Eye of the Storm (23 page)

I look at Mira, who I can see heard all of it. Hanging up and putting my phone away, she frowns.
 

"Did they set the wards to ping on shades?" She asks.

I hadn't thought of that. The only shades who still exist are the ones at the Summit. "They could have. I don't know."

My apprehension must be filtering through my connection with the others, because I feel a distant flash of alarm. I try to calm myself, smoothing out the wrinkles of my anxiety and trying not to fret about something I can't control.
 

"Alamea wants us to get back, eh?" Mira says, changing the subject.
 

I nod at her, and she gives me a wicked grin that doesn't quite reflect in her eyes. "Well, she didn't give a timeline, did she? We've still got the rest of the loop to go."

At that moment, I love her just about more than anything else, and when she takes my hand after sheathing her own swords, I hold onto it as tightly as she did to mine earlier.

The shades in the distance calm, their minds quieting to a pleased buzz.

All except one of them.

By the time we return to the Summit, my leathers crunch around my legs from the knees down, and Mira and I exchange a rueful glance, knowing we'll pay for our little expedition with chafing.

Hardy's in the lobby with a clipboard, and he snorts when he sees us. "Most people'd be ripping each other's clothes off. You two go get covered in mud and slime. Y'all need to sort out your priorities."

Mira punches him in the arm, and the pinkish scars from the markat spittle on her cheek and neck turn a slightly darker shade.
 

"I need to get out of these pants," I mutter as we walk away. Too soon, because I hear Hardy break into giggles behind us.
 

Glad to know I have the power of making a grown-ass Mediator giggle like a seven-year-old who just said
fart
.

Ben Wheedle greets us on the stairs.
 

I recognize the
oh, to the hells with this
look on Mira's face.
 

"Ben." My voice sounds as flat as a steamrolled pancake.
 

"Can we talk?"

I nod, any relaxation earned from our jaunt around the city quickly evaporating. There's a pinch at the base of my neck, like a headache happy to germinate. The stairs prove a worthy adversary with mud-dried leathers. Each step rubs the leather against my knees, and from the way Mira's cursing under her breath, I'm not the only one.

Ben leads us to the cafeteria, where at least we can get some food. To my — and Mira's, I think — surprise, he offers to go get us plates. We can both watch him to make sure he doesn't spit in anything, and Mira's eyes never leave him as if she's expecting exactly that.
 

When he returns with a tray full of heaping plates, I almost forget how much I dislike him. It's taco night, and I think the beef might have once been powder like the scrambled eggs I've been eating twice a day, but there's hot sauce and mountains of shredded cheese and sour cream so I do not even care. He even got us sani-wipes to get the demon goo off our hands.
 

That's what does the trick and makes me suspicious. I watch him while I carefully wipe my hands, digging under my fingernails with the wipe as well.
 

"Spill it, Wheedle."

He gives me a bland look in return, but I still don't think my suspicion is unfounded.

"I haven't had any luck finding who killed Harkan and Holden," he says quietly. The cafeteria is loud enough that probably no one would hear him even if he shouted, but I scowl at him.
 

"This isn't
can we talk
level yet, Wheedle. Are you that lonely?" Mira talks around a mouthful of taco, and she gives him a poisonous look.
 

"Get to the point," I tell him. "Unless feeding us was the point, but then you could have just asked if we were hungry."

"I've been hearing whispers about the shades," he says. "Not from anyone who sounds like they're going to actively go after them — most people are pretty scared shitless of them — but they're not trusted."

That prickle of tension at the base of my neck spreads out like fingers and digs in. "I already know this."

Ben shakes his head. "I mean people are openly talking about it. Not in front of anyone they think really sympathizes with you or the shades, but…the tone of people talking about what happened to Harkan and Holden was relief."

That sobers me. My chest rises and falls faster, but I don't feel the benefit of the air. It's not a surprise, not really. But it's almost enough to make me wish the hellkin would make their move already. The longer they wait, the longer whispers like this have a chance to grow into megaphones.
 

"What is it with people, man?" Mira looks like she wants to kick someone. "Don't we have enough gods damned problems without this?"

"They think the shades add to the existing problems," Ben says.

It's so close to what Alamea and I spoke about that I press my lips together.
 

Suddenly I just want my brother. I can feel him through our link, and as soon as I think it, I feel him moving closer. A smile ghosts my lips, but I wipe it away at Ben's curious look.
 

"Too bad you can't go on full shade propaganda duty," Mira mutters. "No one would believe you, especially because you're sitting here with us right now."

I didn't even think of that. We could have used Ben as a mole, but then again, I'm not sure how I feel about that at all.
 

"We have to do two things," I say. "Stay alive long enough to fight the real threat and keep the Summit from imploding before that threat hits us in the teeth."

Ben's watching me, looking like he wants to say something. But he doesn't for a minute. When he does, I'd put money on the guess that it's not what first crossed his mind.
 

"What do you think we should do?"

"Before we do anything else, we need to make sure the shades are safe," I say. "We all need to hold weapons to be at full usefulness. They are weapons."

Evis comes through the door, and he meets my eyes as if just seeing me releases tension. I've missed him the past couple days. He comes right to me and touches my shoulder. I reach for his right back. Mira puts her arm around me to do the same as Evis settles on the bench to my left. It feels somehow right with the two of them on either side of me. Both their arms stay there for a moment, and I feel a tiny bit of the tightness in my neck ease away with the warmth of them.
 

I can feel eyes on us.

An idea takes me, and I lean into my brother's shoulder. "Play along," I say quietly enough for only him to hear.
 

He pulls me into a side hug and leans his head against mine. He can feel in my mind what I'm doing.

Affection. Love. Humanity.
 

It's not much to start from, but it's a start.
 

If there are eyes on me and my brother, I'm going to make sure they see us as family.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ben's not the only one who wants to talk to me. As soon as we leave the cafeteria after a fruitless thirty minutes of spitballing ideas that feel useless and Mira splits off to go find Saturn, Gryfflet finds me.
 

"They said you were in the cafeteria," he says without preamble. He looks unwashed, probably because he is.
 

"They were right," I agree. "What is it?"

"I'm getting close, but I need your help." He doesn't wait for me to follow, just turns on his heel and heads back up the stairs.
 

Evis follows, still close enough to me that our shoulders bump with every step.

The abrasions from my pants have already healed, but new ones form by the time we get to the fifth floor where he's working. Carrick's already there, feet on the table like Alamea always works, a book propped up on his knees and another in his hands. He nods at me and Evis but doesn't get up. Asher is sitting in the corner of the room with her nose in a book. She looks up, and again I see that flash of grief when she sees me and Evis together. I try not to dwell on it.

"Carrick's helped me nail down some of the timelines, which is great, but I need more information about the new shades." Gryfflet barely makes eye contact with me. The wall he started drawing on last time is now covered in scribbles, little tick marks at intervals on the horizontal line he drew across it. I can't really read his chicken scratches, but as long as he's holed up in here, I don't have to.

"Couldn't Sol and Luna help? They are new shades," I point out.

"They have," Gryfflet says. "But I want a more…outside opinion."

"He's trying to figure out what the difference is," Carrick tells me. "Mason and Evis and the others are pretty similar to me in terms of how we communicate, and any differences could just be because I'm an old curmudgeon."

He gives me a wry smile at that, and I return it. "Old fart," I correct him fondly.

I sit down in one of the chairs and lean back. "What do you want to know exactly, Gryfflet?"

"Behavioral differences, reaction times, strength variance, whatever you can tell me."

Nodding, I think back. "They have a definite tendency to nonverbal communication and pack mentality. They act more like demons than the other shades we know. They also are much more inclined to social hierarchy. We could make the assumption that those things are due to other variables, but considering that I saw all those qualities in disparate groups separated by hundreds of miles, I think something must have changed in their origin process."

Gryfflet gives me a vigorous nod of approval. "Are you sure you didn't miss your calling as a scientist?"

"If we live through all this, I'll go back to school," I say dryly.

"I'm serious, Storme. Those are astute observations."

"Flatter me again when we're not dead after the demons try to make us lunch." I look at Evis. "Do you have anything to add to that?"

At first he shakes his head, then I feel his uncertainty. "I don't know if it's important," he says.

"Anything could be," says Gryfflet.

"Sol and Luna feel different," Evis says promptly. "And they change the way it feels around the others, too."

Carrick looks up from his book, his expression considering. "That's true."

I think about that. I didn't fully become the shades' alpha until the two of them came along, and since then… "It seems like their presence strengthens the bonds I feel with the others."

I can still feel the residual pain of Harkan and Holden. Physical proximity could account for some of it and why I didn't feel the same with Sanj when he died, but it's not enough to explain all of it.
 

Evis is nodding. "I can sense your feelings now a lot better than before."

Carrick has a strange look on his face.
 

"What, Carrick?" I ask.
 

"Is that a demon thing? Are they empaths?" He frowns.

Gryfflet stares for a moment, his mouth open. "I don't know. I don't know if anyone's looked into demon…sociology."

"Well, they definitely don't get it from the human side," I say. "
Homo sapiens whatevers
might be social creatures, but we don't communicate telepathically."

Gryfflet scribbles on a yellow legal pad, his handwriting no better on a table than it is on a wall. "Thanks," he says.

When he doesn't look up for a long moment, I give him a pointed look. "Is that all?"

"Thank you very much?"

"I mean, do you need me for anything else?"
 

"No, that's all." He still doesn't look up.
 

I feel vaguely used.