Spark Rising (13 page)

His guffaw almost sounded like a cough of pain. He settled the bag and crossed to her.

Lena gestured. “Take off your shirt.”

He hissed out a breath as he pulled it over his head.

Her gaze rose with it, flowing over the skin revealed by the rising shirt, then made a slower return trip back down over his chest and abdomen. Yes, he was a finely built man. She couldn’t resist needling him a little to remind him of how he’d come into her life and turned it upside down.

“I don’t blame you for thinking I was propositioning you, considering you’ve talked to my sister. I know what she thinks of me. I am a little surprised you turned me down so fast.” She tilted her head back so she could look him in the face as he pulled the shirt away. She cocked a brow, making her voice a pointed purr. “Especially since you did promise to be good to me when we met. Remember?”

Reyes rolled his eyes.

Lena laughed. Still chuckling, she inspected the offending ribs. Livid bruises spread across his side and curved around to his back. She made a spinning motion with her fingers.

He dutifully turned. “This isn’t going to hurt, is it?”

She met his suspicious gaze, struggling to hold back another laugh. “No, Reyes. It isn’t going to hurt.”

“I’m fine with pain,” he growled, “I just like a little warning.”

She lifted her hands and placed them on his warm skin. She didn’t have to be in physical contact in order to make the Dust heal another. It was all mental. But the contact made her feel more connected.

She traced the contours of his ribs around her hands. Where his skin curved over the muscle and bones of his chest and abdomen, his olive tone paled. She focused in, past his skin, her vision blurring as she called to the Dust living within him. They woke and swarmed to the site of Reyes’s injured ribs. She told them how to pulse, and they sent currents of energy into his bones and the bruised flesh surrounding them to stimulate his cells. She could feel his skin warm under her hands and instructed a slight adjustment. She wasn’t sure if it the warmth or the contact or maybe even the connection of moments ago spurred her, but the urge to turn the touch into a caress nearly overwhelmed her. Just a little more and then—

“Stop.” Reyes’s voice, tinged with alarm, intruded on her thoughts. “Lena! Stop!”

His rough hands pulled her own away from his skin. He held her arms between them and gave them a small shake to get her attention. His eyes were wide and alarmed. He searched her face.

She blinked. She gave a final instruction and sighed, pulling away from the Dust. “What?”

“You’re glowing.” He swallowed. He didn’t release her arms, as if he thought he might have to hold her up.

“Yeah? Sparks do that. I’m overdue for grounding because of…because of what happened.”

“No. Lena. You’re….” His words trailed off. He shook his head. “It’s not the Spark latent bloom. Only we can see that. This is different. You’re actually….” He shook his head and released her to hold one hand up between them and the wall. The stark dark outline of his hand appeared on it, a shadow cast by her. “You’re actually lighting the room. I’ve never seen anything like this. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Except she couldn’t look away from the shadows she cast on the wall.

He dropped his arm to get her attention. “How’s your head?”

From the way he looked at her, he clearly expected her to fall to the ground writhing in pain at any moment. She should be on the floor, incapacitated by pain and the need to ground, but she wasn’t.

Instead of answering, she lifted her hand. She was glowing, the Dust beneath her skin incandescent. It wasn’t subtle, either.

“My head is fine.” There wasn’t even a twinge of over-stimulation migraine. Nothing. She looked from her arm to his face.

Reyes stared at her, fascination and a kind of fear at war in him.

“What about you?” she asked him.

He frowned. “Me?”

“How are your ribs?”

“Oh!” He moved gingerly, then a little more vigorously. He raised his brows and tried an experimental twist to the side. He seemed to have close to full range of motion. “It’s really good. So, you know, when you’re giving lessons, that’ll be a good one to know.” He nodded before he added blandly, “Unless I’ll start glowing.”

She rolled her eyes and turned away from him, still admiring the light cast from her arm as she made her way back to the little table. She hooked a stool with her toes and dropped down. “Hmmm.” She held her hand up again. “I guess this could make my escape a little difficult?”

Reyes pulled his shirt back on and walked over to join her, his movements smooth and cat-like again. “Nope. I’ve got you covered. Unless you’re planning on escaping me?”

Lena raised her brows. “Do I need to?”

He laughed and started working the knot on the bag again as he shook his head. He didn’t actually answer her, though, which made her nervous. The non-answer that was an answer, perhaps? What had the poem said?
“A Truth that’s told with bad intent/Beats all the Lies you can invent”
? Her alarm grew into anxiety. She decided to push the issue.

“Reyes, do I need to?”

He looked up. The knot parted. He spread the cord apart without looking down. “No. You do not need to escape me. You don’t need to fear me. And you don’t need to be afraid of the people I represent, either. I am here to serve and protect,” he smiled as the old words rolled off his tongue. The smile dropped, and he pointed to her with both index fingers. “You. Part of my job has always been to search for you.”

“Search for me?” Her voice was sharp. “But Dad worked so hard to keep me hidden!” Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. If you knew about me—”

“No, no, no. Nothing concrete.” He shrugged and raised one hand to make a back and forth motion. “We knew about the possibility of you. Or we believed it, you could say. We actually expected you to be a child. That’s what we expected to find. And if you happened, when you happened, we’d need to be ready to bring you in. Not to imprison you or use you or kill you, but to protect you from those who would do all of those things.”

She digested that in silence.

He reached into the bag and pulled out flatbread, a small, paper-wrapped package of crumbly white cheese, several apples, and a skin of water. He pushed it all to the center of the table and indicated she should help herself.

She reached out hungrily, broke off a piece of the cheese, and dropped the crumbles into a torn piece of flatbread. She’d eaten the last of the food she’d brought early that morning.

“Protect me, huh?” she said after she’d swallowed her first two bites. “What if I don’t want your protection?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Reyes produced a small folding knife and sliced an apple. He layered the thin wedges on the flatbread and then added cheese. “You need it.”

She stared at the sandwich, mouth watering, even after he caught her. He grinned and offered it to her. When she unabashedly took it, he made another.

“I need it? Reyes, I don’t need protection. All I need is for you to get me to the right place at the right time. Or have you forgotten that I pulled a building down on top of you?” The apple and cheese together was tangy, crunchy heaven.

“Yeah? Could you do it again if you needed to? On demand?”

She said nothing. She didn’t have to. They both knew the first time had been a stress response of some kind. And the second had been a Reyes response. But he’d moved on to his next point anyway.

“And have you forgotten that I got the drop on you? If I can, so can they.” He took a bite. “Might take a little longer…” He grimaced, perhaps at their chances, and chewed. “But they could. You’re not omnipotent.” He snorted. “Not yet.”

She stopped chewing. An image flashed into her mind. A smell came with the memory. Perfume. Dust.
The dress
. She swallowed the dry wad of food in her mouth. “I know I’m not omnipotent. Believe me, I know. I never have been. If I was—” Grief closed her throat, and she choked on her words.

Reyes shook his head. When he spoke, his face and his voice were heavy with regret. “No, that was on us.” He stopped for a moment, staring off as he gathered his thoughts. “She was sick. It was an accident. Not even Lucas, bastard that he is, intended to kill her. I promise.
I promise.
And I
never
would have stood back and watched if I had known she was that weak.”

Tears gathered in Lena’s eyes, but only for a moment. She drew in a shaky breath and straightened her spine. “I understand. I do. And I understand why you did what you did. Just—” She looked down at the floor. When she raised her face again, she could feel it was hot and flushed with hatred. “I’m going to make Lucas pay first.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Regret? Maybe disgust, but not directed at her.

“I am coming back for him,” she whispered.

Reyes shook his own head. “No coming back for Lucas.” He took the fantasy away gently. “He won’t be here. He’s being shipped home to his grandfather.”

She frowned and shook her head.

“When I left you at Ace’s, one of the loose ends I wanted to tie up was Lucas. I went to check his condition—his head injury wasn’t nearly as severe as they said. I’d decided,
again
, to kill him if the opportunity presented itself. But it didn’t. He wasn’t alone. Three was with him.” Reyes used the familiar term for the Councilor. “Lucas was conscious, and they were talking.” His eyes became hooded. He wasn’t telling her something. He shook his head and gave a small shrug. “The reason Lucas got away with so much for so long is that his grandfather is Councilor Four. His forged identity papers showing he was born and raised in Zone Three were so damn good they didn’t even change his surname.
Brayer.
Strings have been pulled from above.”

“Is that the only reason?” She pushed for the something he wasn’t telling her.

“You think there should be another?”

Another non-answer for an answer. She didn’t push this time. She’d find out somehow. She’d use the answer to get to Lucas, and then she’d take care of him herself.

He must have seen something of what she planned on her face because his voice turned soft and persuasive. “C’mon, Lena. Don’t pull away now. Let us help you.”

“I don’t want anyone’s help. I never have. I don’t need you.” She glanced around the tiny safe house and grimaced. “Okay, so I need you to help me get out of the city.”

He grinned knowingly.

She pushed on. “But afterward, all I want is an opportunity to be in a room with the people responsible for my parents. I can finish this. And then I’m disappearing again.”

“Okay,” Reyes conceded. “You can. But you’re one person. Why not use what we have to offer? Education. Training. Resources. We’re Sparks. All of us. We’re like you, and we can help you. We can give you all of the knowledge you missed while you were hiding. You can be a part of us, an important part of us, long term.”

“Uh-huh. And you’d do all of that out of the goodness of your little Spark hearts?” Her pointed question hung between them.

He seemed to be enjoying the beat of silence. His lips turned up in a slow, devastating smile. “If you decided to show your appreciation by helping us, we wouldn’t turn you down. You could offer to teach us your wonderful tricks. But we’re not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.” He shrugged. “Look, I’ll get you out of the city. At that point, you can decide for yourself. I’d like it if you stayed with us.”

“Said the spider to the fly.”

Reyes cocked a brow at her. “Hardly. I’m fairly certain I’m in far more danger the more time I spend with you than the other way around.”

Hmmm. Is it wrong to like the sound of that?

She leaned on the stool, stretching her spine and pushing her clasped hands far out in front of her over the table. Her back eased with the stretch. She leaned forward again and sighed. The food was gone.

Reyes gathered up the detritus and swept the crumbs into his hand. He dumped it all into the cloth bag then lifted the bag across his back. “You ready to go?”

Lena blinked. “What…now?”

His eyes crinkled. “Are you waiting for a better time? I wanted to make sure you were fed before we headed out. You’re fed. Are you ready? Do you need anything else? Do you want to use the bucket?”

She glanced at the bucket and then back at him, mouth opening to answer, but he laughed at her. She closed her mouth and shrugged.

Her boots were kicked half under the cot. She sat to pull them out. As she did, she noticed a corner of the book of poetry. It must have slid out of her hand at some point in the sleepless night. She pulled it out and held it up to him. “Is this yours?”

His eyebrows rose, and his face lit in recognition. “Yes! I wondered where I’d left it.” He retrieved it, flipping through the pages in delight. “No idea how it got here.” He sat back on the stool, his head nodding with familiar pleasure as he skimmed one of the early poems while she tugged on her boots. She tried to guess which it was.

“I kind of thought maybe it was left here to entertain anyone who might need the room. It came in handy.”