Exhaling, she prodded the painful lump on the back of her head. No Plan B came to mind. Her father and uncle thought she was dead. Chances were Lyre thought the same after discovering the half-demolished Consulate last night, which meant Ash would believe it too. Her only potential ally was her mother, but she couldn’t tell Mona about the reaper, not unless she intended to explain why a reaper was after her. There was no way she was telling her mother, and thereby the Council, that she could use the Sahar.
Almost as though the thought had summoned her, Mona opened Piper’s door and stepped inside. Her mouth was a thin, angry line. Walter came in behind her, all shiny bald head and ebony skin. He didn’t look any happier.
Piper turned to face them, quickly hiding her anxiety.
“I asked you not to wander around,” Mona began, clearly revving up to go into full Righteous Parental Lecture mode.
“And that is such a legitimate request,” Piper cut in with biting sarcasm, “when you’re holding me here against my will.”
“You’re not a prisoner, you—”
“If I’m not a prisoner then why did your goons attack me when I tried to leave? Why did that guy knock me out? And why am I locked up again?”
Mona swelled like a bullfrog.
“You’re not a fool, Piper,” Walter said before Mona could explode. She deflated with an irritated glare at her counterpart. “I know you understand perfectly well that by being here, you are privy to highly confidential information. Of course we need to protect that information.”
“So why do you keep pretending I’m not a prisoner?”
“We don’t intend to keep you imprisoned. What use would that be? What possible purpose could it serve? We brought you here because we want you to join us. We want your help. If you choose not to, then we will arrange to return you to your father with the necessary precautions.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Such as what?”
“I assume you don’t know what city you’re in?”
“No.”
“So, you see, we can’t have you walking out the door. But we certainly don’t intend to keep you here if you decide you’d prefer to leave.”
She scowled. “It’s hard for me to decide anything when I’m stuck here.”
“Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the situation. We’re going to have to insist you remain in your room until tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see then what you’ve decided and proceed from there, either preparing permanent accommodations for you or arranging to send you home.”
“I don’t have a home. You blew it up.”
Mona folded her arms and glowered.
“We need to get back to work,” Walter said. “We’ll send someone in with your dinner.”
She nodded curtly. They left, locking the door behind them. Huffing, she flopped back on her cot. Walter’s insistence that they would send her back to her father if she turned them down made sense; Mona certainly wouldn’t let them permanently silence her daughter. Keeping her prisoner would eat up their resources and they had to realize that Piper would be a troublesome inmate. Sending her home with no more information than “an office building in a city and a black guy named Walter” wouldn’t get anyone very far in locating them. Come to think of it, Walter probably wasn’t even his real name, and he hadn’t introduced any other member of the Council either.
Throwing an arm over her face to block out the light, she closed her eyes. A reaper was way more than she could handle alone; as long as he was preventing her escape, she was stuck here. But what would he do if the Gaians themselves tried to take her back to her father? Would he strike then? She would have to be very careful.
Tomorrow she had to decide what she would do. Join the Gaians and unseal her magic? The answer should have been obvious. No to both. A resounding no. But she couldn’t quite let either idea go. They tantalized her with maybe’s and if only’s that made her heart squeeze with longing. Purpose. Power. She wanted both.
Rolling onto her side, she wished there was someone, anyone, she could talk to. Someone to tell her she was crazy for considering the offer. Someone to tell her this was her chance to get what she’d always wanted. Or someone to tell her everything would be okay no matter what she decided.
CHAPTER 6
PIPER was waiting when Mona came to get her the following afternoon. She stood as the door opened, tugging the ratty hems of her shorts down.
Mona gave her a long look. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. Mona scanned her expression, trying to decipher her mood. Piper folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. Her mother motioned for her to follow.
The hall was empty, as was the elevator. Mona hit the button for the top floor. They waited in silence as they ascended, if the creaking of the elevator counted as silence. She let out a huge breath when it dinged and the doors opened. She strode out and shook the tension out of her hands. Mona led her past a set of open double doors. Piper glanced in and saw an immense meeting room with a wall of windows. At the far end, three steps led up to a dais where a podium and a single wooden chair sat. The room was large enough to hold a dinner function for a few hundred people.
“Is that where the meeting is happening?” Piper asked, catching up to her mother.
“Yes, people will be arriving soon.”
How many people were they expecting? The Council sure was leaving it to the last minute to find out what Piper would decide. The sun had already begun to set.
The hall ran the length of the building before ending at a small antechamber. Walter and the rest of the Council waited around a table inside, but one member was missing. The cranky woman wasn’t there. Piper glanced around at the bare space. A second door probably led into the meeting room beside the dais.
The Council members were in their finest suits and jackets. The men wore ties, the women necklaces. Piper felt ludicrously underdressed.
“Piper, welcome,” Walter said, gesturing for her to sit. “Since time is short, I’ll skip the prelude. Have you made a decision?”
She folded her hands in her lap and surveyed each person. Finally, her gaze came to rest on her mother.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought. I really like what the Gaians do to help haemons and build a community for them. I think that’s great.”
She glanced at Walter before turning back to Mona and continuing. “As for the Consulates, I admit they have their flaws. But I don’t think they should be destroyed, and I won’t help you tear them down, especially not when you plan to use outright violence to do it. I won’t help you kill innocent people.”
Mona stared at her lap, her brow furrowed, refusing to meet Piper’s eyes. She exhaled and turned to Walter instead. He nodded solemnly.
“I see. I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Well ... thanks for the offer anyway.” But not for the kidnapping. She could have done without that part.
Walter waved at one of the other Council members. “Could you see if the drivers are ready for Piper?”
She leaned back in her chair, relaxing for the first time. She really had been worried that they would say she had to stay for another week or month or year until she agreed to join them. In fact, they’d taken it so calmly she wasn’t sure how to react. Mona continued to stare dejectedly at her lap, chewing on her lower lip. Piper buried a stab of guilt. Now she just had to worry about the reaper ambushing her on the way out.
Twenty seconds later, the door opened again, but it was just the cranky woman finally joining them. As she passed behind Piper’s chair toward her seat, her footsteps paused. Piper started to turn—and the woman slapped a damp cloth over her nose and mouth.
Piper gasped involuntarily as she jerked away from the woman’s hand. Sweet-smelling air coated her tongue like slime. She lurched out of her seat, tearing herself out of the woman’s grasp. The room spun and rocked like waves under her feet. Hands grabbed her and shoved her down into her chair. Someone pinned her arms against her sides. She kicked off the table, trying
to topple her chair, but the hands held her down as the world spun around and around.
Walter gripped her jaw. Before she knew what he was doing, he’d forced her head up and jammed a syringe into her mouth. Liquid gushed across her tongue, bitter and syrupy, and then someone put the cloth back over her face. Walter held her jaw closed with bruising force, preventing her from spitting. She fought to free herself even as the room whirled and her vision blurred.
Her lungs burned. Against her will, she inhaled a desperate breath through her nose. Another wave of terrible dizziness. The room faded to black.
Her vision slowly returned, but she had no idea how much time had passed. Her head was filled with swirling clouds of vapor, her thoughts lost in a fog. She slumped in her chair with no will to move.
Mona patted her arm. “Don’t worry, Piper. It’s a harmless drug, just to keep you calm.”
Alarm whispered through the haze in her head. Her chair moved as someone pulled it away from the table. She wobbled in her seat. The room rolled and twirled in every direction. When it steadied, Walter was standing in front of her. He peered into her eyes. His eyes were very dark. Like a shaded daemon except not scary.
“It’s taken hold. How much time do we have?”
“Ten minutes until we start.”
“Excellent. Mona, wait with her.”
Piper stared at nothing. She blinked when Mona touched her shoulder. Her mother smiled but it was kind of sad.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you this peaceful since you were a child.” She sniffed. “But then, I’ve barely seen you. We belong together, Piper. I need you to stay with me and I know you need to be with me. You get in so much trouble by yourself.”
Mona touched her cheek. “How do you feel, sweetheart? Calm? You shouldn’t feel any fear.”
Piper stared at her blankly. Mona frowned a little. “Did Walter give you too much?” She squinted. “Perhaps. But better than not enough. Tonight is going to change your life.”
Mona rubbed Piper’s shoulders in a soothing way while they waited. Little flickers of thought and emotion danced in the clouds in her head, nothing touching her long enough for her to feel anything.
Time passed. Piper didn’t notice. Eventually other people appeared and she was pulled up to her feet and gently guided across the room. They went through a doorway and the rumble of noise made Piper stop in vague surprise. Hands prodded her forward. Up three steps. Walter stood in front of a podium. Someone turned her to face the room and she blinked.
Faces looked back at her. Lots and lots of faces. The room spun a little. The crowd looked at her curiously but didn’t seem to know why she was there.
Someone nudged Piper over to one side of the dais and out of the spotlight. All the eyes shifted to watch Walter as he began speaking again. Piper stood listlessly as his words washed over her. He talked about plans for the future. Goals. Missions. Things about the Consulates. How they protected daemons instead of humans. How they were tainted by daemon favoritism.
The words spun and swirled and danced in a wash of sound. Piper stood unmoving, waiting without a thought or care, staring at the growing shadows beyond the windows as the sun disappeared.
“And when we’re ready to face the remaining daemons head on,” Walter declared, “we’ll have a powerful ally. Do any of you know Piper’s unique history? You see, Piper was born to two haemon parents.”
A couple calls of disbelief from the crowd.
“We all know,” he continued, “that female children born to two haemon parents always die in childhood. But do you know that daemons can save our girls? A daemon saved Piper from dying as a child by sealing away the dual magic she inherited from her parents.
“For hundreds of years, daemons have been letting our children die when they could have been saving every single one of them. Why? Because they don’t want the competition. A haemon with a dual bloodline is just as powerful as a daemon! The daemons want to keep us weaker than them, so they let our girls die.”
The Gaians jeered in anger.
“Piper’s magic has been sealed away her entire life, keeping her weak. Tonight, we will remove the seal and give her full access to her magic for the first time. Witness the power your daughters could wield!”
Loud applause. Walter turned off the microphone and gestured. Hands pulled Piper to the chair in the middle of the dais and pushed her down. Other hands touched her upper arms. Magic tingled. Invisible bonds tightened around her arms, binding them to the back of the chair. Piper blinked, distantly unhappy but the feeling soon faded.
A new face appeared in front of her. An old woman. She smiled and patted Piper’s hand. “Don’t worry, child. I’ll get that spell out of you, don’t you fret.”
“Are you ready, Helaine?” Walter asked quietly. The crowd chattered, a low hum behind him.
“Of course,” Helaine said with a bite of impatience. “Don’t be doubting me now. I’ve removed filthy daemon spells from hundreds of unfortunate souls.”
“Begin then,” he replied shortly.
“Will it be difficult?” Mona asked, crouching beside Piper. “The daemon was—”
“Hush,” Helaine snapped, laying her hands on either side of Piper’s head. “It’s bad enough you let that devil wrap your daughter in his evil spells. He did a pitiable job anyway. I can feel the threads of it; the spell is in a wretched state. It would have lasted a year longer at most.”
Piper stared at the woman’s face as it scrunched in concentration. So many wrinkles. Her hands were calloused, her hold tight. Piper’s head felt hot under the woman’s touch. Distressed whispers skittered across her thoughts. This was a bad thing, wasn’t it? She didn’t want this, did she?
The woman grunted. “The devil did a fair job of it after all. The spell doesn’t want to budge.”
“Can you—”
“Hush!”
Piper’s head felt hotter. Little flashes of fire sparked in her skull. She wanted the woman to stop. It hurt. The pain swirled through the mist, growing stronger, threatening her safe, peaceful lassitude. The fire spread to her chest. Her arms jerked and a whimper scraped her throat. Stop now. Make it stop.
“You’re hurting her—”
“Quiet, Mona! Let her finish.”
Hotter and hotter. Flames inside her. Little lightning bolts in her skull, shooting down her spine. The mist in her head turned red with pain. The insulating cloud thinned.
Agony blasted through her skull and she screamed.
The pain stopped, vanishing like a popped bubble. She panted in the sudden cessation of agony, struggling against the haze that immediately swept the thoughts from her head.
Helaine flung her hands wide. “It is done!” she crowed.
The crowd cheered, pressing closer to the dais. They called encouragements to Piper.
Walter gave her a pat on the shoulder before returning to the podium. He switched on the mic.
“Let us congratulate Piper—as well as the haemon race—in this historic moment! For the first time in two centuries, we have a hybrid haemon among our ranks!”
Shouts of agreement. More cheers.
“Now, before we conclude, I would like to—”
The lights went out with a pop, plunging the sprawling room into darkness.
Startled voices exclaimed in the crowd and the Council members grumbled. Power outages were regular enough not to cause a panic, but the timing was terrible. Piper sat in her chair, blinking in the darkness.
“We ask for your patience, please, everyone,” Walter called. “We will have someone check the—”
With a flicker, the lights came back to life, flooding the room. The Gaians looked around, smiling in relief. Walter began to speak again but stopped as a strange hush fell over the crowd, starting from the back of the room. In a surge of movement, the haemons nearest the double doors backed away, bumping into the rest of the crowd.
One lone figure stood in the middle of the new gap, no one within twenty feet of h
im. He stood casually, hands in his jeans pocket, pale blond hair tousled, golden eyes flashing, catching Piper’s attention even from across the room.
Euphoric delight swept through the fog in her head.
Lyre let out a low whistle as he surveyed the crowd.
“This here’s a mighty big group of Gaians,” he drawled, his smooth voice filling the room in a way Walter’s couldn’t. His teeth flashed as he grinned. “What a gathering! I didn’t know murderers had a support group.”
A heartbeat of silence.
“It’s not murder when it’s just daemons,” someone shouted.
“Just daemons?” Lyre repeated. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Wow, I’m hurt. Your mothers didn’t think we were just daemons.”
Angry shouts and hurled insults.
Walter stepped up to the mic. “Restrain that intruder immediately!”
A dozen haemons pushed their way through the crowd to the open space where Lyre stood. As they rushed him, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and flicked them, a casual shooing motion as though he were swatting flies away.
All the attacking Gaians were blasted off their feet and sent crashing to the floor, stunned.
“Oooh, sorry,” Lyre said with a sympathetic wince. “I was expecting you all to shield or ... something, you know.”
“Walter, that’s not a random intruder,” Mona hissed. “That’s one of Piper’s daemon friends. He’s come for her!”
“Take that daemon out now!” Walter shouted. He slashed a look at Mona. “Get Piper out of here before that other one shows up. If he’s here, we’ll have to use Piper as a hostage to stall him until we can get the ultrasound speaker up here. Mona? Mona, are you listening?”
A moment of silence.
“Too late.” The new voice shivered under Piper’s skin, rubbing across her bones. She smiled, elated even through the drug haze.
Walter, Mona, and the rest of the Council retreated rapidly from the back of the dais, two of them falling down the steps in their haste. Mona pointed with a shaking hand.
“You!” she shouted accusingly.
A shadow fell across Piper. She looked up. Ash stood beside her, terrifying in black fatigues, an armored vest, and black armguards. Twin swords at each hip. A black wrap covered the lower half of his face.