Drowning in Fire (27 page)

And this marked the third time. This excited her. She needed stronger eyes on the Airs. Aya’s growing friendship with Keko had given her hope that she’d be allowed a peek into the Chimeran culture, and she knew Griffin would openly welcome a chance to meet with her eventually, but had both those opportunities been destroyed now? What then?

“Wait in here.” The female Air directed Aya into a windowless room in the center of the false church but did not enter herself. She nodded toward a closed door on the opposite wall, set with a mottled glass window that gave the vague impression of bodies moving behind it. “He’ll let you know when he’s ready.”

She left, closing the door, and Aya heard a subsequent click. On her last visit, they hadn’t locked her in. There was no place to sit.

A burst of raised voices, all male, maybe three in number, made her jump, her head swiveling in the direction of the mottled glass door. The voices ramped up to overlapping shouts, their words indistinct but the anger very, very clear. Something crashed to the ground, followed by a heavy thump against a wall. More crashes, more shouts, then the door flew open.

A male Air stomped out, and not just any Air.
Him
. The one with the curly hair and pale blue eyes. The one she saw last time she’d been called here. The one Nem had mentioned.

Inside the office, the premier and Aaron stood in the middle of a disaster. A bookcase had been overturned and something glass lay in shards on the wood floor.

“Go do your penance, Jase,” the premier growled.

The curly-haired Air halted in the center of the room, his back to the door. Fists balled at his sides, he closed his eyes and snarled back, “The name’s Jason now.”

“Ha. Changing your damn name doesn’t absolve you. You still owe me. You still need to pay for
her
.”

Jase—Jason’s—eyes opened, the intense stare spearing straight ahead, straight through Aya, even though she stood not three feet away.

“Fuck you.” Razors laced his whisper. Aya felt them slice across her human skin.

“Reno,” said the premier, his cowboy boots crunching on glass as he went to the door and gripped its edge. “Get it done.” The door slammed with such force the entire wall vibrated.

Jason drew a deep breath, his chest rattling as it expanded and collapsed. Then he blinked at Aya, shook his head, blinked again. “Who the hell are you?”

An earthquake of odd sensations shook Aya’s body and mind as she stood under Jason’s powerful scrutiny, anger flushing his skin and a terrible loss clouding his eyes. She did not understand what she was feeling, how to parse the peaks and valleys of the effects of such direct attention.

“We’ve met before,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “No, we haven’t.”

She shook her head as a strange heat crept up from her chest, traveling the length of her neck to settle in her cheeks. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Last time I was here I merely . . . saw you.”

Last time he’d been standing, dead-eyed, just behind the premier, looking like he’d been sentenced to prison. That was when he’d taken over for Madeline, so perhaps that’s exactly what had happened. Aya had never realized before that the Airs used their mind-wipers as a form of punishment.

Jason inched closer, and though most people were larger than her, right then he seemed impossibly tall, as wide as a mountain. His gaze traveled over her face and hair, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Who
are
you?”

Clearing her throat, she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I am Aya, Daughter of Earth, here to see the premier on Senatus matters.”

“I see.” He nodded, the back of his teeth making a terrible grinding noise. “You don’t look how I thought you would.”

“What do you mean? What were you expecting?”

He let out a hollow laugh. His eyes made a general sweep of her body. Different than how Nem had looked at her, however. Jason’s study was critical and detached. Still, standing there wrapped in the suit of woven grass that suddenly felt too constrictive, a new kind of warmth spread out to her extremities. Never one to cower, though, confident in her decision to evolve, she stared back.

“A Child of Earth?” he finally said with a faint snort. “Dreadlocks. Hairy legs. Bells on your wrists and ankles.”

None of that made sense to her and she made a mental note to look it up.

“But you’re none of that. Are you?” As his voice turned distant, his wandering gaze settled on her hair—still not entirely human, she knew, with its color, or lack thereof, and the way it tended to move on its own—growing, curling, wrapping around her neck and body.

With another sudden jerk and shake of his head, he threw off whatever ghosts clung to his thoughts and leaned closer. Filling her vision with his face.

“Don’t worry,
Senatus
,” he spit, “I’ll do what you fucking want me to.”

Aya opened her mouth—to ask what he meant or to defend herself or to deny she had anything to do with whatever it was the premier wanted of him—but Jason kept talking, his tone spiraling into the same ugly one he’d used on the premier.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “but you tell him that after this one, I’m done. This is the last mind I fuck with.” Swerving around her with the force of a gale, Jason lunged for the exterior door, rattling the knob so hard Aya thought he might rip it off. “Nancy.” He pounded on the wood. “Let me the fuck out.”

Aya only stood there, knowing she could not reveal herself to this man. Knowing she could not tell him that she was just as abhorred by the Senatus practice of mind scrambling as he was.

Jason glared at her and she had to clamp her lips shut to keep from begging him to give her time. To hold on until Griffin succeeded and the two of them could start to steer Senatus thinking and practices in different, better directions.

Nancy, the Air who’d met her at the gate, unlocked the door and Jason fled the waiting room so fast Aya wondered if he’d used his magic to ride the wind. In his wake, she stared at the space he’d once consumed, still able to see his shape. Still able to sense the force of his emotion. Evolution had brought that to her, that blessing and that curse of being finely in tune with what others—Primary or Secondary—felt. And there was no doubt over what she’d just experienced.

Jason
hated
her.

 • • • 

How much time passed before the door to the premier’s office opened, Aya couldn’t say. The hole in her gut had eaten much of her present awareness. Her mind was spinning away, thinking about the human who would suffer so terribly at Jason’s will because they probably inadvertently saw something they shouldn’t have. Hating how, yet again, all she could do was stand here and watch it happen.

Was that what this was about? This midnight summons? Did the premier want to see her about Jason or a new threat coming out of Reno?

“Aya.” The premier’s voice hadn’t lost its snarl.

She turned, giving him a slight inclination of her head and noticing with consternation how his icy eyes pierced her. “Premier.”

Aaron stepped out of the office, beckoning her inside. Too late she remembered how human skin was susceptible to sharp edges. She stepped on a small shard of broken glass and hissed. A sliver of red leaked out from her sole.

The premier didn’t notice. In fact, he stood in front of his desk, arms crossed, hair dented by the cowboy hat now lying upside down in a corner. Staring.

“I know a lot more about you now,” he said, his voice chilly, “don’t I?”

She swept a long look around his office, glancing pointedly at the ceiling where the huge Christian cross sat atop the false church. “And I you.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, or if he did, he chose to ignore her. “How you move about under the earth. How you can change your shape. Quite unusual. Quite fascinating. It’s why you always insisted the Senatus meet outside. In the dark. In remote places.”

There’d been reasons why the Children had kept their true nature and their history secret since the dawn of man: to avoid reactions like this one.

So this was what the summons was about, to confront her about the Children. Maybe to use her indiscretion—done in heat and haste—against her like Nem had done. Worry started to worm its way into her consciousness. Worry that the Father would learn what she’d done, and worry that the premier would feel threatened and cut her loose from the Senatus when she was so close to finally putting her plan into motion.

“Yes, that’s why,” she replied, because it would be disadvantageous to admit otherwise, or to give him any further information.

“But what I don’t get”—he rubbed his forehead in a way that even she knew to be exaggerated—“is why the
fuck
you would go against your own directive.”

Give away nothing.
“Why do you think I did that?”

His hand came away from his face, one finger stabbing into the air between them. “Why make such a grand, dramatic entrance the other night, put massive demands on the Senatus, outline your own terms, and then blow everything to pieces?”

A strange, buzzing sensation filled her head, making her feel dizzy and nauseous. “I think you need to explain yourself.”

“
I
need to explain?” He was shouting now. “There is one thing the Senatus is about, and that’s solidarity. Consensus. You know this. And yet you rise up out of the ground and declare the Earth in danger if Keko so much as breathes on this Fire Source. You cut a deal to allow us to go after her and hopefully keep the peace with the Chimerans. You know you’ll have a chance at her if Griffin fails. And you attack her anyway.”

Dread and rage twisted through her, but she drew herself up as tall as the diminutive body would allow. “I did no such thing.”

The premier shook his head in disbelief and turned to rest both palms on the edge of his desk. “Trust is a tenuous thing, Aya. Especially among Secondaries.”

All this human emotion warred inside her—fear and anger, concern and confusion—and she didn’t know how to keep them separate. Or even if she should. “You forget. The Children of Earth are the ones who approached the Airs and the Chimerans to begin the Senatus many centuries ago. We are invested in its success and don’t want to compromise it. Now tell me what happened.”

He inhaled long and slow through his nose as he regarded her. “Got a call from Griffin a couple hours ago. Pissed off as all hell. Said a Child of Earth attacked them when they were nowhere near the Source. Something about a tree coming to life.”

“Keko. Is she—”

“Alive.”

Aya held in the massive sigh she desperately wanted to release.

The premier pushed off the desk. “Griffin wants assurances he’ll have his chance. Then you can have yours. As you originally agreed.”

She raised her voice, indignant. “Absolutely. I gave no other orders to contradict what was said around the bonfire. I’ve kept my word.”

The premier eyed her hard. “Then which one of you diggers didn’t?”

She was just starting to get a hold on the concept of Aboveground insults, but she was pretty sure the premier had just handed her one. There was no time to dwell on it now. Fix the problem in Hawaii first, or else smoothing over a little name-calling would be the least of her issues.

There were two possibilities behind the attack on Griffin and Keko. The Father, who could have given an order to another Child of Earth behind her back. Or Nem, guardian of the Source, who’d been so clearly angry with her on the Aran Islands.

The Father wasn’t that crafty.

She had to find Nem. Fast.

FOURTEEN

An hour later and Keko still hadn’t come back. It was all the time Griffin was willing to allow before he knew he had to go after her. Before he began to think that maybe she actually had memorized enough of the star map to try to find her own way. Before he started to fear that the Son of Earth had found a way to come back.

Which scared him more? Her trying to give him the slip again? Or another threat to her safety?

Locking up the room, he pounded down the porch steps and headed for the row of connected shops a quarter mile up the road. The rain had transformed into giant drops that hit him like bombs.

At home in San Francisco, when he listened to Ofarian issues, he had to be prudent about which emotions he displayed, and when and how. But here, alone and worrying about Keko after all that had happened between them—and all that had shifted and changed in the last few days—he threw away his guards and let himself
feel
.

She tended to do that to him.

The row of shops were lined with a boardwalk out front, a closed ice cream parlor capping one end, a long-shuttered theater in the middle, and a bar at the far end. A tourist trinket shop and an artist’s studio were dark for the evening. The pub was open, however, acoustic guitar music trickling out to mix with the rain, and Griffin headed toward it.

A blast of heat and fire and magic assaulted his mind and took over his senses.

The whole front and one side of the bar were windows, all thrown open to the salty air, the eaves long and deep enough to keep out the wet. The place was small, the short bar to the right with a glaringly lit kitchen just behind it, a ledge and stools lining the two walls of windows. Three old men sat at the bar with glasses of beer.

Keko sat at the ledge overlooking the ocean, bare feet hooked over the rungs of her stool, one finger toying with the straw in her can of ginger ale, and two wrapped hamburgers sitting untouched at her elbow.

She’d told him once, sitting in that hotel room bed, that she didn’t drink. She didn’t like how it stole her awareness. That said a great deal about her, now that he thought about it. The watchful warrior, always at the ready.

She hadn’t ditched him again. And she was safe.

Keko didn’t even notice him until he slid a hand onto the ledge near the burgers and said, “Hey.”

She blinked up at him in surprise. “Hey.” Peering into the corner where a neon clock hung above a faded, curling nineties-era beer poster, she asked, “What time is it?”

“Not that late. But you left over an hour ago. I didn’t know what to think.”