The Woken Gods (20 page)

“I might take a nap.” I prepare for a lecture in response.

But Ann merely glances up. “Have you seen your new stuff? If I got the wrong things, don’t worry. Mr Bronson said to do my best and that we could add whatever you want. And we can redo your room. But he had me stop at this shop and get a bunch of posters. I’m not sure about those.” She frowns at the chicken, or whatever it is, in front of her. “I think the clerk just wanted to get rid of them.”

I stand, cookie halfway to my mouth, disbelieving. “What are you talking about?”

Ann’s eyes widen. She smiles, and puts her attention on shaking some herbs into a bowl in front of her. “Nothing at all. Definitely not something waiting in your room. Because then it wouldn’t be a surprise. Would it? Now, out of here while I’m working.” She peeks up and winks. “You’re in my way.”

Intrigued as I am to see what Bronson and Ann believe I need, I don’t go to my room first. With Justin in the office and Ann in the kitchen, I have a location for everyone in the house. So when I go upstairs, I open every door except the one to my guest room. Until I find the room that has to be Bronson’s.

Everything neat, everything dark colors. On the chest of drawers is a picture of him and Gabrielle. It’s black and white, probably for artfulness. They both gaze into the distance, wearing safari field gear not unlike what she has on in the portrait in his office. He looks the same. Not exactly, of course. There are not quite as many wrinkles on his face in this picture, but he strikes me as just as grave. Maybe he sensed what he had to lose. There’s also a color photograph of Mom, maybe nine, face streaked with mud, and Gabrielle beside her with dirt on her hands.

Happy families may be the most fragile kind there are.

On that note, I rummage – but with care, shooting for spy-style exploration – through the drawers, checking out the closet, everything I can to learn the layout. I test the door, closing it and then closing it more slowly.

It’s nearly soundless, done the right way. Good to know.

My plan is beginning to come together, though there are still pieces missing. I’m not quite sure how well it will work. But I have to prevent the ritual, and to do that, the relic has to disappear again – and
stay
gone until after solstice. That was Dad’s first strategy, and so it must be a solid one. The disappearance of the relic while he’s all locked up should be enough to reopen the treason case and keep him alive a while longer. The key will be getting it, then running as fast and far as I can for a few days. I won’t make the mistake of going to a god like he did.

I have to figure out how to slip my divine guard. When I check out Bronson’s window Anzu’s perched in the backyard, where he was the night before. He gazes up at me, and I frown at him, feeling like some president’s daughter with inconvenient Secret Service.

At least they would be human.

I will rely on no gods, not even Legba, after the discord revelation. I don’t want any confusion. I want a simple postponement.
That
I might be able to pull off. And the beauty is, only I will be in jeopardy.

Well, and Dad, but that can’t be helped. Mom’s left out of it, Oz and Justin mostly are, and Tam and Bree will be entirely. The rest of the world can’t be mine to worry about. Not right now. Not when this is more than enough.

When I make it back into the hallway, shutting Bronson’s door the quietest way, I hear footsteps on the stairs. If it’s Ann, I’m sunk. She’ll know by looking that I haven’t been anywhere near the gift-a-palooza in my room. I move as fast as I can, but stop after I get a clear view of the stairs.

It’s Justin, so I wait at the banister post. I figure that will be less suspicious than streaking down the hall to my room. I begin to question this choice at the frown he gives me when he reaches the top step.

“Were you looking for me?” he asks.

“No.” I aim a finger-gun at my temple. “Just being ditzy. I got a snack and then managed to forget which way my room is.”

“Oh.” He points to the end of the hall. When I start to leave, he says, “Hey…”

“Yeah?” I wait.

“Did your dad tell you what he’s trying to do? Did he mention who he was working with?”

Why is he asking me about this? Carefully, I say, “Bronson says he must be working with a god or gods. Dad doesn’t share with me. Not his treason plans.”

“But Set attacked you. Why did your dad go to the Sumerians? Are they working together, do you think?”

“Dad and the Sumerians?” Anzu is in the backyard. You do the math. They at least like each other.

“No,” Justin says, dismissing that. A lock of hair falls over his pale forehead. “Not them. Enki and Set.”

I look at him like he’s crazy, and for good reason. “Even I know those two pantheons don’t mix. Doesn’t the Society have to force them to play nice? Or is that not right?”

“No,” he says, “they don’t get along.”

Something about the way he says it makes me curious about where this is coming from. Especially since he was down in Bronson’s office. “Why are you asking me this?”

“I shouldn’t be. I just… Oz trusts you and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. All the answers will come tomorrow.”

Oz trusts me? The situation between us is more than dangerous. “They will?”

He closes his eyes for a moment, sighs. He opens them and steps past me. “I can’t tell you. Ask Bronson. Don’t tell him I told you.”

Still shaking his head, he goes into a room two up from mine. I guess that answers my question about whether he stays here too.

I almost want to hole up somewhere else in the house for a while, but I’ve put it off long enough. I have to visit my room.

Ann was understating things. There are shopping bags everywhere. Recycled bags mainly, but everything inside them is way too new and neat for my taste. Mostly. I do find a drawer of black T-shirts and regular jeans. I have my leather jacket and boots, so those are acceptable. I add a couple of each to my backpack, which is extra-roomy without the cash. Opening the closet, I find it packed with Society outfits – including a uniform or two. But no stripes on them.

The posters Ann picked up are hilarious. A couple feature manufactured boy bands I’ve never even heard of. Another is a checkerboard assortment of baby animals (ostrich, tiger, sloth, kitten) that I admit are adorable, though I let the sheet curl back up into a tube and leave it on the floor. But the
piece de resistance
involves a unicorn with rays shooting from her horn to form a day-glo pyramid. Ann even left a roll of tape.

Since I don’t want to seem ungrateful, I hang the unicorn on the wall.

I spend the rest of the time until dinner staring at it. Waiting.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dinner turns out to be nothing worth waiting for. The four of us are gathered around the overly long dining table with its perfect white linen table cloth. Bronson sits at the head and is talking nonstop about, from what I can tell, such vital topics as the weather, what was in the paper today, whether his administrative assistant should be transferred to the UK so he can get a better one.

It’s the very definition of meaningless chatter.

The food is fine – or it would be if I knew what these small chicken-shaped things
are
. I’m afraid to offend Ann or reveal myself as some untutored barbarian by asking. (Though I may be just that. Mostly I don’t want to hurt Ann’s feelings.) There’s asparagus. Not my favorite, but identifiable, and thus edible. And bread, though I have a feeling I’ll be fighting Oz for the last roll if I want it. He hasn’t touched his mini-chicken either.

The strained atmosphere makes being enthusiastic about eating difficult, anyway. Every clink of a fork against a plate or plunk of a water glass being returned to the table seems loud as a full orchestra, interrupting Bronson’s symphonic babble. I begin to worry that something has already happened to Dad. They wouldn’t have tried him early, would they?

I can’t ask. All I can do is wish I
could
ask.

“And so how was your afternoon?”

I miss the question the first time Bronson asks, judging by the way Oz nudges my shoe with his boot under the table. I shoot him a look. “Great,” I say. “I unpacked some new stuff. Put up a poster.” I tap Oz’s shoe back, pushing it away from mine. He doesn’t react.

“Good,” Bronson says. “Excellent.”

Oz and Justin give every appearance of being as thrown by Bronson’s stiff behavior as I am. It’s as if this really is a dinner party and he’s being forced to entertain us, instead of a quiet “family” dinner at home. I finish the last of my roll and my asparagus as quickly as I can.

“I should go finish my room,” I say.

If I can slip out and call Bree later, she’ll have heard if something’s happened…

When I get up, so does Bronson. He asks, “Kyra, can we talk?”

What have you been doing for the last half-hour?
“Of course.”

Bronson puts his napkin (cloth too) on the table, and abandons his half-eaten food. I can’t help but try and decode whether his lackluster appetite is a guilty conscience or excited nerves for his upcoming treachery. I might be about to find out.

I catch Oz’s eye, a question in mine about whether he knows what Bronson wants as I leave the room. He shakes his head no. I follow Bronson out and toward his office, and we pass Ann coming back in with dishes of ice cream for both boys. It looks like real ice cream and I mouth to Oz:
No. Fair.

He shrugs.

At least he’s acting semi-normal again, with the foot nudging and ice cream hogging. When we first sat down to dinner, he was as stiff as Bronson and silent as a ghost. He hasn’t said a word to me all night. Maybe he regrets telling me about his parents. We barely know each other.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Bronson says, which is a surprise because I assume we’re going to his office. I have to backtrack, and he lets me go up the stairs first. What could this possibly be about?

I pad up the hall to my room. “It’s a work in progress,” I caution.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Ann loves a messy room. It’s why she was so happy when Osborne moved in.”

He doesn’t mention Justin, because I’d bet anything his room is as tidy as his mind.

“When was that?” I ask, curious.

I flip on the light and settle on the bed, awkward. He closes the door and pulls over a chair from the corner I hadn’t even noticed. At least I don’t have to worry about any contraband. There’s nothing for me to hide from him.

“Four and a half years ago. As soon as things settled down enough for him to travel here.”

“And Justin?”

“Oh,” he says, easing into the chair. “His parents asked if I might get him some extra training… three years ago? I thought it would be nice for Oz to have someone else his own age. It’s been good for them both.”

Whose parents sent them off to the head of the Society for training? People who were
in
the Society. Obviously.

“What did you want to talk about?”

I can’t believe how nervous I am. There’s no way he could know why I’m really here, or what I’m thinking of doing. I haven’t given myself away to anyone. In theory maybe the oracles could rat me out, but wouldn’t they protect me for Mom’s sake?

“Your father,” Bronson says. “I don’t feel right about you being here and not knowing. And you’ll find out anyway, so I’d rather it be from me. But I also… I really do like you, Kyra. I like having you here. I want you to stay, and us to be a family. I want that to be for a long time. And I’m afraid once I tell you this you’ll change your mind. So… I’m asking you not to make any hasty decisions.”

I nod. “Oz and Justin… They already told me no one ever gets off for treason.”

“That’s true.”

“And that the penalty’s death.”

“Also true,” he says. He leans forward, arms on his knees. “One thing they may not have told you is that Society courts aren’t like regular ones. There’s no long delay. No lawyers. A representative or three of the Board and, in this case, the Tricksters’ Council will hear the evidence. Then a decision will be made. A final one.”

I know all the important parts of this and yet it still hurts to hear it said out loud. Ironically, that only helps me react how he’s expecting. As if this is news. Terrible news. The worst news.

Because it is.

“When?” I whisper.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “We could go now. See your father tonight, if you like. I wanted to give you one last chance. There won’t be time tomorrow.”

I want to say yes. Because what if I screw everything up? What if tomorrow goes sideways? What if he dies and I never get to tell him anything I want to? What if he dies before I get the chance to prove myself to him?

“No,” I say. “I can’t. I just… I couldn’t stand it if he yelled at me.”

Bronson nods.

“And,” I say, “I couldn’t stand it if he didn’t. If he cried… I don’t want that memory. I have enough pain to last me a lifetime already. He wouldn’t want me to see him that way.”

Bronson keeps nodding. Slow. He gets it. “Don’t we all? But don’t give up hope. You never know. You might see him again someday. Anything is possible. Maybe he’ll be acquitted.”

Sixteen times, Justin says, and no one ever has.

“Don’t start lying to me now. You know he won’t be.”

“So you accept the reason he stole the relic as a fact?”

Since I know more about Dad’s reasons now, I am able to look straight at him and say, “Yes.”

After a long moment, Bronson reaches into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulls something out. He holds his hand so I can’t see what it is, unsure.

“You don’t have to give me anything else,” I say. “All this is enough. And the reliquary key.”

“I’m not saying you can keep these,” he says. “If Henry is acquitted–”

I shake my head.
Stop lying
.

“He would get them back,” he finishes. “And they do have to be our secret for now, regardless. You can’t use them until after your vows. But you won’t need them until you’re a uniformed operative in the field. I’m giving them to you because I have always drawn strength from mine. Even though I no longer wear them often, they’re always right here.” He pats the breast pocket he took the eye from earlier.