The truck backfired about every thirty seconds, and the tarp smelled even worse than the cell floor had, but we were moving. We stopped after a few turns and heard Jerome speaking to someone, probably a perimeter guard. Jerome explained that he had to do a pickup of some rather nasty material, hence the jalopy he was piloting. Amazingly, the guard let him drive away without searching the bed, probably due to the unholy stench emanating from the tarp.
We huddled under the tarp as the truck lurched forward, the lack of functional shocks making us bounce around the bed like rubber balls. After the truck had completed a few wobbly turns, Max peeked out from underneath the tarp.
“All clear,” he announced, and we threw off the stinking cover, sucking in lungfuls of clean, sweet air. Jerome glanced over his shoulder, his lowered brows telling us that he’d rather we remained hidden, but kept driving. After an hour or so, Jerome pulled off the road, going down a dirt trail and into the surrounding woods until the trees were too dense to go any further. Jerome threw the truck into park, and we clambered out of the bed.
“C’mon,” Jerome said after he’d gotten out of the cab. “There’s a cave down this way. We can hide out there for a while.”
With that, Jerome started down the trail, the three of us following. The path soon faded away to nothing, and we picked our way through the trees. It had rained recently, and the rain coupled with the fallen leaves had made the forest floor slick and muddy. As we beat our way through the underbrush, I tried identifying the trees we passed. There were hemlocks, maples, and pines aplenty, but not an oak in sight.
“What’s that?” Jerome said, having overheard my muttering.
“There aren’t any oaks here,” I repeated, a bit louder. “The oaks are Micah’s allies.” I clutched my oak leaf and acorn token, wondering if I’d see an oak anytime soon. I had no idea if an oak in the Mundane realm could get a message to one of its brethren in the Otherworld, but I was sure as hell going to try.
“Micah,” Jerome repeated. “Is that the guy you’re always with at The Promenade?”
“That ‘guy’ is my husband,” I snapped. “His full name is Micah Silverstrand, Lord of Silver.”
Jerome whistled. “Excuse me, Princess Silver.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just…” I maneuvered to avoid a tree branch that Max had let go of. Jerome caught it and gestured for me to go first. “Thanks. Anyway, I don’t mean to be such a jerk. Being a prisoner kinda got on my nerves.”
“I hear ya. Peacekeepers aren’t the best hosts.”
“And it’s Lady.”
Jerome’s brow wrinkled. “Huh?”
“My title. It’s Lady Silverstrand, not Princess Silver.”
Jerome laughed, roaring almost as loudly as the truck had, and I felt another weight lift from my shoulders. Dad had already escaped from whatever cell the Peacekeepers had put him in, and he had sent Jerome to help us. Even though we were trudging through an oakless forest a million miles away from the Whispering Dell, I let myself believe that I would be home with Micah soon.
Eventually we made it to a rocky outcrop and the cave Jerome had mentioned. Only this cave was more than just a hollow space. While the interior still had a dirt floor and rock walls, it also had desks, cabinets, and a few cots pushed against the far end.
“Is this a resistance base?” Sadie asked, hesitantly touching her fingertips to the metal lockers that lined the wall.
“More like a hideout,” Jerome explained. “We don’t have any electricity, running water, web or com links, so we’re totally off the grid. We can hide here for a while, and plan our next move.” We nodded as one, then Max ventured deeper into the cave.
“Got any fey stones?” Max asked, peering into the murky depths.
“None of those, either,” Jerome replied. He opened a desk drawer and produced a few old-fashioned, battery-powered flashlights. “This location is in a sniffer zone.”
“Sniffer?” I asked.
“Peacekeepers have teams trained to sense magic,” Jerome explained. “They’re made up of learned magicians. They canvas areas in set routes via aerial and ground transport, and report on where they sense unauthorized magic usage.”
Unauthorized. Ha. As if I needed the government’s approval to be myself. “Is that how you found that man, the day we met on Real Estate Row?”
Jerome dropped his gaze—I bet he was hoping that I’d forgotten how he sentenced a man to death while simultaneously hitting on me. “Yeah, that’s exactly how we found him.”
“Did he die?” I pressed. “Or did you help him, like you’re helping us?”
“Wolanski was not a good man,” Jerome said.
“You ordered his death,” I said, backing away from Jerome. “All for running a gambling pool?”
“You know how he ran that gambling pool? How he knew which bets to back?” Jerome shot back. “He bled out kids and read the future in their blood. Little kids!” Realizing that shouting wasn’t the best way to lie low, he continued in a softer tone, “Resistance or not, that sick bastard deserved what he got.”
I hated to agree with him, but he had a point. Being born into magic didn’t make one any better than a non-magical person, morally or otherwise. The Iron Queen and Old Stoney had proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Before I could say as much, Jerome started flinging open the metal lockers.
“There’s food in here and a well out back,” he said without looking at us. “You’ll want to drink a lot of water to flush out the drugs. There probably wasn’t much in the food they left you, if you didn’t taste them.”
“Those cookies tasted like crap,” Sadie muttered.
“Yeah, well, all our food tastes like crap.” With that, Jerome grabbed a bucket and headed outside, presumably toward the well. I glanced into the lockers—the food consisted of dried fruit and meat, perfect for long-term storage and a veritable banquet after the cookies we’d been subsisting on. I grabbed a packet of beef jerky and followed Jerome out of the cave.
I went the wrong way at first, but a splash told me where the well and Jerome were. I found him just as he was hauling up the bucket—he’d taken off his flak jacket, and through his thin brown T-shirt I could see the muscles work in his shoulders and back. He had a nice body, and coupled with his dark curls and eyes he was pretty attractive. Maybe I could hook him up with Sadie.
“I’m sorry,” I said to his back. “I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat like that.”
“Peacekeepers are assholes.” He grabbed the bucket and set it on the well’s edge. “It’s only natural that you think I’m one.”
“You’re not,” I said. “This rescue, being part of the resistance…” I spread my hands, trying to encompass everything that had happened in the past few days. “What you did for us is pretty amazing.”
Jerome flashed me a grin. “Yeah, us resistance folks are pretty cool.” He filled a dipper with water and offered it to me. “So, you’re a missus now?”
“Sure am,” I said, extending my arm and showing off my shiny new wedding ring.
“Too bad you stood me up for our date. Maybe I could have swayed you,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
I laughed, more at his ridiculous expression than at the concept of me dating him. “I’d already met Micah by then,” I said. “I thought he’d been captured by you guys. That’s why I was driving like a lunatic that morning on Real Estate Row.”
“I remember,” he said with a nod. “So tell me about him.”
“Micah? Well, he’s an elf lord in the Otherworld.”
Jerome whistled. “Yeah, you said that. So he’s not a lame corporal like me?”
I ignored that question. “And he’s sweet, and kind, and the most handsome man I’ve ever met.” Jerome raised an eyebrow. Okay, maybe I was gushing. “He’s a metal Elemental like me, but he’s of silver. He even lives in a silver manor. But we’re adding some copper,” I added.
“How did a nice office worker like you manage to fall in with the Lord
of Silver?”
I was so not telling Jerome that story. “Oh, you know. The usual ways. Let’s bring Max and Sadie some water.”
16
While Jerome showed Max and Sadie what was in the various lockers and drawers, I sat near a small propane cooking unit. It was blazing, and I’d balanced a pot on it filled with well water and some shredded beef jerky. Thanks to the drugs that had ravaged his body while he was at the Institute, Max’s digestive system still had a hard time processing heavy foods like meat, so I was trying to boil down the jerky to broth so he could get some much-needed protein into his body. I’d even added some dried cherries, hoping the bright fruit flavor would mask what would probably be the worst-tasting soup in history.
As I stirred the pot, I thought about Micah. Or rather, my relationship with Micah. While I wasn’t ready to say anything out loud, least of all with Jerome around, my train of thought was bringing me to less-than-desirable places.
This endless circle of destruction began when Jerome had asked me about Micah. Micah. He had to be worried sick. I thought about him pacing the manor, coordinating a search party, racking his brain for where Dad would take the three of us. Unless…
My heart clenched. Unless he thought I’d abandoned him, traveled with Max and Sadie and Dad to the Mundane realm not just to stop the Peacekeepers but to build a new life. Without him. The thought chilled me. He’d wonder why I hadn’t said anything to him or left him a message with Shep. But he should trust you enough to know you’d come back—you left with Sadie and Max and Dad!
Dad. Micah should have trusted me, but I knew without a doubt that he didn’t fully trust my father. And he hadn’t seemed to think my own trust meant anything at all. That thought stirred old anger in me. The way he’d made Dad so uncomfortable about his lost memories. And how he hadn’t woken me to go with him to the Golden Court to negotiate with Oriana. And how he’d screamed at me after we’d gone to see the crone, Gods, like he thought I was some baby who’d give her anything she wanted for a cup of coffee.
I remembered what Max had said before we’d gone to Moose Lake: that Micah didn’t control me. But Dad seemed to think he did, asking me about when we’d met and if he’d “coerced” me into marrying him…
Did he? Micah and I had both been dreaming when we’d first met, but now I wondered if he had somehow influenced my dream. It clearly hadn’t been the first time he’d hopped into a strange woman’s dream—he’d even implied that female Dreamwalkers attracted male Dreamwalkers for just those sorts of rendezvous. Had Micah somehow made me want him?
And then there was Dad’s reaction to the silver mark on my wrist. He’d responded as an indignant father would, assuming that Micah had forced his element into my skin. While I still didn’t know if that was even possible, I’d never gotten the chance to ask Micah, which wasn’t surprising since we couldn’t manage to make this marriage thing official either. Whether it had been one of Dad’s missions or the Gold Queen’s lunatic notions or a thousand other things, we couldn’t find time to be alone.
Does it matter how we met? I wished I knew the answer to that. I remembered the Goblin Market and how the dark magics that wafted up from the shops had reduced me to a weepy mess. Micah had sensed my distress, and he’d protected me. He was always protecting me, except for those few times I’d needed to protect him.
I shook my head, took a sip of water, and dove back into my memories. Specifically, I thought about that first dream Micah and I had shared. The beef jerky I’d wolfed down earlier became a ball of lead in my stomach as I came to an undeniable conclusion—I had no idea how that dream had started.
I had no idea if I’d called Micah into my dream, or if he’d just made me think that I had. I couldn’t even remember our first kiss.
“This is nuts,” I muttered.
“What’s that, sis?” Max called. I looked up and saw him and Jerome with their heads bent over a map. Sadie, predictably, had found a book and was propped up in a dark corner, reading it by way of a flashlight.
“This,” I repeated, gesturing to encompass the cave, and our situation. I was not sharing my relationship doubts with anyone, not until I’d talked to Micah. “We’re three of the most powerful Elementals Pacifica has dealt with in recent years, and we’re hiding out in a cave.” I strode over to the map, pretending to be confident.
“We’re working on that,” Max said. “I’m marking the known static portals, and Jerome here is figuring out which are the easiest to get to.”
I nodded—at least they’d been doing something while I’d been busy having an emotional crisis. “What about Dad’s stashed portals?”
“Too risky,” Max said, shaking his head. “If these sniffers are as strong as Jerome says, they could have cleaned them out. Better to stick with portals we know aren’t going anywhere.”
Well, that was practical. I nodded, as if I’d ever been in charge of this mission, and went to sit beside Sadie. “What’re you reading?”
“It’s a procedures handbook,” she replied. “Only, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” She flipped back a few pages, then laid the book on the floor between us. “See, here it tells the reader that, if this location is compromised, they should report to centralized command. But here,” she paged forward a bit, “you’re told to burn everything in the cave and go to ground.” Sadie flipped back and forth between the two sections, lips pursed. “This handbook is full of these contradictions. If anyone tried to follow it, they’d be captured in a day.”
A nonsense procedural. I used to sort nonsense reports for a living, reports that told you all you needed to know about nonesense hamsters and lemon oil. I’d sorted those garbage reports for a year at Real Estate Evaluation Services, the sham job that had been created by my fake best friend, Juliana, so that she could keep tabs on me and my family.
I took the handbook from Sadie and turned to the map section. There was an incredibly detailed map of Capitol City, right down to resistance headquarters—which was smack dab on top of the Presidential Mansion, a.k.a. Peacekeeper World Headquarters.
“This is a trap.” I stood, dropping the sham procedural in the dirt. Max and Jerome looked up from the map. “Either this location has been compromised or Jerome’s nothing but a lying Peacekeeper.”
“I am not—” Jerome began, but it was hard to hear the rest once Max had twisted his arm behind his back and shoved his face onto the table.
“Got evidence?” Max demanded.
“Fake handbooks, just like the fake reports I used to sort at the real estate company,” I replied. “Our way-too-easy escape. That when we left where we were held the guard didn’t search the truck bed. The fact that we only have Polonsky’s word that he’s on our side. Even if he is on our side, his tracker chip should be screaming loud and clear that he’s left the base.” I ticked them off on my fingers, one by one. “Either Polonsky’s a plant, or the Peacekeepers knew he was coming and let him get us out.”
“Why bother with either?” Max asked. Jerome squawked about his innocence, but Max just ground his face into the table. “They already had us.”
“They must want us to do something,” Sadie murmured, seeing the truth of the matter. “But what?”
Jerome struggled a bit more, this time kicking at the dirt. “Max, ease up,” I said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” It would be awfully inconvenient if Jerome suffocated. Bodies can be cumbersome, you know.
Max took the pressure off Jerome’s neck—after a few gulps of air, he said, “I am in the resistance. I have been since Peacekeepers killed my father.”
“When was that?” Max demanded.
“When I was twelve. Fifteen years ago.”
“Who was your father?” Max asked.
“Jorge Vasquez.”
That name meant nothing to me, but Max went still. “You’re Avatar’s kid?” Max asked.
Jerome nodded, and for a moment we just stared at him. Avatar had been the last known Inheritor of Air, and had died a
grisly death during the Magic Wars. To date, no new Inheritor of Air had surfaced.
“Avatar was a good man,” Max murmured. “So was his brother, Galen. I spent time in the Institute with him. He made imprisonment bearable.”
“Thank you,” Jerome said, rubbing his neck. “My father and uncle shaped me into who I am today.”
Max looked Jerome up and down, and asked, “So why haven’t we ever met?” When Jerome blinked, Max continued, “Avatar was always near my father. They were great friends. Hell, he even came by for Sunday dinner.” Max leaned forward. “So, why didn’t he ever bring his son along with him? Why didn’t Galen ever mention a nephew?”
Jerome pursed his lips and looked away. “He was ashamed. I…I’m not of air.”
“How is that even possible?” Max demanded. “Elements are passed from father to child.”
“Elements can skip a generation,” Sadie chimed in, always ready with the facts. “Although it usually only happens when the mother also has a strong magical ability. And, they can be passed from mother to child, too.” She peered at Jerome as if he were a lab specimen. Good. Now a Peacekeeper knew how Max had felt while trapped in the Institute. “Your mother must have been very powerful to cancel out the Inheritor of Air.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hands. “If your father was an Inheritor, how are you a Peacekeeper? I mean, don’t they check these things?”
“Changed my name, dyed my hair. I blended in, just like you used to.” He looked pointedly at my copper hair, which I’d once dyed dirt-brown. However, I had never, not even once, contemplated changing my name. We Corbeaus were proud. Jerome continued, “The resistance set me up with a new family, and when I was eighteen, I enlisted.”
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