thirty-two
Lucas texted to say they’d be here in two minutes. I texted back to say we’d handled the situation. Just meet us and we’d explain all. For now, best to leave Anita alone. As Cassandra had said, there was an advantage in letting her think we might negotiate with her.
In the alley, Cassandra and I walked in silence, lost in our own thoughts. When I fell a pace or two behind, she didn’t notice.
I kept thinking about what had happened inside. When a friend was in danger, my power returned. Did that mean some otherworldly entity was actively holding it back, saying, “Okay, we’ll let you have one shot if you really need it.” That sounded more like a deity than a demon. Mom said the Fates weren’t involved but—
“Savannah.”
I turned to see a homeless man tucked deep into the shadows of a recessed doorway. He had his head down, as if dozing. When I started to move on, though, he lifted his head and his eyes glowed with a weird light, not a demonic yellow or orange or green, just a glow.
“If you want to find your spells, dig deeper,” he said. “Too much power has made you lazy. Complacent. Dig deeper. Work harder. Fight smarter.”
“What—?”
“A war is coming. Wars need champions.”
“Savannah?” Cassandra said as she turned and she walked back. When I looked at the homeless man, he was asleep again.
Cassandra let out a soft curse. “I didn’t even detect him. My apologies. I’m not quite the bodyguard I used to be, it seems.”
“Did you hear what he said?” I asked.
She looked at me blankly.
“He was talking to me. Didn’t you hear him?”
“I only heard you, Savannah. What did he say?”
I looked back at the homeless man. “I must be imagining things. Sorry.”
We met Lucas and Troy on the street out front. Bryce hadn’t been seen since leaving his bodyguard’s apartment. Using the GPS on the company vehicle, Sean had tracked it to a nearby parking lot, where it seemed to have been abandoned. There was no signal coming from Bryce’s phone.
Sean hadn’t told the Cabal. Not about Bryce’s potential involvement and not about his disappearance. We weren’t reporting this to Benicio yet either. Our best hope was that Bryce would contact Sean for help. He wouldn’t do that if he knew two Cabals were after him.
“Sean would like to talk to you,” Lucas said when we were in the car Sean lent them.
I stiffened. I wasn’t ready for that. If Bryce was on the run, it was my fault. Even if Sean didn’t blame me for that, how did he feel knowing I’d investigated Bryce’s bodyguard when he’d removed him from our hunt?
“It’s late,” I said.
“Not that late.”
“I’m going to head back to Miami with Cass. You can handle this. We need to work the immortality angle. The best files are in Miami and you know how Cass is with research—she’ll skim and declare the job done.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Cassandra said.
“And not disputing the point, I notice.” I turned to Lucas. “I’m not great with research but I’ll do my best. Tell Sean—”
I stopped. Hadn’t I vowed to be more mature? This wasn’t more mature.
“Okay, I’ll call,” I said.
“He’d like to meet you in person.”
I hesitated.
“I’m sure a call would suffice, if that’s easier.”
I shook my head. “Ask him . . . No, I’ll ask him to meet us at the airport.”
Great plan. Except Sean got waylaid by an urgent summons from his uncle, and we couldn’t delay the jet. I suppose I should have been relieved. I wasn’t. I’d worked up the nerve to talk to him about Bryce, and now that I wasn’t going to get the chance, I realized I really wanted to have that conversation. Wanted to see him. Wanted to reassure him as much as I knew he’d reassure me.
Didn’t happen. Might not happen for a while.
The Cortez jet was waiting when we arrived. I spent the flight trying to cast spells.
Who—or what—was the guy in the alley? Talk of wars and champions made me wonder if I was under so much stress I was hallucinating. Worse yet, hallucinating lines from comic books.
But my powers had temporarily returned. I’d knocked three people to the floor. I’d killed a man with an energy bolt.
After two hours of fruitless casting, I tried a new tactic, clearing my mind and reaching deeper into myself, blocking everything out until I felt the faintest twitch of power.
That twitch spoiled my concentration—I got excited, then anxious when I couldn’t find it again. More resting. More relaxing. More focusing.
We were on our descent before I felt another flicker of power. I forced myself to relax, then thought of the easiest spell I knew.
The pen rose an inch, then dropped.
“Very good,” Cassandra said. “With practice, you might be able to poke someone in the eye with it.”
I glowered at her.
“I’m not saying it isn’t an accomplishment,” she said. “Only that you may wish to ask Jeremy for marksmanship lessons in between your spellcasting practice sessions. That earlier show of power was remarkable, but you can’t count on it.”
She had a point, of course. It was a start, but at this rate, not very helpful. Even if I did get my spells back, I needed to know other ways to defend myself.
I think that’s what the guy in the alley meant—the same message I’d been hearing from others for years. Being a supercharged spellcaster hadn’t made me invincible. It’d made me complacent. Take away those spells, and I’d felt weak and helpless. Only I wasn’t weak and helpless. I needed to remember that.
I’d insisted Lucas not tell anyone we were coming, so the only person who met us at the airport was the driver. We were walking through the parking lot at Cortez headquarters, when someone snuck up behind me and tickled my ribs. I yelped and spun to see Adam, grinning. Just grinning, like nothing had happened between us. He looked tired—face drawn and clothes rumpled—but very happy. And very pleased with himself.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hey yourself. You look like shit.”
He laughed. “Thank you. Been up half the night, but I finally found what I’d been looking for.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see that Cassandra had continued on.
“What were you looking for?” I asked.
“Later. First, we need breakfast. I’m starving.”
“I ate on the plane.”
“Too bad. You’re eating again. Or watching me eat.”
We headed for the elevator.
“And you’ll tell me about this amazing discovery over breakfast?”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“I need to get stuff ready first.”
“Ready for what?”
“You’ll see.”
I looked at him, at his grin and his glowing face, and I felt . . . guilt. I’d hurt him and it shouldn’t be this easy to fix that.
I stopped walking. “About the other day—”
He clapped a hand over my mouth. “Uh-uh. I’m in a good mood. Let’s leave the angst for later, okay?”
I peeled his hand away. “I can’t. I treated you badly. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I feel like shit.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, and you telling me it is only makes it worse because I know you’re just saying that to avoid a fight.”
He sighed, and waved me back into a corner of the garage as two guys in suits passed.
“Okay, you want to hash this out? Speed-fight, then. Five minutes. If it goes into overtime, we postpone it. Okay?”
I nodded. “I want to say—”
“Uh-uh. First shot’s mine. It’s not that you took me for granted, Savannah, it’s that you treated me like your flunky—”
“I—”
“Still my turn. I’m not a leader. Never wanted to be one. I’m happy to let Lucas or Paige make the big decisions. But if I get my choice of partner, I pick you. Because on that level—out in the field, working a case—I want a partner, not a boss. Most times, if it’s you and me, it works. But sometimes there’s a problem. You’re strongwilled and I’m stubborn.”
“I—”
“Almost done. If you insist on taking the lead, I dig in my heels. Usually you see it and you give a little and I give a little, and we’re good. But if you’re stressed, then you’re pushing hard. And if I think you’re making a bad move, then I’m pushing back hard. Eventually something’s gotta give.”
“I know.”
“So I figure the blame is fifty-fifty. You were fighting for the lead, which is always a mistake with me. But you were stressed, so I shouldn’t have gotten as angry as I did. I was just as stressed though, so it kind of . . .” He shrugged. “Blew up. I just needed a couple of days off.”
“Away from me.”
He met my gaze. “Yeah. I know you don’t want to hear that but, yeah, I needed to step back, and I think you needed it, too. Take a break before we both really lost our tempers and said stuff we don’t mean.”
“Okay.”
“Your turn then.”
I shook my head. “I don’t need it. That works for me. Step back until we cool down. I just . . .”
“You thought I was stepping back for good?”
My cheeks heated. “Yes, I have abandonment issues, as you’ve pointed out.”
When I tried to look away, he caught my hand and pulled me back to face him. “I’m not going anywhere, Savannah. Not now. Not ever.”
He moved closer as he spoke and for a second I thought, He’s going to kiss me. Oh, God, he’s going to kiss me. But he only looked into my eyes and said, “You’re stuck with me, okay?” and I nodded, my throat closing. I tore my gaze away before he saw the flash of disappointment.
He hesitated a moment, and I was about to look at him again, but then he stepped back.
“Breakfast?” he said.
I nodded and followed him out of the garage.
We shared breakfast. No, I didn’t say, “Oh, I’m not hungry,” then eat off his plate. Not my style. We got a big breakfast and shared.
I told him about Anita Barrington first. Then I told him about Bryce.
“I want to talk to Sean about it, but I want to do it in person,” I said. “It’s just so . . . awkward. I know that sounds like a lame word, but that’s how it feels. Bryce and Sean and me, we might share the same father, but it’s not a triangle relationship. It’s a straight line, with Sean in the middle, and me and Bryce at opposite ends, staying so far apart that Sean never needs to deal with both of us at once.”
“You feel that you let Bryce go because you didn’t want to give him another reason to hate you.”
I let my head hit the table and moaned. “Oh, God, I’m pathetic. I’m worried about my guardians forgetting me. My best friend dumping me. One brother hating me. The other getting mad at me. How old am I? Twelve?”
“Nah. Twenty-one. With issues.”
I lifted my head and glared at him. “Thank you so much.”
“You did the right thing with Bryce. You had nothing to hold him on and you know that. You’re just stressed out right now because of your powers and it’s making all that latent stuff bubble up. It’ll go away and you’ll be back to your usual overconfident, reckless self.”
“Really not making this better.”
“Not my job. But I can distract you. You haven’t asked about Hope’s meeting with Kimerion.”
“Right. What’d he want?”
“Apparently, just to make contact. Like seeking an audience with the princess when you want to curry favor with the king. In this case, the princess can’t put in a good word with Daddy, but Kimerion seems to think that just being nice to her will please the old guy.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s what he says. Is it true? I don’t know. It seems like a lot of effort just to say hi, so we’re being cautious. For now, that was enough to keep Kimerion working on our behalf.”
“Has he . . . said anything? About what happened to me?”
Adam took a long drink of coffee. “He’s still looking. I told him about your close encounter with Balaam. He doesn’t much like the idea that Balaam’s out there hunting for the same answers. There are some serious battles over this reveal issue on the other side. Demonic and celestial.”
“And Balaam and Asmondai are right in the thick of it. On opposite sides.”
“Meaning either could be responsible for what happened to you, despite what Balaam claims. That’s trouble. There’s no positive spin to put on stealing your powers.”
I thought of what the man in the alley said. Maybe there was a positive spin. I wasn’t ready to tell Adam that, though. I needed to work it through a little more first.
“Kimerion says no demon can just take your powers. You need to surrender them in a pact. Making a rash wish, like you did, doesn’t count. But he thinks deities might be able to. Maybe even eudemons.” That seemed unlikely. Eudemons didn’t share a cacodemon’s chaos hunger, so they had little reason to interact with mortals. “I have found cases, but it’s never clear who accepted the pact. It just happens.”
“Djinn?”
He shook his head. “They don’t cover those kinds of wishes.”
“Maybe a loophole, then.” I leaned over the table. “What if someone wanted to take my powers, and was just waiting for an excuse they could use at least until some higher power vetoed the pact.”
“Possible. Anyway, Kimerion and I are working on that and we’re getting closer to an answer. Now eat up, because I’ve got some work to do back at HQ before I show you what I’ve been up to.”