“Nimael knows we’re after him now.” Kyol’s level voice cuts into my thoughts.
“He’ll go underground,” Aren agrees. “Fortunately, that means we still have a chance.” He hops off my table. “I’ll find him again.”
I’ll read his shadows for you. I press my lips together to hold the words back. I’m not available to help. I have a job, and I’m supposed to like the normal life I’m building for myself. I don’t need to screw it up further by shadow-reading again.
But then, I’ve never been able to turn my back on the people I care about either.
“It will probably take me a few days to learn anything,” Aren says to Naito. “You should get some rest.”
Naito nods, then turns to me, and asks, “Where’s Glazunov?”
Glazunov. Right. One catastrophe at a time.
“My bedroom,” I say, giving Lee one last pissed-off glare before I walk to the door and open it for Naito. He strides past me, straight to the bed, then draws a dagger from its sheath on his right hip. Glazunov is still awake and furious, but Naito doesn’t waste a second. He grips his dagger high up on the hilt then slams the pommel into Glazunov’s temple. The vigilante head whips to the left, then he lies there, completely still.
I really need to learn the trick to knocking someone out like that.
“You have a car I can borrow?” Naito asks, using the dagger to cut through the duct tape binding the vigilante’s wrists and ankles to my bed.
My jaw clenches. Naito needs to drive Glazunov to a gate so that the vigilante can survive fissuring to the Realm, but I don’t want him in my car. If he wakes up and catches someone’s attention, the license plate will lead back to me. Again, the last thing I need is cops knocking on my door.
“We can take my car,” Lee offers from just behind me.
Naito slices through the last of the duct tape, then looks up. His nostrils flare slightly, and the grip he has on his dagger’s hilt makes his knuckles turn white. The gate is only fifteen minutes from my apartment, but I’m not sure Naito and Lee can make it that far without someone ending up dead.
Naito shoves his dagger back into its sheath.
“Help me get him out of here,” he says.
I let out a breath, then move out of Lee’s way. When I do, a familiar, tingling sensation moves across my skin. I step back into the living room, but the fissure has already closed. It was Aren’s fissure.
I bite the inside of my cheek while the shadows his fissure left behind twist through my vision. My hands itch to draw them out. If I had a pen and paper, I could pinpoint where he’s gone. Without it, all I know is that he’s in the Realm. I don’t know whether to be hurt or pissed off. I know he has things to do back in Corrist, responsibilities that he can’t put off, but he needs to . . . He needs to get over the life-bond and talk to me.
I wrench my gaze away from the shadows when Naito and Lee drag Glazunov out of my bedroom. The vigilante is slung between them, one of his arms thrown over each of their shoulders and his head lolling with each step they take. To me, he looks half-dead. To my neighbors, I hope he looks passed-out drunk.
I open the door, then follow them out. From the second-floor landing, I watch as they make their way down the stairs, gripping the rusty rails for balance. They manage to avoid the beer bottles and trash my lovely neighbors have left on the steps. I scan the parking lot, looking for anyone who might see them. It’s dark and empty right now—the landlord seriously needs to fix the lights—but that doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching from a window. If they are, hopefully they’ll believe Naito and Lee are just helping out a friend.
Of course, most drunk guys’ friends don’t stuff them into trunks.
“I don’t like this place,” Kyol says from behind me. He has his emotions locked down tight, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel him. There’s a steady pull, a constant awareness, of where he is.
“It’s affordable,” I say, watching as Lee pulls out of the parking spot. Truthfully, I don’t like this place that much either. At least once a week, the police show up to settle some argument or domestic dispute, but this is the first home I’ve ever paid for on my own. Before Atroth was killed—and before I realized how violent he’d become and how much he had misled me—he paid for my college tuition and my apartment in Houston. That never sat well with me because the money wasn’t exactly obtained legitimately, but I couldn’t have survived without it. I can now, and if I keep my job and watch my finances, this apartment will be temporary.
When the taillights of Lee’s car disappear around the corner, I head back inside. Kyol follows, closing the door behind him.
“I want you to move in with Naito,” he says.
“What?” I ask, not bothering to hide my surprise as I turn to face him. “Naito’s house is in Colorado.”
“It would be safer for you,” Kyol says.
“This place is safe.” Safe-ish.
The protectiveness Kyol feels toward me leaks through his mental wall. He plugs the holes quickly, but that doesn’t stop a warm, yearning feeling from swirling through my stomach. I draw in a slow breath, doing my best to quiet my emotions.
“Look, I’m okay here, Kyol,” I tell him gently. “You’ll fissure Glazunov to the Realm, and the other vigilantes don’t know where I live. Neither do the remnants.”
“Or Lorn,” Kyol says. “Or the false-blood. Many people want you dead, McKenzie.”
“You’re worried about Lorn?” I ask, trying to divert the conversation.
“He might not be entirely responsible for the war,” Kyol says, “but he’s not a good man, and he knows you had something to do with his imprisonment. He’ll sell information on you to the false-blood if he has the opportunity.”
I shake my head. “I have a job here.” At least, I did this morning. “I can’t move in with Naito.”
He doesn’t respond to that, he just stands there as grim-faced as usual. Or maybe, more grim-faced than usual. He’s always been a solemn man, one with a million responsibilities on his shoulders, but the weight he carries seems heavier now.
“Then . . . be careful,” he finally says. “Please.”
I give him a little smile. “I promise I won’t go fissuring around with a tor’um again.”
Amusement leaks through the bond. It doesn’t alter his expression, though. He’s too much the perfect soldier. Always has been.
He says a silent good-bye with his nod, then steps away from me to open a fissure. When he does, Sosch chirp-squeaks from somewhere behind me. I turn, but the damn kimki scurries between my legs. I reach for the arm of the couch to catch my balance, and my hand knocks against the hilt of the unsheathed sword I leaned against it earlier. It starts to fall, and the image of a bleeding kimki flashes in my mind.
It’s a ridiculous image—the worst Sosch might get is a nick—but I’m already moving. I catch the end of the blade on the top of my sneaker, flip it up. It arcs end over end in the air. Me around flying swords? Not a good combination. But my right hand darts out and wraps around the hilt as if I’ve done the move a thousand times before.
I stare wide-eyed at the blade as Sosch disappears into the fissure. Kyol’s still standing here. His jaw clenches as he meets my gaze, and I know he’s thinking exactly the same thing I am: three weeks ago, there’s no way I would have caught the sword.
I don’t sleep in my bed. I don’t sleep much at all. After I shower, I toss my dirty and bloodstained sheets into a laundry basket then curl up on the floor with a pillow that, fortunately, wasn’t used by the vigilante. Not surprisingly, my dreams are unpleasant. My recurring nightmares about Thrain, the false-blood who dragged me into the Realm a decade ago, aren’t the worst this time. The worst are the ones where my friends are dead. Lena’s been made tor’um, I find Naito skinned alive and hanging from the rafters in the palace, and the head of Shane, the Sighted human I haven’t seen since I lost him in London, is delivered to me in a box.