Copper Veins (13 page)

Sadie shrugged. “Maybe it was too far away?”

I nodded, but that explanation didn't feel right. In fact, none of this felt right.

“This is a storage facility,” Jerome explained, looking inside the driver's side window of one vehicle after another, probably to check for keys or eyeball the gas gauge on the older models. “The ones in back are pretty rough, but the ones up front are in good shape. We can hop in one of these and be out before they know to look for you.”

We? “Hey.” I grabbed Jerome's arm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Commander Corbeau sent me,” Jerome replied, as if it was obvious.

“Dad?” the three of us said in unison. “He's okay?”
I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Jerome replied. “Can't hold a man like him for long. Once he escaped, he went right to the resistance and sent me here for the three of you.”

Untold layers of panic and stress were rinsed off of me like grime in a rainstorm. If Dad had gotten free, it was only a short amount of time until we'd be back in the Otherworld. Maybe we'd even meet him, Micah, and Mom as they charged to our rescue.

“This one's the one!” Jerome proclaimed, thumping the door of an old blue truck. “Windows are tinted, and I can hotwire it. Let's hope it has a full tank.”

“Why do tinted windows matter if you'll be the one driving?” Sadie pressed.

Jerome blinked—something told me that he wasn't an intelligence officer. “The fact that I can hotwire it is more important.”

“No need for hotwiring,” Max said, stepping forward to lay his hands on the trunk. “I can start it.”

“Really?” I mumbled. Talk about a convenient, if somewhat criminal, talent.

“How do you think I used to get to school?” Max asked.

“Like you ever went,” I smirked.

Max's smirk faded as he shot me a glare, then he stretched his fingers and repositioned his hands.

Nothing happened.

Max stretched, replaced his hands, and tried again.

Nothing happened again.

“Fuck!” he yelled, kicking the tire for good measure. “They drugged us!”

“What? When?” I demanded. “No one's been near enough to drug us!”

“The water,” Max said. “Goddamnit, I should have known.” He leaned against the truck and scrubbed his face with his hands. “They dissolved the dampeners in the water. That way, they didn't need to risk being near us when we had use of our abilities. We drugged ourselves.”

“Dampeners,” I repeated. I'd never heard of any drug called that before. “How were they so sure they'd work on us?”

Max lowered his hands just enough to make eye contact with me. “Who do you think twas their guinea pig?” I shuddered, the chill in Max's tone turning my blood to ice. I remembered when I found him at the Institute, closed up in that plastic tube with wires and probes covering his skin. I'd never felt so helpless in my life, seeing my big brother reduced to little more than a glorified lab rat. And now we learned that for the past three days we'd been guzzling the same drugs that had been tested on Max. Just another one of life's cruel little jokes.

“We can still take the truck,” Jerome said, rousing me from my dark thoughts. “I can get it running.” He opened the driver's side door and wiggled under the dashboard. After a bit of rummaging and swearing, the truck's engine roared to life.

“Like no one can hear that,” I muttered. Everyone ignored me, probably because I'd been drowned out by said roaring engine. Jerome got behind the wheel as Max and Sadie dragged open the garage doors. I squinted into the sunlight, wondering if this was how moles felt, then my siblings and I hopped into the bed of the truck. We covered ourselves with a ragged tarp that had been left moldering away in the bed, and placed our lives in a Peacekeeper's hands as Jerome pulled out of the garage.

The truck backfired about every thirty seconds, and the tarp smelled even worse than the cell floor had, but we were moving. We stopped after a few turns and heard Jerome speaking to someone, probably a perimeter guard. Jerome explained that he had to do a pickup of some rather nasty material, hence the jalopy he was piloting. Amazingly, the guard let him drive away without searching the bed, probably due to the unholy stench emanating from the tarp.

We huddled under the tarp as the truck lurched forward, the lack of functional shocks making us bounce around the bed like rubber balls. After the truck had completed a few wobbly turns, Max peeked out from underneath the tarp.

“All clear,” he announced, and we threw off the stinking cover, sucking in lungfuls of clean, sweet air. Jerome glanced over his shoulder, his lowered brows telling us that he'd rather we remained hidden, but kept driving. After an hour or so, Jerome pulled
off the road, going down a dirt trail and into the surrounding woods until the trees were too dense to go any further. Jerome threw the truck into park, and we clambered out of the bed.

“C'mon,” Jerome said after he'd gotten out of the cab. “There's a cave down this way. We can hide out there for a while.”

With that, Jerome started down the trail, the three of us following. The path soon faded away to nothing, and we picked our way through the trees. It had rained recently, and the rain coupled with the fallen leaves had made the forest floor slick and muddy. As we beat our way through the underbrush, I tried identifying the trees we passed. There were hemlocks, maples, and pines aplenty, but not an oak in sight.

“What's that?” Jerome said, having overheard my muttering.

“There aren't any oaks here,” I repeated, a bit louder. “The oaks are Micah's allies.” I clutched my oak leaf and acorn token, wondering if I'd see an oak anytime soon. I had no idea if an oak in the Mundane realm could get a message to one of its brethren in the Otherworld, but I was sure as hell going to try.

“Micah,” Jerome repeated. “Is that the guy you're always with at The Promenade?”

“That ‘guy' is my husband,” I snapped. “His full name is Micah Silverstrand, Lord of Silver.”

Jerome whistled. “Excuse me, Princess Silver.”

“I'm sorry. It's just…” I maneuvered to avoid a tree branch that Max had let go of. Jerome caught it and gestured for me to go first. “Thanks. Anyway, I don't mean to be such a jerk. Being a prisoner kinda got on my nerves.”

“I hear ya. Peacekeepers aren't the best hosts.”

“And it's Lady.”

Jerome's brow wrinkled. “Huh?”

“My title. It's Lady Silverstrand, not Princess Silver.”

Jerome laughed, roaring almost as loudly as the truck had, and I felt another weight lift from my shoulders. Dad had already escaped from whatever cell the Peacekeepers had put him in, and he had sent Jerome to help us. Even though we were trudging through an oakless forest a million miles away from the Whispering Dell, I let myself believe that I would be home with Micah soon.

Eventually we made it to a rocky outcrop and the cave Jerome had mentioned. Only this cave was more than just a hollow space. While the interior still had a dirt floor and rock walls, it also had desks, cabinets, and a few cots pushed against the far end.

“Is this a resistance base?” Sadie asked, hesitantly touching her fingertips to the metal lockers that lined the wall.

“More like a hideout,” Jerome explained. “We don't have any electricity, running water, web or com links, so we're totally off the grid. We can hide here for a
while, and plan our next move.” We nodded as one, then Max ventured deeper into the cave.

“Got any fey stones?” Max asked, peering into the murky depths.

“None of those, either,” Jerome replied. He opened a desk drawer and produced a few old-fashioned, battery-powered flashlights. “This location is in a sniffer zone.”

“Sniffer?” I asked.

“Peacekeepers have teams trained to sense magic,” Jerome explained. “They're made up of learned magicians. They canvas areas in set routes via aerial and ground transport, and report on where they sense unauthorized magic usage.”

Unauthorized. Ha. As if I needed the government's approval to be myself. “Is that how you found that man, the day we met on Real Estate Row?”

Jerome dropped his gaze—I bet he was hoping that I'd forgotten how he sentenced a man to death while simultaneously hitting on me. “Yeah, that's exactly how we found him.”

“Did he die?” I pressed. “Or did you help him, like you're helping us?”

“Wolanski was not a good man,” Jerome said.

“You ordered his death,” I said, backing away from Jerome. “All for running a gambling pool?”

“You know how he ran that gambling pool? How he knew which bets to back?” Jerome shot back. “He bled out kids and read the future in their blood. Little
kids!” Realizing that shouting wasn't the best way to lie low, he continued in a softer tone, “Resistance or not, that sick bastard deserved what he got.”

I hated to agree with him, but he had a point. Being born into magic didn't make one any better than a non-magical person, morally or otherwise. The Iron Queen and Old Stoney had proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Before I could say as much, Jerome started flinging open the metal lockers.

“There's food in here and a well out back,” he said without looking at us. “You'll want to drink a lot of water to flush out the drugs. There probably wasn't much in the food they left you, if you didn't taste them.”

“Those cookies tasted like crap,” Sadie muttered.

“Yeah, well, all our food tastes like crap.” With that, Jerome grabbed a bucket and headed outside, presumably toward the well. I glanced into the lockers—the food consisted of dried fruit and meat, perfect for long-term storage and a veritable banquet after the cookies we'd been subsisting on. I grabbed a packet of beef jerky and followed Jerome out of the cave.

I went the wrong way at first, but a splash told me where the well and Jerome were. I found him just as he was hauling up the bucket—he'd taken off his flak jacket, and through his thin brown T-shirt I could see the muscles work in his shoulders and back. He had a nice body, and coupled with his dark curls and eyes
he was pretty attractive. Maybe I could hook him up with Sadie.

“I'm sorry,” I said to his back. “I shouldn't have jumped down your throat like that.”

“Peacekeepers are assholes.” He grabbed the bucket and set it on the well's edge. “It's only natural that you think I'm one.”

“You're not,” I said. “This rescue, being part of the resistance…” I spread my hands, trying to encompass everything that had happened in the past few days. “What you did for us is pretty amazing.”

Jerome flashed me a grin. “Yeah, us resistance folks are pretty cool.” He filled a dipper with water and offered it to me. “So, you're a missus now?”

“Sure am,” I said, extending my arm and showing off my shiny new wedding ring.

“Too bad you stood me up for our date. Maybe I could have swayed you,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

I laughed, more at his ridiculous expression than at the concept of me dating him. “I'd already met Micah by then,” I said. “I thought he'd been captured by you guys. That's why I was driving like a lunatic that morning on Real Estate Row.”

“I remember,” he said with a nod. “So tell me about him.”

“Micah? Well, he's an elf lord in the Otherworld.”

Jerome whistled. “Yeah, you said that. So he's not a lame corporal like me?”

I ignored that question. “And he's sweet, and kind, and the most handsome man I've ever met.” Jerome raised an eyebrow. Okay, maybe I was gushing. “He's a metal Elemental like me, but he's of silver. He even lives in a silver manor. But we're adding some copper,” I added.

“How did a nice office worker like you manage to fall in with the Lord of Silver?”

I was so not telling Jerome
that
story. “Oh, you know. The usual ways. Let's bring Max and Sadie some water.”

While Jerome showed Max and Sadie what was in the various lockers and drawers, I sat near a small propane cooking unit. It was blazing, and I'd balanced a pot on it filled with well water and some shredded beef jerky. Thanks to the drugs that had ravaged his body while he was at the Institute, Max's digestive system still had a hard time processing heavy foods like meat, so I was trying to boil down the jerky to broth so he could get some much-needed protein into his body. I'd even added some dried cherries, hoping the bright fruit flavor would mask what would probably be the worst-tasting soup in history.

As I stirred the pot, I thought about Micah. Or rather, my relationship with Micah. While I wasn't ready to say anything out loud, least of all with
Jerome around, my train of thought was bringing me to less-than-desirable places.

This endless circle of destruction began when Jerome had asked me about Micah. Micah. He had to be worried sick. I thought about him pacing the manor, coordinating a search party, racking his brain for where Dad would take the three of us. Unless…

My heart clenched. Unless he thought I'd abandoned him, traveled with Max and Sadie and Dad to the Mundane realm not just to stop the Peacekeepers but to build a new life. Without him. The thought chilled me. He'd wonder why I hadn't said anything to him or left him a message with Shep.
But he should trust you enough to know you'd come back—you left with Sadie and Max and Dad!

Dad. Micah should have trusted me, but I knew without a doubt that he didn't fully trust my father. And he hadn't seemed to think my own trust meant anything at all. That thought stirred old anger in me. The way he'd made Dad so uncomfortable about his lost memories. And how he hadn't woken me to go with him to the Golden Court to negotiate with Oriana. And how he'd screamed at me after we'd gone to see the crone, Gods, like he thought I was some baby who'd give her anything she wanted for a cup of coffee.