was a match for his. She was one of the few people who could pose an actual threat to him.

  Constance led us deeper into the market’s underbelly, and we entered a defunct boiler room with a hodgepodge of breaker boxes lining the brick walls to what appeared to be a bricked-over doorway. At least, until Constance wound her way through the ancient machinery filling the room and depressed a single brick to the right of the old doorway, then pushed on the area of newer bricks. It gave in with the grind of stone on stone until there was an opening plenty wide enough for a person to fit through. The space beyond was pitch-black, even to my sensitive eyes.

  Nik whistled, and I grinned. Who doesn’t love a secret passageway?

  Constance reached through the opening, fumbling blindly for something. “There’s a lantern here, somewhere . . .”

  “Here,” Nik said, holding up his hand, palm up. A writhing, glowing mass of living At flared to life, looking so much like some alien form of fire. It cast the area around us in an eerie incandescent light, making the world appear almost silver.

  Constance’s eyes widened, and she licked her lips. “Thanks,” she said, eyeing the otherworldly mass for a moment before turning away from us.

  We followed her through the opening to what appeared to be an old sidewalk—there was even an antique lamppost a few yards up the passageway and an arched opening for a window, though the view through the cracked glass only showed a mass of dirt, rocks, and rubble. The air down here smelled musty and earthy, sort of like a cave, but not quite. I’d been in spaces like this under the city before, areas leftover from the citywide regrade after the devastating fire of 1889. The old Seattleites had decided building a new city on top of the old one would be more practical and efficient than rebuilding the old. And lucky us, that meant that much of the original city remained . . . one only need know where to look.

  “You won’t find this on the underground tour,” I said, voice hushed, as Constance led us further into the remnants of a Seattle long forgotten.

  “I remember this place,” Nik said, his voice barely a whisper. He walked ahead of me now, sharing his light with Constance as much as possible. I watched his profile as he slowed and looked around, nostalgia transforming his features. He reached his free hand out, brushing the half-burned wood frame of another window opening. “This was a hotel—the Occidental. Mother and I stayed here once.” A wistful smile touched his lips. “This was the first place I ever had my photograph taken.” He laughed under his breath. “Re disapproved, but Mother was so eager . . .”

  I smiled to myself, enjoying this rare glimpse into Nik’s past.

  “Just a little farther,” Constance said, pausing and tossing a glance back at us. Only then did I realize how far behind we’d fallen.

  Five minutes later, we reached an old armored door, the kind used on a bank vault a century or two back. PUGET SOUND NATIONAL BANK was engraved in the metal near the center of the door. Constance made quick work of the heavy-duty built-in lock, spun the wheel, then turned a handle, and the door slowly swung outward on surprisingly well-oiled hinges. “Stay here, out of sight,” she whispered, then passed through the vault doorway and headed for a second door just a few yards in from the first. It was smaller and rusted, with a several-inch square hatch at face height for a peekaboo window.

  Nik nodded, and the two of us backed up a few steps, retreating into the passageway. I inhaled deeply, then held my breath.

  Constance’s knock was gentle, but she didn’t need more than that to alert Mari’s Nejeret ears of her presence. “It’s me,” she called quietly. “I have news.”

  There was a rusty creak, followed by, “What happened at the meeting?”

  Adrenaline flooded my bloodstream at the sound of Mari’s voice, and my whole body hummed with anticipation. She was really here. We’d found her. I might just be able to save Garth.

  “You look like hell,” Mari told Constance. “Did the board vote you out?”

  “Not exactly,” Constance said. “Let me in, and I’ll explain.”

  Nik and I stared at each other as we waited for the sound of a door opening. It seemed to take forever. There was clang after clang as Mari dealt with the door’s locks, and I was starting to get a little lightheaded from holding my breath for so long. But I could hardly let it out now, in a massive exhale. Mari would hear that, for sure.

  Finally, the door opened with the faintest of creeks. We waited a few more seconds for Constance to actually get in the doorway, where she could bar the way so Mari wouldn’t be able slam the door as soon as she spotted us, and then I stepped into view.

  “Hey, Mars,” I said, raising a hand to wave.

  Her familiar, almond-shaped eyes rounded in surprise.

  “Been looking for you . . .”

  In an explosion of rainbow mist, statuesque Mei appeared behind her adopted daughter and placed her hand on Mari’s shoulder, preparing to teleport them both away to safety.

  “Wait,” Nik said as he, too, stepped into view. “Daughter, please, hear us out.”

  I blinked, eyeing him for a few seconds before his words finally made sense. It always took me a moment to reconcile the fact that Nik has a daughter—Mei. He’s just so unfatherly in pretty much every way possible. Not that that changed the fact that he had fathered Mei millennia ago. She’d inherited her fair share of the stunning beauty that was so pervasive in her father’s bloodline, though her ancient human mother’s genes had lent her a far more Middle Eastern look. She’d also inherited her sheut from Nik, though her powers were quite different from his.

  “We need your help,” Nik said, extending his hand, almost like he was pleading with her. Maybe he was.

  For uncounted seconds, the five of us stood there, an ice sculpture of tensions and uncertainty.

  Until, finally, Mei nodded. “Very well, Father.” She looked at me, bowed her head in greeting, and murmured, “Katarina.” Then she straightened. “Both of you, please, come in.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “So,” I said, “will you do it?” I was sitting across from Mari at a farm-style dining table in their surprisingly well-stocked underground kitchen. It turned out that their hideout really was an old bank vault, and that some guy named Billy had set it up as a fallout shelter in the forties, only to leave it abandoned some years later when he died in a car accident. We knew about Billy and how he’d died because he’d been a friend of Mei’s back in the day. It was how she and Mari had known the bunker was down here in the first place.

  Mari inhaled deeply, then looked at her mother, who was sitting to her left. I’d filled them in, telling them as quickly as possible about everything that had happened over the past couple days, save for our encounter with the mysterious Netjer. And my whatever-it-was with Garth. TMI is very much a real thing.

  I glanced at Nik, sitting on my left, but his eyes were locked on Mei, too. Probably because she was staring at him just as hard. I didn’t know much about Nik’s relationship with his daughter, but based on appearances, it was a tense one.

  Seeing that she wouldn’t get any help from her mom, Mari returned her attention to me. She blew out a breath and threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, why not.” She pointed a finger at me. “On one condition.” She redirected her pointer finger to Nik. “You agree to help me, even after we save Kat’s boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said reflexively, and Mari snorted. I looked at Nik, begging him with my eyes to agree to her condition. It was hard to do when he hadn’t even glanced my way. Losing patience, I reached out and touched the back of his wrist with my fingertips.

  Finally, he looked at me, his expression hard.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Nik . . . please.”

/>   His features softened, and he closed his eyes and bowed his head in assent.

  A sly grin spread across Mari’s face. She slapped her hands together, then rubbed them back and forth vigorously. “Looks like you’re not dying today, Connie,” she said to Constance, who was lying down on the mid-century couch in the “living room.” She was running a fever already, and she’d practically collapsed on the couch as soon as Mari suggested she get some rest.

  Constance held up a hand, giving us a thumbs-up over the back of the couch.

  “Gather whatever you need. We’ve got to get back to Bainbridge right away,” I told Mari, then looked at Mei. “Can you teleport us there?”

  “You three, no problem,” she said, then looked at the couch. “But I can’t teleport her. She’s human—the trip would tear her apart.”

  I sighed, then scooted my chair away from the table. “Alright, well, a gateway it is, then.” I stood, hoping I had it in me to make one more today. “Which wall do you care about the least?”

  Mari and Mei exchanged a confused look.

  “Her power’s evolving,” Nik explained. Oh, right, because I hadn’t included that part in my flash update, either. “She can draw a sort of doorway from one place to the next.”

  Both Mari and Mei looked at me, eyes opened wide and lips parted. Boy, I sure do love surprising people. Maybe it’s why I always try to make sure their expectations are extra low. Because I totally do that on purpose. Really.

  “Wall preference?” I asked, nudging them out of their shocked states.

  “Oh,” Mari said. “Um . . .” Brow furrowed, she looked at her mom, who shrugged.

  “Artist’s choice,” I said, nodding slowly as I scanned the space. I was already digging the bundle of Sharpies out of my coat pocket. “Suh-weet.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Alright,” Neffe said, exchanging a look and a nod with Aset, “we’re ready.” The two petite Nejerets stood on either side of something that looked an awful lot like a dentist’s chair—only the kind a demented, evil dentist would use, what with all the strappy restraints holding down the brilliant duo’s first subject.

  Mitch Carmichael was being used as the inaugural lab rat for the ba-grafting procedure. Even though Constance had volunteered, Heru thought she held too much value to be used so negligently. She was willing to work with us—to share everything she knew about the inner workings of the Ouroboros Corporation and Initiative Industries, not to mention the negotiations and deals made with the Senate—and that made her an invaluable asset, especially compared to rancid Mitch Carmichael.

  If the procedure was a success, Mari promised to infect Carmichael with anti-At as soon as the positive outcome became clear, and his short-lived, partially formed ba would be erased from existence once and for all. No gentle eternity for this pathetic excuse for a human being. That was just fine with me.

  Standing at the foot of the chair, Nik held a marble-sized orb of At, a minuscule sliver of Heru’s ba writhing within its temporary prison. It was one of nearly a dozen such marbles filling a metal lockbox on the counter behind me. Heru was the oldest Nejeret on site, and though Mari hadn’t been able to explain why, she believed his age would make his ba the best candidate for a successful soul-grafting.

  The ba extraction itself had only taken a few minutes, though it had taken Mari more than twenty-four hours of constant work to get the extraction apparatus—a modified MRI machine—up and running. With Nik’s help, Mari was able to harvest a baseball-sized chunk of Heru’s ba, which she claimed should be all she’d ever need, since the fragment would ceaselessly replenish itself within its At prison, just as Heru’s ba would regrow until it was fully repaired within his physical body. Probably a good thing, because I doubted Lex would ever let her husband go through a ba extraction again. It had been excruciating even to watch.

  Mari stood beside me, arms crossed over her chest and expression rapt. Lex stood on my other side, and Dom, watching from the pendant hanging around my neck, was the only other soul present. Heru was two floors above us in his and Lex’s bedroom, recovering under the attentive “care” of his toddler, and it had been Mari’s suggestion to clear the basement laboratory of everyone else to ensure that word of this potentially world-changing procedure didn’t get out. Nobody had argued.

  Nik glanced over his shoulder to look at Mari. “You’re sure this’ll take?” He frowned. “I don’t need to do anything more invasive?”

  Mari nodded. “A human’s soul is contained within every single cell of their physical body. The moment that ba fragment touches his skin, it’ll recognize a potential host. It wants to be whole, and merging with a human soul is the path of least resistance. Go on . . .” She gestured to Carmichael with her chin. “See for yourself.”

  We wouldn’t know if it was truly successful for a few hours, or so Mari claimed. That was how long it would take for the newly forming ba to make noticeable changes to Carmichael’s human physiology.

  Nik placed the At marble on Carmichael’s shin, balancing it there with a single fingertip. A moment later, the opalescent At dissolved into a shimmering mist. I caught only a glimpse of that silvery filament of ba before it seeped into Carmichael’s skin and vanished completely.

  Mari blew out a breath and brushed a sleek strand of black hair from her forehead. “Well, I suppose we should all get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”

  Three hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds later, Mari destroyed Carmichael’s brand-spanking-new ba. I heralded Carmichael’s writhing passage into oblivion with a one-finger salute. It was a glorious moment.

  “We’ll do Constance next,” Mari said as she turned her back to Carmichael’s writhing form, “then your boyfriend, Kat.”

  I rolled my eyes, ignoring Nik’s snicker. He’d swapped places with Mari and now stood on my left. I lost patience after a few seconds and elbowed him in the side none too gently.

  “We’ll prep Constance,” Aset said, and she and Neffe headed to the quarantined half of the lab. The temporary plastic walls had been erected to keep the disease as contained as possible, and the area within functioned as a makeshift hospital for the few infected people in the compound, Garth included.

  I watched them go, my heart yearning to follow. I still hadn’t visited Garth. I didn’t know how to talk to him without telling him there was maybe a chance that he would not only survive the incurable disease but also become a Nejeret. That he’d live forever. I couldn’t not tell him that chance existed, but I hadn’t been willing to get his hopes up. I’d needed to know for sure. And now I did.

  “Go,” Lex said, nudging me with her shoulder. “He’s been asking for you nonstop.” She offered me a gentle smile. “Give the poor guy the good news.”

  I searched her kind, carmine eyes, looking for some reason not to go. I was afraid to face him. But I needed to, so I pushed off the counter and marched after Neffe and Aset. The two were already beyond the plastic walls.

  I could hear Lex and Nik whispering, but I hummed tunelessly to drown out whatever they were saying. Force of habit. Some things are better not overheard.

  Mari laughed, and I slowed, glancing over my shoulder to see her sidling up to Nik. “Better get used to it, buddy.” She linked arms with him, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I had to force myself to keep going. “Besides, you’ve got a new partner now, and I’m half as crazy and twice as fun.”

  Ugh. I threw up a little in my mouth.

  Nik looked my way, and when his eyes met mine, when I saw the sad smile curving his lips, my heart seized up. He nodded infinitesimally, and I had the oddest impression that he was saying goodbye.

  Shaken, I faced forward and continued onward, heading into the decontamination space everyone had to pass through on their way in and out of the quarantine zone. A quick spray of some high-intensity disinfectant cascaded over me in a fine mist, and I continued through the next plastic flap.

  Garth was sitt
ing at a folding card table alone, his back to me, a half-played game of solitaire laid out before him. Neffe, Aset, and Constance were in the far corner of the room. Aset seemed to be explaining to Constance what sorts of changes to expect after the procedure.

  I took a deep breath, then plastered a smile on my face and headed for Garth. “Hey, stranger.”

  He spun in his seat, looking too big for the folding chair, his fingers gripping the chair back. The second his rich brown eyes locked with mine, my heart warmed and my smile softened, becoming genuine. He looked exhausted; his skin was too pale, emphasizing the dark circles under his eyes, but he still filled the space around himself with a sense of calmness. Of peace.

  “So, I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” I told him as I drew nearer.

  His eyebrows rose. “What’s the good news?”

  “This disease isn’t going to kill you.”

  He started to stand, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You found a cure?” he asked.

  I shrugged one shoulder, pulling out the chair adjacent to his and turning it around to sit on it backwards, cool-kid style. “Something like that,” I said, resting my forearms on the back of the chair.

  He frowned. “And the bad news?”

  I smirked, tilting my head to the side. “You’re going to have to put up with my ass forever.”

  “I don’t—” His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. And then his eyes widened. “My forever, or yours?”

  I grinned. “Mine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sitting on a piece of driftwood, I stared out at the endless gray mass of salt water. Wind made the surface of the Puget Sound choppy, a clutter of white peaks forming only to fade away under the rolling swells seconds later. Dark clouds coated the sky from horizon to horizon, but the rain was the barest of drizzles. It looked more like five o’clock than one, but a glance at my borrowed watch assured me it was still barely after noon.