Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (40 page)

But Pernie didn’t know what to do with his vulnerability. This wasn’t the kind of combat they’d trained her for. So she just watched him and waited to see what he would do next.

“You want a tablet or net visor?” he said.

“For what?” she asked.

“To play with until the major comes.”

“What major?”

“The one from Fort Reno. From the NTA.”

“Fine,” she said.

He brought her one. She couldn’t get access to the global net, or even call out to ask Jeremy if she could stay with him and Gabby and go to school. All it had on it were games for captured kids to play. Pernie knew what it was. But she didn’t care. She would wait and see.

She opened up the only game she recognized,
Blades of Death XIV: Return of the Lich
. She spent the next three hours turning all the other stupid game warriors into piles of guts with Starfaze. Starfaze with her big bosoms and her broomstick.

Chapter 40

T
he major came into the little room in the Reno PD headquarters and looked just like Pernie thought he would, just like all the other fleet officers she’d seen back on Prosperion. There was actually something comforting in that. He looked a little like Roberto, only taller and not quite so broad across the shoulders and back. He had dark eyes, but there wasn’t anything funny glinting in them, though, not like Roberto’s always had.

“Well, Miss Grayborn, it seems you’ve already worn out your welcome with your host family. Although, Lieutenant Hammond there has told me that you’ve had some bad luck in at least part of that.”

Pernie thought he was going to lecture her about going downtown like everyone else did. But he did not.

“You’ve put us all in an awkward place,” he said instead. “But I’m not sure how we are going to find a new host family for you if you are going to continue running about drawing attention to yourself.”

“I didn’t draw attention to myself.” She didn’t really know what that meant anyway, but she didn’t care. She didn’t do it on purpose if she had.

“Well, sweetheart, yes, you did. I’ve got one Martin ‘Zest’ Boyle, a registered sex offender, still in a coma at Pfizer Corporate Hospital. I’ve also got a Calvin McLeary, Ryan Perkins, and Lashon Zaparto listed as hospitalized. The McLeary and Zaparto kids have been released, but it looks like the Perkins boy is probably going to lose his eye unless he can come up with enough money to get it regrown. That’s a lot of carnage for one ten-year-old girl in under seventy-two hours. If that’s not drawing attention to yourself, I don’t know what is.”

“They started it,” Pernie said.

He actually laughed. He reminded her of Don Hayworth in that way. Which was also comforting.

“Well, that may be so, but I’m afraid that, by our agreement with your government back on Prosperion, if you can’t be … kept in check, we are authorized to send you home.”

“I’m not going home,” she said. “I need to learn how to do all your sciences. Plus I am going to learn to fly the planes that go as fast as sound. And a starship.”

“Well, that’s just it, Miss Grayborn. That’s what we all want for you as well. But you can’t run around ramming broomsticks into people’s faces and putting them in comas.”

“I already told you: they started it.”

“Yes, that’s what you said. But they wouldn’t have started it if you were in your house where you were supposed to be.”

“They have alarms on my house and I can’t leave, like I am in jail.”

“But you aren’t in jail.”

“People in jail can’t leave when they want to.”

“That is true, but—”

“Well, they won’t let me leave when I want to. The man who brought me here the first time told me that criminals are supposed to be in jail. But I am the one who has to stay inside, and all the criminals are outside.”

“Miss Grayborn,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way. I can see how you—”

She cut him off again, because she didn’t want to listen to any more grown-up lies. “No,” she shouted at him. “Everyone wants me inside. But they don’t keep the criminals away.” She pointed at the lieutenant accusingly. “That’s why all the criminals are outside. You should make him go get the bad men and leave me alone.”

She felt tears burning in her eyes, though. They were going to send her back home. They were. She just knew it. They were grown-ups, and grown-ups always did whatever they wanted to, even when they were wrong. And so she’d go back to Prosperion and she wouldn’t know anything. She’d know how electricity worked and how to fix a wall. And that was all. Nothing else. Master Altin would think she was stupid, and he’d just be married to Orli Pewter forever, and Pernie wouldn’t even be Sava’an’Lansom, because she didn’t do like Djoveeve and Seawind said. She hadn’t even been here for three weeks, and they were sending her back. She even kept all her promises.

She put her head down in her arms upon the desk. She didn’t want the Earth men to see her cry and know that she was weak like a little girl. She tried not to cry, but it all just kept coming out.

The man from Fort Reno tried to touch her shoulder, but she turned on him and growled and made her most terrible face. He recoiled from her as if she were a viper. She was glad to see it in his eyes. He was afraid of her.

She set her head back in her arms and stared at the darkness inside. Enough light came through that she could see a pool of tears and spit on the table. After a time she wished she hadn’t cried like that.

She blinked her eyes dry and tried not to make too much noise sniffling up all the snot that was running in her nose. She wiped her face on the shoulder of her blouse as best she could, then finally looked up again.

“I’m not going home,” she said.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” he said. “But for now, you’re going to have to come with me.” He glanced up, and nodded out the window at someone standing outside the room. The door opened, and in came another man in an NTA uniform much like his. The new officer handed the major a square, flat box made of metal, dully reflective in the bright lights of the small room, then moved around to stand behind Pernie.

The major opened it, and Pernie saw a large metal object, round like a collar or a tiara, though held closed with a small, locking clasp. At even intervals around it were small metal boxes, hardly bigger than one joint of her finger, three of them in all. Each had two lights on it, one a dull green and the other flashing yellow.

“I’m going to need you to wear this,” the major said. “Just for now.”

“What is it?” Pernie asked. She glanced over her shoulder at the man behind her, then back at the object. She didn’t know why, but she hated it on instinct.

“It’s just to help us … keep you from doing anything we’ll all regret.”

Pernie glanced to the cut she had made on her arm, where the police medic had stitched it up with tiny black things he’d called staples. He’d told her they would dissolve and the “new skin” he’d painted on her would help it all regrow. He’d put another chip in her arm too. Pernie thought the metal ring in the box was going to be worse than the chip.

“I don’t want to wear it,” she said.

“It’s just for now. Until we can, well, until we know what to do.”

“I won’t wear it,” she said.

“But you don’t even know what it is. You might like it.”

“If I was going to like it, you would have said what it is.”

He turned to the police lieutenant, who nodded and raised his eyebrows in a way that seemed to say, “You see?”

“Well, you have to wear it. That’s just how it goes.”

“I won’t.” She pushed out her lips and crossed her arms again. She was watching him, though. She’d been in enough fights in her life to recognize how those things go.

“Vincent,” said the major, meant for the uniformed man behind her.

The man in uniform behind Pernie stepped up and grabbed her arms, pinning them to her sides. Pernie started to jump up from the chair, intent on flipping backward, over his head, but in the same motion as he was snatching her arms, he shoved her chair forward and pinned her to the table’s edge. He was extremely fast, like he was a trained fighter too.

The major took the collar out of the box and unlocked it with the pass of a plastic key. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said, “as long as you do as you are told. So please, let’s just all stay calm. It’s just a precaution. That is all.”

Pernie thrashed in the man called Vincent’s grip. He was very strong, and the edge of the table was jammed up under her ribs. She flung her head back, trying to head butt him, but she only thudded against his chest, which was muscular and strong.

The collar opened up like a set of jaws. The lights were all blinking red now. The major stooped and approached her, reaching it for her throat. The throat was the most vulnerable part, Djoveeve had said. Never let them at your throat.

She tried to kick the table over, but it was attached to the floor. Her knee clanked against the metal painfully. She thrashed even more violently in Vincent’s grip. He was too strong.

“Come on, Miss Grayborn, please.” The collar was only inches away.

She wanted to do magic. She wanted to teleport.

The tip of the collar latch brushed against her neck. She batted his arm away with the side of her face.

“Miss Grayborn, stop it now.” That was absolute command.

Pernie batted it away again. She smashed it hard with the side of her head, and when he tried to shove it back, she bit him as hard as she could. He shouted, and when he tried to jerk his wrist out of her mouth, his skin tore. She shook her head like a dog as he tried to pull away, biting harder. His blood tasted much different than Seawind’s had when Pernie bit the elf. The major’s blood tasted like Earth.

“Lieutenant,” ordered the major, finally pulling his arm free, “for Chrissakes, come help. Hold her head.”

The lieutenant moved to comply.

Pernie thrashed. She really wanted to teleport away. She hated her stupid promise.

The lieutenant grabbed her head, crowding Vincent behind her to get position. He mashed his hands against her forehead, covering one eye, and squeezed her skull front and back.

“Watch her teeth,” the major said. He came at her with the collar again. She felt its leading edges scrape against her throat.

She should teleport.

“Move your hand, I can’t get it locked,” he said.

The metal was cold as it slid around her neck.

“Hurry up, before she casts something. Move your damn thumb.”

Promises were stupid.

The collar clicked shut as Pernie finished the second word of the spell. She felt something bite her on the neck, electricity perhaps, but when she reached for the collar, it wasn’t there. She turned and looked at the three men through the window. They were still in the room. She wasn’t.

She ran down the hallway in the direction she’d seen Don and Sophia Hayworth go. She remembered the way the police people had brought her in. She didn’t want to go that way. She ran left and right, running through corridors. All the doors had little windows in them, so even the locked ones were easy to get through.

She teleported past one lock after another.

She ran past a wall of monitors and saw herself on them. The Reno PD people had cameras everywhere.

She ran through another series of corridors. There had to be a door that would take her outside. She found a door that was opening all by itself. A man was coming down another hall. He shouted at her.

She jumped through the opening door but found herself boxed in. It was a very tiny room. The doors were closing behind her. She turned to leave, but more men were running down the hallway where she had come.

The doors closed on them. She looked for a lock to keep them out. They were heavy-looking metal doors; perhaps they would buy her time to think.

There were so many buttons. All of them numbered. None looked like locks.

She pushed them all.

The little room started to move, upward, by the feel of it. She wondered where it was taking her. The men were taking her somewhere.

The doors opened again right away, and she was in another set of corridors. She looked out, and there were people passing by, but not the men chasing her. These people weren’t looking at her at all. She ducked back. The doors were closing again.

The little room went up again. The next floor was the same as the floor before. People were out there in corridors. She ducked back again. Three more floors went by before she found a corridor where there wasn’t anyone right outside. She ran down the nearest hallway, then left and right and left again. Still there were no doors leading outside. She kept running.

Finally she saw a big window that looked out into darkness at the end of a hallway. She ran to it. The night sky beckoned from between buildings that were tall like the ones downtown. There was no way to open the window. Just glass in a wall. Thick glass.

She was at least a hundred spans off the ground.

Shouting came from behind her. The lieutenant and the two NTA officers were running after her. Someone came through a door at the opposite end of the hallway, and there were footsteps coming from another corridor halfway in between.