Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (25 page)

“You need an exorcism? Of the whole Tower?”

“That’s one solution, and certainly what some are hoping for. But you’re the expert; perhaps you’d be able to recommend a different solution.”

“For this contract, I’d have to live in your Tower?”

“We’d provide meals and accommodations, yes. Unless, of course, you’d be more comfortable making your own arrangements, in which case we would be happy to provide you with daily transportation.”

“Your Tower’s not Allenai, is it?”

“Allenai?” The man’s pale brows raised in evident confusion. “No. Why?”

Xhea shrugged. “Not important. How much are you offering?”

The sum he named was so astronomical that Xhea could barely process it. She stood, staring—knowing she was staring, slack-jawed and stupid, and unable to do anything about it.

“I’ve heard that you can’t process the energy directly,” he continued as she gaped, “so we could make arrangements for you to be paid an equal amount in goods and services, or hold some of the funds for you to draw on as needed, or—well, I’m sure we could find a satisfactory arrangement.”

“I need . . .” Xhea choked on the words. “I need . . .”

“To think about it,” he replied. “Yes, of course. But here, let me give you this.” He reached slowly and carefully into his pocket, and drew forth what Xhea took to be a small metallic chit. A coin? No, she saw as he raised his hand toward her, the metal disc laid flat on his palm. It was more like the token that she’d stolen from Brend’s private food storage, the metal inscribed with a detailed pattern that was almost like a spell.

“Use this to contact me—I’m known as Derren. We can even arrange for you to have a tour, understand the details of the situation, before you—”

Xhea stepped forward, reaching for the offered disc. Somewhere behind her, Shai cried out. “Xhea, on your right!”

There was a yell—a harsh, inarticulate sound—

The pale-haired man, Derren, shouted, “
No
, not now!”

A man struck Xhea on her right shoulder, sending her sprawling into the road. She hit the ground hard and tried to roll; cried out as the weight of the man hit her moments later, impacting against her chest and legs. Whoever hit her cried out as well, a sharp sound of pain as their bodies connected, and he flinched away.

“Grab her,” someone was shouting. “Blight it, just grab her!”

“Not like that,” another voice said—a familiar voice, though she couldn’t place the speaker. “I told you—”

Xhea pushed herself away, and fought to gain her feet, but the impact had rattled her, knocked the breath from her chest and set her head to spinning. She stood, stumbled, and almost fell again. Where were her attackers? One on the ground, voices behind her shouting. Which way was the subway entrance?

“Xhea,” Shai called again, closer this time. “This way—toward my voice.”

She stumbled forward, gasping for air. Caught sight of Derren being held by a hunter, his perfect hair in sudden disarray. His offered token was on the ground, light glinting from its etched patterns, but there was no time to grab it. Shai was like a beacon before her, the ghost’s light calling her onward.

“That’s it. Now duck under the spell.”

Xhea dropped and rolled, feeling each of the stones of the warning X dig into her side. Suddenly she was at the lip of the stairway and rolling down, the broken tile of the stair treads sharp against her shoulders and hip and back. She caught herself after a few stairs, whimpered, and made her way down the rest. Gates barred the subway entrance, but they were old and rusting, and she’d unlocked the chain that bound them years before, only leaving it for show. Yanking away the chain, she pushed the gates open and forced herself through the narrow gap into the cold and shadow beyond.

“I’m sorry,” Shai said, glowing like a candle in the darkness. Xhea struggled to catch her breath. “I was distracted—I should have seen them coming, they just . . .”

“It’s okay.” With tentative fingertips, she cataloged her new hurts, countless bruises on her arms and legs and side. “We’re both idiots.”

Not now
, Derren had said. Not “Stop,” not “What are you doing?”

Not now—as if only the timing had been wrong. Of course his offer had been too good to be true. Hope did such terrible things to one’s sense.

She heard shouting from beyond the gate and then the crunch of heavy footsteps on the stairs. With a grimace, Xhea made her way into the subway station to stand in the shadows past the turnstiles, watching. Waiting. Listening to the footsteps grow nearer. A voice murmured but there was no reply, only the crunch of a second set of feet.
Oh yes
, she thought. She knew that voice. Knew, too, who had trashed her maintenance room in the Green Line tunnel, and used that knowledge to harden her expression and heart alike.

“Business,” she reminded herself in a whisper, watching the shadows the approaching figures cast. “It was only ever about business.”

A man arrived first: lanky and sandy-haired, Torrence looked like some City kid gone slumming and enjoying every moment of his temporary fall from grace. Equal parts charm and businessman, with one part knife-you-in-the-back, that was Torrence. Yet his easy smile was nowhere in sight as he straightened and squinted, searching for Xhea in the gloom.

His partner followed a moment later—slower, more carefully, and in perfect silence. She was short, barely reaching Torrence’s shoulder, with a hard face and a build of pure whipcord muscle. Daye had none of Torrence’s charm or easy manner, and was as likely to knife you in the throat as the back. You knew exactly where you stood with Daye—on perpetually uneasy ground—and for that reason she and Xhea had always gotten along.

“How are they following?” Shai moved restlessly like a flame in midair.

Xhea had no fear that either would see the shining ghost; both were so magic-poor that their signatures barely registered. They had turned their joint weaknesses into a business, stealing, collecting, hunting, and going places few others in the Lower City could. The jobs that had required them to go too deep underground they had outsourced to Xhea.

She shook her head in response to Shai’s question. This station might be deeper than some—but it was far from truly underground. Yet she knew, too, the pair’s normal preparations for venturing underground included both meditation and drugs, a mix that allowed them to endure the pain. She doubted that their quick pursuit had allowed for any such planning.

At the movement, the coins in her hair clinked softly. Daye stiffened and turned, her eyes meeting Xhea’s in the near-darkness.

“Ah,” Torrence said. “There you are, darlin’. And here I thought you went sneaking off rather than waiting for us.”

He knew not to call her darling, or sweetie, or the thousand other names he used to mock his marks—they’d agreed on that their very first job together. He was just trying to goad her, annoying rat that he was; and the thought was almost enough to make Xhea grin, despite everything.

“Now why would I do that?” she replied, casual and slow. “Seems like such fun to be dragged away to—hmm, which Tower hired you again?”

“Tsk, tsk. You know the rules, doll, and you know how this is going to go. Nothing personal, you understand—all past favors aside, et cetera, et cetera.” He waved a hand airily. “We have a job to do here, and it’s best for all of us if you don’t make that any harder than it needs to be.”

His voice was steady, Xhea gave him that, but sweat already beaded his forehead. She watched as a droplet trickled down his cheek, glinting in the faint daylight from above. He tried to smile—that easy, habitual gesture—but it soured, lips twisting into a pained expression.

Oh yes
, she thought.
I know how this is going to go
.

“I wouldn’t dream of making your life harder,” she said. “Business is business.” But she did not move, the turnstiles and the expanse of dirty floor between them as solid as any wall.

“Right, that’s a girl.” Torrence swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Now what I want you to do . . .” He paused and swallowed again, then raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. His fingers shook. He stared at his hand, turning it over in disbelief before suddenly balling it into a fist and shoving it into his pocket, out of sight.

Too late
, she thought. From the glance that Daye spared him, she wasn’t the only one.

He tried again, slower: “What I want you to do is . . . is to step forward . . .” His voice caught, and his hand flew to his stomach. His arms were shaking now, and his knees. With his free hand, he reached for the wall to keep from falling.

“What’s happening to him?” Shai asked.

“Just watch.”

“I . . . I can’t . . .” he said, before doubling over and retching. He trembled like a junkie in withdrawal as he reached for stair rail to haul himself upward, nearly falling as his stomach doubled him over again. Xhea listened to his fumbling, staggering steps recede.

Daye was stronger. She always had been.

Daye grit her teeth and stepped forward. Xhea didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. Just stood, calm and casual, watching with feigned indifference as the woman attempted to approach. If Daye came within five feet of her, Xhea would be down the stairs to the platform and gone—they both knew it. That didn’t stop Daye from forcing herself closer, just to prove that she could.

Step by careful step, the woman approached. Sweat broke out across her face, and her hands shook, and she took another heavy step, and another. By the time she made it to the turnstiles, it was all she could do to hold one with shaking hands and stare at Xhea unblinking. She would go no farther.

In silence, Xhea nodded—a low nod, almost a bow. When she rose, their eyes met one last time, and then Xhea turned and walked down to the subway platform, Shai at her back. Her only farewell was the sound of her footsteps, echoing into the darkness.

“Again,” Shai said.

Xhea looked down at her hands, held cupped before her, and grimaced.
Focus
, she told herself, willing the magic to come. She remembered how it felt as it rose through her, slow and calm and powerful; she remembered too how it looked, lifting from her skin like steam from a hot stone.

Her hands remained stubbornly empty.

She glanced at Shai across the cracked food court table. “It’s too early for this, Shai,” she said. The ghost simply waited, face impassive, until Xhea sighed and looked back to her hands.

The key to controlling her magic, Shai had patiently explained—time and time again—was owning the power. Magic wasn’t an entity of its own; it was a part of her, and it reacted to her thoughts and emotions and needs. Gaining control was only a matter of practice and time.

Theoretically.

Of course, after three solid days of nothing but practice, Xhea was about ready to abandon the whole thing. Shai insisted that Xhea was improving. Then again, it would have been difficult for her to become more incompetent.

She’d remained hidden underground since the disastrous near-meeting with Derren. Her pursuers had systematically blocked, booby-trapped, or set watchers around every single entrance in the Lower City core, and while she could simply use one of the tunnel entrances out in the ruins, alleviating her own boredom didn’t seem worth the risk. Her food stores were running low, but not dangerously so, and it had rained enough to keep her water stores nearly full. And while she’d heard Torrence and Daye enter the underground more than once, their foreign footsteps loud in her normally quiet haunts, neither could delve deep enough to threaten her, not now that she knew they were coming.

So she stayed in the lowest levels—the food courts and parking garages, the maintenance shafts and back hallways—attempted to smother her frustration, and practiced under Shai’s ever-patient eye. Xhea wasn’t sure how she would have stayed sane without the ghost; though it would be nice, she thought, to wake up once—just
once
—without Shai zapping her. Of course, it would have been nicer to perform the tedious repetitions in sunlight, breathing air that didn’t smell like ancient concrete and countless years of dust. It would be nicer to
understand
who these people were and what they wanted of her, rather than being forced to be a pawn in a—

And there it was: a wisp of dark rising from the palm of her right hand. It’s not that the magic didn’t respond to her; it only ever needed a spark of anger to rise.

Carefully now, she directed the power, trying to contain the swirling wisps in the bowl of her hands, willing it to become the simple sphere that Shai had asked of her. Yet it seemed to slip from her mental grasp, the magic turning and twisting not in response to her will, but evading it.

At last she let out an explosive breath and shook her tingling hands.

“Not bad,” Shai said as the darkness dissipated. “You lasted eleven seconds that time.”

“Eleven whole seconds.”

“Nearly twelve.”

Xhea snorted. “Oh joy.”

She was massaging her hands in preparation for the next attempt when she heard a scuff like a heavy door opening, and then another sound, louder. Xhea tensed and looked to the escalators that led to the mall’s main level, listening.