Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 (3 page)

“Exactly. My
father.
”

“Oh for . . . I’ll change later! Do you know someone who knows about drugs?”

“I know someone who knows something about anything,” said Ferd. “Why?”

Jase drove to a turnoff, where they could park overlooking the city. This time of day no one would be nuzzling there.

Ferd’s eyes grew wide as Jase told him about the shootout at the border station, the girl, the pouch, and his own conclusions.

“But if it’s something harsh I’m flushing it,” Jase finished firmly. “And if it’s as new as I think it is, it’s probably a nasty one. Because why disguise it in a medicine pouch, if it’s not so new that the border scanners can’t detect it?”

“Let me see. It probably is new. Designer. And if the scanners can’t detect it . . .”

Ferd untied the pouch and tipped a small sample of the powder into his hand.

“Whoa.”

“Do you recognize it? Know what it is?”

“Not a clue. You’re right, it looks like dirt. A totally new drug. Bro, this is terminal! If the scanners won’t detect it . . . Well, whoa.”

“
Terminal
? What happened to
’treme
?”

“’
Treme
is completely last year,” Ferd said. “
Terminal
is now the cool way to say cool.”

“You were saying
’treme
just a few days ago,” Jase protested.

“Then it’s last week. Or month. Whatever. Focus in, bro. A designer that can pass scanners would be worth serious money!”

“We don’t know if it can pass the scans,” Jase reminded him. “She threw it over the fence.”

“Was she hot?” This was a question that could distract Ferd even from money.

“Nothing special,” said Jase. “And if it’s a new designer, it’s probably harsh.”

“Not necessarily,” Ferd said. “Buzz and Finn are designer, and they’re very mellow. Riffle and Keloscope are new, and they’re designed
not
to burn your brains out.”

“I should go straight home and flush the whole package.” Jase knew he should.

“Bro,” said Ferd, “it’s your
car.
I’ve got a cousin who’s in college in the city.”

“Can he tell—”

“No, but his roommate is a chemistry major. In more ways than one, Manny says. He’ll be able to tell us what this weird dirt of yours . . . That would be a good drug name. Dirt.”

***

Jase agreed to bring the dirt to school and meet Ferd, who would provide a proper container and then get the stuff to Cousin Manny’s roommate. “He’s a chemist, bro. It’s going to take time.”

Jase dropped Ferd off and went home, where he finally changed out of his suit while he told his mother about the shootout at the border—minus the biker drug girl and the pouch. At least it explained the sap and other stains on his suit.

It had made the news, a biker gang and a bag of drug money that had somehow ended up flying all over the road on the Canadian side of the station. Despite all the shots that had been fired, there were only two minor injuries. No mention of a girl at all.

“I wish you’d commed,” his mother said, her gray-green eyes serious. “I knew you’d be at the border right around that time, and I was worried.”

“So why didn’t you com and ask if I was OK?”

Jase pulled a stretchie over his head and felt better. Ferd was right about a suit being halfway to a shroud, but the firm’s drivers had to wear them.

“I almost did.” His mother sighed. “But I didn’t catch the news till evening, and your father pointed out that if you had been injured we’d have been notified hours ago. I’m trying to accept the growing-up you. It’s not easy.”

“Um, OK. Whatever.”

It made her laugh and hug him. In front of the mirror over his dresser. And because some part of him was still thinking about the three-sixteenths comment, for the first time in years Jase noticed how much paler she was than his dark, square, undeniably Native self. That was one of the things that had made the court case so devastating—that he looked one hundred percent Alaska Native.

He
would
visit his grandparents again, next weekend, Jase resolved. Even if it meant putting off finding out about the “dirt.”

By the time he went to bed he’d stopped thinking about his grandparents, consciously, but that night he had a Native dream.

An elderly Native woman sat in a grove of pine trees, the bushy kind that grew wild in the lower forty-eight and some places in Alaska too. The woman’s smile was warm and inviting. Grandmotherly. Jase noticed that the hovering mosquitoes left her strictly alone. And given the antique leather clothing she wore, it wouldn’t be because her repel-vacs were up-to-date.

“Oh, carp. I know I’m feeling guilty about keeping that pouch,” Jase told her. “I admit it. But did they have to send an ancestral grandmother to scold me?”

Her smile faded. “So you do have it. Where is it?”

“Look,” said Jase, “if it’s something that nukes people’s brains I really will flush it. But if it’s harmless what’s the problem? Do you have any idea how much auto insurance costs for a kid my age driving a Tesla?”

She looked confused by this, but she pulled the smile back on with an ease that made Jase wonder about its sincerity.

“I’m not here to scold you, boy. I’m here to warn you. In a short time, if he hasn’t found you already, you’ll be approached by a very handsome young man. You mustn’t trust him!”

“Is it his stuff? Is he a dealer?” The girl had no way to identify him . . . unless she’d seen him get into the Tesla and drive off. There were maybe a hundred Teslas in Alaska, but Jase’s was the only one old enough to have tires.

“He’s evil,” the old woman said seriously. “He’ll try to corrupt you, and ultimately destroy you. You must not trust him. Don’t even talk to him if you can avoid it.”

Evil and corruption were pretty much what drug dealers did. And Jase was about to become one? He should probably think about that, but for now . . .

“OK. But if I’m supposed to avoid him, it would be nice to know what he looks like.”

Jase would gladly avoid the person to whom that little pouch really belonged—and who’d probably just shot up a border station too! But how could a manifestation of his own subconscious warn him away from someone he’d never seen?

To his surprise, the old woman held up cupped hands and a wavering image formed between them, like a palm-sized holo-generator.

“That’s ’treme! Will it be on the market soon?”

The old woman scowled. “Look at him. Has he found you yet?”

Jase peered at the teenage boy who smiled between her hands. “No. He looks young, for a dealer. Is this a current ID?”

The guy in the luminous image looked only a few years older than Jase, but he was man-model handsome, which was one strike against him already.

“He’s not . . . he’s not to be trusted,” the old woman repeated firmly. “You’d be far safer if you gave us the pouch. Where are you now?”

“How can I give you something in a dream?” Jase gestured to the woods around them. Though he was sitting in his own bed, which looked very out of place in this wild glade. “It’s back at my house, anyway.”

Tucked behind some half-full coolant jugs in the garage, where neither his parents or the cleaning woman ever poked around.

“Where is your house? Are you in Whitehorse? What’s your name?”

It seemed to Jase that his subconscious should know that already. And her grandmotherly smile had evaporated.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

The way she hesitated before replying reminded him of the last lying client he’d driven.“Please, may I come to where you are? It might make this easier.”

“Sure,” said Jase. “Why not? And make what easier?” As far as he was concerned, he could go back to sleep anytime now. This nosy grandmother was beginning to annoy him.

For a moment he thought he’d gotten rid of her, because the woods vanished and his own room appeared around him. But then his closet door opened and the old woman stepped out. She was still clearly a Native, but the archaic leathers had turned into jeans and a rain jacket.

“How come you came out of the closet instead of through the hall door?”

It might have been simply because the foot of his bed faced the closet, and the hall was off to the side, but she shrugged.

“I’d guess that’s where some of your dreams center . . . unless the pouch is in there.” She turned toward the open door, clearly ready to look.

“Hey! Keep out of my stuff. What do you want, anyway?”

She’d already lost interest.

“Not there,” she murmured. “Not that it matters.” Her gaze went to the window and she frowned. “It can’t be that dark. Not in Canada, this time of year. Where are we?”

“It’s not dark,” Jase said. “I opaqued the window. And we’re in Anchorage, not Canada.”

“Alaska!” Now she looked angry, and it wasn’t his fault. Whatever the problem was.

“Who are you?” she went on urgently. “Where is this house? Its number. I need the number.”

“You mean the address,” said Jase. “And I’m not going to say, because I don’t want you in any more of my dreams. I’m going to wake up now.”

He could almost feel his sleeping mind, fighting for awareness. He tried to help it along, but the woman stepped forward and grabbed his arm.

“Oh, no you don’t! Tell me the number. Tell me who you are.” Her expression was frightening-fierce.

“Ow! Let go!” Jase struggled against her grip, which made it hurt worse, and finally broke through to wakefulness.

“Low light,” he ordered, and the bedside lamp snapped on.

His lungs heaved and his heart beat wildly. His blankets looked like he and Ferd had been wrestling on the bed, as they had when they were kids.

The rest of his room was undisturbed, the closet door still closed. Not that he expected it to be . . . That was a nasty one! He hadn’t imagined a monster in his closet since he was five, damn it!

“Window clear,” Jase ordered, and then turned off the lamp as the window slowly depolarized, revealing the brilliant twilight of an Arctic summer night.

Usually Jase had to darken the window to sleep. Now he simply turned away from the light and closed his eyes.

It was just a stupid dream. But there was no harm in leaving the window clear till morning.

***

He was drying off after his shower when he noticed the bruises, a row of dark splotches on the back of his arm where the dream woman’s fingers had dug in. The sight shocked him, until his rational mind kicked in. He must have picked them up when he was diving behind that tree, back at the border. When they began to ache, he’d dreamed up the old woman to account for the pain, which explained the weird dream too.

It was odd that the bruises hadn’t bothered him yesterday, but he’d probably been sleeping in a position that put strain on them or something. They still ached, as he put on the collared shirt and blazer that Murie Preparatory Academy required its students to wear, even in the summer.

He’d have to remember to get the pouch out of its hiding place before he took off for school.

Jase didn’t have a chance to talk with Ferd alone till their lunch break. And since, as Ferd pointed out, trying to sneak off and find a place out of range of the school’s security net would be more likely to draw attention than anything a student did in the cafeteria, Jase simply handed over the pouch and then watched as Ferd poured about a quarter of the powder into a plastic container with a simple snap lid.

“Stop looking so itchy.” Ferd’s calm voice cut through the high-pitched girl gossip more clearly than a shout. “With all that goes on in here, we could set our hair on fire and no one would noti—Hey, Ron! See you on the court, bro!”

Ron stopped to talk to them, and he didn’t give the pouch in Ferd’s hands more than a glance.

Jase looked around the crowded room. The same dress code that stuck them all in boring blazers demanded that face gems be turned off during school hours, but outside of class that prohibition was loosely enforced. Tiny sparks of color winked on most of the girls’ faces and some of the guys’. None of the faces was turned in their direction.

“He probably thinks it’s something for Culture Club,” Ferd said, after Ron had set up their handball time and moved on. “It looks like something for Culture Club.”

“You’re not in Culture Club,” said Jase. Neither was he. Three-sixteenths.

“The point,” said Ferd, “is that if you act like you’re not doing anything, no one cares.” He knotted the strings and handed the pouch back to Jase.

“Why don’t you keep it?”

“’Cause if it really is something harsh, with a heavy sentence attached, the less I have on me the better.”

“Gee, thanks.” Jase pocketed the small leather bag. “How long before Manny gets back to you?”

“A while,” said Ferd. “His roommate’s got some big project due day after tomorrow, so he can’t even start on it now. And then he’s got to arrange a time when he can have the lab to himself.”