Cinder . . .
I looked at Anne. “I’m going to make a call.”
| | | | | | | | |
Anne was still with me when I came down the slope and over the bridge. We’d argued and I’d tried to convince her to stay behind, but Anne had told me that she was coming with my agreement or without it. I’d given in, on the condition that she stay in cover. Though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be the primary target in any case.
I got to the garden wall and stopped. The stone was only three feet high but enough to block a disintegrate spell if worst came to worst. My front door was closed, and Rachel was inside. If I kept going up the path, she’d fling the door open and attack.
A minute passed, two. The futures didn’t change. I glanced sideways at Anne and saw her slight nod; Rachel was still there. Four minutes.
The door opened.
Rachel is around the same height as Luna, or maybe a little taller. She has blonde hair which she’d let grow out since the last time I’d seen her, and she was dressed in black. Something about her clothes looked a little dishevelled, as though she’d been in the middle of something else and run out without getting ready, but what really worried me was the black domino mask on her face. That mask seems to have some kind of effect on Rachel’s personalities, and it’s rarely good news for anyone else.
“You know,” I said, “this used to be a private house.”
Rachel stared at me.
“I mean, it’s one thing to invite someone over,” I said. “But since Christmas I’ve had the Keepers, then Morden, and now you. I’m starting to think that repairing that lock was a complete waste of time.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Rachel said.
“Yeah, well, tell that to the people who burned down my shop.”
“How stupid are you?”
I didn’t answer. “You shouldn’t have come back,” Rachel said. “You should have stayed in that shop selling crystal balls.”
“You know what?” I said. “I was happy doing exactly that. Guess who made sure I couldn’t? The same guy you’re taking orders from right now. So if you want to know why Morden brought me back, why don’t you ask him?”
Rachel stiffened at that, and I knew that shot had got through. Rachel is Richard’s Chosen, and that meant she was supposed to be one short step below Richard himself. Now, as far as I could tell, it was Morden and Vihaela who were closest to Richard. Rachel had been pushed down in the hierarchy, and she didn’t like it.
“I was the one who waited for him,” Rachel said. Her voice was starting to rise, and I could sense the futures of violence drawing nearer. “Me! Year after year after year, and what did you do? Nothing.” Rachel was ignoring Anne completely; her eyes were locked onto me. “Then he calls you in, and he doesn’t even talk to me. He doesn’t even talk to me! Were you planning it?”
“Planning what?”
“You were always his favourite.” Rachel stared at me. “I do all the work, then you take the credit. That was what was really going on with those adepts, wasn’t it? You wanted my place as Chosen.”
“Jesus.” I shook my head. “You really are insane.”
“Tell me!”
“Of course I didn’t!” I snapped. “You seriously think I wanted to go back to Richard? Stay as his fucking Chosen. It’s not worth what you paid for it.”
It didn’t work. The futures in which Rachel attacked were coming closer and closer. With one finger I pressed a button on my phone.
“You want to be Chosen,” Rachel said. It was as though she hadn’t even heard what I’d said. “That’s what this is for.”
And the futures shifted in the way I’d been hoping. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Yeah, well, it’s not me you should be trying to convince,” I said. “It’s him.” And I nodded to the side of the house.
Rachel stared back at me, and then the sound of a heavy footfall made her blink and break her concentration. She turned to look just as Cinder stepped into view.
“Wait,” Rachel said. She looked at Cinder, then at me, then back at Cinder again, blinking. “Wait.”
“Del,” Cinder said in his rumbling voice. He was wearing a windbreaker, his big hands stuffed into the pockets, and the breeze was blowing his hair.
“You shouldn’t be—” Rachel began, then stopped. “Wait. She’s not here. That’s why she’s not here. You’re here, so—”
“Del,” Cinder said.
“What?”
“Take it off.”
Rachel blinked. “Why?”
“Take it off,” Cinder repeated.
“I don’t want to,” Rachel said. All of a sudden she sounded like a child.
“Take it off, Del.”
“He deserves it,” Rachel pleaded. “It’d make everything so much easier.”
“You know what Richard said.”
Slowly, unwillingly, Rachel reached up. Her fingers worked at the ties of her mask, hesitated, then undid them. The silk mask slid from her face and she looked up at us, blinking in the light.
Next to me, I could feel Anne looking at Rachel in fascination. Rachel is quite beautiful without her mask, in a diamondlike way: finely carved, but hard. Rachel looked from me to Cinder. All the futures in which she attacked had vanished. She didn’t seem to know what to do.
Cinder shifted slightly. It was only a small movement, but it made me realise that he’d been ready for a fight. He glanced at me. “We’re okay,” I told him.
Cinder nodded. “We need to talk.”
I glanced at Rachel. “With her,” Cinder said.
“Got anywhere in mind?” I asked.
“Not here.”
I looked at Anne, then back at Cinder. “Well,” I said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m still hungry.”
| | | | | | | | |
“Seriously?” Anne said.
I shrugged. “He picked it.”
“You didn’t exactly complain.”
“Problem?” Cinder asked.
“I’m fine with it,” I said.
We were sitting at a four-person table, Anne and me on one side and Cinder and Rachel on the other. The restaurant was a McDonald’s, a drive-through next to the intersection of two A-roads in some town I’d never been to before. Cinder had brought us here through a gate to a nearby wood, whereupon we’d walked five minutes, tapped our orders into the machines, and sat down.
“There has got to be somewhere better to eat,” Anne said.
“You’re the one saying I need to eat enough to keep my strength up.”
“If you want to go to a hamburger restaurant, why not pick a decent one?”
“Some of the food here isn’t bad,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Fries,” Cinder said.
I pointed at Cinder. “What he said.”
“They’re just oil-fried potatoes doused in about ten different chemicals.”
“Yes, but they’re thin oil-fried potatoes. Do you know how hard it is to find decent-quality thin fries in the U.K.?”
“These are not decent-quality.”
Cinder snorted and Anne looked at him. “What?”
Cinder nodded at Rachel. “You sound like her.”
There was something surreal about sitting here with the two Dark mages. So far, no one had paid us any particular attention. Fast-food restaurants get a pretty wide mix of customers, and compared to the men in workmen’s clothing by the far window, the bunch of construction workers in their high-vis jackets at the counter, and the two women with a pram sitting a few tables over, we didn’t look especially out of place. We obviously weren’t locals, but someone taking a casual glance would probably have pegged us as tourists or travellers.