Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (14 page)

“But if Lord Cordus is …”

I caught Gwen’s tiny head-shake out of the corner of my eye and stopped speaking.

I’d been about to ask if the barrier would start weakening if Cordus were dead. I guess that was a no-no in front of Yellin. I swallowed the question, then looked down at my beer bottle and tried to banish the mental image of Cordus’s brown and gold eyes gone all flat and empty.

Yellin looked up at me. “You are wondering, Miss Ryder, if a sustained working will persist after its worker’s demise. The answer is yes. Workings that are made to last will last until broken. The power to maintain them is invested at their making. They do not require upkeep.”

His eyes were aimed my way, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing me. He was just staring into space. The look on his face was beyond worry, beyond grief. I thought it might be despair.

I understood, then, why Yellin, alone among the estate’s Seconds, was still with us. Cordus was everything to him. Yellin wasn’t just doing his job. He was doing what he loved.

Did that make me like him any better? Well, probably not. It wasn’t right to love someone like Cordus. But it did humanize him a bit, in my eyes.

Humanize
. He’d probably be insulted.

As though he’d heard my thoughts and taken offense, Yellin stood. “I thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Duff. I will see you all in the morning.”

We stood as well and bid him goodnight. It was all very formal and awkward.

Williams followed Yellin out. That was a big plus.

After Theo closed the door behind them, Andy plunked down on the sofa with a sigh. “Thank god that’s over. You don’t want the class nerd or the school bully at your party, much less both.”

“Andy,” Gwen said, frowning.

“Please. You know I’m right. A pair of grade-A assholes.”

Gwen’s voice took on an edge. “You shouldn’t go around badmouthing Nolanders who could wipe the floor with you, much less Seconds.”

“She’s right,” Theo said. “You take too many risks.”

Andy looked from one to the other, then at me.

I shrugged. “They’re sorta right, Andy. Talking about them when they could be standing right outside the door isn’t the best idea.”

Zion pantomimed shooting herself in the head.

Kara said, “Don’t look at me, dude. There’re only so many times a man should hear about his own idiocy.”

“Jesus Christ. You people are friggin’ annoying.” Andy leaned back and crossed his arms, clearly put out.

Theo, who was headed to the kitchen, gave him a playful cuff on the back of the head. “Don’t take it so hard, kid. We still love you.”

“Don’t ‘kid’ me. You’re only eighteen months older.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Theo said. “I forgot.” He shook his head mournfully. “How tragic to be so ancient and so unlaid.”

“Dude, your mouth and my sex life need to get unacquainted, fast.”

And they were off. Gwen, Kara, Zion, and I sat back, listening to the familiar and oddly soothing sound of the brothers ragging on each other. It lasted a good ten minutes, only petering out when Andy brought up the fact that Theo’s high school girlfriend was now a nun.

I’d heard about Sister Annalisa before. She seemed to be Andy’s weapon of last resort. Truth be told, I thought he went to that well a little too often — the dig was going to lose its sting if he trotted it out weekly.

Maybe I’d put a bug in his ear about the way Theo looked at Zion when Zion couldn’t see. I probably owed him one. Andy hadn’t had a problem with Williams until I’d told him about my experiences with the big man in Dorf. Now Andy hated him on my behalf, so the “school bully” remark was sort of my fault.

Having sent an irritated Theo stomping into the kitchen, Andy turned to me. His smile faded.

“How’re you doing with all this, Beth? You know we never wanted you involved, right?”

“I’m glad to be involved.”

But my mind kept going back to the thought I’d had by the Canal Street manhole: what if my gift put in an appearance?

“Kara, Zion, do you remember, in that isolate …”

I had to stop. It was hard to talk about.

Kara came and sat down beside me. Everyone else just waited quietly.

“The fire that destroyed everything. You know I did that, right?”

“Yeah, Zion said the working had your signature.” She elbowed me lightly in the ribs. “We’re not total dumbasses, you know.”

I shot her a quick smile, then took a deep breath.

“I didn’t exactly
make
it. It just happened. Cordus, he said that can happen, that a gift can get forced out early under, you know, stressful conditions, or whatever.”

I stumbled into silence. My friends looked around at each other.

It was Gwen who finally spoke. “Beth, I don’t think we’re quite following. What do we need to understand about this? That you have a gift for fire? That’s not so unusual.”

I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t fire, not directly. It was infrared radiation.” I looked around at them. “I might be able to generate every kind of electromagnetic radiation, and I have no control over it at all.”

“Holy shit,” Theo said from the kitchen.

“Damn, girl,” Zion said.

“What?” Andy said. “It’s a cool gift. What’s the big deal?”

Kara said, “She means she could accidentally nuke the metro area.”

One of those heavy silences fell.

Andy looked at me for a few long seconds, brow furrowed. Then his face cleared, and he shrugged.

“Who knows — might be sort of cool. Gamma rays made the Hulk, right? I don’t look half-bad in green.”

We all laughed.

“Hey, Theo,” Andy continued, “you remember that fuzzy little mint-green sweater Annalisa used to wear?”

Theo threw a tangerine at him, and instead of dodging or catching it, Andy crossed his eyes and let it bounce off his forehead. This struck everyone as hilarious. Pretty soon we were all opening another round of beers and talking about happier things.

Friends are good. They can’t always fix things, but they can make you feel better anyway.

The early October sun warmed the back of my neck. I wrapped my arms around myself, chilled despite the gentle weather.

“It’s out there,” Zion said.

Liz nodded. “About two miles north.”

We were all standing at the edge of the lawn. The estate’s property stretched almost a mile and a half north from where we stood. The terrain was wooded hills.

All of Cordus’s people from the day before were there.

Williams was speaking quietly into his phone, probably reconnoitering with Innin’s people.

Yellin stood with us, holding the bag containing the carven strait. He was staring off into the distance and made no move to take command of the situation. Gwen glanced at him and looked away, clearly uncomfortable.

Williams ended his call and started issuing orders. “Hegstrom, take Globa, Tanner, and Zion. Meet Lady Innin’s people at the road. They’ll approach the fragment outside the barrier. Mirror them on the inside. Don’t bring them through unless you have to.”

Gwen nodded and headed off with Zion, Natasha, and Rudolph.

I wondered if their being about to die would be enough of an excuse to bring Innin’s people over to the safe side. Probably not, in Williams’s book. Good thing he’d left it up to Gwen’s discretion.

Williams looked pointedly at Yellin. “I’ll take the strait. You wait here. Rest of you, keep up.”

He took the sack out of Yellin’s hands and turned toward the trees.

The Second seemed to shake himself out of his stupor. “I will accompany you.”

“No,” Williams said flatly. He headed into the forest.

Yellin was livid. He was also scared. He stood, staring after Williams. I could see anguish on his face as well.

For a few seconds, everyone stood there looking back and forth between Yellin and Williams’s retreating back. The training to follow and obey Seconds was hard to ignore. Then people started peeling off, following Williams toward the woods.

Gwen caught my eye. Ever so slightly, she gestured toward the trees.

I cleared my throat. “Okay, I guess this is it. Please, Mr. Yellin, would you show us the way?”

Yellin turned toward me so abruptly I was sure he was going to start screaming at me, but instead he just stared for several long seconds. Then he visibly collected himself, straightening up, loosening his shoulders, adjusting his suit jacket.

“By all means, Miss Ryder. Let us go.”

He turned and headed into the woods.

Gwen gave me a disapproving look.

I flushed and averted my eyes. Maybe it had been the wrong call, but Yellin didn’t deserve to be left behind. He’d had his face rubbed in his own uselessness. He’d been left no dignity at all. Yet he was still here, unwilling to surrender Cordus’s affairs to another, even after they’d been forcibly taken out of his hands. That kind of faithfulness deserved some recognition.

We eventually caught up to Williams, but only because he stopped to wait for us. Following along behind Yellin, I came around a bend in the trail, and there Williams was, leaning against a graffiti-covered cement wall and staring at me very pointedly.

The look on his face said,
I know you’re the one who brought him along
.

I made my face say,
I know you’re the one who has a tiny little dick
. Or I tried to, anyway. I might’ve just looked like a scared person covering it up with pissiness, which is what I actually was.

Williams didn’t say anything, just pushed off from the wall and headed down the trail.

We moved fast, jogging past other scattered ruins of the military base that had been built on the property in the early twentieth century. It had been abandoned decades before Cordus seized the land, but old ruins and tunnels remained.

Yellin was soon dripping sweat and breathing in great shuddering gasps. He just wasn’t up to the workout. I sympathized. A few months earlier, I would’ve struggled with it too. On the other hand, I would’ve been bright enough not to go running in a business suit and dress shoes. I guess he’d assumed we’d drive. Or maybe he just didn’t own anything else.

We crossed the decaying blacktop of the old Schuyler Road, which had been moved west when Cordus claimed the land, and pressed on another hundred yards to the northern edge of the property.

When we stopped, I hung back from the others. Unlike them, I couldn’t sense the estate’s barrier, and running into it accidentally wouldn’t be pleasant. I was just a trainee and wasn’t allowed to leave the property alone. If I tried, the barrier would either repulse me or hurt me on the way through. Probably the latter. Graham had been able to get through it, and I was supposedly stronger than he was. Though with Graham, it was hard to know.

We stood quietly, letting Liz do her job.

“It’s pretty close,” she said. “That way. The other group’s still a mile out.”

Williams made an angry sound.

The estate was ringed with homes and businesses, so we’d left early in hopes of avoiding people. Unfortunately, Liz was placing the fragment in the middle of a subdivision. That wasn’t workable. Even at 6:00 a.m., we’d attract attention. This was one drawback to the new strategy: there were plenty of tough-looking people wandering around the city, but in an expensive suburban neighborhood, we’d really stand out. Someone would have to keep us all silent and invisible if we had to go in among the houses, and whoever was doing that wouldn’t be able to fight the fragment.

Williams started walking slowly south, and we all followed along.

“It’s pacing us,” Liz said, “directly west, half a mile out.”

We kept moving for a good twenty minutes, until we were farther from the populated area.

“Still with us?” Williams asked.

“Yeah,” Liz said. “It’s keeping up but not getting any closer. The other group is just over that rise.”

Williams stopped. We all took up watchful positions and waited.

Forty-five minutes later, we were still standing there.

“It hasn’t moved at all,” Liz said. “It must know we’re behind the barrier.”

Williams cursed, then fell into silent thought. Finally he said, “Bring her,” jerking his head at me.

“I don’t recall changing my name to ‘Her,’” I muttered under my breath.