Closed Hearts (9 page)

Even people forward of Hinckley’s head-turning trick retreated up their steps and inside as we neared. Julian walked with his chin up, not obviously controlling anyone. Were they fleeing before Hinckley could reach them? Or was it Julian’s presence that made them retreat to the safety of their houses?

We moved as a pack past an alleyway, as well as another shop papered with jacker faces stamped “MISSING.” After rounding the corner, it became clear we were going back to the mages’ headquarters. I couldn’t think of anything else to do but go with them. Raf and I wouldn’t last on the streets, and I couldn’t take any risks with Myrtle. She was so strong, she might accidentally kill Raf without even thinking about it.

We passed the street where we had left Norma and her gang, but there was no sign of them. It was nearly dark, the bluish plasma of the streetlights replacing the reddish glow of the sunset. When we reached the crumbling brick entrance of the mages’ headquarters, a dark-skinned boy a couple of years older than Julian knelt in the doorway, welding a metal patch to the frame. His mini laser welder threw sparks on the sidewalk and singed the air with a sharp smell. Shiny black goggles cupped his eyes.

“Sasha.” Julian raised his voice to be heard over the sparking of the laser. “How is the door coming along?”

Sasha flicked off the laser and set it down. He stood, lifting the goggles and perching them on his forehead, trapping his curly black hair underneath.

Instead of answering Julian, he said, “So, you found her.” He turned his dark brown eyes to me. They were almost black, like a bottomless pit that couldn’t reflect light. “That’s too bad. I was hoping you might have gotten lost.”

“Sasha.” Julian’s voice was filled with patience. “The door?”

Sasha tugged off his welding gloves. “It will hold for now,” he said. “I can rig up a passring sensor and get a new door frame in the morning. Assuming Kira doesn’t decide to break down our door again.” He said my name like it was something bitter, then stepped back to let us pass, tracking me with a cold stare. Julian ushered us into the dim light inside, trading the damp summer air for the stale machine-grease smell of the converted factory. Sasha scooped up his welder and clanged the metal door shut, followed by a click that signaled we weren’t going anywhere.

Raf walked with stiff legs to the kitchen table and carefully sat in a rickety chair, staring vacantly at the carpeted floor. Myrtle took up a station next to him. My heart was ripping into pieces at the blank look on his face, so I turned my back to the table. Hinckley sat on the edge of the broken-down couch, where Ava was roughly bundled in a thick blanket. Sasha knelt by her, smoothing her hair and sending me a look that sent a shiver through me.

“Ava’s not going to be happy with you when she wakes up,” Julian said. He leaned against the kitchen counter, retrieving an apple from a basket and taking a noisy bite. I didn’t like Julian before, but the loathing I had for him was reaching new heights.

“Let Raf go.” I didn’t care that desperation crumpled my voice. “I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him?” Julian stopped mid-chew. “I don’t think you quite understand the situation you’re in here.” He gestured with the apple. “This is Jackertown. There’re quite a few jackers who don’t realize how important you are—to us, to jackers everywhere—and who would be happy to see you dead for your trouble.”

I had no idea what Julian meant about my
importance
, but I understood quite well that plenty of jackers wanted me dead. Sasha seemed like he would be happy to do the honors.

“I have some influence here,” continued Julian. Hinckley gave a snort from his perch on the couch. “Which is why I was able to get you to Myrtle’s safe house. And back again. But him,” Julian said and pointed at Raf, “he’s as good as dead out there. That, or a ruthless crew that doesn’t have much in the Morals Department will use him for a pawn. I had thought you would understand that and not go dragging a reader through the streets.”

Julian’s patronizing tone lit a fire in me. Maybe he had gotten us off the street, but we were hardly safe. “You’re the one that dragged us here in the first place!”

“I had no intention of bringing him here!” Julian pushed away from the counter and threw the apple in a small trash can, knocking it over. “I thought…” He seemed at a loss for words for the first time since I’d woken up on the couch. He swiped a hand across his mouth and glared at my fists curled up by my side. “I don’t understand what you see in that mindreader, but for whatever reason, you seem to care about him. I never intended for him to be here, but now that he is, it’s better that he stay safely asleep.”

With those words, Raf’s body caved facedown onto the dingy table. Myrtle took a seat next to him, and Molloy drifted from the back to land by Raf’s side, his meaty arms folded as he loomed above him. My fingernails were digging trenches in my palms.

Julian crossed his arms again and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Sasha, the keeper will sleep on the couch tonight. Can you take Ava to her bunk and keep an eye on her?” Sasha gave me one last glare, then gathered the blanket tighter around Ava and easily scooped her off the couch, carrying her toward the cluster of bunks.

Julian lingered a look after the two of them. “As much as you seem to be protective of your mindreading friend,” he said, “my sister is currently in the hands of that monster Kestrel, so you can perhaps understand my urgency to not wait around while issuing invitations. I’d rather not have to chase you all over Jackertown either. I can understand that you don’t want to go near Kestrel again, but I thought… I thought we would have more common cause than we apparently do.”

He paused to wipe his hands on his neatly pressed pants. “In the morning, you can return to rooking in the suburbs and pretending you’re merely a waitress in a diner, serving closed-minded readers their pie.” The distaste in his voice seemed to emanate from him.

Did I hear him right? “You’re not going to force me to help you?”

“It was never my intention to force you into anything, keeper.” He massaged his temple with two fingers and stared at the floor. “But I’m not going to send one of my mages to shepherd you and your pet reader through Jackertown at night.” He nodded to the slumped-over figure of Raf. “He’ll be safer here. In the morning, Mr. Molloy can escort you both back to the suburbs.”

“Now wait just a minute,” said Molloy, his voice low. “What about the plan? I don’t care much for the lass, but she’s a key part of it. You can’t just let her…” Molloy drifted off, looking confused but innocent, like a small child. As if he had lost his train of thought and couldn’t find it again. “Then again, maybe there’s no rush. There must be a way we can figure a plan that will work without the lass. Can’t put my finger on it, though.”

My eyebrows hiked up. I glanced at Julian, but he didn’t acknowledge Molloy, merely tapped his fingers to his lips. I jacked into Molloy’s mind and he didn’t even notice me at first, he was so swirled around in his own confused thoughts. Finally, he realized I was there and pushed me back out.

Hinckley hopped off the couch and stepped up to Molloy. “Do you want me to take him, boss?”

“Take me where?” Molloy asked. “I’m fine right where I am, mate.”

“No, I’ve got him.” Julian waved Hinckley off in an absentminded way.

Hinckley glanced in my direction. “So, what’s the plan?” he asked Julian.

“We’ll make new plans in the morning,” Julian said. “You can turn in if you’d like.” Hinckley shrugged, snagged an apple from the kitchen, then strode to the back of the factory.

“Yes, plans in the morning sounds right enough,” Molloy said. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a raging hunger. What have you got for food here, Julian?”

I stepped out of Molloy’s path as he ambled to the kitchen in search of a snack. What kind of jacker
was
Julian? He seemed to get others to do his jacking for him, and when I pushed into his mind, it was a horror show—something I never wanted to do again. Yet he was doing
something
to Molloy.

Julian strolled over to Myrtle, who was softly tapping her fingers on the table next to Raf. “Thank you for your assistance, Myrtle. I’ll contact you on the short comm in the morning, when we have an idea of our next step.”

Myrtle flicked a look to me. “I think I’ll stay a while,” she said. “Maybe have some tea.” She got up to join Molloy, who was rummaging through cabinets in the kitchen.

“What did you do to Molloy?” I asked Julian in a hushed voice.

Julian followed my gaze. “I didn’t think you cared much for Mr. Molloy. He’s not injured in any way, just… calmer. His instincts are quieted so that his strongest urge right now is to get a snack.” Julian tilted his head to tap the base of his skull where it met his spine. “This part of the brain controls instinctual responses. Fight or flight. Survival mechanisms.” The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Mating instinct.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“It’s the oldest part of the brain, evolutionarily speaking,” he said, slipping into his professor voice. “Reptiles have it. We don’t use it to think or feel. It controls how we react, without us ever having to think about it at all.”

“So, you jacked into that part of Molloy’s brain?” The idea sent a shiver down my back. When I jacked into other people’s minds, I could feel the different parts: the thinking parts, the memory zones, the emotional centers. The part that controls respiration and heart rate. But they were fluid, not necessarily all in the same spot from person to person or one jack to the next. I found them by feel more than anything else.

“I don’t quite jack in.” He regarded me. “When you jack someone’s mind, you feel something, yes?”

“Like plunging my hand into a bowl of goo.”

“Goo?” A tiny smile appeared and then left. “You feel something because you are interfacing your mind field with theirs. There’s a natural resistance between the two fields. An interference, you might say.”

“A mind barrier.”

“Indeed.” The smile came back, but my shoulders hunched up. I didn’t want to discuss the finer points of jacking. Julian said he would let us go in the morning, but I didn’t trust him any more than I could jack him, which was to say not at all.

“So what are you saying?” Impatience crept into my voice. “That it doesn’t feel that way to you?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “It feels like dipping into an endless bath of dread. Or an infinite sea of joy.” He spread his hands wide. “Or a myriad of flavors in between. Everything in the reptilian part of our brains is a wash of energy on a spectrum from positive to negative.”

I looked at him like he was demens. He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never met another handler, so I’m not sure if it’s the same with everyone.”

“Handler?”

“That’s just what I call it,” he said. “When I slipped into Molloy’s reptilian brain, it was inflamed with a protective instinct, to save his brother from Kestrel. The protective instinct is very strong. It’s the kind that makes you run into a burning house to save a child, even though it puts your own life in danger. Mr. Molloy thinks you’re the key to our plan to break into Kestrel’s facility, but his methods of persuasion are more extreme than I’m willing to entertain. So I flipped his protective instinct to its opposite.”

I had a flash of fear and understood why those jackers on the street fled into their houses when they saw him coming. How could you fight someone that messed with your instincts?

“What’s the opposite instinct?”

“Peace,” Julian said. “It’s the opposite of almost any negative instinctual response. It’s not unlike the love he no doubt feels for his brother, but I don’t traffic in emotional manipulation.”

“Right.” I laid the sarcasm on heavy. “Because that would be beneath you.”

He laughed in a lighthearted way, which rubbed raw against the nerves strung tight throughout my body. “No. Because I don’t know how. I don’t jack like you do, keeper, or like most other jackers.”

“No, you just play around with people’s instincts for survival.”

“Yes, precisely.”

Suddenly I wondered if he could control me. If so, why didn’t he just jack, or
handle
, me into doing whatever he wanted in this crazy attempt on Kestrel? Then I realized Julian must have already tried.

“Wait. You were planning on
handling
me into turning myself in to Kestrel, weren’t you?”

His lips pinched in. “No, I wasn’t. Even if I wanted to, it doesn’t work that way, not for something so complicated.” He examined me again. “Although I was surprised to find that I couldn’t access the primal parts of your brain, keeper. Even Anna wasn’t able to keep me out, not that I ever would handle her. No, I thought… I thought that you would be different. That you would be more interested in the opportunity I had to offer.” He drew a long look along my Dutch Apple apron. “Obviously I was wrong about that.”

My heart twisted at his insinuation that I didn’t care about freeing the changelings. But I didn’t need to explain myself to someone who was effectively holding me and Raf hostage. “So you’ll let us go?”

“In the morning,” he said roughly, looking away from me.

“What about Raf?” I said. “If you’re going to make him sleep, at least move him to the couch. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping much, anyway.”

Julian was about to speak when banging at the front door made us all jump, even him. Then he calmly called to Myrtle in the kitchen. “Would you answer the door, please, Myrtle?”

She pulled her cardigan a little tighter and focused on the door. I felt a little sorry for whoever was on the other side, having been on the receiving end of a mental push from Myrtle.

She turned back to Julian. “It’s a contractor. He’s looking for the keeper. Has business for her.”

“Let him in,” Julian told her. He shook his head at me. “Well, it didn’t take long for word about you to get around. Don’t worry. I’ll send a message that you’re not available for business. I don’t need every contractor in town looking to make a few spare unos.”

Myrtle’s slipper shoes made swishing sounds on the concrete floor. She punched in a code at the keypad and pulled open the door. A man in a jacket with the hood thrown back stood on the other side. He was wearing a Second Skin face mask, the kind that hugged the features of his face, only this one was all black and covered his eyes and mouth as well. He could surely see through the thin film, but not an inch of skin showed. He bent his head and the mask moved with his lips as he spoke words I couldn’t hear. Myrtle swept her hand out, inviting him in. His stride was firm as he stepped across the threshold. He surveyed the room, pausing at Raf, still passed out at the table.