Trickster's Girl (The Raven Duet)

by Hilari Bell

  Her hair had dried. Kelsa pulled out her comb and teased the black fuzz back into place. She was opening the foundation when her pod signaled that a text had come in.

  To: Phillipini

  Can do. Provided no one hurt. Charlie Rigby.

  Kelsa put down the tube to type in her reply.

  No one hurt. Honest. Thanks. Johnny.

  The dark foundation spread smoothly over her face, neck, arms, and the back of her hands. It looked like brown putty, but Kelsa knew that a good foundation soaked in. She picked up the clear brown nail polish and carefully painted a thin coat over the picture on her PID.

  Even when she tilted the card toward the descending sunlight, it didn't make any difference. There was no way the brown-haired, white-skinned girl in the picture could be taken for mixed race. The police would look at an ID card whose owner was visiting a prisoner in their jail. Particularly if they couldn't run it on the net.

  Kelsa wiped off the still-wet polish, and after a moment's thought poured a small amount of polish into a cup, then squeezed a few drops of temp color out of the bottom of one of the packets and stirred. It certainly got darker.

  She painted the mixture over the plastic card and held it up to the light once more. The blue backdrop had turned a sickly green, but there was no standard background color, so that didn't matter. The severely braided hair looked darker—it could have been black. The skin was darker too, not beautiful mixie gold, but muddy gray. Still, that could have been caused by bad lighting. PID photos were notoriously hideous, anyway.

  Kelsa looked into the bike's mirror. The foundation had sunk into her skin, as advertised. It wasn't as dark as she'd hoped, but the color was even and looked surprisingly natural. Her mouth and nose weren't right, but she knew several mixie kids who'd drawn paler skin and Caucasian features out of the genetic lottery. She didn't look like a white girl anymore, and her PID photo looked more or less like her.

  She quickly cleaned up the color packets. She wanted Charlie to get well out of town before the police tried to call him, but she had another task to perform, and she wasn't sure how long it would take.

  After a final check to make sure the dark coating on her PID was dry, Kelsa biked toward town.

  Her father had liked taking his bike down small, unnamed roads, so Kelsa knew what she was looking for. Eventually she spotted the double track of an off-pavement service vehicle heading into the hills. It could have been a forest service access road, or even a loggers' trail, but for once she got lucky. Only half a mile from the pavement, she crested a rise and saw the town's com tower.

  Surrounded by a chainlink fence, with a locked gate.

  Kelsa took off her helmet and pulled out the bike's tool kit. Her conscience might flinch, but if you were planning a jailbreak it was stupid to worry about vandalism. And at least there were no cameras. Places like this relied on seclusion for their security. Seclusion, and the fact that there was no reason for anyone to sabotage a small-town satellite link.

  The wire cutters were designed for the bike's thin electrical wires, and by the time she'd finished cutting a gap in the fence her hands ached. But once she was inside the fence, the screwdriver worked just fine to pry the cover off the master board.

  Kelsa had no idea what the blinking lights indicated, what the various wires and circuit boards did. It would be nice to do something clever, to make the damage look like an accident ... if she'd been a trained electrician and had the tools she needed and all the time in the world.

  If she couldn't be clever, Kelsa decided, she might as well go for maximum damage. She was committed now.

  She ripped out thin plastic circuit boards, leaned them against one of the tower's metal legs, and stamped on them to break them. Then she cut every wire she could reach. By the time she finished, all the lights were dark. But there was one final test.

  Kelsa pulled out her com pod and tried to access the net.

  No signal.

  Good enough. Now she'd better get out of here before the repair crew arrived. Kelsa reached the paved road in minutes and headed into town, keeping well within the speed limit. There was no way for anyone she passed to know she was a vandal ... and planning a jailbreak.

  The police station was on the main street, marked with a sign. It was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, even after centuries of independence and almost two centuries after the advent of the automobile.

  Kelsa parked her bike in the lot and walked through the front door, like any law-abiding citizen. The police couldn't know that her heart was hammering against her ribs. There were only a couple of officers on the evening shift, a man and a woman, scowling at a deskcomp. The woman looked up when Kelsa came in.

  "Can I help you?" Her soft Canadian accent was more pronounced than most, and she summoned up a smile despite her annoyance. The quivering tension in Kelsa's belly eased. Cops were human. After Otter Woman, that seemed like a very good thing.

  "I'm not sure," Kelsa told her. "A friend of mine was supposed to meet me today, to do some trail biking, but he never showed up. I know it's early to report someone missing, and he's not ... it wouldn't be the first time he missed an appointment. But he usually coms if he's going to be a whole day late, and I haven't heard anything. So I thought I'd better see if something happened to him."

  "He was probably just delayed," the woman said soothingly. "And if our link wasn't down, I could check the accident reports. But I'm afraid—"

  "It's probably squirrels again," the man put in. "They gnaw the wires."

  "I can tell you if any of our officers dealt with him," the woman offered. "What's his name?"

  "He goes by Raven." Kelsa had anticipated this question and had a story ready. She hoped it didn't contradict whatever he'd already told them, but the scenario she'd come up with should cover any discrepancies.

  The woman's hands, poised above the keyboard, froze. "Is he a First Nations boy, about seventeen, five foot ten, 155 pounds?"

  "Yes," said Kelsa. "At least, I guess that's what he weighs. Did something happen to him?"

  The difficulty was keeping anxiety out of her expression, not letting some leak in. If Raven had somehow avoided arrest, and just not managed to find her, all of this would be for nothing.

  The woman snorted. "You could say that. He's right here, in a cell in the basement. In jail," she added, to clear up any doubt.

  "But ... did he crack up his bike? He's not much of a drinker. Really."

  "No, nothing like that," the clerk said. The male cop had drifted over and was listening. "He just blew a tire. But after it was fixed, his girlfriend took off on the bike leaving a two-hundred-dollar repair bill. The garage owner kept hold of him and called us."

  "But why didn't he just..." Kelsa began artfully. "Oh. Wait. I bet he didn't have enough cash on him to pay for the repair. Right?"

  "He didn't," the woman confirmed. Her voice was still friendly, but her gaze was sharp. Kelsa could see both of them comparing her with Charlie's description of the girlfriend—and not finding a match. When they'd call him to come identify her, he wouldn't be home.

  "He also had no ID and no account cards," the woman continued. "And he refused to give his real name."

  Kelsa sighed. "He's such a jerk. But in a way you can't blame him. If his father found out where he was, he'd be dragged home in a heartbeat. And he really, really doesn't want that. They know he hasn't been kidnapped or anything," she added. "He lets them know he's OK. But ... Well..."

  "So what is his name?" the woman asked. Her voice wasn't so polite now.

  "I don't think I should tell you," Kelsa said apologetically. "Not if he didn't. He's going to be eighteen in eight months, and then it won't matter nearly as much, but for now ... Well, you understand."

  "No," said the woman. "I don't. What's your name, Miss? And may I see some ID, please?"

  "Sure." Kelsa handed over her card. "I'm sorry he made so much trouble for you. He doesn't mean to, but there are some things he just doesn't get.
He grew up with other people taking care of things like bike repairs."

  The woman looked at her picture, then at her nonfunctional card reader, and sighed. "Kelsa Phillips?"

  "That's right," Kelsa said. "How much did you say that bill was?"

  "Over two hundred dollars," the male cop put in. "I don't suppose you're prepared to pay it?"

  "I can't," Kelsa told them with real regret. "But he might be willing to let me contact someone who can. Who could take care of all of this, in fact. Can I see him?"

  "You can't contact anyone till the link's back up." The woman gave her PID back to her. "But when he wouldn't tell us his name, we ran his face on a net ID program. We couldn't find him anywhere."

  "Which should have told you a lot right there," said Kelsa. "Everybody's got a picture somewhere in the net. Please, I know it's late and stuff, but if I could talk to him maybe he can tell me who to get in touch with about this bill. And when they get your link fixed, we could settle it without his father getting involved. Because trust me, that's the last thing anyone wants."

  She could see they weren't completely convinced. A runaway rich kid fetching up in a Deese Lake jail was pretty unlikely. On the other hand, abuse was as possible in a rich family as in any other, and a boy who'd rather sit in a cell than give his real name ... Choosing between standing up to a powerful wealthy man and returning a teenager to an abusive situation wasn't a decision any cop wanted to make.

  "Talk to him in private," Kelsa added firmly. "Mikes off." According to the lawyer vids, any visit to a prisoner would be recorded visually, but private conversations were a civil right. At least they were in the U.S., and surely Canada wasn't too different.

  The two cops looked at each other.

  "I don't see any problem with letting them talk," the man said at last. "If it gets settled, good. If nothing comes of it, there's no harm done."

  "Mikes off," Kelsa insisted.

  "Of course, Miss Phillips. That's standard for prisoner conversations unless we've got a warrant."

  "Oh. I didn't know that. Please, call me Kelsa."

  She'd expected an interview room, but the male cop took her down a flight of Sinoleum-covered steps to a linoleum-floored corridor with many doors off it. Two of the doors consisted of steel bars.

  Raven lay on a narrow cot, frowning up at the ceiling. He must have been foolish enough to resist, somewhere along the line, because he had a black eye. The fact that he still bore those bruises told Kelsa something was seriously wrong. And if Charlie had done that, she no longer felt bad about sending him into the back country on a call that wasn't there.

  "What are you doing here?" Raven demanded before she could speak. "You haven't ... ah..." He cast the cop who accompanied her a fierce glare.

  "No, I haven't told them who you are," said Kelsa. "Or who your father is. Though you were an idiot not to carry enough cash to pay your bills!"

  Raven opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything.

  The cop suppressed a smile. "You can use this." He pulled a folding chair out of a closet, opening it in front of Raven's cell door. "And the mikes are off, but I'm obliged to tell you that you're being visually monitored at all times." He gestured to the cams at either end of the corridor, and Raven glared up at one corner of his cell. It must be monitored too, but as long as the mikes were off that didn't matter. Clearly something else prevented him from shapeshifting, or his bruises would be long gone.

  Kelsa sat down in front of the barred door. The cop cast a final glace around and went back down the hall.

  "Are you all right?" Even if the cop overheard, that question would sound perfectly normal.

  "No." Raven rose from his cot and came to sit, cross-legged, on the other side of the bars. He peered through to make sure the cop was out of earshot before going on in a much lower voice. "All my abilities have been suppressed. Fenesic. It's one of the few things in this world that can affect us. But if my enemies managed to poison me, they must know exactly where we are! You've got to—"

  "I've got to get you out of here," Kelsa told him. "Preferably before morning, because that's the soonest the drug is likely to wear off. It might last longer, but we can't count on that. What's this Fenesic stuff, and how could they poison you? We've been eating the same food, mostly from sealed packages, and drinking out of the public water supply."

  "Who did you drug? And if they had you, how did you escape?"

  "It was Otter Woman," Kelsa said. "And I was able to escape because, like you, she's not as smart as she thinks she is. I'll tell you about it later, but right now we need to get you out of jail! How did you get poisoned?"

  "I think it was the perfume," said Raven. "Remember in that baggage car when we were getting the bike out? Fenesic is one of the best poisons to use on someone in this world, because it's not only inhaled, it acts slowly and subtly. It won't wear off for years. Decades if it's a strong dose, and this was! If I hadn't been distracted I might have noticed something, but—"

  "But we were arguing." Kelsa pushed guilt aside. "What's the cure, and how do I get it to you? Bake you a cake with the antidote in it? I'm pretty sure they'll analyze anything I bring you, and they might have a rule against prisoners getting food from the outside."

  For the first time, Kelsa saw genuine fear in Raven's eyes.

  "Don't tell me there is no antidote," she said sharply.

  "No, it exists. An inhalant, like Fenesic. But it's in the sap of a tree that grows only in the Southern Hemisphere, so you couldn't possibly get it and get back here before I was transferred to some larger facility. And Fenesic ... it doesn't wear off. They could leave me here to die!"

  He sounded panicked. Kelsa couldn't blame him.

  "I'll get you the antidote," she promised rashly. "Even if it takes years." Assuming the tree plague didn't kill the trees he needed before she could reach them. And after years of plague, even if she saved Raven, it might be too late for her planet. Kelsa had no more desire to die than he did, and even less to see her world die with her.

  But she was getting ahead of herself, letting his terror infect her.

  "Tell me about this tree," she said. "My father was a botanist who specialized in forests. Maybe there's a sample of Fenes-whatever in some arboretum, and since I've got his com pod I might be able to fake my way in."

  Raven's face brightened slightly. "It's found in Australia. It grows very tall, very rapidly, and has long dark green leaves and..."

  A few sentences later Kelsa was sure. She began to laugh.

  ***

  Deese Lake was too small to have a megastore; it barely had a grocery store. But like many small-town stores, it stocked a wide variety of goods. It had a very decent selection of herbal and natural medicines, including a big squeeze bottle of eucalyptus chest rub.

  Raven had been startled when Kelsa told him that his exotic foreign tree was common in California and other places as well. It probably hadn't been imported when he was learning words like Jehoshaphat, so the enemies who'd poisoned him wouldn't have known about it either.

  It shocked Kelsa to realize that they were willing to destroy one of their own. Stripping Raven of his powers and landing him in a human prison—and without any way to prove an identity, even in Canada, that's where he would have ended up—seemed almost as horrific as being kidnapped by a biker gang.

  After Kelsa had told him that the scent of eucalyptus wouldn't be any farther away than the nearest pharmacy, they'd worked out the rest of the plan. The window wells above the cells were barred and screened with wire, but the windows themselves opened four inches to allow the prisoners fresh air. Raven's had been open when Kelsa arrived.

  Having purchased the chest rub and removed the seal, Kelsa opened the fly on her bike pants and zipped the bottle inside. Bike wear was loose enough that it wasn't too uncomfortable. It was also loose enough to conceal the shape of her body.

  This time she parked the bike behind the police station—from the back it could have been a
store or a real estate office, almost anything.

  She left her helmet on, trying to walk with a manly swagger as she entered the shadowy alley beside the jail. Only one of the barred window wells glowed with light, but Kelsa knew Raven was in the cell closest to the back of the building, anyway.

  She turned toward the wall, opening her fly and hunching her shoulders in the characteristic posture—a posture that helped conceal what she was holding from the cameras on the building's eaves. She flipped up the bottle's cap with one flick of her thumb and sent fragrant liquid splattering into the window well. Even if someone happened to be watching the security monitors, they would have no way of knowing what that liquid really was, although they might be a bit startled by the capacity of her bladder.

  When the bottle was empty, Kelsa zipped it into her pants and strolled back to her bike.

  She rode straight out of town, expecting at any moment to hear sirens behind her—though they probably didn't chase people down with sirens for urinating in a public place.

  She was out of Deese Lake in a few minutes, and between the deepening dusk and the rough road it was easy to go slowly enough for Raven to catch up with her. Soon she had to turn on her headlight, and on the potholed surface that slowed her down even more.

  How long before the antidote would take effect? Assuming that eucalyptus sap that had been made into a chest rub would work at all.

  Eucalyptus might have been imported to this continent, but California was a long way from British Columbia, especially by dirt bike. Kelsa couldn't afford a plane ticket, and if she transferred money from her mother's account to her own, this adventure would come to a screeching halt. Because when she refused to come home, her mother would call the Canadian police to bring her home.

  Hell, the police would be after Kelsa anyway the moment they noticed that Raven had vanished from their jail. Assuming he could break out of jail. He'd sworn his beak was strong enough to tear that screen, but if he couldn't...

  It was almost two hours later when a big black bird swooped out of the night and through her headlight.