“You two better watch out,” Ariel said to David and Jacob.
“If Zayin finds out you’re hanging around with her, you could be reassigned, too.”
Jacob pushed back his chair. “That’s crap. Zayin’s not going to stop us from taming fire because your boyfriend screwed up.”
Ariel’s eyes glittered with moisture. “He didn’t. Take it back.”
“What is this, high school?”
“Gideon did his job,” Lara said quickly. “I’m the one responsible for . . . for the mission.”
An uncomfortable pause.
“That’s all right then,” David said. “I mean, you work for the headmaster.”
“Not anymore,” Ariel said with satisfaction.
Lara’s throat tightened.
“Lara? What’s she talking about?” Jacob asked.
“I hear your friend is in really deep shit.” The girl with Ariel tittered. “Literally.”
“She’s working in the bird house,” Ariel said with gleeful vindictiveness. “With Crazy Moon and the other cuckoos.”
“Oh, hey.” David’s good-natured face creased in sympathy. “That sucks.”
Lara swallowed. “It’s only temporary,” she said again.
And heard Simon saying, “Until I can trust your judgment, you cannot work for me. ”
Her hands shredded her napkin in her lap. He would forgive her, eventually. Everything could go back to normal.
If only she’d be quiet, if only she’d be good . . .
“From now on, you cannot see him, cannot speak to him, cannot visit him, is that clear?”
She stared down at the bright pattern of fruit on her plate, all appetite gone.
*
Dust motes danced in the diffused brightness of the raptor enclosure. Lara’s rake rattled over the gravel subfloor, turning up broken bones and hardened pellets, the remains of small dead rodents, digested and undigested.
The big bird perched in the corner turned its wicked head, surveying her with a bright, suspicious eye.
Lara froze like a rabbit. Moon said the bird wouldn’t attack.
But Moon was crazy. Everyone knew that.
As if summoned by the thought, the mews keeper appeared in the door of the cage. She was tall, like most of their kind, and striking, like all of them. But her wavy hippie hair was tied back with a leather jess, her strong, angular body swallowed by a shapeless brown tunic. Her blue eyes were cloudy and vague.
“When you’ve finished sweeping, you can scrub out his bath.” Moon flapped her hand at the metal pan weighted by an old tire in the middle of the cage.
Lara eyed the scummy water without enthusiasm.
Self-knowledge and obedience, she reminded herself.
She didn’t know what Simon expected her to learn in this dirty, shadowed hole. But she knew what she had to do.
“Okay.”
The keeper padded across the enclosure, her slippered feet silent on the newly raked floor. “There’s my lovely boy, then,” she crooned to the bird. “You’re one of Simon’s girls, aren’t you?”
It took Lara a moment to realize Moon was speaking to her.
She flushed. “I work for him, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t care if you dance for him naked,” the keeper said. “But he found you.”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I’m good with faces,” Moon said with satisfaction. “Better with birds, but still, I remember. You came in here with your class, a dozen years ago.”
Lara’s heart beat faster at the memory. Bria had made her stay behind in the shadowed mews when the rest of their cohort had escaped to sunlight and safety. Her friend had been fascinated by the birds, their daggered feet, their cruel, curved beaks, their caged grace.
She shrugged to hide her discomfort. “Everyone comes once. It’s part of the life science unit.”
“But I remember you,” Moon said. “You were friends with that little blond girl. The flyer.”
Lara’s mouth jarred open. No one talked about the flyers.
Ever. After Bria ran away, it was as if the other girl had never been. Lara had grieved for her friend in silence and alone. “She was my roommate.”
Moon cocked her head. “Never came back.”
“No,” Lara whispered.
“I meant you.”
“Oh.” Lara fought an absurd urge to apologize. “No, I . . .”
“Most of them don’t,” Moon said frankly. “Unless they want to use the birds in the flight cages to practice spirit casting.”
Lara shivered. Under the Rule, only Masters had the authority to project their spirits into other creatures. The Gift was too close to the demonic power of possession, too much like usurping free will, to be considered quite safe.
Even Masters were restricted to using it on birds, fellow children of the air.
She glanced at the large golden-eyed raptor in the corner.
“They do that . . . here?”
“Not so much. All of the Masters at least try it. Most don’t have the knack. And even fewer have the inclination.”
Raising her arm, the keeper pressed against the bird’s haunches until it either had to step back or be pushed from its perch. Lara held her breath as, with a disgruntled flap, the bird hopped onto Moon’s glove.
Moon stroked its breast. “A lot of our birds come to us because they’ve been injured—trapped, maybe, or shot.
That’s why they leave us alone, the Masters. They want to fly, but they can’t stand to be reminded they’re no different than my birds.”
“Hunted?” Lara ventured.
The keeper met her gaze, her vague blue eyes suddenly sharp and clear. “Caged.”
Lara stared, speechless. She had a mental flash of Justin, lean and golden, balancing against the bright blue sky, plunging into the sea in a flourish of foam and daring. Free.
Until now.
She moistened her dry lips. “But . . . the birds are all freed eventually. When they’re well enough to survive on their own.”
“That’s what they teach in your life science unit, is it?”
Lara nodded slowly. She had never questioned the school masters’ expertise.
“It’s true for some. The ones that aren’t hurt too badly to be rehabilitated and released.” Another sharp glance, bright with pity or derision. “Or so used to being locked up and hand fed they can’t adjust to life outside.”
Lara’s heart thumped. The tawny raptor on Moon’s arm watched her with wicked, golden eyes.
“What about him?” she asked. “What will happen to him?”
“Tuari?” The keeper stroked the bird’s bronze plumage.
He opened his beak softly against her fingers. “He won’t have an easy time of it. He doesn’t belong here. He’s not like the others.”
“He’s not one of us,” Zayin had said last night about Justin.
Not human. Not nephilim either.
“What difference does it make?” Lara asked fiercely. “If he needs care.”
“Oh, we can care for him. But he doesn’t have a place here.
Or out there. The others are all native species, hawks and owls. Tuari’s a golden eagle. God knows what brought him to us, but he’s totally out of his range, poor boy.” The keeper’s eyes clouded again. “Even if I set him free, he’d be lost.”
*
Moon’s words hung in the air like the smell of newts, pungent and impossible to ignore. They haunted Lara as she raked flight pens and scrubbed birdcages, breaking her nails and her heart. “He doesn’t have a place here. Or out there.”
She rubbed her forehead, but the words kept circling, picking, attacking. They kept her company at dinner when no one else would. They whispered in the carrels during evening study and followed her up the stairs after lights out.
She held on to the banister as she climbed. The darkness of the stairwell suited her mood.
After her so-called period of reflection, she was dirty and exhausted and more confused than ever. What she needed was a hot shower and an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Everything would look better in the morning.
Including Justin?
She stopped, a tight, fluttery feeling in her chest, trying to remember what Miriam had said. Forty-eight hours to recover from the concussion. And then what?
“Even if I set him free, he’d be lost. ”
She dragged herself the rest of the way to her room. She closed and locked the door. Stripping her filthy T-shirt over her head, she dropped it with a sigh to the floor.
As a proctor, she had her own closet-sized bathroom.
She turned the shower as hot as she could stand, letting the pulse pound her tight muscles, the water sluice over her head, desperate to rinse away the stink of the mews and her lingering sense of guilt. Steam billowed in the air, slicked the tiles, condensed on the mirror. She breathed in the moist, shampoo-scented air. Released it, expelling tension on a sigh.
Wrapped in a towel, she opened the door to her room.
The window was open. Night whispered against her bare skin. Her body hummed with awareness.
A sound, a breath, a disturbance in the air . . .
Her mind blanked in terror. It was her nightmare, a man in her room, in the dark.
She sucked in her breath.
“Don’t scream,” Justin said from the direction of her bed.
He could see in the dark. “Cat’s eyes,” Captain Rick had said the first time he’d watched Justin climb the rigging at night.
He could see her now, Lara, silhouetted against the slanting light from the bathroom, the quick rise of her breasts above the knotted towel, her small hands curled into fists at her sides.
He could smell her, soap and fear, and under that her skin, her scent, female, sweet. Arousing.
“Don’t be scared,” he said hoarsely, which was a crock—she should be scared, she barely knew him. And what she could probably make out was hardly reassuring.
His head hurt. His throat burned. For seven years, his past had been a blank to him. Now his brain seethed with unfamiliar images. With questions. Something had changed within him, and the one person he trusted for answers was braced in front of him, watching him with wide, wary gray eyes as if he were about to jump her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
Her body remained tensed, slim taut lines and the gleam of her breasts against the darkness of the room. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I won’t go back to the cellar.”
“This is the first place they’ll look for you.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“Don’t say that,” she snapped.
It was true. So he said nothing, watching her.
She wet her lips. “How did you get in?”
He nodded toward her open window. “Climbed.”
“But the heth . . . you couldn’t get past the threshold before.”
His memories were all mixed up, but he remembered sprawling half out of the cellar door, a weight on one leg like a cement cast, a noose around his neck.
He remembered that bastard, Axton.
He remembered her lips, her scent, her hair falling down to brush his face. Her breath filling his lungs.
“Yeah, I figured that out.” Slowly, so he wouldn’t spook her, he straightened his leg, stuck out his ankle. “I got rid of one.
Cut it off.”
Her eyes widened. “What about your throat?”
He shrugged. “I can breathe.” Her kiss had done that much for him.
“You removed Zayin’s spell?”
Her talk of spells made his skin crawl. He didn’t believe in magic. But he had a sailor’s healthy respect for luck. Not to mention some kind of voodoo charm hanging around his neck like a fucking albatross. Under the circumstances, he was prepared to be open-minded.
I don’t know about spells,” he said. “But I’m still wearing the necklace. Every time I tried to get the blade under, I damn near slit my throat.”
She switched on the lamp that stood on her desk. He squinted in the sudden yellow light. Christ, she was lovely, all that milky skin rising above the towel, her slim, bare legs, the curve of her hip under the terrycloth.
“Show me,” she said.
Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.
Wordlessly, he tugged on the neck of his T-shirt.
She made a soft, distressed sound.
He didn’t know what it looked like, but he could feel the cord, a line of fire around his neck, the bead a burning coal in the hollow of his throat. His skin felt hot and swollen.
He smiled crookedly. “I don’t suppose you want to try that kiss of life thing again?”
He thought she’d refuse. Hell, he thought she’d run.
She took a hesitant step toward him. “When I opened your airway, it must have turned the magic outward. Do they know? Did they see you like this?”
He wanted to say yes, to play on her sympathies, to buy her loyalty by any lie at his disposal. He had to get out of here.
But faced with her anger and concern, he went with honesty.
“It didn’t start to feel this way until I got outside.” He angled his head to give her a better view. “Is it bad?”
“It looks painful. How does it feel?”
He shrugged again, pulling the tender skin. “About the way it looks.”
Still wearing the towel, she approached him and the bed.
“I’m not a healer.”
“Your healer Miriam’s been keeping me drugged and locked up in a basement. I trust you.”
She sat beside him, the mattress dipping beneath her slight weight. She leaned away to avoid rolling against him, but his gaze was drawn to the knot of her towel, the shallow indentation between her breasts, the pulse beating just there beneath her jaw. Her hair smelled damp and clean.
He had to close his eyes, dizzied, distracted by her nearness.
She laid cool fingers on the raw skin of his throat. Her touch drew away the heat and the pain.
More magic? He didn’t care. He wanted to rub himself all over her for comfort like an animal. Catching her wrist, he pressed his face into her palm. Her hand trembled against his cheek. He inhaled her, smelling her fear and the faint notes of her skin, fresh as lilies in the rain.
“What do you want?” she whispered.
You.
“Help. Answers.”
She eased back from him, her hand slipping from his grasp. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
He couldn’t think of any acceptable reason to grab her again, so he said, “Just tell me the truth. What is this place?”
“A school. A private boarding school.”
“For what? Wayward girls and boys? The criminally insane?”
“Nephilim.”
He forced his gaze from the pale swell of her breasts.
“Neff . . .”
“Neh-fil -eem,” she pronounced carefully.
He tested the word against the echoes of his dreams like a man dropping a stone into a well to test for depth. But there was no ripple, no memory, nothing.
“What’s that, like a cult?”
“The Fallen children of air.” She searched his eyes.
“You really don’t remember? Anything?”
When she looked at him like that, with those clear, dark-lashed eyes, he wanted to say yes. To a drink in a bar, to a ride in her car, to sex on her narrow white bed . . .
“Justin?”
“I remember the sea,” he said.
The sea and a sense of loss.
“That’s it?”
“A dog.” A flash of memory, tall as a wolf, graceful as a deer, with a thin whip of a tail and a narrow, bearded muzzle. Justin smiled. “I remember a dog.”
Lara frowned, apparently not amused. Or satisfied.
“Wh
at about your life before you went to sea? Your family?
Your childhood?”
Fatigue and pain and the echo of Zayin’s voice, prying, sliding into his dreams, needled his temper. But Lara was his only ally. His only hope.
“I don’t have a family.” Or want one. He didn’t want to be tied down. Tied up, drifting in the cold green sea, everything gone, lost . . . “I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t remember much of anything before seven years ago.”
Except in his dreams . . .
“What happened seven years ago?”
“Shipwreck.” Beneath the towel, she was naked. He forced his gaze up to meet her eyes. “I was the only survivor.
Norwegian freighter captain found me tied to a mast and fished me out of the North Sea.”
“And since then?”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, I’d be happy to tell you the story of my life some other time. Right now, I just want to get the hell out of here.”
“You can’t leave.”
He looked her up and down. “You going to try and stop me?”
“N-no,” she said slowly.
“Good. I need your help.”
“I can’t—”
“A car.” He interrupted before she had the chance to say no. “I figure you owe me a lift.”
“Where are you going?”
An island, its green hills forming a jagged cup around the shining sea, its ancient stones imbued with power . . .
“Anywhere there’s water,” he said firmly. “A shipyard, a marina. I’ve got contacts, I can get a berth.”
He needed to be at sea. Assuming he could find a boat captain willing to hire a crew member with a broken skull and a hex burning around his throat.
She shook her head, her damp hair sliding like water over her bare shoulders. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be okay. I’ve had practice flying under the radar.”
“You have very good shields.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “I have very good papers.”
“Papers?”
He shot her a grin. “The best money can buy. No memory, remember? No birth certificate, no social security number.”
Her gray eyes were clear and solemn. “It can’t have been easy creating an identity on your own.”
Forgotten Sea Page 7
