“Of course not,” he said, sounding insulted. “I’m too old. I’ll be the Local Area Mission Liaison.” I was willing to bet he’d just made that title up on the spot. “My job is to help coordinate the assignment and report back to our superiors. And I’m not going to do it if she’s the one there.” He looked from face to face as he spoke that last line, but there was no question who she was. Me.
“Then don’t,” said Stanton bluntly. “Sydney is going. That’s my decision, and I’ll argue it to any higher authority you want to take it to. If you are so against her placement, Mr. Darnell, I will personally see that you are transferred out of Palm Springs and don’t have to deal with her at all.”
All eyes swiveled to Keith, and he hesitated. She’d caught him in a trap, I realized. I had to imagine that with its climate, Palm Springs didn’t see a lot of vampire action. Keith’s job there was probably pretty easy, whereas when I’d worked in St. Petersburg, I’d been constantly having to do damage control. That place was a vampire haven, as were some of the other places in Europe and Asia my father had taken me to visit. Don’t even get me started about Prague. If Keith were transferred, he took the risk of not only getting a bigger workload but also of being in a much worse location. Because although Palm Springs wasn’t desirable for vampires, it sounded kind of awesome for humans.
Keith’s face confirmed as much. He didn’t want to leave Palm Springs. “What if she goes there, and I have reason to suspect her of treason again?”
“Then report her,” said Horowitz, shifting restlessly. He obviously wasn’t impressed with Keith. “The same as you would anyone.”
“I can increase some of Zoe’s training in the meantime,” said my father, almost as an apology to Keith. It was clear whose side my father was on. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t even Zoe’s, really. “Then, if you find fault with Sydney, we can replace her.”
I bristled at the thought of Keith being the one to decide if I had faults, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the thought of Zoe still being tied to this. If my father was keeping her on standby, then she wasn’t out of danger yet. The Alchemists could still have their hooks in her—as could Keith. I vowed then that no matter what it took, even if I had to handfeed him grapes, I would make sure Keith had no reason to doubt my loyalties.
“Fine,” he said, the word seeming to cause him a lot of pain. “Sydney can go . . . for now. But I’ll be watching you.” He fixed his gaze on me. “And I’m not going to cover for you. You’ll be responsible for keeping that vampire girl in line and getting her to her feedings.”
“Feedings?” I asked blankly. Of course. Jill would need blood. For a moment, all my confidence wavered. It was easy to talk about hanging out with vampires when none were around. Easier still when you didn’t think about what it was that made vampires who they were. Blood. That terrible, unnatural need that fueled their existence. An awful thought sprang into my mind, vanishing as quickly as it came. Am I supposed to give her my blood? No. That was ridiculous. That was a line the Alchemists would never cross. Swallowing, I tried to conceal my brief moment of panic. “How do you plan on feeding her?”
Stanton nodded to Keith. “Would you explain?” I think she was giving him a chance to feel important, as a way of making up for his earlier defeat. He ran with it.
“There’s only one Moroi we know of living in Palm Springs,” said Keith. As he spoke, I noticed that his tousled blond hair was practically coated in gel. It gave his hair a slimy shine that I didn’t think was attractive in the least. Also, I didn’t trust any guy who used more styling products than I did. “And if you ask me, he’s crazy. But he’s harmless crazy—inasmuch as any of them are harmless. He’s this old recluse who lives outside the city. He’s got this hang-up about the Moroi government and doesn’t associate with any of them, so he isn’t going to tell anyone you guys are there. Most importantly, he’s got a feeder he’s willing to share.”
I frowned. “Do we really want Jill hanging out with some anti-government Moroi? The whole purpose is to keep them stable. If we introduce her to some rebel, how do we know he won’t try to use her?”
“That’s an excellent point,” said Michaelson, seeming surprised to admit as much.
I hadn’t meant to undermine Keith. My mind had just jumped ahead in this way it had, spotting a potential problem and pointing it out. From the look he gave me, though, it was like I was purposely trying to discredit his statement and make him look bad.
“We won’t tell him who she is, obviously,” he said, a glint of anger in his good eye. “That would be stupid. And he’s not part of any faction. He’s not part of anything. He’s convinced the Moroi and their guardians let him down, so he wants nothing to do with any of them. I’ve passed a story to him about how Jill’s family has the same antisocial feelings, so he’s sympathetic.”
“You’re right to be wary, Sydney,” said Stanton. There was a look of approval in her eyes, like she was pleased at having defended me. That approval meant a lot to me, considering how fierce she often seemed. “We can’t assume anything about any of them. Although we also checked out this Moroi with Abe Mazur, who concurs he’s harmless enough.”
“Abe Mazur?” scoffed Michaelson. He scratched at his graying beard. “Yes. I’m sure he’d be an expert on who’s harmless or not.”
My heart lurched at the name, but I tried not to show it. Do not react, do not react, I ordered my face. After a deep breath, I asked very, very carefully, “Is Abe Mazur the Moroi who’s going with Jill? I’ve met him before . . . but I thought you said it was an Ivashkov who was going.” If Abe Mazur was in residence in Palm Springs, that would alter things significantly.
Michaelson scoffed. “No, we’d never send you off with Abe Mazur. He’s simply been helping with the organization of this plan.”
“What’s so bad about Abe Mazur?” asked Keith. “I don’t know who he is.”
I studied Keith very closely as he spoke, looking for some trace of deception. But, no. His face was all innocence, openly curious. His blue eyes—or eye, rather—held a rare look of confusion, contrasting with the usual know-it-all arrogance. Abe’s name meant nothing to him. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“A scoundrel,” said Stanton flatly. “He knows far too much about things he shouldn’t. He’s useful, but I don’t trust him.”
A scoundrel? That was an understatement. Abe Mazur was a Moroi whose nickname in Russia—zmey, the serpent—said it all. Abe had done a number of favors for me, ones I’d had to pay back at considerable risk to myself. Part of that payback had been helping Rose escape. Well, he’d called it payback; I called it blackmail. I had no desire to cross paths with him again, mostly because I was afraid of what he’d ask for next. The frustrating part was that there was no one I could go to for help. My superiors wouldn’t react well to learning that, in addition to all my other solo activities with vampires, I was making side deals with them.
“None of them are to be trusted,” my father pointed out. He made the Alchemist sign against evil, drawing a cross on his left shoulder with his right hand.
“Yes, well, Mazur’s worse than most,” said Michaelson. He stifled a yawn, reminding all of us that it was the middle of the night. “Are we all set, then?”
There were murmurs of assent. Keith’s stormy expression displayed how unhappy he was at not getting his way, but he made no more attempts to stop me from going. “I guess we can leave anytime now,” he said.
It took me a second to realize that the “we” meant him and me. “Right now?” I asked in disbelief.
He shrugged. “The vampires are going to be on their way soon. We need to make sure everything’s set up for them. If we switch off driving, we can be there by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Great,” I said stiffly. A road trip with Keith. Ugh. But what else could I say? I had no choice in this, and even if I did, I was in no position to turn down anything the Alchemists asked of me now. I’d played every card I
had tonight, and I had to believe being with Keith was better than a re-education center. Besides, I’d just fought a hard battle to prove myself and spare Zoe. I had to continue showing I was up for anything.
My father sent me off to pack with the same briskness he’d ordered me to make myself presentable earlier. I left the others talking and scurried quietly up to my room, still conscious of my sleeping mother. I was an expert in packing quickly and efficiently, thanks to surprise trips my father had sprung on me throughout my childhood. In fact, I always had a bag of toiletries packed and ready to go. The problem wasn’t so much in speed as it was in wondering how much to pack. The length of time for this assignment hadn’t been specified, and I had the uneasy feeling that no one actually knew. Were we talking about a few weeks? An entire school year? I’d heard someone mention the Moroi wanting to repeal the law that endangered Jill, but that seemed like the kind of legal process that could take a while. To make things worse, I didn’t even know what to wear to high school. The only thing I was certain of was that the weather would be hot. I ended up packing ten of my lightest outfits and hoped I’d be able to do laundry.
“Sydney?”
I was putting my laptop in a messenger bag when Zoe appeared in my doorway. She’d redone her braids so that they were neater, and I wondered if it had been an attempt to impress our father. “Hey,” I said, smiling at her. She slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. I was glad she’d come to say goodbye. I would miss her and wanted her to know that—
“Why did you do that to me?” she demanded before I could get a word out. “Do you know how humiliated I am?”
I was taken aback, speechless for a few moments. “I . . . what are you talking about? I was trying to—”
“You made me sound incompetent!” she said. I was astonished to see the glint of tears in her eyes. “You went on and on about how I didn’t have any experience and couldn’t handle doing what you and Dad do! I looked like an idiot in front of all those Alchemists. And Keith.”
“Keith Darnell is no one you need to worry about impressing,” I said quickly, trying to control my temper. Seeing her stormy face, I sighed and replayed the conversation in the study. I hadn’t been trying to make Zoe look bad so much as do whatever I could to make sure I was the one sent away. I’d had no clue she would take it like this. “Look, I wasn’t trying to embarrass you. I was trying to protect you.”
She gave a harsh laugh, and the anger sounded weird coming from someone as gentle as Zoe. “Is that what you call it? You even said yourself that you were trying to get a promotion!”
I grimaced. Yes, I had said that. But I could hardly tell her the truth. No human knew the truth about why I’d helped Rose. Lying to my own kind—especially my sister—pained me, but there was nothing I could do. As usual, I felt trapped in the middle. So, I dodged the comment.
“You were never intended to be an Alchemist,” I said. “There are better things for you out there.”
“Because I’m not as smart as you?” she asked. “Because I don’t speak five languages?”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I snapped. “Zoe, you’re wonderful, and you’d probably make a great Alchemist! But believe me, the Alchemist life . . . you don’t want any part of it.” I wanted to tell her that she’d hate it. I wanted to tell her that she’d never be responsible for her own future or get to make her own decisions again. But my sense of duty prevented me, and I stayed silent.
“I’d do it,” she said. “I’d help protect us from vampires . . . if Dad wanted me to.” Her voice wavered a little, and I suddenly wondered what was really fueling her desire to be an Alchemist.
“If you want to get close to Dad, find another way. The Alchemist cause might be a good one, but once you’re in it, they own you.” I wished I could explain to her how it felt. “You don’t want this life.”
“Because you want it all for yourself?” she demanded. She was a few inches shorter than me but filled with so much fury and fierceness right now that she seemed to take up the room.
“No! I don’t—you don’t understand,” I finally said. I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation but held back, as always.
The look she gave me nearly turned me to ice. “Oh, I think I understand perfectly.” She turned around abruptly and hurried out the door, still managing to move quietly. Her fear of our father overpowered her anger at me.
I stared at where she’d been standing and felt terrible. How could she have thought I was really trying to steal all the glory and make her look bad? Because that’s exactly what you said, a voice inside me pointed out. I supposed it was true, but I’d never expected her to be offended. I’d never known she had any interest in being one of the Alchemists. Even now, I wondered if her desire was more about being a part of something and proving herself to our father than it was about really wishing she’d been chosen for this task.
Whatever her reasons, there was nothing to be done for it now. I might not like the heavy-handed way the Alchemists had dealt with me, but I still fiercely believed in what they were doing to protect humans from vampires. And I definitely believed in keeping Jill safe from her own people if it meant avoiding a massive civil war. I could do this job and do it well. And Zoe—she would be free to pursue whatever she wanted in life.
“What took you so long?” my father asked when I returned to the study. My conversation with Zoe had delayed me a couple minutes, which was two minutes too long for him. I didn’t attempt to answer.
“I’m ready to go whenever you are,” Keith told me. His mood had shifted while I was upstairs. Friendliness oozed from him now, so strongly that it was a wonder everyone didn’t recognize it as fake. He’d apparently decided to try a more pleasant attitude around me, either in the hopes of impressing the others or sucking up to me so that I wouldn’t reveal what I knew about him. Yet even as he wore that plastic smile, there was a stiffness in his posture and the way he crossed his arms that told me—if no else—that he was no happier about being thrown together than I was. “I can even do most of the driving.”
“I don’t mind doing my share,” I said, trying to avoid glancing at his glass eye. I also wasn’t comfortable being driven by someone with faulty depth perception.
“I’d like to speak to Sydney in private before she goes, if that’s all right,” my father said.
No one had a problem with that, and he led me into the kitchen, shutting the door behind us. We stood quietly for a few moments, simply facing each other with arms crossed. I suddenly dared to hope that maybe he’d come to tell me he was sorry for how things had been between us this last month, that he forgave me and loved me. Honestly, I would’ve been happy if he’d simply wanted a private, fatherly goodbye.
He peered down at me intently, his brown eyes so identical to mine. I hoped mine never had such a cold look in them. “I don’t have to tell you how important this is for you, for all of us.”
So much for fatherly affection.
“No, sir,” I said. “You don’t.”
“I don’t know if you can undo the disgrace you brought down on us by running off with them, but this is a step in the right direction. Do not mess this up. You’re being tested. Follow your orders. Keep the Moroi girl out of trouble.” He sighed and ran a hand through his dark blond hair, which I’d also inherited. Strange, I thought, that we had so many things in common . . . yet were so completely different. “Thank God Keith is with you. Follow his lead. He knows what he’s doing.”
I stiffened. There was that note of pride in his voice again, like Keith was the greatest thing walking the earth. My father had seen to it that my training was thorough, but when Keith had stayed with us, my father had taken him on trips and lessons I’d never been part of. My sisters and I had been furious. We’d always suspected that our father regretted having only daughters, and that had been proof. But it wasn’t jealousy that made my blood boil and teeth clench now.
For a moment, I thought, What if I tell him what I
know? What will he think of his golden boy then? But staring into my father’s hard eyes, I answered my own question: No one would believe me. That was immediately followed by the memory of another voice and a girl’s frightened, pleading face staring at me with big brown eyes. Don’t tell, Sydney. Whatever you do, don’t tell what Keith did. Don’t tell anyone. I couldn’t betray her like that.
My father was still waiting for an answer. I swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He raised his eyebrows, clearly pleased, and gave me a rough pat on the shoulder. It was the closest he’d come to real affection in a while. I flinched, both from surprise and because of how rigid I was with frustration. “Good.” He moved toward the kitchen door and then paused to glance back at me. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
CHAPTER 3
THE DRIVE TO PALM SPRINGS WAS AGONY.
I was exhausted from being dragged out of bed, and even when Keith took over the wheel, I couldn’t fall asleep. I had too much on my mind: Zoe, my reputation, the mission at hand.... My thoughts spun in circles. I just wanted to fix all the problems in my life. Keith’s driving did nothing to make me less anxious.
I was also upset because my father hadn’t let me say goodbye to my mom. He’d gone on and on about how we should just let her sleep, but I knew the truth. He was afraid that if she knew I was leaving, she’d try to stop us. She’d been furious after my last mission: I’d gone halfway around the world alone, only to be returned with no clue as to what my future held. My mom had thought the Alchemists had used me badly and had told my dad it was just as well they seemed to be done with me. I don’t know if she really could’ve stood in the way of tonight’s plans, but I didn’t want to take my chances in case Zoe got sent instead of me. I certainly hadn’t expected a warm and fuzzy farewell from him, but it felt strange leaving on such unsettled terms with my sister and mother.
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