I didn’t have any salt, or anything else I needed to make this easier, and we didn’t have much time. Fairchild would, nodoubt, send the Authority’s team of “experts” up as soon as they got here. Even my name wouldn’t stop them.
We would have to do this the hard way. It was going to hurt the kid, but there wasn’t much use in warning her again. “Hold on a minute—I’ll get you free.”
I fished my phone out of my pocket and texted Eryx with one hand. We needed my best team on this. The girl was going to need help after this, and only the Phoenixes would do. Each of them had gone through something similar as kids, and now they were the team I called for anything remotely sensitive. Eryx typically handled their business these days. When my brother responded that he’d be up in five, I put my phone back in my pocket.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said, pulling at the spirit’s aura.
“I have no desire to,” the spirit wailed from within the girl. She was probably fifteen or sixteen, and a tiny slip of a thing. Looked like she didn’t get enough to eat.
“Why did you kill the man?” I asked as I picked apart the knot in the spirit’s aura. Now that I knew what had happened, it was more apparent. The spirit was cooperating; apparently it had some respect for my power, and the fact that it didn’t want to hurt the girl helped.
“The woman. The stepmother,” the spirit within the girl ground out. It was having trouble communicating. The stepmother had known what to do to lock the spirit inside the girl, but she hadn’t done it well. The girl wasn’t screaming, and showed no signs of distress. I thanked Saint Tanith profusely—the spirit had her locked down tight. It was keeping her from feeling me pull her aura from the spirit’s.
Now I saw it. The way the knot had been tied told me all I needed to know, confirmed every one of my suspicions. I pulled it free, and the girl screamed, no longer protected by the spirit’s aura. I rushed forward to keep her from falling when the spirit released her.
Eryx burst through the door.
“Take her,” I said, passing the child off to him. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Have Elias look her over when the Phoenixes get her. She’ll need medical attention.”
Eryx hugged the frail child to his chest, nodding. Elias was the medtech of the Phoenixes—had made it all the way through school and everything, though the Authority had denied him his degree. He’d take care of the kid’s injuries, and the rest of the team would get her shored up and safe until we could figure out what to do with her.
Eryx’s eyes closed as he took in whatever the spirit wanted him to know. I could speak to spirits, but what Eryx did was a more complicated, deeper form of communication. “She’s in no danger. She was weak to begin with—the spirit tried to help her. Tried to get her more food.”
The shadow in the corner nodded.I tried my best.
A vision, from the girl’s perspective, of her stealing food from the local grocery filled my second sight. The spirit wanted me to see this moment and had the strength to project it through my brother. We would both be exhausted tonight.
“Go,” I said to Eryx. “I’ll take care of this. Fairchild doesn’t come near her.”
“Got it,” my brother agreed as he passed through the door.
I sat down on the arm of the ratty couch that wasn’t covered in blood and stared at the diaphanous form of the Rider. “Tell me what happened here. Every bit of it, and I’ll let you go.”
CHAPTER 8
EMBER
The soundof my molars grinding against one another was sickening. I had to stop this or I’d be forced to grow new teeth and that was annoying and painful. But Lara’s attitude was just that grating. It was impossible, sometimes, to understand how I could love her so fucking much and also want to punch her face so, so badly.
But then, that was the gist of spending an eternal life together. Not that any of my cursed cohort showed signs of comprehending that kind of nuanced perspective. From what I could tell, they preferred to cut and run.
Rhiannon Brontë hadn’t just left me. She’d gone to work for the Consulate itself. After what happened with Lara and Sera, she’d very calmly stated that she’d had a better offer and would leave. Two very long lifetimes of friendship, and she’d just up and left.
The audacity of these women never ceased to amaze me. Though I was tempted to argue with Lara, she was right about calling Rhi. “Fine. I’ll call her.”
Lara sighed. “Do whatever you want.”
I closed my eyes, searching for some semblance of patience. “It would be nice if you could at leastpretendlike this matters.”
Lara stood up. “I don’t need this shit from you. It’s not like we have a way to get the swords, anyway. We’d need a lot more talent than you’ve got access to.”
I just about lost it, pushing my chair back so hard as I stood that it flew across the room. “And why is that, Lara? Whose fucking fault is it that the five of us split up?”
She stepped to me, glaring. “Go ahead and say it, Verona. You know you want to. You’re just itching to blame me for the fact that we lost the swords to begin with.”
“No,” I breathed, all the vim and vigor gone out of me. Having this argument again was infuriating. Why couldn’t any of them ever focus on what and who ourrealenemies were? “No. I am not. I don’t know how many times I have to say it. What happened is on all of us.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. She shook her head, her dark hair falling into her eyes. “I need to take a walk. Blow off some steam.”
