Girls Can't Be Knights: (Spirit Knights Book 1) (12 page)

“Ssh! It’s Drew. Outside.”

Her heart thumped so hard she thought she might throw up. She scrabbled to the wall and checked vent after vent until she found him peering through the screen. That stupid mesh needed to go so she could touch him. She punched through it and reached for him.

He smiled at her and squeezed her hand. “There’s a weird guy with a horse here. Says he’s looking for you but isn’t talking to the fosters.”

Claire’s heart leaped into her throat. He came! Somehow, he figured out to come here. “He’s my friend. Tell him where I am. Please?”

“What’s he want?”

“To rescue me. Drew, you gotta tell him where I am. I gotta get out of here. There’s someone who wants to hurt me, and this guy wants to help. I think he might adopt me, or maybe his parents will.”

Drew gulped. “Okay, but I’m coming with you.”

“No, you can’t. You have to stay here and be safe. Please, Drew. I won’t be able to think straight if you’re not safe.”

“Tell me how to find you.” His words came out strangled and tortured. “I can’t let you go again, not like last time.”

Tears stung her eyes at the thought of losing him forever. “Stay here and I’ll find you when I can. I promise I’ll come back for you.”

Drew squeezed her hand again. “Promise on their graves.”

“I promise on the graves of my parents and brother that I’ll come back for you.”

He looked away and nodded, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Okay. I’ll tell him.” He squeezed her hand again, then let go and ran off. A few seconds later, she heard his voice, muffled by distance, along with another male voice. She tucked the locket under her shirt again and stood up, too nervous, excited, confused, and angry to sit still anymore. Hunched over, she paced, waiting for him to rescue her. She heard rapping on the front door and rushed to that end of the house. The door opened. Everything took forever.

“Hi there. I’m here for Claire.”

“I don’t know you,” the foster father said, “and don’t let costumed freaks inside my house. Get off the porch and get out of here or I’ll call the police.”

Justin snorted. “Let me rephrase. I know she’s in the basement, and you can either get her and bring her to the door, or I’ll use my horse and sword to put a hole in your wall and floor to get her out myself. Your choice.”

“Mabel,” the foster father’s voice shouted, “ca—
glrk
!” Claire heard shuffling and grunting, and had no idea what to make of all the noise. Something big and heavy hit the floor and boots clomped into the kitchen.

“Ma’am, I didn’t come here to destroy your home or seriously injure anyone, but I will if you force me to. Put the phone down and show me the basement access.”

Other feet scuffed on the floor. “It’s down there,” Drew said with an unhappy sigh. “This is her suitcase.”

“Thanks.” She followed the sound of Justin’s boots to the trap door. It got heaved aside and light streamed in as Justin smiled down at her. “Claire, I came to apologize.”

She burst into tears, so happy to see him she couldn’t speak.

“Are you hurt?” He reached for her, and when she wrapped her arms around his neck, he lifted her out.

“You came,” she bawled into his shoulder, still holding on and not caring about the hard metal of his pauldrons.

“Of course I came. Can you walk?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did, and you still came anyway, and I’m sorry.”

“Claire.” He pushed her away from him and put a finger under her chin to make her meet his eyes. “It’s okay. It was my fault too. We’ll talk about it later. Right now, we need to leave. Mabel’s probably calling the cops right now because a sword-wielding freak punched her husband in the face and he’s still out cold.”

“Actually,” Mabel’s voice said from behind him, “considering how much effort you put into coming for Claire, and how happy she is to see you, I’m inclined to let you have a head start. So long as I shouldn’t be worried about an inappropriate relationship, given your apparent age and all.”

Justin grinned. “I’m happily married to someone else, ma’am. We’re hoping to take her in as a big sister for our little girls.”

Claire beamed, delighted to hear she had a home waiting for her. “Really?” Over Justin’s shoulder, she saw Drew break into a relieved smile too. Meeting his eyes, she mouthed the words “Vancouver” and “Brady farm.”

“Yes, really. We’ll talk about that later too.”

“Then Godspeed,” Mabel said with a smile, “and good luck.” She offered Claire a tissue. “I’ll handle my husband, you get going. And do up the paperwork properly as soon as you get a chance.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He pulled Claire up to her feet, took her hand, and led her out. Along the way, Claire grabbed her suitcase from Drew and rolled it along behind her. She had to pick it up to get around the foster father, still lying in the hall, then she was free of this place forever. Drew stood in the doorway and blew her a kiss. She caught it and tried not to be upset about leaving him behind.

Chapter 18

Justin

Tariel trotted along with traffic on the city streets, taking them home. Justin had one arm wrapped around Claire, holding her tight. She seemed so upset, but being locked in the basement shouldn’t have been so horrific. According to the boy, she’d only been down there for half an hour. Worse, she had a limp, and her clothes were ripped up.

“Claire, you look like hell. What happened?”

She looked up at him with needy red eyes and puffy cheeks, hints of purple coloring one side of her face. “I met my dad.”

That must have been confusing for her, and distressing. It didn’t explain the bruises, but he’d let her get to that in her own time. “Oh. Ah. How’s his Phasm doing?”

Her eyes watered and she sniffled. “It was like touching something without touching it.” She paused and sniffled more. He waited. “He said the Knights need to be stopped. But I don’t understand why he needs me to do it when he has Avery.”

His blood ran cold. A curse slipped out of his mouth, and he knew without a doubt that whatever had happened to Claire over the past two days had all been his own stupid fault. He should have kept better track of Mark’s Phasm. He should have kept in touch with Avery. He should have checked up on her last night.

Too late for any of that. Now he had to deal with it all. He also had to explain what he’d seen to Claire, and it would break her heart. For that, they needed to stop and settle in someplace where Avery and none of Mark’s pets could find them. “Tariel, take us across the river so we’re out of any Oregon police jurisdiction, and go north. Don’t go near the farm.”

The horse sped up, and he covered Claire with his cloak when they joined the freeway. They went up Interstate 5 past Vancouver, taking the Kelso exit and heading east, away from the town. At the end of a road, Tariel jumped over a hedge line and landed on damp, spongy earth. They traveled through thick trees, leaves dripping in a light ran. Justin wiped his face, soaking wet from the neck up.

Half an hour later, Tariel stopped and Justin flicked the cloak aside to let Claire see where they were. The horse stood in front of a dark cleft in a rocky hillside, one with a floor sloping up and enough space to hold a bear. Runnels of water ran down around the hole without dribbling inside it. Tariel would be stuck in the rain, but they wouldn’t.

He climbed down and put a hand out to prevent Claire from following. It almost surprised him to see her obediently stay on Tariel’s back. To be on the safe side, he pulled out his sword. The metallic ting as it scraped against the scabbard bounced off the cave walls, echoing deeper in. Peering into the gloom, he braced for a possible onrush of angry animals or ur-phasms. “Anybody in there?” His voice sent a second echo chasing the first.

When he heard a chorus of screeches, he stood away from the hole and waited. Bats streaked out, disturbed by his intrusion. One in the middle separated from the flock and dove at Claire. Of course there had to be an ur-phasm in the group. Tariel snapped at it, Claire covered her head and Justin ducked under the swarm. The ur-phasm flapped around, shrieking in unintelligible anger. It took him two swings before he caught the thing in midair and sliced it in half.

Tariel had the presence of mind to move her head so it blocked Claire’s view of the bleeding corpse. “How refreshing. It’s been a while since ur-phasms blindly attacked us.”

Justin snorted and used his cloak to clean his blade.

“What the—?” Claire looked up and her still-red eyes went wide as she watched the blood rolling down his cloak with the water. She gulped. “Um, your cloak?”

He shrugged. “It’s magic.”

“Really?” She climbed down from Tariel’s back and grabbed a corner of his cloak to rub the fabric between her fingers. “It’s not just, like, water-repellent flannel?”

“Yes, it’s really magic.” He grinned. “Your dad had one a lot like it. The sword and armor too. You’ll be able to make your own when you get to the Palace, though we’ll hold off on that until you’ve had a little time to adjust to the place.”

Claire’s eyes slid to the sword. “Can I…?”

Justin’s brow raised, then he handed the hilt of the blade to her. “Some Knights make them really fancy. I’m more of a ‘walk in the front door’ kind of guy.”

“She thinks you mean that figuratively.” Tariel’s eyes danced with merriment.

He stuck his tongue out at the horse and thanked everything in existence that no one else would ever understand her. “You’ll be able to make yours look however you want. Your father, if I recall correctly, preferred something in between. It had a fancy silver guard with a thick blade, and he etched a design along the center of the blade. No gemstones or anything like that.”

She gripped the leather-wrapped T-shaped hilt and ran her fingertips along the plain steel blade. “What happened to it?”

“It dissipated when he died. If you want a copy of it, the Palace has a memory for that sort of thing. There are guys walking around with copies of swords from a thousand years ago.”

Her eyes unfocused, and her voice came out breathy and distant. “I always thought his sword was fake. A prop.”

“He wanted to shield you from the unpleasant things he sometimes had to do.” It seemed unwise to leave a large, sharp weapon in the untrained hands of a distracted teenager for long, so he gripped the blade with his gauntlet and tugged it away from her.

Her attention snapped back to him and she narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”

Frowning, he sheathed the sword and stalked into the cave. Five paces in, he found rocks at the right height for sitting and used one. Claire followed him in, then remained standing with her fists on her hips. This time, she wouldn’t be distracted from the subject. He sighed and told her the generic things Kurt had told him about Phasms.

She softened and sat opposite him as she spoke. “So my dad will fade away at some point and make someplace better?”

Unable to look at her while he said this, he let his thumbs attract his attention. “No. I need to go back to the Palace to be sure, but I’m pretty confident the entity that looks like your father is a corrupted Phasm.”

“But…” She gulped. “How can you know that without meeting him?”

“It’s a common thing for a corrupted Phasm to think the Knights need to be stopped. A lot of them scheme and plot to destroy the Palace, or to kill Knights. It’s very likely that he’s managed to taint Avery.”

“But he could—”

“No, Claire, he couldn’t. He’s corrupt, I promise. It’s not your dad, it’s an echo of him, one that’s gotten confused and twisted. I’m going to have to hunt it down and destroy it. If I leave it, people will get hurt.”

“He said…” She wiped her face. “You’re really sure?”

“I’m sorry.” He nodded and let his shoulders sag. “It’s my fault you had to meet it. And I shouldn’t have killed that ur-phasm cat in front of you the other day. That was dumb.”

She covered her face, and her shoulders shook. For a heartbeat, he hesitated, then he shifted to her rock and put an arm around her shoulders. Leaning into him, she sobbed. He held on and let her weep for as long as she needed to. Her pain and grief, so easily expressed, made him wonder if the weight of Kurt’s death had yet to settle on his own shoulders.

When her tears subsided and finally straightened away from him, he let her decide what she wanted from him. It turned out to be nothing for several minutes. When Marie had learned about her first pregnancy, she’d wanted quiet and distance. She’d needed time to deal with it herself before letting him back in. Then, he’d thought it a rejection. Now, he knew better.

“A few days after they all died, I went to my first group home.” She stared at her feet, her voice thick. “The foster mom there told me all the rules, then she took me to a bunk bed in a big room and said I had to take the top, because it was the only one they had. All the kids under twelve slept in the same room, and the bunk below me belonged to an eleven-year-old boy.

“I dreamed that night that my dad came on his big horse and apologized for the misunderstanding and all the pain of those few days. He had an enemy who needed to believe we were all dead, and it worked, and now he could come get me and we’d all be together again, in a new house. Then I woke up in that place and I cried.

“I guess I was kind of loud. The boy below me climbed up and held on to me and told me his parents had been dead for three years already, and it would get better, and all kinds of other stuff. He turned twelve a few days later and moved into the older boys’ room. Sometimes he’d sneak back into the kids’ room and stay with me until I fell asleep.”

He stayed quiet for several moments after she finished, considering it a gesture of trust that she’d tell him something so personal. It felt like a story that demanded reciprocation, but he wasn’t ready to share his own with her. Maybe later. “You were lucky to find someone to connect with in the system.”

Claire took a deep breath and nodded. She hugged herself, then dropped her arms, then stood and wound up staring out at Tariel. “How long will we stay here?”

“Until we have a plan.” He finally pulled his chain gloves off. They hit the floor of the cave with a wet splat. Their magic had, of course, kept his hands dry. He had to think now, to decide what to do about Mark and Avery.