Any Port in a Storm (38 page)

After an hour of this, I pause the movie and lean forward to look at him. "Carrick. What in the hells is wrong?"

He gets up again, and for a second I think he's going to walk straight out the balcony door and over the edge.

It takes a solid five minutes before he'll look at me.

"I saw Miles," he says.
 

"What?" The blood has almost all rushed to my head, hanging over the edge of the couch like I am, but his words make it drain from my face.

"I know. It's mad." He gets to the balcony door, and I can see his face reflected in it. He looks tormented. "What is it?" I can feel every breath I take in a strange way, the pizza in my belly and the sensation of lying in this position making me very aware of my injured back and the fact that I'm almost immobile.

If this turns bad, if he knows I've been hiding this from him, or if he thinks I'm…I don't know. Panic wriggles through me, and I start to push myself up.

"Don't, Ayala. It's okay. It's just…this is going to sound madder still."
 

I freeze.

"I think Gregor lied to me. I don't know why he would. He told me that he saw Miles die. He would have had to see Miles lose his head for that to be true, and the Miles I saw tonight most certainly had his head fully attached to his body." Carrick turns back from the balcony and looks at me, his face earnest and lost. "Why would he do such a thing?"

Slowly, I push myself to a sitting position. It makes me woozy, and I reach out and grab my glass for another sip of water. Sitting pulls on the wounds on my back.

For a moment, I'm baffled that Carrick seems to trust Gregor so much. I think until this moment, I've assumed that Carrick spent the last four hundred years becoming worldly and cynical, because he acts like an ass sometimes and makes a habit of showing his, metaphorically and literally.
 

But what if he's just spent the last four hundred years very, very lonely?

"You really saw him?" I ask. Internally, a war stages itself over whether I should come clean or not.
 

He nods, and I swallow, taking another drink of water to try and chase away the lump in my throat.

I can't risk Carrick's trust.
 

"I know Gregor lied," I say.
 

I tell him everything.

I have to go back to the Summit Saturday morning, and the first person I see when I walk through the doors at eleven is Ben Wheedle.
 

I almost turn on my heel and walk out.

My back is healing, the gel starting to slowly slough off, and I chose loose-fitting clothes to be safe, but at the sight of Ben, my whole body starts to itch.

He comes right over to me. "I need to talk to you."

"Not now, Wheedle. I'm busy." I try to get past him, but he blocks my way. The Mitten at the front desk looks over with only mild interest, then turns back to his phone, texting away.

I take another step to get around Ben, and he throws out an arm and grabs mine. "You don't understand, Storme. I need to talk to you. It's important."

"If you don't take your hand off me in three seconds, I'm going to rip it off and feed it to a jeeling."

He drops his hand, but he points toward the corridor that leads off to the left from the main lobby. I follow reluctantly. I'm going to regret this.
 

"Make it fast," I say.
 

"I have people. They've been keeping an ear out for any of the unrest in the Summit. I've had them tracking Alamea and trying to find out what she's up to."

"Up to? Do you even fucking hear yourself?"

Ben's eyes are wild, and he looks like he wants to punch the wall behind my head. "This is bad. It's really bad, and you need to know."

I stare at him, waiting. Last time he told me everything I already knew, just with more histrionics.
 

"I don't know the details yet, but I know Alamea is trying to frame Gregor for something big. Something huge. It could get him killed." Ben's voice rises on the last sentence, and I just watch him.
 

Covert ops, not for Ben Wheedle.
 

"Do you remember what I said to you last time I saw you?" I ask.
 

He looks flustered. "What? No. Hells, Ayala, I'm trying to tell you something important."

"And I'm trying to clue you in to what a hysterical asshole you look like right now. Last time you went plunging into something without knowing all the details, you almost got me killed."

Stricken, he taps his index finger against the hem of his jeans. He opens his mouth.

"No, Wheedle," I say. "If something's going on — and I know tensions are high right now — and you go haring off throwing false intel at people, you're going to have Mediator blood on your hands. Take a gods damned second and listen to yourself. You're talking about accusing the leader of the Summit of what, conspiracy? And with only hearsay to back you up and no details? At best right now, you could get imprisoned. At worst, you could start an internal war."

For a second I think he might actually listen. He bites his lip and sits back on his heels. Then he shakes his head. "No. I trust my sources. I won't let anything happen to Gregor. He appreciated what I told him —"

"What did you just say?"

My voice comes out like a hollow echo in a vast cavern, and it shuts Ben up mid-sentence.

Samhain's a week from today. We had everything worked out. And now Gregor's going to know something's up.
 

Ben stares at me, uncomprehending. "He deserves to know someone's gunning for him."

It takes every single year of training I have to control my muscles enough not to slam Ben Wheedle into the wall. "Out of the two of them, which one of them had actual people gunning for her?"

"Yeah, but —"

"I have to go."

"Ayala, wait."

"Because of you, people are going to get killed. People. Not demons. People. Every drop of blood spilled because of what you done is on your head, Wheedle. Congratulations. You just ruined every hope of stabilizing the Summit." I shouldn't do it, but I turn and pull my hair back to show him the perimeter of gel protruding over the collar of my shirt. "See that? I got set upon by seven markats last night with Mira. We both almost died. Five years ago, you'd never see more than two or three of them at once.

"And my new little kill record? When was the last time you saw a mixed gaggle of fourteen demons, five different breeds, all at once in one place without them ripping each other to pieces?"

Ben just shakes his head.

"You've been tracking the norm death rate, and that's just dandy. But if you can't see what's happening, if you can't get it through your concrete skull that there is something much bigger going on than who's fucking King of the Summit, then you're more than stupid, Ben Wheedle. You're going to get us all killed."

I do turn on my heel then, and my sheer panic propels me out of the Summit.

I'm supposed to be in Alamea's office in two minutes, but I can't go straight there now. I head to my car at a near run and drive off, dialing Alamea as I pull out of the parking lot.
 

She answers on the first ring. "What's wrong?"

"Ben's gone to Gregor and told him he heard you were trying to frame him for something huge."

"That fucking troll." I think it's the first time I've heard her say fuck.

"Samhain's off. There's no way we can last a week before something happens."

"I'll call you later. Be on your guard."

She hangs up, and that's it. I speed home as fast as I can, almost tripping over my own feet to get into the apartment. Carrick better be home. I push open the door, and Nana tries to dart out. I catch her by the ears and immediately feel awful for it, scooping her up and depositing her back inside the apartment.
 

"Carrick!"

He doesn't answer right away, but I hear a thump and a footfall in the bedroom, and a moment later he emerges, looking haggard and tugging his shorts up as he walks. "What happened?"

"Ben tipped off Gregor that Alamea's on to him. Told him she's trying to frame him for something. He'll know she knows."

"Bloody hells."

We drive straight to the foreclosed house where Saturn and Miles are staying. I make Carrick stay in the car while I run up and rap on the back door. I hurriedly explain, and after a long, incomprehensible moment between Miles and Saturn, they motion at Carrick to come in.

I try calling Ripper and Devon, but neither of them answer at first. Nor does Mira.
 

"When did you leave her house?" I ask Saturn.
 

"At first light," he says.
 

"She was okay?"

"She was swearing at me."

So she was okay.
 

Carrick and Miles are sitting close together, and I feel like one of them needs to speak before the turn of the century, but I can't try to fix their friendship right now.
 

Devon picks up when I try to call him again. "Ayala?"

I explain as fast as I can and tell him to meet us at Mira's. Mira doesn't answer again, and I leave her a message to call me. Ripper doesn't answer either, and I leave him a message to meet us at Mira's too.
 

We all pile in my car, which doesn't work out any better with two shades in the backseat than it did with one. I try to pretend not to notice when Saturn pulls a fast food straw from between his butt cheeks.

I pull up at Mira's and I can't tell if she's home or not. I can't see her car.
 

My phone rings. The inside of my car smells like shades, warm skin and a slightly stale scent that lingers from the inside of the foreclosure. I answer the phone.

"It's Ripper," says Ripper. "Mira's not home. She's with me."

"Where are you?"
 

"I can't tell you. We'll meet you at the spot. Hurry up. Devon's on his way already."

Shades have good hearing. They all go very still.
 

I hit the gas and drive.
 

Twenty minutes later, we pull up to the campsite where we gathered before and Mira punched me for saying I didn't have any friends. Now, surrounded by shades and Mediators I trust, I think that punch was well-deserved.

Mira's fist connects with a tree trunk. Her scream of fury tears through the air, startling the few migrating birds into silence.
 

"What happened?" I hurry to her, but jump back when she punches the tree again. It's only then that I see tear tracks on her face. My stomach sinks like an anvil.

"Gregor fucking took Wane."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

It takes a few seconds for what she's said to process.
 

Gregor took Wane.
 

Mira's cousin. He took Mira's cousin. He knows they're family.

"Where did he take her?" I ask. Images of her tied to the railroad tracks like some sort of shitty cartoon damsel in distress flash through my head, and I shove them away.

"He imprisoned her at the Summit. In the basement. You know where."

Devon looks almost as incensed as Mira, and Ripper has the look of the first swell of a tsunami.
 

Thank you, Alamea.

"It's going to be okay," I say, forgetting how that's the absolute worst thing to say to people in almost any situation.

Mira looks murder at me, and I take a step back. I do not want to be that tree trunk. I drop to one knee and dig in my left boot.
 

"I mean it, Mira. It's going to be okay." I pull out the key Alamea gave me. "Alamea taught me how to get out of there."

All three Mediators turn and stare at me. The shades don't seem to have any idea what's happening, but they listen with curiosity.
 

Mira's hands fall to her sides. "Alamea did what?"

"She gave me a way to get out of the prison. She knew people were trying to get her ousted, and she was afraid they'd throw me down there again. She didn't want me to get trapped." It's only saying that out loud that I realize just how much Alamea has trusted me. "I can get Wane out."