Fate's Edge te-3 Page 25

  She blinked. “Umm, is your brother here?”

  Jack braced the door with his foot. If George started mumbling, their lives would get complicated fast. “He’s sleeping.”

  The girl licked her lower lip nervously. “Maybe you could wake him up.”

  “He’s tired. I’m tired, too.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you woke him up for me.”

  The way she stood, determined, one foot forward, meant she wouldn’t go away on her own. He had to say something mean now, or they’d be stuck here with the door half-opened, and George could start talking any moment. Jack rummaged in his brain.

  “He has a girlfriend. And she’s prettier than you.”

  The freckled girl took a step back. “You know what? Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you back. Bye now.” Jack shut the door and latched it. Phew.

  An hour passed. Another. This was taking too long.

  Finally, George announced, “Okay, I’m through. The room is empty except for the table. On the table there is a square glass case. I see it now. It’s a low-grade Karuman emotional amplifier, level three, standard cloak-chain model, known as the Eyes of Karuman. There is a book in my luggage on automatics; it should have a picture. This item was used by a cult, and it’s been banned in the realms for at least a hundred years. It doesn’t just influence emotions; it cooks your brain until you become a fanatic. Judging by the mineral crust on the lower edges of the disks, this thing has been used a lot. You need to tell Kaldar and Audrey that when the device is active, the people likely think Yonker is a prophet and will defend him with their lives. But the effect is short-lived, so he has to continuously use it to keep the congregation together. The use of the device induces euphoria, and some research suggests that the congregation will exhibit dependent tendencies.”

  “English, George,” Jack muttered.

  “. . . meaning they are addicted to the way the Eyes of Karuman makes them feel.”

  Great. Crazy addicted religious people.

  “The device consists of two golden disks two inches in diameter. Each disk has a dark blue stone, probably sapphire, pillow cut, an inch and a half in diameter. There are five glyphs on each disk, radiating from the stone out. From the top going clockwise, glyph for air, glyph for mind . . .” George launched into a detailed description of the parts.

  Jack memorized it all. Finally, George took a deep breath. “Okay. Bring me back now.”

  Jack grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Wake up.”

  Nothing. Fear shot through Jack. It was all right. He still had a backup. He had water.

  “Wake up!”

  No response. Crap.

  Jack grabbed the bottle of water, pulled the lid off, and dumped it on George’s head.

  “Anytime,” George said.

  Curse it.

  Jack slapped him. Nothing. Another slap. Nothing. Panic swelled in him.

  “It’s not working,” George said.

  “No shit.” Jack paced back and forth, like a caged tiger.

  “Don’t panic.”

  “I’m not panicking.” He didn’t know why he kept talking. It was not like George could see him or hear him.

  “Try burning me.”

  “With what, George? We have no matches.” With each second, the gulf between his brother’s mind and his body grew wider. They should’ve thought about this. They should’ve brought something, a lighter, matches, something.

  “No wait. We don’t have any matches. I forgot. Jack, you have to hurt me.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I know it sounds nuts, but it works. You have to do it, because if you don’t, I’ll be stuck in this rat. Pain, Jack. Severe pain. My body needs to send me a signal that it’s fighting for its life, or it will just go to sleep. You could try breaking my fingers. That works sometimes—”

  Screw it. Jack grasped George’s neck into an armlock and squeezed, hurting but avoiding the jugular. If he put pressure on it, George would pass out. Three seconds, and George gasped for breath. Jack kept squeezing. George’s face turned purple. Jack hauled him up. George made no effort to resist. He just hung there like a cloth doll. Jack kept squeezing. He couldn’t remember how long it took to choke a man to death. Of all the things, how could he, with his perfect memory, forget that one? Was it three minutes? Two? He tightened his hold.

  Please, George. Please.

  George’s hands clawed his arm. Jack let go, and his brother crashed to the floor and sucked in a long, hoarse breath.

  “Are you back?”

  George curled on the floor, gasping, trying to breathe.

  Jack yanked him up. “Are you back?!”

  “Yes,” George croaked. “Let go.”

  Jack dropped him, and George fell, smashing his head on the bed frame. “Ow.”

  Jack crouched on the bed. He had almost squeezed the life out of his brother. A little longer, and, one way or another, George would have been dead. Jack realized he was cold. His face was drenched in sweat. In his head, he was holding George’s dead body.

  It was over. It was done and over, and everything was well. Everything was fine.

  George grinned at him from the floor. His face was red, and a dark swollen line marked his neck. Jack held out his hand, his brother grasped it, and Jack pulled him to his feet.

  George rubbed his neck. “Shit, this hurts. Your turn.”

  Jack rolled back off his bed and pulled off his clothes. “The freckled girl came to see you.”

  “Oh, what did she want?”

  “She wanted to talk to you.”

  George grinned and winced. “Ow. My whole face hurts now. What the hell did you do?”

  “Just a standard choke hold.” Jack took a deep breath and let the Wild off its chain. The world crashed down around him. Pain tore through his muscles, grasped his bones, and twisted them in their sockets. His body whipped the floor, thrashing and kicking, lost in a confusion of agony and magic. He felt himself stretch into the distance, impossibly far, then he was back. Jack rolled to his feet. George was looking down on him from the bed.

  “You have four hours. At five, the sun begins to rise, and there is light.”

  Jack bared his fangs, panting. Four hours would be plenty.

  George opened the door, peered outside, and shut it. “The freckled girl,” he breathed. “She’s outside.”

  It had been like two hours. She couldn’t have waited there for two hours, could she? Everyone in this place was crazy.

  “I’ll go first,” George said.

  Jack crawled under the bed to hide and squinted so his eyes wouldn’t give him away. George swung the door open and stepped out. “Greetings.”

  Greetings? George, you dumb-ass.

  “Hey there,” the girl said. “Your bother said you were sleeping.”

  “I was.” George’s voice slipped into his Cursed Prince tone, calm, measured, with a touch of a blueblood accent. “He said you came by a long time ago. Did you wait here this whole time?”

  “I took a walk.”

  Bullshit.

  “I don’t blame you. The moon is so beautiful tonight.” George looked up. The moonlight spilled from the sky, bathing him, and George’s yellow hair seemed to shimmer, almost white. The freckled girl stared at him, googly-eyed. Jack rolled his eyes.

  “You must be tired,” George said. “Why don’t we sit down? I think I saw a bench somewhere.”

  “There are a whole bunch of benches in front of that building.”

  “That’s wonderful!” George’s voice pulsed with joy, as if she’d given him a present. Jack would have grimaced if he could. “You know this camp so well.”

  “My mom works in the cafeteria. I’m stuck here for the whole summer. There is nobody to talk to except the Bible-heads and the runaway kids, and all of them are assholes. It’s so boring.”

  “Not anymore, I hope.” George smiled.

  “No, I guess not.”

  They turned right and walk
ed away.

  “So tell me about yourself,” George’s voice floated on the draft. “What’s your name?”

  “Lisa.”

  “That’s a lovely name. What do you like to do?”

  “I like to read. I read about vampires a lot . . .”

  Jack sprang from under the bed and dashed into the woods. The tree trunks and branches blurred. He ran and ran, as if he had wings. In that moment, with the moon rising over the treetops, the forest was his for the taking. He was the king of everything he saw.

  Three hours later, when he crawled back into the room, having recited everything George had told him into Kaldar’s recorder, George was already in his bed. George waited until he shifted back into his human body.

  “How did it go?”

  “It’s done.” He had met Kaldar and Audrey near the Edge boundary and recited everything George told him into a recorder.

  “Good.”

  “How did it go with the freckled girl?”

  “She thinks I’m a vampire.”

  Jack snickered and fell asleep.

  “WHAT do you think?” Gaston held up two disks made of pale brown plaster.

  Audrey examined the disks. The three of them had worked on the fake disks for the last two hours. Jack’s recount only confirmed what they already suspected—stealing the Eyes of Karuman out of the camp was too risky. The wards guarding it had been rooted too deeply into the soil, and even assuming they did somehow break through the magic defenses, the camp was filled with children and armed guards. If anything went wrong during the heist, the chances of a child’s being hurt in the confusion were too great. Even Kaldar wouldn’t risk it. They had to go with the Day plan—replacing the real Eyes of Karuman with a fake copy—and hope they got out of the camp alive.

  Forging the stones for the Eyes had been easy; George had recognized them as the Weird’s pillow cut, which was just another name for the antique cushion cut, halfway between an oval and a square with sixty-four facets. Both she and Kaldar had handled enough gems in their lifetimes to reproduce the stones of the correct cut and size. Two thousand dollars at a specialized glass shop got them two chunks of glass that looked close enough to pass a cursory inspection. The disks were harder. For one, they had glyphs, and while Gaston was a wizard with clay and brush, the glyphs proved tricky.

  The disks resembled what Jack described; he was very thorough, but that didn’t change the fact that all they had to go on was a description and a picture in a book. In the picture, the disks were squares and the stones were green.

  “So?” Gaston asked.

  “They have to look like gold,” Audrey told him. Next to her, Ling watched them with her small black eyes. She and Jack’s cat had made friends finally. The cat was off hunting in the woods, but instead of going with him, Ling stuck to Audrey like glue, almost as if the little beast sensed her anxiety.

  “They will, once I magic them up.”

  The bushes parted, and Kaldar made his way into the clearing. “Got it.” He handed her a thick gold chain. Audrey held it up to the picture.

  “Close enough,” Gaston said. “Once I put this together, it will look like the real thing.”

  “I’ve been breaking my head about how we’ll make this switch.” Audrey pointed to the diagram on the piece of paper, which she’d drawn after listening to Jack’s recording. “I’m guessing he goes into the room, puts the device on, does the service, goes back, and takes the device off. The guards likely watch him the whole time.”

  “So we hit him before or after the service,” Kaldar said.

  “After won’t work,” Audrey said. “You saw him, he goes off to the back. It has to be before, when he is doing his hug and handshake bit.”

  Kaldar nodded. “Not only that, but if we let him mind-rape the congregation, and he realizes we’re up to something, they will tear us to pieces. Also, I don’t know about you, but I’m not eager to sit there and let him magic me into thinking he’s the new messiah.”

  Hitting Ed before the service was risky, they both knew it. The device was his most prized possession. He knew its weight and feel like the back of his hand. If he realized that something had gone wrong, there would be hell to pay.

  But they were in too deep to back out now. They needed Ed Yonker’s gadget to get the invitation from Magdalene, and they needed the invitation to get into de Braose’s impregnable castle and steal back the bracelet diffusers. It felt like tumbling down the stairs—once started, they couldn’t stop, and each step sent them deeper and deeper into danger.

  “I can distract Yonker,” Audrey said. “But stealing the device isn’t my thing.”

  “I’ve got it covered,” Kaldar said.

  Really. “So what, you’re a pickpocket, too?”

  Kaldar paused, as if considering something. “Check your left pocket.”

  Oh no. No, he didn’t. She thrust her fingers into the pocket of her jeans. They found empty space and fabric. Her grandmother’s cross was gone. The cross was everything. It was a reminder of the only stable time in her life; it was a symbol of her finally saying, “Enough.” She could lose everything, but as long as she kept that cross, she would be okay.

  Audrey held out her hand. “Give it back.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “Give it back right now, Kaldar.”

  Ling let out an angry raccoon noise, halfway between hiss and growl.

  Kaldar swiped his fingers over her palm. The cross lay on her hand.

  “When did you steal it?”

  “This time?”

  That bastard. “Did you take it more than once?”

  “He steals it about twice a day,” Gaston said. “Then he puts it back. It’s not personal. He does the same to everybody in the family—” He saw her face and clamped his mouth shut.

  She faced Kaldar. “Never take it again, or we’re through.”

  Kaldar raised his hands. “I promise.”

  “I’m dead serious. You take it again, and I walk.”

  “I understand.”

  She turned away and went around the wyvern, away from the two of them.

  “Audrey . . .” Kaldar called.

  She kept walking, away, into the woods, until she was far enough not to see the blue bulk of the dragon. A tree stub jutted out of the soil. She sat on it. She felt so angry, she couldn’t even put it into words.

  Ling ran out of the bushes, sat before her on hind paws, and dropped a dead cicada on her lap.

  “Thank you,” Audrey told her, brushing the insect off her jeans. “But you better eat it.”

  Ling scratched at her knee. Audrey opened her arms, and the raccoon jumped into her lap. She petted Ling’s soft fur.

  The light sound of a twig snapping underfoot came from behind her. Ling hissed and jumped down. Kaldar circled the stump and knelt in front of her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you take it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I wanted something of yours.”

  “There must be trust between partners. You broke it. When I worked with my brother and my father, I always had to guard my things. Any slip-up, and they would take what was mine and laugh in my face when called on it because I wasn’t good enough to catch them in the act.”

  “That’s not why I did it.” Kaldar took her hand. “I’m sorry, Audrey. Please smile at me.”

  She shook her head. “No. Let me alone.”

  “Audrey, seriously, what do you want me to do? You ran away like a child.”

  She squeezed the words out through clenched teeth. “I walked away so I wouldn’t have to deal with you.”

  Kaldar stood up, his hands held out. “Well, I’m here anyway. Why don’t you just be a big girl and deal with me. What are you afraid of—”

  She punched him. She did it right, turning with the punch, hitting him in the precise corner of his jaw. Kaldar’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he went down like a log.

  Audrey studied his prone body for a long moment. Her hand hurt.
She should just leave him here in the woods. But she wasn’t mad anymore—all her ire had gone out with that punch. She nudged him with the tip of her shoe.

  “Get up.”

  Slowly, Kaldar’s eyes opened. He sat up and rubbed his jaw. “Good hit.”

  “You deserved it.”

  A gray ball of fur dashed from the undergrowth, all but flying. Ling charged Kaldar. Her sharp teeth closed on his arm. Kaldar cursed in surprise, and the raccoon darted into the safety of the bushes. Ling the Raccoon Vigilante.

  “What the hell?” Kaldar stared at the bite marks on his forearm.

  “Don’t expect mercy from Ling the Merciless.” Audrey reached for him. He grasped her hand, and she pulled him up. “We better disinfect this.”

  He shook his head. “How did you manage to train her like that?”

  “Little bit of food and petting.” Audrey stepped over a fallen branch. “She is like a cat: she only does what she already wants to do. Something really bad happened to Ling when she was very young. When I found her, she was covered in blood. The vet said something bit her. I wasn’t even sure she would survive. She did, but she is a terrible coward. She’s scared of dogs, so she coughs when she smells them. She is scared of strangers, so when she smells or sees one coming, she will run and hide somewhere close to me. I’m surprised she’d gathered enough courage to bite you.”

  “She must’ve thought you were in danger,” Kaldar said.

  She wasn’t wrong. The theft of the cross hurt, but it hurt most because Kaldar had done it. She had thought that all of her inner warnings to herself and all of her careful reasoning would keep her out of trouble, but she had been wrong. She’d wanted to trust him, and a small, naive part of her desperately wanted him to be better than he pretended to be. This is the precursor of things to come, she told herself. Learn from this. He treated you as a mark once; he will treat you like that always.

  Kaldar looked at her. “Does this cross have something to do with why you stopped stealing?”

  “The cross is mine, Kaldar. Everything else belonged to our family together. My clothes, my toys, all that stuff could be sold if we needed money or left behind if we had to leave in a hurry. I learned not to get attached to any of it. They were just things. Things changed hands a lot: I stole them from their owners and gave them to Dad, and Dad would sell them. Later, Alex would try to steal my take from me and sell whatever I stole to buy drugs. But the cross was only mine. Even my idiot father understood that. And then a violent man hurt me and took it from me, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt so helpless. Angry, scared, and helpless. It was like he violated something deep inside me. That was when I realized what it feels like to have something you cherish stolen. So I don’t do that anymore.”