by S. M. Reine
Marion’s phone was an old thing, maybe as old as the world. It was slow to turn on, and once it did, she saw that the icons were clunky and big. The screen was scratched as though it had been rolled down a cliff a few times. She might have been important enough to orchestrate the election of the nation’s most important gaean, but her mother still wouldn’t let her have a new cell phone.
Deirdre opened the text messages, curious to see whom Marion was always chatting with.
The most recent messages were passed between people who seemed to be classmates, judging by the inane content. There were texts about homework, finals, and going to the beach. Marion seemed particularly fond of texting cleavage shots to contacts with boys’ names.
It was so ridiculously ordinary that Deirdre would have laughed if her heart hadn’t been pounding.
She was getting close to something more important than jailbait pics. She was sure of it.
A quick swipe took her to older text messages. She found a conversation between Marion and Gage Cicero there.
Gods.
Deirdre should have known better than to read it, yet she still tapped his name, bringing up the text. There were no cleavage shots or anything inappropriate there, but the content was equally inane. Marion had asked Gage some questions about Rylie’s whereabouts, pushing for information about when they were traveling, when he would be home, when they could hang out with Rylie’s son Benjamin again.
The kind of messages a brother and sister might have shared.
Those messages terminated abruptly the day that Gage had left with Deirdre to infiltrate Stark’s asylum. She remembered throwing his cell phone in the trash at a gas station so that they wouldn’t be able to be tracked.
She should have left the phone with him.
Deirdre scrolled back up to the top. The most recent thread of messages was to a contact listed as “ECF,” but it was an entirely one-sided conversation. Marion sent messages to ECF. Long messages, mostly describing the mundane details of her week, and a few pictures of Rylie’s family. But ECF never replied.
The last message to ECF said, “I got the sword. Want it back?”
Deirdre lowered the phone, staring at the churning waterfall as she rolled those words over in her mind.
Want it back?
ECF couldn’t be Rylie. They had just been talking, and that text message had been sent while Deirdre was in the tree. ECF was someone else. Someone who used to have the Ethereal Blade. Brother Marshall?
The Godslayer?
“It couldn’t be,” Deirdre muttered.
Marion was too young to have known anyone who impacted Genesis like that, especially the notorious Godslayer. She would have been…what, three years old when the world ended? Four years?
But Deirdre couldn’t shake the idea.
She needed to know who ECF was.
Deirdre went through Marion’s other accounts—her email, which was sparse, her photo cloud, and then her social media. She had a lot of social media accounts. Pretty much every site that Deirdre had ever heard of, Marion had an account there. Even old stuff like Instagram and Facebook.
She also had an app for a blogging platform that Deirdre didn’t recognize. It looked old, though. The icon was even clunkier than most of her others.
Deirdre sat on the rock to read her most recent posts.
Marion treated the blogging platform like a personal diary. Skimming the last couple of posts was pretty boring. Marion talked about the election like it was a particularly obnoxious chore, something she was doing to help out Rylie, not because she wanted to.
But even though she only talked about it in passing, the details were really specific.
Like, Rylie’s travel itineraries kind of specific.
Horror dawned over Deirdre as she read deeper, looking for more dates and times. Marion’s interest in politics was obvious, no matter how casual she tried to be about it. She even talked about Deirdre a few times. Not by name—she had codes for everyone. Rylie was Wolfy. Her mate, Abel, was Grumpy—that gave Deirdre a laugh. Deirdre was described as Scary Girl. She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or insulted by that.
All Marion and the pack’s personal information was just sitting there on the internet, on some distant server. Who knew where that server was located? Who knew who could have had access to it?
Deirdre checked Marion’s settings. It was all private. Only she and a few other people should have been able to read it, including Gage’s account.
“MyWords,” Deirdre said. That was the name of the blogging platform. MyWords.
She ran a quick internet search on it.
According to the encyclopedia article, MyWords had been founded before Genesis—about twelve years before. Well before Deirdre had been using the internet. It was a very old site, and it had been large in its heyday. Its IPO had netted the founders billions of dollars and allowed them to retire young.
It took a little more digging to find that the founders were named Gabrielle and Haywood Stark.
No way.
Sascha Stark had mentioned that his family had gotten rich in the dot com boom. He hadn’t said how. An early blogging platform could have been a great way to earn billions.
Deirdre set Marion’s phone down slowly on the rock, her hand trembling.
“Oh my gods,” she said.
It answered so many questions.
Now Deirdre knew why Marion was always playing with her phone. She was writing lengthy, detailed, intensely personal blog posts about her life.
Posts that should have been secret, but weren’t.
Rylie and Deirdre had been wondering for months how Stark had such intimate knowledge of the pack’s movements. He’d even known that Rylie was going to be at the United Nations to meet Secretary Friederling. They’d expected that he had an informant he was protecting.
That was because Stark did have an informant.
He had access to Marion’s blog.
“Oh my gods,” Deirdre said again.
“Hands above your head.”
She reacted instinctively, obeying the order.
Deirdre turned slowly, still holding Marion’s phone. Abel stood behind her. He was accompanied by a half-dozen members of the pack in their human forms, a trio of wolves, and Vidya.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“I know how to beat Stark and Rhiannon,” Deirdre said.
XVI
“I knew we should have taken her phone away years ago,” Abel said. “It’s not right, letting a fourteen year old have internet all the time. Rots the brain.”
“She’s not our daughter. That’s not our decision to make.” Rylie held the phone away from her, pinched between forefinger and thumb, like it was something rotten.
“Did you read it?” Deirdre asked, pacing across the stage where the inauguration would be held the next day. “She wrote about the security vulnerabilities at the sanctuary, which was how Stark got in to attack that first time. She’s been writing about your movements. She’s been sharing everything.”
“In her defense, she thought nobody was reading it,” Rylie said. “And since she wrote in code, Stark never realized that Deirdre was Scary Girl, so she didn’t expose that particular vulnerability.”
Abel snorted. “Kids these days.” He stepped back to allow a pair of technicians to run wire past him. They were connecting screens on either side of the stage, which would show Rhiannon’s enlarged figure to the audience as she took over as Alpha.
“But it’s good,” Deirdre said. “This is great, in fact! It gives us a plan of attack. We can make Stark do anything we want by writing a post on Marion’s account.”
Rylie bit her bottom lip, gazing thoughtfully at the circle of power that witches were casting among all the wires. It was the ritual space, the platform for the magic that would give Rhiannon and Stark control. “We’ll have to be careful about it. Spurring Rhiannon to attack means…well, we’ll be spurring her to attack. It
could easily turn into a bloodbath.”
“It’s okay if we control the violence, though,” Deirdre said.
“Maybe.” Rylie sighed, dropping the phone to her side. “It’s good that you found this. We’d be up a creek if you hadn’t. Even so, Deirdre…I had you in that cottage for a reason.”
“What, so I wouldn’t hear about the Voice? What is the Voice?”
“You don’t—” Rylie began.
Deirdre cut her off. “Why did Marion take the Ethereal Blade? Where did she go? Who is ECF?”
Abel glanced around, as if worried someone would be listening. They were surrounded by pack members. People working for the sanctuary. People who should have been allies.
But both Rhiannon and Stark could compel shifters, and they couldn’t trust any of them.
“You can’t ask those questions,” Abel said.
Deirdre wanted to fight, to push against them. To demand answers.
But maybe they weren’t pushing back because they wanted to punish her or keep secrets.
Maybe there were answers Deirdre just shouldn’t have.
She took a few deep breaths, closed her eyes.
“Okay. Fine.”
Rylie reached over to hug her. “Thanks.”
“Whatever,” she said, trying to pretend her burning cheeks had to do with her phoenix rather than shame. “Anyway, Stark and Rhiannon’s biggest weakness is pride. They have goals, but nothing so big as wanting to be important. That’s where we can hit them. I just…I don’t know how exactly to stop them.”
“Shoot them in the face,” Abel said. “Both of them. Like to see them retaliate against our kids when they’re both dead.”
Rylie laughed, as if her mate had said something cute. “I’m not convinced a bullet to the face would kill Stark.”
“We shouldn’t kill them unless we find their daughters first,” Deirdre said. “They’re naiads. Rhiannon’s drawing all of her power off of them, so she’s got to be keeping them somewhere safe. If we kill her, we might never find them.”
“Why do you care?” Abel asked.
Rylie slapped his arm. “Stop it.”
“I know you care, you big stupid bleeding heart,” he said. “But what about you?” He glared at Deirdre. “They’re not your kids. They’re not your problem. Think of all the people you’d save if you just killed the Starks—unless you don’t actually want this Everton guy dead.”
Deirdre didn’t meet his eyes.
She wanted to tell him that she wanted Stark dead, but she was too tired to lie.
“Don’t be a dick, Abel,” Rylie said.
“You need my dick,” he said. He meant it to sound as bad as it did. He grinned when Rylie snorted. “That’s what I thought.”
They were so cute it hurt. It literally hurt. Deirdre hated them a little. “Alona and Calla Stark are naiads,” she said again. “They’re among those I want to protect. Not just shifters, but all gaeans. All people.”
“Idealists are gross,” Abel said, taking the phone out of Rylie’s hand. “Sometimes you just gotta shoot people in the face. But all right. We’ll need to get them to attack before they reach the inauguration, or else we’ll have lots of dead shifters around. They’re gonna be pissed when they realize what we’re doing. Real pissed.”
“And what is it we’re doing, exactly?” Deirdre asked.
He started to type a post on Marion’s phone, his thumbs clumsy on the touch screen. “We’re gonna need a decoy. Someone to look like Melchior.”
“Like how Rylie was in disguise at the cathedral?”
“Just like that,” Abel said. “If we disguise a member of our pack as Melchior, then when Rhiannon tries to kill him, it’ll break the oath for the unseelie faction. The Starks lose protection. We arrest them, and the second place winner gets inaugurated instead.”
The second place winner—Rylie Gresham, who had actually won the vote.
Deirdre dug her fingernails into her palms. “Is Marion’s magic that stupid? Rhiannon won’t know that the Melchior-decoy is part of your pack, so she won’t be deliberately violating the oath.”
“I told Marion to leave a loophole when she made the spell,” Rylie said.
It made Deirdre sick to know that Rylie was still playing politics, still lying to people to her advantage.
But for the first time, she was grateful, too.
If Rylie hadn’t left that loophole, they wouldn’t have had a way to stop Rhiannon.
“A decoy,” she said softly.
Deirdre gazed across the stage where the inauguration would happen. The circle was huge, with multiple rings, comprised largely of marks etched directly into the wood. The magic was both old and new, ancient runes mixed with Marion’s inventions. Other witches worked hard to put it together while the girl herself was gone.
It looked out over the sanctuary. The same open fields where Rylie had given a speech months earlier.
Soon, that space would be filled with gaeans watching the inauguration. They were already lining up in Northgate again. They would be checked more carefully than they had been at the last event, but they were gaeans, after all; stripping them of external weapons wouldn’t render them harmless.
Deirdre had seen what they did when driven to rage by injustice. She wondered what they would do when they witnessed justice—the first justice that many gaeans would have experienced since Genesis.
How would they feel to see Rhiannon and Stark struck down for cheating and the incumbent returned to her position?
She couldn’t imagine it, but she wanted to be there to see it.
It was everything she had been working for.
“I’ll be the decoy,” Deirdre said. “Induct me into your pack. Make me your Omega officially. Then I can get dressed up as Melchior, and when Rhiannon attacks me…”
“You are no Omega,” Rylie said. “I never should have called you that.”
“I want the title. It seems right. You know? Make it mine.” Deirdre thumped her fist against her chest. “It shouldn’t be an insult to be a mystery.”
Rylie touched her shoulder. Deirdre put her hand on top of the Alpha’s, just for a moment, accepting the comfort. “Okay. I’ll make you my Omega—officially. You’ll be in my pack. And we’ll work against the Starks together.”
Deirdre’s eyes stung. “Thank you.”
Hatred hurts us more than the people we hate.
That was probably true.
But Deirdre still planned to see the Starks burn.
The sanctuary was restless that night. The last of Deirdre’s fires had been extinguished, but coals continued to smolder in some places for endless hours. She watched the glimmer of her dying flames from atop the waterfall, and she knew it would be the last time she’d ever see that fire.
Melchior was dead. He wasn’t going to change her again.
And the next day, she was going to try to trap Rhiannon and Stark.
Deirdre wasn’t just saying goodbye to her fire. She was saying goodbye to the last night she might ever see.
A pair of legs appeared beside her. “Avoiding the inauguration prep?” Niamh asked, settling on the cliff. Their feet dangled off the edge together. As avian shifters, neither of them should have had reason to fear heights. They both sat right against the edge.
“I’m actually waiting for Marion to come back from her trip to…wherever she went,” Deirdre said. “She’s going to make me look like Melchior.”
Niamh had brought a couple of water bottles with her. She offered one to Deirdre. “Vidya told me that. She thinks you’re stupid and insane and she’s also not planning to do anything about it.”
“That’s because I told her not to.” Deirdre took a drink of water.
“I thought she was bound to obey Stark,” Niamh said.
Deirdre shrugged uncomfortably. “I think she’s decided I’m a better Stark than he is.” Everyone seemed to have decided that. She saw the way they looked at her, their every horrible thought about Deirdre o
bvious on their faces. Rylie may have decided to give her leniency, but the court of public opinion had passed a different judgment.
She was the enemy, the public face of opposition to Rylie Gresham.
Maybe she was hiding from the inauguration prep after all.
“Speaking of Stark…” Niamh said.
“Do we have to?”
“When I came back to the throne room at Niflheimr, it looked like you were getting dressed.” The harpy was trying not to grin and failing. She pointed at Deirdre with the cap of her water bottle. “Did you and Stark…? I mean, you guys totally did it, didn’t you?”
It reminded Deirdre so much of the time that she had hooked up with a guy that both she and Niamh were attracted to in school. She couldn’t even remember his name now. He had been a nerdy, weedy guy. Someone who really liked World of Warcraft.
Niamh must have been jealous that Deirdre had gotten to him first, but she’d still been supportive, eager for details, and willing to joke about the experience.
Almost as willing as she’d been to stab Deirdre.
Deirdre braced herself to reject Niamh’s tentative offer for sisterhood. But Rylie had kissed Deirdre on the forehead after her flaming phoenix rampage. She had chosen not to bite when a bite had been well deserved. Rylie believed that Deirdre’s phoenix should have been about love, not hate.
She didn’t want to hate Niamh anymore.
Deirdre made herself smile. It wasn’t easy, but she managed it, even though the expression was strained. “Yeah. We did it.” Her lips quivered. The smile faded. “We did.”
“Oh, Dee,” Niamh said.
Deirdre hugged her first.
They embraced, phoenix and harpy in their human forms, women without the wings that they’d both longed to have for so long.
“It must have been pretty bad, huh?” Niamh asked without letting go. Her bony chin dug into Deirdre’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Deirdre said. “Well, actually, no. It was pretty good until the end, when I accidentally set him on fire.”
“You what?” She burst into laughter, and Deirdre couldn’t help but chuckle along. “You set fire to Stark!”
