So Bruster had wanted to meet me. Not just pass on intel, but finesse an introduction so he could get a bead on me. The interest, coming from a man in the business of selling information, gave me indigestion.
“Give it to Santiago Benitez,” Kapoor continued. “He’ll know what to do with it. Have him send us a copy while he’s at it, if you don’t mind.” Bruster groaned once, slumping, and Kapoor clasped him on the shoulder to steady him. “Give us the quick and dirty version.”
“Your girl here isn’t the only abnormality this ascension.” Bruster twisted on the mattress until he faced us, but his head remained too heavy to hold upright. “War and Famine breached together.”
An icy calm unfurled in my chest and fanned throughout my extremities. “How is that possible?”
“No clue.” He attempted a shrug that resulted in a faint twitching motion. “All I can figure is whatever hit you with the humanity stick must have whacked them too. Except the shit they’re pulling is textbook. Maybe what happened to you weakened the breach site, and the others pressed their advantage.”
The voice that poured from my throat resembled mine not at all. “What about Death?”
“There is no evidence to indicate she’s active.” He wiped a hand over his mouth. “This terrene is going to need an episiotomy after birthing two Otillians at once, and Death would be a damn fool if she didn’t wriggle through before the stitches go in, even if it collapses the breach site.”
That same imperious tone cracked at him like a whip. “Who owns me?”
“That information is worth more than you’ve got, girlie, and not just to you.”
Chills dappled my skin, a too-late warning the cold place had already overtaken me, and I shifted my weight forward, ready to convince him otherwise. “I must know.”
“Bargain with me then.” He recoiled from whatever he saw on my face, but he kept the tremble from his words. “Offer me something of equal worth.”
“No.” Wu noticed the change in me and shifted closer. “I won’t let her write you a blank check to cash later. Her favors are worth more than your life, and you know it.”
“I know a lot of things, Wu.” Bruster rasped out a chuckle. “More every day. Soon your daddy’s going to know them too.”
“We should be going.” Wu stepped between me and Bruster, blocking my view of him. “There’s nothing more to learn here.”
The clarity afforded me in my current headspace agreed with him, and I curled my fingers around the thumb drive. “You better hope what you know doesn’t come back to bite me,” I warned Bruster. “I bite back.”
Before the iceberg in my chest got any more ideas, we left. The precision with which Wu closed the door behind him set alarm bells clanging in my head.
“Kapoor should have warned us.” Simmering fury boiled over in his tone, thawing the ice encasing my heart through sheer proximity. The daddy comment, whatever it meant, had lit a fire under him. “He should have prepared you.”
“What is Bruster?” I angled my head toward Wu as we rode the elevator down. “I don’t mean his species,” I clarified before receiving the talk about how rude it was to ask that. “Is he a psychic?”
“Bruster doesn’t read minds or predict futures. He maps hearts. He looks into a person, and the naked truth of them peers back. That’s what makes him such a valuable informant. He doesn’t have to interact with his targets to learn about them. All he has to do is get close enough to see into them, to follow the tangle of threads in their souls. There’s not much he can’t learn that way.”
“That is damn creepy.” I pressed a hand flat over my heart like that might protect what pulsed beneath. “Are there more charun like him?”
“On this terrene? No. He’s the last.” The ride stopped, and we exited into the lobby. “They were hunted to extinction here. Only the NSB’s protection keeps him alive.”
I didn’t have to ask him why such brutal measures had been taken. No one wanted their innermost secrets exposed. Still, despite the carrot Bruster had dangled before me, I pitied the man his solitude. It was hard being different and alone. I knew that better than most. “Did he look into you too?”
“My father wanted to know the truth of my heart, and he bargained with Bruster to have me read, but that was a long time ago.”
That explained his flash of temper at the invasion of my privacy, but I wasn’t sure that was what Bruster had been alluding to back there. “Your father sounds like a piece of work.”
The more I learned about Daddy Wu, the less I liked what I heard.
Wu’s smile was brittle and cracking around the edges, but it was there.
“Kapoor has taken a lot about you on faith,” he said, shutting down the topic of his father. “Bruster returning to the area must have been a temptation he couldn’t resist.” Wu slowed his stride. “Bruster is never wrong, and his kind can only speak truth.”
Yet another nail in his coffin. The only thing people wanted less than for someone to know the truth about them was for that person to be honest about what they found. There was comfort in lies, and people dearly loved their comfort.
“Kapoor wanted me read before I became official.” One last check against all those precious balances. “He wanted to be certain he was getting what he paid for.”
“Bruster has wanted to meet you for some time,” Wu admitted. “Kapoor was using you for leverage as a means to other ends. I intervened to keep you separated for as long as possible, but today he took that decision out of my hands.”
Wu cast in the role of guardian angel. Who’d a thunk it? “Why the interest on his part?”
Paranoia swarmed me, wondering what Kapoor had tricked me into revealing to the man. I was willing to bet if he played informant for the NSB, he worked with other factions too. All I could do now was hope whatever he’d learned was worth more to Kapoor when kept as a secret than sold on the open market. Or to one of my sisters.
“There are as many factions among the charun who are eager to bear arms against your sisters as there are outliers salivating for the chance to join in the battle and reduce this world to ash.” He escorted me back to the Bronco. “You’re a powerful symbol cast in either light. Bruster doesn’t ask for favors, ever, but he wanted to evaluate you to make his own determination.”
As much as I hated to admit it, “Kapoor was right to bargain me away for the information we received.”
“It was a strategic choice, yes.” Wu glanced back like he could see Kapoor ensconced in his room, buying more of what Bruster was selling. “But if he wants to build trust, earn your loyalty, he must be transparent. With you and with me.”
“It is odd he let you walk into that blind. Me, I get. But you? That does not compute.”
“You’re my partner.” He placed special emphasis on my but appeared not to notice. “I would have warned you.” He shrugged. “Or I might not have brought you to Bruster at all.”
“That would make it appear as though I have something to hide.” I spread my hands. “I don’t.” I laughed, surprised when I got what he implied. “You think I do?”
“We all have secrets.”
“I can’t argue with you there, but you know all mine. Even the one I keep from my coterie.”
“Ezra,” he murmured without hesitation, as if the name had already been on his mind. “The others don’t know about him.”
“They might. They keep a close eye on me.” I might be letting guilt gnaw on my bones over nothing. I might be endangering them rather than protecting them. I might be doing more harm than good on all fronts, but I was doing the best I could to protect the ones I cared about, and that was all anyone could ask of me. “But I haven’t told them.”
Wu leaned against the Bronco. “Any particular reason why?”
“I want to bring them answers.” I scuffed my shoe on the asphalt. “I don’t want to raise more questions. I’m already in doubt in everyone’s mind to one extent or another for various reasons.” I pulled out my keys. “For once, I want to walk in and say, ‘This is a problem I had, and I solved it.’”