Red (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kia

After the fire trucks and tow trucks left, I took a hot shower to warm up. I was still cold, as if there was no fire left in me. I’d assumed I had an endless amount, but apparently blowing up vehicles takes its toll on a girl. Abby would suspect my unlucky talent had helped along the fire. Insurance didn’t cover freak-granddaughter damages. I’d be delivering pastries until I died just to pay off vehicle debts.

Ethan was waiting for me in the kitchen. Everyone else had gone home. “Where’s Abby?” I asked him, going straight for the carafe of hot cocoa Sara had left on the counter.

“Justine’s parents have a unicorn,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but that sentence is ridiculous.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s the only creature kept off the premises. They have nearly as many acres as Dad, and the unicorn can be passed off as a horse with a birth defect.”

“And what? Abby is frolicking with a unicorn?”

“Not quite. It’s sick, and she’s doing the vet thing. Dad took her over. He likes to think of himself as an expert,” he added.

“Well, he kinda is.” I poured some of the hot cocoa into a second mug for Ethan. Maybe this
was
true love, to share my chocolate.

“He doesn’t know anything about
fixing
monsters,” Ethan pointed out.

“On the plus side, I have a few hours before I am tried and convicted and possibly executed for car cruelty.”

“Extra bonus, the storm will mean they’re stuck there overnight.” Ethan wrapped his hands around the mug and wandered out to the piano in the living room. He played something mournful, tragic.

“If you have time to be emo, then you have time to snoop,” I decided. I knew exactly what anger and guilt and self-pity did to your insides. It turned mine to fire, but I suspected it might turn him to ice. His jaw was too hard, his eyes cold.

His fingers stilled. “Sorry?”

“You heard me,” I said. “Your dad’s gone, right?” I waited for him to nod. “Well, then. Let’s go through his stuff.”

He half smiled, as if I was cute. “Kia, Dad has so many different security measures, he may as well be the president of a small country.”

“What happens if we get caught?”

“Nothing good.”

“Well, let’s not get caught then. Now, come on.”

“You’re already on his radar. He had you under surveillance. God knows what he saw.”

“I’m not afraid,” I insisted stubbornly, even though I was. A little bit.

“You should be.”

I shot him a glare. “You’re not helping.”

“And you’re not listening.”

“Well, we have to do something. A wendigo almost ate me. And your dad’s starting to give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Good,” Ethan said softly, closing the distance between us. He leaned in, sending shivers up my spine. “Stay here with me,” he whispered. He wasn’t kissing me, but I could feel the brush of his lips when he spoke.

I paused, fighting the pull of longing. “You’re totally trying to distract me.”

He smiled, soft and lazy. “Is it working?”

“Yes,” I said, brushing my lips over his. He sucked in his breath, his hands slipping around me. Two could play this game. Wait, no time for games. Damn it. “I mean, no!” It was as difficult to pull away from him as it had been to escape the wendigo. I swallowed, trying not to tingle all over. “You are dangerous.”

“I’m the safest thing in this house,” he drawled.

“Yeah, yeah,” I shot back, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the room. My knees still felt weak.

“We’ll never get through his booby traps, locks, and passwords,” Ethan protested. “Trust me.”

“Your dad hires a lot of people. Someone’s bound to have forgotten some little detail somewhere.”

He looked thoughtful. “You might be right.”

“So where do we start?”

We checked the basement, where Ethan showed me a room with computers and surveillance footage. If there was a recording of me setting fire to things at the abandoned factory, it wasn’t here. We checked his dad’s office door to be thorough, but it was locked, as expected, and the hall was lined with cameras. I gave one the finger because I couldn’t help myself.

We were running out of ideas when I stopped on the servant stairs so abruptly Ethan crashed into me. “Got it!”

He steadied me. “Got what exactly?”

“We’ll go through the garbage.” I beamed at him.

“Can’t wait,” he said drily. “You have weird ideas of what to do on a date,” he added when we were outside, popping open the lid of the garbage bins behind the eight-car garage. The smell was unpleasant but at least the worst of it was in the compost pile.

I slid him a glance. “Date?”

“You know what I mean.” His ears turned red. “Just dig.”

I poked around under the trees until I found a long branch. We used it to shove aside broken arrow shafts and the assorted detritus of kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms. In the movies, this sort of thing looked exciting. In reality it was smelly and boring and harder than it looked. “The important papers will have been shredded,” he said, hopping up to crouch on the wooden fence bordering the back of the building.

“What about this construction bin?” I asked, stretching up on the tip of my toes to peer inside. “It’s full of scrap metal and wood and stuff. Were they building something?”

He slid right into the bin, sawdust making dusty clouds around his boots. He dug roughly for a few minutes then stopped, leaning on the side. “Nothing,” he said. “Even the zoo garbage is clean.” He frowned when the end of a two-by-four slid and dislodged a roll of blue paper wedged behind it.

“What’s that?” I asked, craning my neck. “Blueprints?”

He nodded, flipping through them. “Sketches for new pens and enclosures. The troll nearly got out last month, so they improved his cage and built a new one.” The sketches showed a red bird with long tail feathers catching fire. “It’s from a Russian fairy tale,” Ethan said grimly. “It’s called a firebird.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“What? When?”

“In the castle. It landed on me.” I paused. “Your dad saved me.”

“My dad.” He paled. “He was testing you. The bird is attracted to fire.”

I stared at him.

“Those birds aren’t aggressive. And they don’t need fireproof iron and metal. That new cage,” he continued, stunned. “It’s meant for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kia

By the next morning, there was so much snow everywhere it almost hurt to look outside. The sky was faintly pink, the air clogged with ice and the trees furred with frost. Holden and Abby would be stuck at the Alamedas’ for at least another day. I thought about the drawing of the cage and packed a suitcase and my favorite graphic novels. I tried not to think about secret government testing facilities. I paced, I ate chocolate, and I paced some more. The day crawled by, slow as a cockroach caught in a honey trap.

I was worrying myself into a frenzy when I finally saw Ethan from my window. He was ducking into the pool house after some kind of patrol. I went down the back stairs and into the humid flower- and chlorine-choked air. There were orchids on the ledges and mosaics set into the floor. On the other side of the window, the world glowed like a pearl, even as the sun set. I rolled up my pants and sat next to Ethan, dangling my bare feet in the warm water.

“Thought I’d defrost,” he said. “It’s stupid cold outside.”

“Yeah, I hear that happens in a blizzard,” I returned. “That’s why normal people stay inside.”

“The snow’s on our side,” he said. “No one can get out and no one can get in.” He paused, sending me a sidelong glance. “You don’t have to worry,” he added quietly. “I won’t let him take you.”

“Do you hate him?” I asked, because what was the point of small talk? Not now when everything was closing in, jagged and treacherous.

“Sometimes,” he admitted.
He
used a remote control to turn on music, which flooded the room. I hadn’t even realized there were speakers hidden in a bank of ferns. They were shaped like rocks. He tapped his ear and mouthed
security
.

“I don’t know if I hate him,” Ethan finally admitted. “Maybe. He thinks he’s doing this awesome thing, you know? It’s like he watched too many Hercules movies and now the rest of us have to pay for it. Anyway, it’s better when he’s not here. Like I can breathe.”

“Sometimes I hate my mom. Okay, a lot of the time.” Even after what Abby had told me. Maybe it was unforgiving of me, but I didn’t think you should bail on your family. On the other hand, I could see how the fear of setting them all on fire one night might complicate things.

“You’re not like her,” he reminded me.

I touched his wrist, left my fingers there until he looked at me. “And you’re not like your dad.”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “I can almost believe it when you say it.”

The contrast to the soft tropical cocoon of the pool house made everything feel even more surreal. Especially when Ethan took off his shirt and tossed it aside. Then he stood up and undid his jeans. I choked. “What are you doing?”

He grinned. “Going swimming.” He stripped down to his boxers and then winked at me. “Why? What do you think I’m doing?”

It was really hard not to stare. He was strong and sinewy and sculpted. The way the muscles in his arms moved was especially delicious. It made me want to bite them. Because I wasn’t weird enough. I tried to get my brain back on track, but it was like a dog off its leash. It wanted more. More muscles, more skin.

He turned and dove into the pool. Water splashed over the tiles. He surfaced, shaking hair off his face. “Are you coming in or what, Alcott?”

I knew a dare when I heard one.

“Don’t blame me if this thing turns into a soup pot.” I wriggled out of my jeans until I was in my underwear. I refused to remember that the last girl he’d been swimming with was probably Justine in a designer bikini and that my underwear didn’t match my bra. I jumped in before he could see that I was struggling not to blush. His shoulders gleamed, except for the white bandage taped under his collarbone and up around. I touched the edge of the tape lightly. “The manticore?”

He shrugged. “Manticore. Phooka. Wendigo. It’s been a hell of a week.”

I let my fingers trail over his ribs, then up his arm. A girl could get used to muscles like that, especially now that I knew there was so much more to Ethan than a hot body and a fat bank account. We were nose to nose and I wasn’t sure which of us had moved, or if it was the currents of the water. Bare skin brushed bare skin. His pale hair fell over his forehead as he tilted his head. My lips tingled in anticipation.

A sound made us turn sharply away. I jumped, anger burning away the fear. The next person to interrupt us kissing was going to get flambéed.

And then something moved outside, scraping its fingernails against the glass. A bloody and blackened tongue licked ice off the window.

Ethan hauled himself out of the pool. He barely had his clothes on before he was out the door and into the blizzard. Cold air slapped at the humidity. “Ethan, you idiot.” I scrambled out of the pool as well, drying off with one of the towels in a stack on a lounge chair. My T-shirt twisted over my damp skin as I tried to get dressed as quickly as I could. “Ethan, come back! It’s trying to lure you out.”

Damn it, even I knew that, and I wasn’t Cabal. Snow pelted my eyelashes as I squinted through the storm.

“Ethan.”

I wasn’t the one calling him that time. It was someone else’s voice, scratchy and soft, like a cat’s tongue.

The wendigo.

“Oh, crap.” I hopped on one foot, desperately trying to get my shoes on. I could barely see through the snow. “What do I do? What do I do?” I hated to admit it, but it would be stupid for me to stumble blindly behind Ethan. And I couldn’t melt my way through the storm. “Where’s a werewolf when you need her?”

I couldn’t get Sloane in time, but I could get Tobias. I shot up the stairs, pounding on his door, my hair still dripping wet. He answered, yawning and bleary-eyed. “Why in the— Kia?”

“Ethan,” I panted. “Wendigo.”

He didn’t say a word, just went back into his room, pulled on some clothes, and grabbed a staff from behind his door. “Show me.”

We stopped by the closet for coats and boots and then I took him through the pool house and out into the snow. “Maybe you should stay here,” he suggested.

I ignored him. Mostly because Mr. Yang suggested I ignore people who are pissing me off instead of hauling off and punching them.

Tobias sighed. “Stay behind me at least.” He put an arm out to stop me. “Wait.” He crouched to make two snowballs, then lobbed them at the two nearest security cameras. I felt a smug satisfaction at seeing the lenses obscured. “Probably can’t see us in this storm anyway, but I’d rather be sure.”

The trail wasn’t exactly stealthy; even I would’ve been able to follow it alone. They’d cut through the fields and crashed through the woods. Broken branches and churned-up snow led us farther and farther into the forest. I put my head down, pushing against the snow. I didn’t realize how cold I was until Tobias glanced back and then stopped so suddenly I crashed into him.

“Kia?” he said. “You’re glowing.”

It looked like my hands were made of candlelight, a peach-colored hue that wavered with heat. It was like looking at the sun through your closed eyelids. I didn’t feel cold anymore. I smiled sheepishly. “Um, yeah. That happens.”

“That
happens
?”

Actually, it usually happened with a great deal more violence, as Ethan’s dad’s car could attest to. This was kind of awesome. It was a simmering warmth, nothing exploding, no one getting hurt.

Yet.

“Ethan.”

Tobias’s jaw clenched. I nodded grimly. “It was calling out to him like that before.”

The snow swirled, blinding us. I stumbled to keep up. The glow from my hands intensified. A hank of white hair fluttered in a severed branch. Blood and sap dripped sluggishly to the ground.

We finally found Ethan, a knife in his hand and his hair frozen in spikes. Tobias grabbed his arm. “Let it go, man.”

“Get off me.” Ethan shook him away, snarling. “It’s right there. I can get it.”

I saw the flash of the wendigo’s eyes, like shards of mirror. The snow turned to ice pellets, stinging and biting as it pelted us. “Uh, guys?”

“You’re not even wearing shoes!” Tobias argued, ignoring me.

“I don’t care!” Ethan shouted back.

“Guys?” I knew the minute the wendigo saw me. Its eyes flashed brighter, and ice creaked all around us, coating pine needles and the last of the maple leaves. It dropped out of a tree and advanced on me, licking its mangled lips. “
Guys!
”

They stopped shoving at each other to glare at me, snapping in unison. “What?”

I pointed to the blur of white hair and jagged wintry bones rushing at us.

Well, at me.

Ethan threw his knife. Wendigo blood was dark and sluggish, a trickle in the snow, but it barely noticed, flicking at the knife as if it were a mosquito. Tobias swung his staff in warning. Ethan ducked underneath it and went for the creature’s throat. He punched, snapping its neck back. There was the crackle of ice, a slap from the storm. The wendigo grabbed Ethan by the collar of his shirt and lifted him up so that his feet dangled off the ground.

“No!” Tobias swung his staff low, at the wendigo’s skeletal knees. It was too late. It had already tossed Ethan aside as if he were a paper doll and kicked Tobias in the face.

And now it was charging toward me.

Ethan landed hard, crashing through pine branches until he lay sprawled and covered in snow. When he didn’t move right away, fear clamped around me like an iron trap. The answering fire blasted through the air, turning the snow to boiling water around us, cracking branches off trees as the ice shattered. The smell of charred pine made Ethan choke.

At least he was alive. The fire danced, biting at the wendigo. It cried out like a wounded animal, falling back. But it was still glaring at me, still boiling with resentment and hunger. I knew exactly how it felt. I really must be one of the monsters after all.

“That thing really doesn’t like you,” Tobias remarked calmly, wiping blood from his crooked nose. Ethan pushed to his feet, groaning.

I swallowed. “Bigger problem.”

They followed my gaze to the treetops. “Oh, crap,” Tobias said. “And now you pissed off the moss girls.”

“Me?” I squeaked. “How did I piss them off? I don’t even know what they
are
!”

Well, I knew one thing. They looked damned scary. And this coming from a girl facing down an angry wendigo.

Shadows congregated around us, grim mouthed and green eyed. They were the color of pine, mahogany, cedar. One was faintly green, like moss. They wore layers of birch bark and leaves and berries in their knotted hair, and they carried sharpened spears and bows and arrows.

All pointed at us.

“Girls,” Tobias said, stepping out so that he was the easy target. An arrow took the tasseled end of his scarf and pinned it into the ground, nearly strangling him in the process.

“What the hell, man?” Ethan asked, shaking snow out of his ears as he kicked the arrow, snapping it in half. “The moss girls love you.”

“I helped Abby chop firewood last week, and they smelled the sap on my hands. Guess they’re still pissed.”

“Guess so.”

“But what
are
they?” I asked. The fire was still keeping the wendigo at bay, but I had no idea how long that would last.

“Kind of like dryads,” Ethan replied. “Tree spirits,” he elaborated when I just stared at him. “They protect the forest.”

“More security? And how exactly do they do that?”

“Well, not with sunshine and sugar, I can tell you that much.”

When we stepped back, a spear bit into the snow, cutting off our movement. That spear was sharp enough to cut through bone. Fire raced up a pine tree, flaring with my agitation. Blisters rose on my fingertips, but I barely noticed.

“No more fire!” Tobias actually yelled, abandoning his usually Zen-like calm, as more spears and arrows whistled toward us. Ethan pushed me into the snow, covering me. There were pine needles and blood in his hair from his collision with the tree. If anything, the tree had harmed him, not the other way around.

“Hey!” I yelled at the moss girls, craning to see over his shoulder. “Maybe you missed the big-ass wendigo somewhere over there? He’s the one breaking all your trees. We’re just trying not to get eaten!”

Ethan looked down at me, nearly smiling despite the fact that he was in real danger of being turned into a pincushion. “You used to poke the bears at the zoo when you were a kid, didn’t you?”

“Tobias.” The moss girls’ lips didn’t move, but they seemed to speak as one. It was a chorus of voices that was rustling leaves and the clack and rattle of dry winter branches. Tobias stood in the center of the clearing, vulnerable and silent. Stoic.

When I tried to wiggle out from under Ethan, he pinned me, shaking his head. “Don’t,” he whispered. An arrow landed so close to our heads I had to blink snow out of my lashes. The cold ground warmed up under my body, melting in rivulets that soaked into my clothes.

“Leave us the girl.”

Ethan tensed.

“Shit,” I said. “That’s not good.” The moss girls were still talking, but I couldn’t make out any more words, only leafy sounds. “I have an idea.”

“And now I’m really afraid for the first time tonight.”

“Ha-ha. Seriously. The wendigo hates me. We need it to attack again.” Ethan didn’t move. “A little misdirection,” I pointed out. “You’re the big hero, shouldn’t you know this stuff?”

He still didn’t move. “Great plan. You know, if it didn’t involve risking your life for us.”

We didn’t really have time to argue. So instead I pinched him really hard on the sensitive skin under his arm. He jerked back reflexively. I rolled to my feet, staying low. I took a deep breath, concentrating on the cold numbing my hands until the fire died down.

The wendigo snarled, coming at me through the trees, hair singed.

Ethan kicked the back of my knees, knocking me back down, as winter-damaged claws raked past my nose. White hair slapped me in the face. Ethan spun on his heel and kicked again, sending the wendigo stumbling. It caught itself on a tree, ripping a branch right out of the trunk. A moss girl lost her footing and tumbled. The others jumped like mad hornets, swarming the wendigo.