* * *
The detective sat too long in the parking lot, but finally he left in a spray of taillight-soaked water. Landon turned back to the corridor, pulling his robe around his knobby knees. He really should go home and dress first, but Vallon still stood at the T, her florescent-stained hair shifting slightly in the circulating air, her body pressed, trembling, to the wall. Afterburn radiated off her like a furnace. It would consume her from within if they didn’t get it managed. In the early days of the AGS an agent had almost died from untreated afterburn. He needed to help her through this.
“By all creation, you look like you’re going to fall over, Pigeon.”
A weak smile and, “I just might.”
He tried to take her arm, but she shrugged him off. “Not a good idea, Landon. We wouldn’t make beautiful music.”
He held his hands up, feigning dismay. “You’re not my type, Pigeon. You’ll have to get inside under your own power.”
Somehow she found the strength to return to his door using only the wall to steady her uneven gait. Then she was inside, and made it to the lone desk lamp and the chair illuminated there. She collapsed and buried her face in her hands so he truly wished he knew how to comfort and protect her. The poor kid hadn’t had protection like that ever.
“Oh god, Landon. What have I done?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
She glanced up at him and she was steel and velvet at the same time, and more vulnerable than he’d seen her since the day her father was suddenly gone. She closed her eyes and nodded.
“I couldn’t save her, Landon. I tried. I truly did—just like I tried to save Simon. Oh, god, I’m such a screw up. I leave my post. I get caught using the Gift—by the cops no less, and then I….” She hunched down in her chair. “Then I use one of those cops to relieve the afterburn and now he’s coming to me telling me stories like he actually knows about the Gift.”
She raised panicked, grief-stricken, brown-green eyes to him before he could even consider all she’d revealed.
“How can you trust me when I don’t trust myself? I didn’t save her. I should have saved her. I could have saved her but I was too-fucking afraid.”
The uncharacteristic tears showed just how distraught she was. But she fought them back valiantly and sat up to face him.
“So why don’t you just do your job and tell Gleason and we’ll get this over with?”she asked. You can lock me up or turn me over to the police—whatever it is you do with agents you can’t trust anymore.”
Landon sat back and crossed his arms over the Gore-tex. He should be feeding her inhibitor, forcing her to drink if she wouldn’t on her own. But he couldn’t take the chance she wouldn’t understand or would just fall asleep.
“So you think anyone else could have done any better than you, Pigeon?” he asked quietly.
The room held only the sound of her ragged breath and the hush of the movement of air. Finally she raised her gaze to his.
“I’m a loose cannon. Gleason said so. I’ll never be as good an agent as my Dad.”
“He says a lot of things, Pigeon, but I doubt he said that. Gleason says different things to different people. Whatever will work—if you get my meaning.”
“He plays people.”
Landon nodded.
“Like me.”
He nodded again.
“So just what is he playing at now?” she asked, fatigue loud in her voice.
“Trying to save all our lives, Pigeon.”
That seemed to wipe some of the exhaustion off her face as she tried to parse out his meaning. Finally she shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not tracking.”
“Exhaustion, I’m sure. You’re too quick a study most of the time.” He leaned on his desk and prayed he could get this right, because at this moment he suspected Vallon might be all that stood between the AGS and its annihilation.
“It’s like this, Pigeon. We’re aware of the deaths and we suspect a connection, but we’ve also suspected that it might be someone inside the AGS causing it.” He heard her breath catch.
“You thought it was me.”
“Actually the thought did cross Gleason’s mind, but neither of us truly believed it. It’s been going on too long.”
A frown as she considered that bit of news, but he couldn’t wait for her to figure out all that it meant. “The problem is that there isn’t anybody but us with the Gift to do this. We keep track of the population. We recruit anyone with enough potential power. There aren’t that many who have the Gift and control of it. That’s why there’s the Academy. We finally started to think we could enhance our agents by schooling the children of our Agents right from the start.”
“So you needed to keep your suspicions quiet. You couldn’t very well tell your Agents because that would put your enemy on guard.”
“Exactly.” He nodded. “And we couldn’t very well tell Homeland Security, either. They’ve been trying to take us over for years. They’d use an inability to contain an Agent as a rationale for our amalgamation.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
At that he chuckled. “Now there’s a question, Pigeon. Tell me, just how is a non-Gifted supervisor going to know if you’re doing your job? He or she won’t remember anything that you did. Difficult to do an employee evaluation. I dare say he or she won’t even be able to come up with assignments because he or she won’t recognize a problem when he or she sees one.”
“But what if it’s not someone inside? What if it’s someone outside the AGS? Landon, there’s this man—Xavier de Varga, his name is. He was following me. The detective got his license number and found out his name. He—he feels like he’s got a lot of power.”
Landon sat stunned. “That’s why you let me ramble on the other day.”
He wanted to grab her, shake her for everything she knew, but the buzz of Landon’s phone cut him off. He looked at the call display. Gleason.
“A moment,” he said, settling himself before he picked up the phone. With her news it was difficult to do so. “Snow.”
“Drake still with you?” The clipped voice said Gleason was still under observation.
“Yes, we’re sitting here having a most illuminating chat.”
“I see. Well, if she’s had to be medicated to get some rest, perhaps this isn’t the time to interview her. Perhaps sometime tomorrow after the shock has worn off.”
So he wasn’t on speaker phone. “We’re under threat?”
“Yes. I understand. It was the worst we’ve seen. A direct hit.”
“I’ll get things in play.”
“See that you do. And Snow, see that you take care of Agent Drake. She has things to answer for tomorrow. See she understands she’s to be in my office at four p.m.”
The phone went silent and Landon slowly dropped the handset into the cradle, considering Vallon as he did. He stood and regretted what he was about to do.
“We’ve got to get you out of here, Pigeon. Homeland Security has you in its sights and they’re going to use you to take down the rest of us.”
The afterburn showed in her glazed eyes. He crouched in front of her.
“You with me, Pigeon? Unless you want to be the key to taking down the AGS, you’ve got to get moving.”
Her over-bright gaze locked on his. “What’s gild the lily, Landon?”
He almost fell back into his chair with surprise. “Damn it, Vallon, where do you get these things? First Xavier de Varga, and now this? It’s an archaic phrase about unnecessary adornment.”
“So. What would it mean to the AGS?”
Landon checked his watch to cover his shock. He had to get her out of here and set her on course like he and Gleason had planned.
“There’s no time, Pigeon, and it has nothing to do with this situation. You need to listen. Focus. Gleason and I need you to carry on with your investigation.” He held up his hand. “Yes, I know you were already determined to investigate, we’re just going to help you.” He bent
down and hefted the file box he’d prepared onto the desk. “This is everything we have on the agents who have been killed. Are you willing to carry on?”
“Willing?”
She struggled up, and again he was struck by her strength. There was tenacity there he didn’t think he’d seen since her father, no matter what she thought.
“What choice have I got? I want my name cleared.”
“Good girl.” Landon wanted to hug her, but instead he shoved the box toward her. “The bad news is I estimate you’ve got a maximum of about sixteen hours before Homeland Security comes looking for you. Gleason’s bought you time by saying you’re to report at four, but once they’re on you I’m afraid you’re on your own. You’ll be a rogue Agent on the run, and Homeland Security will be looking to bring you down.”
A bitter chuckle. “Better and better. Dad would be so proud.”
“He would be.”
She flipped open the lid of the box and her face went still. She reached in to rifle the files. Looked at him.
“Jeezus. How many?”
“Seventeen.”
The afterburn flush had faded from her face, but two highpoints of color formed now. “How far back does this go?”
And he knew she was no longer the little girl he’d rescued from a changed house’s front porch. He couldn’t protect her anymore.
“All the way back to your father.”
Chapter 16—Faces Like Petals
The rain drove against Vallon’s windshield, sluicing silver fingerprints down the glass and making it almost impossible to penetrate the blackness caught in her headlights, just as the afterburn made it almost impossible to think.
Only sheets of rain and slick buildings and streets. At three a.m. nobody was on the road except the cops and a few shift workers on their way home to bed. Nobody but her, alone as she was meant to be.
It was why her father had left her. Her mother, too. And all the men since then. She glanced over to the box of files. Maybe it contained some answers about why. She had sixteen hours to find out.
That Landon and Gleason were depending on her seemed strange. That they had trusted her all along even stranger. And Landon’s tale of the danger suggested that there was far more to the world than met the eye. She shivered.
Sixteen hours until she gave Homeland Security the weapon to take over the AGS, and here she was, checking out something she hadn’t told Landon about, so she hadn’t trusted Landon, either. But then he hadn’t answered her question about ‘gild the lily’.
Her hand went to her jacket pocket to fondle the last thing she had received from Landon. It was a symbol of how serious the situation truly was. A new Mont Blanc pen loaded with ink and a folded piece of pristine, government-issue vellum.
She drove the car down off I-520 onto I-5 and then navigated toward the old district that was Seattle Center. The bright folds of the Music Experience melted into the night. The Space Needle formed-disappeared-reformed through the windshield as she wormed her way down into the older areas between Denny Way and Broad Street.
She pulled into a space beside the road and parked, then -reached-. The darkened city disappeared into a landscape of flickering flames. The brief sparks that were most of the city dwellers spread around her like the stars or the sea of lights that was Seattle after dark, but nearby lay a brighter shoal of torchlight. Gifted.
She climbed out of the car and hiked her collar against the rain, then shifted the files to her trunk.
It was when she turned to walk down the street that she felt the tremor. She -reached- and the AGS burned like a bright beacon in the night. Something happened, and she found the strength to follow a surge of brandy-flavored power—Margorita Chavez—aimed at Mount Rainier.
In the darkness and the rain Vallon staggered against the light standard, pressing her head against the cool metal. Power ranged through the earth. The ridge of land that had formed where Wilkeson once existed began to wisp into the night. Trees wicked like candles. Stone flowed away.
In the flat expanse of treed parkland the brandy-scent surged, then faded away. A new Gifted worked—bayberry-scented. Ingersoll.
Clapboard buildings shimmered and formed in the rain. A light in a window, and antique neon sign. She felt the newly formed lives asleep in their beds. Chavez and Ingersoll had done good. Better than she had done. But then, whoever had opposed her wasn’t there anymore. Or at least they didn’t care about the changes the AGS had worked.
Which begged the question: why did they change Mount Rainier at all?
She dropped back into her body, but this wasn’t the time to figure out the answer to that question. She hunched against the deluge and jogged down the street, rain soaking her trousers and Doc Martin’s and running down her scalp under the collar of her jacket.
The Terry Avenue Shelter was a two-story brick building with barred windows and black steel door that stood under an awning that was edged with overflowing eaves. A river of water ran across the pavement in front of it, but Vallon waded through and knocked on the door.
No answer, which didn’t exactly surprise her given most shelters quit accepting people after about eight p.m. Those who wanted to get in out of the rain had to make a decision early.
She tried the door, but the lock held. It rattled on its hinges. She -reached- and the flare of Gifted was beyond the door. Did she dare go in? Chance finding what she’d found at the flophouse in Pioneer Square? Could she get free this time if she did?
She had to try, because she had to understand, no matter the consequences to her afterburn. She was going to be laid up for days as it was. She dug into the jacket breast pocket for the vellum and pen. So smooth, the paper was a balm to her anxious afterburn. She uncapped the pen and unfolded the vellum against the door. -Reached-.
Cold steel, born of molten earth and fire. Brick, fired of clay and shale. She breathed it in, dry ash and heat still lingered for her nose. She sank—into it. Running through the smooth structure of the steel, the crystals of brick. Found.
The place where steel and brick met.
The wooden doorframe, tasted of old leaves and forest mold, and slumbered with the memories of height and sunlight. There.
Steel bored slightly into wood. Vallon hesitated. This was nothing she’d ever done before, but Xavier de Varga had. He had to have gotten into her house this way.
She touched pen to vellum and drew, as her mind told her to. Steel tongue faded away from high relief to low. Smoothed over in contours that ran the length of the door. Wood eased its tight frame, gave up its moisture to allow:
A click, and the door hinges groaned.
Vallon sagged, gasping, and fighting the afterburn against the brick. Who knew how long she could go on like this? Well, she wasn’t going to deal with her afterburn here.
She studied what she’d done. Still a steel door, but its wooden frame had shrunk back as if desiccated from heat and age. She eased the door open, feeling the familiar tingle she’d felt from her kitchen door. No steel bolt fed out from the lock. The entire door edge was a smooth expanse of steel. Nothing could be secured against this kind of power. Did the AGS know?
She hauled herself upright. Whether they did or not, didn’t matter. This was one skill she wasn’t going to share with them—yet.
She held the changed door in her mind as she stepped inside.
The reek of dust, old men, and filthy clothing assaulted her nose upon entry. She pulled the door closed behind her and faced a silent vestibule and another locked door.
Her pulse thumped in her head, the bump from hitting the wall throbbing with each breath. She was taking a huge chance—break and enter the least of her crimes.
But she had to know if her suspicions were true. And this might help track whoever was murdering agents. That was worth the chance she was taking.
She used the vellum and drew the second locked door open; the vellum conne
cting the smooth metal with what it was to become. She -reached- felt the steel like her skin, and smoothed the lock away with her mind and her ink. A gentle tug and the door opened.
She stepped into almost-darkness and wondered what Landon would say if he saw how she used her Gift now. Not quite what he’d expected.
To one side, a night light illuminated a hallway and a closed doorway marked ‘staff—no admittance’. The dim flicker of the non-Gifted attendant came from beyond the doorway. She crept forward, seeking.
The hallway guarded a series of dormitories, judging by the number of people she sensed beyond each door. But as she trod the corridor the air grew heavy with scent of licorice. She stopped, scanning the rooms with her inner sight.
The door at the end of the hallway guarded a mass of flames so bright it almost blinded her inner sight. Strange none of the other rooms held Gifted. All the little hairs stood up on the back of her neck. An electric pulse too similar to what she’d felt near Pioneer Square seemed to run through the air and send the bump on her head thumping harder.
She touched the dormitory door. Stopped.
Going through the door placed her in danger of being caught again if what she suspected was true. But this time she would be on guard. The latch clicked loudly in the silent hallway and she eased the door open onto a too-familiar tableau.
The row of cots had been dragged away from the walls to form a star around a center-point in the room. Old men—the cast–offs of society—curled on the thin mattresses, their faces turned like petals toward the center.
A shifting, golden glow filled the room’s core and placed deformed shadows across the fly-cast ceiling and walls. The stench of licorice and unwashed bodies hung so powerful her stomach threatened to rebel—and yet….
The golden glow pulsed like a siren song, warm and golden and honey-sweet as a yellow-flowered licorice tree. She wanted to step into that glow, remove herself to become part of that many-layered licorice world so vivid she could almost see:
White beaches, and palm tree shadows like trails on the sand.
Blue waves, and the breeze carried the light scent of salt and licorice and crab baking over a fire.
Happy voices from the people gathered around the fire, and she would be one of them.
So simple—she could live her life there, drifting on the beach. Simple and free. None of the concerns of her life. Happiness.
So much happiness.
Her lips pulled into an unaccustomed bow and that shocked her back a step. The damned glow was insidious. She doubted she would ever be that happy, and in that was the falseness of this place.
But the licorice scent said it was also a conduit to whoever was doing these things—including taking out Simon and Janet, and presumably every other agent back seventeen years.
Including her father.
Vallon grabbed hold of the doorframe to stop herself from being drawn into the room. Then she carefully, tentatively, -reached-.
Power blasted her like the room exploding. She dug fingernails into the doorframe. Earth. Pulsing. Her own pulse changed to match, and the earth’s heat seared through her, weakened her grip.
Power dragged her forward a step.
Another.
Her mind ripped further from her body than it was meant to—sucked her down. Sucked her out of her flesh like a siphoning straw. Shattered her so she was swept far and wide in the web that spread under the streets and hillsides of Seattle.
Thin, so thin the licorice wind could take her like a sail and she—Vallon—would be no more. It would almost be better. She would be part of something more. Something great.
Would stop them.
The satisfying purpose rammed through her. Intent so powerful her body stepped forward again. Again.
Her shins banged against the metal bar at the foot of a cot. The pain broke through her compulsion.
She staggered.
It wasn’t her purpose.
She scrabbled for the shredded pieces of herself, like trying for laser readings through wind and heat. Nothing solid. Nothing clear. Nothing to hold on to, and wasn’t that what Simon had said: that she was too distant, too secretive, too hard to read?
Was that all she was? A being made of half-made dreams and impressions?
No! Vallon Drake. She was Vallon Drake.
A stutter in the brilliant gold, and suddenly it was as if laser light lit on her. Blinding. Precise. And Vallon knew that the person behind the killings was aware of her.
Was aware of who and where and what she was.
Terror tore her loose. She slammed back into her body. Half-fell on top of one of the old men, his stench burning away the licorice scent.
She righted herself. Across the room one of the old man sat up.
“Hey, sweetie, you here for a date?” He made a smooching sound that made her skin crawl.
A hand found her thigh and she yanked away.
A hand found her ass and she punched him in the gut.
The afterburn burned through her veins, stuttered her thoughts, slo-mo’ed everything, and made triangulating her feet, her footsteps, her location almost impossible.
The old men pushed to their feet.
The noise would wake the staff. She had to get out of here. Get safe, because the licorice woman was like a treacle shadow in the corner of the room, the corner of her mind, and the sticky reach of her fingers could take Vallon down.
She turned, ploughed into an earnest-looking young man with rumpled clothing and sleepy eyes.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
He tried for her arm, but she slipped past his touch and dashed down the hallway thanking whoever had set only one night staff in the shelter. She slammed her shoulder into the vestibule door, the outside door, and stopped in the rain soaked street.
She turned to the door and hauled out the vellum and drew. The door was steel, smooth, chill, except for the tongue that had found its way to moist wood. She held the image in her head until it was so. Someone slammed against the door. The doorknob rattled and Vallon managed a grin.
She hadn’t quite put back the inner workings of the lock, which should slow them all down.
She jogged to her car and then, almost on autopilot, drove like a madwoman through the hissing streets past the dark expanse of Lake Union, over Fremont’s Aurora Bridge with its lurking troll.
If only the licorice woman were so benign.
The slopes of Fremont Hill were cloaked in darkness and trees, streetlights spilling their amber pools of light. She was forced to take a parking spot a block uphill from her house. She claimed the file box from her trunk and limped down the hill, fighting back the afterburn fatigue, the panic that she didn’t want to recognize for fear it would immobilize her.
The licorice woman had known her. Knew who she was — and Vallon racked her tired brain trying to make mutual the recognition.
A welcome porch-light blazed from the front of her house. So Fi was still there. At least there was that.
She lugged the box up the stairs, fumbled for keys, but the door opened before she could get them in the lock.
Detective Jason Bryson stood framed in her doorway.
Chapter 17—Fadeout in Rain