Closed Hearts (5 page)

“We’re not going to hurt you, keeper.”

Right.
Which was why I was sprawled on his couch with an electric hangover. And why was he calling me
keeper
?

“Wha…” My tongue was a useless lump in my mouth. I swallowed and tried again. “What did you do with Raf?”

The boy frowned and turned to Molloy, who tilted his head down the skeletal row of shelving. “She means the reader.”

I craned my head so that I could see Raf, but I was stiff and achy, and my vision was so blurred I could barely see past the end of the couch.

“Why did you bring the pet?” the boy asked Molloy. “We don’t need him.”

“Insurance.” Molloy folded his beefy arms, his red hair wild and flowing down to his shoulders. “I’ll not be trusting her again, Julian, and you won’t either, not if you know what’s good for you. Believe me on this.”

I rubbed my eyes and tried to think. They hadn’t killed me yet, and it sounded like Raf was alive too.
Insurance.
The word sent a shiver through me. I didn’t know what this boy Julian wanted or what Molloy’s plans were, but I was sure none of it would be good. I squinted, trying to see more in the dim light. We were in some kind of warehouse or factory. The closest rack held a mattress and crumpled blankets, like someone had slept there but not made the bed. My couch and the chair Julian sat in comprised a sort of living room. A few more makeshift bed racks stretched down the row, then rectangular shapes the size of doors dangled from a crossbeam between the columns. At the end the row opened into a larger area where several fuzzy figures moved about. Molloy said Raf was down there. That was probably also the way out.

Julian studied me again, stroking the scruff on his cheek with his long fingers. His dark hair was mussed, like he had used his fingers for a comb, and he was either deeply tanned or possibly Latino.

“Trust is something earned, is it not, keeper?” His voice rumbled smooth, almost hypnotic. Or maybe it was the electrical storm still fuzzing my head.

“Why do you keep calling me that? And what do you want with us?”

“I’m calling you what you are, Kira.” His smile glowed in the low light. “I’ve admired you for a while. Your performance with the changelings was very impressive. And letting the world know of our little secret…” He templed his fingers and tapped his lips with them, as if choosing his words carefully, then he leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Well, I can’t thank you enough for that.”

I moved away from him, pressing my back into the musty fabric of the couch. Why was he grateful for me outing jackers? Most jackers seemed to think I had ruined their lives with that piece of honesty.

He leaned back, giving me space again. “But what are you, precisely? Mr. Molloy tells me you are a keeper, which I can see for myself is true. Which is very fortunate for us.” He pursed his lips. “Perhaps not so much for you.”

I didn’t know what this hypnotic jacker wanted with me, but I needed to find Raf and get us out of here. Considering I was barely able to sit up without feeling woozy, that meant going along with whatever his game was… for the moment. Until I figured a way out of this mess.

“What is a keeper?” I asked. “And why does it matter to you what I am?”

“You are the one who started everything, and yet you don’t seem to understand.” He eyed my name badge, which still said
Elizabeth
. “Maybe you’re confused about who you are.”

I sat up straighter. “I know who I am just fine. Thanks for your concern.”

He sat back in his chair, amusement playing on his face. “A keeper is a jacker who can keep their thoughts. Their mind barrier is virtually impenetrable, at least to normal jackers. And in your case, even to me. Which is very interesting.” Again he tapped his fingers to his lips. “As much as I’d love to know why that is, we don’t have time for that. But it does make you just what we need.”

“And what is that?” I hoped to cut to the chase. If this Julian person wanted something from me, maybe I could bargain our way out of this. Or at least get Raf out of the equation and then go from there.

“I have a job that you might be interested in.”

“I’m not a jackworker.”

“No, of course not,” Julian said. “I wouldn’t expect someone like you to be jacking for something as simple as money. I knew you would be interested in much more than that, keeper, which is why I brought you here.”

“
You
brought me here?” I flicked a look to Molloy.

“Well, I’ll admit that it was Mr. Molloy’s idea,” said Julian. “Although I was entirely for it, once he confirmed the rumor about your keeper abilities. Finding you was a bit of a problem, with you rooking in the suburbs, but there aren’t many father-daughter mindguard teams in Chicago New Metro. Getting our jackworker into Mr. Trullite’s compound to conduct a little surveillance, to make sure it was you, was the easy part.”

My eyes went wide.
The gardener.

“To bring you here,” Julian continued, “I needed someone who knew how vital you were to our plans. Someone who could ensure you would consider what we had to say.” Julian glanced at Molloy. “I’m sorry Mr. Molloy took my instructions a little too literally.”

Molloy grinned like he enjoyed the process of bringing me in. “That driver was quite the helpful lad with information on your whereabouts.” A chill ran up my back. Molloy had jacked the driver, and he already had Raf. That meant Molloy knew everything: where my family lived, where my dad worked. I had no doubt that Molloy would kill them all if I didn’t do what he—or this Julian person—wanted.

My hands bunched the loose fabric of the couch next to me. “What is this jackwork you want me to do?” I asked Julian.

But it was Molloy that answered. “It seems that Agent Kestrel has a particular interest in you, lassie. And we aim to feed you to him.”

My head snapped back to Molloy. “What?”

He smirked, obviously enjoying my shock. When jacker Agent Kestrel had dropped off the grid, I was furious that he had gotten away with everything: sending innocent jackers to the camp, experimenting on changelings as young as twelve. He had slunk underground, and worse, he had taken the camp prisoners with him, including the changelings I had been forced to leave behind. The only good part was that he had Molloy too. Only here he stood, threatening to hand me over. That Kestrel would want me back was no surprise: he wanted my DNA for his research, plus I’d put three darts in him and sent him into hiding. That Molloy would be the one to hand me over was a possibility I hadn’t even considered.

It would have been better if Molloy had simply killed me in the parking lot.

“Why?” I asked Julian, my voice weak. “Why would you turn anyone over to Kestrel?” An icy trickle made my stomach seize up.

Julian stabbed Molloy with an unappreciative look. “I’d never turn another jacker over to Kestrel.” His voice gentled when he turned back to me. “And I wouldn’t ask anything of you, keeper, that I wasn’t willing to do myself. I’ll be going with you. Together, maybe we can stop that monster and free the jackers he’s holding prisoner in that torture chamber of his.”

“Wait, what?” The chill drained out of my stomach when I realized that Molloy had been joking. Or perhaps exaggerating. Or maybe not, with the smirk that still lit his face. “You’re
asking
me to turn myself in to Kestrel?”

The tiny smile was back on Julian’s face. “The last thing Kestrel will expect is to have
you
come looking for
him
, no? We can talk more about the details later. First, I need to know what you can do.”

First, I needed to get out of there, and fast. I didn’t need to know any more about Julian’s plans. If it involved me going within a mile of Kestrel, they could count me out. Whatever revenge Kestrel had planned for me was sure to be unpleasant, not to mention deadly.

But I needed to keep Julian talking until I could figure a way out of this.

“You already know what I can do,” I said. “I have a hard head. A keeper, or whatever you called it.”

“Yes, but Mr. Molloy tells me you can view at long distances like Ava, as well.” He gestured to the distant figures. My vision was coming back into focus, and I could see one of the figures breaking away from the group and striding past the door-shaped panels that dangled between the columns. Ancient industrial machinery snaked along a far wall, its metal frames dotted with large wheels and circular blades. I guessed that we were in an abandoned factory, maybe one of the ones left behind when the city depopulated under the range ordinances a hundred years ago. The building around us was cavernous, and we were dead center, at least a hundred feet from the edges.

Just far enough to be out of normal jacker range.

I made a mental note to check out what lay beyond the walls as soon as I got some reach back. A petite girl with long blond hair glided down the row. Her features were delicate, and her wide blue eyes made her look like a child, but she was probably in her mid-twenties. She came to rest next to Julian, her fine-fingered hand alighting on his shoulder.

“Kira, meet Ava,” Julian said. “Ava can reach minds much farther away than a normal jacker. She’s a mage, like the rest of us. With the exception of my burly, ill-mannered friend, Mr. Molloy. You don’t have any hidden talents you’ve forgotten to share with me, do you, Mr. Molloy?”

“I have a talent for smacking jackers who are a little too full of themselves,” replied Molloy dryly, but he made no move against Julian.

Julian just laughed. Why was Molloy—Clan leader and general thug with no compunction about killing readers and jackers alike—willing to take ribbing from Julian, a boy with delicate manners and a smooth voice? Something didn’t fit. What kind of jacker
was
Julian?

“What’s a mage?” I asked. “Sounds like a magician.”

“Well,
you’re
a mage,” Julian said. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

“I’m just a jacker.” Prior experience told me that keeping my abilities to myself was usually best.

“You’re much more than that, keeper.” He was eyeing me again, as if assessing me for some kind of test. “Mages are jackers who have extra abilities, beyond the normal jacking, like Ava here.” He rested his hand on her hip in a friendly way. I wondered if they were lovers, but it didn’t seem so. Julian had an ease about him, like he was comfortable with everyone. “She can reach for miles, reading minds in every direction, including up.” He seemed to find her ability delightful. “Didn’t you view an airplane coming in for a landing at O’Hare yesterday?”

“That was simple.” Ava’s voice was as airy as the rest of her. “Not that the passengers were thinking anything interesting.”

“I can’t reach that far,” I said. Knowing that Ava could reach farther than me made me feel more…
normal
. “I can only reach a few thousand feet, not even half a mile.” The words slipped out before I knew what I was doing. I cursed myself inwardly and resolved to keep a closer eye on Julian. He was slippery. Then I realized that my theory about being special, about being Kestrel’s genetic key for his research, might not be true after all. I thought I was unique in having extra jacking abilities, but if there were others like me, with even stranger abilities—

“She can do more than that, Julian,” Molloy said. “She can jack at those distances too. And she can fight off the gas as well.”

I bit my lip. Molloy already knew some of my abilities from our time together in the camp, but that didn’t mean I needed to share any more.

“Interesting.” Julian dropped his hand from Ava’s hip and leaned forward. “I haven’t heard of anyone able to fight off the gas. I wonder if that’s part of being a keeper. Tell me, how does it work?”

“Magic.”

A smile flashed across his face, like this was a game. “It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it? That’s okay, keeper, you can have that secret for now. As for jacking at long distances… that
is
impressive. So you have at least two abilities, three if you count jacking and viewing as separate ones. Tell me, is it true what the rumors say? That you can jack even the most hardened mind? That no one is impenetrable to the Impenetrable Mind?”

“Yes, and I can shoot lasers from my eyeballs as well.”

Julian laughed outright, then nodded to Ava. She drifted back down the row, and I squinted after her, trying to see the figures that milled by the tables at the far end. One of them started to twirl around and around, doing pirouettes. He drifted into a spot of light, and I saw it was Raf. The pravers at the far end of the building were forcing him to dance like a marionette.

I heaved myself up from the couch, startling Julian who tipped his chair backward, and I reached toward Raf with my mind. My mental strength was coming back, but I could barely brush into his mind, much less wrestle with the jacker whose presence was burrowed deep inside, making him perform this grotesque dance. Worse, my body still hadn’t recovered, and I didn’t get two feet from the couch before stumbling to my knees, grinding them on the rough carpet.

“Make them stop!” I cried, hoping against hope that Julian might actually do it.

Julian was on his feet now, leveling a cold stare at the far end of the room, and when I looked back, Raf was on the floor, motionless.

No!
“What did you do?” I forced my arms and legs to obey me and lunged toward Julian, who caught my weakened arms in his hands with ease. I fought against his hold, then jacked into his mind, but my entire body convulsed as I forced my mind into his. Horror filled me, a screaming terror that erupted out of my mouth. My mind recoiled from his, and my body rebelled as well, as if it knew it should run for its life. Julian held me fast, and I sagged, all fight fleeing from me.

“Let him go.” I was surprised how much it sounded like a sob.

Julian softened his hold on me, but didn’t let go. Which was probably a good thing, because my legs were failing me and his grip was all that was holding me up. “Keeper, your pet is fine.” His voice was warm and gentle. “The other mages won’t play with him again, I promise. He’s just… resting for now.”