Jack leaned a little harder.
George growled.
“You know I can lie here all day. It’s not hurting me at all. How long do you practice every day? Two hours? You should practice more. Don’t struggle now. You might get your hair dirty.”
“Hrgff.”
“What’s that?” Jack eased the pressure.
“In the Edge, I would’ve killed you by now.”
“With your flash, yes. Don’t kid yourself. If this was for real, you would’ve broken your neck in the fall.”
A desperate high-pitched squeak jerked Jack’s attention to the end of the parking lot. Straight ahead, the five guys crowded around a tree growing from a square flower bed. The thicker kid with brown hair held a rope. Another squeak. Jack focused on the end of the rope coming from beneath the hedge on the other side. The kid on the left looked back at him and George, said something, and laughed.
A fist landed on his ear. Jack ignored it and sat up. George sat up next to him.
The thicker kid jerked the rope and pulled, dragging a small gray shape into the light. It was bedraggled and filthy, its fur smeared with some sort of mud or paint.
Jack forgot where he was.
The little cat shook and hugged the ground, trying to break free of the rope. The asshole on the other end kept pulling, dragging the limp body across the asphalt.
Red flooded the world. Jack exhaled rage through his nose. Suddenly, he was on his feet and walking, and he didn’t remember how he got there.
Next to him, George caught up with him, reached out, and snapped an antenna off the nearest car.
The world snapped into crystal clarity, the smells too sharp, the sounds too loud. Jack floated through it, light as a feather.
“Don’t kill anyone,” George said.
The bastards noticed them and turned toward them.
“You two done making out?” a tall blond kid asked.
The little cat lay on its side. He wasn’t moving. A long stripe of bright green paint ran along his back, gluing his fur into small, sharp spikes. They had painted the cat. Those fucking bastards had painted the cat and then tortured it.
The Wild snarled inside him. He strained, pushing it back into its den.
“I’ll make it simple,” George’s voice rang out next to him with icy precision. “Give us the cat, and you can go.”
“Man. What a fucking dumb-ass.” The blond kid snorted. “Get the hell out of here, fags.”
“What’s with the clothes? Are you from some sort of fag cult?” the asshole with the rope asked.
“No, man, they’re from a Renaissance fair.”
“Maybe they need the cat for their fag sacrifice!”
The Wild retreated into its lair and stared at him with glowing eyes.
“Yeah, be careful, they might pull some crazy satan shit on you, man.” The bigger dark-haired kid laughed.
The smaller kid on the right raised his hands and crossed his index fingers. “Stay back, the power of Christ compels you!”
Jack looked at George. “Now?”
“Ooh, I am so scared.” The blond kid raised his hands. “So scared . . .”
“Now,” George said.
Jack charged.
OUTSIDE, the California sun hit Kaldar. He kept walking, down the path and out into the street, through the open iron gates, past the cream-colored wall bordering the rehab facility. He turned left, heading for the parking lot. He’d left his stolen vehicle there. Men in pristine black shoes did not walk; they drove expensive cars, and so he’d procured one on an off chance someone might see him arrive. And now he needed one to depart quickly because a man in his outfit would draw attention jogging down the street.
He had to find Audrey Callahan. Kaldar imagined a female version of Alex Callahan. Ugh. Likely an addict as well. If Callahan was to be believed, she hated him, so she wouldn’t have helped them with the heist out of love or from a sense of obligation. No, their father must’ve dangled money or drugs before her, and she took it.
Family was the last line of defense. No matter what Kaldar had done or would do, he could walk through the gates of the New Mar house and be welcomed with open arms, food, and friendly proposals to rearrange his face. They would lament and bellyache and whine, but in the end, crossbows and rifles would come off the walls, and the Mars would ride out to fix whatever he’d wrought.
The Callahans couldn’t stand each other. Alex despised his sister and thought his father was a sucker. Since Audrey returned the hate, using her brother’s safety as leverage was out of the question.
Audrey wasn’t an obnoxiously common name, and the list of PI firms in Olympia had to be somewhat limited. It shouldn’t take him too long to find her . . .
Ahead, a vicious snarl ripped through the afternoon. It sounded inhuman, but he’d heard it before. That’s how William sounded when he cut through people like they were butter. Kaldar sped up.
A scream of pure terror followed. A changeling here in the Broken? William could cross back and forth, so it was plausible . . . Was someone else from the Weird or the Edge here for Callahan?
Ahead, an adolescent boy, around fifteen or sixteen, stumbled out from between the hedges bordering the entrance to the parking lot. His nose was bloody, and both of his eyes sported red puffy bags that promised to develop into spectacular shiners. Red whip marks crossed his forearms and neck.
The boy stared at Kaldar, looking but not seeing, his eyes two pools of fear, and took off down the street, limping. Kaldar broke into a run.
A moment, and he turned the corner into the parking lot. Four adolescent kids rolled on the ground, clutching various limbs as a result of a savage beating. In the center of the carnage Jack stood, his arms raised in a trademark South Adrianglian style. Next to him, George brandished a car antenna.
Damn it all to hell.
The bigger of the boys moved. George let him rise halfway and whipped the car antenna. Right, left, right. The kid tumbled down.
George glanced up, saw Kaldar, and grabbed Jack’s shoulder. The two kids froze.
He had to get them away from the damn parking lot before someone called the cops. Escape first, explanations later. Kaldar moved past the prone bodies to the first decent older vehicle he saw and slid the long narrow strip of metal from his sleeve. The boys followed. A second to pop the door open, another three seconds to hot-wire the car, while Jack slid into the back, clutching a small cat that looked dead, and George hopped into the shotgun seat.
Another second, and they pulled out of the parking lot and merged into the current of cars, heading out of the city toward the boundary and the safety of the Edge.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He had the two wards of the fucking Marshal of the fucking Southern Provinces in a stolen car. An entire continent away from where the two of them were supposed to be. In the Broken. Where they had beat up some Broken children. Well, if those children weren’t broken before, they were surely broken now.
Fate, that bloody, vicious, fickle bitch. Sometimes she loved him, and he could do nothing wrong. And sometimes she stuck a knife in his back.
Kaldar adjusted the rearview mirror until Jack’s face swung into view. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“They were torturing the cat,” Jack said.
That explained volumes and nothing at all. “Who else knows you’re here?”
“Why are you asking?” George asked.
“So I would know if I could kill you and dispose of the bodies.” That ought to shake them up. For all he knew, Declan was scouring the countryside looking for these precious darlings and breathing fire. How the hell was he going to get out of this?
In the rearview mirror, Jack gathered himself. Kaldar was suddenly aware that sitting with his back to the boy left his neck vulnerable.
“You won’t kill us,” George said from the front seat. His voice trembled slightly.
“Why not? Cerise is mildly fond of you, but I have no emotional attachment to either of you. I could slit your throats and toss you into a ravine. Nobody would know. You can be sure I would be sad and express my condolences to your sister at the first opportunity.”
George paled and stared straight ahead. No tears, no hysterics. Some sort of calculation was taking place behind those blue eyes. At least the boy was thinking. That was usually a positive sign.
“We told Lark that we had stowed away on your wyvern. She will wait until Declan and Rose panic, then tell them where we are.”
It wasn’t enough that Fate had stabbed him with a knife. No, the blade had to be poisoned. Kaldar feverishly sorted through the possible outcomes. How in the world would he explain this? And it would have to be explained and justified. Instead of wondering where his brothers-in-law had disappeared to, Declan would know that some distant, no-good cousin of his best friend’s wife had taken them to the Democracy of California, the place that made Convict Island seem like a walk in the park.
He would need Richard, Kaldar decided. His older brother and Declan were cut from the same cloth. The two of them would sit down, sip some wine, share stories of their siblings’ regrettable behavior, commiserate with each other’s family issues, and in the end the Marshal of the Southern Provinces would see the light and perhaps condescend not to murder him.
The two boys sat completely quiet. Idiots. “I’m waiting for an explanation,” Kaldar ground out.
“Jack might be sent to Hawk’s,” George said. “William promised to intervene on his behalf.”
The light dawned. “But he’s gone on a mission, and the two of you are trying to buy some time at my expense.”
“Yes.” George nodded.
Perfect. Just perfect. “I understand why Jack would run away. Why are you here?”
The kid looked at him as if he were stupid. “I’m his brother.”
Of course. Why did I even ask?
“How much time do we have before your brother-in-law loses his grip on his temper?”
“At least a week,” George said. “I informed them that we had a weeklong camp at College. It’s an annual tradition, and since I told them about it, they won’t have any reason to doubt it.”
“And why would that be?” Kaldar made a left turn off the highway onto a country road. Two more miles, and they were in the clear. “Is it because you never lie?”
“No, it’s because I only lie when I know I won’t get caught.”
Good answer. Kaldar considered his options. He could load them on the wyvern and take them back, which would take two days there and two days back. Too long. He had no reason to trust Alex Callahan. For all he knew, the junkie was calling his supposedly hateful sister right now with a warning. If he delayed, he risked losing Audrey. Not to mention that Lady Virai would be less than pleased. In fact, after she was done with him, they wouldn’t even be able to harvest his organs.
He could load the kids on the wyvern and send them off with Gaston while he made his own way up the coast to Washington State. Going through the Edge on his own was out of the question—it was a wilderness. Going through the Weird was too dangerous—the Democracy of California consisted of a collection of baronies only loosely organized into a country. Each baron had his own private army at his disposal. They disliked their neighbors, but they hated outsiders. That left him with traveling through the Broken in a stolen car, ready to be pulled over by every highway patrolman with half a brain.
He could also just take the kids with him. It was the only solution that still permitted him to do his job. There would be hell to pay, but he would worry about it when the time came.
Kaldar leveled a heavy stare at George. “Tell me why I shouldn’t load you on the wyvern and send you back to the loving arms of your sister?”
“We can be useful,” George said.
“How? You think that you’re smarter than everyone around you, and he”—Kaldar pointed at the backseat—“he can’t control himself and starts breaking legs if someone looks at him for half a second too long. What I do requires perfect timing, resolve, and cold temper, none of which you’ve demonstrated so far.”
George blushed.
“The fact that you’re turning pink, like a happy bride, tells me you aren’t well suited for my line of work.”
The blush died. “We can be useful.”
“Nobody pays attention to us because we’re kids,” Jack said from the backseat. “I can go anywhere. I can climb a wall, listen to the conversation, and tell it back to you word for word. George can animate a mouse, send it to a locked room, and tell you what’s inside.”
“We can speak three languages fluently,” George said. “We’re trained in self-defense, we know the protocol, and we’re motivated.”
“By what, exactly?” Kaldar asked.
“We’re Edge Trash,” George said. “No matter how perfect we are, we’ll never be accepted completely. I can never hold a political post like Declan, and if I could attain it, I wouldn’t have the kind of influence he does.”
Kaldar glanced at him. Now that was interesting. “What makes you think that?”
George looked back and held his gaze. “Declan’s uncle tried to enroll me into Selena University. It’s the best school in Adrianglia. I scored in the top one percent of nine hundred applicants. I was denied admission. They know that Declan can pay for my school. They just don’t want the likes of me on their admission scrolls.”
Welcome to the real world, kid. The Weird ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
For all of their reforms and talk of equality, pedigree still mattered in the Weird.
“Jack can at least do the military, but he has to get his temper under control. I can’t,” George said. “I’m fast and strong, and I can fight well; but I don’t have the endurance. I’ve worked on it for two years, and a ten-mile run leaves me nearly dead. I can’t put on a fifty-pound backpack and march thirty miles in one day. I will never be good at it. But I could be good at this.”
“The Mirror doesn’t care if we’re Edge Trash,” Jack said. “It doesn’t care that I’m a changeling, either.”