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“That’s special effects,” Leon said.
“What if it isn’t?” Arabella asked. “What if Catalina goes to see him and he turns her face into a pincushion?”
“You don’t even know it’s him. His face is covered. What you have here is some sort of Chinese ninja on a wire and lots of CGI . . .”
Arabella grabbed a spoon and threw it at Leon. He caught it.
“No violence,” Bern rumbled.
I glanced at Nevada. “Could an aquakinetic do this?”
“In theory,” she said. “I never came across one who did.”
That’s what I thought too. Most of the aquakinetics killed by drowning. It was faster and more efficient.
“I’m taking Stephen Jiang,” Arabella announced.
“Marat Kazarian,” Leon said.
“Cheryl Castellano.” Bern raised his finger.
“Okay,” I said. “My first interview is tomorrow at ten with Kazarian.”
“Do you need backup?” Leon crunched his knuckles.
“I already have it.”
“Who?” Leon asked.
Do it quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Alessandro Sagredo.”
The room exploded.
I dragged myself from my small bathroom to my bed, crawled into it, and sprawled on my back. Shadow jumped up, turned three times, and settled on the blankets by my feet.
Once I mentioned Alessandro, the family had ganged up on me. Arabella screamed like a pterodactyl and demanded to know where Alessandro was staying, while punching her palm with her fist. Bern swore, which had happened exactly six times since he came to live with us. Grandma Frida promised to hit Alessandro with a wrench when he came over. Leon produced a gun, and then Mom asked him what the rule was about guns at the dinner table, and then he said that this was a special case and he had a bullet with Alessandro’s name on it. Then she told him that writing names on bullets was no way to go through life. And Nevada just sat there, in the middle of the chaos, and listened to me lie through my teeth about how Alessandro was no longer an emotional factor for me.
It was over now. Everyone had calmed down.
I was so tired. Reaching over to turn off the lamp on the night table seemed way too hard. I could probably fall asleep with it on, but it would bug me.
A quiet knock echoed through the room. Now what . . .
“Yes?”
The door swung open. Nevada walked in and shut the door behind her. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.”
My sister crossed the room and perched on the side of my bed. She’d switched to a flowing maxi dress in pale blue and green and abandoned her shoes somewhere. Her feet were swollen again. I’d bought her maternity support stockings that went up to her waist, but it was too hot to wear them.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
Living with a truthseeker older sister had its advantages, but sometimes I wished I could lie to her. I sat up. “I’ve been better.”
Nevada glanced at the wall above me. “Is it me, or are there more of them since I last was here?”
Originally our building consisted of a long hallway with ten-foot-by-fifteen-foot offices on both sides. Bern had analyzed the structure and we knocked down some walls, which was why my bedroom was only ten feet wide but thirty feet long. The left side of it, with two large windows, looked out onto the glorious vista of an old parking lot. The other side, a solid wall of brick, offered two hundred and seventy square feet of opportunity. I put my bed against it, in the center. The rest of the space I’d filled with blades. Rapiers, sabers, tactical swords, katanas, daos, machetes, and kukris rested against the brick, each in its proper place. The blades glinted softly in the lamplight.
“The saber on the left is new. And the short sword in the lower right corner,” I told her.
A shadow crossed her face. “I should’ve found another way . . .” she murmured.
“What do you mean?” I knew exactly what she meant, but neither of us was ready for that conversation today. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Do you feel unsafe?”
Oh no. She thought I needed a sword for protection, and she blamed herself. Nevada was the kind of older sister one dreamed of having. When things were at their worst and I was scared to tell Mom, I ran to Nevada and she fixed it. For a good chunk of my life, she protected and provided for us, and she still tried to do it even after she married Connor.
I needed to fix this. She didn’t need to feel any guilt because of me. She’d made the only possible decision when her life was tumbling into hell. In her place, I would’ve done the same.
“I don’t collect swords because I feel unsafe. I collect them because I like them. And because I haven’t found the one sword yet. I think we should discuss the real problem instead of this.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Nevada, your addiction to scented wax cubes is tearing this family apart . . .”
She laughed softly, but the guilt was still there, buried in her eyes. I needed to steer this conversation away from myself and my addiction to sharp chunks of metal.
“When was the last time you heard from Connor?” I asked.
“The day before yesterday. He said he found Shevchenko’s trail.”
“So good news?”
“Good news. What’s really going on with you and Alessandro?”
I sighed. “Nothing.”
She leaned forward and gently said, “Lie.”
Argh.
“Linus wants me to work with him.”
“And you always do what Linus says?”
“You’re breaking our agreement,” I told her.
“What agreement?”
“You don’t ask me about Linus, and I don’t ask you about midnight calls from the Pentagon to your cell and stories of harrowing hostage rescues by unidentified elite forces on the morning news.”
In Connor’s absence, Nevada ruled his private military empire. The aftermath of exposing the Sturm-Charles conspiracy scarred my sister and those wounds still hurt. She concentrated a lot of her efforts on making friends in high places and, by all accounts, succeeded. When House Rogan was mentioned in the Texas Assembly, the name was spoken with apprehension and respect.
“Fine,” Nevada said. “I’ll just say it. I am worried about you. When Alessandro abandoned you, you weren’t yourself for weeks.”
There was a lot more going on in my life at that time besides Alessandro leaving, but no, him taking off didn’t help.
“You barely slept, you didn’t eat, your wings . . . He hurt you.”
There was no point in lying. “Yes. He did. But . . .”
“There is no but.”
“But I bear some responsibility for it. He didn’t promise me anything except that he would see the investigation to the end. He didn’t say he loved me. I fell head over heels, and the worst thing is, I didn’t even know him that well. I fell in love with a man that was half fantasy and I paid for it.”
“What does he want from you?” Nevada fixed me with her stare.
“I don’t know. He says he is here to protect me.”
“From whom?”
“From a man called Arkan. He killed Alessandro’s father and now he is targeting me because of the current case.”
“Never heard of him.”
She would know everything there was to publicly know about Arkan by morning.
“I think he’s sincere.”
“Why?”
I sighed again. “He’s different.”
“How?”
“It’s hard to explain. The old Alessandro spent a lot of time tailoring how people saw him. He was arrogant. Everyone respected Linus, so Alessandro would challenge him out of principle. He thought he knew best, and he didn’t have to waste time on silly things like explanations. If he told me something, I should just accept it and do what he said. He thought he was exempt from a lot of limitations that normal mortals had.”
“Mortals?” Nevada raised her eyebrows.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was immortal. He is death in a fight, Nevada. I don’t think he’s ever met an opponent he couldn’t take.”
“So what changed?”
“All the flash is gone. He’s hyper focused. It’s this grim, cold determination, and it’s frightening. He didn’t challenge Linus. He told me he was sorry. He had a long list of what he was sorry for. Above all, he wants to protect me. He told me he would answer anything I asked, no matter how personal, and he did. He’s driven.”
My sister nodded. “I understand. Connor is driven. Right now, my husband is in the Russian Imperium, because when you live with a driven person, there are times you have to step back and let them do what they must do. I could have kept him here. It would’ve only taken one word, and he would have stayed, but I understand that he would carry a lifetime of guilt if he couldn’t try to save his friend. The important thing is, I’m still first. Connor cares about me most of all. Are you more important to Alessandro than his revenge?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I’m not trying to restart this relationship, Nevada. I’m only trying to do my job. He is a part of it, and so I’ll grit my teeth and work with him, and at the end of it we’ll go our separate ways. It’s just . . . there are leftover feelings and they make everything complicated. It still hurts.”
