Descendant

“Picnic. You?”

“Boat cruise.”

“I see.” Fennrys paused for a moment and then asked, “What’s your boot size, Coach?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Boot size. Yours. What is it?” Fennrys glanced over his shoulder to where Mason was peeking out from around the bushes. She had one hand clamped over her mouth to keep from laughing at the way Fennrys had chosen to confirm Toby’s identity. Seeing as how Fenn—who’d appeared out of nowhere on the night of the raging zombie storm without the benefit of clothing or footwear and thus had been obliged to steal Toby’s boots as the fencing master slept—knew exactly what size those clodhoppers were.

There was a pause out on the water.

And then the man in the boat chuckled and said, “I wear a twelve wide in combat boots, which you damned well know. Thanks for returning them—next time, run ’em through a shoeshine stand, will you?”

Mason exhaled a sigh of relief.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing out here in this boat,” Toby said, and Mason could almost hear the wry smile on his face.

“It had crossed my mind,” Fennrys said.

“You saved my kids the night of that storm.” Toby’s voice was serious and quiet. “You saved me. Me, I don’t care about so much. But I hate wasted potential, and my fighters are exactly that. They’re also my sacred charges.” Mason could see him shaking his head. “I don’t take particularly well to having my ass kicked by monsters when I’m trying to do my job. And I don’t like having to rely on someone else to kick monster ass back on my behalf. But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t repay debts. I do.”

“That’s good to know.” Fennrys crossed his arms over his chest. “But you weren’t expecting to find me here, Coach. You just said so yourself.”

“That’s true. But I thought you should know that before I tell you what I am doing here. Because that reasoning is something that impacts upon my decisions here.”

“Fair enough.”

“I assume Mason’s with you?”

“I’m right here, Toby,” she said, stepping out from behind the trees and walking up to stand beside Fennrys.

They both heard Toby sigh with relief and murmur, “Thank the gods. . . .”

Mason and Fennrys exchanged a glance at Toby’s particular word choice. Fennrys raised an eyebrow, and Mason shrugged.

“I’m going to beach the Zodiac. You two can climb onboard, and we’ll get out of here.”

“We three,” Mason corrected him. “There’s three of us here.”

“Who else is—oh . . .” Toby fell silent as Rafe stalked out of the darkness to stand beside Mason, and the beam from the searchlight illuminated his decidedly inhuman form. Which Toby clearly recognized immediately. “Humble greetings, mighty Lord of Aaru, Protector of the Dead,” he said, with a respectful bow of his head. “I offer myself in service to you.”

“Gee,” Rafe said drily. “Thanks. ’Cause it just so happens I’m fresh out of boatmen.”

Mason and Fennrys exchanged another glance as the fencing master maneuvered the flat-bottomed boat up onto the ragged little beach, and Fennrys helped steady Mason as she climbed into the boat.

“The good news is,” Toby said to Mason as Fennrys handed her off to him, “the fact that you’re still alive is one less thing your father will want to kill me over.”

Mason went stiff and instantly cold at the mention of Gunnar Starling.

“The bad news is,” Toby continued ruefully, “he’ll still want to kill me anyway over what I’m about to do.”

“And that is?” Fennrys asked warily.

“Not take you and Mason directly to him. Now get in.”

Fennrys climbed over the side of the boat, followed by Rafe, who shoved them off, and Toby reversed the engine, then pointed the boat downstream and steered westward. No one spoke for a few minutes as they glided across the black expanse of water. Downriver, banks of portable floodlights had been trucked onto the two severed ends of the Hell Gate Bridge, illuminating the wreckage in a wash of white light that rendered the twisted metal girders in stark black silhouette. The whole thing looked like some kind of abstract sculpture and was strangely beautiful.

And they were passing directly beneath it.

There were police and coast guard boats patrolling the waters of the Hell Gate Strait on either side of them and workers clearing debris above, but Toby kept the Zodiac’s engine purring at just barely over an idle, and the little black craft slipped past utterly unnoticed. Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that Fennrys had, for the duration of the ride, been clutching the iron medallion at his throat and murmuring. Mason figured he was drawing on some of the power of the charm’s Faerie magick to keep them hidden as they swept past the patrolling boats.

A look of understanding had passed between him and Rafe as he’d begun to cast the veiling spell. The ancient god seemed grateful and more than willing to let Fennrys do some of the arcane “heavy lifting.” The trip through the Between, Aken’s death, and the ritual Rafe had performed for him . . . it all seemed to have taken a bit of a toll on the Jackal God. He sat in the bow of the boat, shoulders slumped and head hanging. His dreadlocks swept forward, curtaining his face.

When they were well past the Hell Gate, Fennrys sat back and looked over at Toby, who sat in the stern, steering the Zodiac. “Hey, Coach,” he called out softly. “Earlier, you said you thought I was out of commission. What exactly would have led you to that conclusion?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Toby took a sip from the travel mug that was his constant companion and wiped the corner of his mouth on the back of his hand. He kept his voice low, and his eyes never left the river in front of them. “Maybe it was the bullet through the shoulder. Or the cartwheel off the train. Or, y’know”—he pointed with the mug—“the bridge exploding while you were still on it.”

“You know all about our little train trip then,” Fennrys said.

“Of course I do.” Toby grunted. “I was driving the train.”

Mason stared at Toby, her mouth drifting open. She cast her mind back to the fencing tournament she’d so spectacularly crashed and burned in . . . and tried to remember what Toby had said to her. How he’d dealt with it. And then she remembered . . . Toby hadn’t been there.

“You missed the competition,” she murmured, shaking her head in disbelief that she hadn’t, at the time, even noticed. How screwed up was that? “It was for the Nationals and you missed it.”

Toby blinked at her, as if startled by the accusation leveled at him. “I know, Mase . . . I’m sorry. You didn’t get my note?”

She shook her head, mute. That whole evening—how long ago had it been now? a few hours? days?—seemed like a kind of fever dream. She’d been so thrown by her confrontation with Calum, by everything, even though she’d thought she’d had a handle on it all. But now, in hindsight, it seemed almost as if the entire thing had been staged to catch Mason at her most vulnerable. Like Fate had stepped in to mess her up. She wondered . . . if Toby had been there, would she have so totally blown the competition? Stormed out afterward and right into Rory’s trap? Maybe she never would have wound up on that train in the first place. The train that Toby had been operating . . .

What. The. Hell . . .

Mason felt a stab of cold in her gut. “Wait. If you were driving the train that night—but—that would mean —”

“That I work for your father, Mason.” Toby’s gaze was steady and calm as he looked at her. “Yeah. I do. Sort of. And Gunnar damn well ordered me to be on duty that night. In an ‘offer I couldn’t refuse’ kind of way.” He shook his head. “You know how proud I am of you, Mase, and you know how badly I wanted to be there. For the team, but mostly for you. I wanted to see you win.”

“I didn’t. I lost.” The dull hurt of her failure had faded into the background with everything that had happened since, but sharpened suddenly to a new stab of pain at the memory. “I imploded.”