Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (6 page)

“I really need to get my hair done. Can you set that up for me?”

“Justine, you know Lord Cordus won’t let you leave the estate. He says you’re safest here.”

My sister-in-law leaned over the marble sink, frowning into the mirror as she toweled her hair. Her highlights had grown out a couple inches, leaving a wide dark-blond stripe around her part. I could see a few gray hairs in there. That’s probably what was upsetting her.

“Like he cares what happens to me. I haven’t seen him in months.”

“I keep telling you he’s out of town.”

“Then who’s to stop me from leaving?”

“I don’t know. His dozens of obedient flunkies, maybe?”

She rolled her eyes at me and then started sectioning her hair for blow-drying.

Of all the things that had happened to Justine over the last few months, being deprived of trips to the salon seemed to be what bothered her the most.

She’d talked a lot about Ben and the kids during the first few weeks at the estate, but they seemed to have faded from her consciousness. It’s not that she didn’t remember them. She just didn’t tend to think of them unless I reminded her.

That was too bad. I talked to my oldest niece, Tiffany, on the phone at least once a week, so I knew that Justine’s family was still struggling with her absence. Madisyn, who’d just turned four, had regressed on her potty-training; Lia, who was five, was having separation anxiety; and Jazzy, the nine-year-old, had sprouted some major tweener attitude.

As for how my brother was doing, I thought he was hanging in there, but I didn’t know for sure. He’d only just started taking my calls about three weeks ago, and I could tell from what he said (curt monosyllables clustered around “where the hell are you, anyway?”) that he was still really mad at me.

I understood why. From his point of view, his wife had vanished. Then his sister, his only remaining family, had picked that moment — the moment he desperately needed her help — to flip out and leave town, destination unknown. He’d spent the four years since our mother died looking out for me, and he’d done it despite Justine pretty much hating me. But when the time came to return the favor, I split. And I hadn’t even been able to offer a reasonable explanation for where I was going or why, since “unable to leave New York due to enslavement by godlike otherworldly being” was a no-go.

Yeah, I understood why he was pissed. I just hadn’t expected him to stay pissed for quite so long. Ben was my only family. I missed him.

I finished drying between my toes and began pulling on my clothes. Over by the mirror, Justine turned on the blow-dryer and began the long process of making that hairstyle Jennifer Aniston had in the mid-’90s. Justine had been wearing her hair that way since before she could drive. Funny how some people’s fashion sense gets frozen at a certain moment in time and stays that way forever.

Not a problem for me — I had no fashion sense. Jeans, sneakers, and a ponytail were my look of choice. Unfortunately, life in Cordus’s world demanded at least “business casual” most of the time. It was a drag.

But not as much of a drag as spending time with Justine. I felt responsible for her and tried to see her every day, but it sure wasn’t something I looked forward to. She reminded me of Ben and the girls and of the life I’d lost. Plus, she’d never been nice to me.

Justine had grown up around the corner from me, so I’d always sort of known her. When I was eight and she was a freshman in high school, she’d babysat for me a few times. I don’t remember much about her at that age. A few years later, she’d started going out with Ben. She got pregnant, and they got married.

You’d think I’d have developed a good relationship with a sister-in-law who wasn’t all that much older than me, but it just didn’t work that way. She seemed to dislike me from the get-go. I never could figure out why.

Anyway, a few months ago I’d found out she was actually some weird kind of Second, one who could shape-shift so fully that even Nolanders and other Seconds couldn’t tell she wasn’t human. Apparently, she’d stolen some kind of super-weapon from another S-Em power, Limu, and had come to Dorf to hide out. When Limu got wind of where she was, he sent a bounty hunter after her. That started the chain of events that revealed my maybe-not-human-after-all status and brought me here. And her, too — Cordus wasn’t letting her go until he figured out what Limu was up to.

I slid my feet into a semi-comfortable pair of brown suede heels and straightened up. Justine was still blow-drying, intent on the task at hand. She was sucking in her upper lip, something she only did when she was concentrating.

I still had trouble accepting she was a Second, much less a mythical one, and a daring thief, to boot. Intellectually, I knew it was true. I mean, I’d seen what was apparently her true shape — a bunch of floating blue balls. But emotionally, it still felt unreal. “Petty, shallow small-town sister-in-law” and “legendary, inhuman hero of the Second Emanation, a god to the gods,” were the mental equivalent of matter and anti-matter: I couldn’t put them together.

At any rate, making Justine my gym buddy had been a good idea. When I was exercising, I didn’t think about all that stuff so much. Plus, we worked out hard enough that we couldn’t really talk. Perfect.

And it made for great workouts. When I’d first come to the estate, Gwen had been in charge of my fitness training, and it had been brutal. Not because Gwen was that rough on me, I realized later, but because I’d been pretty out of shape. That was changing fast, though — Justine was a fitness freak, and I was so unwilling to look bad in front of her that I pushed myself harder than I had for Gwen. Today we’d run four miles on the estate’s trails, and I’d almost broken the seven-minute-mile mark. That was a big step up for me. I’d left Justine behind.

I wish I could say my combat training was coming along equally well. I’d definitely improved: I could actually punch something, now, but only if the something wasn’t moving. And the punch was probably more of a love-tap.

Justine finished up with her hair and began lining her makeup up on the counter in a neat row. With a small inward sigh, I settled down on the locker room bench and pulled a book up on my phone. We were going to be there a while.

“I was really shocked. I couldn’t believe he’d admit to being so blasé about human life. Actually, ‘admit’ isn’t the right word. It wasn’t even an issue. He just said she was always discreet.”

I shook my head. It was hard to find the right words.

Andy made a sympathetic face and patted my hand.

He and Theo and Gwen and I were ensconced on the ugly couches in my room. I was telling them about the weirdest thing I’d seen in months: a Second running away from me.

When Yellin and I had gotten back to the estate that afternoon, I’d pulled the car into its space in the garage and started to get out. By the time I’d closed my door, Yellin was already disappearing down the tunnel to the house. I’d never seen him get out of a car so quickly. Maybe it was an exaggeration to say he was “running away,” but he was moving awfully fast. Way faster than the beetle scuttle I’d seen him do that morning.

Watching him high-tail it out of there sort of shook me up. Before fetching Justine, I’d texted Andy, Gwen, and Theo, asking them to come over after dinner.

As soon as he’d walked in, Andy had put a sound-blocking barrier around us. Theo had brought beer. Gwen had brought her quiet calm. What I had were questions.

“So, anyway, here’s the thing: when he realized he’d made me mad, he was scared. Almost shitting-himself scared. I think …” I paused, feeling out the realization as it came to me. “I think he thought I was going to hurt him.”

I let it hang there among us, the crazy idea that a Second would’ve thought I posed a threat.

“That can’t be it,” Theo said. “Maybe he was afraid you’d cause some sort of scene. You were on Central Park West, right? That’s pretty public.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It still seems weird, though. Even if I’d caused a scene, he could’ve hidden it.”

Andy shrugged. “He’s a Second. Whatcha gonna do? They’re all weird.”

“Damn, I’ll drink to that,” Theo said.

I lifted my bottle.

“You’re both assuming Mr. Yellin’s stronger than Beth,” Gwen said. “What if he’s not?”

The rest of us froze, beers halfway to our mouths. After a second, Theo and I set ours down. Andy sipped his, then frowned at the bottle as though he’d tasted something funny.

My heart rate picked up — whether from alarm or excitement I wasn’t sure. I stared at Gwen, waiting for her to explain.

At thirty-seven, Gwen was the oldest Nolander in Cordus’s household. Well, no, I should amend that: she was the oldest of those who were strong enough to be given the dangerous work of hunting down renegade Seconds. Most Nolanders couldn’t do a whole lot more than see workings. Those folks had safer positions as household staff. The ones who went hunting didn’t tend to survive nearly so long, even though they worked in teams.

Gwen’s age was a testament to how good she was. She was a real ace with firearms and had a weird gift: she could make small things disappear. Not just go invisible or take another form. Any strong Nolander who’s studied workings can do that. I mean completely disappear, as in cease to exist forever.

Even so, you could see Gwen had lived a rough life — lots of scars. She hadn’t endured by being reckless or unobservant. She was quiet, serious, and careful. She’d only recently started loosening up around me, as though it had taken her a few months to decide I was good people.

Now she spoke slowly, as though weighing her words.

“For a long time, I thought every Second was stronger than me, but now I’m not so sure. They pretty clearly have a range of strength. Why should we assume that the bottom of their range is higher than the top of ours?”

Andy and Theo shared a thoughtful look.

The phrase “run-of-the-mill S-Em shop-keeper” popped to mind. After a second, I remembered where I’d heard it — Graham.

Maybe that’s what Yellin was — a glorified shop-keeper.

“So Yellin thinks I could overpower him?”

“That’d be my guess.”

Andy was looking at Gwen, clearly a bit miffed. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”

She grimaced. “It’s not the kind of thing that’s wise to talk about around here, usually.”

I knew what she meant: we wouldn’t want to have this conversation when Cordus was here. Heck, it was risky even when he wasn’t, since he could always pick tidbits out of your brain later. I didn’t blame Gwen for keeping her mouth shut.

Plus, who would’ve believed her without the Yellin example? According to the party line, Nolanders were neither Second nor human. We had no true home in either world. But what Gwen was saying made Seconds and Nolanders sound pretty much the same — mixed together along a continuum of power.

“Yellin called Sturluson the ‘Thirsting Ground,’” I said. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Gwen said. She looked at the guys. “Ever heard of it?”

They both shook their heads.

“So do you think she’s the one who killed that kid?” Andy asked.

I shook my head. “If she had, why would she have brought it to our attention like that?”

“She could be challenging Lord Cordus,” Gwen mused. “Leaving behind a mysterious corpse, practically on his doorstep, then rubbing our noses in it when we don’t notice? That’s beyond ballsy. Either she’s challenging him, or she’s nuts.”

“Maybe both,” Andy said.

“Or she didn’t do it, and she’s trying to make sure we don’t get the wrong idea,” I said.

“Yeah, but if she didn’t do it, something just like her probably did,” Andy said. “Either way, it’s gonna be a bitch to take care of.”

The conversation had sobered everyone up pretty quickly. After all, we knew who was going to be going after the killer — the people in that room. Minus me, of course. I had little to offer in that kind of situation. Theo and Andy were only a couple years older than me, but I was a babe in the woods in comparison, since my abilities were emerging so late and so unevenly.

“That
Post
article, can you call it back up?”

I found it in my phone’s browser history and passed it to Gwen. She went over it slowly, her lips moving as she read. Then she looked up, thoughtful.

“This reporter’s connecting three different cases. Sounds like she’s really looking into it. That’s not good.”

“Lemme see,” Andy said.

Gwen handed the phone over.

“Huh,” he said, passing the phone to Theo. “Well, if all three of us go, we should be fine.”

“Fuckin’-A, dude, you just jinxed us!”

“Shut up, Theo. Don’t be a pussy.”

Gwen put on an am-I-the-only-adult-in-the-room? look.

I smiled, but the whole situation frightened me. Would my friends really have to go take this unknown creature down, with only scaredy-pants Yellin to rely on for guidance?

The phrase “organic slurry” whispered through my mind.

The questions of whether I was or wasn’t genuinely attracted to Cordus, would or wouldn’t sleep with him, suddenly seemed absurdly unimportant. We needed him back. Immediately.