Dragon Justice (7 page)

Most of what we did these days was careful, regulated, and
always, always thought out in advance. I had absolutely no idea what I was going
to do right then, except it involved keeping anyone—human or fatae—from getting
killed.

One of the girls saw me, and I could tell from her body
language that she wasn’t sure if I was friend or foe. Trying to reassure her,
without catching the fataes’ attention, I nearly fell over one of the
camouflaged lumps and kicked aside something small and shiny. A metal tent peg.
I grabbed it instinctively, and the moment the cool metal hit my palm, I had a
plan.

I ignored the individual scuffles, dodged around a fatae who
tried to grab at me, and made it to the center of the scrum. Holding the spike
up over my head, I gathered all of that wild current and sent it into the metal,
wrapping it tight with hot blue threads of my own core-current, forcing it to my
will.

“Sit
down
,” I yelled and put all my
annoyance, my frustration, my worry, and my sheer irritation at wasting time
with this crap into those two words.

The magic echoed like a thunderclap under the tree branches,
and I swear I heard some of the granite behind me calve off and splinter in
response. The effect on the fatae was gratifying. They weren’t built to actually
sit down, but they dropped to the ground anyway, bellies low and clawed hands
down. The humans went down like someone had cut their strings, in at least one
instance falling over her erstwhile opponent.

“
Stay
down,” I said, still annoyed,
when one of the humans tried to get back up, and she subsided. A fierce looking
chica,
maybe midteens, with dirty blond hair in
a braid and a pair of brown eyes that were currently trying to glare me in half.
She was pissed and wanted to get back into the fight. Despite myself, I started
to grin and had to force it back. Now was not the time to admire her scruff.

The magic, amplified through the metal spike, had hit the
ground hard, hard enough that there were still sparks in the dirt, moving like
miniature whirlwinds. When one of the fatae shifted, it sparked him—her,
it?—hard enough that it uttered a clear yelp and turned to glare at me with the
pained expression of its human counterpart.

Apparently, I had ruined their party.

“Life sucks, kids,” I said to both of them.

There was a scuffling noise behind me, somehow managing to
sound graceful, and I knew even before the fatae all looked in that direction
that Rorani had decided to join us.

“This will not do,” she said. “This is not acceptable.”

The human children—and this close I could see that they were in
fact all children, none of them past fourteen, probably—went wide-eyed in
astonishment and fear. The fatae were just very attentive. I’d never seen—hell,
I’d never even heard of a dryad losing her temper, but that was very much what
was happening next to me. It took every bit of control I had not to step
away.

Rorani wasn’t sparking, or yelling, or waving her arms. She
had, in fact, gone very still and very tall, and the impression was not of a
delicate, willowy lady but an ancient tree, deep-rooted and stern, standing
beside me.

“Sweet Dog of Mercy,” I whispered, barely audible even to
myself. Rorani was an American Chestnut.

To survive the blight, to live so long after her tree-kin had
died out and been replaced by lesser trees… There was a lot about the Lady of
the Greening, and the way the fatae reacted to her, that made more sense
now.

“The Greening is large. Treaties exist. Even if these humans
did not know, you did.” She was talking to the fatae then. “You knew, and were
warned to behave, and yet…this? This attack?”

The pissy-looking fatae shifted its gaze, and the others all
looked down at the ground. In that moment I realized something: these fatae were
teenagers, too. Or whatever passed for it, in their lifecycle.

We’d interrupted the equivalent of a teenage gang turf war.

“You.” I pivoted slowly and took on the brown-eyed human.
“Where are the rest of your folk?”

She glared at me, utterly defiant. She’d get up in an instant
and start the fight again, not cowed by the magic show I’d just put on or the
fact that her opponents looked like something from a high-budget sci-fi flick.
She might be Null, but magic didn’t impress her much. If I were a high-res user,
or could make with the mojo, I’d change that, fast, but I’d always been brutally
honest about my capabilities. I was smarter, faster, and able to outthink most
other Talent, thanks to J’s and Venec’s training, but I would get blown off the
curb in a real power-off. And pulling all that wild current, without warning,
had given me the start of a serious stomachache.

“I’m not the enemy here,” I said impatiently. “In fact, I just
saved your asses. You might have won this fight, but you might not have, and
even if you did, you’re outnumbered here. You know that, right?”

“We’re protected.”

That was from another of the girls, the one who had been
reading up on the rock. She was about the same age, still skinny, still looking
like someone needed to tuck her into bed, not toss her into the street.

“Protected?” Rorani had said that their leader was a Null. Was
Rorani wrong? Or was another person, a Talent, protecting them? If so, why? I
held up a hand, the current still sparking under my skin, making it look like it
was wreathed in bright blue smoke, and showed it to her. “Like this?”

She glanced at my hand, swallowed, and looked away. Not scared,
but…disturbed? They definitely knew magic, same as they knew fatae; enough to
deal with it, but not anywhere enough to be comfortable. Or, probably,
understand exactly what they were dealing with.

Their leader had taught them, but not well. That probably meant
they weren’t as protected as they thought, either.

I looked at Rorani, whose lovely face was still set in stern
lines that would have made me quake if it was directed at me. The fatae
certainly knew they were in deep shit, the way they were still flat on their
bellies.

“You,” she said now. “Take your fellows and be gone. This place
is now mine.”

The lead fatae actually had the cojones to try and protest.
“We…”

“I have spoken.”

And that was that. It and its fellows got up, moving slow and
careful, and slid back out the way they came.

“Will they cause trouble later?” I asked her, watching them
go.

“They will not. Their elders…possibly. It will depend.” She
looked over the remaining humans and sighed, the sound of wind through leaves.
“These are your people. You will be able to manage it?”

To most fatae, humans were all one breed: Talent or Null,
lonejack or Council. I’d expected more of Rorani, but it wasn’t as though I
could hand these idiots over to her. And I still had my own case to follow up
on, something I’d nearly forgotten in the current-rush and the confusion of the
fight.

My stomachache got worse. The thought of my girl being
somewhere among these would-be toughs meant there might be others stolen away,
too. Maybe all of them.

Even if babygirl wasn’t here, I couldn’t walk away from this,
not without knowing who was teaching them and who was—allegedly—protecting
them.

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” I told Rorani.

“Then I shall leave you to your work, and I shall manage mine.”
She offered me her hand, and I took it. The flesh was hard but soft at the same
time, like velvet over bone, and I had the moment’s thought that I should bow
over it, not shake it.

Then the moment passed. Rorani turned away, blending into the
landscape the same way she’d appeared, and I was left with four uncowed,
unbiddable teenage girls who clearly saw no reason to answer any of my
questions.

Chapter 5

“You say you’re protected.” I had settled with my butt
on an outcrop of rock, giving me the double advantage of covering my back and
making it look like I was just lounging, totally in control of the situation.
The first rule of interrogation, as per Benjamin Venec, was to proceed as though
you were utterly certain that you would be given all the answers you wanted, in
time. Let the perp worry about how you planned to get those answers.

“You can’t make us talk,” the third girl said, all spitfire
defiance. Oh, darling, I just did. But I only smiled and nodded my head. “You’re
right, I can’t. Well, I could, but that would be messy and you’d probably lie,
anyway. At first.”

I let that sink in for half a breath.

“Seriously,” I continued, girl-to-girl. “You’re not dumb. You
know what I am—you weren’t surprised by the magic—so you know I can do stuff you
can’t.”

There was a twitch at that, just the slightest twitch, but I
caught it. Rorani had said these girls were all Nulls, hadn’t she? I tried to
remember. The missing girls were all Nulls, mine and Danny’s. Did they think
they could do magic, too? Had their protector gathered them here to be some kind
of modern hedge-witch coven? Well, stranger things than that had happened in the
Park before, the past few hundred years, but…

It always happened during a case, that click click click moment
when a few pieces just snapped into place. Not a cult: a coven.

That would explain the transits of seven: like I’d thought, it
was an attempt at old-ways magic. The ability to manage current was born in you;
it could be trained, but not taught. But there were always people who tried,
using all the old ways—sacrifices and potions, prayers and bargains—and all too
often listening to fatae happy to take advantage of gullible humans.

The old ways had been unreliable and variable and failed more
than they succeeded, but if you had the right place and the right words and did
the right things, even Nulls—those who weren’t entirely current-blind—could
summon a wisp of natural power. Just enough to make them want more.

“Did your protector teach you about magic? Did she promise to
teach you?” A charismatic, luring girls—young girls, almost-brilliant,
almost-pretty, wanting to be special—with the promise of learning magic. How
could they resist?

“She said—” one of them started.

“Shut up!” That was my fierce
chica,
trying to regain control.

Now all four glared at me, upset and angry and, in at least one
case, about to cry. I was such utter crap at interrogation. Sharon would have
had them spilling everything from the name of their first Barbie to who they
fantasized about at night, by now.

They would have been fourteen when they were taken, assuming
they weren’t originally in a seven-year-old bunch. No, Rorani would have said if
they’d been here that long. I tried to remember being fourteen—okay. Yeah.

“I don’t care,” I said, playing it jaded and way
tougher-than-thou. “I really don’t. You can play circle-the-pole and play at
hedge-witchery until you’re forty. Have fun. I’m looking for someone.” Three
someones, actually, but one they might be willing to give up; three would be too
much.

“A little girl named Molly,” I went on. “A baby, next to you
guys, and she’s too young to be out here. You know that.” They were nearly
adults, after all, my tone said. Old enough to make decisions, choose for
themselves. But a little one like that?

There was silence, then my fierce
chica
with the tough brown eyes nodded, trying to match my tough
’tude. “I said she was too young. But…”

Normally, the “her parents want her home” line would have been
my next line, but something warned me that might be the wrong card to play. Huh.
No, not me. That was Venec’s experience, lingering through the Merge. I’d gotten
better at scenting out that particular flavor, although it still freaked me out
a little, the way it got through every wall we put up.

Like kenning. Damned annoying, and damned useful.

“She’s out here with you? She’s with the others now?” Rorani
had implied a largish group, so it was a calculated assumption, that there were
at least three others, to make it ten, and probably more.

“They’re training. We alternate, so nobody gets worn-out.” The
girl who had been silent until now spoke up, shaking off the look of disgust my
chica
gave her. “Oh, give it up, Steph. She
knows. And she’s not going to drag us home, are you?”

I wanted to. I really did. Drag them home and make sure their
parents spanked them for being such brats. But they weren’t Talent, and I wasn’t
a social worker. “No. You guys are here of your own free will, you’re not being
mistreated…so, no. I’m not.”

I might mention it to Danny, though. And their leader? Oh, I
was so going to check her out. Even without the kenning telling me this was
trouble, anyone dragging teenagers out into the woods—or what passed for
woods—to teach them magic was something we needed to know about. If she was a
harmless witch-wannabe, whatever her actual intentions, then it would be a
matter for the cops. But if she were a Talent, then it was our
responsibility—ours meaning the
Cosa
in general, not
PSI specifically. And a Talent luring Nulls? Oh, that could be potentially so
very bad. The Burning had been a long time ago, but we were never allowed to
forget what could—and did—happen when Nulls got scared.

But first, get the missing girl home and the Fey Folk off our
backs.

“It’s all right, Steph,” I said, keeping my body relaxed,
although the stone was beginning to dig into my back. “All I want to do is make
sure the little’un is okay.”

“Why? Why do you care? It’s not like anyone’s paid attention to
any of us before. Nobody told us—” Steph’s jaw clamped shut, hard, on whatever
she was about to say.

Damn it, I’d just gotten her mad enough… And then I realized we
weren’t alone in the ravine anymore. I turned slowly, pivoting toward my left,
and saw a handful of girls standing there, staring at me. All teenagers or a
little older. None of them, I knew immediately, were the unnamed leader: too
young. And none of them were Danny’s missing two.

I finally did what I should have the moment they mentioned
magic, if I hadn’t been distracted by the fight: I pulled a tendril of current
from my core and let it waft over the new arrivals. Among Talent, it’s the
polite way of asking if anyone’s there. Even if they’re trying to pass as Null
for some reason, there would be a response, an instinctive reaction to current
being offered to them. Nulls wouldn’t even notice, would be as oblivious to it
as they would a dog whistle.

All five of the newcomers stiffened as though I’d slapped them,
and I could feel current stir, but not a single one of them responded; I
couldn’t even feel them restraining it, just a sense of it being there, but at
the same time, not.

And that, in a day of odd, was seriously odd.

“Keep your cool, guys,” I said, trying to remember every lesson
Venec had ever given about keeping body language nonthreatening but not weak.
Shoulders down, chin up, gaze steady, palms forward, check…don’t sweat…not so
much with the check. “I just helped your friends avoid an attack by other Park
locals, so that makes me a friendly.”

“It’s cool,” Steph said, surprising the hell out of me.
“Relax.”

“She’s one of them.” A girl in the back of the newcomers, her
skin the color of blackstrap molasses and her voice the clean-edged, fast-spoken
rhythm of a native New Yorker, set her chin and glared at me. What was with all
the glaring these girls did? Had I been like that at fourteen?

Inner honesty made me say, yes, I had.

“She’s not like that. I mean, she’s…” The third girl from what
I was starting to think of as “my” group trailed off, looking at Steph
uncertainly. I needed another set of eyes to track everything that was
happening, because there was no way I was taking more than ten percent of my
attention off the newcomers, not yet.

“She wants to know about Mollywog,” Steph said.

“Mollywog’s ours,” the third girl said, possessively.

“Molly’s too young for this. All the little’uns are. You know
that, no matter what she said.”

A lanky brunette crossed her arms over her chest and looked
incredulous. “You’re challenging her?”

Steph looked down at the ground, her mouth tight with
unhappiness. No, she wasn’t going to challenge their leader, even if she didn’t
feel good about something. Was that the natural inclination of a beta-dog in the
pack, or was there something more going on here?

Not my worry, not right now, anyway. I was an investigator, not
a social worker, damn it.

“Let me talk to Molly,” I said. “Assure myself that she’s okay.
Can I do that, at least? Is she nearby?”

Silence.

I took a deep breath, then let it out in a long swoosh. All
right, then.

“I’ve been helpful, and I’ve been gentle. Now I’m starting to
get annoyed.” The difference between Talent and Null isn’t will, or brains, or
fairy dust. It’s a purely physical ability to recognize and manipulate the
natural power generated around us, running alongside electricity. Some of that
power is manmade…but the original current, the most powerful current, is
wild.

Central Park, home to not one but three ley lines, practically
seethed with it. I’d already pulled from it once, to stop the fight, so it was
easy enough to tap the nearest line again and gather its energy to me.

“Spirits, gather. Hear my call.

Tree and dell, rock and pond;

Invaders come

Defend your land!”

The speechifying was all utter crap, of course, but the way the
current swirled to me was very real, the electric-neon sparks visible—and enough
to make just about any Null shit their pants.

Raw current was impressive-looking but useless: I shaped the
current into the first thing that came to mind: a thick-bladed bastard sword
like the one J had in his study. His was an antique gag gift, not capable of
doing anything more than knocking you unconscious with a concussion. But mine
was sharp and deadly, shimmering with power, poised in midair with the blade up
and tilted over my shoulder as though awaiting my command.

The girls didn’t look quite scared enough, although there was a
lot of nervous body movement, so I added a little over-the-top flash.

“Intruders. Mortal fools…”

The voice was straight out of central casting, a low,
hollow-sounding voice, gender neutral and one hundred percent unnerving. I think
I’d remembered it from some god-awful scream-queen movie Nick made me watch one
night last winter.

Two of the girls shrieked, and out of the corner of my eye I
saw one of them sink to her knees, whether in prayer or terror I’m not sure. I
kept my attention on the de facto leaders of each group, though, tough-
chica
Steph and the dark-skinned girl in back, who was
still glaring at me like I’d done everything wrong in her entire life. Steph had
started, but otherwise not reacted. They both knew it was magic, but they
weren’t entirely sure if it was me or I’d really called up the spirits of the
Park.

The sword tilted a little more, and—feeling the surprising
weight on my shoulder—I briefly wondered the same thing. As Farshad learned that
morning—god, only this morning?—just because you call up A, that doesn’t mean B
isn’t also listening.

Well, if I did have some help with this, so much the
better.

“This Park was created for all,” I said, trying to pick my way
through words that would both accomplish what I needed and not piss off any
magic, old or otherwise, that might have come to watch. What did I know about
the Park? Not much. Built in the 1800s, it had been mostly unusable land, but
there had been people living here, hadn’t there? Poor folk who’d been kicked
out, and…I tried to remember anything I’d ever been told, anything I’d ever
read, thankful again for my near-perfect recall. There had been an
African-American community somewhere near here, yeah. Freedmen and their
families. Family bonds. Okay.

“It was created for all, claimed by all. You have every right
to be here…but not to take a child from her parents. Her parents miss her.”

I actually had no idea if they did or not—the Fey had come to
us to save their reps, not out of any concern for the child—but I could only
imagine J’s reaction if I’d disappeared, or even Zaki’s, casual a dad as he’d
been. Panic, fear, anguish…yeah.

“We were chosen.” The unnamed girl pushed her way past her
cronies, giving the one on her knees a disdainful look. “All of us, including
the little’uns. We have no other family now.”

Charismatic leader. Cutting ties to the family. Loyalty to the
group over all. Uh-huh.

“Bullshit.” I emphasized my words with the release of more
current, snapping in the air, the sharp bits of light clearly visible to all but
the Nullest of humans. The blade over my shoulder started to glow, too. I
definitely hadn’t done that. “You all have families. They may not be much, but
you have ’em. And Mollywog’s too young to decide that she doesn’t want ’em. You
know that.”

Right now, if the Merge had given me access to Venec’s skill
with the Push, the ability to influence thoughts, I would have taken it, and
gladly. But it didn’t seem to work that way. I had to rely on my own powers of
persuasion… and the time-honored tradition of scare tactics.

The sword, as though sensing my thoughts, lifted off my
shoulder and flew through the air, stopping with its point pressing into Steph’s
neck. I guess I, or it, or some combination had decided that she would be the
one more likely to crack. Her eyes practically crossed, trying to look at both
the blade and me, but she didn’t flinch.

“There’s a difference between loyalty and stupidity,” I said.
“You’re pretty sure I won’t kill you…but you’re not entirely certain.” The
current crawled up and down my bare arms, thin lines of neon-blue and green
drawing their attention, even away from the sword. “The one thing you know is
that I’m more powerful than you, more powerful than you ever dreamed of being. I
might even, you’re thinking, be more powerful than your leader.”