Keystone (24 page)

“We need pizza, if it’s going to be a party,” Zane says once we let ourselves into my little apartment.

“You can call the desk while I get drinks,” Garrett tells him. “But you know the best we’re going to get is multi-grain crust and veggies.”

“Pizza’s pizza.” Zane shrugs and he picks up the phone.

Robin goes to the glass door and runs her fingers over the glass.

“Solida Glass.
Veeery
nice. It’s bullet proof, shatterproof and impermeable. You can’t just buy this stuff. It’s made by the Veritas and it’s stronger than metal.” There is awe in her voice as she taps the glass door.

“Cool.” Zaneen rolls her eyes, unimpressed.

“You’d appreciate it a lot more if one of The Fury was standing outside with a gun pointed at your head,” Robin tells her.

“Like they’d ever make it into the Courtyard.”

“You never know where they could make it in,” Garrett jumps in, even though his voice is friendly instead of chastising. “You’ve got to be ready for anything.”

Zaneen tips her head to one side and beams at Garrett.

“Oh, come on,” Robin says, sliding the glass door open. She’s already stepped outside before she says, “You care if we go look around, Nali?”

“I don’t mind,” I say, as Zaneen follows her and Deeta bobs along behind them.

Zane and Garrett start up about my next training session and when they walk into the kitchen, I ditch them and trail after the girls. They’re standing near the tiny waterfall, each of them gazing in different directions. As I walk up beside Deeta, she grabs my arm and squeezes.

“This is incredible,” she says. “You’re so lucky.”

Robin grunts. “We’re in the upswing of a Cusp, Deets. Nobody’s lucky.”

“Oh, but she is lucky.” Zaneen shoots me a smile that glints like sharpened knives. “She’s Garrett’s Vieo. Who cares about any stupid ol’ Cusp when you’ve got Garrett, right, Nali?”

I push my shoulders back. “If Vieo means that I’m Garrett’s girlfriend, then yeah, I’m lucky, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m Contego.”

“
I don’t know what Vieo means…It doesn’t change the fact that I’m Contego,”
Zaneen parrots, strutting back and forth in front of me like a bobble-eyed baby doll.

All that swirls in my mind is doubt and questions.
Why can’t she just like me? Why doesn’t she blast Garrett for not liking her instead of me? Is Zaneen always going to be an extra battle I’ve got to fight?

Deeta jumps forward to cling on my arm.

“I am sooo excited!” she yelps. “All that time that you were in History with me and I had no idea you were one of us! Or that you would be Garrett’s Vieo! That’s so cool. It feels like we’re sisters!”

Her warmth feels like a barrier against Zaneen. I squeeze Deeta’s hand on my arm.

“Deeta,” I say, keeping my eyes carefully off of Zaneen. “Everyone says I’m Garrett’s Vieo and, uh, I don’t know what that is.”

Robin lets out a whoop and Zaneen’s gushes a laugh like I just kicked her in the stomach. Deeta squeeze-hugs my arm.

“It means you’re his
intension
,” Deeta squeals, searching my face for recognition that, I’m positive, doesn’t come. “It means he chose you for binding!”

I’m sure my face doesn’t register everything that happens inside me. I assume being bound means marriage, or something like it, and my heart is caught between doing air flips and sliding into my shoe. The effect Garrett has on my heart and my brain and my body is the equivalent of a lit match, thrown into a city-sized box of fireworks.

But I’m seventeen. My mom didn’t want me to marry young, like she did.

Then I think of all the conversations Garrett and I have and how he looks at me and how I can talk to him and how it seems like we’ve known each other longer than I’ve even been alive. But I haven’t even known him for a full two months yet. This is way over my head.

I don’t even know how these things work. Maybe the Ianua won’t give me a choice. Maybe I don’t want one. Maybe I do. The enormous Courtyard, filled to the sides and ceiling with foliage, suddenly seems to be lacking in oxygen.

“Don’t freak her out like that. She doesn’t even know how it works.” Robin steps forward and wrenches me out of Deeta’s grasp. “Listen, before you lose your mind, here’s what you need to know. Even if he chose you as his Vieo, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck with him.”

“Stuck? With Garrett?” Zaneen snorts. Robin turns me away from the other two girls.

“It means that Garrett chose you. That’s it,” Robin says. “Even if you don’t choose him as your Vieo, you’ll be his, until you either choose him too or…”

“Or,” Zaneen pops up beside Robin, “until you choose someone else.”

“But if you do choose him, then you’ll be bound,” Deeta squeals, clapping her hands. I think she might faint. “
Forever
.”

“Well, you’ll be bound if the Addo agrees to do the ceremony,” Robin says. “Word of advice? Don’t be in a rush. The Ianua only let you bind once and you’re stuck with that guy the rest of your life.”

“And he’s the only man who can ever father your children,” Deeta adds dreamily.

“Oh gag,” Zaneen groans. “You’re talking about my brother.”

“Well, she needs to know all of it,” Robin snaps at Zaneen before turning back to me. “Marriage in the Ianua is a whole lot different than Simple marriages. There’s no divorce, no take backs. So once you’re bound—physically, that’s it. You can only have kids with the person you are bound to. But the Addo usually doesn’t agree to bind couples until they’re at least twenty.”

“But with the Cusp, he might give in earlier.” Deeta winks at me, like all I need is a little encouragement, instead of about seven more birthdays. “Especially if you drive him totally nuts, like another couple I know.”

“I love Zane 100-and-a-half percent,” Robin says, “but we still jumped in way too fast.”

“You guys are actually married?” My lips are really heavy, as if I’ve been smiling way too long. Robin just nods.

“Pizza’s here!” Garrett shouts from the sliding door and this glob of weird shame splatters all over me. Having the girls tell me what a Vieo is, when Garrett hasn’t told me himself yet, and having Robin encourage me to wait, makes me feel like I’m standing here naked. It seems like this should be private stuff that I should be talking about with Garrett first. It scribbles me up inside.

Then I turn around and our eyes meet. The clear blue of his eyes erases the shame and the scribbles. Looking into his eyes, it’s like my life lays itself out between us, a sprawling treasure map, and the dotted line that I’m supposed to follow leads straight to him.

I smile at Garrett and he smiles back.

It’s just so simple.

“Why don’t you crack out that picture?” Zane says, once he’s finished his fifth slice of pizza. He’s sitting on the floor with his feet under the coffee table.

“What picture?” Robin shifts on the couch right above him, her knees pulled up in front of her. The veggies on her pizza slice look like they could slide off onto Zane’s head.

“Nali found an old picture and a card at her mom’s storage shed, hidden behind her…Roger’s photo.” Garrett wipes his mouth on a napkin and his eyes flick to me from where he’s sitting in the chair, an arm’s reach from my loveseat. He’s too far away.

“Oh! Secret stash!” Deeta bubbles. She’s on the loveseat beside me, a little too close, since we can’t move without knocking arms.

“Let Robbie take a look first,” Zane says. “See if she recognizes anybody.”

I pull the picture and card from my pocket and hand it her. Zaneen leans in, squinting at the photo too.

“I can’t see this girl under the smudge. I wonder if we can scrape that off? Wait, isn’t this the guy from that Junkyard?” she leans over Zane, pointing to the slouchy guy at the right side of the photo and Zane nods proudly.

“Clint,” he says. He drops his head back on the couch cushion and smiles up at her. “You’re gonna be one killer Emen, baby.”

“Yeah yeah,” she says, flipping the photo back to me. It spins in the air. “But who are the other people?”

“My mom and Roger are in the middle, but I don’t know who the other ones are,” I say. Zaneen shrugs.

“Why don’t you just go ask that guy then?” Zaneen takes a big bite of her pizza, but no sauce gets on her face. “What was his name again? Clint?”

Zane laughs and slaps his knee. “Just go ask him? Clint? Sure. The problem with asking Clint anything is that he’s not going to tell you anything. He hates the Ianua. Shoot, he hates people.”

“He does business with you and your dad,” Robin says. “He can’t hate you too much.”

“He takes our money,” Zane says. “It’s not like he invites us to his birthday parties. That’s why Larsy doesn’t go there anymore. Clint kicked him out, after Larsy asked about donating some property in the middle of the junkyard for an Ianua safe house. I mean, damn, it would be the perfect place to disguise a house. Who would think to look under a heap of metal in the middle of the yard? It was Larsy’s one good idea and he not only got shot down, but he got thrown out of the junkyard for life too.”

“What’s Clint’s problem with the Ianua? Is his family from the blood lines?” Garrett asks. Zane shrugs.

“There’s all kinds of rumors, but nobody knows if any of them are true. Somebody said he’s from an old Ianua family that cut him out because he was Simple. Somebody else said he was always Simple but turned to the Fury, got out of it and then wanted nothing to do with any of it. I heard he was Ianua blood, but went Simple when he fell for a Simple chick, but then she went and ditched him for someone in the Fury. I also heard that he came out of a hard core Fury family, so who knows what’s true.”

“You’re quite the little gossip,” Robin says.

“Whatever the truth is,” Garrett says. “It sounds like we’re going to have to be careful talking to him. He could be with the Fury.”

Deeta touches my arm on purpose this time. “If it’s dangerous, maybe we shouldn’t find out who’s in the picture. Is it that important to know?”

“It is,” I say. I glance at Garrett, to see if he’s ready for me to spill the beans about searching for the Key. He gives me a tiny nod of encouragement, but I’m saved from making the final decision by a knock at the door.

Chapter 11

“PROBABLY SEAN,” GARRETT SAYS, HOPPING up. But when he finally opens the door, Principal VanWeider is on the other side, holding what looks like a cardboard briefcase with a plastic handle and standing beside a boy who is about the same height as Garrett and who is also holding a box like the one the Principal has.

“Well, good evening,” Principal VanWeider says when he walks in. The boy follows him, silent but with a strong, straight back, as if he’s trying to take up as much space as he can. Their boxes have pictures on the side of a student working at a laptop.

Deeta, her eyes scoping the boy from head to toe, does a little squeak of appreciation beside me. Even Zaneen looks entranced. “I didn’t expect everyone to be here, or I would’ve just brought all of your Quantus systems with me, instead of having FIXI deliver them.”

“Good thing he didn’t, or I would’ve had to carry all of them,” the boy says with a chuckle. No one laughs, but Deeta smiles at him like a mental patient.

“And what are you doing here?” Robin’s question is too sharp to be considered friendly. Her eye, the one I can see outside the black sheet of her hair, is pressed flat in a suspicious squint. Principal VanWeider sets down his laptop box.

“I’d like to introduce Milo Frangere,” he says. “He’s come from Addo Chad’s Cura and he’s been authenticated. Freddie gave him the room next door.”

Garrett leans a shoulder against the wall and Zane stretches one leg leisurely beneath the coffee table, the other is bent with his elbow resting on it. Robin settles back against the couch and unloops her arms from around her knees. The whole room looks so uncomfortably comfortable that the apartment could be a wax museum. Except for Deeta and I. We’re perched together on the loveseat like a couple of nerved-up birds.