“It sounds bad whichever way you put it. I know Alex. Drugs fried his brain, and he thinks the whole world owes him. He would’ve tried to bargain with the Hand.” She stopped. “My brother is dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Kaldar said.
Two people had been murdered because she had been too weak to say no to her dad. Alex had it coming. But Gnome was just a neighbor. He could be mean sometimes, and he was an ornery old bastard, but he had always helped her. Now his head, with glazed-over eyes, was sitting in a wicker trunk in the corner of the cabin. She shouldn’t have taken that job. She should’ve convinced Gnome to run with them when the Hand showed up. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve . . .
The kids were looking at her, as quiet as two birds.
“Audrey?” Kaldar asked.
Alex was dead. She had prepared herself for that possibility years ago, but now it finally hit home. She would never see him again. Deep down in the hidden recesses of her being lived a tiny hope that Alex would get better, that one day he would walk across her threshold, clean and sober, grin that handsome grin, and say, “I’m sorry, sis. I was an ass. Let me make it up to you.”
The Hand’s magic had burrowed so deep into her, it finally reached that hope, and Audrey felt it die. Something vital shattered at her very core. Her own magic, so familiar and easy, rebelled and bucked inside her like a runaway horse, fighting back in self-defense. The pain almost took her off her feet.
Audrey cried out. Her magic burst out of her body in a sweeping wave. Every bag and box in the cabin flew open. Jack jumped a foot in the air. George gasped.
“Leave!” Kaldar barked, and the three boys scurried out to the front.
“I killed Gnome, and I killed Alex.” Her voice came out dull and creaky. “And more people will die because I was selfish, hurt, and stupid. I was always so smart. How the hell could I be so stupid?”
“Happens to the best of us,” Kaldar said. “How the hell did I get stuck with the Marshal of the Southern Provinces’ teenage brothers-in-law and a woman who thinks I’m ugly?”
“You have to send them back,” she said. “They will be killed, Kaldar.”
“It’s too late now,” he said. “It was already too late by the time I found them because the Hand has their scent. To go home, they’d have had to fly over Louisiana territory, and Gaston doesn’t have a lot of experience with piloting wyverns and doesn’t know how to avoid detection. The Louisianans would track them down at the border, and without me, they would kill them or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
A grimace twisted his lips. “Like I said, their brother-in-law has unprecedented access to matters of Adrianglian security. The Hand would torture the boys to gain influence over him.”
This was just getting better and better. “Then put them on a plane in the Broken and have them cross into Adrianglia through the Edge at the eastern coast.”
Kaldar sighed. “Being in the Broken didn’t protect your brother. Besides, even if I bought tickets and made them go through security, they’d escape the moment our backs were turned. They’re here because they want to be here, and they are clever enough and well trained enough to be trouble. Trust me, I’ve spent two days thinking it over, trying to find some way to get out of this blasted screwup. The kids have to remain with me. That’s the safest option.”
Audrey couldn’t handle being responsible for the deaths of two kids. In her head, it wasn’t even George and Jack specifically; it was all the Jacks and all the Georges who lived in the Edge. All the lives her stupid caper had put at risk.
Some things even a Callahan couldn’t live with. “Then there is only one solution.”
Kaldar crossed his muscular arms. “Please. I’m all ears.”
“I have to get the diffuser bracelets back.”
She had to set it right. She would fix this, whatever it took.
“Why the sudden change of heart?”
Audrey shrugged. “Who else is going to do it?”
“Me.”
She gave him a
drop-dead
stare. “Please. You got yourself Tasered and tied to a chair because you were too busy watching me eat little mints.”
Kaldar grabbed her. One moment he was there, and the next he clamped her to him in a firm grip. Suddenly, his face was too close. His eyes were pale brown, like old whiskey, and he looked at her the way a man looked at a woman when wanting her had pushed every other thought out of his brain. A little electric thrill danced through her. She was pretty sure that if a volcano suddenly erupted in the cabin, neither of them would’ve paid it any mind.
“Mmm, Audrey,” he said, his voice low and intimate. The sound of her name caressed her like velvet against her skin. Tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck.
“You should let go of me now.”
“You know what the difference between you and me is?”
“I can think of several.” Oh yes, yes she could, and what fun differences they were. And at a different time and in a different place, she might even consider exploring them, but not now.
Kaldar leaned over her. His whisper touched her ear. “The difference is, I don’t need a Taser.”
He turned, his mouth so close to hers, the distance between them suffused with heat. He looked at her, drinking her in, his gaze sliding over her eyes, her cheek, her mouth...
She felt his breath on her mouth, the first light, teasing touch of his lips on hers, then the stronger, insistent pressure of his mouth, and, finally, the heated touch of his tongue. She let her lips part, and he slipped his tongue into her mouth. They met, and his taste washed over her—he tasted of toothpaste and apricot and some sort of crazy spice, and he was delicious. He chased her, teasing, seducing, and she pretended not to like it, then teased him back again and again, enticing, promising things she didn’t intend to deliver.
They broke apart slowly. Her whole body was taut as a string stretched to its limit, and just before she took a step back, one of those differences he mentioned earlier pressed hard against her stomach.
Audrey looked straight into his smug eyes and slapped him. It was a good slap, too, loud and quick. Her palm stung.
Kaldar let her go and rubbed his face. “Really?”
“I told you no, and you still did it.” And it had been glorious. When she was old and gray, she’d remember that kiss.
Kaldar looked at her, amused and slightly predatory. All of his smooth polish had vanished, and the part that was left was dangerous, reckless, and very much up to no good. Audrey had heard about the Mire before. It was a savage place, and Kaldar had grown up there, which made him both savage and crazy. Now all his sleek manners had sloughed off, and the real man emerged. And he was hot.
He must’ve been a feral terror at eighteen, especially with that face. Now he was older and wiser, and he hid his crazy better, but it was still there, buried deep under the surface, and he had let it out for her benefit. Well, wasn’t she privileged.
Kaldar winked at her. “You enjoyed it. It made you feel alive. You were looking kind of green.”
You bastard.
“Oh, so it was a lifesaving kiss.”
“Well, if you want to put it that way . . .”
Arrogant jackass.
“Do me a favor: next time you think my life needs saving, just let me die. I’d really prefer it.”
He laughed.
She shook her head. “I’m going to the front with the boys. Don’t follow me. You and your paramedic kisses need time to cool off.”
Audrey swiped Ling off the floor and marched to the front of the cabin.
THE wyvern dipped down, banking above the clearing, which felt only slightly less thrilling than plunging down a drop in a roller coaster. Audrey clutched on to her seat. The front of the cabin offered only two seats, and the boys had graciously let her sit next to Gaston and the enormous windshield, which she now sorely regretted.
“It will be fine,” Gaston told her. “The wyverns are difficult to stop, so we’re just going to spiral down for a minute. Landing is actually kind of fun.”
Jack bared his teeth at her from his perch on top of a trunk. “He just says that because he isn’t human.”
Gaston laughed.
Audrey tried to look anywhere but at the rapidly approaching trees. “Not human?”
“His grandmother had sex with a thoas,” Jack told her.
“Why thank you, Jack.” Gaston showed him his fist. “You’re so helpful.”
“I like to be helpful,” Jack told him.
“I have strange teeth, and my eyes glow, while you turn into a lynx and run around spraying your spunk on bushes. And you’re calling me not human? That’s rich.”
George cleared his throat.
Gaston looked at him. “What?”
George nodded at Audrey.
“What is it?”
George heaved a sigh. “We have a lady in our company.”
“I’m aware of that. I am not blind.”
“He’s telling you to watch the crude language,” Kaldar said, emerging from the cabin. He stopped between their two chairs, leaning on the backs with his arms. “How does it look?”
“Looks good,” Gaston said. “We’re in the clear.”
“Take him down.”
Gaston leaned forward to a complex, polished set of levers and knobs and pushed several switches.
“So how does the wyvern know what you would like him to do?” Audrey asked.
“He’s wearing a receiver device over his spark glands, just under his chin,” Kaldar told her. “When Gaston adjusts the magic frequency of the console, the receiver sends the new signal through the glands. The wyvern is trained to recognize the specific commands.”
“Just like a dog,” Gaston told her. “He knows ‘sit’ and ‘stay.’ Except in his case, ‘sit’ takes about five minutes.”
“Why?” Audrey asked.
“He’s very large,” Kaldar said. “So for him to land, everything has to align just right: approach, speed, wind, and so on.”
“What if he decides that ‘sit’ means turn upside down in the air?” she asked.
Kaldar leaned closer to her. “Then we all die a horrible death.”
Great.
Audrey squeezed the chair’s seat, willing the wyvern not to fall out of the sky.
“Afraid of flying?” Kaldar asked.
“No, I’m afraid of falling to my death.”
“If it will make you feel better, I could hold you.”
“In your dreams . . .”
The wyvern plunged down. Audrey gasped. The ground rushed at her as if she were in the cabin of a train hurtling at full speed.
Audrey dug her nails into the seat cushion.
The trees jumped up. The cabin jerked, and the wyvern’s feet smashed into the ground, skidding. The huge reptile careened and stopped.
Kaldar leaned toward her ear. “You can breathe now, magpie.”
Magpie?
“I don’t need your permission, thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
Argh.
“Beautiful landing,” Kaldar told Gaston. “Your best thus far.”
Gaston grinned.
If that was the best, what in the world did the worst feel like?
“Let’s go,” Kaldar called. “We need to make camp. The sky is clear, so we’ll be sleeping outside today. Audrey can have the cabin.”
“That’s all right,” she told him. “I can manage. I can sleep outside just fine.”
Four pairs of eyes looked at her with a distinctly male skepticism.
“It’s only proper that you have the cabin,” George said.
“You’re the only lady,” Jack added.
“What they said,” Gaston said.
“Then it’s settled.” Kaldar pointed at the cabin. “Quilts, pillows, sleeping bags. Once we’re done, Jack, you find us something to eat, and George, you set up some sentries. Let’s go.”
Fifteen minutes later, their sleeping bags were on the ground by the wyvern. Audrey had always pictured dragons as fast and agile. But lying in the grass, the wyvern appeared barely alive, like some monolith carved from blue stone, with a blanket of green moss on his back.
Kaldar extracted a foot-long bronze box from one of the trunks and opened it. Inside, on a bed of green velvet, rested a large mechanical insect. Another gadget. The people from the Weird called them automatics.
Kaldar opened another box, pulled out a small printer with a cord sticking out of it, and plugged a camera into it. The printer whirred and spat out a picture. Audrey peered over Kaldar’s shoulder. The blond blueblood woman stared at her from the cliff. Her haughty face radiated scorn.
“You took a photo? When?”
“When we landed in the cabin. I don’t know her, and she isn’t in any of the Hand’s roster available to me. I would’ve recalled that face, but I need to identify her, and I can’t simply patch myself through the Mirror’s network.” Kaldar waved the photograph around to dry the ink. “Any magic contact will be intercepted, and given that we’re in the field, we’re under strict orders to limit our communications.”
He took the insect out of the box, flipped it on its back, and gently pressed the thorax. A bronze panel slid down, revealing a small, clear crystal. Kaldar held the photograph to it, rattled off a string of numbers, and said, “Activate.”
Tiny gears turned within the insect with a faint whir.
“Scan.”
A ray of light stabbed through the crystal from the inside. The light slid over the photograph, and the crystal went dull.
“Encode,” Kaldar ordered.
The insect’s long legs moved and trembled. The panel over its thorax slid closed, hiding the crystal. Kaldar flipped it back on its feet.
“Home base.”
The insect’s back split. Gossamer wings emerged, shook once, and blurred into movement. The insect rose from the box, hovered above the grass, and streaked into the sky.
“We’ll get an answer in a few days.” Kaldar stood up. “Gaston, you and I have to see to the wyvern.”
A moment later, Kaldar and Gaston went to get some water to mix some sort of special food for the wyvern.