couldn’t trust me fully, even though he wanted to.”
Rena made a sound of agreement, before adding, “And it’s why every death he fails to stop is a sign in his eyes that he doesn’t deserve to be leader. That his lineage—the son of a vicious rogue agent—means he’s a failure before he’s even started.”
No wonder he was so willing to sacrifice himself for Gregor. For us all.
“What about the rest of them, then?” I asked. “What are they going to do now?”
“What they were born to do, of course,” Rena answered, folding her hands and leaning back. “They’re going to save him.”
“But the Shadow agents are waiting for them in the boneyard.” My eyes roved over her face. Surely there was a better plan than that. Even I could see that turning me over to the Shadows was a far better alternative. “They said themselves that the entire Zodiac will be completely wiped out.”
“Without Warren, it is anyway,” she said, a sigh floating from her. She patted her hair, an unconscious, nerve-filled gesture, since not a strand was out of place.
I frowned, because a woman so protective of her children shouldn’t sound this defeated. “And what do we do?”
“We hope. Pray. If that’s not enough, we wait until the next batch of initiates is ready.” Her voice was soft, almost drowsy, but the scent of nightmares accompanied it, not dreams. “Not long, half a decade at most. Then we rise again.”
“But they’ll die!” I said, catching myself before I sat up.
“Yes.” And her own head fell. “They’ll all die.”
And now I did shoot up in bed. My diaphragm burned and the heat rose like smoke to my gorge, but it was bearable. “How can you sit there so calmly and just let them go?”
Stiffening, Rena’s rocking abruptly stopped, and I swear if she had eyes she’d have been glaring holes through me. “It kills me to think of Warren out there now, suffering. He’s a favorite of mine. Always was. But there’s nothing I can do save discipline and train the next batch to be stronger and better and smarter than the last. To teach them where this group went wrong…and where I went wrong with them.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “You blame yourself?”
“A mother always does.” Then, more softly, “Even a blind old surrogate like myself.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and so the minutes ticked by, marked by the clock next to my bed, the soft glow of numbers finally blurring as my fatigue rose. The candlelight was relaxing, the incense finally doing its trick, and I would have fallen under, probably waking when it was all over, if it weren’t for the sob that escaped the darkened corner.
“I always have to let them go,” Rena said, voice cracking in naked emotion. “Just sit here. Sit on my hands, even if those hands are clenched in fists.”
I swallowed away my fatigue and turned my head back to her in the faint candlelight. She looked like a battle-scarred angel in her shapeless robe; lost and, for a woman with so many charges in her care, entirely alone. “Would you go? If you could, I mean?”
“I would sacrifice myself for each of them, over and over,” she said, every word solid and sure. She straightened in her chair. “I would take that pain in your gut and wrap it around myself so tightly it could never get loose and touch one of my children again. I would burn my eyes from my sockets every day from now to death if it meant saving even one.”
“Because you’re a mother, and that’s what a mother does,” I said, nodding, thinking of my own. Not that any of her sacrifices had ultimately mattered. Here I was, trapped, and as much at the mercy of these people as I’d been at Joaquin’s hands years earlier.
“No,” Rena said, surprising me. I squinted at her in the dim light. “Don’t you get it yet? It’s because I’m Light, and that’s what we do. That’s what Warren did for Gregor, what he’s doing for you. It’s why the rest of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for him.”
Because he was Light.
“Oh, my God.” I blinked once, my heart thumped twice, and I slowly rose to a sitting position in bed, careful not to let the dizziness pooling in my head topple me again. “That’s it.”
Rena started, and her rocking faltered. “What?”
I felt a leap in my belly as I leaned over and flipped on the light, and I felt my own excitement transmuted, knowledge registering with Warren. I snuffed what remained of the incense, reached for the water on the nightstand, and touched the glass to my cheek to cool the skin. Then I drank deeply to clear my mind, dousing what I could of the flame in my belly and ignoring the rest. Snagging my duffel bag, I rifled through it, pulling out the first dark article of clothing I could find. It was a black cat suit, half cotton, half nylon, and deplorably low-cut, but that couldn’t be helped.
“He’s of the Light.
The pieces were coming together rapidly now, but it felt like a slow progression, like the evenly spaced ticking of a clock when I was already running out of time.
“My God, why didn’t I see it before?” See it, I thought, and almost giggled.
“Where are you going?” Rena asked, leaning forward when she heard the rustling of my clothes. I rushed past her into the bathroom, where I knotted my hair messily at the nape of my neck and splashed cool water on my face, clearing my senses further. I was going to need help, I thought, glancing back at her through the mirror. What I had to do was near impossible. What I had to prove was unbelievable, even to me.
“Not me. Us,” I said, returning to the doorway. I stared down at her, and she was so focused on me I would’ve sworn she could see me. She rose, face inches from mine. “It’s time to stop your rocking and praying, Rena,” I told her, grabbing her hand. “We’re going to go save your favorite son.”
24
Sneaking across an entire compound of supernatural beings was a tricky business, though simplified by the knowledge that the handful of people I most needed to avoid were either sequestered away like a hung jury or taking turns in last minute sessions with Greta, mentally preparing them for the battle to come. It was this that gave me confidence as I steered down a sick ward as empty and hushed as a morgue. This, I thought, and a note I was sure Tekla had written me just after her son had died.
Obviously I didn’t have a key to her room—her cell—but the viewing window on the door should help, and my plan was to get her attention by tapping lightly on that. Not loudly enough to draw anyone else’s curiosity, I hoped, but sufficiently hard to call her close so she might tell me what to do next. I just prayed she’d respond to me a little more favorably than last time.
I pressed against walls, crouching around corners, and narrowly avoided running straight into Hunter, apparently on his way to his session with Greta. I watched as he knocked on her door, and had to duck back around the corner when he whirled to sniff suspiciously at the air. Then I heard the door open and Greta’s voice welcoming him inside.
I peeked again. The only light in the entire corridor was the glow eking from the office’s shaded window. Tekla’s room, diagonal to that, was utterly dark. I suspected I had ten minutes, perhaps less, before the next agent arrived for their session, and while it seemed enough time, I’d be standing in plain view for the duration. Even ten seconds was enough to ruin it all.
When the light in Greta’s office dimmed, I made my move. My boots echoed on the tile like gunshots, but keeping my nervous energy contained so no one would detect my presence through anything but direct sight was a far greater concern.
Reaching the door, I shook the handle. Locked, of course. For a moment I considered taking it as a sign. Who knew what I would find beyond that door? Tekla might be completely mad by now. Frothing at the mouth, rocking in a corner. I was taking a big chance on what amounted to nothing more than a hunch on my part. Then again, as Rena had said after I told her what I intended to do, if what I thought was true, I’d be taking a bigger chance by
