I took a slow breath, pushing my irritation down. “I need your help to identify him.”
Karayan crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Well, I’m not actually looking to join the Guard right now. But thanks for the invite.”
“Forget this,” Lucas said in disgust. “We don’t need her.”
“That’s debatable,” Karayan muttered, examining her sculpted nails.
“You think we’d take you in?” Lucas snapped. “After everything you’ve done? Knowing what you are?”
“And what do you think I am, little Guard dog?”
“A selfish, soulless killer,” Lucas shot back. “There’s no place for you in the Guard.”
“Something we can agree on,” Karayan said, her tone dangerously quiet. “I’ve never been very good at turning off my brain.”
Lucas glared at Karayan, opening his mouth to fire back.
“Lucas, please.” I laid a hand on his arm. It took a moment before he could pull his eyes off of Karayan. When he’d calmed down enough to listen, I spoke. “Let me talk to her for a minute. Privately.”
“Fine. I’m tired of looking at her face.” Lucas stood and walked away from our table, shoving his hands into his pockets. I watched as he walked into a bookstore a few doors down.
Someone was standing in the bookstore’s window, watching us. I couldn’t make out too many details, other than his short-cropped hair, which seemed to gleam platinum under the display lights. But there was something about him... A strange tingle shot down the back of my neck.
“Alone at last,” Karayan murmured.
“You don’t have to bait him like that,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the stranger.
“Oh, I know I don’t have to.” She smiled, taking a sip of her coffee. “But it’s so much fun.”
“Karayan.” I glanced back at the bookstore window, but the stranger was gone.
“Ugh. You’re spending too much time with the Guard. It’s very bad for your sense of humor.”
“I’ll work on it,” I said. “In the meantime, I really do need your help.”
Karayan smiled at some private joke. “That’s rich.”
“I’m serious.”
“Perpetually.”
“Do you not care at all about this world?”
Karayan looked down at her coffee, playing with the rim of the cup. “I don’t know why you’re asking for my help.”
“Whatever happened to being my mentor?”
Karayan laughed humorously.
“That’s funny?”
“What’s funny is you not knowing how powerful you are.” Karayan looked up, and for a change, her gaze was serious.
“Don’t play games with me,” I said.
Karayan rolled her eyes. “Whatever you think I can do, you should be able to do it yourself.”
“I’m asking for your help,” I said through gritted teeth. “Are you going to give it to me or not?” Karayan looked at me, unimpressed. “Before you answer,” I added. “You should know that I can be pretty stubborn. Also? I know where to find you in your dreams.”
That wiped the bored expression clear off Karayan’s face. After a moment, she forced a smile. “Well. What are mentors for?”
Lucas and I walked into the Guard’s living room half an hour later. Hale looked up from the newspaper he was scanning. He frowned.
“You’re not dressed? Matthew and Gretchen are already downstairs warming up.”
“We need to talk to the Guard,” Lucas said. “We’ve got news.”
Hale didn’t need to hear anything else. “Get your sister and Matthew. I’ll get Thane. Braedyn?” Hale glanced at me but I was already dialing my cell for Dad.
By the time Lucas returned with Matthew and Gretchen, I had Dad on the line and Hale was leading Thane out of the back office.
Two minutes later, when Dad walked through the front door, we were all sitting around the dining table. He joined us, taking the chair next to me.
“What’s the news?” Dad asked.
“There’s a ritual,” I said. “That can lock the seal. It could keep the Lilitu out forever. The monks at the mission knew about it.” I had expected a big reaction. Instead, the room fell into silence. Dad and Hale glanced at Thane.
“I’ve never heard about any ritual capable of locking a seal,” Thane said after a long moment.
“Braedyn where did you get this information?” Hale asked.
Lucas and I shared a quick look. “We went to Seth’s house,” I explained. “He showed us his mom’s journal.”
“You went through Angela’s work?” Dad asked. I could see this disturbed him. “Without her knowledge?”
“Why would she keep this from us?” I asked, voicing the thought that had been nagging me all afternoon. “If it really could shut out the Lilitu forever, why would she even hesitate to tell us about this?”
“Angela is an archivist of the first order,” Thane said stiffly. “If she’s not ready to share her research, there’s likely a good reason.”
“Like what?” I snapped.
“Maybe she doesn’t have all the necessary information yet,” Thane replied.
“But if she told us—if she told you,” I glared at Thane. “You could help her. Aren’t two archivists working on this problem better than one?”
“I have projects of my own,” Thane said.
“As important as this one?” Lucas asked. Thane glanced at him but remained silent.
“They have a point,” Dad said.
“Murphy,” Hale said. It sounded like a warning. He turned to me. “Braedyn, I understand that this is potentially very significant. But we have to trust our experts to do their work. Angela is—as Thane says—one of the best. She’s got a gift for research. She’ll come to us when she’s ready.”
“But,” Lucas started.
“Drop it,” Gretchen said quietly. “You guys shouldn’t have left school.”
“Dad?” I pleaded. Dad glanced at Hale. Conflict warred in his eyes.
“Linwood is following protocol,” Hale said. “She’s doing exactly as she was trained to do.”
Dad nodded stiffly. “Hale’s right.”
“So we’re just supposed to trust her blindly?” I asked. “What do we really know about her?”
“Braedyn,” Dad said quietly. “We can’t give into paranoia. Not when we’re so close to the next battle. Let Linwood handle the research. We need to focus on the fight.”
“Speaking of which,” Matthew interjected. “We got a call from Marx’s people. The first group should be arriving in a month or so. They’re going to make some stops along the way, try to ferret out a few other units if they can.”
“We need to start preparing for them,” Gretchen said. “I think we can fit four cots to a room upstairs if we move out the furniture. It’s going to be tight, but we can’t sleep everyone downstairs. And we’re going to need supplies to handle the crowd.”
Hale pulled a notebook out of his back pocket. “I’ll make a run to the army surplus.”
“Wait.” Lucas’s voice rang like a bullet, silencing the room. “You’re not listening to us.”
Gretchen turned to Lucas. “We’ve had our answer,” she murmured. “Give Linwood some time.”
“There’s more at stake,” Lucas looked at me.
“If we can lock the seal,” I started. Hale glanced at me. He wasn’t used to having his orders questioned. “If we can lock the seal, we won’t have to fight. And if we don’t have to fight,” I caught Dad’s eye. “I can become human.”
My words ran through Dad like some kind of electrical current. Hale saw it, too.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Hale said.
“We should, at the very least, ask her,” Dad replied.
“You want to avoid inciting paranoia,” Thane muttered. “You might not want to tell the archivist we’re depending on for answers that we’ve been snooping through her private journals.” His eyes cut to me.
“Thane can research it independently,” Hale said after some thought. Thane didn’t look happy about this, but he nodded in acceptance. Hale turned to me. “All right?”
“All right.” It was the best I was going to get for now.
Dad gave my shoulder a warm squeeze. “Just hang on. We’re going to figure this out,” he promised.
That promise didn’t make life any easier. School became an exercise in patience. Whatever progress Thane might be making on his own, he wasn’t talking about it. And Angela still hadn’t come forward with any of her theories. But Lucas and I had agreed to give them time. And so we were stuck, waiting. Going through the motions of our everyday lives. School. Training. Dinners spent planning with the Guard. And all the while we were trying to ignore the possibility that all this was unnecessary because maybe, just maybe, there was a way to lock the door between this world and the Lilitu world forever.
One week became two. Two weeks became three. And then it was Halloween. Lucas and Seth came over to watch TV with me. The pumpkins Dad had bought for us sat on our porch, un-carved. Next to them I’d set out a bowl of self-serve candy for any trick-or-treaters brave enough to walk up to our dark front door. It just didn’t feel like Halloween without Cassie and Royal. We’d spent Halloween together every year since elementary school, but this year they had other plans. They’d been invited to a big party that some of their theater friends were throwing. Cassie had asked us to join them, but neither Lucas nor I felt up to it, and Seth wasn’t exactly well liked around campus. After half-heartedly flipping through some Halloween specials, I told the guys I wanted to turn in early. Lucas, understanding, said he thought it was time to be getting home, too.
Dad offered to make popcorn if Seth wanted to stay and finish the show, but Seth made his excuses and left to drive himself home in the car he’d borrowed from his mom for the night.
Moments later, after hastily brushing my teeth and jumping into bed, I slipped out of this reality and into my dream. I sat in the rose garden, hugging my knees to my chest, next to a pool of flickering dreams. It felt like a small eternity had passed before Lucas fell asleep, but as soon as he did I could sense him. The glimmering light of his unconscious mind rose up and out of the pool at my feet. I closed my hand around it and felt the comfort of Lucas’s presence drawing me into his dream.
I found him squinting against a bitter wind, anxious and unfocused. When he saw me his troubled brow eased. He came to me and I buried myself against his chest, holding on to him tightly, drawing comfort from the embrace. I felt Lucas’s hand brushing the side of my cheek and looked up. His kiss was warm, urgent. I responded, threading my fingers through his hair—trying not to compare the sensation to what it felt like in the real world. In the dream, everything felt somehow muted, watery. Which wasn’t to say it wasn’t nice. It just wasn’t... real. And yet, it was all we had. We spent the night trying to take our minds off the agony of waiting.
November settled over Puerto Escondido, teasing the last of the leaves off the aspen and oak trees, and we still had no answers about the ritual.
That week in physics class, while Mr. Harris stood at the board going over the math for another experiment, Seth was watching me. I had been trying to take notes, but my pencil kept straying to the margins, filling the page with anxious doodles.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said. “I think—I think I get it.”
I glanced at him. “What?”
“You know, because that ritual is all about shutting the door on the Lilitu world forever. I get why that would freak you out.”
“It doesn’t,” I looked at Seth, surprised. “Why would you think that?”
“Well, if I were you, I mean,” Seth shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. “Aren’t you curious? About what’s on the other side?” Seth studied my eyes. “If my mom figures it out,” Seth shrugged, “you’ll never get the chance to find out.”
“This ritual, it’s a good thing,” I said, studying Seth sharply. “Do you know something more about it?”
“No. It’s just,” Seth glanced quickly to the front of class. Mr. Harris had his back to the class, carefully writing out a list of formulas on the board. “Why do you want to be human? I mean,” he lowered his eyes sheepishly. “I think your powers are cool.”
I looked at Seth. Unfamiliar feelings tickled the back of my mind.
“What?” he asked, seeing my expression.
“Not even Lucas thinks my powers are cool,” I admitted.
“Why not? They’re a fundamental part of who you are,” Seth said. He looked honestly surprised. “I mean, you can turn yourself invisible. How much cooler does it get?”
I couldn’t help smiling. No one—with the possible exception of Karayan—had ever talked about my powers like this before. Seth looked at me with awe, but not like the boys who were caught in the snare of a Lilitu’s beauty. This was different. Seth looked at me, really looked at me, and saw all of me as beautiful. The feeling was strange, but nice.
Seth was still watching me, curious. “He seriously can’t see that?”
Stubbornly, I defended Lucas. “Lilitu hurt his family.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t you. I mean, from what Gretchen says, you saved Lucas’s life.” I had no answer for him. Seth shook his head. “I thought Lucas was cooler than that.”
Try as I might to push Seth’s words out of my mind, they stayed with me all day. I found myself watching Lucas at lunch, trying to spot any signs of revulsion or fear. Once, he caught me staring and gave me a faintly bemused smile. I glanced at Seth, who was talking animatedly with Cassie across the table. Lucas followed my gaze, then turned back to me.
“It’s nothing,” I said in answer to his unasked question. Before he could call me out, I turned my attention to Cassie.
“I’ve got a few more things to do, but it’s ready for a fitting today,” she was telling Seth.
“Which costume is this?” I asked, forcing enthusiasm into my voice.
“It’s one of Guinevere’s dresses, the one she’s wearing when she meets Lancelot. You want to see?” Cassie looked suddenly hopeful. “Will you come over today after school? I’d love to show it to you; you haven’t seen any of the stuff I’ve been working on lately.”
I felt a twinge of guilt for being so absent from Cassie’s life. “I’d love to,” I said, and this time my enthusiasm wasn’t faked. I could feel Lucas watching me, but I spent the rest of lunch engaging Cassie in stories about what it was like to be a costume designer.
After school, I walked into the performing arts building. There were posters along the walls from former musicals and concerts. From some rooms I could hear violins or horns running scales. At the end of a long hallway, I found the heart of the theater program—the green room.
Cassie and Royal were sitting on an old worn couch, talking and laughing with some kids I didn’t know. Cassie jumped up when she saw me.
“Braedyn,” she said, “you’re here! Come on.” Cassie led me back down the hall to a set of double doors. “This is the costume closet,” she said, opening one of the doors.
Closet was a bit of an understatement. It was massive—at least the size of a classroom. Shelves and racks lined the walls from the floor to the high ceiling 20 feet above us. The floor in the back half of the room was crowded with rolling racks of clothes, but the front of the room featured a huge worktable piled with bolts of fabric, buckets of tape measures, pencils, scissors, and stick pins. It looked like Cassie’s personal heaven.
A dress form stood next to the table, and I recognized Cassie’s work instantly. A shimmering, pale grey velvet gown hugged the dress form snuggly to the waist, then the creamy velvet spilled down in gleaming folds of fabric that just barely kissed the ground.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. It was true. The gown was perfect, delicate, pure. “I want to get married in tha
t dress.”
Cassie giggled, pleased. “It’s not totally finished,” she said. “I can’t put the trim on until I’ve hemmed everything up for—oh! Here she is!”
I turned as Missy bounded into the costume closet. “Where is it?” she asked eagerly. I don’t think she even saw me standing there.
Cassie gestured at the dress, beaming. Missy squealed when she saw the gown. She threw her arms around Cassie. “You are a genius, Cassie!” Finally, Missy noticed me. “Oh, Braedyn.”
“You’re in the play?” I asked.
“She’s the star,” Cassie said.
“Well,” Missy lowered her eyes, pleased. “It’s really Arthur and Lancelot’s show. I’m just the eye candy.”
Cassie hit Missy lightly on the arm. “That is so not true,” she said, turning to me. “She’s got an amazing voice.”
Missy tipped her head down, letting the red curls cascade around her features to hide the pretty blush spreading across her cheeks. “Thanks, but we all know who the most talented lady of this production is.” Missy threw an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and grinned at me. “Right, Braedyn?”
A tight knot of jealousy worked its way into my stomach. I tried to push it aside. Cassie was one of my best friends in the world, but I didn’t own her. Of course she had other friends.
“Absolutely,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Royal arrived at that moment, carrying a huge box. “Delivery for Miss Ang,” he said.
“Put it on the table,” Cassie said. She pounced on the box with a pair of scissors. When she had it opened, she pulled out a deep blue material. It had a luxurious sheen, but was shot through with the rougher strands distinctive of raw silk. “Very nice,” she said with satisfaction.
“Is this the material for the outer dress?” Missy breathed. At Cassie’s nod, Missy practically swooned. “I wish we could dress like this every day.”
“Yeah, to heck with Women’s Lib,” I said. “Who needs pants?” Cassie and Missy looked at me. I cleared my throat, feeling awkward.
Royal perched on the worktable, eyeing me. “Look who decided to visit.” He still wore the skullcap everywhere, but he wasn’t tugging on it self-consciously anymore.
Incubus (The Daughters Of Lilith) Page 11
