Kindling the Moon (24 page)

I'd removed her leather pants and boots so that she couldn't use them as projectiles to knock down the sheets, and now she had on only underwear and a sheer black spiderweb print shirt. The dirty soles of her feet faced me as her toes curled; the black polish on her toenails was chipping. “Are you cold?” I asked. “There's a space heater I can turn on.”

“Are you mad that they left you?” she asked, ignoring my question.

“My parents? No. They were protecting me.”

“By deserting you? If you were so fucking special, why wouldn't they guard you with their own lives?”

“The three of us being seen together would draw suspicion. It was safer to separate.”

“Or maybe they just told you that. Maybe they realized that you weren't the savior to Ekklesia Eleusia that they'd thought you'd be. Maybe they thought you weren't worth the troub—”

“Look, this isn't going to work. My parents love me. They just did what they had to.”

She shook her head. “Still protecting them after all these years, huh? One of our mages has a theory that you helped them with the killings.”

“They didn't kill anyone,” I snapped.

“I know for a fact that they did.” When she tried to smile, all I could see was the gaping hole in her teeth. The incisor that once held that spot was now in my pocket.

“Let's see, you were fourteen or fifteen during the Black Lodge slayings? I seriously doubt you knew much more than your math homework back then.”

She relaxed her shoulders and stared at me for a moment. “Huh,” she said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“You really don't think they killed all those people, do you?”

I gave her a weak smile. “They were framed by the head of your order.”

“Wow, you're dense.”

“Alrighty, then. This is going nowhere.” I moved the fruit and crackers toward her with the tip of my shoe. “Have fun eating like a dog off the floor.” I left her a small length of toilet paper on the arm of the couch and parted the hanging sheets to exit.

“I know your parents killed the other heads of the orders,” she said behind me, “because they tried to kill my dad.”

Her dad? I froze in place.

“That's right, Moonchild. I'm Phil Zorn's daughter.”

An uneasy chill ran down my back. Magus Zorn? Holy shit. I had just kidnapped the Luxe leader's daughter. This was either the worst mistake I'd ever made, or a once-in-a-lifetime piece of leverage; I wasn't sure which.

By late afternoon I'd checked on Riley twice and brought her more water. At least she'd eaten. She was refusing to talk anymore, which was fine by me, merely requesting that I change the satellite radio station, which I did. Then I dug through an old toolbox that the previous owners of the house had left behind and found an old sliding lock, which I installed on the door to the basement. Having some extra security made me feel less anxious. More than that, it gave me something to do.

After finishing, I plopped down on my living room sofa, gloomy and miserable, weighing my options. Only four days left until my time ran out.

I laid out in a neat row on my coffee table the contents of Riley Cooper's pockets. Her gun, a driver's license, a key card for a motel room in La Sirena, about a thousand dollars in cash, a piece of red ochre chalk, her key ring, a cell phone. I scrolled through her contacts several times. Read all her text messages. Most of them were just brief I-love-you's to her father and another man—boyfriend, brother? She hadn't made or received any calls in two days; at least no one would be suspicious about calls suddenly stopping. Hopefully I
could just continue texting in her place to keep up appearances.

I was haunted by her implication that my parents had ditched me. It wasn't like I hadn't thought about it before or confronted them with the same charge, especially during my first year in hiding. I'd tried to persuade them to take me with them, even after a couple of years had passed. One especially dreary winter in Seattle, when Kar Yee was busy marrying her fake husband to get her citizenship, my mental health went south. I'd already linked myself to Priya at that point, and sent the guardian to ask my parents to call me.

It took them three days to respond. The longest three days of my life. I locked myself in my room and did every spell I could find to draw them to me. After two days, I dosed myself with a medicinal elixir and slept on my closet floor. By the time they called, I was weak from hunger and hallucinating from the medicinal. I remember sobbing on the phone, begging them to come to get me. My mom spent a couple of hours talking me down, flew from France that night and stayed with me for several wonderful days. I missed all my classes and had to repeat one of them the following semester, but it was worth it.

That was the last really bad time for me. Apart from the occasional bout of self-pity, I had moved past all that long ago. It made me mad that Riley Cooper was able to dig it back up, so I did my best to squelch any lingering feelings of abandonment.

My thoughts floated back to another subject I was trying to avoid, and I wondered how Jupe was doing. It crossed my mind that I could send a servitor to check on him, but if Lon ever found out …
ugh
. No thanks. I glanced at my cell. No calls. I stupidly dialed Tambuku to double-check that I had service, then chastised myself for being desperate and put it
back down. I lay down on the sofa on my side, staring at it, trying to will it to ring.

I guess that's why I never heard the door open and close.

“Hey.”

I yelped. Lon was standing by the coffee table.

“God …” I put my hand over my jackhammering heart and quickly sat up.

As the surprise wore off, I realized I had no idea what to say, so I remained quiet. His gaze dropped to the row of Riley's items on the table. He set down a book he'd brought and picked up her keys. “You still have the girl?” he asked.

“In the basement.”

One brow rose in question.

“I'm treating her humanely.”

He didn't reply. Just tossed the keys back on the table and crossed his arms over his chest.

“How is he?” I asked, embarrassed that I couldn't bring myself to say Jupe's name.

“A friend healed his hand. The breaks in his arm were too big, so he's in a cast.”

“Is he in a lot of pain?” I couldn't look at him, so I just stared at the floor. My hands gripped the edge of the sofa.

Lon snorted, sounding just like Jupe. “He's high as a kite on pain pills and glad to be missing school for the rest of the week.”

I tried to laugh, but it got distorted by a sudden surge of emotion.
Don't you dare cry
, I thought.

Lon pushed Riley's things to the side and sat down on the coffee table facing me, his legs surrounding mine. He leaned forward until his face was only a few inches away. He smelled like valrivia smoke. “Listen up,” he said, “because I don't say this often.”

I stiffened, drawing back, unsure of his intentions. He put his hand on my forearm to stop me. I shook it off. “What?”

“I overreacted,” he said.

It took several moments for his words to register.

“Look—” he started.

“I understand.” I raised my voice to drown out his explanation. “I understand you being scared and upset about Jupe—”

“No, you don't.”

“Yes, I do. I may not be a parent—”

“Yeah, you're not a parent, that's right.”

Anger flared inside my chest. “Don't give me some bullshit about how I can't understand because I didn't give birth to him, because even I know that you don't have to do that to care about someone.”

“Will you calm down and let me talk for a second?” Lon said in exasperation. “I'm trying to apologize.”

I pressed my lips together.

“Thank you,” he said crossly.

I waited for several moments while he collected his thoughts.

“When I said that you don't understand, I meant that you don't understand why I reacted like I did. Hell, I didn't understand it.” He dropped his eyes. “It was Jupe who pointed out some things. How I was getting you confused with Yvonne.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You aren't like his mother,” he clarified, “but I was reacting to you the same way. It's just that …” He squinted his eyes and creased his brow, engaged in some inner battle to find the right words. “Yvonne put Jupe in danger a couple of times when I was away on shoots. When he was four, she
left him at someone's house, some guy she was screwing. A stranger. She took Jupe with her, and that's one thing, but then she forgot him—her own child.”

Well, shit. I really didn't know what to say to that. He was close enough to sense my feelings, which was probably helpful for once; let him figure it out.

“That was neglect,” he continued, “and it was her fault. What you did wasn't the same. You didn't know that girl could track you that way. I didn't either, frankly, and that led me to my second realization.”

“Which was?”

“I guess I was mad at myself and taking it out on you. Like I told you before, I can't totally blame Yvonne for all her actions. She was a wild child before I got her initiated, but after I did, she got worse. So that's my fault.”

“What do you mean, ‘initiated'?” I asked. “You still haven't told me what you did to her.”

He closed his eyes briefly and inhaled. “I let her talk me into having a spell done on her to increase her demon powers.”

I ran through all the spells I'd come across that could be applicable but came up short. “I don't understand. Was this some spell you found, or …?”

“It's a spell that one of my father's friends learned back in the sixties. My father and a few others cast it on each other. Like I said, it amplifies latent demonic traits.”

“Makes you more demon?”

He nodded. “That's why my halo looks like this. Both my parents underwent the spell before I was born. I had it cast on me when I turned eighteen. After I started dating Yvonne, she found out about it and wanted it done too. I should have said no, but I didn't.”

“What exactly does it do? I mean, was your empathic power not as sharp as it is now, or …?”

“It allows Earthbounds to transmutate.”

“Huh?”

“To shift. To become less human, more demon. Your powers are ramped up, and not … tempered by your human nature like they normally are.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. I'd never heard of such a thing. “So you can do this? Transmutate?”

“Yes.”

“What happens when you do?”

“I can read emotions really strongly, and pick up a few conscious thoughts too.”

“Oh.”

He cleared his throat. “I can also manipulate emotions. Temporarily change the way people feel.”

Wow. That didn't sound good. “Have you done that to me?”

“Huh?” He squinched up his eyes like I was crazy, then shook his head. “No. You'd
definitely
know if I transmutated. It's not something I can sneak by you.”

“Oh, okay.” I thought about it, then my mind turned back to his ex-wife. “What is Yvonne's ability? Why do you hate it so much?”

Silence.

“Don't ask me that right now,” he pleaded in a soft voice. “I'm not trying to hide anything from you, and I will tell you eventually.”

He reached for me, and I flinched.

“Please,” he whispered, and picked up my hands in his. He looked down at them, stroking my fingers. We were silent for a moment, not looking at each other.

“I didn't mean to get started on all that, but I suppose
you'd find out soon enough any way. What I meant to say about my behavior last night is that I was mad at myself for being indirectly responsible for putting my own child in danger in the past. Granted, I'm not happy that he got hurt, and I'm not saying I think it's no big deal.” He leaned his head to the side to catch my eye. “But I don't blame you for what happened.”

“Okay,” I said lamely.

“Honestly, Jupe's seen me do magick before, so if you did something wrong, well, I have too. Jesus, you're shaking like a leaf.”

“Too much magick,” I conceded with a wry smile. “I get drained, and … it doesn't matter.”

He gave me a tender look, then squeezed my hands firmly, as if that would help.

“Maybe you haven't thought this all the way through,” I said after a few moments. “I mean, I would never do anything to hurt Jupe on purpose. But you were right the first time—it
is
my fault. Like you said, I'm a magnet for trouble. I'm not a good person to be in Jupe's life. He deserves someone more stable. I mean, look at me. I'm holding a kidnapped girl in my basement. What would Father Carrow say about me now if he knew that, huh?”

“Well,” Lon said in a diplomatic voice, “I can't think that he would approve of kidnapping, or of injuring her, but I'll bet he would give you a little slack for the situation you're in. And like Jupe told me, the girl
did
have a gun, and she didn't seem all that sorry about slamming my kid's arm in a door. You might have saved our lives, like Jupe thinks you did.”

“Hmm.”

“Besides, no offense to Father Carrow, but I'm more concerned about what opinion my son has of you right now.”

“Why?”

“Because you might be the first woman Jupe and I have both agreed on.”

My heart vaulted. A cautious hope threaded through me. Did he mean that?

After a short silence he dropped my hands and asked, “So how did you get her back here last night?”

“Uh … taxi?” Umm, yeah. He wasn't buying that. I reckoned if he was being honest, I should too. “All right. I kinda stole a car.”

He closed his eyes in resigned annoyance.

“But it's been returned, good as new. The door was unlocked, so I didn't have to break the window or anything. Bob even put gas in it.”