Mason turned onto the drive that led to the gate.
“I hope Bran is here!” Fletcher said for the third time in the last half hour. The excitement had long eroded from his son’s tone, leaving him a live wire of anxiety. Mason was past anxiety; some kind of constrictor snake now lived in his chest, and with growing frequency, without warning, squeezed blood and breath from him.
The kid had taken it well. Had even said, “It’ll be okay,” as if he were eighty instead of eight.
“I hope Bran is here, too.”
Because then this change might seem like going away to camp or some boarding school. Not that Fletcher had ever gone to either.
Mason swallowed a curse. He’d tried everything.
That Livia Walker and her House would not take Fletcher in, her own child, Walker’s own blood, when all this was happening made Mason crazy with rage.
He gripped the wheel.
Her own child. Even temporarily
. . .
The massive iron gates to Webb House opened for Mason’s car to pass, but he didn’t advance; the real barrier was still in place. There: a dark shimmer in the gray air, and the Webb House wards lifted for their entry.
Wards.
Brand must have assured Riordan that they weren’t plague carriers.
The wards slid across Mason’s mind, licking cold and sharp at his consciousness. The sensation steadied him. Wards were what he’d come for. Wards were what gave him the will to put his foot back on the gas. Wards would shield Fletcher while all Mason had was tricks and muscle and maybe the unthinkable—soul—none of which could keep his son whole for long.
Mason pulled on Shadow to conceal that damning part of himself in darkness. The magic came more readily now—he’d been practicing since he’d made the decision to give his son to Webb. He filled himself with Shadow until he steamed with magic. He didn’t want to ruin Fletcher’s new life by revealing that his son had a human father. No one could know about the soul.
Mason slowly accelerated up the drive to stop at the wide terraced steps that led to the deep porch and further to the imposing stone edifice that would now and henceforth be his son’s home. Servants waited to take Fletcher’s bags.
And, sweet Shadow forever, down the steps ran Bran, oblivious to the fact that a plague was raging in his world. “. . . been setting up your rooms all morning . . . right next to mine . . .”
Fletcher looked up at Mason, his mage-black eyes smiling, actually smiling in the midst of all this. Kid needed a haircut. “Can I?”
Mason worked his emotion-locked throat. “Yeah. Go check it out. I’m not leaving for a while.” The contract. And then he’d damn well see those rooms himself.
Cari closed the accounting files and put pen to paper to write herself a note. Erom needed to be taken off DolanCo’s Special Projects Committee. Keycodes had to be changed as well. This, in the midst of everything else, was bad timing. But the decision was feeling better and better.
Her stepmother had looked at her as if she were out of her mind—
Erom Vauclain!—
but had accepted her decision with a passive-aggressive, “This is your House.”
Cari wouldn’t let herself be manipulated into backtracking to say, ‘But this is
your
House, too,’ and invite (endure) further discussion on the matter.
Because, yep. This
was
her House. Her life. Scarlet could mutter all she wanted. On paper, it had been a decent match. In reality, not so much. And just wait until they spoke seriously about Zella and Stacia. No one would get married if they didn’t want to.
Word of the breakup filtered through the household—Cari could almost feel it reaching everyone’s ears. Unlike Scarlet, the rest of the clan had gentle questions.
No, she and Erom had not quarreled, but after the first ineffective explanation—“just not right”—she shut herself in the office to work. Let them think what they wanted.
She had a job to do, and she’d concentrate on that. The stray was on his way right now to help her.
Mason, she corrected herself.
There was no reason she couldn’t use his name, even if she didn’t trust him. Their moment of past history meant nothing. Less than nothing. She’d had a crush, that’s all, intensified by the fact that she’d been painfully shy as a teenager.
She’d been seventeen, had just reached her majority, and was celebrating with a late-night picnic with her friends. She’d bravely—audaciously—invited Mason to come along as well, even though he’d dated and broken up with Liv, who was there, too. The potential for warfare had hummed in the air all night.
They’d gone up to Walden Pond. The moon had been bright in the night sky. The other boys had already been in the water, skinny dipping. Liv had sauntered down to the edge to watch, but Cari lingered behind, taking the opportunity to talk to Mason away from the others. Which had been the whole point of the birthday picnic in the first place.
Every time he’d looked at her, she’d had to try not to smile.
“No swimming for you?” Cari had managed without a quaver in her voice. Mason, naked. Sweet Shadow. He’d been lean then, his muscle perhaps too well cut. Maybe hungry.
“Too easy for someone to drown,” Mason answered. “I like my feet on the ground.” The stray thing. And yeah, thinking about it, Erom and the other guys might’ve easily messed with him. Mason already moved stiffly. But there were few choices open to him, and fighting back wasn’t one of them. They’d kill him.
She dared to touch his arm. The touch brought his gaze snapping to hers, as if she were dangerous.
She felt danger in the air, too. It was screaming in her mind.
Mason!
“Shouldn’t be this way,” she said.
“Shouldn’t be what way?” His voice lowered. He flicked a worried glance at the boys in the water. They’d had enough of him with Liv.
“You should be claimed,” Cari said. Not shut out of his mother’s House. It was cruel, his life. How he was treated. Someone as strong as he was should belong to a great family.
Her heart went wild at the idea.
“You gonna claim me, Dolan?” he joked bitterly.
Her face heated, her voice got all tangled up, and she lost track of her words.
“Cari, I’m sorry.” He always noticed everything.
She shook her head and looked down toward the water. Then she changed her mind and forced herself to turn toward him.
He had somehow gotten closer, though she couldn’t remember him moving. Whispers of the fae rose around them. Time stopped. Sparks of magic hung in the air. And he looked at her, so seriously it made her sad. But she couldn’t help it. She was about to get him in very big trouble.
She moved closer still, until she felt his breath brush her skin. She could almost sense the future moment when that breath would be inside her, his mouth on hers.
A question glinted in his eyes.
She looked down at his mouth and went tingly when she saw the slight, wondering smile that appeared there. She smiled back. It was an answer. Yes. Permission. What she’d
really
wanted for her big birthday.
But the kiss never happened.
“Cari!” Liv had shouted.
And the moment between her and Mason had exploded.
Never happened.
A moment. That’s all it had been. And then, soon after, all magekind had found out just how dangerous a stray could be.
A two-and-a-half-hour drive, and Mason arrived at the deserted campground that was his rendezvous location between the Taconic Mountains of Webb House and the suburban Boston estate of Dolan. Drought had made kindling out of the underbrush, and so the park had been closed rather than risk a forest fire. That’s what all the notices said on the narrow drive to the park’s interior, though the thickets of birch and maple trees looked lush enough to him. A cluster of cabins ringed a central lodge.
He’d just signed away his son.
Fletcher was eight, almost nine. And he would not reach his majority in magekind until he was seventeen. The time until then was almost exactly double Fletcher’s life. The early years had gone by so fast, but Mason knew that from now until then each moment would creep by, snickering at his agony.
Fletcher was safe; that’s all that mattered. Mason held on to that fact with everything he had left.
Three angels, in all their eerie perfection, exited the main lodge as his car slowed to a stop. Jack Bastian was not among them, and Mason was glad for that reprieve. He didn’t want to hear one more platitude about how the Order was looking out for Fletcher, too. Light was just as opportunistic as Shadow.
Mason got out of his car and slammed the door shut.
A white-haired angel came forward. Though his body had the ease of youth, the man had the weight of ages in his eyes. If Mason had any feeling left, he might have been frightened. Not today.
“I’m Laurence.” The angel didn’t try to shake his hand, which Mason knew would’ve broken him. He was not in the mood to shake hands. “These are my companions Jorge and Frederick.”
Mason barely glanced at them. He grimaced what he could of an acknowledgment.
“This way.” Laurence gestured toward the lodge door.
Mason followed them inside. The place smelled of fresh wood; logs and beams made it rustic. Benches and cafeteria-style tables were stacked over by one wall. A gurney waited in the middle of the room. One table had been opened to hold a metal suitcase with tools couched in some kind of foam.
The plague scars. To make him look like a mage.
With his shroud of Shadow in place, Cari would not know him for what he was.
“If you will disrobe,” Laurence said. Polite words uttered by power.
Mason got the feeling that the angel could look right into him. That he could see the scraping filth that had been his early childhood. The tough living as a boy, like a stray dog begging for scraps. The hours he’d spent squatting in the dark, attempting to master his Shadow craft, trying to make something of himself as he labored with clumsy fingers at this or that invention. Then the teenager, showing off for pretty mage girls. The wild hope that was Livia. So reckless, loving danger. Then being shut out of her House, a dog again. And finally Fletcher, who’d made the world and this life finally make sense.
But Laurence didn’t speak of any of that, though Mason knew for sure that the angel had seen it all in one glance. “Your clothes, please.”
Mason nodded. He stripped until he was naked—in front of them he was naked regardless—and then climbed up on the table to lie on his back.
One of the angels brought up a tool. “An anesthetic.”
But Laurence stayed his hand. “He’s numb already.”
And it was true. Mason felt the burns as if from a distance, an abstract kind of pain. One on his chest, and another at the lymph node near his groin. Sizzle, snap.
The wounds had to be able to be hidden by clothes, or Webb would have noticed their absence.
His thigh burned. Then some scattered pocks like blisters. And another tool to accelerate the healing process. Each welt itched and crackled as his flesh reknit. And he didn’t really care.
The worst of them were covered with cotton bandages and tape—drug store stuff. And then he dressed to leave again. He didn’t like being here; didn’t like the knowing gaze of one angel in particular.
But as Mason made to leave, Laurence touched him on the arm. “You wondered once how you might perceive your soul.”
Laurence had seen too much.
Mason shuddered. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t need proof to distance him even more from his son. Not anymore. Please not today.
But Laurence didn’t pity him this time. “Mason Stray.”
Every atom of Mason’s body reverberated, as if struck with a tuning fork. The welts finally ached, pain blooming everywhere, especially his heart. He staggered.
“You
are
your soul.”
Mid-scrawl on a notepad, an inset window popped up on Cari’s laptop screen over her flooded e-mail inbox. The window showed streaming video of an old blue car, what an optimist might call vintage, awaiting entry to the Dolan grounds. A dialogue box below the video read,
Mason Stray, here on business for Ms. Dolan.
Here we go.
She looked at the time. 2:35 p.m. He was running late.
Lifting wards now,
she typed to notify the guardhouse.
A deep thought and Cari reached for the ward stones buried deep within the foundation of the house. The resonant response in her umbra grounded her. Stones meant strength, an echo that rippled through the diffuse magic in the room.
In the window on her computer screen, Mason’s car crossed the wardline and drove out of sight, toward the main house.
She had to remind herself that he was like her—he’d already contracted and survived the mage plague, and was not a carrier. Mason was safe for her House and her family. But his arrival still made her uneasy—she did not like people going in and out. Cari moved to meet him herself; she didn’t want the ceremony of staff leading him to her. It felt awkward with a stray, with
Mason
, as if he were beneath her. She would meet Mason head on.
She found her stepmother in the hall looking out one of the slender windows that flanked the sides of the massive front door. Scarlet managed to be elegant, even in mourning—black slacks, black silk. Pearls. Her silver hair styled away from her face, highlighting her high cheekbones. The look of censure was gone from her eyes though. Progress.
Blue streaked past the window, which had to be Mason, winding around the driveway to park.
“I don’t like him. What he did to poor Livia Walker.” Scarlet put a hand to her mouth and shook her head, as if the scandal were happening right now.