Firewalker

by Josephine Angelini

  “Got it,” Una said, already crouching low like the fighter in Rowan’s image.

  They didn’t exchange punches as Tristan and Rowan had—they grappled. Una’s new style of fighting relied on her getting in close and zeroing in on fragile little bones or crucial nerves. Rowan taught her how to get right up against her opponents and knock them off balance while she took a joint and broke it, or shot in like a surgeon to skewer a vital artery. By the end of Una’s grappling session, both Juliet and Breakfast looked like they were going to upchuck from all the gruesome images Rowan had conveyed to them.

  “My girlfriend’s an assassin,” Breakfast said disbelievingly when Una brushed the sand off her clothes and sat down next to him. She kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I am so doomed,” he said, grinning.

  Juliet looked seasick. “I don’t think I can do that,” she said.

  “I don’t expect you to,” Rowan replied, holding in a laugh. “For you and Breakfast, I’m going to focus more on self-defense, rather than attack. Which is incredibly useful for protecting Lily.” Rowan’s tone turned deadly serious. “And that’s what this is all about. Protecting your witch. Never forget that without you, she’s nearly defenseless, although a powerful witch will always have a few last-ditch tricks up her sleeve. I’ll teach you those later, Lily,” he said, tossing Lily a brief image of a witch throwing fireballs and forked tendrils of lightning from the palms of her hands. “But without a witch, a mechanic is as good as dead. Protecting your witch is more important than your individual life, because if she dies, all of her claimed are left without her strength. If you care about each other you must protect Lily first, and you must protect her to the last. Do you understand?”

  They all nodded solemnly as the weight of this responsibility settled inside them.

  “This is about that guy,” Tristan said, his voice low and rough. “The one that you chased last night. Who is he?”

  Rowan started to answer, but Lily stopped him. “No, Rowan. Let me.” She took a deep breath and shared a memory of Carrick from the oubliette. For half a second she let all of them feel what she had felt when he touched her willstones, and then she cut off the sensation before any of them could scream.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tristan spat.

  “He should be torn apart,” Una growled.

  “Who is he?” Breakfast asked, his face stony.

  “My half brother, Carrick,” Rowan answered, looking down at the sand. “All I know of him is that he was raised by a vile man. Carrick knows just about everything there is to know about torture. And he’s here for Lily.” Rowan looked Tristan in the eye. “Can I count on you? Can I count on you to never leave her?”

  Tristan nodded. Rowan looked at each of them in turn, waiting until they all nodded in silent agreement.

  “Wait. There’s something else you need to know. Carrick has a witch fueling him,” Lily said. She turned to Rowan. “You know her better than I do.”

  “I’ll explain through you,” Rowan said quietly.

  Rowan allowed everyone to view a few of his memories of Lillian. He showed them how she started out idealistic and progressive, then how she disappeared for three weeks and came back terribly sick and inexplicably changed. Finally, he showed how she started hunting scientists with a maniacal single-mindedness. He let them all see one moment of his father’s body, dropping through the trapdoor on the gallows while Lillian stood no more than two steps away, before he abruptly ended the flow of images.

  “We’re fighting you?” Una asked disbelievingly.

  “A version of me,” Lily answered. “You need to understand that no matter how strong I may seem to you, our enemy is just as strong and she’s had years more practice. She’s mastered things that I’m still struggling to understand. She brought me to her world—something that had never been done before—and now she’s sent Carrick here to bring me back to her.”

  “Why?” Tristan asked. “Why does she want you?”

  “She wants Lily to replace her as the leader because she’s sick. From the way she looked in Rowan’s last memory, I’d say she was dying,” Juliet answered. Everyone turned to her, surprised that she could guess this. Juliet smiled warmly at Lily. “You wouldn’t trust anyone but yourself to rule the world. So why would she?”

  Lily stared at her sister, hurt.

  Am I really like that, Juliet?

  You tend to think you know better than everyone else, Lily. Please don’t think I’m judging you. I know it’s just the way you are.

  “Come on,” Rowan said, his eyes on Lily’s troubled face. “It’s late and you all have to be alert tomorrow.”

  He started shoveling sand onto the last embers of the fire.

  Breakfast groaned as he hauled himself up to help. “I haven’t done any of my homework. Maybe I’ll skip school tomorrow.”

  “No,” Rowan said firmly. “I need all of you to stay with Lily.”

  “Give me your homework, Breakfast. I’ll do it for you,” Tristan offered as they headed up the beach.

  “Thanks, but I don’t think that’d do me any good,” Breakfast said despondently. “My teachers would know I cheated because of all the right answers.”

  As they walked back to Lily’s house, she could hear Tristan and Rowan speaking quietly to each other at the back of the group.

  “In that last memory—that was your father?” Tristan asked.

  There was a long pause. “Yeah,” Rowan replied.

  “I was there. I saw my face in the crowd,” Tristan said, shaken.

  Rowan laughed under his breath. “You were there for me. In my world, you and I have been stone kin since we were kids. You’re my best friend, Tristan.”

  “No, seriously,” Tristan said disbelievingly.

  “We fight all the time,” Rowan said.

  “Constantly,” Lily chimed in, looking at them over her shoulder. “When I first got to Rowan’s world, you two bickered for hours.”

  “Really?” Tristan said, cracking a smile. “About what?”

  Rowan shrugged, like the answer was obvious. “What we always fight about. Her.”

  “Are we in your world?” Una asked. “Breakfast and me?”

  “I don’t know,” Rowan answered. “But anything’s possible.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Carrick got off the train they called the T. He was so used to trains running only underground that it unnerved him when, occasionally, a train would pop up from the safety of the tunnel system. Luckily, his stop was underground. Carrick made his way up the short staircase to the center of this tiny city of Boston. It was so easy to move around this world. No walls, no citizen checks, no Woven. Anyone could get on a train and go anywhere, even clear across the continent, at any time of the day or night. All one needed was money, which was unbelievably easy to steal here.

  Without wards protecting the buildings, Carrick could walk up to nearly any property and let himself in without the tenants ever suspecting his presence. The “alarm systems” people used here were a joke. All Carrick had to do was cast a glamour over himself to blend seamlessly with the shadows, wait a while for a tenant to come home, and watch that tenant type in the entry code on the keypad. The same method applied to those bank machines. Watch a mark’s fingers type, pickpocket his card, and off you went with his money. Even more ridiculous were the locks and keys they used on their apartment doors. A nudge from any willstone could knock the inner tumblers into place, opening the door in a moment.

  Everyone here was so rich and stupid. This world was one big purse waiting to be robbed. Thieving had never been to Carrick’s taste, but there was something gratifying about how naive the people were in this world. It had made the few days he’d spent here remarkably easy. Carrick had only had to trouble Lillian once, asking for power. And that was to escape Rowan.

  His little brother was faster and stronger. He had years of experience being a mechanic on his side. Carrick escaped only because he’d led Rowan into a populate
d area. Carrick didn’t care if he injured or killed innocent bystanders as he ran through traffic, but Rowan did. Next time he wasn’t so sure Rowan would let him go, not even to save innocents. While Carrick learned more about his new skills as a mechanic he’d have to try a different tactic. Facing Rowan head-on would be suicide right now, especially since Rowan was swelling Lily’s ranks with native recruits. Her growing circle of mechanics had some real talent among them, but Lily was vulnerable in other ways. People who cared about other people always were.

  It wasn’t a long walk from the station to Carrick’s destination. Lillian had found where Carrick’s target lived in this world. Carrick sometimes forgot James existed because he had so little to do with Lillian’s life, although their estranged relationship was a constant source of gossip-fodder among the bored and vapid city folk back in his world. Apparently, this version of James had little to do with Lily’s life as well.

  Carrick let himself into the apartment building, nodded at the sorry excuse for a guard at the front desk, and took the elevator up to the correct floor. He paused at the door, savoring these last few seconds of knowing something that someone else didn’t.

  Carrick knew with utter certainty that the man in this apartment would be in agony in a few moments. The man, on the other hand, knew with utter certainty that he would be safe for the rest of the night. For just this one moment they were both right. Two possible universes coexisted inside one.

  Carrick slid the bolt on the door aside with the faintest nudge from his willstone and let himself in. With that one choice, the two universes collapsed into one. The one that was filled with agony.

  * * *

  My father!

  “Lily? What happened?” Rowan propped himself up on an elbow, his willstone flaring with magelight. Lily’s panicked face looked like a pale mask in the otherworldly glow. Rowan got up from his mattress on the floor and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “He’s in pain. My father’s in pain,” she said through panting breaths.

  “Nightmare?” Rowan asked.

  “No.” Her brow wrinkled with doubt. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Check. Reach out to your father,” Rowan urged.

  Lily tried, but all she felt was numb darkness. “He’s there, but out. Completely unconscious.”

  “Deep sleep?”

  She looked at the clock. It wasn’t even four a.m. yet. “That would make sense.”

  “It could have been his nightmare then,” Rowan said comfortingly. “Deep sleep usually follows vivid dreams. If you don’t wake up, that is.”

  Lily flopped back onto her pillows and sighed. “That’s annoying.” She reached up and touched the bare skin at the base of Rowan’s throat, circling her finger slowly around his willstone. “I don’t mind sharing your bad dreams, but my dad’s? I don’t want to accidentally stumble into any of his dreams—bad or good.” A disturbing thought occurred to her. “Especially not a really good one. Ew.”

  “Block him out.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I’d better.”

  Rowan smiled down at her, and a thought occurred to him. “I don’t have as many nightmares in this world.”

  “Because your subconscious knows there are no Woven here.”

  “Must be it,” he agreed.

  Lily pulled on Rowan’s arms. “Lie down with me.”

  A pained look crossed his face. “You should sleep.”

  “Can’t. I’m wide awake,” she whispered, easing Rowan down on top of her.

  He gave in with a lost expression, allowing himself to be pulled under the covers. The silence in the room filled up with the tense sound of their half-held breaths and the low, almost imperceptible hum of their shaking. Rowan pushed her nightshirt up over her head and laid his cool chest on her warm one. He slid a knee between her thighs, rocking his hips against her as he kissed her. Lily opened herself up and let Rowan feel what she felt.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” he whispered, suddenly turning his head aside, his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Why?” Lily asked, smiling patiently up at him. “And this time, tell me the real reason.”

  He looked young and scared. Lily felt that huge gray emotion sweep through him again. “Because I can’t stay in this world,” he answered. “And I don’t think I’d be strong enough to ever leave if I make love to you.”

  Lily shook her head, his words not sinking in. She sat up and fixed her nightshirt, pushing him back so she could see him clearly. “What are you talking about?”

  “We left at the start of a war,” he said, his voice wavering. “My friends, my people—they’re fighting and dying. No matter how much I love you right now I know that if I stay here for you, I’ll start to hate you. I’ll hate you because I’ll hate myself for not going back.”

  Lily stared at him, dumbfounded. “But—I can’t go back there,” she said.

  “No. Not you. It’s too dangerous there for you,” Rowan said in a low voice. “Just me.”

  “I almost died the last time I went to the pyre,” Lily said, unable to believe that he was asking her to risk her life for this.

  Rowan rubbed his face. “Because you’d fought an entire battle before trying to worldjump. This time, you’d just be sending me. I know you can handle that. And if you do get burned, Tristan will be here to heal you. I’ll teach him how.”

  Lily finally understood. She winced at the slippery, nauseous feeling in her stomach. It was as if she’d jumped a little too high and it was only now, at the top of the arc, that she realized how terribly hurt she was going to be when she crashed back down.

  “That’s why you wanted me to claim them so badly. And why you didn’t want me to push Tristan away,” Lily said. “You’ve known from the start you wanted to leave me.”

  His dark eyes narrowed in anger. “This has nothing to do with what I want.”

  Lily thought of catching Tristan in the bathroom with Miranda. How stupid she’d felt for not knowing, and how small that hurt was compared with this.

  “I thought there was no way I could know anyone better than I know you. I can read your mind, and I still had no idea,” Lily said, amazed. “It’s impressive, actually. While I was planning our future you were planning how to get away from me.”

  “Lily,” he said pleadingly. “Who would I be if I walked away from everything I’ve ever believed in and lived only for you? Would I be someone worth loving?”

  Lily leaned back. “You see, that’s the thing, Rowan. Whether you stay here or go back, it won’t change me. I’ll always love you.”

  “Then let me go,” he whispered. “Because I can’t love myself if I stay.”

  Lily knew if she refused he’d have no recourse. She could keep him chained to her for the rest of his life, but even the thought was ridiculous. Rowan wasn’t anyone’s to keep. She remembered him telling Nina at the nightclub that he belonged to himself. She should have listened to him then.

  “Okay,” she said numbly. She knew she’d already lost him, anyway. “I’ll send you back.”

  “I won’t go until I’ve dealt with Carrick—or not until Tristan, Breakfast, and Una are trained,” he assured her. He could feel Lily detaching and pulling away, and it worried him. “You know I’d never leave you defenseless, right?”

  Lily breathed a sad laugh and got out of bed. She felt heavy and slow and too empty to cry. “Sure, Rowan,” she said.

  She left him sitting in her room, staring at the messy sheets. It was hours before dawn, but she knew there’d be no point in trying to sleep. More images of suffering swept through her mind. Pain. Begging. Blood. Carrick’s face loomed over hers. Lily banished it all from her mind, unable to process anything else that morning. With an aching head and a blank heart she stepped into the shower to start her day.

  * * *

  “You were up early,” Juliet said right before Lily stepped out the door to go to school.

  “Sorry if I woke you,” Lily replied, distracted. She waved at Tristan, trying to signal
that he didn’t need to get out of the car and walk her the twenty steps from the house. He was taking Rowan’s admonishment to never leave her alone literally, and Lily wondered just how annoyed she was going to get with the constant supervision over the course of the day.

  “I was already up. Guess neither of us slept well.”

  Lily noticed that Juliet was wringing her hands. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s nothing,” Juliet said, forcing a smile. “Be careful, okay?”

  “Let’s go,” Tristan called out impatiently. Lily shouldered her schoolbag and ran to his car. Something about what Juliet had said nagged at her. She stopped and looked back, about to ask Juliet in mindspeak why she hadn’t slept well, and saw Rowan watching her from the living room window. As she jumped into Tristan’s car, the only thought left in her head was that she wanted to get away from him as quickly as she could.

  As soon as they pulled away from her house, Tristan started eyeing her cautiously. “I think I can feel you,” he said, only partially freaked out. “And you feel terrible.”

  Something popped inside Lily, and huge, hot tears spilled down her face. “Rowan wants to leave me,” she sobbed.

  It had been such a long time since she’d had the luxury of being able to cry. For months she’d had to be strong no matter what she was feeling, and now that she was safe with her best friend it all came tumbling out of her in a hysterical rush.

  Aided in her explanation by the images she passed to Tristan in mindspeak, Lily told Tristan everything, starting with the Outlanders and the Woven. She recounted Lillian’s persecution of teachers, scientists, and doctors, and Lillian’s law that magic—which the Outlanders couldn’t access or afford—be the one and only way. She told him about Alaric’s rebel tribe, and how they had fought back to defend three scientists, and how that battle had ended with her and Rowan accidentally worldjumping.