Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2

Chapter 5

In school on Monday Jase looked for Raven, hoping for a chance to say some of the things he’d been rehearsing, but she wasn’t there. That night he dreamed that something was searching for him, hunting him. He didn’t know what it was, but it frightened him and he hid—even though next morning he couldn’t say what “it” had been, or where he’d hidden.
On Tuesday, Jase was so busy trying not to think about Raven that he caught a reprimand from his algebra teacher, and had to stay after school to watch a vid of the lesson. “Since you clearly aren’t paying attention to it now.”
When he finally escaped the school parking lot was nearly empty, so he saw at once that Raven wasn’t waiting by his car either. And there was no reason to feel that surge of disappointment—he didn’t want to see her again. If she’d found some other human to terrify and seduce and harass, that was fine!
As he walked toward his car, he noticed two Native boys crossing the lot, but there were a lot of school sports going on now. Jase cataloged them as football players leaving practice early… until they swerved toward him and grabbed his arms.
“Hey! What’s—”
The world spun as they kicked his feet from under him and shoved him face first into the pavement. Sparks of pain flashed from his knees, competing with a throbbing ache that radiated from the cheekbone resting on the asphalt.
Then thought returned. Jase had been punched once or twice by little kids expressing their parents’ frustration with Mintok v. the Native Corp. Being beaten more seriously, by teenagers, was a fear he’d been suppressing for years.
“It wasn’t my fault.” His voice sounded fuzzy, even to him. “For God’s sake, I was only three!”
He squirmed against the hands that pinned his wrists behind him, but the boys were stronger than he was and had better leverage. If he yelled for help, would the beating part begin? His stomach knotted. But Jase could hear chattering voices, a study group maybe, behind the hedge that screened the courtyard from the parking lot. This was an awfully public place for a beating, and all his attackers were doing right now was… going through his pockets?
They were. One held him down while the other pulled his blazer from under him to search, and then ran his hands into Jase’s trouser pockets and yanked them inside out. Robbery?
“My credit chip’s biolinked,” Jase told them. “No one else can use it.”
“I don’t sense anything,” one of them said. “You’re sure this is the same car?”
Sense what? What car?
The hands holding Jase’s wrists twitched, but no one spoke.
“Yeah? Well you were sure the last three times too,” the first speaker continued. “Get him up.”
The ground fell away from Jase as they lifted him, with an ease that warned him not to try anything stupid. They shoved him to sit on the Tesla’s hood, and then sat down beside him, each holding one of his wrists in a grip that felt more like iron than flesh.
They still looked like high school football players, or at least they were big enough to play. The tall one was thinner, with more aquiline features. The short one wasn’t much taller than Jase, but his body was thick with muscle. Linebacker to the other’s wide receiver.
Jase knew all the kids at his school, by sight at least, and he was pretty sure he’d never seen them before. The short one looked kind of like the plainclothes cop at the border, only about twenty years younger, which made no sense at all.
“Where is it?” The tall one’s voice was coldly impersonal, his indifference emphasized by the pain that throbbed in Jase’s cheek. He was going to have a bruise, one that would probably show up even in the security vid. And where was school security? Even if no one was watching the monitors, the computers were set to recognize and alert on anything that even looked like bullying. Which this surely was!
“You know, the school security guards are on their way by now.” Jase nodded to the cameras that covered the parking lot. “You should probably go before they get here.”
He wouldn’t dream of trying to stop them.
The tall one didn’t seem to care about the cameras. “Where is it?” he repeated. “Where’s the catalyst?”
“The what?” If this wasn’t a revenge beating or a robbery, what was it? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you sure I’m the guy you’re looking for?”
The tall one scowled at the short one, who shrugged.
“The medicine pouch,” the tall one said. “The one you picked up at the border eleven days ago.”
Realization shot through Jase on a blast of adrenaline. But the tall one had given him time to gather his wits.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t been near any border for five months, and I didn’t pick up a pouch or anything. I just drove off the ferry and through customs. And if you’re customs agents, I want to talk to your supervisor! And call my father. He’s a lawyer,” Jase added.
His heart was hammering so hard they could probably feel the pulse in his wrists. Would they buy it? And if they didn’t, was he willing to let them beat him up just to keep the pouch away from them? He’d promised Raven, sort of. But she hadn’t done anything to earn that much loyalty.
The shapeshifters, Raven’s enemies, looked at each other.
“What do you think?” the tall one asked.
The short one’s answer was to twist Jase’s arm up behind him so hard it felt like his shoulder was coming out of its socket.
“Hey!” Pain made up Jase’s mind. “Help! Somebody call security, call the cops, somebody help me!”
He was yelling the final words, but in the silence after he stopped he could hear the voices of the study group on the other side of the bushes. They didn’t sound like they’d heard him. Real fear prickled down his spine.
“Help me!” Jase put all the volume, all the fear he could muster into that scream.
The oblivious chatter went on without missing a beat.
The tall one didn’t even glance at the hedge. He rose to his feet and pulled a knife out of his pocket, old-fashioned steel, with a five-inch blade that should have set off every security siren in the school the moment the cameras spotted it.
Nothing happened.
Jase threw his weight against the short one’s grip, with all his panicked strength. For a moment he thought his shoulder would dislocate, but then his wrist, slippery with sweat, turned in his captor’s grip. Jase twisted his arm free and ran.
Looking back would have cost him half a second, and he didn’t dare lose even that much speed. He headed straight for the hedge, diving and rolling like an acrobat over any car that blocked his path.
He was shouting for help at the top of his lungs, but it wasn’t till he burst through a gap in the bushes and into sight that they finally heard him.
***

The head of school security didn’t believe him.
The bruise on Jase’s face wasn’t as dark as he’d expected, only faintly blue, and all the kids who’d been working in the courtyard swore they hadn’t heard a thing till Jase thrashed through the hedge yelling about cops.
Jase hadn’t felt up to explaining alien shapeshifters to his principal—not to mention medicine pouches of contraband. He’d said his assailants were Native teens with a grudge against his father. And that they’d worn hats and had their collars pulled up, so he couldn’t identify them.
The head of security promptly offered to bring up security footage of the parking lot during that time period, which gave Jase some bad moments… until they found that every security camera fixed on the lot at that time displayed nothing but static.
The principal gave the baffled security chief a look that promised a serious discussion when there were no students around.
The security chief accused Jase of jamming the feed to conceal whatever it was he’d been up to.
Jase said he didn’t know enough tech to do that, and that his science teacher would confirm it.
The principal said no one should be able to do that, as the security chief had promised when he recommended that system to the school.
The security chief reminded the principal that no one in the vicinity had heard Jase’s alleged shouts for help, either.
Maybe, the principal said fairly, the study group was making too much noise to hear anything else. And the hedge could have muffled the shouts, too.
Jase didn’t believe it, and that worried him more than the static on the vid. Jamming a security camera was possible, though it took really competent tech. Preventing sound from traveling out of an open-air parking lot was… Well, maybe the aliens did have some way to do that. And if Jase’s great-great-grandmother could whistle for wind, then maybe it was some sort of magic.
And if they could do that, what else could they do?
This disturbing train of thought derailed when the principal said it was time to call Jase’s parents.
He didn’t want his parents to know about this. His mother would worry, and that was bad enough. His father would think he’d brought this down on Jase himself. And that guilt would translate to demanding that the police arrest his son’s attackers, immediately.
At best, they wouldn’t find anyone. At worst they’d arrest a couple of blameless Native kids. And Jase, who’d just sworn that he couldn’t possibly identify his assailants, would have to explain why he was so certain those kids weren’t guilty.
Jase told the principal that there wasn’t much harm done, and he’d rather tell his parents about it himself.
The principal said he’d delay any further action till he heard from Jase’s parents regarding their wishes in this matter.
Jase was pretty sure the principal knew he wouldn’t be hearing from anyone, but his civilized ass was covered so the matter would be allowed to drop.
He drove home, very late now, with all the car doors locked, looking for football player–sized boys on every block.
When he got home he told his parents he’d fallen on the stairs, but that the school nurse had taken scans and said there was no serious damage. At least that part was true.
He waited till they went to bed before he patrolled the house and checked the locks on every door and window, so he didn’t have to explain that either.
***

Where was Raven? Now Jase wanted to see her, so he could get that pouch out of his garage before something even worse showed up to claim it. She wasn’t in school on Wednesday, either. What would he do if she never came back? If even part of what she’d said was true—which now seemed a lot more likely—he couldn’t just throw the pouch away. She should have given him her pod code, or whatever it was aliens used to communicate.
The house was more secure than the garage, so Jase moved the pouch into his room and hid it in the back of his desk drawer. Still in its plastic bag, because despite what Georg said, you never really knew. Maybe the airtight bag would keep it from leaking magic as well.
His father told Jase he’d be needed to drive Mr. Hillyard back to the border on Tuesday, and that he’d clear it with Jase’s principal. Which would be fine, if Jase had given the pouch back to Raven by then. If he hadn’t… As long as Mr. Hillyard was with him he’d be fine. It was the long drive home that worried him.
But there was no reason for football player aliens to be looking for him at the border, Jase told himself firmly. He hadn’t seen them again, not at school, or around his home, or anywhere. He’d probably convinced them he didn’t have it. The tall one had said he couldn’t sense anything, and the short one hadn’t been sure they had the right car—which meant that someone must have seen the girl throw the bag over the fence, seen Jase retrieve it, but they hadn’t gotten a good look at him or the Tesla. The fact that they couldn’t identify his Tesla pretty much proved their alien nature, as far as Jase was concerned. But aliens or not, they didn’t seem to be stalking him now.
Unless they were biding their time, waiting till he relaxed his guard.
On Wednesday night Jase dreamed of being hunted again, of hiding, cowering, while something menacing tried to find him. When he woke up enough to think, the dream made sense—being stalked and mugged by aliens who could stop sound was enough to give anyone nightmares. Maybe the principal was right, maybe the study group had been talking too loudly to hear him. Or maybe the aliens had used some advanced sound-damping tech—Jase preferred both those explanations to magic. But he resolved to leave his window clear for a while, anyway. He was getting accustomed to sleeping in the light.
On Thursday he played basketball with Joey and Brendan, and he was so distracted looking at passing football players, and any girl with long dark hair, that he missed several passes. When he found himself peering into nearby trees for a big black bird, he quit the game and went home early.
Forget it—and they could forget about him, too! If Raven wanted to save the world so bad she could make contact. And if she didn’t show up soon, he’d hide the pouch in the woods somewhere and let them all go hunt for it.
When she knocked on his window late Thursday night she woke him out of a sound sleep. About time she showed up!
“Open the window.”
Jase could barely hear her through the glass. He hoped his parents couldn’t.
“Shh!” He got out of bed and padded over to the window, not bothering to put on his pajama top.
Raven, who’d leaned over the rail to knock on the glass, settled back onto the deck. As Jase drew near enough to look, he saw that this time she was dressed in a man’s big flannel shirt… and nothing else, as far as he could see. Planning another seduction? He had no intention of falling for it.
“Open the window,” she repeated.
Despite his resolution, Jase wished he could. If she was wearing as little as it seemed, watching her climb in would be interesting.
“It doesn’t open,” he told her. “Go down the deck to the door and I’ll let you in.”
Moving through the dim hall, Jase was grateful his parents’ room was on the other side of the house. But when he reached the big glass door, he still touched a finger to his lips for silence before he pressed the button to slide the door aside.
She’d wrapped her arms around herself, and she stepped hastily into the warm house. Jase couldn’t be sure in the gray twilight, but he thought he saw goose flesh on those long bare legs.
He gestured for silence again, led her back to his room, and closed the door before he spoke.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for days! Something happened that I need to tell you about.”
“Are you carrying the medicine bag?” She sounded as if she hadn’t even heard what he said, which annoyed him even more. But in that old-style flannel shirt, with her dark hair falling around her, she looked like the kind of woman who could ask that question. Good luck on the hunt, my love. Do you have enough ammunition? Your medicine bag?
Except the way she looked now, any hunter in his right mind would suddenly decide to delay his departure for a few more hours, and—
“Hey!” She waved her hand in front of his eyes, breaking into the beginning of a really nice fantasy. “Where’s the pouch? It doesn’t seem to be on you, but I can tell it’s near.”
“If you can tell that, how come he had to turn out my pockets?”
“What? Who’s ‘he’?”
“A couple of guys, who shook me down in the school parking lot.” Jase pulled open the desk drawer, groping till his fingers touched the slick plastic. “They looked like Native kids, about my age. But they didn’t fight like kids.” He turned his face to the window, showing off the fading bruise. Holistomax had lightened the color, but green and yellow blotches still showed.
“How do you know they were looking for the pouch?”
“Because they asked if I had it—the catalyst, he called it.” Jase held out the pouch, but she just stood there, frowning. “I said I didn’t know what they were talking about, because I didn’t know anything about a catalyst. Then they told me they were looking for the medicine bag I’d picked up at the border, and I kept saying I didn’t know what they were talking about, and one of them pulled a knife on me. I know they were… were your people, because after I escaped I started shouting and they stopped the sound. Somehow.”
He waited for her to ask how he’d escaped from two high-tech aliens with knives. Which was pretty impressive, when he thought about it.
“When did this happen? Have you seen them since? Do they know where this house is?”
“It was four days ago, and I haven’t seen them since. I don’t know what they know.”
“Hmm. If they followed you they’d have found the house days ago. And if they got close enough they would have sensed the pouch, so they didn’t bother to track you down. You must have convinced them you didn’t have it.” Her expression brightened. “You’re a very good liar, Jase Mintok.”
“My dad’s a lawyer. It’s genetic.” She evidently didn’t care about his courage, determination, and quick wits. “So how come you knew I had this catalyst thing… it’s the dirt, isn’t it? The dust in this bag, it starts something.”
“Exactly. Well, not exactly, but close enough.”
Jase decided he didn’t want to know what it started.
“So how come you can sense it’s here, and they didn’t know that it wasn’t? How come you could find me when they couldn’t?”
“I’m more familiar with its energy signature,” Raven said. “Though it’s changed, since Kelsa abandoned it. And it’s about to change again, which should slow them down even more. Hand it over.”
Reluctant curiosity stirred once more. “Energy signature?” Jase gave her the medicine bag, and watched her remove its plastic sheath and untie the strings.
“That’s the clearest I can say it in your language.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a bit of folded cloth, then turned on his desk lamp.
“Open this for me, and hold it.” She gave the pouch back to Jase as she spoke. “I don’t want to drop anything.”
Jase held the bag open, trying not to touch its contents. “When you say ‘my language,’ do you mean English? Or Human?”
“Both.” She unfolded the rag, revealing a small pile of what looked like white glitter, speckled with small dead bugs.
“What’s that? It’s not bugs, is it?” On closer examination, the black bits had neither legs nor wings. In fact they looked like—
“It’s rubber.” Raven tipped the glittering pile into the medicine bag, then took it from Jase with the delicate firmness of someone handling a baby bird. “I filed it off your car’s tires.” She stirred the rubber and glitter carefully into the rest of the dust, and smiled. “Oh, good! It’s melding.”
Jase frowned. That tiny bit of rubber wouldn’t hurt his tires, though he’d bet the file left a scar. But the glitter…
“You didn’t file my car, did you?” His voice rose, despite the danger of waking his parents.
“Don’t sound so panicked.” The imp smile dawned. “It’s just a tiny bit off the inside of one of the wheel holes. And a tiny bit off one of the metal parts too, which was hard to file! The tricky part was infusing the whole thing with energy from the batteries,” she added. “I had to perform a ceremony for that, and I haven’t had to do that kind of beginner exercise to control any form of energy since… well, for a very long time. And it took days! But it wasn’t like light, or even electricity,” she finished thoughtfully. “It was more… slippery, I guess.”
Jase didn’t care how battery energy felt.
“What did you do to my car?”
“Since you wouldn’t do this the easy way, I’m using your car, the thing you care about most in the world, to bind you into the medicine pouch’s magic.”
“You’re what?”
She was still smiling, but her dark eyes held a determined glint.
“I also bound your car’s essence to the pouch. So if you don’t use this magic properly, as it was meant to be used, your car won’t work either.”
“That’s carp. I may have begun to think… I mean, maybe those guys did have some cool tech, and maybe some of those old shamans could do stuff. But there’s nothing magic about my car. Teslas are the most reliable cars on the road. And besides, there’s lots of things, people, that I love more.”
She considered that. “You probably do love them more, but your car is more a part of you. I could have mixed your own blood into this dust”—she tied up the pouch as she spoke—“but that wouldn’t have worked, because to you it’s only blood. This will matter.”
“Carpo,” Jase said. “I might be able to believe you could do something to help with the tree plague, but you can’t work magic on a machine. They work with steel and physics and… and reality.”
Though so did sound waves, and the football kids had messed with them. But that was different, that was part of nature. This was his car.
“You know,” said Raven, “I think I liked the old curses better. That trick your computers played, transposing the letters… I liked bullshit better.”
Her eyes were laughing, as they so often did. Flirting with him again?
“Look, I’m giving back your pouch. Maybe, just maybe, you’re doing something real with it. But I’m not interested in you, or anything you plan to do. Period.”
It wasn’t that those two bullies had intimidated him, oh, no. He just wasn’t interested.
Who was he trying to kid?
He expected her to call him on it, call him a coward. Then he could get insulted and throw her out.
She met his gaze steadily, all the lurking humor gone. “Not interested. Even if my plan involves the survival of your species?”
“You’ll find someone else. Someone who’s willing to sleep… to help you.”
Not that he wasn’t willing to sleep with her. It was her using that willingness to manipulate him that he objected to.
“It has to be you,” Raven said patiently, “because when she passed you that pouch, Kelsa created a surge of magical potential. She had an incredible talent for healing—it took me months to find her! You don’t have that kind of talent, not as far as I can see. But by her sacrifice, Kelsa opened an energy vortex around you. I think it’ll give you enough power to finish the job. It had better.” Her serious expression shifted into grim. “Because we’re running out of time. They found you and dismissed you, and that was an incredible stroke of luck. They might not look at you again till the healing starts, but we can’t count on that. Once we begin opening the ley they’ll be able to pick up the changed signature. Then they will be able to track the pouch, and we’ll have to move fast to keep you out of their hands.”
“I’m sorry.” Jase was surprised to realize that he almost meant it. “But I’m not a save-the-world guy. You have the pouch. Go find someone who knows what he’s doing. Who believes in it! I wish you luck. Really. But you’ll have to find someone else.”
Someone who didn’t mind being beaten up by football players. It wasn’t like he owed her anything—she’d tried to use him, manipulate him. She still was. No, he wanted no part in this, and even if he did, he wasn’t what she needed. She needed someone like that girl at the border, someone who really could heal the world with magic.
But Raven didn’t look worried. “I knew you’d say that. That’s why I also rigged the magic so your car won’t run unless you’re in it, wearing the pouch. And using the pouch! You’ll have about a week to heal the first nexus before it starts to quit, even when you’ve got the pouch with you.”
“You’re not listening,” Jase said. “I’m not refusing because I’m pissed. Though I am. It’s not even because I’m scared, and I’m scared too! I. Can’t. Do. It. Which of those words don’t you understand?”
“How do you know you can’t,” Raven asked, “unless you try?”
“All right,” said Jase. “I won’t do it. Is that precise enough? Take your stupid pouch, and go find someone else to save the world.”
“I knew you’d say that too.”
Jase was sufficiently irritated that he didn’t even try to argue further when she pocketed the pouch and left… no matter what she wasn’t wearing.
***

The next morning, his car wouldn’t start.
The dash lights lit. The p-ping that accompanied the starter sounded. But when he pressed the reverse button and stepped on the accelerator, the Tesla didn’t move.
Cold battery? In late June? He’d been up in the middle of the night—he knew it hadn’t been that cold. But nothing else had ever kept the Tesla from starting.
He would not believe she could magic his Tesla. But he could believe she’d planted some alien device. Or maybe it was just cold.
Jase turned the car off, got out, and opened the trunk to raise the cover that concealed the battery over the right rear tire. The battery was cool to the touch, but not the freezing cold that could keep the car from starting in midwinter.
On the other hand… Jase pressed his palm against the coils of the battery warmer, which was standard issue for any car in Alaska. If battery temp dropped below working level, the charger was supposed to heat the coils as well as charge the battery. Once the car was unplugged and running, it used the batteries’ own power, if necessary, to keep them warm. The coils weren’t hot, but the temperature in the garage wasn’t that cold, either.
Jase went to the passenger seat and punched the button that extruded the diagnostic control panel below the dash. Most car owners never used the diagnostics themselves—some barely knew they existed—but Jase thought he could read them as well as most Tesla mechanics. And any addition to the system that wasn’t factory authorized would be flagged in red—which would surely include alien tech! But when he brought up the battery system, every section lit up green on the diagram. So did the motor, and the drive system.
Could the diagnostic system be down too? It was a better explanation than magic.
Jase had to hunt through the menus, but he finally found the manual override to run the battery warmer on command. When he went around and laid his hand on the coils again they were heating nicely, so he went back into the house and made himself a second cup of coffee. With luck he’d be only a little late, and for homeroom that didn’t matter.
When he came out and felt the battery, its cover was warm to the touch—easily warm enough to run. Jase closed the panels and made sure the charger had unplugged itself. He turned the security key and pressed the start button. The controls lit, and the familiar p-ping told him the car was ready to roll. He punched reverse, stepped on the accelerator… and the car didn’t move.
His mother finally drove him to school, over his protests that he’d figure out what was wrong any minute now. He was forty-five minutes late for his first class.
***

The diagnostics, which should at least have told him what part of the system wasn’t functioning, must be broken too. Along with whatever else was broken. Or sabotaged. Because the only other hypothesis was that a girl with midnight hair and warm brown eyes had magicked his car, and he couldn’t accept that. Advanced alien technology, that he could believe… From a girl who didn’t know what golf clubs were?
Jase’s mother was meeting a client at the gallery that afternoon, and she’d refused to cancel that to help him tow the Tesla to the shop. If Jase was that impatient, she said, he could call for a tow truck and pay the $120 fee himself. Jase wasn’t that impatient. Besides, he knew as much about the Tesla as most mechanics. Certainly enough to spot any alien devices that had been added.
The Tesla was so low to the ground that he had to roll it down the driveway till it straddled the gutter in order to crawl under it, but the neighbors were accustomed to seeing it parked there, with Jase’s legs sticking out from under. He liked to maintain the car himself, and should at least be able to figure out what Raven had done.
With the batteries thoroughly warmed, Jase put the car in neutral and pushed the start button. All systems in the diagnostic glowed green as Jase removed the access panels and checked to see if power was flowing from the batteries to the motor—which it wasn’t. But the batteries were all fully charged and warm. Could they have done something to the starter’s electronics?
Jase was under the car with a tester, tracing the flow of power from the starter to each of the batteries, when the electric motor whirred to life only inches from his nose. He banged his head on the pavement, then dragged himself from under the car. With all the panels open, he could hear the motor’s almost-inaudible purr as he stalked around to glare at the girl who leaned against the front fender.
Raven still wore the flannel shirt, but with jeans and gel-soles beneath. The medicine bag was hanging around her neck.
“What did you do? Tamper with the starter’s programming?”
One fine brow lifted. “I wouldn’t begin to know how to do that. The pouch is here. You’re here. That’s why it’s running.”
“Carpo! All the neo-hippie voojoo in the world can’t stop an electric motor. It just can’t!”
Raven sighed. “You’re stubborn, I’ll give you that. Go watch what happens to your motor while I walk away.”
Jase, who wanted to take a look at the motor anyway, went back to the trunk. Through the clear cover, he could see the inside of the cylinder spin. Then it stopped.
His eyes flashed to Raven, but she was more than fifty feet from the car. Smirking, damn her.
No one else was anywhere near.
Raven walked toward him and the motor began to spin.
She walked away and the motor stopped.
She turned and drew near again, and the motor ran.
She walked away and it stopped.
The next time she came all the way back to where Jase stood, arms folded, scowling.
“You could have tampered with the battery connections. Put in some sort of switch that cuts in and out on a proximity signal.”
“Without your finding it? You’ve looked at every inch of that thing. About four times, by my count.”
She was right. He would have found a switch, or any other device embedded in the system.
“You’re wearing a damping field then, something that disrupts every kind of energy.”
But it was when she walked away that the motor stopped. When she came near, it worked. All the other electronics in the house and the garage were fine. The Tesla’s controls lit. The diagnostic computer was live.
Jase’s scowl deepened and she laughed.
“Oh, come on. You can admit that I can change into a bird, and my enemies can stop sound, but I can’t affect a car?”
Jase looked at the spinning silver cylinder.
“How are you doing this?”
“I convinced your batteries that whenever the pouch isn’t nearby they’re too cold to run.”
“But they’re not cold. They’re warm.”
“They think they’re cold.”
“Batteries can’t think!”
“Yeah, well, they don’t know that. Do you want me to walk back and forth some more to prove it?”
Jase looked at the humming motor. She could affect his car. And if she could do that, maybe the rest of it was real. Those football players had been plenty real, and the idea of meeting them again sent cold fear sliding down his spine. But what if the world really was in danger? And he was the only one who could save it? Humanity was clearly doomed. Still…
“What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?”
***

Jase picked her up the next morning, in a Tesla that was running just fine now that he wore the medicine bag under his shirt.
He’d tested it himself after she left. As long as he had the pouch with him, the car ran. When he left the pouch in his room, it didn’t. And he’d looked in all the places a proximity switch could have been spliced in, and found nothing.
He’d kept a wary eye out for football players and not seen a sign of them. He must have convinced them he knew nothing. According to Raven, they’d keep looking elsewhere till he healed the ley. With magic. So he’d probably never see them again. Given the choice between fighting football players and losing his car, well, sometimes you had to take a risk.
That evening at dinner he told his parents he’d be out with friends all day Saturday. If his father didn’t have a job for him, Jase often spent weekends hanging with Ferd or Mick or Brendan—they didn’t question it.
Raven was waiting on the curb just before he reached the ramp onto Highway 1. The sun was shining today, and she was wearing a stretchie and using the flannel shirt as a jacket. The stretchie wasn’t as tight as the top she’d worn to seduce him, but Jase noticed that several cars slowed as they passed.
He still couldn’t forgive her for hexing his car, but he felt a twinge of pride that a girl who looked like that was waiting for him.
He’d left the top down, and she climbed nimbly over the low door.
“Where are we going?” Jase headed for the highway, since he was pretty sure whatever was going to take place would be a nature thing, not a middle-of-Anchorage thing. And the sooner they were finished, the sooner his car would be free. If he tried his best and failed, surely she’d be willing to let his car go before she went to find someone else.
“That way.” She pointed east. “We want trees for this.”
On the highway the wind was too loud to converse in anything softer than a shout, so they said very little.
Somewhat to Jase’s surprise, Raven told him not to turn off on Highway 3, which led north to Denali and Fairbanks, but he didn’t mind. Past Palmer, away from the cameras and speed recorders of the grid, the traffic thinned. Eventually, Jase came across a long straight stretch with no traffic at all and let the Tesla go.
Some girls squealed when he punched the accelerator and the g-force threw them back against their seat. With the top up, it felt like riding a roller coaster. With the top down, Jase thought, it felt more like being fired out of a cannon.
Raven threw back her head and laughed. Her hair writhed in the backwash, the tips flicking Jase’s face and neck till she gathered it up with both hands and twisted it into a thick coil.
Treacherous as she’d proved herself to be, Jase found the idea of getting his hands into that silky hair so distracting that he had to slow down, because he wasn’t paying enough attention to the road.
“Wow!” Raven shouted as the wind died back to its normal rush. “I didn’t know you could go that fast, in this form.”
That was such a startling idea that Jase took his foot off the accelerator, and the car slowed sharply.
“Is that what it’s like to fly?”
“Yes. No. In a way. The sense of speed can be like that, particularly when you’re diving. But this car, it’s completely rooted to the earth. Flying is all about air. And sometimes you have to put a lot of effort into flying, and then it’s nothing like—oh, we’ve arrived. Pull off here.”
Jase had expected… he didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t an ordinary pullout in the middle of the taiga.
“I know they look sick,” Jase said, “but the tree plague hasn’t reached here yet. The icky woods always look like this.”
Scraggly and misshapen, the treetops drooping wearily, this had to be the least beautiful forest in the world. One of his mother’s European friends had said that she’d never been to Chernobyl, but now she knew what it would look like. It was one of his first-grade classmates who’d dubbed them “the icky woods,” and for Jase the name had stuck.
“I know the plague isn’t here yet,” said Raven. “The leys where it’s set in are so poisoned that it’s going to take more than one human to heal them. What we’re doing here is strengthening this ley so it can’t spread north. Once we’ve healed the leys that ring the plague, stopped it from spreading, we can work inward and heal the disease itself.”
“Leys plural?” Jase asked. “We? All of them? I want my car back!”
“Not you,” Raven assured him. “Other humans can do the rest. I told you, if we can heal one ley, open all its nexuses so the power flows strong and clean, the neutrals will keep my enemies in check so I can do the rest. Kelsa opened this ley from the central crossing all the way to Alaska. Now the power’s building at a… sluggish point, right here. If you can free it, I think healing just two more points would leave it clear all the way to the terminal node.”
“So if I can just do three of these healing things, the football players will leave me alone?”
“Forever. I have the neutrals’ word on that.”
She seemed to trust that a lot more than Jase did. And once the Tesla was running again, all these neutrals and enemies would be none of his business.
“All right then.” Jase got out of the car and went around to help her. “What do I do?”
Somewhat to his annoyance, Raven wiggled out of the low seat without his help.
“First we have to hike a little way into the woods. You need to be able to touch the trees, and I’m afraid the traffic would distract you.”
Jase had thought they might go hiking—New-Agey nature healing—so he’d worn waterproof boots, and put a pack with water and trail snacks into the trunk.
“Let me get the car locked up.” A few pushed buttons later the Tesla was protected from both thieves and rain, and Jase was once more tramping into the wilderness on Raven’s heels.
They hadn’t walked for more than ten minutes before she stopped, and looked around at the damp, mossy woodland.
“We’re right on top of a nexus here, and the taiga—your “icky woods”—appears all over central Alaska. If you can reach it, heal the ley through these trees and plants, power should be able to flow all the way to the node once a couple of places on the coast have been opened.”
“You said these trees weren’t sick.” A mosquito buzzed near, drawn by the warmth of his body, and he swatted at it. His repel-vacs were up-to-date, but sometimes Alaskan mosquitoes didn’t care. “Why do we have to heal them if the tree plague isn’t here?”
Raven looked impatient, but her voice was serious when she replied, “It’s not so much that you’re healing the trees, it’s that in joining them to the power of the ley you’ll be freeing their power. The type of nature that you heal here will help to clean and invigorate the leys wherever they connect. This kind of vegetation, the sparse taiga, reaches all through the north of this continent and into Siberia. If you can heal this ley through the taiga, I’ll have a head start on more major leys as well.”
This made no sense to Jase—but he hadn’t expected it to make sense. The sooner he tried, the sooner she’d release his car. “OK. What do you want me to do?”
Raven sighed. “First, sit down.”
She settled onto one of the mossy tussocks, and Jase eyed the one behind him dubiously. The seat of his pants wasn’t waterproof. He touched the moss, finding it soft and not too wet, so he seated himself facing the girl.
“Now what?”
“You have to… open communication between yourself and the trees, the moss, all the living plants around us. Once you’ve—”
“Wait, communicate? You want me to talk to the trees?”
“Not just the trees, though they’d do. And not just talk. You need to—”
“You brought me here to talk to a tree?” Though given what he’d seen her do, maybe that wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. “Will it talk back?”
Raven rubbed her temples, as if they were beginning to ache.
“When I say ‘communicate,’ I don’t mean talk like we’re doing. You need to open yourself, your energy, and connect it to theirs. Once you’ve established a connection, your intent can affect that shared energy. You’ll probably need to use an incantation to focus it; most humans do. When you’re connected and focused, then you scatter a pinch of the catalyst. The catalyst will seal and amplify the connection, so your will to heal can become reality.”
Jase looked around dubiously. Dark scrawny spruce trees. Little bushy things. Yellow-brown moss and swamp mud, because the taiga was a swamp.
“Open myself how? Stop scowling like that. I’m willing to try, but I just don’t get it!”
She did her best to explain, and he continued to try for the next two hours, but he never got it. He’d never been more glad to get into the car and drive a girl home in his life. And at least his abysmal failure as a magical healer meant that he didn’t have to search the shadows around his garage for lurking football players. But it still felt like failure.
“I told you to find someone else,” he said. He wouldn’t mind at all, as long as she let his car go before she vanished.
“No,” said Raven. “I think I tried to start you out too fast. Baby steps, that’s what we need. And for you to be less frustrated.”
“I have a feeling I’m going to be frustrated for a long time,” Jase said gloomily, and didn’t even think about the double meaning till Raven laughed.
She said she’d come and get him first thing tomorrow, to start whatever “baby steps” she had in mind. When Jase got home, he told his parents he’d be gone the next day and went to bed still frustrated by his failure. And in other ways as well.


He was ready to hide at the first flicker of the shadow, but instead someone knocked on the inside of his closet door.“Who’s there?”It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but he wasn’t surprised when the old woman stepped out of his closet.“The energy of the catalyst has changed. It’s so corrupted I can’t find it at all. But you’re closer to it, aren’t you?”The pouch was back in his desk drawer, which Jase supposed was closer than the garage—but he wasn’t about to tell her that.“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. It had worked on the football players, after all. “And I think you’re the one who sent… something to hunt me, didn’t you? In my dreams? Well, I want it to stop. Call it off, whatever it is.”She stood perfectly still in the center of his room, but her expression put Jase in mind of one of his grandfather’s dogs, sniffing scents on the wind.“Yes, you’re bound into it now. I can sense that much, at least. He found you.”“That boy you told me about? I haven’t seen him.”The dark old eyes were fierce. “You’re ly—oh. Of course he’d change. You’re not a liar, boy. You’re an idiot.”“Thanks,” said Jase. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t—”“That’s why you’re an idiot,” the old woman said. “But you don’t have to die for it. Tell me where you are, where the pouch is. I’ll come get it, and you’ll see no more of any of us. In dreams or out of them.”Realization dawned. This wasn’t just a dream. “You’re a shapeshifter! You’re…”One of Raven’s enemies.“Oh, yes,” she said. Jase prayed she was reading his expression, instead of his mind. “But Raven’s no more your friend than I am—though I’ve no doubt she’s prettier. Did she tell you what happened to the last human she talked into carrying that dust?”“The girl who threw it over the border fence? Raven said she’d been arrested, though she was released later.”“She was arrested. And it saved her life. Because if she hadn’t thrown herself into the custody of human guards, she’d have been killed by our ambush just four miles past the border. Yes, we’d have killed her for the dust she carried. And if you use it, we’ll kill you too. Spare yourself, boy. Spare your parents that grief. Tell me where you are, and let me take that pouch off your hands.”No one had ever threatened to kill him before, not someone who meant it. The memory of his face slamming into the asphalt parking lot returned, vividly, and his cheekbone throbbed again. Jase clasped his hands around his knees to hide the fact that they wanted to shake.“If you’re willing to kill me, I’d really be an idiot to tell you where I am. Besides, Raven says that if the leys aren’t healed the tree plague will spread through the world and everyone will die.”And if he gave away that pouch, his car might never run again.The old woman snorted. “What nonsense! Do you really think the world could be destroyed by a few sick trees?”“It was almost destroyed by a few degrees’ change in temperature,” Jase said. “Not that long ago. I’ve taken biology. This planet’s atmosphere, its oxygen, comes from the forests. They say the tree plague won’t spread out of the Tropics, but if it did we’d be in real trouble!”“But your own scientists say it won’t spread far,” the old woman pointed out. “Why not trust them?”“I might trust them,” Jase said. “I don’t trust you. Get out of my room.”Or did he mean out of his dream? In either case, he was going to do something about it.Jase had given up on golf years ago, but the putter his father had told him to practice with was still stuck behind his dresser. Jase got it and stood before the old woman. She was shorter than he was, and had to be much weaker, but she didn’t look frightened.“Go,” said Jase. “I’ll use it. I swear I will.”“You think that can hurt me? You’re dreaming.”He was dreaming, wasn’t he? It wasn’t as if she was a real person, who might actually be injured. So Jase swung the putter with all his might, and almost fell over when it passed right through her.The old woman smiled. “Your weapons have no power here. Mine, on the other hand…”She stepped forward and slapped him, hard enough to rock his head to one side, hard enough that Jase woke up, standing in the middle of the room with his heart pounding.

The closet door was closed. The old woman was gone. But his face still stung from the force of her slap.