Outcast

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  It was Nik. He leaned back against the broad shop window to the left of the door, a cigarette held up to his lips between two fingers and a silver lighter in his other hand. He was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and worn, gray jeans. Though he had many more, only a few of his tattoos were visible—most notably the Egyptian goddess inked into his neck, her outstretched wings wrapping around to just barely touch in the back. His dark brown hair was buzzed on the sides, the longer top portion swept back, and his face was clean-shaven. His was a jaw that didn’t require the assistance of a five-o’clock shadow to look strong, a perfect finish to the rest of his chiseled face, slightly crooked nose and all.

  He took a deep draw on his cigarette as he stowed his lighter back in his jeans. He blew out the smoke, then rested his head back against the glass, his eyelids drifting shut.

  The door to the café opened behind me. “Excuse me, miss. Are you waiting for a seat?”

  I tossed the guy a half-assed glance over my shoulder. “No.” When my gaze returned to Nik, he was staring straight at me. Shit.

  He’d heard me. That single, brief word had been enough to catch his sensitive ears. And to say he looked pissed was putting it lightly.

  I shouldn’t have been there. It was too risky. I was at the tippy-top of the Senate’s shit list. The danger to my life was huge, the danger to my mission—to Heru’s cause—astronomical. Nik had every right to be pissed. I knew it.

  Which was why I ran away. Or, rather, walked quickly. I mean, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, after all.

  I rounded the corner of the block and headed west. After a sneaky glance over my shoulder, I sidestepped into the alleyway behind the shops lining the block and broke into a dead sprint, making my backpack bounce against my back. I was about a quarter of the way down the alley when a metal door banged open farther down.

  Nik burst into the alleyway, a thundercloud in jeans and a black hoodie. A vine of At shot out of his hand, coiling around my neck before I could even consider turning around and running the other way. He closed in on me, pushing me back against the brick wall of the building he’d emerged from. He didn’t retract the vine of At until my back was pressed against the wall and his hands were planted on either side of my head. The straps of my backpack had slipped over my shoulders. I let the bag fall to the ground so I could melt back against the wall, putting a few more inches between us.

  I knew better than to try to run from him again. He’d just snag me again, and we’d be right back here, him glowering down at me and me glaring right back simply because it was the only way I knew how to respond.

  He stepped closer, leaning in. His inhumanly pale blue eyes were livid, his jaw clenched. And when he spoke, his voice was so low and quiet it sent a cascade of goosebumps trickling over my skin. “What the fuck are you doing here? I told you I’d look after things, and I am. Don’t you trust me?”

  I swallowed roughly. I couldn’t help it, not when he was so close and so angry and so him. My heart was racing so fast it was a stumbling, bumbling mess. I was having flashbacks of the last time I’d been pressed against a brick wall. By the bartender, the Senate spy. By the last Nejeret I killed. I lifted my chin. Served him right for calling me a whore.

  Nik lowered his face to within an inch of mine. “Well?” I could smell the remnants of his discarded cigarette on his breath, and beneath that a hint of mint and coffee.

  I looked at his lips, just for a fraction of a second, then squeezed my eyes shut, hoping he hadn’t noticed. I couldn’t handle him so close, so intense. So in my bubble. Not without wanting him to invade my space further.

  “I, um . . .” I cleared my throat and turned my face away from him. Only then did I reopen my eyes. “Mari’s number,” I said as soon as the excuse popped into my brain. “I need Mari’s number.” He was the only person I knew who had it, and I felt a renewed sense of urgency to get ahold of her. If I could reach her, maybe she would know what had been done to Sammy in that lab. Maybe she would know how to cure him.

  Nik was quiet for a moment, his pale eyes searching mine. “Do you have a phone?”

  I shook my head. I’d been going through a different burner each day, and I’d tossed today’s as soon as I left the Tent District. I pulled a Sharpie out of my coat pocket with shaking fingers. I always had a couple on me.

  Nik whispered the number to me, watching as I jotted it onto the back of my hand. “I’ve been trying her every day,” he added. “She’s never picked up.”

  When the pen was capped and back in my pocket, Nik leaned in further, pressing his body against mine and bringing his lips to my ear. If anyone walking past either mouth of the alleyway saw us, they’d think we were just a couple of punk kids making out. I kind of wished it were so simple.

  “You could’ve called the shop for that,” Nik whispered. “Why’d you really come here, Kitty Kat?” His lips grazed over the shell of my ear as he spoke his nickname for me.

  A shiver rolled through me. I splayed my fingers on the brick wall behind me, my nails digging into the grout to keep me from reaching for him. From pulling him closer. He loved messing with me. I just had to keep reminding myself that was all this was. Him messing with me. That’s it.

  “Tell me the truth,” he breathed.

  “I—” The words “I wanted to see you” caught in my throat. But I had. I’d wanted to make sure he was still here. That he hadn’t vanished into the night again. That he was safe. I choked on the words. Those pathetic damn words.

  “Are you ever going to forgive me for leaving?” This wasn’t his messing-with-me voice anymore. This was his full-on serious voice.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and a tear snuck free, snaking down my cheek. I didn’t have the mental or emotional ability to deal with this shit right now. I’d let Nik take a single, tiny step into my heart once, and the fallout had nearly destroyed me. Literally, figuratively . . . pretty much every-ly. I couldn’t afford to let something like that happen again right now. Maybe not ever.

  Nik pulled back, just enough that he could see my face, and I peered at him through my lashes. For long seconds, he stared at the tear, stuck somewhere between my cheekbone and my jaw, then raised his gaze to mine. “Kat . . .” His whisper was raw, gutting, his breath mingling with mine. He leaned in.

  “I have to go,” I said, ducking under his arm and sliding out from between him and the wall. I scooped my backpack up off the ground and jogged up the alleyway, ditching him before he could do the same to me. Again.

  I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. If I did, I might never leave.

  4

  Now that I was in Capitol Hill, now that I was home, I seemed incapable of dragging myself away. It would’ve been impossible if I’d let something happen between Nik and me. I couldn’t. I wasn’t afraid of much, certainly not of anything physical, but emotional shit scared the crap out of me. Except, with Nik—this serious, raw version of him—it was different. Something more. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. This sense of great potential . . . for joy and happiness and wonder. But also for complete and utter devastation. Not. Going. There.

  The fresh interaction with Nik left me unhinged. A live wire. I felt the need to lash out. To take all of my pent-up frustration and aggression out on someone. To do something. I couldn’t handle another second of sitting on my thumbs while I waited for Dom to get back to me. There were other ways to attack this problem. And I was rabid with the need to act.

  I could call Mari . . . but I’d need a phone for that. There was a public phone at the library, which was just a couple blocks away. Computers, too. Two birds and all that.

  As I strode up the sidewalk toward the front entrance to the public library, I pushed thoughts of Nik and the feel of his breath in my hair and his body against mine—of the vulnerable look in his eyes in that last moment before I fled—into some dark corner of my mind. Somewhere where those troubling thoughts could haunt me from dreams. But at least I’d have a semblance of peace whil
e I was awake. Thoughts of him, now, would only get in my way.

  The Cap Hill Library is a pretty generic two-story brick building, teetering on the modern side with floor-to-ceiling windows at all of the corners and a strange, cagey protrusion shaped like the enormous bow of a ship at the main entrance. It isn’t the largest library in Seattle, but it has computer kiosks set up with free Internet access to library members, which was all that I needed, really. And it just so happens I’ve been a member since elementary school, and I’d memorized my card number long ago. It was only a matter of setting up an online account, something I’d done on my first day as a fugitive, and I’d been bouncing around the Seattle Public Library system ever since.

  Once inside, I tried calling Mari, not surprised when she didn’t pick up. I would try her again before I left. And again and again and again until I got through.

  Standing before one of the computer kiosks, I logged in and ran a quick search for the Ouroboros board of directors. If anyone besides Mari could make things happen in that putrid organization, I figured the people who held the purse strings could. Even if they didn’t know the cure for the disease themselves, they had to know who did.

  According to the official Ouroboros Corporation website, there were thirteen board members, but their bios didn’t tell me anything beyond their names, ages, and experiences in medicine, science, and the corporate world. Nothing overtly helpful, like addresses, or even a general location or neighborhood. I could run a separate search for each of them and see what popped up, but once I started down that very specific and targeted path, it was more and more likely that my search would ping some cyber watchdog programmed to keep an eye out for someone searching for such specific Ouroboros-related information. I told them I’d come after them, right after I burned one of their scientists to death with only the power of my sheut, and I had no doubt that they’d be on the lookout for me, in real life and online.

  I decided to hold off on cyber-stalking for a minute or two while I consulted the cards. I shrugged my backpack off and unzipped it, fishing out the velvet drawstring bag containing my tarot deck, then set both bags on the floor while I started shuffling the cards. After three shuffles, I pulled a card and placed it on the desk beside the computer’s mouse.

  Queen of Swords, reversed. The image on the card looked much as I’d drawn it a few years ago, with a slender woman sketched in black and gray standing beside a massive claymore, the sword’s nose in the ground and the woman’s fingers wrapped around its hilt. But the image wasn’t exactly as I’d drawn it. Because I’d created this deck with ink and paint, and because the innate magic granted to me through my sheut could give the things I drew a life of their own, their images and general design shifted with the tide of my mood, not to mention with the greater movement of events around me. It made this particular deck of tarot cards incredibly insightful.

  Last week, when several dozen kids went missing, abducted by Ouroboros, the children had been incorporated into the cards. Now, the children were gone from the imagery, but the tail-eating snake, the symbol for which Ouroboros was named, was still there. On the Queen of Swords, it was a small, golden circlet, resting on the queen’s head like a crown.

  Generally, this card represents intelligence and quick thinking, suggesting a calculated, independent intellect completely devoid of emotion. But reversed, the Queen of Swords represents quite the opposite—emotional investment that clouds decision making, relying too much on the heart and not enough on the mind.

  I picked up the card, flipping it over to get a good look at the queen’s face. She appeared middle-aged and stern. And somehow familiar. I held the card up to the computer screen and opened the page containing the board members and their bios.

  And there she was at the top of the list—Constance Ward, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Ouroboros Corporation. Her showing up on this card definitely wasn’t a coincidence. It was a message from the universe. It had to be. Now, I knew exactly who to target—the head of the snake.

  I returned the card to the deck and replaced the whole thing in its bag. “Alright, Constance,” I said under my breath as I typed her name into the search bar. “Where are you?”

  I glanced around just before hitting enter. Nobody seemed to be watching me, aside from the librarian who’d been staring a hole in my forehead since about two seconds after I walked into the library. Geesh. I didn’t even have any facial piercings anymore. Was homeless fugitive wafting off me or something?

  I inconspicuously stuck my nose into my sweatshirt and gave it a sniff. Maybe.

  I caught the woman’s eye and winked, gaining an inkling of amusement from watching her flustered fluttering as she moved books here and there, pretending that she hadn’t been keeping an eye on me for the past fifteen minutes. With a blink, I refocused on the computer screen and hit the enter key.

  There were about a gazillion entries for Constance Ward, so I amended my search to include the word “home.” My fingers were crossed, but even with the tip-off from the good ol’ universe, my hopes weren’t high.

  Which just goes to show you that I can’t predict the future, at least not without the help of my cards . . . or a pen and some paper. The first entry in the search results was an article from the Seattle Times with the headline OUROBOROS CEO HOSTS RECORD-BREAKING FUNDRAISER. Hosts? As in, throws a party at her house?

  I snorted quietly. No wonder the cards suggested I start with Constance; tracking her down was going to be a breeze.

  I clicked on the link and gave the article a quick skim. Apparently, Constance could throw a killer party. She’d raised over a million bucks for the Children’s Hospital at the annual gala she’d held at her lakeside home this past October in Madison Park. It wasn’t as precise as an address, but paired with the photos snapped at the event, knowing she lived in the ritzy neighborhood was almost as good as GPS coordinates.

  From the images of the house—and the pool and the greenhouse and the sprawling lawn and the private dock on Lake Washington—I could tell exactly where Constance lived. It only took thirty seconds of skimming a satellite map of her neighborhood to glean her address. Not that I was an expert sleuth or anything—though after years of hunting rogue Nejerets, I didn’t suck—but there just weren’t that many private lakeside homes in Madison Park. Maybe a dozen, total, and none but hers with a huge, Victorian-style greenhouse. Ding ding ding . . . we’ve got a winner.

  I jotted down the address, cleared my browser history, then closed the window and logged out. I didn’t want to risk the chance that Nosy McNoserson over at the checkout desk might use her admin privileges and do some sleuthing of her own.

  I gave the librarian a cutesy finger wave as I passed the checkout desk and glanced at the clock on the wall behind her. It was a quarter till eight, fifteen minutes until the library would close. I’d found Constance’s address just in time.

  I had to walk a few blocks to reach a bus stop served by a bus that would take me the two plus miles to Constance’s neighborhood, but it didn’t really matter because the bus wouldn’t arrive for a good thirty minutes. Sometimes taking action took forever. It was moments like this that I missed my Ducati desperately.

  According to the bus’s clock, it was almost nine o’clock when we came to a screeching halt at my stop in Madison Park. I hopped off the bus and wandered up the sidewalk in the wrong direction while I waited for the bus to trundle farther down the street and turn around a corner.

  Once it was out of sight, I turned on my heel and marched straight toward Constance’s lakefront property. It was surrounded by a wall of trees and shrubs grown over a four-foot-high fence—totally scalable. I found a spot where the greenery was thinner and the light from the streetlamps was dim. For a few seconds, I loitered by a black pickup, pretending I was checking an imaginary phone. After I felt fairly certain I wasn’t being watched, I squatted down, then leapt at the fence, propelling myself over in one smooth motion. My landing could’ve been b
etter, but it wasn’t too loud and didn’t disturb the plants too much. With any luck, nobody would ever know I’d been there.

  I huddled in the bushes for a few minutes, making sure that even if the average person had spotted movement in the shrubs from the other side, they’d have lost interest. And then I waited a few more minutes. Only after it felt like I’d been waiting for an hour but it had really probably only been ten minutes or so—really, I’m temporally lost without my phone, I should probably consider getting a watch—did I start the slow process of skulking through the bushes. And can I just say that skulking is exhausting. All that squatting and breath-holding and slow shuffling forward. By the time I reached a break in the shrubs, my quads were quaking and my back ached.

  Giving my legs a break while I surveyed the property, I lowered myself the rest of the way down until I was sitting on my heels. I’d come through behind what appeared to be a guesthouse, but I had a clear line of sight to part of the enormous main house. Just like in the photos from the fundraiser gala, the house appeared to be in the traditional Cape Cod style, only on crack. The place was huge.

  Here’s the thing about breaking and entering into multi-multimillion-dollar properties like this—there’s never really a good time to do it, but nighttime is pretty much the worst time, what with all of the alarms and motion sensors and security personnel and guard dogs. Not that there isn’t always a way around the security measures, but it takes time to formulate a plan. So I had to give myself some time to study my surroundings. To locate all visible cameras and motion sensors and extrapolate the locations of others I couldn’t see based on what I could see. To figure out how to get into the house and interrogate Constance—and, let’s be honest, dispose of her—then get back out without getting caught. That last part was key.