Adamant (4 page)

“I have, actually,” I said, and then wondered why I’d risen to his bait. It wasn’t something I went around shouting about, though everyone at the Academy had known about the infamous wyvern incident.

Markos raised an eyebrow. “You’re lying.”

“Nope.”

“Prove it.”

Typical. Once centaurs fixated on something, they never let it drop—the phrase “stubborn as a mule” came to mind, not that I’d be saying
that
aloud unless I had the sudden desire to become part of the interior decorating. Centaurs weren’t easily freaked out, but maybe this would deter him from asking any more questions. I pushed up my shirtsleeve to show the tip of the claw mark scar across the back of my forearm then flipped it over to show the identical mark on the other side.

“Damn,” he said. “Well, that could have come from a wyvern… or a really vicious stinging nettle.”

We reached the first floor, sparing me from having to reply. File in hand, I approached the open door to Mr Clark’s office. Behind all the papers, I saw he was on the phone, so I laid the file down and backed out of the room just as someone else passed by.

“Hey—you’re new here? I’m Ellen.” She read my name badge. “Kay…Walker?”

“Just Kay,” I said.

“Nice to meet you, then, Kay,” said Ellen, brushing dark blond hair from her eyes and smiling at me. “Wait—someone was just talking about you. Aric Conner.”

I stared. “Aric Conner… from the Academy?”

“Yeah, he started this week, too.” She gave me a puzzled look. “You know him?”

Well enough that I’d like to string him up and use him for target practice.
“We were in the same class. That’s all.”

Oh, I wished that was all. I’d thought he’d gone to join his sister at London’s West Office, and good riddance, but it seemed the universe wasn’t done screwing with me yet. If ever anyone deserved to be trampled by a wyvern on the first night shift, it was the bastard responsible for the incident which had almost got me and two other students killed. And he’d got away with it.

My communicator buzzed in my pocket.

“That’ll be the patrol rota,” said Ellen. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Sure thing,” I said, skimming down the touch-screen. The rota said I was up tonight. Now that was more like it.

And then I saw Markos’s name next to mine—and Aric’s.

Yeah. The universe definitely wasn’t done screwing with me.

ADA

Morning brought the smell of hot chocolate and a certainty that I’d slept through my shift. A glance at my alarm clock confirmed it. Ten thirty. My shift had started two hours ago.

Groaning, I rolled out of bed and gave my clock a shake. Oops, I’d forgotten to set it before I left for the Passages last night. Way to go, Ada.

I unplugged my phone from its charger, trying to think of an excuse I hadn’t already used to text my supervisor. I settled for, “Sorry, I thought I had an afternoon shift”, which would probably have got me fired from any other job. My boss was known for being lenient, even if reliability was
not
listed on my CV.

I dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved top, leaving my combat boots by the door. I pulled out my dagger from the sheath and put it back with the other knives I’d acquired, stacked on the bedside table. My room was little bigger than a cupboard, a problem when you hoarded the way I did. Books were stacked creatively on every surface, often with trophies from various martial arts classes balanced on top, and “souvenirs” Delta had given me from offworld. When I was twelve, I’d fetched a ladder and painted the ceiling with stars. Not representing the actual stars outside, but the worlds in the Multiverse. Like the doors in the Passages. Close, but distant. Untouchable.

The aroma of hot chocolate beckoned. My legs were stiff from yesterday, but I could still feel the electric tingle of magic in my blood. My bad mood cleared. The lingering aftereffect of using magic meant I’d be able to use it on Earth, at least for a short time. Today was going to be good.

Nell was in the kitchen, washing up. She looked like an innocuous housewife from the back—and people had been known to regret making that assumption. “You must be Ada’s clone, seeing as she’s at work,” she said.

“Ha ha,” I said. “Guess I was more tired than I thought.”

Nell turned around. “Have they fired you yet?”

“They won’t fire me. They like me.” I gave her my most innocent smile.

Nell made a disparaging sound. “Can’t imagine why.”

“Nice to know you care. Is that hot chocolate I smell?”

“On the table. Don’t say I don’t spoil you.”

So it was, and also a stack of toast. I shoved half a slice in my mouth. “You’re amazing,” I said, my voice muffled.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. You’re lucky Jeth and Alber aren’t around.”

I swallowed the mouthful of toast. “Alber’s not up yet?”

“Hangover. His own fault.”

I grinned. “Hey, you let him go out.” Unlike me, my seventeen-year-old brother Alber fitted in fine with people his own age. He’d got a handle on the double life better than I did.

“And Jeth’s at work.”

Here we go.
I could sense a work-related lecture coming a mile off. Jeth was two years older than me, twenty-three, had a ‘real’ job in IT, and was saving to move into his own place. In other words, exactly what Nell wanted me to do. Well, it wasn’t like there was an abundance of affordable flats in London, much less for someone young, single, broke, and who kept a collection of knives in their room. A conventional landlord would kick me out.

“Ada,” said Nell. “The real world won’t go away if you ignore it.”

I glanced up at the flickering light. “I’m not ignoring it. I’m helping people. Same as you.” Okay, I’d left my adult card behind today. But I was tired, and kind of ashamed at myself for sleeping through my shift. As well as being the first time I’d done that in a while, it was a reminder that a double life came with a price.

“Well, I don’t want you to waste your life away. You can’t save everyone.”

Her face clouded. She never really talked much about her life before she’d moved to Earth. All I knew was that she’d taken me to the transition point to be assigned to a new world and was coached on language and customs. I could never wrap my head around the idea that Nell had known nothing about Earth until she’d been there, and had learned English from scratch. Within a couple of years, she’d been able to pass as an Earth native, and nobody had ever doubted the same of me. When I’d asked why she’d never taught me Enzarian, she’d said,
We’re never going back. We have to let the past go.
She never spoke about how hard it must have been to accept that.

“Duly noted,” I said. “Look, I’ll… find a better job. Honestly, I didn’t plan on spending my whole life stacking shelves.” Pity even a degree wouldn’t qualify me for more. The exception, of course, being the Alliance. They’d interview anyone for an entry-level position, provided they passed their entrance exams. I probably had more practical experience in the Passages than most of their novices, at least, the ones who hadn’t been to the Academy, and could speak three offworld languages to boot.

The one job I might be qualified for was the one Nell despised more than anything in the Multiverse. That figured.

“What’s happening with that family?” I asked. “Do you have their papers sorted out? Need me to get anything?”

“Actually… you’re changing the subject,” Nell said, sternly. “But yes, we’re out of powdered bloodrock.”

I frowned. “I thought you had a ton of the stuff?”

“We burned through most of it three weeks ago.”

Ah. That had been the biggest job of the summer, when a huge group of people from the collapsing world of Zanthar had come through the Passages at once. There was absolutely no way a Zanthan could pass as someone from Earth—they had gills, for one thing—so Nell’s friends, the Knight family, must have used all the bloodrock to make the concealment concoction using Nell’s recipe, a delightful combination of pure bloodrock and human skin tissue. It worked like magic—ha—to completely change a person’s appearance. Permanently, if you kept applying it every year or so. I’d never used it, but it seemed to be some kind of hi-tech illusion – you only needed to dip your hand in it, and the effect would transfer to your entire body. Pretty ingenious. Except there was only one place bloodrock, a highly classified illegal offworld substance, was available.

“I get to break into Central’s stores?” I said, cracking a grin.

Nell turned, hands on her hips. “I never said
you
had to do it. You’ve been reckless enough this week already.”

“Might as well keep it up,” I said. “Come on, I’m not working. There’s less risk in it for me than the others.”

At that moment, Alber came into the kitchen, yawning. “I’m dead,” he announced.

“You’re walking,” I pointed out.

“This is my reanimated corpse,” he said, opening a cupboard. The door fell off. “This house is literally falling apart,” he announced, propping the door back in place.

“It is a bit,” I admitted, glancing up at the cracked ceiling. The house had been “lived-in”, as Nell put it, when we’d moved here fifteen years ago. Now, it seemed like something broke every day. The kitchen light flickered constantly, shelves fell down with little warning, and the dripping tap was a permanent fixture.

“Well, when you’ve found the universe where money grows on trees, let me know,” said Nell. “I’m going to check on the others upstairs.”

“Sure,” I said. “Enjoy last night, Alber?”

“Never speak of it again,” he muttered, running a hand through his blond, spiky hair and downing a glass of water. “Why is there no food in this house?”

“Because you and Jeth ate it all,” I said. “I have good news, though. I’m breaking into Central tonight.”

Alber’s eyebrows shot up. “You serious?”

“Yeah, Nell’s out of powdered bloodrock. You want in?” Hey, I never said I was a good influence on impressionable teenagers.

“Hell, yeah.” He set the glass down, grinning.

“Great. Today’s Monday, so patrols are every hour until eight, then every two. I think we should set out at ten, to be on the safe side. They’ll be in the Passages when we get there, so there’ll be fewer guards at Central.”

“You know all their patrols by heart?” said Alber. “Wow. That’s dedication to law-breaking, right there. And shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“School finished a week ago,” said Alber, rolling his eyes. “Which universe have you been in?”

“Ha ha.” I pushed back from the table. If I had a few hours to kill, might as well do something productive. Like practicing throwing knives in the garden.

Alber followed me out the back door, having swiped the remains of the stack of toast from the table. “Nell’s being a neglectful parent again,” he said, perching on the garden wall. Weeds grew between the cracked paving stones and from the back, the house looked run-down and abandoned. Nell had let the ivy grow out of hand to block the windows, not that anyone ever came back here anyway. A chain-link fence and an alley separated us from the neighbouring house.

“She’s just busy.”

Running both the shelter and a home business was no joke, even if the business was basically all online, selling disguises to offworlders who wanted to build new lives on Earth. Nell might have wanted a normal life for me, but she could never escape her own roots.

The magic still zinged through my veins as I lifted a knife in my right hand, focusing on the target. Usually, I wouldn’t be able to do this, but today magic was on my side.

I gripped the knife and sent a jolt of power into it, letting go as I did so. It struck the target dead centre, and then rebounded. I jumped into the air and caught it by the hilt, exhilaration mingling with the power still surging through me. Nell had lectured me half to death about throwing away my weapon during a fight, seeing as one time I’d done that, I’d ended up missing and almost getting speared through the eye with my own weapon. But with magic, I could get my dagger back to my hand without the enemy grabbing it.

“Show-off,” said Alber, his violet eyes flashing. He wasn’t wearing his contacts. He jumped back as the knife whizzed past and stuck point first in the target. “And you wonder why Gary was scared of you.”

“Did you have to bring that up?” I said, shuddering at the reference to my ex. “It’s not like I brought knives to our dates. Wait. Okay, there was that one time.”

“I rest my case,” said Alber.

“Oh, don’t you start,” I said. “Thank God Nell’s not the type to want me to settle down and get married. Ugh.”

“No.” He smirked. “Can you imagine
her
dating anyone? I’m pretty sure she sleeps with three knives under her pillow.”

“See? Makes me look almost normal.”

I handed the knife over to Alber. He was right-handed, but landed a perfect hit with his left hand. Again, the knife soared back at him and he caught it in his right hand, grinning.

“I know all your tricks, Ada,” he said. “You’re not the only mageblood here.”