Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) (14 page)

“Not if she has anything to say about it,” Langdon began, but Nana waved him off.

“She doesn’t. Can I see her?”

“In a minute or two,” Langdon said. “There’s a human detective in with her now.”

Nana let out a bark of laughter. “Going to try to prove that she threw a tree with mind-powers, is he?”

“Apparently that’s his plan,” said Thea.

Nana shrugged. “He’s welcome to waste his time, I suppose.” She looked at Thea. “You haven’t been to see me in a while.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been busy,” Thea said. “If it’s any comfort, I got this same complaint from my aunt just this morning.”

“Don’t need
comfort
. I get plenty of visitors without pining away for you, honey. But last time we talked I promised to look into… well, just to look into.”

Thea nodded. “I remember. Have you seen anything?”

“Furies and humans,” Nana said. “Fighting each other.”

“Where?” Thea asked.

Nana shook her head. “Couldn’t tell. There was too much smoke to see much. But the location might not matter; it might not have been literal. A warning, I think, not a real vision. See what you can do to stop it from happening.”

“Are you sure it didn’t just happen?” Langdon asked. “Maybe it was today’s protest.”

“Maybe,” Nana agreed. “Maybe not.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can, Nana,” Thea said. “But it’s kind of a vague warning.”

Nana sighed. “We work with what we have.”

Holgersen came into the hall a few seconds later, not looking any happier than when he’d left. He nodded to all of them, but Langdon stopped him when he would have walked off on his own.

“We don’t let humans roam the campus unescorted,” Langdon said. “I’ll walk you to the gate.”

With a wave to Nana, Thea started to follow Langdon and Holgersen, but Alecto called out to her from inside the exam room.

“Stay on hand, will you?” Alecto asked. “I want a few words with you after I’ve talked to Nana.”

“I’ll head to the basement to visit with Julius,” Thea said. “You can have Darnell or somebody call me when you want me, how’s that?”

“I’ll have him walk me down to you,” Alecto said. “I was supposed to talk to Dr. Forrester about the inoculation against the Ninth Disorder, and blind or not, I still have a job to do.”

Thea spent a fairly pleasant half hour in Julius’s makeshift living room, listening to him talk in roughly equal measure about the amazing plant life to be found in South America and the season’s prospects for the Atlanta Braves, before Darnell led Alecto down the stairs.

Julius scurried off to the bedroom to read, while Alecto took a seat on the couch.

“How are you feeling?” Thea asked.

“Helpless,” said Alecto. “Which I cannot abide.”

“Why did you go out to talk to them?” Thea knew it was probably a bad time to ask, but she couldn’t help it. Alecto had been so adamant, the last time, that they not engage the protesters anymore.

“I didn’t,” Alecto said. “It wasn’t them I was going to talk to. We were told there were federal agents out there. Either someone was mistaken, or the whole thing was a setup.”

“Sounds like the second one to me. Who started this rumor about the agents?”

Alecto shook her head. “I don’t know. But needless to say, those responsible for our troubles will pay the price.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t made them pay already.”

Alecto laughed at that. “What, while Langdon was bandaging my eyes? Even I’m not that efficient.”

“I meant right after Hemlock Heights,” Thea said. “Right after we found them, for that matter. I know I’m not supposed to ask what your plans for your sister are, but—”

“My sister?” Alecto paused, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess her too.”

“You
guess
?” Thea asked. “Who are you going to make pay, if not her? You don’t just mean the Concerned Citizens?”

“It wasn’t my sister throwing that acid,” Alecto said.

“No, but I’m not sure you can make Mrs. Billings pay any higher a price than you already have. This all comes down to Fury Unlimited.”

“Speaking of Mrs. Billings,” Alecto said, neatly sidestepping the issue of her sister, “I hear you didn’t tell Holgersen anything about my—our—particular gifts.”

“Keep it at
your
gifts,” said Thea. “I’ve managed telekinesis maybe three times total.”

“You don’t practice enough,” Alecto said. “And you should. Anyway, I’d have expected nothing less, but I appreciate your loyalty where Holgersen is concerned.”

“He’s just blowing smoke anyway,” Thea said with a shrug. “He just can’t stand that he can’t do anything about any of this.”

“But we can,” Alecto said. “And we will.”

Thea gave her a hard look, despite the fact that Alecto couldn’t see it.

“Do something about Fury Unlimited, you mean,” Thea said. “What Mrs. Billings did was obviously bonkers, but you’ve taken your vengeance for that, and the Concerned Citizens are not the ones who started this. Megaira is. She attacked them. They’ve gone about defending themselves the wrong way, but that’s all they’re trying to do.”

Alecto seemed to consider her for a while, although Thea couldn’t really tell without being able to see her eyes. Maybe she’d fallen asleep behind those bandages.

When Thea couldn’t stand the silence any longer she said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Was Cora able to get anything off Philip’s computer?” Alecto asked.

Thea frowned. Surely she could have just asked Cora that question. She wouldn’t have told Thea to wait around just so she could get secondhand information from her.

“No,” Thea said. “I guess he must have reported it quickly, because by the time she cracked his passwords, he’d already been locked out of everything.” She smiled to herself. “Wonder what Megaira did to him. She couldn’t have been happy.”

Alecto nodded. She was picking at the arm of the couch. After a few more seconds she said, “In the course of your investigation into Fury Unlimited, you must have taken more pictures than the few that were in the report you gave me.”

“We have dozens of pictures,” Thea agreed. “Do you want the whole file?”

“Yes. Send it to Vlad, will you?”

“Sure.”

“How are they situated?” Alecto asked. “Is that building serviced by the public sewer system? Water?”

“I don’t know off the top of my head, but I can get that information for you, too.”

Alecto nodded again. “And I’m particularly interested in the ventilation system, as well.”

“The
ventilation
— Alecto, you wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?” Alecto asked. “You’re the one who just told me to focus on Fury Unlimited.”

“And you should!” Thea said. “But not like this!”

“Like what?” Alecto asked.

“
Wouldn’t what? Like what?
” Thea mocked. “Don’t play innocent with me, it doesn’t work for you.”

Alecto smiled slightly, and stood. “Would you be so kind as to bring me to the lab? I think it’s time I had that talk with Dr. Forrester.”

“About what?”

“I told you. The inoculation.”

“Is that still all?”

“I might have a few other things on my mind.”

“Like what? The only thing she knows about besides the Ninth Disorder that could possibly interest you is the superhex itself.”

“Not true,” Alecto said. “She was on Megaira’s team for a while. She knows the organization. Some of the people who are still at the top. She could recreate their org chart for me. Fill in some gaps. Tell me about their processes. I’m sure she knows some details that your investigation didn’t pick up. Some of them might be helpful to us.”

“That’s all true,” Thea agreed as she took Alecto’s elbow and led her toward the lab. “But since you can’t spread an org chart through the water or the air vents, I’m guessing it’s also all bullshit.”

“It may be that you can’t spread the Ninth Disorder or the superhex through the water or the vents, either,” Alecto said.

“But you intend to find out.”

“Knowledge is power.”

Shit
.

Thea had meant it, when she’d pushed Alecto toward revenge. She wanted Megaira, and everyone else at Fury Unlimited who was involved with the superhex, to pay for what they’d done.

But this is going too far.

Isn’t it?

“I’m taking your advice, Thea,” Alecto said. “You should be pleased. It’s high time for us to deal with the real threat. And deal with it permanently.”

“But it’s a whole colony!” Thea said. “There are other furies in there besides your sister and her cronies. Innocent—”

“Innocent?” Alecto laughed. “All I’m aware of are a bunch of traitors who deserted their colony to follow Maggie’s promises. Even though every single one of them knew what she was making at that place. Is this the lab door?”

“Yes. But Alecto, don’t—”

“Great, thank you. You’re dismissed.”

Shit.

What have I done?

The night before Flannery and Nero’s wedding, Thea sat down with her blue cardigan sweater. Before she cut herself, she spent some time just sitting, eyes closed. She did her best to clear her mind of thoughts about the superhex, the Ninth Disorder, Fury Unlimited, or the Concerned Citizens For A Fury-Free County. She didn’t want to think about furies at all.

Instead she thought of Flannery when they were girls, playing in the orchard. Secrets whispered in the hayloft. Thanksgivings and Christmases with Uncle Gary and Aunt Bridget.

Thea didn’t want answers from her visions tonight. She didn’t want solutions. She just wanted a glimpse of something hopeful and lovely. Flannery’s wedding, her future. Little purple babies, maybe.

Just something nice, for once.

Thea flicked a claw across her lip, just where it met her gums, and used the sweater to blot the blood.

At first, as often happened with visions, she didn’t know where she was. She was standing on a hard floor, shivering. There was the scratching, grating music of an off-key orchestra, playing too slowly. The room was filled with bats. It smelled horrendous.

The bats were dancing to the music, grinning at one another, tiny bat mouths drawn back over their tiny bat teeth. Some of them were biting each other.

“What are you doing here?”

It was Flannery, in her wedding gown.

“Is this your wedding?” Thea asked.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Flannery hissed. “None of you are.”

She drew back a hand and tried to slap Thea, but Thea avoided the blow and flew upwards. Her wings were too light, moving too fast. She looked to the side, then down at herself. She too was a bat.

“They’ll take your heads!” Flannery was shouting at her. “All of your heads!”

Thea found herself falling, diving into Flannery’s hair, melding together with her cousin until they were one and the same. Now she was Flannery, looking out at the dancing bats.

Her dress was too tight. It was hard to breathe. She picked up her heavy skirts and walked through the crowd until she reached the orchestra beyond the dance floor.

They were all corpses. Corpses she knew: dead Pete played a violin, dead Bridget a cello. Elon was there, wearing a human illusion, a gaping wound in his belly and half his face ground up like sausage.

Thea-Flannery turned back toward the dance floor. Where was Nero? She had to find her groom.

The bats were all dead, scattered around like confetti. The whole floor was sticky with purple blood. The smell of it rose up until she gagged.

Flannery screamed, in Thea’s voice. Thea woke up screaming for real, and threw the sweater across the room.

“Oh fucking
come on
,” she choked out through tears. “All I asked for was something nice!”

She flew straight to Aunt Bridget’s house and banged on the kitchen door until Bridget finally answered it, wrapped in her bathrobe.

“Thea, did you come to sleep over?” Aunt Bridget asked. “That’s sweet, but it’s so late. Flannery needs rest before—”

“Flannery needs to cancel the wedding,” Thea said.

Ten minutes later, Flannery and Thea sat at the kitchen table, a plate of blueberry muffins between them, while Aunt Bridget made tea.

“So what are you saying?” Flannery asked when Thea finished telling her about the vision. “You want me to call off my wedding because you had a bad dream?”

“Oh, Flannery, come on,” Thea said. “A bad dream? I understand how you feel. I know you don’t even want to think about postponing. But you know as well as I do that my visions are—”

“
Special
.” Flannery flung the word at her like a dart. “Let’s all obey Thea’s visions because they’re
special
. She’s a supermodel, she’s a Hollywood star, she’s psychic, she’s
so freaking special
.”

“Flannery,” Aunt Bridget said gently. “Let’s try to keep our language civilized.”

“And get off the drama train while you’re at it,” Thea said. “That’s not going to solve—”

“The
drama train
?” Flannery stood and leaned over the table. “You come here the night before my wedding, spouting some horseshit—”

“Flannery,” Aunt Bridget said again.

“—about dead bats and corpse bands,” Flannery went on, ignoring her mother. “And telling me I have to call off my wedding because of it, and
I’m
the one being the drama queen? No! Not this time. You don’t get to pin this one on me. This is
your
drama, Thea!”

“Fine,” said Thea. “It’s my drama. But we need to take it seriously.”

“We most certainly do not!” Flannery flopped back down into her chair and crossed her arms. “You were supposed to get married first, is that it? The pretty one, the nice one, the one everyone likes better? So now you’re just trying to ruin it for me?”

“Flannery, stop it,” Thea said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It
is
ridiculous,” Flannery agreed with an emphatic nod. “You’d think you’d be happy about this wedding. You’d think you’d be happy that I’m finally moving on and leaving Pete free for you.

I do not need you to
give
me Pete. I could have had Pete any time I wanted. And you knew it. You always knew it, and it made you a bitch to us both.

Thea bit back the words, determined not to get sucked into a fight, and tried to think of something more reasonable to say.

Aunt Bridget put mugs in front of them, then sat down with a tired sigh. “Can we try to discuss this rationally, please?”

“That’s a great idea,” said Thea, blowing on her tea. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her, Aunt Bridget. She obviously won’t hear it from me.”

But Bridget shook her head at her niece. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. I’m not sure calling off the wedding is the answer.”

“What?” Thea started to say three other things, then finally settled for repeating herself. “What?”

Flannery laughed. “Look at her. She’s practically in shock. She can’t believe you’d actually take my side.”

“This isn’t about taking sides,” Aunt Bridget said. “Although heaven knows that’s what you two will always find a way to make a thing about.”

“That’s not fair—” Thea started, but Aunt Bridget silenced her with a stern look.

“Thea, you showed us when you were seven that your visions were not to be lightly ignored,” Aunt Bridget said. “And I have always supported that. You know I have.” She waited for Thea’s nod, then continued. “But they’re not always straightforward, either. This particular one involved bats. Nero wasn’t even there.”

“Flannery was in her wedding dress!” Thea said.

“Yes, after you specifically asked your psyche to show you Flannery in her wedding dress,” Bridget pointed out. “I’m not sure that kind of manipulation can be trusted.”

Thea stared at her aunt. “What is wrong with you? You’ve asked me a million times to try to manipulate my visions! I would expect this from Flannery, but—”

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t be cautious,” Bridget interrupted. “We absolutely should be, and I trust you’ll talk to your security people about it first thing tomorrow morning. But to call it off
entirely
, on the basis of this vision of a very non-specific threat, seems extreme. That’s all I’m saying. We’re not talking about a picnic here, we’re talking about Flannery’s
wedding
.”

Thea crossed her arms and looked from her aunt to her cousin. “Maybe I should talk to Alecto instead,” she said finally. “She can call it off. Since she’s not emotionally invested in this wedding, maybe she’ll be more rational.”

She wasn’t.

It was already after midnight when Thea knocked on Nana’s door, which probably didn’t help her cause. Nana let her in without bothering to hide her irritation, and made yet more tea while Thea sat at the table with Alecto, a near-exact recreation of the scene at Aunt Bridget’s. But without the drama, Thea hoped.

Alecto’s face still showed traces of the acid burn, and her eyes were still covered, although she said she hoped to take the bandages off in the morning. She heard Thea out, then said, “I’ll talk to Gordon first thing.”

“You should call it off,” Thea said.

“That is the last thing I will do.”

“
Why?
”

What the hell is wrong with everybody?

“New Year’s Eve,” said Alecto.

Thea blinked at her. “What?”

“New Year’s Eve,” Alecto repeated. “When the humans do these big gatherings in their cities. Or tree lightings at Christmas. They get terrorist threats every single year, don’t they?”

“I have no idea,” Thea said.

“Well, let’s say they do. Or if they did. You think they would call it off?”

Thea sighed.
Of course. Cowboy bullshit. I should have expected as much.
“No.”

“Why’s that?”

“Some crap about not letting the terrorists win,” Thea said. “But you wouldn’t catch me there.”

Alecto shook her head, and Thea could easily imagine the disgust in her eyes. “All this time, and you’re still not a real fury.” She accepted a mug of tea from Nana and repeated, “I will talk to Gordon first thing. But if there’s a threat—from either my sister or the humans—I will be damned if I’ll cower before the likes of them.”

“Could work to our advantage anyway,” Nana said as she took her own seat.

Thea frowned at her. “How so? And I would think you of all people would be on my side, after your own vision. You don’t think we could be seeing two different versions of the same thing?”

“Might be, or they might have nothing to do with each other,” Nana said. “But the point is, our enemies don’t know the details of either of our visions. They won’t know we’re expecting trouble tomorrow.”

“So you want to use my cousin’s wedding as bait,” Thea said, then remembering the typical fury attitude toward the disposability of humans, added, “
Nero’s
wedding.” She looked at Alecto. “Your head of RDM. Maybe I’ll go see him next.”

“You will do no such thing,” Alecto said. “Let the man have one last night of peace. You have my word I’ll tell him in the morning, and if he wants to call it off, we will. Otherwise, I think it should be up to the couple getting married, don’t you?”

She didn’t, but Thea also didn’t seem to have much say in the matter. So she went back to her residence and tossed and turned until morning, then put on her yellow dress—she regretted not sticking with the black, now that Flannery had been such a bitch—and went to the Colony Center to start setting up.

“Good morning.” Cora came in in her own black dress, and gave Thea a tired smile. “I heard about your vision.”

“How’s Nero?” Thea asked. “He still wants to move forward?”

“Even more, if that’s possible,” Cora said. “I’d have expected nothing else from him.”

“So you think the same thing as Alecto,” said Thea. “That it’s unfurylike for me to suggest calling it off.”

Cora shrugged. “Not really. You’re the one who actually experienced it. I’m sure it was more unsettling for you. Gordon’s got everyone in his department working instead of joining the party, by the way. They’re all pissed at you.”

“Great. I’ll add their names to the long list of people who are pissed at me. Starting with Flannery.”

“Eh, it’s her wedding day,” said Cora with a wave of dismissal. “In a few hours she’ll be drunk and sentimental and telling stories about when you were kids to everyone who will listen.”

“I guess.”

I hope.

Flannery herself arrived an hour later, Aunt Bridget in tow. Both embraced Thea as if their conversation the night before had never happened, which, Thea decided, was probably not a bad call. Flannery and Nero had made their decision, and there wasn’t much to be gained from retreading the same ground.

Gordon walked over to them while they were in the dining hall, putting the centerpieces on the tables.

“I need to go over the list of human guests with you real quick,” he said to Flannery. “They’ll be escorted in from the main gate by my guys.”