Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

I
told Mamie the whole story
about my fight with Ella while we ate spaghetti. Mom was working late because she had a big trial coming up, and it’d been Mamie’s turn to cook. The smell of oregano hung heavy in the air. Even if her cooking wasn’t quite as good as Mom’s, Mamie tried hard. Besides, I would’ve eaten anything after my workout—no telling how many calories I’d burned on the treadmill alone.

We sat across from each other at our rectangular kitchen table. It seated six and looked kind of lonely with just the two of us eating. Next year, it’d be me, all by myself, eating frozen pizzas or chicken pot pies. I sighed, not wanting to think about it.

“So,” Mamie said, twirling a dark brown pigtail around her finger, “Ella caught you ogling a cheerleader and laughed it off, but when she exchanged two sentences with Carter, you blew a fuse?”

I flushed. Mamie had a way of cutting right to the heart of things. “Pretty much.”

At my admission, she shook her head. “Oh, dear. I hate to say it, but you were kind of a jerk.”

“Ouch…thanks, sis.”

Mamie patted my hand. “I’m not trying to be mean. You’ve got a lot going on, and Carter’s a sore spot between you two. Ella should’ve known that. This was your first big fight, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What do I do now? I mean, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start by changing your clothes,” Mamie said. “You need to wear something nicer than a T-shirt and track pants when I take you to her house.”

My jaw dropped. “Mamie, I could just text her…if you’ll help me with what to say.”

“No, you’re not.” Mamie pointed at me like a schoolmarm. “You’re going to guy up and apologize in person.”

I rolled my eyes. Brains should never try to use slang. “It’s ‘man up,’ and there’s no way I’m going over there.”

“Yes, you are.”

Was she crazy? I couldn’t go over Ella’s house with my tail between my legs and apologize while Ella stood there with her arms crossed so tightly her hands met up in back. I shook my head. “No way.”

“You’re such a chicken,” Mamie said, looking mischievous.

Ugh, she knew I couldn’t let the chicken comment stand. She also wouldn’t give up until she got her way. “Fine. You win—I’ll go change.”

“The blue button-down shirt with the white stripes and nice jeans,” she called after me as I stomped upstairs. “Oh, and brush your teeth! I put garlic in the spaghetti sauce.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

I ran upstairs to dig out the required outfit, get dressed and brush my teeth. After I passed inspection, Mamie hustled me out to her car before I could change my mind. She insisted we shouldn’t call first, that my coming over should be a surprise to Ella.

“It’s a romantic gesture,” she said. We pulled up to a stop light. Mamie straightened out my collar, then picked lint off my jeans. “Besides, this way Ella can’t hang up on you.”

But she could slam the door in my face. Yeah, this was a good idea.

Mamie spent the rest of the drive telling me how to act and what to say. Some of her instructions were totally contradictory, like “be contrite” but “make sure she understands.” I was so confused by the time we pulled up in front of Ella’s house, I wasn’t sure what I would say beyond, “Hi. Sorry I acted like a dumbass.”

When I got out of the car, Mamie said, “Text me when you’re ready to come home.”

Before I could ask where she thought she was going, Mamie backed down the driveway and left me standing in front of Ella’s house. How was it possible that I ran with Army Special Forces but just spent the last hour getting bossed around, then abandoned, by my seventeen-year-old sister?

On the other hand, most of those same Green Berets lived in terror of Mamie Archer.

Knowing I looked like an idiot hanging out on Ella’s driveway for no good reason, I trudged to the front door. My palms were sweating like crazy when I rang the bell. What if she laughed at me? Or told me she never wanted to see my sorry butt again? This was wrong; I shouldn’t have come. I was about to text Mamie to tell her I was a chicken after all and to come get me when the lock on the front door was thrown back.

I had hoped Ella would answer, or at least her mom; Mrs. Mitchell was pretty nice. But no, a tall, thin blond with Ella’s green eyes stared at me, her nose twitching like she smelled something gross.

Alyssa was home from college. Great.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said.

“Um, hi Alyssa,” I said, desperately wishing I could tell her I’d saved her life last winter. Maybe she wouldn’t glare at me so much.

“What do you want?” Alyssa asked, not moving from the door. Her frown made her face look cold and snobby. It was a shame, really, because she was pretty when she smiled—which wasn’t very often.

I squirmed on the doormat, wondering how long I’d be raked over the coals by Ella’s big sister before I could gain an audience. I knew one thing for sure, though. Mamie was in for it for ditching me.

“Is Ella here?”

“That depends,” Alyssa said. “Why do you want to see her?”

My temper started to spark, so I forced myself to count to ten before answering. “To tell her I’m sorry for being a total ass at school today.”

Alyssa took a step back from the threshold, her eyes wide. She must not have expected me to be honest, but whatever. I’d sing show tunes if it got me inside.

She pulled the door all the way open, and there was Ella, standing next to her. Based on Ella’s expression, she’d heard the whole thing while hiding behind the door. I considered bolting into the night, but I knew I had to do this.

“Can I talk to you?” I shot a pointed look at Alyssa. “Alone?”

Ella nodded and came outside. Alyssa gave me a disapproving sniff before closing the door. It was a cool evening, but Ella didn’t have a jacket. Not wanting her to have an excuse to run off, I gave her mine and we sat on the porch swing. To my surprise, she didn’t glare at me like every other female had tonight. Instead, she looked sad.

And that was way, way worse.

Half-hesitating, I draped an arm across her shoulders. She sat stiff as a board, but didn’t shrug my arm away. I took some hope from that. Now I just had to pry the words from my throat. “I meant what I said; I’m sorry for how I acted. I was just a little keyed up today.”

Ella’s spine relaxed and she melted against my side. I kissed the top of her head, then we swung back and forth for a while, listening to the wind blow through the dry leaves on her front lawn.

“I should have told you about the basketball game,” she said, her voice muffled by my shoulder.

As much as I wanted to say “damn straight you should have,” I’d learned my lesson. “No. If you want to go to a basketball game, it’s no big deal. I’m not around much, and it’s not fair for me to put any kind of limits on what you do. You should be out having fun even if I’m out of town.”

“Out of town. You make it sound like you were on a business trip or something.” Ella lifted her head, her eyes searching mine. “I worry about you, about the strain you’re under. And with all that stuff last night about the knife saying I was some kind of distraction…what if it’s right?”

Her words hit me hard. I wished I’d never mentioned anything about the knife. I pulled Ella closer and put a hand on her cheek so she couldn’t look away. “Or maybe you’re the only thing in my life that makes any sense.”

Ella blinked fast, like she was trying not to cry. “You mean that?”

“Yes.” And it was true. Everything else was so jumbled, there were days when the only thing I knew for sure was how I felt about her. “I don’t know what I’d do without knowing I’d see you when I get home.”

She smiled. Finally. “That’s nice to hear.”

I must’ve been holding my breath, because it whooshed out just then. “Does that mean we can kiss and make up?”

Ella brushed my cheek with hers. “Oh, yeah.”

Chapter Twelve

J
anuary slogged by. Intel came
in from the Pentagon weekly, and it wasn’t good news. Women and children disappearing by the dozen in Afghanistan. Men with horribly blistered skin left dead, surrounded by bullet casings. Whispers of ghosts traipsing into villages to steal people in the night. Colonel Black put the team on alert and called a wielder’s summit in D.C. in early February to plan an assault. Until then, all I could do was wait to be called up.

I was pissed to be stuck in school. I wanted to be out doing something; what were tutors for, anyway? I could get my GED just the same as going to class every day, but Mom flat refused to let me drop out until the Army had no other options. Uncle Mike backed her up, too, saying they weren’t ready to mobilize and that I should just stay home until the summit. So here I was, sitting at home studying isosceles triangles when I could be at the Pentagon with the team.

Making matters worse, my control issues with the knife weren’t getting any better. Oh, sure, I could
hold hands
with Ella, even kiss her as long as it was quick. But I clearly had less say in the whole deal than I wanted. Frustrated, I decided to take matters into my own hands and practice feats of mind control with the knife. Yeah, not my most brilliant idea; the knife didn’t like backtalk.

Despite a dozen failures, I decided to try again the Saturday before the wielder’s summit. While sitting cross-legged on my bed in case I passed out—because that was a real possibility, one I’d found out the hard way—I laid the knife on my comforter and focused on its gleaming white handle. I imagined fissures in the smooth bone surface, weaknesses that would let me break me free of its control. Once I found my Zen, I started.

Step one: Close my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Slow my heart rate.

Step two: Locate my link to the spirit, that one small spot that connected my brain to hers.

Step three: Separate my thoughts from the knife.

Step four: Fight the pain as the knife-spirit kicks my butt for daring to suggest that I might like to have majority control of my own mind.

I tried to push her away, to make the spirit understand this connection was on
my
terms, and she pushed back until I gagged.

I forced my stomach to be still. My mind. Mine.

Ours.

After puking up all my lunch into the trashcan I’d put beside the bed just in case I needed it, I spent the rest of the day sleeping off a blinding headache. Maybe Jorge would have an answer when I saw him next week; if not, I had a feeling I’d be at Tinkerbell’s mercy for a very long time.

The summit finally arrived and Mom let me check out of school to travel to D.C. The flight was decent, but when we landed, the plane smacked down on the runway and came to a jarring stop. Uncle Mike had once told me rough landings usually meant a former Navy pilot was in the cockpit, feeling the need to hit the deck hard enough to catch the cable before we fell off the end of the carrier.

I collected my backpack and duffel from the overhead bin. It never failed to surprise me that the Army had enough pull to get me a permit to carry the knife on the plane. Sure its metal storage box was sealed with safety tape, but something about the bland-looking permit made the TSA agents stare at me funny, halt the security line to send the knife through the X-ray by itself, then wave me through the scanner without a word.

As I struggled up the aisle of the plane, the knife gave a bright buzz in its box that tingled down my arms through my backpack straps. Not sure what that was about, I headed out of the terminal, fumbling with my cell phone to call Mike for a ride.

An Army sergeant in full Class B uniform—navy trousers, button-down shirt and tie paired with shined black shoes—stood just outside the security line, holding a sign that said “Archer.”

Not like that was conspicuous or anything.

I made my way over, but didn’t salute. “I’m Archer.”

The guy’s eyes widened but he quickly regained his military nonchalance. “Yes, sir.”

Sir…I’d been upgraded. “You my ride?”

“Yes, sir.”

He led me outside to a black SUV and put my luggage in the back for me. Someone was already sitting in the backseat.

I turned to the sergeant. “Should I sit up front?”

“No, sir. The captain would like to speak with you.”

Captain who? I climbed into the passenger side of the backseat. A man, maybe late twenties, with fierce green eyes, rust-colored hair and pale, freckled skin turned my way. He wore a jungle-print battle dress uniform—green camo—with a captain’s insignia sewn on the collar and his boots were scuffed, with frayed shoelaces. Whoever this guy was, he’d seen action recently.

“Major Ramirez said you were young,” the captain said in a slow southern drawl inconsistent with his intense stare.

“Um, and who are you?” I asked. Weird how so many people knew tons about me, and I had no clue who they were.

“Someone like you.” He smiled and pointed to his thigh pocket, showing me a black handle with white markings—one of Jorge’s knives. “I’m Captain Parker, and I’ve waited quite some time to meet you, Mr. Archer. I’ve heard a few stories.”

“Those stories have anything to do with me acting possessed from time to time?” I asked.

Parker laughed. “Well, I didn’t figure it was polite to say that outright, but yes.”

I laughed, too. “I’ve never heard a member of the team use the word ‘polite’ let alone keep from saying exactly what was on their minds. No filters, you know?”

“I’m not typical of most of the team. My mother is a manners coach at a school for proper young ladies in Alabama. She about had an apoplexy when I joined the military.”