EIGHTEEN
THE MAZIKIN WANTED TO talk. And they were going to use the body of my mother as their mouthpiece. That well of pain at the core of me turned cold, a column of ice along my spine.
Jen squinted at me. “Are you all right?”
Ketzler dove for the tissues and waved them beneath my chin. I looked up at her with dry eyes, and she cradled the box against her chest like she was personally offended by my rejection of them. Or convinced I was an emotionless psychopath. Diane’s warm hand closed around mine, which was chilled to the bone.
“Yeah,” I heard myself saying. “I should see her.”
Jen’s mouth dropped open. “Lela, just so you know, you don’t have to. You have every right to refuse. Rita Santos’s parental rights were terminated years ago, but we were legally obligated to let you know she’d made the request.”
And the Mazikin would have known that, because by taking over her body they had gained access to all my mother’s memories. They probably wouldn’t have cared about her past—until she recognized me last night. Until Rita Santos’s memories betrayed her own lost daughter. Now they knew they had something important, and they were going to try to use her against me.
I wouldn’t allow that to happen. I smiled at Jen. “I know, and I’m glad you told me. I want to see her.”
Diane squeezed my hand, but her eyes were locked on Jen’s. “Was Rita … all right?” She knew that my mom had been diagnosed long ago with schizophrenia.
I held myself back from replying. No, Rita Santos definitely wasn’t all right. She was trapped in the Mazikin realm—a place of fire and death—and I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t do anything for her except try to liberate her soul by cutting the throat of the Mazikin occupying her body. Probably I shouldn’t do that during our first visit, though.
Jen grimaced. “Well, you know she has profound mental health issues, and that doesn’t seem to have changed. Lela, I don’t know if you remember her—”
I didn’t want to talk about this. It was irrelevant anyway, because the person who wanted to visit me wasn’t my mother. My mother, when she was alive, had never asked to visit me, as far as I knew. She’d never come for me. She hadn’t shown up to any of the planned visits. And finally, she’d just disappeared. Into oblivion.
“I remember enough,” I said. “And I’d like to plan the visit with her.”
I looked over at Diane. “It’s okay,” I reassured her, because she looked almost as worried as when Nadia died. “You know what they say: Closure is healthy.”
After fleeing from Ketzler and saying good-bye to Diane, I endured the rest of my classes. I’d just reached my car when I heard panting behind me. Ian jogged toward me, his backpack over one shoulder and his tanned cheeks ruddy. “I feel like I’m making a habit of running after you,” he called out.
I tossed my backpack into my front seat, and then kept the car door between us like a shield. “I’m not that hard to catch.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how bad they sounded. “I mean—”
He laughed. “I know what you meant. But yeah, you are.” He’d stopped running, but his cheeks were still ruddy, and now the red was creeping toward his neck. He bowed his head. “I just wanted to … um.”
“Are you all right?”
He nodded. “Are you?”
I frowned. “Sure. I mean, I’m sad like everyone else.” And overwhelmed and wrecked and worried and feeling like the weight of the world is crushing me.
“No, I mean—about Malachi?”
“Oh.” My throat tightened.
“So I guess you guys aren’t together.”
“I’d only known him a few days. It’s not like it was a big deal.” Every word was a lie.
Ian nodded. “But it seemed like you liked each other. A lot.”
I let out a humph. “Yeah. Well. That craziness is over.”
“And what about that blond guy you were with last Friday? I saw him in the cafeteria earlier.” He gave me a cautious look. “He seemed kind of into Tegan.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I’m good. I just want things to get back to normal.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Normal?”
“What—I’m normal. Sort of.” Boy, I was full of lies today.
His mouth curled at one corner, like he was biting the inside of his cheek, but then he said, “You’ve been at this school for over a year and haven’t gone out with a single guy. Not even once. Is that the normal you’re referring to?”
“I go out,” I protested. Not really. I had followed Nadia to parties and driven her home.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time about it. I was just—thought maybe you might want to hang out sometime?”
All the blood in my head drained to my feet. Ian Moseley, jock extraordinaire, wanted to hang out. I looked up at him, and his lips twisted up into this rueful half smile. Only one dimple showing.
“Hey, I didn’t want to make it a big deal,” he said. “With everything that’s going on, I thought …” He scratched at his chin and let out a quiet laugh. “I don’t know what I was thinking, actually. You just seem cool. Bullshit-free, if that makes sense.”
I rubbed my clammy hands on my jeans. “I guess it does.”
If I got to know him better, I could make sure he was protected from the Mazikin, who would almost certainly come after him. Young guy. Strong. With resources. Embedded deeply in Aden’s memories. The Mazikin probably knew all about Ian.
I smiled at him. “And yeah, we can hang out. I’d like that.” And this time, I realized, I wasn’t lying.
We exchanged numbers but didn’t make any plans. I told him I would be at the wake and the funeral, and he gave me a brave smile and said he’d see me there.
I drove to the Guard house in a fog. The sleep deprivation was catching up with me. I couldn’t go on like this forever, and neither could the other Guards. We were all human, after all, and our bodies were frail. None of us would be able to make good decisions or fight well if we tried to subsist on two hours of sleep a night. The only time I got any rest these days was when Raphael put me under so that he could heal me.
I didn’t bother knocking when I got to the Guard house, just walked in, only to find all three of them waiting for me in the entryway, their arms crossed over their chests. I laughed. “Hey guys. Is this an intervention? Do you have a therapist tucked away in the corner?”
Identical looks of puzzlement crossed their very different facial features. “You said you would brief us,” Malachi said solemnly.
Henry’s eyes were locked on my boots as he spoke. “I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself before I took my concerns elsewhere.”
I stalked into the parlor and sat down. “You mean before you call Raphael in here. What do you think he’s going to do? Demote me? At this moment, Henry, that sounds fucking awesome.”
Henry took a seat across from me. “Last night. You were talking to the wild-haired Mazikin. It didn’t look like you were trying to capture her.”
“Sorry, my arm was kind of shattered at the time,” I snapped.
“Which was why I shot at her,” growled Henry. “I was trying to protect you.”
I looked away from him, and my gaze landed on Jim, who was still in the entryway, watching us warily. “See, Jim?” I called. “I’m a screwup, too. We should start a club.”
He gave me a small smile but said nothing. Henry glanced at Malachi and then leaned forward, recapturing my attention. “This isn’t funny, Captain. We need to know why you jumped in front of my bolt to save that Mazikin.” His expression changed, like a mask falling away, and in that instant, he allowed me to see the true effect of whatever horror and tragedy he carried inside his head. “I could have killed you. Do you know what that would have been like for me?”
“I understand,” I said calmly, determined not to take this out on him and make his suffering worse. I got to my feet, needing to move. “You don’t know me, Henry. So I get why you might be confused, why you might think I’d protect the creatures we’ve come here to exterminate.” I glared at Malachi. “But you know me better than that.”
Malachi didn’t flinch. “Did you think she was human? Because then—”
I shook my head. “I knew she was a Mazikin.”
His dark eyes bored into mine. “You could have told Henry to stand down.”
“There wasn’t time. Henry can verify that.”
Malachi rubbed the back of his neck. “Then you could have captured a different one. Unless perhaps you thought this Mazikin had special knowledge about Sil and his plans?”
“No. I had no reason to believe the female Mazikin had special knowledge of their strategy.” In fact, I’d had every reason to believe she had special knowledge about me, and still I’d risked my life to keep her alive.
Malachi’s fists clenched. “You took an arrow to the chest for this creature, Lela! And I don’t—” He stopped short, some realization dawning, and swept the other Guards with an authoritative glance. “I will talk to the Captain alone.”
Jim shrugged. “Fine with me. I’ve got homework.” He turned and walked up the stairs.
Henry stood up slowly, looking me over. I could tell that whatever fragile trust he’d had in me was shattered the moment I’d forced him to shoot me, and it would take a while to rebuild, if that was even possible. But it was clear by the way he looked at Malachi that he trusted him. After a few seconds, he turned on his heel and headed for the basement.
“Why didn’t you just tell us you knew her?” Malachi asked quietly as soon as the basement door clicked shut. He closed the distance between us slowly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
Of course he’d figured it out. I shouldn’t have expected anything different. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t want to talk about it.” I crumpled onto the couch and bowed my head, letting my hair fall around my face as my misery finally bubbled up to drown me. “In fact, I almost wish that bolt had hit me a few inches to the right. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me, and I wouldn’t have to deal with this.”
Malachi sank to his knees in front of me like someone had punched the air out of his lungs. “Don’t say that, Lela,” he whispered. His hands moved forward, reaching for me.
I jerked backward and slid sideways along the couch, away from him. I couldn’t take him halfway. I had to have it all—or nothing. “Don’t touch me. You’re the one who wanted distance.”
My boots hit the floor, and I was up. Rage singed me on the inside, turning all my edges black and brittle. With my fists balled up tight against my sides, I whipped around, ready to loose some of my fury on him—because the alternative was to collapse on the floor and cry, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop once it started.
Malachi was still on his knees in front of the couch, his head bowed, like he was comforting the ghost of me.
I spoke to his back, hurling words like knives. “I’ll tell you the deal, and then you can decide if you’d like to request my removal as your Captain. Are you ready for this? Because the irony here is beautiful. That Mazikin was my mother.”
Malachi raised his head.
“Yeah. You see now. My mom must have been living on the streets. And they got her.” It was so much easier to do this when I couldn’t see his eyes, when I didn’t have to deal with what they might reflect. “Think how you would feel if you hadn’t seen your mother since you were a small child. If you were too young when she left you, too young to remember her face, too young to remember if she really cared for you. But when she shows up, when she looks at you with your own eyes, it all comes back. The way she sang to you and loved you once, before she couldn’t do it anymore. All of those memories, buried deep in your head. For years. Waiting to ambush you.”
My fingers had crept into my hair and were tugging at it. My voice had thinned, small and high again, the voice of me from a long time ago. “I wish I could rip those images from my mind. I wish I could dig them out. For years, I assumed I didn’t have them. That would have been so much easier. But when she was right there in front of me, all of a sudden, so were all those memories. All at once. When Henry took aim at her, I didn’t think about it. I acted.”
Malachi stood up slowly, but did not turn around.
“Yes!” I shouted, anticipating what he might say before he had a chance to open his mouth. “I know what you believe! I know you think I missed my chance to liberate my mother’s soul, all because I protected her body! I get it now. I see how hard it is to kill a Mazikin when it’s wearing the skin of a person you care about. I get it. You must love that.”
“Of course I don’t,” he said, so softly I almost missed it.
I tore my fingers through my hair and headed for the door. “Now they’re using her to get to us. They’ve set up a meeting, using the pretense that my long-lost mother wants to see me again. You’re coming with me. To translate. See, I can’t even understand what she says.” Bitterness broke my voice, leaving it hoarse. “I assume you can, though. You couldn’t have spent all those years with Ana without learning some Spanish.”
“You’re right,” he said, finally turning to me, his eyes ebony pools of sorrow. I almost screamed at him to stop looking at me that way. It wasn’t fair, and I needed to get away before I made a fool of myself by collapsing into his arms and begging him to never let me go.
I groped for the doorknob, desperate for my escape. “I’ll let you know when it’s all set up. It should be great fun.” I welcomed the cool air on my burning skin as I swung the door open. “I’ll be back tonight. We have less than a week before the city’s emergency shelters close for the season. We need to locate the new Mazikin nest, and Sil in particular, before they start picking off those folks—as well as our friends—one by one. So study your maps, and tell the others to get ready. We’ll be patrolling heavily, but probably in shifts from now on. The objective is still to find a Mazikin and track it back to the nest or capture one and force it to tell us where they are. Does that sound like an acceptable plan to you?”
His eyes lingered on my face, and he opened his mouth to say something. But then he swallowed whatever it was and drew himself up straight. “Yes, Captain.”