Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 (12 page)

Jase looked around dubiously. Dark scrawny spruce trees. Little bushy things. Yellow-brown moss and swamp mud, because the taiga was a swamp.

“Open myself how? Stop scowling like that. I’m willing to try, but I just don’t get it!”

She did her best to explain, and he continued to try for the next two hours, but he never got it. He’d never been more glad to get into the car and drive a girl home in his life. And at least his abysmal failure as a magical healer meant that he didn’t have to search the shadows around his garage for lurking football players. But it still felt like failure.

“I told you to find someone else,” he said. He wouldn’t mind at all, as long as she let his car go before she vanished.

“No,” said Raven. “I think I tried to start you out too fast. Baby steps, that’s what we need. And for you to be less frustrated.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to be frustrated for a long time,” Jase said gloomily, and didn’t even think about the double meaning till Raven laughed.

She said she’d come and get him first thing tomorrow, to start whatever “baby steps” she had in mind. When Jase got home, he told his parents he’d be gone the next day and went to bed still frustrated by his failure. And in other ways as well.

He was ready to hide at the first flicker of the shadow, but instead someone knocked on the inside of his closet door.

“Who’s there?”

It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but he wasn’t surprised when the old woman stepped out of his closet.

“The energy of the catalyst has changed. It’s so corrupted I can’t find it at all. But you’re closer to it, aren’t you?”

The pouch was back in his desk drawer, which Jase supposed was closer than the garage—but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. It had worked on the football players, after all. “And I think you’re the one who sent . . . something to hunt me, didn’t you? In my dreams? Well, I want it to stop. Call it off, whatever it is.”

She stood perfectly still in the center of his room, but her expression put Jase in mind of one of his grandfather’s dogs, sniffing scents on the wind.

“Yes, you’re bound into it now. I can sense that much, at least. He found you.”

“That boy you told me about? I haven’t seen him.”

The dark old eyes were fierce. “You’re ly—oh. Of course he’d change. You’re not a liar, boy. You’re an idiot.”

“Thanks,” said Jase. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t—”

“That’s why you’re an idiot,” the old woman said. “But you don’t have to die for it. Tell me where you are, where the pouch is. I’ll come get it, and you’ll see no more of any of us. In dreams or out of them.”

Realization dawned. This wasn’t just a dream. “You’re a shapeshifter! You’re . . .”

One of Raven’s enemies.

“Oh, yes,” she said. Jase prayed she was reading his expression, instead of his mind. “But Raven’s no more your friend than I am—though I’ve no doubt she’s prettier. Did she tell you what happened to the last human she talked into carrying that dust?”

“The girl who threw it over the border fence? Raven said she’d been arrested, though she was released later.”

“She was arrested. And it saved her life. Because if she hadn’t thrown herself into the custody of human guards, she’d have been killed by our ambush just four miles past the border. Yes, we’d have killed her for the dust she carried. And if you use it, we’ll kill you too. Spare yourself, boy. Spare your parents that grief. Tell me where you are, and let me take that pouch off your hands.”

No one had ever threatened to kill him before, not someone who meant it. The memory of his face slamming into the asphalt parking lot returned, vividly, and his cheekbone throbbed again. Jase clasped his hands around his knees to hide the fact that they wanted to shake.

“If you’re willing to kill me, I’d really be an idiot to tell you where I am. Besides, Raven says that if the leys aren’t healed the tree plague will spread through the world and everyone will die.”

And if he gave away that pouch, his car might never run again.

The old woman snorted. “What nonsense! Do you really think the world could be destroyed by a few sick trees?”

“It was almost destroyed by a few degrees’ change in temperature,” Jase said. “Not that long ago. I’ve taken biology. This planet’s atmosphere, its oxygen, comes from the forests. They say the tree plague won’t spread out of the Tropics, but if it did we’d be in real trouble!”

“But your own scientists say it won’t spread far,” the old woman pointed out. “Why not trust them?”

“I might trust them,” Jase said. “I don’t trust you. Get out of my room.”

Or did he mean out of his dream? In either case, he was going to do something about it.

Jase had given up on golf years ago, but the putter his father had told him to practice with was still stuck behind his dresser. Jase got it and stood before the old woman. She was shorter than he was, and had to be much weaker, but she didn’t look frightened.

“Go,” said Jase. “I’ll use it. I swear I will.”

“You think that can hurt me? You’re dreaming.”

He was dreaming, wasn’t he? It wasn’t as if she was a real person, who might actually be injured. So Jase swung the putter with all his might, and almost fell over when it passed right through her.

The old woman smiled. “Your weapons have no power here. Mine, on the other hand . . .”

She stepped forward and slapped him, hard enough to rock his head to one side, hard enough that Jase woke up, standing in the middle of the room with his heart pounding.

The closet door was closed. The old woman was gone. But his face still stung from the force of her slap.

Jase slept in next morning, and woke up still debating whether or not to tell Raven about his dreams. On one hand, that old lady was one of her enemies. On the other hand . . .

I had a terrible nightmare—a little old lady slapped me.
It wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to say to an attractive girl. And the old woman hadn’t found him. And the football players were convinced that he didn’t have the pouch.

And after all, they were only dreams.

He still hadn’t made up his mind when he went downstairs and found Raven talking to his parents.

“What are . . . Ah, I see you’ve all met.”

“I said first thing this morning,” Raven reminded him. “It’s almost nine. But your parents were kind enough to offer me breakfast.”

“We like meeting Jase’s friends,” his mother told her.

“Even if they’re still in the ‘haven’t made up my mind what to do with myself’ club,” his father added. “Of which Jase is a charter member.”

But the look he gave Jase had less to do with criticism and more to do with
wow!

His father was in love with his mother, and Jase knew he’d never look seriously at a girl Raven’s age. But a man would have to be dead not to appreciate her.

How dare she introduce herself to his parents, without asking him first?

“Let me grab a heat-go sandwich, and we’ll get out of here,” Jase said.

“Great. Your mother was kind enough to pack lunch for us.”

Raven and his mother exchanged a look he couldn’t read, but he didn’t think it meant
wow.

“Raven tells us she’s going to teach you to appreciate nature,” his mother said. “I warned her it was likely to be an uphill fight—you’re worse than your father! But I certainly wish her luck.”

Was “let’s start to change the guy right now” a female version of
wow
? Jase doubted it.

“I won’t give up,” Raven promised. “Not if it kills both of us.”

His parents laughed.

Jase knew better.

***

“You should have asked me, before you showed yourself to my parents.” Jase pulled the Tesla out of the driveway.

“If I’d asked, what would you have said?”

“No! I don’t want my parents involved in this.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask. It was interesting to meet your parents.”

Jase turned onto the street. He didn’t want to discuss his family.

“Where to?” he asked. “We’ve already been to the most boring part of the state. How about doing dangerous next? Spelunking in glacier crevasses, maybe?”

Raven grinned. “You’re going to learn to appreciate nature, just like I told your mother.”

Jase snorted.

“Seriously. Nature is part of everyone’s heritage. Maybe you should get closer to yours.”

“That’s what my grandfather says. I attribute every bee sting and sprained ankle I ever had to my heritage.”

She laughed. “Then let’s start with something safer. The Ananut are matrilineal, right? What’s your mother’s mother’s last name?”

“Harrigan,” Jase said dryly.

“You think the Irish don’t appreciate nature?”

“I’ll have to turn at the stop sign,” Jase pointed out. “It would be nice to know where I’m going.”

“All right.” Her expression shifted into serious. “Is there someplace, anyplace at all, where you feel at peace in nature? Someplace that makes your soul feel open and still.”

Jase started to frame a crack about nightclubs, and the wildlife therein, but something in her face stopped him. The sooner she gave up on him, the sooner he’d get his car back.

“There’s . . . I’ve been to Potter Marsh on school field trips. It’s OK.”

He actually thought it was beautiful, but surrounded by the spectacular scenery of Alaska, he feared that small, home-made marsh would seem pretty tame.

“It’s quiet,” he added. “Even with tourists around. And they’ll be there, on a Sunday.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Raven said firmly. “Potter Marsh.”

On Sunday most of the traffic was headed into the city, but Potter Marsh was so close to Anchorage that it hardly mattered. Maybe afterward they could go appreciate nature farther down the road to the south. There was plenty of nature there, but also some nice restaurants and clubs. The Kenai Peninsula was Anchorage’s wilderness playground.

Potter Marsh ran beside the road, but the turnoff to the parking lot came before you could see it. Jase pulled the Tesla out of the traffic, and within moments he had Raven on the boardwalk and through the trees, and the marsh spread out before them.

It was kind of lame, Jase supposed. But a cool breeze stirred the long grass, turning it from green to silver in sweeping waves. The dark water, as they stepped along the walkway above it, was full of salmon fry, from big-trout size to toothpick. Yellow butterflies perched on the deck when they weren’t in flight.

“This wasn’t here before.” Raven stared at the marsh in astonishment.

“Before what? It was created when they built the railroad,” Jase told her. “They changed the grade or something and ended up with this really big puddle, and decided to turn it into a wetland instead of draining it. So it’s almost two centuries old. But . . . the quiet’s so loud, you can hear it over the highway noise.”

He felt stupid the moment he said it, but she nodded. “You’re right. Now go on. Tell me what you see here. What makes this place what it is.”

A Canada goose with a flotilla of goslings paddled by as Jase talked. A swallow, perched on a rail, let the tourists with their flashing com pods get amazingly close before it flew.

“And those yellow lilies,” Jase finished. “They grow in ponds all over Alaska. They look like they’d smell sweet, but I got close to one once when my grandfather made . . . took me fishing. They don’t have any scent, except maybe a bit resiny. And the one I grabbed was full of ants.”

“Then there’s something sweet about them,” Raven said, “whether you can sense it or not. But you’re right about this place—you can feel the life in it. You can, can’t you?”

Jase could, though he’d never put it into words before. He nodded.

“Then it’s time to go back,” she said. “And give the taiga another try.”

***

“I was hoping we could go south today,” Jase grumbled as they drove back down Highway 1. Between the chill of the breeze and the clouds scudding across the sky, he’d decided to keep the top up. “Or maybe turn north this time, toward Denali. Denali’s got lots of nature—trees and things.” And there were good restaurants there as well, catering to the tourists. “Couldn’t we do this healing thing in Denali?”

Raven sighed. “You should be glad you’ve got me to walk you through this. Remember me talking about the ley’s terminal node? The place where all its power spirals in, and is cleaned and amplified?”

Jase frowned. “Denali’s the terminal node? Then why don’t we just do the healing thing there? If it’s that big and important, maybe we wouldn’t have to do the smaller places.”

He was looking at the road then, but he could feel Raven wince.

“If you
could
connect with the ley at Denali, and dropped the catalyst there, one of two things would probably happen. The first is that it would simply ignore you, and not react at all.”

“Then why don’t we—”

“The second,” said Raven grimly, “is that every volcano on the Pacific Rim would erupt. Or something equally devastating. When you clear a nexus you release a lot of power. Igniting a node . . .” She shuddered.