Closed Hearts (10 page)

Then he found me, and his eyeless face stayed trained as he came to a stop just short of the carpeted patch of the kitchen. The way he was staring at me unnerved me, so I reached out to surge into his mind, like the jackers on the street had done, to get him to back off. When his name popped up automatically, I had to clamp my mouth shut to keep myself from blurting it out.

Dad.

In the middle of the mages’ lair, sheathed in a black contractor mask, stood my dad. I linked fast into his mind.
Dad! What are you doing?

Stay calm. I’m getting you out of here.
His thoughts roamed the room, taking in all the players: Myrtle behind him, Julian standing near me, Molloy settling in by Raf at the table and biting into an oversized sandwich.

“Either you’re a very stupid contractor,” Julian said, “who thinks strolling into a mage cell is an easy way to hire out jackwork, or you’re reckless and looking to prove something to your crew. I hope for your sake that you’re merely stupid.”

“I have jackwork for the keeper,” my dad said. I held absolutely still. “What’s her price?”

“She’s not doing business,” Julian said. “She’s a guest under the protection of my crew.”

“Name your price.” My dad’s hand flexed, like he was itching to do something besides talk. “My patron has plenty of money.” His brow twitched as he took in Molloy’s noisy eating.

“I told you, she’s not doing business.” Julian stepped so that he blocked the line of sight between me and my dad. “You’ll simply have to explain to your patron why she’s not available. Or perhaps you could persuade him out of his desire to use mindjackers for his dirty business. I suggest you go now before my patience runs out and my friend here,” he inclined his head to Myrtle, “decides to dump you in the street with your memory wiped.”

I peered around Julian in time to see my dad twist toward Myrtle, his hand in his jacket. Myrtle crumpled to the floor. I gasped, but before Julian could react, my dad had his dart gun trained on Julian’s head.

“I’m only here for the girl and the reader.” His voice froze all the air in my lungs.

“I see.” The tendons in Julian’s neck flexed. “I take it you’re not actually a contractor.” He turned his head to the side and said, “So, this is your father, then? You’re turning into a lot more trouble than I expected, keeper.”

My dad lowered his gun, his hand slack at his side. He had the same confused look that Molloy had earlier. I linked into my dad’s mind, but there was no hard marble, nothing I could jack or get hold of, no presence of Julian that I could push out of my dad’s mind. Just a swirl of jumbled thoughts wondering why he had felt it was so important to come get me.

“Stop it!” I cried, taking a step toward Julian. “Leave him alone!” He twisted around to face me and threw up his hands, taking a half step back. Until that moment I hadn’t realized I had balled up my fists in front of me, like I was about to pummel him.

His jaw worked, like he was chewing on the words he wanted to say, but he kept them inside. He lowered his hands and straightened. “Your father just shot my strongest jacker. And pointed a gun in my face. Are you planning to hit me, or can we stop now?”

I wanted to hit him more than ever, but my dad’s mind was in Julian’s grip and hitting Julian wouldn’t help things.

I forced my hands to lower and unclench. “He was only trying to bring me home.” Tears stung my eyes. Now my dad was embroiled in my mess, which just seemed to get more horrible by the minute.

“Obviously.” Julian took a breath and rubbed his face. “For the time being, your father’s lost that great urgent need he was feeling to take you home. You certainly manage to complicate things, you know that?”

My dad holstered his gun and grabbed the bottom edge of the mask, pulling it up and off, leaving his hair mussed. He stuffed the mask into his pocket and stared at the floor as he puzzled through the conflict in his head. He was trying to figure out why he was pointing a gun at Julian when an
all is well
feeling filled his mind.

I blinked back the tears. “Look, my dad is here now. You can let us go. You don’t need to send any of your mages with us. I’m sure my dad has a way out of town.”

“Oh yes. Absolutely.” Julian’s dark chuckle hollowed out my stomach. “You truly don’t understand anything about Jackertown, do you? From your hideout as a rook in the suburbs.”

His insult felt like a cage that was growing smaller and smaller.

“You know, he’s right, Kira,” my dad said casually, as if he were talking about the Cubs’ chances this year. He rolled up on the balls of his feet and bounced slightly. “Traveling through Jackertown at night is pretty dangerous. There’re lots of people out there that would probably kill you first and check your pockets second. Might be better if we stayed here. Yes, definitely better.” He nodded to himself.

Julian ignored my dad and flung his hand out toward the town beyond the cracked brick walls. “I just paraded you past half of Jackertown, letting everyone know you are under our protection. If I let a contractor come in here and whisk you away, I’ll have no end of trouble from the gangs that are waiting for a sign of weakness. There’s a balance of power here that’s very delicate, and I’m not going to upset all of that simply because your father came in here, guns blazing.”

“You said you would let us go!” The tears were close to falling.

“In the morning!” His face pinched in and he took a deep breath. “I wasn’t the one who called him here in the first place, keeper. That was your mistake.”

Molloy startled me by speaking. “You’re the one who’s making a mistake, Julian.” Molloy’s confused face had regained focus. When did that happen? Julian was controlling my dad now, so maybe he couldn’t control Molloy at the same time? “We need her to get inside Kestrel’s horror shop. The plan only works with her.”

“We’ll find another way!” Julian’s words bit the air, but he quickly calmed. “Mr. Molloy, would you be so kind as to take our reader guest to a spare bunk?”

Molloy’s face mottled a color almost as red as his hair, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he lifted Raf out of his chair as easily as Sasha had picked up Ava and threw him over his shoulder. My throat closed up, watching Molloy carry Raf away. When he reached the racks, he dropped Raf onto a vacant bed. His body lay curled on his side.

Would Julian really let us leave in the morning? He seemed to hold all the cards, and the feeling of being trapped was cutting off my air. I sucked in a couple of quick breaths. To have any hope of getting my dad and Raf home safe I needed to stay calm and not give Julian any reason to keep us here. Or make him any angrier than he already was.  

I turned away so I wouldn’t have to look at Raf’s unmoving form. My dad meandered to the kitchen and poked through the cabinets one by one. Julian sank into the chair where Raf had just been, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. The chair creaked when I eased into the seat next to him, and I gripped the rough edges of it to keep my hands from shaking.

Julian had Myrtle, whose jacking strength was unlike anything I’d ever felt, plus Molloy, Ava, and Hinckley’s puppeteering hands. I didn’t know what Sasha could do, but he was one of Julian’s mages. He had to have some special skills.

“Why do you need my help so badly?” I asked.

Julian dropped his hands from his face and spread them on the battered table. “We need a keeper to get close to Kestrel without him knowing what we’re planning. Anna would have been the perfect person, but she went missing—”

“Wait,” I said. “I thought you were breaking in to get your sister out. If you were planning on breaking into Kestrel’s facility before that—”

“Anna’s disappearance,” Julian said, cutting me off, “brought a certain urgency to our plans. But we’ve intended for some time to finish the job you left undone, back in the camp. To liberate the rest of our brothers and sisters who are being tormented under Kestrel’s needles.”

I blinked. This wasn’t only about rescuing his sister, which I could understand. I’d done the same thing for Laney, and she wasn’t even my sister. He wasn’t just after the changelings either. Julian wanted more—to
liberate
his brother and sister jackers. He was some kind of jacker revolutionary.

He took my silence for something else. “Are you now reconsidering my proposal?”

“No.” Rescuing changelings was one thing. Liberating all the dangerous jackers that Kestrel had locked up wasn’t worth risking my life, or anything else. I’d left people like Molloy behind in the camp for a reason.

The flash oven beeped as my dad put in a teapot. He watched as the light went on and it heated the water, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Even the tiny lines in the corners of his eyes had disappeared in Julian’s artificial peace.

I clasped my hands on the table and watched them turn white at the knuckles. All the risks that I had taken were catching up to me at once. It wasn’t fair for my father to fall into the mages’ net, but I could see how that would have happened regardless. There was no scenario I could imagine where my dad wouldn’t have come looking for me. Guilt and happiness for that fact wrestled around in my chest, causing my ribs to ache as if they were actually battling in there.

But Raf… if I had stopped seeing him when we moved, like I should have, he wouldn’t be here, trapped in the mages’ lair. Guilt for that stabbed my heart like a red-hot poker.

The flash oven dinged its completion and my dad dipped a teabag in the pot.

Up and down. Up and down.

I jumped up from my chair and snatched the steaming teapot from him.

“What’s the matter, Kira?” my dad said. “I thought you liked tea. Maybe your friend would like some?”

“I’ll do it.” The hot ceramic of the teapot scorched my hand, but I grasped it tighter and grabbed a chipped cup from the cabinet, then stalked over to Julian and slammed the cup and pot down in front of him. My dad drifted over and gently placed a second cup in front of me. I shuddered and slowly sank into the seat again. I stared as Julian poured the tea into my cup.

“If you’re not taking the couch,” Julian said to me, “maybe your father could make Myrtle more comfortable.”

“That’s a good idea,” my dad said. “Sorry about the dart. Not sure what came over me, shooting a little old lady like that. Least I can do is get her off the cold cement floor. That can’t be good for someone her age.” He hurried over to Myrtle, whose frail body was a heap of cardigan and flowered fabric on the floor.

Julian was examining my face again, like he was fascinated by it.

“What?” I asked. Was he looking for a way into my reptilian brain too?

“It’s so interesting,” he said. “Your brain, I mean.”

I squirmed in my seat. “Well, your sister’s a keeper, right? It’s not that strange.”

“She’s not like you,” Julian said. “I mean, she
is
a keeper—no one can jack through her mind barrier either. My father called her Diamond, because her head was so hard. No one could reach her, except me. But you…” He waved his hand in front of my face. “There’s nothing there. It’s almost like you don’t exist. You’re a ghost.” His lips curled up, like he thought he was terribly funny.

“How do you know so much about all this?”

Julian leaned back and draped an arm over his chair. “My mother and father were both jackers. They raised me and my sister to understand precisely what we were and what we would one day become.”

“Really?” No wonder Julian was so strange. Once upon a time, I had wished my dad had prepared me for being a jacker, or at least warned me that it could happen. Maybe things would have been different. Or maybe I would have turned out like Julian. “Were your parents mages like you and your sister?”

“No,” he said. “They were scientists. I spent the better part of my childhood watching them do research, studying Cerebrus images of brain waves and deciphering what it meant to be a jacker. They understood what we are.”

“Er, what is that, exactly?” I asked. “Besides mutants?”

“We’re the next step in the evolution of mankind.”

Oh boy. It was worse than I thought. Julian was a jacker revolutionary with a little crazy sprinkled on top.

“Sure,” I said. “Okay. Wait, you said your parents
were
scientists. What are they now?”

“Now they are dead.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip, not sure what to say.

“My sister and I were sixteen when they died. Car crash.” He traced the rough grain of the table with his finger. “Even jackers have accidents, I suppose.”

“Wait, your sister and you were
both
sixteen?”

“We’re twins.” His brow crinkled. “Maybe that’s the reason I can access her mind, but not yours. We have a connection—even now, I know that she’s alive. I can’t tell you how I know, but whatever Kestrel has done to her, he hasn’t killed her yet.”

I fought down the tiniest bit of sympathy welling up for Julian. “Yeah, Kestrel doesn’t kill them. Not right away, at least.”

Julian leaned forward, templing his hands again. “When you rescued those changelings before,” he said, “what sorts of things was he doing to them?”