Liquid Fire (48 page)

“What’s happened?” Jewel said, and Philip was silent. “What’s wrong?”

“This,” Philip said, again beckoning to me, “is a delicate situation—”

“Damn it, don’t cut me out!” Jewel said. “This is Molokii’s life—”

“No, it isn’t,” the other agent said. “This mess . . . is all about Miss Frost.”

We gathered in front of a giant flat panel, where a third agent typing away did a quick double take looking at me, then, without a word, began digging in his browser history. “The first site’s already taken down, but I’m sure someone snagged it—ah, here we go. Steel yourself.”

He hit the link—and a promo played for Alex Nicholson’s TV show,
The Exposers
.

“You’ve seen him performing illusions—coast to coast,”
Alex announced—as a short, swarthy, white-haired wizard appeared: Christopher Valentine, the man who nearly took my life, performing card tricks, escaping a straitjacket, and appearing with his
projectia
, a magic double.

“And you’ve seen her performing magic—on the news,”
Alex intoned—as a tall, tattooed, Mohawked punk grrl appeared:
me,
inking Alex’s wristwatch in my studio, uncoiling my vines at Cinnamon’s talk at Berkeley—and releasing my Dragon in Union Square.

A succession of quick shots of Valentine made that murderous bastard look like a saint. They showed him yukking it up on
The Late Shift with Jack Carterson
, accepting a key to the city from a mayor, and cheerfully interrogating a woman with a crystal ball.

Me? They caught me at my most biker, riding my Vespa at an angle that made it look like a Harley. Shots Daniel Ekundayo had done at my dojo were spliced together to make me look like Jackie Chan. Clips of me kicking a punching bag so hard my tattoos glowed.

They made me look like a savage.

“Dakota Frost is the only magician ever to beat Christopher Valentine at his Challenge,”
Alex said, again over clips of the inking, showing my detailed setup, showing my needle on Alex’s skin—and that faker Valentine watching from a gurney.
“And then she killed him.”

My face flushed. My vision went red. I heard a whine and distant voices.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

And then Christopher Valentine was leaning into the camera, candid, and smiling; deep down I knew it was a lie, but for a moment, just for a moment, it wasn’t Mirabilus holding a knife, but the Christopher Valentine I’d admired as a child—the wizard and debunker.

“Because we’ll get to the truth. Even if it kills us,”
Valentine said, winking.

And then
I
appeared, angry, flushed and aggressive, barking,
“I said, no cameras!”

Then my vine whipped out, and the screen went black, and the title card faded in:

THE EXPOSERS EXPOSED:

VALENTINE VS. FROST

“Oh my God,” I said, putting my hand over my mouth. Then I left the room.

Philip, Jewel, Nyissa, and the agents swarmed out after me, as I whipped out my cell phone and began punching numbers into it rapidly. I actually had Alex on speed dial, but I wanted. To punch. Each number. Straight through. The dial. To his face.

Mr. Iloa stepped in from outside, looking at me dial curiously.

“This
is
a safe house, Miss Frost,” he said. “Don’t make
too
many—”

“She just saw the trailer,” Philip said, as I raised my eyes and stared at Iloa.

Mr. Iloa’s eyebrows went up. He scooted past me, extending his arms.

“Everyone, if you could please join me in the kitchen—”

“
ALEX!
” I roared into my phone.

“What? Who is this?” Alex said, blurry. “Do you know what time—Jesus. Dakota.”

“You were supposed to run everything by me first,” I said. “That was the contract. You run the videos by me, and I approve them. Approval not to be unreasonably withheld, but tell me, what’s so unreasonable about not wanting to be portrayed as a murderer?”

“Dakota, I—” Alex blurted.

“You walked to the edge of slander!” I yelled. “Trashed
my
reputation for
your
show—”

“I did
not,
” Alex said. “Lloyd-Presse leaked it. Even
I
hadn’t approved it yet—”

“You were the announcer,” I growled, cracking my neck as my Dragon snarled,
let me loose, let me at him!
And I felt like doing it. “You
knew
what the video would be like—”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, despairing, and I knew I had him. “The same reading could—”

“
Alex!
” I yelled. “You lying son of a—”

“Dakota. Dakota! What, what do you want?” Alex said. “I’ll do anything—”

He babbled, but I wasn’t listening. My rage was subsiding. I’d spun around in my anger, seen Jewel looking in from the kitchen—then remembered where we were, and why we were here. What was my reputation worth, compared to Molokii’s life?

Come to think of it, what were a few secrets worth, compared to Molokii’s life? I had the Princess of Fire right here in the kitchen, yet getting information out of her still seemed like pulling teeth. Not that I didn’t understand her caution about the elixir of immortality—

But I had a second initiate, right here on the line. One who was a thoroughly modern magician, who spoke my language, who—if our conversation about the Dragon
projectia
at Union Square was any indication—was at least as up to date as
I
was.

“Enough,” I said, a cold plan forming. I turned away from Jewel, walked away from her, walked straight out of the house, and, for good measure, lowered my voice so only Alex would hear me cut her out and put him in her place. “Damage’s done. You have to make good.”

The line was silent while I stared up at brilliant stars against velvet Maui night.

“All right, Dakota,” he said, resigned. “How much do you want?”

“It’s not about money,” I said.

“Don’t get stupid,” Alex said. “It’s not all about money, but that’s what I can get you—”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “One of my friends has been kidnapped.”

“Jesus,” Alex said.

“I can’t play around anymore, Alex. It’s not about me, it’s not about the money, it’s not about my trashed reputation or the T-Rex-sized lawsuit I could slap on you. One of my friends has been kidnapped, and I need all the tools I can to find him, and I need them yesterday—”

“God,” Alex said. “Of course, Dakota, but what do you want from
me
—”

———

“Fulfill your promise. Send me
everything you have
on fireweaving,
right the fuck now!
”

51. Summon the Dragon

“When I learned you were from Hawaii,” I said, “I imagined us coming here.”

After my confrontation with Alex, I’d stormed off, and Jewel had settled our bags in our cabin. She’d drawn me away from the others, fixed me tea, massaged my shoulders. No longer burning up inside, I leaned on the railing of the porch of our cabin, staring over the hillside.

Jewel stared out next to me. The safe house had once been a carnation farm, and wild ones grew under our porch. Our cabin was well defended behind a high fence and a twisted knot of volcanic rock that the DEI now used as a guard tower, but the view was still amazing.

The sky was black as crushed velvet, sparkling with stars as bright as glitter. But the broad slopes of Maui before us were not dark; the moon smiled thinly down on us, its disk still lit with earthshine, its waxing crescent bathing the mountains and ocean in dim green light.

Cinnamon had railed that the moon was new enough for her to come, that she could have helped, both with the codes and with any “running,” as she put it—but even though she drooped her ears in her best
poor-me
face, there was no way I was bringing my child into a war zone.

That was sad; before our trip to the Bay, she had never been on a vacation, and after I met Jewel, Cinnamon told me she wanted to come see Maui. I had too—a dream of touring the sun and sand and, before I met Jewel, of finding a cute girl in a grass skirt.

But the Maui I got was
not
what I had envisioned.

First, it was cold on the mountain, and getting colder. But it was more than just night chill—we stood at the collision of climates. Upslope, Haleakala was verdant, practically rainforest; downslope, where the rains petered out, it looked like the surface of Mars. The wind carried no voices. Here, there were no tourists, no beaches, no cute girls in grass skirts.

This was as far from the Hawaii of my imagination as you could get.

“The water would have been blue and sparkling,” I said.

“That’s the Caribbean,” Jewel said, leaning on the railing next to me.

“I’d never been here,” I said heavily. “In my fantasy, the water would be great, and we’d play in the surf. With a beachball and bikinis. Bouncing in the water and the waves. Then we’d roll on the beach as the sun set, getting sand in all the inconvenient places.”

“I wanted that too,” Jewel said—and then she hissed. “No, I didn’t.”

I stared at her. This new “let other people talk” thing was working for me.

“Of course I wanted you to come here,” Jewel said quickly. “But it could never happen. You had a daughter, in school—and where would you find a math program for her? I mean . . .” She smiled. “. . . that creature is absurd, Dakota. Of course you have to put Cinnamon first.”

“She is that,” I laughed. “And, yes, I do.”

“But I never wanted you to come
here
. I never wanted you to become a
tourist.
” She spoke the last word with venom that surprised me—and the venom in the next surprised me even more. “
Maui.
You have no idea what it’s like to have a name known all over the world—”

“I’m starting to learn,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her head, staring at the flowers. “Growing up here, you learn to hate the tourists. I’m as tired of people coming here to gawk at Maui as you are tired of people making fun of Southerners for your accents.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Still, the tourist industry funds the island, doesn’t it?”

“No,” she said, “tourism only funds
itself
. Or take Science City. They say it creates local jobs, but really it’s just a resort for eggheads—
atop our sacred mountain
. Maui has everything from sugarcane to supercomputers—everything except a way to live that lets us be left alone.”

I leaned on the railing, lowered my head too.

“I’m not trying to fight with you, Fireweaver,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I want,” Jewel said, drawing her breath in ragged, “to get my best friend back. To stop Daniel from seizing control of the egg. And, when I’m pissy, for the damn thing to actually hatch and to burn all the interlopers off the island, starting with that damn observatory on Haleakala.”

“A real live dragon,” I said, shifting, “might not stop with just interlopers.”

“I know that,” Jewel said, scowling, staring through her hands at the flowers. “And who am I to decide who’s native and deserves the island? I hate playing ‘other’ games. So I’ll settle for saving Molokii—and the island.”

“The whole thing?” I pressed. “Everyone on it?”

“Yes,” Jewel said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think that I really wanted to kill all the interlopers on the island. You just mentioned tourism and it hit one of my hot buttons. So, yes, Little Miss Subtext, I’d give up my ‘throne’ if it meant saving everyone on the island.”

“Hey,” I said. “Fireweaver. It won’t come to that. Hopefully, Daniel’s group will contact you again soon. You
pretend
to give up your throne in exchange for Molokii, and then we rely on the DEI’s enormous spy-gathering power to track him back to his destination.”

“All right,” she said. “It’s not my preferred plan A . . . but I’ll do what I have to.”

“That’s . . . great,” I said, feeling a wave of relief. Jewel was really starting to open up. If she’d cooperate with us, if she’d let us help her . . . we might actually be able to, you know, help her. I leaned back from the railing, energized. “Really great. We may win this yet.”

I leapt the railing, cursing myself when I landed. The damn knee was still bugging me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I felt the ground—soft grass, good enough for my purposes—then slipped off my vest coat and chaps and folded them over the railing.

“You’re . . . practicing?” Jewel asked, stunned. “Like, karate?”

“Every day,” I said, stretching my elbows forward, popping my shoulders, one, then the other. “Martial arts rely on unnatural movements. Especially if we’re about to go into battle, I need to stretch out, to test myself out, make sure that I’m not rusty—where are you going?”

“To get my spinny sticks,” she said. “You practice karate more than I spin, but karate’s a hobby for you and spinning is my life.” She paused, then raised her hand in the air. “Shame on me. I mean, shame on me! I could be going into battle too! I need to practice—”

I laughed. “Fair enough, Fireweaver. Put some music on, and let’s dance.”

“I . . . didn’t bring a stereo,” she said. “Just my practice sticks—”

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” I said, ferreting in my chaps and pulling out my new iPhone and its pocket clamshell charger dock. I unfolded it, plugged it in, and found my practice mix. “What kind of dancing magician are you?”

“We don’t dance,” Jewel said, disappearing inside. “We keep our feet on the ground.”

That was one thing we would have to differ on, because keeping your feet planted was one thing a dancer should
never
do. The drums of Sleepthief’s
Dawnseeker
thumped out of my practice mix, and I closed my eyes, starting with the rhythmic warm-up of capoeira.