Firebug (23 page)

Despite my worry, I couldn't help but smile. Sylvie has that effect. “I promise to do the best I can, Crustacean Queen.”

“Great!” she chirped, back to her normal self. “Is Lock there? He is, isn't he? I know he is, because you guys are, like, joined at the hip or something stupid like my mom would say. Put him on the phone.” Knowing better than to argue, I handed the phone to Lock, making a few kissy noises as I did. “Your girlfriend,” I mouthed.

He flipped me off, but he took the phone.

 

 

I HATED
the idea of leaving, even though it didn't make any sense to stand around and stare at the rubble. As the car drove away from the mutilated husk of Broken Spines, I felt my heart crumble at the edges. Just one more thing I needed to take the Coterie to task for. Too much of my life had been a reaction to them and their actions, to what they wanted, and I was sick and tired of it. They would answer for it, come hell or high water. But that was for later. For now I just curled up in my seat and tried not to cry.

My fear that I'd find the cabin in the same state was unfounded. The windows were dark and empty, but it was intact. A quick search of the inside yielded very little in the way of information, but I had to see for myself that Cade wasn't there. That he was really missing. Ikka was able to tell me there had been someone about who wasn't human—she'd smelled different scent trails, but no blood. So if someone had been hurt, it hadn't happened in this cabin. Unless it was poison, but that wasn't really Venus's style.

Why couldn't the Coterie have been thoughtful enough to leave a dagger planted in my kitchen table with a detailed note outlining their plans? At the very least, some sort of threat or something for me to go on. A nice theatrical clue would have been good just then—of course, burning the bookstore was a pretty clear signal, but they could deny that they did it. I could see Venus sitting on her divan, her blue eyes wide and innocent, her voice full of sincerity as she talked about humans and arson and the state of the world these days. In this scenario Ryan is painting her toenails for some reason, while she sits and points fingers at anyone but the Coterie. Sure, we'd both know who did it, but what could I do? Nothing.

I went to my room and packed. Lock rapped on the wall as he entered.

“We should go.”

I nodded. “Just a few things, then we're gone.” I sat down on my bed. “Lock? Can I ask you something?”

“You're asking permission? It must be a very awkward question.”

I materialized a small ball of fire between my hands, tossing it idly back and forth. While other kids were playing video games and complaining about braces, my mom was teaching me to juggle fire, just like I was doing now. It had become habit, something I did when I was thinking or nervous. “How come you and Ezra are willing to do all this?”

He dropped down into a crouch in front of me, staring up at my face. The fireball lit his face while it passed, leaving one half in shadow as it flicked back and forth. He studied me for a second, his elbows resting on his knees. I tried to ignore him and keep the flame ball bouncing. Suddenly he stuck his hand up right in its path. I quickly extinguished it, but it was very close to his skin when I did.

“
What the hell do you think you're doing?
” I think I spit a little when I yelled.

“Proving a damn point. I'm not scared of you, Ava. We're friends. That means if you're going to duck march into the maws of hell, I'm going to be right behind you carrying the marshmallows and roasting sticks.”

I kept my head tilted away, not wanting Lock to see me tearing up. I hate crying in front of people. Lock, of course, wasn't about to let me get away with it. He gently grabbed my chin and pulled it until I was looking at him. “I know you didn't really have any friends growing up, that you couldn't,” he said softly. “But this is kind of how it works. You're going in, then I'm going in right behind you, whether you like it or not. And we couldn't lose Ezra if we tried.”

“And we have tried.”

Lock dropped my chin and rested his arms on my knees. “Remember that time he was chasing wild turkeys through someone's field and we tried to make it back to the car before he spotted us leaving?”

“I still say we would have made it if my phone hadn't gone off.”

I don't know how long we sat there lost in our happy memory before I felt his mood shift. He traced a pattern on my leg with his thumb, and I knew he was trying to figure out how to say something. “Spit it out,” I said with a sigh.

“Cade would have left a note if he'd changed his plans.”

“He would have left something, yes.”

Lock dropped out of his crouch and sat on the floor. “He probably never made it back here to pack.”

A curt shake of my head, just enough to convey a no without thinking enough to completely collapse into tears. Cade. They had kidnapped Cade. I couldn't handle losing him. Venus wouldn't kill him, at least not at first. She needed him for now. But she would hurt him. Lock had said she'd seemed extra unhinged lately. She didn't have the best restraint on good days. If she hurt Cade, would she know when to stop? Venus wasn't used to dealing with humans except for lunch. They were fragile compared with the rest of us. My whole body quaked at the thought of it. I took a deep breath. I hadn't lost him yet. No matter what, I needed to remember that. He was just temporarily misplaced.

“What do we do next?” Lock asked. I didn't know. But when we rejoined Sid in the kitchen, he gave us an answer.

“We go back to the drove,” Sid said from his seat on the counter. “Les and Duncan. That's what we do.”

I scowled at him until he jumped down. “Drove?”

“That's what you call a group of rab—I mean hares,” Lock said. When I looked at him, one eyebrow raised, he shrugged. “My mom's a dryad, remember? I know a thing or two about nature.”

“I thought your grandma raised you.”

“During the school year. But the summers were all Mom.”

I heard a muffled thump from outside the door, presumably from Ikka since that was where I'd last seen her. Sid cocked his head. “We'd better get going.”

“To the drove,” I said, flinging my bag over my shoulder. Hopefully, Les and Duncan had some ideas. Because I was about out.

11

I
T'S
H
ARD
TO
F
IGHT
IN
P
AJAMAS

BY THE TIME
we pulled back into Duncan's, I was feeling a little more hopeful. Sylvie had Horatio, and the cabin was okay. We could rebuild the bookstore. It was insured. Not quite the same as hearing that Cade was safe, but at that point any positive news was welcome.

Duncan was sitting by the fire when I got in, his big body huddled over a small piece of wood. He held a whittling knife in his hand, but right then he was running a thumb over the half-carved piece as if he were trying to decide what he wanted it to be. A handful of Les's drove were sitting here and there, even a kid curled up on the fireplace rug like a dog.

Lock brought everyone up to speed as I collapsed into a chair, moodily staring at the flames. Every once in a while, I'd glance at Duncan, who was still staring at that damn piece of wood, his occasional nod the only sign that he was listening. For some reason his inattention made me furious. There I was, miserable, tired, and in deep shit, and he was fucking
whittling.
Like the situation had nothing to do with him, like it wasn't at least partially his fault that I was in this mess. If I had just taken the damn contract on him and burned this stupid cabin to the ground, then I'd have been home in front of
my
fire probably eating a damn steak while Cade talked about … well, anything at all, really.

“You look about ready to pop,” Duncan drawled, keeping his gaze on his project. At least he'd finally started carving it again.

I glared at him.

Sid bristled, but Duncan just laughed. “I bet you're thinking how nice and simple things would have been if you'd just taken the contract on me, hmm?”

I nodded glumly, and before my chin even finished bobbing, the mood in the room took another one of those mercurial shifts. All eyes were on me, hostile and wary, and the little kid by the fire had rolled to his feet and pulled a blade on me before I could blink. It was a decent-size hunting knife too, and placed rather skillfully at my throat. This seemed to be a favorite move amongst the were-hares. I wondered where the kid had been hiding the knife.

Now that I looked, I realized that I'd made an error—the knife wielder was a girl of about eleven, maybe twelve at most. Her brown hair was shaved short in the back, the top and the front kept longer and brushed forward so that it swept down to her nose. Despite the smudges on her face and the punk-rock hair, there was an almost angelic quality to her, probably something to do with the big brown eyes and ghostly skin. She was one tubercular cough away from being a perfect Dickensian orphan.

Of course, she'd have looked a lot more angelic without the knife. But then again, what did I know about angels?

“Olive,” Duncan said drily, “while I commend your speed and dedication, that is hardly necessary.”

I eyed the young girl. “You know I could barbecue you, right?”

She stared right back at me. “But could you do it before I finished the job?” With a flick the knife was gone, back to her mystery hiding spot. “And are you really willing to find out?”

“No,” I said. “But if I'd really wanted to kill Duncan, why wait this long? Why come to the house and get mixed up with you guys?”

Olive continued to stare at me, calm and barely blinking. “Maybe you knew you couldn't get close enough if you didn't. Maybe you're just careless or stupid. How should I know?”

Lock leaned in, all charm and smiles. “We made it this far because Duncan is Ava's friend. He let us get close. We'd be idiots to think otherwise. Just like we both know that we'll be guarded tonight, friends or not friends, because Duncan isn't stupid, either.”

The little girl seemed impervious to Lock's charm but assented to his logic soon enough. “Fine. Whatever.” She turned to Les. “Can I have a cookie?” Les gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the girl was off like a shot.

“Only one!” Sid shouted after her. I'd only known Olive for about a minute, but even I knew she was going to take as many cookies as she thought she should have, and it was going to be more than one.

I turned to Duncan. “May I ask you a question? And please don't do that smart-ass thing where you tell me I've already asked one. I hate that.”

“You may ask,” Duncan said. “But that doesn't mean I'm going to answer it.”

“Why does Venus want you so bad?” Venus liked to show that she was in charge, but she didn't usually force a confrontation unless she could guarantee she was going to like the outcome. She had to have known that I was going to say no to Duncan's contract. She couldn't offer it to Owen, since he couldn't get close enough, but she must have wanted it pretty bad if she forced the issue with me. Twice. In public. She was hungry for Duncan's death in a way I'd never seen before.

Duncan contemplated the fire as Ikka put another log on, stoking the flames with an old iron poker as she did so. “What do you know about the Coterie?” he asked, finally.

“That it sucks,” I said promptly.

He laughed. “Anything else?”

“That it sucks a lot.”

Les gave me a small smile. “I see you don't put much store by the adage ‘Know thy enemy,'” He helped Olive up onto his knee as he spoke. She was holding only one cookie, but the crumbs on her face told me she'd had several before she came back into the living room. I noticed that her pants were cargo style, with lots of pockets, and I bet there were some cookies stashed in at least one of them, too.

“Knowing more about it isn't going to change anything. Snow is cold, water is wet, the Coterie sucks. Some truths are immutable.” They were responsible for my mom's death and my current misery, and they probably stole candy from babies. What else did I need to know?

Duncan leaned back in his chair, his whittling forgotten for the moment. “Okay, let me ask you another question. Do you know who was in charge before Venus?”

I didn't. To me, Venus
was
the Coterie; it started and ended with her. Venus was old—really old. I knew that, in theory, there had been someone before her, I just didn't care. What came before wasn't my problem. Venus was. I said as much.

“That's exactly what Venus wants you to believe,” Duncan answered, “that there is no Coterie without her. But organizations like the Coterie are nothing new. That doesn't mean they're everywhere, though. In most areas, the councils look out for the weaker ones.”

“In my experience they're not much better than the Coterie.”

“They aren't all like that,” Lock said. “What about the one in Portsmouth? Are the rumors true?”

Although we'd heard they were on the Coterie payroll, that morsel of information had come from people associated with the Coterie. I leaned closer, excited. An official team of toughs at my back would be nice. The idea of a quick trip to Portsmouth solving my problems appealed to me, I'm not gonna lie.

Duncan shook his head. “Oh, you can go there, ask for their help, but it won't do you any good. The Portsmouth Council is weak—too much infighting and petty squabbles to be of any real use. Venus has at least half of them in her pocket. And we don't know which half. The other half is probably in someone else's pocket. You can only trust them as far as their own personal agendas go. Hopelessly corrupt.”

“I guess if the Council was functioning properly, there'd be no Coterie, huh?” I tapped Lock's knee with mine, trying to soften the blow.