Chains and Memory (15 page)

“I'm not an idiot, Kimberly,” she snapped, iron-hard. “I suspected you were hiding something from me. I've suspected for a while.”

“And that gives you the right to take a psychic sniff around my apartment?” Outrage almost strangled the words in my throat.

“You're my daughter, Kimberly. If you aren't going to talk to me, then I have to do what I can. And now, to find this —” She flung one hand out, taking in the entirety of my apartment. The traces Julian left behind weren't physical, but they were there if you looked — and she had. Auras of warmth, of intimacy. Everything we had become to one another, especially in the last week. Voice raw, she said, “You're
sleeping
with him.”

My own shields were disintegrating, fraying under the chaos of my emotions, and I knew I needed to stay controlled but I couldn't find my center. A sea of betrayal had drowned it. “Not that it's any of your fucking business, but yes, I have. I don't give an iron damn what society thinks about him, Mother. Or about me, for that matter—or have you forgotten that I'm like him now? I love Julian and I trust him. That should be all you care about, not his gods-damned Krauss rating.”

“He's the one who got you into all this trouble in the first place!”

“And he got me out of it, too,” I shot back. “If it weren't for him, I'd still be Unseelie.”

“If it weren't for him, you would still be
normal!
”

Silence landed like a stone. We stared at one another, frozen in place by words that never should have been spoken. But they had been, and she couldn't take them back.

Her mouth trembled. “Kimberly—”

“Get out.”

“Let me—”

“Let you do what? Tell me that I'm a freak now? That I'm a
changeling?
” I spat the word with all the venom I could muster. “Be honest, Mother. That's what you see what you look at me now.” I dropped what was left of my shields, seized her wrist, shoved all the inhuman force of my nature against her mind. Her own shields cracked beneath it, and I realized with a vindictive chill that I really was stronger than her now. The fear in her eyes was there for a good reason.

She wrenched her arm away from me, stumbled back a few steps. “Get out,” I said again, gathering energy around me. I'd throw her out telekinetically if I had to. “Go before I do something I'll
really
regret.”

She went. The door slammed shut behind her. Then the rush of it hit me, turning my bones to water. I dropped to the floor, shaking, and began to cry.

~

Julian didn't allow himself to pace. Toby and Marcus wouldn't have commented on it if he had, but being around other Fiain made it clear how much his old habits had slipped, after years spent living by himself among ordinary bloods. The first step toward controlling an emotion was controlling its outward signs. So he kept his impatience to himself, and didn't pace. Instead he focused on his breathing, recited a mantra in Irish Gaelic, his ritual language, and waited for his port to ring.

By the time it did, he had himself well enough in hand that he didn't even lunge for it with noteworthy speed. The call came through as voice only.

“You might as well come home,” Kim said.

The words were flat and dull with exhaustion. Julian rose to his feet and went out onto the front step, shutting the door behind him. “What happened?”

“While I was talking to Toby, my mother read the traces in the apartment. She knows about you. And she—she said—”

He listened with growing fury as the broken pieces of the story came out. Julian had known for years that Dr. Argant hardly approved of him, and Kim had made no secret of the fact that her mother was adapting badly to having a wilder for a daughter. But he'd never guessed at how deep the rejection went.

This was why the Fiain had no family but each other.

He couldn't say that to Kim. It wouldn't comfort her, not now. Instead he said, “I'll be there as soon as I can. Do you want me to stay on the line until I get there?”

“No.” Kim sniffled, steadied her voice. “No, I'll be okay. Sort of. Just—I really kind of need you right now.”

If he could have teleported himself to her side, he would have. “I'm on my way,” Julian said.

He didn't bother going back inside. Gathering his belongings could wait for tomorrow. He sent a telepathic ping to Toby as he headed down the sidewalk to the Metro.
Going back to Kim's. I'll explain later. And I'll watch out for her, I promise.

~

I was a zombie the next morning. I'd slept like shit, reliving the confrontation with my mother a hundred times over while I stared at the ceiling, then dozing off only to dream myself back in that cave in the Arboretum, the Unseelie holding me trapped and bringing that powder pipe toward my face . . .

“You could stay home,” Julian said softly.

I was sitting at the counter between the living room and the kitchen, staring vacantly at the bowl of cereal slowly turning to mush in front of me. I shook my head and made myself take a bite. “No. I mean, I could. But all I would do is sit here and—” The cereal felt like lead in my stomach. “I'd rather be at work. It'll give me something to think about.” And if I collapsed to the floor with a fairy-dust-induced aneurysm, well, there was a hospital just a few blocks from the office.

Julian drew in breath, held it, then expelled it with a grimace. I could tell he didn't want me to be out of his sight. But he also couldn't do much to help me. Not short of going into my mind and installing a block that would make me forget the entirety of last night.

Part of me was tempted to ask him to do it.

I knew what Liesel would say to that. Gods — just then I would have given my left arm to talk to her. But she was still out in the Black Forest on that retreat, cut off from all technological contact. And even with my amped Krauss rating, I couldn't boost my telepathy all the way across the Atlantic. She'd be home in a few days; until then, I would have to cope on my own.

My port beeped the arrival of a message. For one delirious instant, I thought that maybe it was Liesel, that some psychic intuition had warned her of my need and sent her home early. Before I could get up from the stool, my port flew into Julian's hand.

It roused me a little from my stupor. I'd seen some of the other Fiain at Toby's do things like that, small, casual uses of power — but not Julian.

He saw my surprise and shrugged, almost apologetic. “I broke myself of the habit before I went to Welton. Didn't want to unnerve people.”

It put an unexpected lump in my throat. Another difference between wilders and the rest of us. Between him and me. Should I start telekinetically whisking things into my hands? There was no point in
not
doing it, if everybody was going to treat me like a wilder anyway.

Liesel hadn't come home early. The message was from my mother. I almost didn't want to open it, but now that I knew it was there, wondering what it said would eat at me until I looked. Once I did, I sagged with something that wasn't quite relief, but could pass for it at a glance. “She's gone back to Atlanta. Changed her flight to this morning.”

“What does that mean for you?” Julian asked. He stood with one hand on my shoulder, a comforting weight—and a reminder that I had his support.

It meant I wouldn't have to face her again, at least not for a while. But that wasn't what he was asking. “She'd talked to most of the relevant people already. What good she could do is probably done.” I wondered how sincere that effort had been, if she couldn't even accept me as I was now. Then I told myself not to wonder, because that way lay madness. Besides, it was my
mother
. She couldn't do anything half-heartedly if she tried.

Coping with me included.

I forced myself to shower, to get dressed, to walk out the door. Julian went with me as far as the Metro and saw me onto a train. He probably would have come all the way to FAR if I let him, but I kissed him and then pushed him away with a gentle hand. “Having you babysit me freaks me out more. Go. I'll be fine.”

The ride to Arlington almost made me wish I'd let him come. I never had to worry about being crushed in rush-hour traffic; nobody wanted to bump into me, no matter how crowded the train. Now that was just another reminder of my outcast status. Julian's presence would have made the buffer zone larger, but at least then I wouldn't have been alone in the middle of it. And I would have had someone to look at, to distract me from a guy partway down the car who kept staring at me with hateful eyes.

Half the train was getting off at the Crystal City stop. I waited to let other people out, so they wouldn't have to flinch away from me, then stepped off onto the platform.

From behind me, I heard a man yell, “Hey! Changeling!”

I turned. I shouldn't have—I knew that even as I was turning. But my skull was full of cotton wool, and the thought came through too slowly.

The guy who'd been staring at me was just a few feet away. As I turned to face him, he hurled something at me.

It hit me before I could react, square in the chest, and exploded into a burst of powder. I inhaled it, involuntarily—

— and burning fire traced its way into my mouth, my nose, my throat, my lungs, setting every nerve ending on fire.

I reacted on instinct, shoving the guy away with my mind. But instead of stumbling back a step or two, he
flew
through the air, cartwheeling at a diagonal until he slammed into the coffered ceiling of the station, then dropped onto the people below.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
That powder—it was fairy dust. The thing that almost killed me—

But it wasn't killing me now. It was filling my veins with fire, and the people around me were shouting, backing away. I tried to reassure them, but my words died in a fit of coughing, and when my vision cleared they were standing there like docile zombies because without thinking I had touched their minds and swamped them under.

Something slammed into my side, and my muscles spasmed tight, dropping me to the platform. One of the station cops was aiming a stun gun at me, ready to fire again; then his weapon exploded in a burst of sparks. The fire still burned in me, cranking my gifts to heights beyond my control. I saw the future before it came, saw the Guardian come vaulting down the stairs after everyone who could had fled, dodging falling chunks from the ceiling I'd cracked; I felt him try to force a shield onto me and fail because I was too strong for him. But he spun up something I didn't recognize and flung it at me, and then my mind went white and blank, and after that the future vanished entirely.

“I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot share any information with you regarding suspects in custody.” The desk sergeant's voice got more strident with each repetition; pretty soon he was going to call security. And in a federal detention facility, security was no small matter.

Julian drew deep on his training to keep from completely losing his temper at the man. “I just need to know if she's all right.”

“As you are neither a family member nor the suspect's lawyer, I'm afraid I cannot—”

In his peripheral vision, Julian saw a tall black woman walking toward the exit. Even from behind, that silhouette was unmistakable, with the closely-buzzed cap of white hair. “Grayson!”

She pivoted so sharply, he knew she was operating in something like combat mode. Her strides ate the distance between them in no time at all. “Julian. This saves me the effort of calling you.”

The sergeant was clearly glad to see the end of him as Julian stepped away from the desk, walking with Grayson to one side of the lobby, where they could talk in something more like privacy. “What's going on? Nobody will give me a straight answer as to what happened with Kim.” Then he thought again about who he was talking to, and the bottom of his stomach dropped out.

It must have shown on his face, because Grayson put out a reassuring hand, stopping just short of touching him. “She hasn't been stripped, Julian. The stay of execution is still in place.”

For her to mention the stay, someone must have been pushing again to get it lifted. Still, Julian's pulse slowed. He took what felt like his first deep breath in an hour. “Then why are you here? You told me you aren't active.”

“I'm not,” Grayson said. “They brought me in to consult on a shield—a temporary one, for Kim's own good.” She blew out a slow breath, turning to keep an eye on the people in the lobby. “Someone assaulted her on the Metro. Threw a bag of that sidhe powder in her face. We don't think it's done anything to her on a genetic level, though that will have to wait for a Krauss test to be certain. What it
has
done is what the sidhe use it for: it's boosted her gifts. Unfortunately, the boost went far beyond Kim's ability to control it.”

Julian's hands gripped one another at the small of his back. His own voice sounded clinical in his own ears, habit taking over and keeping him steady. Information he could deal with, even if it the news was bad. Ignorance had been harder. “How long?”

“We don't know. We didn't have the chance to observe her after the original dose, so we don't even have that to compare to. There's been concern that the powder might make it out into our world; this is the first street use we know of.”

“The Unseelie,” Julian said.

Grayson shook her head. “Not directly. The assailant is human. A baseline, even. Probably a member of the Iron Shield, though we haven't confirmed that, since he's presently unconscious. Kim wreaked a lot of havoc before Chen took her down, Julian.”

“If he's Iron Shield, how did he get hold of the powder? There's no way one of them would talk to either Court.”

“We're tracing that now,” Grayson said. Then she paused, grimaced, and corrected herself. “
They
are tracing that. SIF agents and Guardians are. My only role is to make sure Kim is taken care of.”