“It will still be okay,” she said, pivoting to jump through that gaping hole like a circus performer. She somersaulted and came to her feet with her hands in the air. “If you put me above yourself.”
I woke to a sharp pounding on the steel bay door. Jasmine’s sweet voice still lingered as I clamored to my feet. I checked three different peepholes to make sure there were no Shadows outside before turning off the alarms.
“You look like crap,” Vanessa told me with a weak smile. But despite the worry cutting lines around her eyes, she looked much better than the last time I’d seen her. She wore a black scarf around her head, pinned to one side with a silver broach. That was the only remaining sign of the Shadows’ handiwork. Her speech was perfect, her ear and thumb and nose regrown, unmarred. I looked down, and she wiggled her left foot. Good as new.
Nice to know someone could heal, I thought, rubbing at my eyes. “Where is everyone?”
“Warren doesn’t want to meet here anymore. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but this warehouse is our safest place on this side of reality. He wants to guard its location for as long as possible.”
So he thought the Shadows would find it eventually.
“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked as I sighed. She put a hand on my arm and I covered it with my own.
“Yeah, I just had a strange dream.”
She grunted. “Not surprised. Do you know how to lock this place up?”
I nodded. “Hold on.”
Deciding it would be safer to leave my bag and the soul chips in the warehouse, I tucked it in the bottom drawer of a standing toolbox, before running through the series of codes Hunter had shown me. I held my breath, hoping I remembered them correctly. Otherwise the whole place would blow. Vanessa and I backed a safe distance away, but nothing happened. I gave a quick prayer of thanks. I seemed to be praying a lot all of a sudden.
“What time is it?” I asked, knowing only that it was early morning. I never wore a watch. The kind Olivia Archer would wear would be a dead giveaway on the Kairos’s arm.
“Almost seven. Not that you’d know it by this weather.” Keeping half a step in front of me, she motioned me south. “Um…Happy Birthday, for what it’s worth.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I was twenty-six now, and a bit surprised at the fact. A part of me, it seemed, hadn’t expected to make it a year. And Ashlyn, my daughter, was now eleven. “Thanks.”
The sky was lumpy gravy, gray and badly stirred. Behind the shifting clouds, though, was a riot of flashing color, red and oranges battling with that strange liquid blue and green strain, like the most elaborate production show to hit town was being rehearsed on that side of the sooty curtain. I ducked my head as thunder ripped across the valley, like it was wired in surround sound. The grand finale, I thought worriedly, couldn’t be far off.
Vanessa saw me looking and followed the trail of thunder across the sky. “Warren’s concerned too.”
Finally, I thought, shaking my head. “So where are we meeting?”
“Shapiro’s Kitchen,” she said, talking about the latest celebrity chef to be lured to town. “It’s not open yet, so it’ll be private, and because it’s so new, no one could have tracked any of us there.”
It was a stand-alone restaurant, a risky business move in a town where the most successful restaurants were backed with the seemingly endless cash flow and street traffic from an attached casino or hotel. Word was, though, that Sam Shapiro’s name would be enough to draw a crowd. That’s not why I remembered it, though. “Wasn’t that supposed to be a safe zone?”
Vanessa shrugged, but the stiffness of worry was caught in the movement. “In another life.”
We trudged on in silence after that, stuck with this one.
The places we were safe in this city-this world-had shrunk shockingly fast. Since Shapiro’s Kitchen was supposed to have been a designated safe zone, meeting there was a calculated risk because the Shadows knew about it. Yet Warren obviously felt comfortable with the plan, and because of that, I tried to push my own worry away. Something about it didn’t feel right, but I was exhausted, and needed to trust that his judgment was better than mine. So Vanessa and I stuck to the surface streets, burying ourselves in pockets of darkness whenever a lone car would pass, until we finally reached the sleek round building. Not until then did I realize how worried she’d been as well. At Shapiro’s Kitchen she melted into Felix’s arms and he buried her in his embrace. I swallowed hard, thinking that should be me with Hunter. Yet because I’d screwed up so badly, he was caught out somewhere beneath a threatening sky, searching for a girl I had broken.
I didn’t have much time to give in to regret. Warren met me at the hostess podium. “You’re okay?”
“For now,” I muttered, but his gaze was flat and disinterested, and he was already turning away. I tried to tell myself that he was preoccupied with thoughts of saving the world, but I couldn’t help a final glance back at Vanessa and Felix, dissolving as one into the alcove of a coat check, whispering so softly that even I couldn’t hear.
I sighed and followed Warren through a mahogany paneled hallway and into the main dining room. The tables were already spaced, the floor laid out the way it would be on opening night. Stacks of linens threatened to topple in one corner, and a cart of glassware was totally out of place on the opulent floor, but you could already see that the dining room was going to be magnificent. The focal point, however, was the glass-encased kitchen, where-for the viewing pleasure of a gastronomically appreciative audience-Sam Shapiro himself would direct his crew like he was conducting an orchestra.
It was in this fragile interior that the troop was huddled, and they were battered. Not physically, not like me. But Iraqi War battered, like they’d been fighting for years and there was still no end in sight. Battered like they sometimes lost sight of what they were fighting for but kept on doing it anyway. Battered like people who had to keep taking orders, because left to their own devices, they might float away.
They greeted me when I entered, but the curiosity and enthusiasm that had met me after my first return from Midheaven wasn’t there. They knew I couldn’t tell them anything about the place, and the loss of Hunter and Jasmine-and now Skamar-weighed heavily upon them.
It was in that weighty silence that my eyes fell on the object in the middle of the stainless steel table. I blinked. “What’s that?”
“We got you cake.”
I felt my brows wing up to my hairline. “Cake?”
“For your birthday,” Warren said, coming to stand at my side. He was the only one who sounded even remotely enthused about it. “You didn’t think we were going to let our Kairos’s big day pass without notice, did you?”
“Cake,” I repeated dumbly, thinking I might puke if I tried to take a bite.
“You can say thank you,” he muttered, pushing past me. I watched him go, frowning, then met Micah’s eyes. He rolled his. Good to know I wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel like celebrating.
“Thank you,” I muttered, following him around the table to join Gregor on the other side. Gregor put his good arm around me and kissed the top of my head. I felt a little better after that.
But almost immediately Vanessa appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, and face ghost white. Though her mouth worked open and shut, nothing came out. Warren quirked his head and took a step forward. “Van-”
“Vanessa! Get in there!”
A whimper escaped her throat and her fear hit us all with the full force of a cyclone. Felix yelled again behind her and I drew back at the strain in it, so different than the reunion I’d witnessed only moments before.
Warren headed that way. “Felix? What is it?”
Felix came into the room so slowly it looked like he was freeze-framed. Vanessa whimpered again. A gurgling laugh sounded somewhere behind him.