“Wait!” I called back at her, but Anne was already running, flitting into the shadows.
A control console blew out in a shower of sparks. I’d lost track of Rachel in the fighting, and the only people left in the room were me and Richard. We stared at each other across the burning room. The electrical fires were spreading and the air was filling with a haze.
“You have no idea what you have done.” Richard’s voice was tight; he’d regained his self-control, but anger was clear on his face.
I looked back at Richard. There was a surge of magic from somewhere against the far wall, and from outside, I felt the stasis barrier go down. In only minutes, reinforcements were going to come pouring in, and whether they were on Richard’s side or Sal Sarque’s, I didn’t want to meet them.
I turned and ran. Futures flickered in which I had to dodge an attack, but Richard didn’t take the shot. Starbreeze, I called out through the dreamstone. Pickup for two.
Ooh, Starbreeze said with interest. That was you?
Meredith was hiding in an alcove; she flinched as she saw me. “We’re leaving,” I told her.
“Leaving where? There are—”
I silenced her with a motion. Anne. Where are you?
There was no answer, but I had a sense of distant laughter. I cursed; I could try to chase her, but Richard was in the way and reinforcements were coming fast. Besides, I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I caught up.
Then Starbreeze was there. Meredith gave a yelp as she was turned into air; I ground my teeth and surrendered to it. Starbreeze shot out down the corridors at blinding speed. I had a confused impression of faces turning up to look at us, then we were out into the night air and soaring, rising up and up into the sky.
The moon was above us, the island below. Sal Sarque’s fortress shrank as we climbed and began angling west. There was no more fire coming from the rooftop: the survivors seemed to be disengaging. In only seconds we were above the cloud cover, and the fortress vanished from sight.
Starbreeze got bored a few minutes into the journey back, and dropped us in some godforsaken spot in the highlands of Scotland. She was obviously done with being a ferry service. I’d have to be sparing asking her for lifts in the future.
The gate stone took Meredith and me back to her garden, the air changing from the chill of Scotland to the warmth of Argentina. I let out a breath and closed my eyes as the gate closed, feeling a little of the tension go out of my muscles.
I opened my eyes to see that Meredith was watching me. “Well?” she said. “I did it, didn’t I?”
“You did.” I smiled slightly. “You know, it’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“Back when I met you, I used to get lifts from Starbreeze all the time,” I told her. “I only stopped when you betrayed me to Belthas and I had to blow up my calling focus getting away. But because you did that, it forced me to stop relying on her, which meant all of my enemies got used to the idea that I couldn’t rely on her. And so when I finally figured out a way to call her again, Richard and Caldera and Onyx weren’t prepared for it at all. If it hadn’t been for you, I never could have used her so effectively now. Funny how things work out.”
Meredith didn’t answer. It was hard to make out her expression in the shadows, but it didn’t look like she thought it was very funny at all.
“Give me your hand,” I ordered, walking towards her. Meredith hesitated, then lifted her right arm, shrinking back slightly as I took her hand and pulled up her sleeve. The light of the house windows revealed the black metal of the death bracelet, the same one that Selene had been wearing. I took the focus from my pocket, touched it to the metal, and channelled. The bracelet clicked open and fell to the grass below.
Meredith tried to pull away but I didn’t let go. “Tell me something,” I said. “If I’d acted this way back when we’d first met, would you still have betrayed me?”
Meredith held very still. I felt the futures flicker. “I didn’t—”
“The truth, Meredith.”
Meredith flinched. “No,” she said at last, quietly.
“Good,” I said, and leant in close to her. Meredith looked up at me, only inches away, and I could see the fear in her beautiful dark eyes. “Now one last question. More than anything else, what do you want from me right now?”
I saw Meredith struggle to keep herself under control. She’d never been brave: she could fight if she had to, but only if she was afraid of something worse. I was close enough to smell her perfume, feel the pulse beating at her wrist, and as I looked at her I noticed that under her makeup, there were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Time hadn’t changed Meredith as it had me, but she hadn’t escaped it.
“I want . . .” Meredith took a breath, swallowed. “I want you to leave me alone.”
I looked down into Meredith’s eyes for a long moment, then smiled slightly. “Suits me.” I let go of her wrist. “Go away, Meredith. Go back to your house and your boyfriends and your life in the sun. But make sure I don’t catch you working for my enemies again.”
Meredith fled, opening the French windows and stepping inside before closing them. She gave me a last quick glance from behind the glass, then pulled the blinds closed, disappearing from view.
I looked at the house for a moment longer, feeling as though a very old piece of unfinished business had just come to an end. Then I picked up the bracelet and walked away into the night.
chapter 15
“I can’t believe you actually made that work,” Luna told me.
“I can,” I said. It was the next day, and we were walking in the Hollow, the woods alive with the sounds of the summer morning. I’d just finished filling Luna in on the events of last night.
“If I’d told you I was going to do something like that, you’d have said I was suicidal.”
“I figured my chances were around two in three. Maybe a little more.”
Luna gave me a sceptical look. “How?”
“So it all started with Richard,” I said. It was a relief to be able to talk like this, walking with Luna without any immediate dangers to worry about. “Back when Anne and I visited him in his mansion two years ago, I looked into the futures to see what would happen if I attacked him. And it was close, really close. I couldn’t see who was going to win.”
“Okay.”
“Except that it shouldn’t have been,” I said. “I mean, even if I didn’t believe the rumours, I saw what Richard could do later that year, in the Vault. There was no way I could have taken him in a fight. Once I noticed that, I started trying to figure out how my divination could have been so wrong. And the most obvious answer I could come up with was that Richard had some kind of ability that worked against it. Like a shroud that worked in the future instead of the past, letting him project false futures. And the most natural way he’d be able to do that was if he was some kind of diviner himself. The aftermath of the Vault fight fit with that as well. The one time I landed a punch on him, it was when I acted on impulse without giving him the time to see it coming.”
“But we already talked about whether Richard might be a diviner,” Luna said. “Lots of times. You were the one who said it didn’t feel right.”
I nodded. “Because it didn’t. He was too confident, as though no one could touch him. It didn’t fit with someone whose only ability was seeing the future. It wasn’t until I realised that he had a jinn as well that it made sense. A jinn’s power, mixed with a diviner’s knowledge. I couldn’t test it, not without tipping my hand, but I was sure. The thing is, it also made me realise just how screwed I was. He could do everything I could do, plus he could counter what I could do, and if somehow that wasn’t enough, he had the jinn to fall back on as well.”