A Taste of Ice (30 page)

“He’s crazy,” Cat whispered. “He can’t own people.”

Lea chuckled. “Some people might argue that most driven, successful, narcissistic people are crazy. Even if he’d never found out about you, he would’ve pursued you in the Primary way. But once he found out you’re one of us—”

Cat gasped. “He’s Ofarian, too?”

“No. He’s something else. If there’s a proper name for his kind, it’s been lost.”

“And you’re helping him?”

“Who’s helping whom exactly? Little Cat, little Cat. He and I are helping each other.”

She wondered if Michael knew that, because he wasn’t the type of guy to let others rise above him. The fact that she gave no more explanation, and looked at Cat with that wide-eyed, faux-innocent face, made Cat shudder.

“You’ve taken other Ofarians,” Cat said, turning her face toward the hall door, trying to pick out their signatures in the house.

Lea nodded with false pride. “Very good. So you’re starting to be able to differentiate them.”

Cat dug into her memory, trying to recall all that Xavier had told her in Shed when he’d revealed the world of the Secondaries. He’d mentioned others—other elementals, specifically. She closed her eyes, concentrated on the whisper of sensation across her body and the different kinds of twinges in her brain. “Is there an…air elemental? Maybe a fire?”

That condescending look of satisfaction melted off Lea’s face. “Quick learner.”

“Are they all working with you?”

Lea paused. “The fire is a little temperamental.”

“Wants to burn you alive, huh? I know the feeling.” Cat didn’t look away from Lea’s scorching look. Lea seemed to respond to being goaded, so Cat started to poke around. “So how in the world did
you
capture someone like that?”

“Not much can overpower water, you little bitch,” Lea hissed. “If there’s one thing you need to know about us, it’s that.”

Bingo.

“Ah. So that’s why you took the other Ofarians first. To collar a fire elemental?”

Lea stood up, looking down her nose at Cat on the carpet. She examined Cat like she was a lamb going to slaughter, and Cat feared she’d just poked the wrong person.

“Among other reasons,” Lea said, that smirk reappearing. She turned away, heading for the bed.

“You’re kidnapping your own people.”

Lea whirled back around, snatched Cat’s chin in her hand and wrenched it up at a sharp angle. “They are
not
my people.”
Her nails dug in. “Whatever delusions you have about beautiful Ofarian people joining hands and singing sappy songs worshipping water are so
wrong
. They are not good people. They don’t care about any Ofarian unless they follow every one of their twisted rules exactly to the letter. It’s fascism, Cat. They control everything about you, and when you want to follow your heart, they rip it out, stomp on it, then abandon you.”

“What the—I don’t understand.”

Lea shoved Cat away, the back of her head striking a particularly sharp carved tree branch. Lea went to the dresser, where Michael had a neatly folded tie and a bottle of that awful cologne. Lea brushed her fingers over the tie. She took several deep breaths, each one more calm than the next, then turned back around. Leaning against the dresser, legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded at her waist, she said, “Let me tell you a story, Cat. It’s an oldie but a goodie.

“Once upon a time there was an obedient little Ofarian girl who did everything her daddy told her to. She said what he wanted her to say, she went where he wanted her to go. And as she got older, she always believed she’d marry who he wanted her to marry. Because that’s how the Ofarians worked, you know.”

Wait…what? Arranged marriages?

“Only when the betrothal announcement came, this girl had already fallen in love with someone else. And he wasn’t Ofarian. She gave in to the Allure—the itch to fool around with Primaries before you give yourself entirely to the Ofarian world. She thought it was going to be a one-night thing, as most Ofarians do, but there was something there. Something powerful and wonderful and stronger than anything she’d ever find with an Ofarian man. So when the time came for her to marry and her daddy marched in an Ofarian man she’d only met briefly once or twice before, she refused. She told her daddy she’d fallen in love with a Primary and that she was going to marry him instead.”

Cat didn’t move. The hardened, calculating Lea had suddenly become this desolate woman with tears shimmering in her eyes.

“You know what happened next?” Those glassy eyes focused on the carpet somewhere near Cat’s feet. “Her daddy
made her choose: the Ofarians, or the love of her life. She chose love. And her daddy had his big bad soldiers grab her, inject her with about five needles of this potion that completely erased her water magic and said, ‘Bye, then. You made your choice. You’re never welcome back.’

“So she left with her love. Married him. Never thought twice about the backstabbing dad and sister who claimed to love her then threw her away when she longed for their support. Until she got pregnant and had a beautiful baby girl, and there was no one in the world she wanted to share it with other than her older sister. But her sister was rising in the ranks of the Ofarian Board, being groomed for the next Chairman’s seat, and the banished girl was forbidden from making contact. So she tried to forget about them and lived her life. Until everything was stolen from her. Again.”

Cat couldn’t remember the last time she’d blinked or breathed.
These
were the people she wanted to belong to? Suddenly Xavier’s terror—his reaction to her heritage—made sense. If the Ofarians could do that to their own people—their own daughters—imagine what they could do to a race they held enslaved.

Lea swiped at her tears with the back of her hand and looked down at the wet streaks in disgust.

“My husband and child died in a dumb car accident. Not because of anything I did, not because magic went awry or some terrible alien force took them out. He was taking my baby to the grocery store and a distracted moving van driver slammed into them. I had no one to go to. No family to hold me. No one of blood left to comfort me. No one!”

Oh, God.

“When did this happen?”

“Six years ago.”

So much conflicting information. Cat had no idea which way was up. And she couldn’t let on that she knew anything about the Ofarians at all, how Xavier and Gwen had claimed the whole system had changed. “That’s a long time, six years, to go without family. Couldn’t you try again?”

Lea laughed through her tears and it was nasty and devious. “Nothing will change with them. Ever.”

“How do you know that, if you’ve been gone so long? How
do you know your sister isn’t sick with worry? Maybe she’s tried to contact you.”

“She hasn’t. She couldn’t even say his name when I told her about him. Neither could my dad. It was John, by the way. My John. But Gwen’s all high and mighty now. She’s
part
of what’s leading them. She was the one who brought the old Board down and then built everything back up in the way she wanted. If she’s my daddy’s daughter, then nothing has changed, no matter what she says.”

Whoa. Gwen was Lea’s sister?

Something wasn’t right. Either Lea had Gwen pegged wrong, or Xavier had been tricked into believing something about Gwen and the Ofarians that wasn’t true. He’d told Cat that Gwen was one of the most honorable people he’d met, and that she’d changed her people for the better. The thing was, Xavier wasn’t easily tricked into anything. He was cautious with a capital
C
. He hadn’t
wanted
to trust Gwen, but some part of him did.

“Wouldn’t matter anyway.” Lea pushed away from the dresser, and the cologne bottle rocked and tipped over. “I made myself disappear. Changed my name. If she and my daddy couldn’t be there for me when I needed them the most, I wasn’t going to turn around with open arms whenever they decided it was okay to talk to me. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve picked my side and, like them, I’m sticking to it.”

Lea was dry-eyed now, that cunning, hard look settling like ice crystals over her features. She was doing this—helping Michael take Secondaries, particularly Ofarians—for revenge. And that scared Cat most of all.

“It makes me happy,” Lea said, “to see Ofarians not in control. I like to see them scurry about, all confused. I want to see them used, in the way I was used all those years ago, when I was young and trusting, and was made an example of the consequences of disobedience and punishment for the entire Ofarian world.”

Cat rubbed her cheek on her shoulder. All of this was so foreign, so out of her league. But there were general truths and emotions behind it all, reasons that defied Primary or Secondary definitions. “There’s an easier way. Go to Gwen and talk
to her. Chances are she’s changed as much as you have. You’re sisters. She talks, you talk. She listens, you listen.”

“Says the newbie,” Lea spit. “I can’t wait until you’re out of here and you can see what they’re like for yourself.”

Cat gasped. “You’re letting me go?”

Lea rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Technically, Michael doesn’t need you. He already has two Ofarians in his collection. He wants you, but he doesn’t need you. Plus”—she glanced at the hallway door—“he has something better now.”

Cat’s gut roiled. Her voice bottomed out. “What do you mean.” Then, suddenly, she knew. “Oh, God. Xavier.”

Lea sauntered back to stand over Cat again. “He came for you, you know.”

Cat couldn’t catch her breath. Xavier had come for her. Where was he? Was Gwen far behind?

“He made a trade.” Lea examined her fingernails. “You for him. So Michael agreed to let you go and Xavier’s now bound to him.”

Oh no no no. If he’d done that, the action had been borne of passion, out of impulse. Chances were he’d gone hunting for Cat without contacting Gwen. He was alone.

Xavier was strong and would survive whatever it was Michael wanted him for, but kneeling at an Ofarian’s feet again, cowering under Lea’s whip…Cat feared it might destroy him, piece by piece.

And he’d done it for her. Stupid, brave, selfless man who’d already suffered enough for a generation.

Wait. Maybe this was exactly what Xavier wanted. Maybe he had a plan after all. If Michael was letting her go free, the solution was simple. All she had to do was contact Gwen and the Ofarians. Tell them everything. Lea had no idea Cat knew Gwen, or that they’d spoken. Lea and Michael would assume she wouldn’t know where to go, and that she’d never alert the Primary police. But she’d bring the Ofarians back here—or to L.A. or Miami or wherever Michael would be. They’d save Xavier. Break apart Michael’s sick “collection.”

And Lea would be in her people’s custody, at their mercy, again.

“Where is he?” Cat demanded, because she couldn’t give away her cards. “In this house?”

“He’s kind of sexy, your loverboy.”

Cat took that as a yes. A yes that enflamed hatred.

“You know that’s what he was made for, right? To fuck women? I know which Tedran he was, too, when he was in the Plant. How they prized him.”

“Shut up, Lea. Just shut up.”

Lea ignored her. “Michael’s coming to terms with your freedom. He may still want you, but Xavier’s far more valuable in the end. The last Tedran and all that.” She started for the door. “Anyway, that’s why I came here, to tell you the good news, so to speak. And to get a last look at you.”

She left, and Cat tried not to feel like Lea had taken hope with her.

The daydream played on a loop.

Xavier imagined Cat standing on a pristine, secluded beach of white sand, staring out at water so clear he could see the bottom. A storm rose behind her, turning the world ugly and violent, but ahead, over the water, only a few clouds danced across an otherwise sapphire blue sky.

A boat appeared in the shallows, rocking and drifting toward her, the waves slapping lightly against it. She pulled the boat to her, and with barely a glance at the great expanse of water, she stepped into the boat and picked up the oars. Her arms moved steadily, propelling the boat farther and farther out. The look on her face was determined but also excited.

After she broke through the waves she drifted across the open ocean, one tanned arm draped over the side, her fingers trailing through the water. Nothing around her in any direction—the land had since fallen away and so had the storm—and yet she was perfectly content.

Cat, out in an element that terrified him. An element that had managed to cage him once again.

In the distance, another boat appeared. In it sat Gwen and Griffin, who smiled at Cat and paddled over with long, smooth strokes. They pulled Cat’s smaller boat to theirs and helped her over the side and into their craft. They rowed away.

The basement door opened, throwing a weak shaft of daylight down the stairs. Xavier raised his head from his crossed forearms. They’d taken him off the particleboard slab and had removed the cuffs, but hadn’t let him out of the bleak basement cell in nearly twenty-four hours. When the kid, Sean, brought
him food and a bucket to piss in, he’d either
split
himself in two like Michael, or he’d brought with him Jase, the wind cowboy.

Didn’t matter. A deal was a deal. Xavier wasn’t fighting, as long as Cat was safe.

“You came yourself,” Xavier said, standing as Michael crossed the empty floor. “Thought that might’ve been beneath you.”

Michael gave him a wry look then turned back to shout up the stairs. “He’s good. You can come down, Lea.”

“I’m only ‘good’ if Cat’s hell and gone away from here.”

“She is.” Lea reached the bottom of the steps and came over, holding her hands behind her back. “Put her on a plane myself this morning.”

Cat’s boat was drifting out to sea…Gwen’s was coming to meet her…

“We also put a man on her,” Lea added. “Someone just as loyal to Michael as Jase and Sean. I’ll know where she goes, who she talks to. And if you so much as flinch in my or Michael’s direction, he has orders to take her out.”

If she was trying to get Xavier to reveal something, it wouldn’t work. He narrowed his eyes at Michael. “What now?”