Seeker (32 page)

He was looking down at the grass, his head turned away from her. There was a sparkle of reflected light on his face, and Quin realized it was a tear running down his cheek. Its presence felt unnatural. It was like seeing a wild animal cry.

Shinobu brushed the tear away with the sleeve of his jacket, smearing more dirt across his face. She looked away, embarrassed.

“My mother was here the whole time. All these years,” he said, so quietly it could have been to himself.

Quin made the connection. The woman in her healing office this morning—she’d known her before, a long time ago … in Scotland.
She felt an onrush of an emotion that was a mixture of sadness and dread. She was starting to remember …

“My mother was
dead
,” Shinobu went on. “That’s what I thought. That was what he told me. Only she wasn’t. She was here with my brother. When she found out she was pregnant with Akio, she and my father made a plan to get her away. My ancestors owned property here. My father lived without her for seven years, so she and Akio would be free. He couldn’t tell me, couldn’t warn me, because Briac … But he was always trying to get us free as well, so we could be a family again.”

“Free of Briac,” Quin whispered. Briac, her father. She had seen him in a dream.
I promised myself I would kill him
, she thought.
So I could be free, and Fiona too
.

“I left my father there, dying.” Shinobu’s voice had gone hollow. Quin reached for him, but he moved away from her immediately. “One day I’ll forget to eat, forget to check my air tank, take too many pipes at the bar. I’m not a Seeker. I don’t think I’m even a person anymore. I’m a ghost waiting to die.”

They sat together in heavy silence. At last, Quin said, “I feel the same. Except maybe I’m a ghost waiting to live.”

Carefully she picked up the whipsword. The grip fit perfectly in her right hand. Without allowing herself to think, she let her wrist move automatically. The whip unfurled with a crack, and Shinobu ducked away from her as she sent it through five different sword shapes in quick succession. Then she gripped its blade, watching it melt around her fingers. She looked up at Shinobu.

“It knows me,” she said.

“Of course it knows you.”

She flicked the whipsword into more shapes—a scimitar, a rapier, a long sword. Then she grabbed its blade again, letting oily, dark puddles run over her hand.

“I was never a Seeker,” she murmured. “I was a pawn.”

He didn’t respond. He was starting to shiver again, hopefully from the cold.

“I was my father’s pawn,” she continued. She wasn’t sure if this was a memory returning, but somehow she
knew
it to be true. “I was always his pawn. And now John’s …”

Quin flicked the whipsword into the shape of a dagger, then stuck it into the grass.

She overcame her reluctance and picked up the athame to study the symbols along its haft. Then she slid it through a belt loop.

She lifted up the flat stone rod that had been concealed in Shinobu’s trouser leg.

“Lightning rod,” he told her.

“Lightning rod,” she repeated.

She slid the lightning rod through another loop, lodging the two stone weapons in her borrowed jeans like six-shooters. The whipsword got dirt on her clean hand as she pulled it from the ground, but she didn’t allow herself to wipe it off. She’d been huddled in her house on the Bridge for over a year, scared of her own shadow. Today she had saved a child and killed a man, maybe two. Perhaps the dirt could wait.

She got to her feet.

“I don’t want to be a pawn anymore.”

She clipped the whipsword to her waistband, then drew the athame and lightning rod out of her belt loops. She watched as her fingers lined up the symbols along the athame’s dials. Her heart was beating quickly all of a sudden. She was terrified, and it felt good. It felt like she was alive after more than a year asleep.

“Show me,” she said.

Shinobu stood up and moved over to her. He studied the symbols she had aligned and nodded.

“Yes—that will get you
There
. Then you need the coordinates of wherever you’re going
after
there.”

“What do I say? Teach me again.”

Shinobu stood behind her and held her arms against his own, positioning the athame and lightning rod so she could strike them together. With his body against hers, his shivering began to stop. He was so much taller than he used to be, she realized, and despite how thin he’d become, he was very strong, like a wall at her back, supporting her.

“In the beginning, there was the hum of the universe,” he whispered into her ear.

With that sentence, it was as though he’d turned on a faucet in her mind. The words began tumbling out of Quin so they were saying them in unison: “The athame finds the way, cutting through the trembling fabric to take us
There
.”

“Now the chant,” he whispered. “Say it with me.
Knowledge of self, knowledge of home, a clear picture of
 …”

“… of where I came from,”
she continued,
“where I will go …”

“Where will you go?” he asked.

His body was warm and steady behind her now, but Quin herself had begun to shiver.

“Where do you think?”

John stood in the office doorway, momentarily taken aback by the sight of his grandfather. Gavin was slumped over his antique desk, his form shadowy against the room’s immense windows, his back shaking. He was coughing, but he also seemed to be crying. The room was filled with a burning smell.

“Grandfather?”

Gavin lifted his face off his arms in a sudden jerking motion. John took a step back involuntarily when he saw his grandfather’s face. The old man’s eyes were uneven, the pupil of the right eye twice as big as that of the left, and the whites of both were completely bloodshot.

“Shut the door!” Gavin choked out between coughs. “I don’t want them to see me like this!”

John glanced both ways down the hallway first—he agreed that no one should be nearby to see his grandfather in such a state.

The old man was coughing again, but between fits, now that the door was shut, John became aware of a hissing sound somewhere in the room.

“Where’s Maggie?” John asked, moving quickly to the bar against one wall and pouring a glass of water, which he brought to Gavin. “What’s that noise?” His grandfather took hold of the glass frantically, with only his left hand, and swallowed several large gulps, coughing water all over his coat as he did so.

“Where’s Maggie?” John asked again. The hissing noise was louder now, like air rushing through a pipe. Something close by must be making the sound, but the room was shadowy in the dawn light outside, and John could see nothing as he glanced around the desk.

“You left three of my men dead in Asia, John, and it’s going to be the end of me,” Gavin croaked, and then he was coughing again. The water was already gone, some down his throat, the rest spilled.

John took the glass and walked to refill it. “Grandfather, where is Maggie? I couldn’t find her on the ship.”

“Where’s Maggie?” Gavin asked behind him, his voice rising into something like hysteria. “Where’s Maggie, you ask me? I’ve sent her away. They want to push me out, want what’s mine. Maggie included!” And then he cried out in pain.

John turned to see a bright blue flame in Gavin’s right hand.

“What are you doing?” he yelled, rushing back to the desk.

In the moment it took John to cross the room, he saw Gavin directing the flame in his right hand toward the sleeve on his left arm.

It was a blowtorch. A tiny thing—just a hand-sized canister with a pipe snaking out the top—but the small flame was an intense blue, hissing loudly now. Gavin had been concealing it under the desk. In a flash, John realized it was the torch he’d glimpsed in the office cupboard a year and a half ago, one of the items that had belonged to his father, Archie. Gavin had progressed from caressing these objects to using them against himself. There was a burning smell again, strong and acrid.

“Stop it!”

He grabbed for Gavin’s right wrist, but in a moment of wild strength, Gavin wrenched his arm away and stood up from the desk. He aimed the flame at himself again and screamed in pain as it burned through his coat.

John reached out to stop him, but Gavin flailed the torch, and John was forced to duck, feeling his face buffeted by a wave of hot air. He could now see a series of burns along Gavin’s coat sleeve. Pink, raw flesh was visible underneath. How long had he been doing this?

“Grandfather, what are you doing? You’re hurting yourself!”

“I’m not—I’m—not—” He was coughing again. “I’m focusing my mind. Archie used this, when he worked on his cars. He paid such close attention … If I can stay focused … I can see my way out.”

Gavin’s right eye drifted to the side, out of sync with his left. He was still waving the torch at John.

“My father didn’t burn himself with a torch,” John told him. “This isn’t—it isn’t you, Grandfather! How long has Maggie been gone?”

“Sent her away as soon as you left for Asia, John. Catherine said it—they’re out to kill us.
All
of them.”

In his increasing paranoia, Gavin had sent Maggie away, but in doing so he’d condemned himself. His mind was going entirely. John lunged, but the old man stepped backward, lengthening the torch’s flame and swinging it in a wide arc.

“Grandfather, if Maggie’s been gone, we need to get her back.” He reached for him again, but Gavin kept out of reach. “You can’t live without—”

“You killed my men, John—”

“I didn’t kill them. I promise you.” He grasped for Gavin and was met with another blast of hot air as the old man brandished the torch at John’s face. “There was a fight—”

“They’ll push me out now for sure …” Gavin began, and then he doubled over in a coughing fit.

John took advantage of the moment and seized him. Gavin thrust his arms up, straining to push his grandson away. He was much weaker than John, but desperation was driving him, and John didn’t want to hurt him. His grandfather held on tightly, his left hand digging into John’s flesh, his right hand rotating the torch wildly. Suddenly John felt searing pain across his forearm. The torch was on him. The flame was burning his skin.

He screamed and knocked his grandfather backward roughly. The old man fell, the blowtorch rolling down the front of his chest, burning him as it went, then clattering away across the floor. John jumped after it, switching it off, and kicking it toward the other side of the room. When he turned back, he found Gavin sprawled on the ground, small and weak and injured.

His grandfather looked up in terror. His right eye came slowly back into alignment with his left. The pupils were still mismatched, but both eyes were staring directly at John. “You too? Are you after me too, John?”

John knelt in front of him and took hold of his shoulders. “I’m not after you. This isn’t you!” He made Gavin look at him. And then he spoke the words he’d been trying to avoid for years. “We—we poisoned you, Grandfather. Do you hear me? It’s the poison making you think this way.”

Gavin scooted away from John, still staring wildly, but the meaning of what John had said appeared to sink in. Gradually his face became calmer. “What?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

The room was still dim in the early-morning light, but John could see the bright red swath along his own arm, already blistering dramatically. His whole arm, from wrist to shoulder, had started to ache. He grabbed his grandfather’s left arm and studied the row of burns there. They were bad, as were the burns down his chest. John would have to call a doctor for both of them.

He settled heavily onto the floor next to Gavin. “Your cough. That’s one of the symptoms—spasms in the trachea. Your muscle spasms and tics. Dilated pupils. The mental disorder. They’re from the poison.”

“You poisoned me?” Gavin whispered, looking devastated. “Actual, actual poison?”

“My mother,” John replied. He took a deep, slow breath, gritting his teeth against the agony now rolling up his arm in dark waves, in time with his heartbeat. He clutched the limb closer to his body. “Catherine did it, years ago.”

He felt a vibration at his hip. With his good arm, John withdrew his phone from his pocket and studied the image that had appeared on the screen. For a moment, he forgot his pain and felt a rush of hope. She had contacted him. He hadn’t thought she would, but she had. He could succeed, if he could keep Gavin sane for a little while and get his help one more time.

“Catherine poisoned me,” Gavin said quietly, staring at the floor. His voice was heartbroken. His right eye was drifting out of alignment again. “Why would she?”

“It was before she knew you well, before you became close. She—she wanted a way to control you, if you became a threat.”

“She gave me so much. I would never, ever—”

“It was a mistake, Grandfather. A bad mistake. The poison’s been stealing your mind for years. She shouldn’t have done it. She—she never thought she could trust anyone. It wasn’t her best quality.”