Crowned (29 page)

“Can I see the sleeping potion?” asks Wiki.

I hand it over. “Sleeping
draught
.”

“Semantics,” he replies, examining the dropper. “It doesn’t look like much. Any idea how potent it is?”

I shrug. “Very, knowing my grandfather. I’m sure it’ll knock me right out.”

“Cool,” says Kelly, eyeing the draught hungrily. That’s what comes of having parents in the pharmaceutical industry.

Lebz, on the other hand, radiates concern. “Connie, what are you going to do? Duma’s gone, you have no idea how to find him, you have some freaky ancient creature living inside you, and the Puppetmaster is still planning to use you to take over the world!” She pauses for breath. “And someone else has gone missing. A boy. He’s like twelve, or something.”

I shake my head sadly. Now the Puppetmaster’s targeting children?

“Connie.” I look at Lebz and see fearful tears glisten in her eyes. “You can’t do this by yourself.”

“I’m not by myself. I have you guys and Rakwena and Ntatemogolo, even if he’s being stubborn at the moment. It’s going to be fine.”

“You always say that,” she grumbles.

“And have I been wrong yet?”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Wiki murmurs.

I shoot him a dirty look. “That attitude isn’t helping.”

“I’m sorry, but Lebz is right. This isn’t kid stuff any more. We don’t even know how we can help you this time.”

“Just have my back.”

“We always have your back,” says Lebz.

“Obviously,” adds Kelly, and I smile.

* * *

Rakwena drops by later in the day. I let him in and he immediately takes me in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t mean to shut you out yesterday. It was just a lot to take.”

“I know.” I close my eyes and soak up his energy, and when he releases me I pull away with reluctance. “How’s everyone doing?”

“Not good. Temper’s furious. He’s in trouble with the rest of the council…” He sighs. “It seems like someone’s always in trouble. We have people searching, but this isn’t our turf. We don’t really know how to deal with the Puppetmaster.”

“No one does.”

“Except you.” His gaze is pleading.

“You know I’ll do whatever I can to help. I’ve tried talking to him – he’s off the radar. But I’ll keep trying. At some point we’ll find out where he’s hiding.” I lead him to the sofa. “I guess you haven’t heard the news.”

He lowers himself onto the cushions with a frown. “What now?”

“Thuli’s been taken.” I sit beside him and go over the story again, and at the end of it I see something resembling a smile on his lips.

“Well, at least one good thing came out of all this,” he says. I expected this reaction; he was never a Thuli fan, but after that little incident in Thuli’s bedroom the freak hunter has been at the top of Rakwena’s hit list.

“We don’t know that it’s a good thing. The idea of an ungifted in the Puppetmaster’s clutches doesn’t exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling.”

“Even if it’s Thuli?” He raises his eyebrows at me. “Come on. You must have felt a little satisfaction. Just a little.”

“Maybe a tiny bit,” I confess. “Though I was kind of preoccupied by the fact that he disappeared before my eyes.”

“Poor Connie,” he says, and he’s only half serious.

“It wasn’t like the others. I don’t think he took Thuli because of the Loosening. I think he took him because Thuli was trying to hurt me.”

Rakwena tenses. “You think he was protecting you?”

“Well, it wouldn’t help his plans if Thuli strangled me to death.”

Rakwena withdraws his hand. I sense his discomfort, but he doesn’t say a word. I reach for his mind.

“Your barrier’s grown stronger,” I muse.

“Ja.” He looks at me with a thoughtful frown. “You know, the boys say all their gifts seem stronger around you. Like what we did when we fought the army. We couldn’t do that before, and we haven’t been able to do it since. We tried. We couldn’t synchronise our gifts that way, make them work together. It was you.”

I shake my head. “It was her.”

He falls silent and looks down at his hands. “Are you scared of her?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think you should be?”

I lean back into the cushions. “She’s on our side. She wants to stop the Loosening.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

I heave an impatient sigh. “That’s like asking how I know my conscience is on my side. I just know, OK? The Ultima is a pain in the butt, but she’s a force for good.”

“OK. Let’s say she
is
good. That doesn’t mean she’s not also dangerous.”

I shoot him a defiant glance.

“You don’t control her,” he continues. “She controls you. Knowing that, how can you not be scared?”

I don’t know how to explain this to him. I sit quietly for a moment, trying to see things from his perspective. Rakwena and I are alike in certain ways, but very different in others. He spent his whole life terrified of his drifter nature. I’ve been ambivalent about my gift. There were times I even hated it. But I’ve never been afraid of it. It’s part of me. I understand it, and I can’t fear what I understand.

When we’re afraid of something, on an instinctive biological level where rational thought has no place, we want only one thing – the annihilation of the thing we fear. Fear knows no reason. It’s fight or flight, and you choose one. Rakwena had no choice. He couldn’t run from his enemy because it’s in his DNA. All he could do was try to kill it, in the misguided belief that killing it would save him. He didn’t see the truth that was so clear to the rest of us – his enemy was not a separate entity, a parasite in his body that he could expel. It was bound to him.

That’s how I feel about the Ultima. She’s not me…and yet she is. She’s not a demon to be exorcised. She’s in my body, and as long as that’s true fighting her is like fighting myself. I can resist her. I can argue and refuse to listen, but that will only get me in trouble. What happened at the warehouse is proof of that. She may have invaded my body and turned my life upside down, but now I’m her vessel and she’s my backup power source. We need each other.

“In the beginning I was scared,” I admit, curling my legs under me. “I didn’t know what was going on. There was something different inside me, something I’d never experienced before. But I was only scared because I didn’t know what it was. I know now.” I look at him, hoping he’ll understand. I can take Ntatemogolo’s doubt, but not Rakwena’s. I need Rakwena in my corner. “I don’t like her, but…I trust her.”

I can see the confusion on his face. He’s struggling to comprehend. “Connie…” His jaw snaps shut, tense with frustration. “How can you trust her when you don’t even know what she is? Is she some kind of spiritual being? An angel? A demon? Is she a form of old earth magic? An alien?”

I lift my shoulders in a shrug.

“And yet you’re willing to let her use your body – your gift – however she pleases?”

I manage a half-smile. “It’s not like she asked permission.”

“But you’re going along with it.”

I nod.

He shakes his head. “What happened while I was gone? You’re different.”

My heart drops and I swallow hard. “Good different?”

He frowns. “I don’t know. Yes, I guess. More confident.” He sighs and reaches for my hand, his tingle running from my fingertips right up my arm. “I trust you. You know that, right?” He waits for my nod before continuing. “But I don’t get this. You have these weird relationships with weird people. The Puppetmaster – John to you – is your enemy, and yet the two of you have this…connection. You’re in each other’s heads. It’s like a secret language that shuts the rest of the world out. And now there’s this Ultima who body-snatches you, and you act like she’s a divine messenger!”

I’m disappointed that he doesn’t get it, but it was unrealistic to expect him to.

“Connie.” I look up into his face. “I’m worried about you.” His fingers brush my cheek and a fiery tingle runs through me.

I can see it coming. I should stop it. I know I should…but I don’t want to. His lips brush mine ever so lightly. The tingle leaps into my jaw. I close my eyes…and see the faces of the council. What am I thinking? They’ll never let us be together. I press my hand against his chest and push him away.

“I miss you,” he breathes, but missing me won’t change a thing.

“You know this won’t work.”

He slumps back against the cushions. “So what do you want? You want us to be buddies? Like you and Wiki? Hang out, give each other advice?” He slams his fist into a cushion and I catch a whiff of burning fibres. “I don’t want to be your buddy!”

“Nobody cares what you want!” I snatch the cushion out of his reach before he does any further damage. “You’re not in charge. The rules say we can’t be together, and maybe they’re right.”

His eyes widen. “You don’t mean that.”

“How is a relationship between us going to work? Are you going to go against your cell, like your father?” I shake my head. “I know you. If they forbid you from seeing me you’ll get in your car and disappear. Sure, you’ll miss me, but you’ll get over it. The world is full of girls! You’ll be fine.”

He stares at me for what feels like a lifetime. This time I don’t see it coming. He grabs me, and there is nothing sweet or romantic about it. It’s almost an attack. He kisses me hard, in anger, but even then I long to lose myself in it, to surrender to the energy coursing through me. But I can’t. I push him away again.

“Does that feel like something you can just get over?” There’s a blue dot in each of his eyes, growing with each breath. “Tell me you’re not going to be thinking about that kiss, replaying it in your mind every chance you get.”

“You’re not
that
good,” I snap breathlessly. “And even if you were, it’s just biology!” My heart is pounding, but it doesn’t feel like biology. It feels like magic.

Rakwena makes a disgusted sound and gets to his feet. “I have to go.”

I stare at him, annoyed. Why do I have to be the voice of reason? I don’t like that role. It doesn’t suit me. “Hey, why are you upset? Did I ask you to kiss me?” I follow him to the door.

“Obviously I made a mistake.” He opens the door and then stops to glance at me. “We’ll talk later,
buddy
.”

I roll my eyes at his retreating back. “Don’t be such a baby!”

“Sorry,
pal
,” he calls over his shoulder, kicking the gate open.

Ugh! Boys. Can’t he see that I’m right? In a perfect world there would be no drifter code, but we don’t live in a perfect world and we have to act accordingly. I watch him drive off in a huff, and slam the door shut. He’s so damn cocky, assuming his lips have some kind of supernatural effect on me. Well, they do, but he has no business taking that for granted.

He’s right, though. Until Dad hurries into the house about two hours later, the kiss is almost all I can think about.

Dad drops his briefcase on the dining table and rushes over to me, eyes wide.

“Are you OK, love? I heard the news. They say someone in your office disappeared, and you were the only witness!”

The romantic bubble bursts, and I’m back in the world of kidnappings and Puppetmasters. “I’m fine, Dad.”

“How can you be fine? You’ve witnessed two abductions in as many days, both of them rather close to home.” He touches my forehead and cheeks with the back of his hand, as though supernatural kidnappings are known to induce a fever. “You must be distraught.”

I sigh. “I’m OK.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

I shake my head. I haven’t even thought about food.

“Should I make you a sandwich?”

I resist a smile. A sandwich is about the only thing he can make without burning down the house. “No, thanks.”

He sinks onto the sofa beside me. “This Puppetmaster business is getting out of hand.”

Oh, you don’t know the half of it, I think to myself. “I’m working on it. But right now I think I’m going to crash, if that’s OK.”

“Of course.” He kisses my forehead. “I wish there was something I could do. Tea?” he suggests hopefully. “With lemon and honey?”

“We’ve never had honey in this house, Dad.”

“With lemon?”

“I don’t think we have lemons, either.”

“Just tea, then?”

I laugh. “Sure. Thanks.”

I head to my room to change, and a moment later he knocks and enters with a steaming mug of milky tea.

He watches me carefully, as though he’s afraid I might have a sudden breakdown. I’m amazed he hasn’t broken down himself.

“You know, we could go to the UK,” he says suddenly. “Get away from it all.”

I blow on the tea, then set the mug down on my bedside table. “Away from what? The Puppetmaster?”

He nods. “Just for a little while.”

I smile at his naivety. “He’ll just fly after us.”

His face pales. “Please tell me you’re talking about flying in a plane.”

I bite my lip to keep from giggling. “Actually, he has a spaceship.”

“Ha ha,” he grumbles, before wishing me goodnight and closing the door.

I shake my head, pull back my duvet, climb into bed and pick up the mug. I’ve just taken the first sweet sip when I feel the Puppetmaster’s consciousness come barging into my head without knocking, as usual.

You still owe me one meeting.

I put the mug down again.
I don’t owe you a damn thing.

You’re upset. I understand.

I’m more than upset! You tricked me, you twisted bastard!

I apologise. A necessary deception.

Aren’t they all, where you’re concerned?

He doesn’t answer. Instead he says, in that infuriating paternal tone,
You gave quite an impressive performance, my dear, but you still have work to do. You’ve abandoned the puzzle box. I think you should make another attempt to solve it.

I ignore him.
Tell me how to find you.

Not yet.

Where the hell is Duma? What are you doing to him? And Thuli?

That fool. I thought you’d be pleased to be rid of him.