“You do realize,” Nadia said, “that all of this could be a trick? To send in someone you trust to lure you to a place above this Break, from which Tovin intends to summon this Tainted creature? Bravo for walking right into his trap. Again.”
Wyatt intercepted me before I could punch her. He herded me to the other side of the kitchen, away from her smirk and annoyingly angular face. He grabbed my chin with one hand and held me still. I stared right back.
“Don’t let her bait you,” he said. “She’s in pain, Evy, just like you were.”
I yanked my chin out of his grasp. “Was I that much of a bitch?”
“Aren’t you always?”
“Very funny, Truman.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“A pain in the ass.”
“Sorry to interrupt the happy time,” Nadia said, “but we have not yet decided upon a plan of action.”
“You mean, do we play right into Tovin’s hands again and head up to the nature preserve, or do we stand around and insult each other some more?” I asked.
She nodded.
“We’ll need help,” I said. “I’d feel better going up there with some Triad backup, especially if Tovin’s got a herd of Halfies guarding the place. The three of us won’t be much good against more than a dozen.”
Nadia snorted. “Three? You assume a lot.”
“You’re telling me you don’t want to kick a whole lot of Halfie ass on behalf of Tully and Wormer?” Her silence confirmed the opposite, so I switched my attention to Rufus. “How about that backup?”
“Kismet owes me a favor,” Rufus replied. “She can probably get Baylor’s team on board, if I ask nicely. Maybe Willemy, too, if he’s forgiven me for Turner Street.”
“Do I even want to know?” Wyatt asked.
“Nope.”
“That’s good backup,” I said. “Weapons?”
“Standard. I’ve got a stash. Hall closet, black trunk.”
To Nadia: “Map?”
She returned to the computer and typed. I passed Wyatt to stand behind her. She was in a great position for me to wring her neck. I quashed the urge. Wyatt was right. I’d been in her shoes, and had no business judging her anger.
The computer displayed a map of the forest north of the city. Nadia dragged the mouse to the location of the defunct nature preserve. Cherrydale Road wound along the banks of the Anjean, passed the turnoff for the preserve, and continued deep into the mountains.
“There should be a gas station here,” I said, pointing to a spot where a secondary road branched off from Cherrydale, half a mile from our destination. “You and the others will meet us there at three A.M., fully armed and assault ready.”
“Wait, who’s you and who’s us?” Wyatt asked.
“Us is you and me. We’re leaving early to go on recon. No sense in planning a blind assault on an unknown compound.”
“You are both wanted targets. Is this wise?” Nadia asked.
“Probably not, but I don’t want us separated. As long as we know what’s going on with the other person, we can control the game.” And I could keep Wyatt from acting on his damned guilt.
“Three o’clock is cutting it close,” Wyatt said.
“We need to rest a little. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t slept much in the last few days.”
“And we still need some time to figure out your Gift. Teleportation could be pretty damned useful, you know.”
“If we can find the trigger.”
“I have an idea on that. Let’s go up to the roof.”
I tilted my chin. He quirked an eyebrow.
“Fine.” Over my shoulder to Rufus, I said, “Make the calls. We’ll be back in a bit.”
It took several hard shoves to open the roof access door. Rusty hinges squealed angrily. We only managed to move it three feet before it stuck on the tarred surface.
The city hummed all around us. Car engines and the occasional bass line drifted up from the streets below. A city that never seemed to sleep, no matter day or night—consequences of a population that preferred coming out after sundown.
I followed Wyatt across the spongy surface. It was the strangest roof I’d ever walked on, and I imagined it leaked like a son of a bitch during storms. “So what’s the trigger?”
“You tell me, Evy.”
I rolled my eyes. “You said you knew.”
“I have the same pieces as you. Just put them together.”
He was going all Sphinx-like Handler on me again. I hated that. Straight answers were simpler, but he liked proving his point. Challenging me to do the work myself.
“She was in the sandbox with other kids,” I said, thinking back over the information I’d read. “Probably not having fun. She wanted to go to the toy store and see her favorite animals. It was a place she liked and felt safe. She didn’t like her preschool, so she went out to the playground. She was shy, an introvert.”
“By nature, shy people are more likely to be what?”
I worked the question over in my mind until the answer came screaming at me. “She was lonely. You think loneliness is the trigger?”
“It’s a logical trigger.”
“Is yours logical?”
“Not really.”
“What is it?”
“Also not telling.”
“Come on, Wyatt, you need to teach me how to do this. I can’t just drum up loneliness and hope I land ten feet away. What if I reappear in between walls? That could hurt.”
He heaved a sigh dramatic enough to make a professional actor proud. “It’s arrogance, okay? Haughty, highbrow arrogance at its worst.”
My lips twitched. “So what? You forget to put your arrogance away when you’re done with it?”
His eyebrows scrunched. He opened his mouth to retort. I stuck my tongue out—a gesture guaranteed to force a smile. It worked.
A shadow passed my peripheral vision—a large bird shape that was gone before I turned my head. Too big for a pigeon, but what else? I thought of Danika and was struck by a sudden pang of sadness.
“Evy?”
“Yeah?” Had he been talking?
“Do you feel the Break right now? You said it felt tingly, like static.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled. It was there, but more distant than in First Break. The faintest hint of static just below the surface. I latched on to the buzz and urged it closer. Asked it to burn just a little brighter.
It ignored me and remained far away, the palest notion of power. “It’s there,” I said. “Barely, but it’s there.”
“Use your trigger to bring it forward. Concentrate on feelings of loneliness.”
“Uh-huh.” Hard to feel lonely when he was crowding me. He wouldn’t always be there, though. At the end of this day, one of us (or both) would be dead, forever parted. Alone.
Tears stung my eyes. Nostrils flared. Instinct told me to push those thoughts away and stay positive, but I needed that emotion. Needed to feel the loneliness. I held on, trying to imagine living without Wyatt. Spending the next five or ten or thirty years without him in my life. Without his voice in my head.
The faint buzz crashed on top of me like a waterfall, zinging through from head to toes and back out again. The hair on my arms tingled. My skin flushed, at once hot and cold. Every single cell in my body seemed to vibrate,
