“We should’ve kept driving.”
“Then they would’ve hit the Jeep and you probably wouldn’t have made it out.” Michael paused. “Look, I know the math doesn’t work on that one: two people if they hit the Jeep versus five people at the ranch. I’m sorry, but not all of the ‘we the people’ are actually created equal. Jade is valuable, potentially vital. You’re . . . well, we’re not sure what you are. But you’re something. So, yeah, I’ll trade the two of you safe for the lives of five noncombatants.”
“Is that the sort of math they taught you in assassin school?” Lucius asked bitterly. “Or is that more of an us-versus-them Nightkeeper thing? How many humans would you trade for a single Nightkeeper’s life and still consider it a fair trade? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand?”
Although Michael’s temper had mellowed since his engagement, he still had a hell of a glare. He used it now. “Honestly? However many it took. There are eleven of us and however many billion of you. If our survival now means that you all get to see Christmas Day 2012, then fuck the math and protect the magi.” He sent a sidelong look in Lucius’s direction. “Same goes for the woman you love, mage or not. You do what it takes, whatever the sacrifice.”
Lucius let that one pass and returned to staring down at the ranch, where Rabbit was concentrating his fire white-hot on a couple of key locations. “Doesn’t he ever get tired?”
“Apparently not this week,” Michael said cryptically.
It was another ten minutes before Rabbit, satisfied with his work, doused the flames and trudged up the hill to the Jeep. Michael dug through Jade and Lucius’s road supplies and pulled out a gallon of water and Lucius’s spare clothes, and made the soot-covered, sweat-soaked mage wash and change before he let him in the Jeep. Still, the smell of smoke was thick and cloying.
Rabbit opened the passenger-side door and jerked his thumb at Lucius. “Out. I’ve got shotgun.”
Lucius bristled. “Why? Mage’s prerogative?”
“No, asshole. You grubbed through my apartment. Not that there was anything to see there other than Pervy Doughboy’s wiener pics, but still. It’s the principle.”
Discovering that he didn’t have a comeback for that, Lucius climbed into the cramped rear deck, collapsed across the bench seat, and found a semicomfortable position as Michael sent the Jeep back along the narrow secondary roads and out onto the highway. They passed a couple of fire trucks headed the other way, sirens going. Lucius didn’t know why that made him feel a little better about leaving. After that, he didn’t fall asleep so much as his brain simply shut off, unable to process anything more. It didn’t turn off all the way, though; instead it sent him dreams of dead eyes and flames, and a wall of stone that looked solid, but wasn’t.
Worse, she was becoming the thing she feared, falling prey to the pattern she despised. As she made herself coffee, she was practically counting the hours until the Jeep rolled in, even though she wasn’t sure where things stood between them now; wasn’t sure where she wanted them to stand.
“Gah!” She threw up her hands, unable to stand herself. “Go . . . do something.”
If it hadn’t been three days until the solstice, with the whole of Skywatch locked in a state of tense expectation, waiting for something to break with regard to Kinich Ahau, she might have headed out to the greenhouse. The gardens were mostly Jox and Sasha’s territory, with Michael’s
winikin
, Tomas, doing the lion’s share of the manual labor—because, he said, it kept him too tired to bust Michael’s chops nearly as much as he used to. But even so, Jade occasionally stopped in for an hour or so of dirt work, which she’d always considered damn good therapy.
Under the circumstances, though, hitting the greenhouse would’ve seemed self-indulgent. Considering that just yesterday—gods, it seemed like forever ago—she’d finally called the scribe’s magic on command, she figured she was duty-bound to hit the
Idiot’s Guide
again and see what she could do with some of the other spells.
To her surprise, she found Patience in the temporary archive, frowning at one of the computer workstations, which the
winikin
had moved into the room while the reno crews worked on repairing the archive.
Pushing aside an inner stab of frustration that she’d done more damage to Skywatch than to the enemy so far, Jade dredged up a smile. “Can I help you with something?”
The power button is the big one with the circle on it
, she thought with uncharacteristic bitchiness. But then again, she and Patience weren’t exactly tight. Even though Jade had given her a number of tips on beating depression in the weeks and months after the twins had been sent away, the other woman had ducked hard whenever Jade needed help with data entry or any of the other grunt tasks the archive occasionally required. Jade had let Patience get away with the mommy excuse while it was relevant, and the depression excuse after that, but Jade didn’t think she was the only one losing patience with the pretty blonde.
Patience looked up from the computer—which was already powered up, so at least she’d gotten that far—and smiled so warmly that Jade promptly felt like a bitch. “Yes, thanks. I’m looking for the ongoing file. Strike asked me to update it with a rundown of the Egypt trip, for good or bad.”
“Sure. That’s no problem.” Unusual, yes, but not a problem. Jade clicked her way through a couple of levels of the computer desktop and pulled up the metafile that was part of Strike’s efforts to ensure that the current Nightkeepers’ experiences would be transmitted to subsequent generations—assuming that, gods willing, there
were
future generations—far more smoothly than had been done previously.
Given that the Nightkeepers had found themselves fighting a rearguard action against things they quite often should have known about, but didn’t, the king had made a point of asking each of the magi,
winikin
, and humans in residence to chronicle his or her experiences, thought processes, strategies, and action plans as they went along. In theory that sounded great. In practice, Jade often found herself transcribing the quick vignettes that the warriors tossed off to her in passing, or patching together fragmentary e- mail missives from off-site ops. Less frequently, the others would write their own stories longhand for her to transcribe. The others almost never came to the archive to type into the raw file . . . as in, she could manually count the number of times that had happened without using her toes.
More, Jade realized as she ran through those few incidents in her head, each of those times had been less about the mage in question wanting some hands-on writing time, and more about their wanting to hide out in the archive, needing some productive- feeling peace. A glance over at Patience suggested that was the case here, as well. The other woman’s face was etched with stress and fatigue, and she toyed with the hilt of the ceremonial dagger she wore on her belt.
I can relate
, Jade thought sourly. She pushed back from the computer. “You’re good to go.”
“Thanks.” Patience got to work; within moments, her fingers were flying across the keyboard with a clatter that sounded like machine-gun fire.
Breathing past the adrenaline kick brought by the comparison, Jade snagged the
Idiot’s Guide
and carried it over to the other workstation. She found herself sneaking looks over at Patience, though. It was strange seeing her at the computer, even stranger that she didn’t look out of place. The image jarred Jade’s perception of her teammates and the way they fit together . . . or didn’t, as the case might be.
“Go ahead, say it.” Patience stopped typing and glanced over at her, eyes lit with faint challenge.
Caught out, Jade fell back on counselor mode. “What is it you think I want to say?”
“That I should get over myself, stop whining about being separated from my boys, make up with my husband, and do whatever else I possibly can to strengthen the Nightkeepers and make sure Harry and Braden have a world to live in—and lives to lead—in 2013.” Patience lifted her chin, blue eyes defiant, yet wary.
Jade grinned, comforted to find that she wasn’t the only one having a pissy morning. “Honestly? I was thinking that you type way faster than I would’ve expected. What was that, seventy words a minute? Closer to eighty?”
Patience just stared at her for a second. Then she burst out laughing, though the laughter carried an edge. “Why? Because I come off more like a fluffy ex-cheerleader than anything? Are you wondering if I took touch typing as part of an admin course?”
“Is that how you think other people see you?” The question came from both parts of Jade; the therapist framed it, but the woman saw the pain and wanted the answer.
“Don’t you?”
Questions and more questions, classic defensive-ness.
This isn’t therapy
. Patience was a teammate, though perhaps not a close friend. The two women were acquaintances at best, not just because of Patience’s lack of interest in academics, but also because she had come to Skywatch with her life already fully formed. She and Brandt had both known all along that they were the Nightkeepers of legend, that they might one day be called upon to serve. Granted, they hadn’t told each other about their true natures, leading to a hell of a surprise when they’d arrived separately at Skywatch, but still, they seemed to have gotten past that, seemed to have made a family unit within the Nightkeepers. Or was that only the surface of things? Jade wondered suddenly. She’d known there was trouble in the relationship, but had thought it was strong enough to withstand the bumps. What if she’d been wrong?
“I can’t say the word ‘cheerleader’ has ever come to mind,” she answered. “I see you as a woman who was a warrior even before she came here. You started your own dojo and made it a success, even as a young mother, which means you’re focused and driven, and you’ve got good business sense.” She turned her palms upward. “I don’t know why the typing was a surprise, except that you’ve always been so much more focused on the physical than I am. You spend most of your day in the gym, on the range, in the training hall . . . so maybe I pegged you as a girl jock, and not someone who would keep her touch typing up to speed.”
A slow, almost shy smile had crept onto Patience’s face as Jade was speaking. Now the blonde stretched her long, elegant fingers and looked at them. Nine nails were shaped and painted a pale, pearlescent pink. One, the left pinkie, was snapped off near the quick, leaving a ragged edge. “Typing’s physical . . . it’s really just hand-eye coordination, after all. In fact, it’s almost a sport.” She paused. “But thanks for seeing me as capable. Sometimes I forget that I used to be that person. Here . . .” She looked around the plain auxiliary room, though Jade suspected she was seeing all of Skywatch and the responsibilities it symbolized. “Here, I feel like a misfit cog in the calendar wheel. I’m a day that’s just slightly out of step. A week with too many hours in it, or too few.”
“I think we’ve all felt that way, some more than others.” Jade lifted a shoulder. “We just lose track that we’re not the only ones feeling it.”
Patience glanced at the computer screen, though Jade wasn’t sure what she saw there. “It just sucks, you know? There are enough of us here that it shouldn’t feel like we’re all alone.”
“Welcome to my world,” Jade said emphatically.
Patience frowned. “But I thought you and Lucius—”
“Are having sex. Great sex, mind you, but that’s it.”
“Don’t knock it,” the blonde said dryly. “Sometimes the love part really stinks.”
“There’s a song in there somewhere.”
“Very funny.”
After that surprising exchange, the women fell companionably silent. As Patience once again started her rapid-fire typing, Jade steeled herself, closed her eyes, and thought back to the night before—not the attack, but the lovemaking. She tried to remember only her own thoughts and feelings, but instead found herself locked on the look in Lucius’s eyes as he’d taken her, possessed her, branded her. Her skin heated as the magic came; her body tightened and throbbed as she remembered his hands on her, his mouth, his fingers—
Jerking herself out of the memory, she opened her eyes. But instead of the spell book, she found her attention drawn inexorably to the man who was standing in the doorway as he had the night before, leaning on the door frame, watching her.
“Lucius!” she exclaimed, hoping he didn’t see from her face how open she was to him at that moment, how much her senses lit at the sight of him, and how much she wished they were alone.
Patience’s head snapped up. “Oh!” She did something with the mouse, then very deliberately looked back at the screen and started typing again. “Just pretend I’m not here. Or tell me to get lost if you need to.”
“You’re fine,” Jade said, but her attention was locked on Lucius. “I’m not sure I can say the same about you,” she told him. “What happened?” He looked tired and run-down, and although his hair was slightly damp and he was wearing clean clothes, he smelled inexplicably of wood smoke.
“Rabbit sterilized the scene,” he said when she wrinkled her nose. He held out his hand to her. “Let’s take a walk. I need your help with something.”
“Is that a euphemism?” Patience asked without looking up.
Lucius grinned. “I thought we were pretending you had turned yourself invisible.”
Her head came up and she glanced speculatively at him. “Given that she would be able to see me but you wouldn’t, that thought has potential. Weird potential, granted, but potential nonetheless.”
Jade snorted. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
“I haven’t been feeling good for way too long,” the blonde answered bluntly. “I’ve decided it’s time for me to get over myself.”
“Fair enough.” Jade set aside the
Idiot’s Guide
, let the magic dissipate, and stood. To Patience, she said, “After the solstice, you, Sasha, and I should have a chick date.”
A shadow crossed the younger woman’s face. Jade was familiar with the look, having seen it plenty in her practice. It was one part excitement at the thought of making plans, one part,
Oh, no, I couldn’t; I need to spend time with my child/boyfriend/husband
, and one part dismay at realizing that number two wasn’t true anymore, whether because of a divorce, a breakup, or a death. Patience rallied quickly, though with a smile nowhere near the wattage of the others. “I’d like that.”
To Lucius, Jade said, “A walk, huh? Anywhere in particular?”
“Humor me. I have an idea.”