Matter of Truth, A (17 page)

“Christ. There’s—it got her leg, too.”

Karl murmurs an answer, his voice soaked with weary concern,
but something stabs my butt. Pathetically, I don’t have the energy to cry out,
so I—

There are no more Elders in Anchorage, at least for the time
being. Lee was able to track them as far as Vancouver, but as they seemed to be
consistently heading south, Karl felt the Métis were safe enough to come out of
hiding.

Which means I need to get out of town as soon as possible so
the Elders don’t have a reason to come back. Technically, it’s an easy enough
decision. I’d already planned on going back to Annar to begin the long road
toward atonement. But now that it’s a stark reality, I’m a bundle of confused,
jittery nerves. Cameron insists that all of this is due to Human medications
Erik has me on, but I’m thinking it’s more likely because taking responsibility
for a whole slew of mistakes can make a person nauseated.

Karl’s phone goes off for what must be the thirtieth time in
less than twenty-four hours. When we finally got home last night, he was too
exhausted to answer any calls—even Moira’s. All communication was done via
text, including an admission to his wife that he’d found me and was with me at
that very moment—although, first thing this morning, he called her right away
to elaborate. But now that we’ve had nearly a day’s worth of rest (albeit
mostly under the influence of Erik’s drugs), I’m informed when the phone goes
silent, “I need to tell him, Chloe. It’s time.”

He’s talking about Zthane Nightstorm, his best friend and
apparently the only other person in the Guard more senior than he. That
surprise was dropped on me just a few minutes ago, when he admitted he was
second in command.

I certainly don’t want Zthane to lose his job—or Karl.
“Okay,” I tell my friend. Nell comes over and jumps on the couch to sit next to
me. I love how she instinctively knows when I need some good old-fashioned
support.

Karl dials Zthane with his good hand and then puts it on
speaker. He and I are alone in the living room; everybody else is going through
the motions necessary for moving. Cameron’s gone down to turn in his
resignation at the warehouse; Will’s in his bedroom packing. I stroke Nell’s
satiny head when Zthane growls, “You better have a damn good reason why you
haven’t checked in with me in nearly a day, Graystone.”

Ugh, not a good sign. I’ve never heard Zthane call Karl by
his surname before.

Karl leans forward, wincing as his wounded arm, cradled in a
sling, jostles against his leg. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Nell licks my hand and looks up at me, her dark eyes shiny
with unconditional love and acceptance. I take this small bit of encouragement
and cut Karl off as he’s about to speak. “Hi, Zthane.”

Something sounds on the other end, like a chair falling
over. “Chloe? Is that you?”

Karl gives me a small, reassuring nod to continue. “Yeah.” I
clear my throat. “It’s me. We’re—Karl’s here with me in Alaska.”

A small, protracted silence precedes, “Pardon my language,
but thank the effing gods. Karl, is she okay?”

I love how Zthane thinks that he’s swearing.

Karl bites his lip as he surveys me. According to Erik, the
sooner I see a Shaman, the better. The same goes for him. We’re in pretty bad
shape. But Karl knows as well as I that that isn’t the best thing to start out
with. “We’ll be heading back to Annar within the next thirty-six hours.”

“I can have a team sent out—”

But Karl insists that a team isn’t necessary since we’ll be
on our way shortly. I get the feeling Zthane is grossly unhappy with this, but
after I swear to him that I’ll be back in Annar with Karl as soon as possible,
he relents. And then he asks Karl to take him off the speakerphone.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Karl’s getting his ass
chewed out big time. Yet another thing for me to feel crummy about.

Minutes later, when he hangs up, I realize he didn’t tell
Zthane about the Métis or what went down with the Elders. When I question him
why, he says tiredly, “Some things are better discussed face-to-face.”

His point is not lost on me.

Saying goodbye sucks. It flat-out,
unequivocally sucks.

Despite my reservations (and fears, if I’m being honest with
myself), I insist on saying goodbye to the Moose and its inhabitants in person.
I’d insisted on walking on my own two feet despite Erik wanting to push me in a
wheelchair. So Will and I, we were like the walking wounded hobbling through the
front door, and when the bell above it jingled, tears sprang to my eyes.

The Moose was a haven to me. It was safety when I had
nowhere else to go and needed a place to lick my wounds and grow up some. And
now, as I glance around the cheesy décor, I worry that I might have taken it
for granted like so many other things in my life. I can’t help but wonder if
I’ll get to come back here, if I’ll ever get to go bowling with these people
again. If there’ll be moments when I roll my eyes at Frieda’s snark, encourage
Ginny to follow her dreams, or feel one of Paul’s nourishing hugs again.

Gods, I hope so.

Paul took the news of our leaving—well, not exactly well,
but I guess better than we expected. I let Will do the bulk of the talking,
because it just hurt. Every time I went to open my mouth, something inside me
quivered and strained and I feared just flat-out ugly bawling, so I stayed
silent, nodding at appropriate times. When it was all done and said, Paul
mentioned he was disappointed and would miss us, but ultimately, he understood.
Then he stupidly offered us severance pay, like he laid us off rather than us
up and quitting on him with little-to-no notice.

In other news, Frieda raged. Ginny cried softly.

And now, the girls are here with me, hugging Will and me
like we’re porcelain dolls, thanks to our injuries, and they’re not acting like
themselves. They’re holding back, and I get it, but part of me resents it, too.
These girls helped me in ways they’ll never know. Their honesty was one of the
things I valued the most.

But I can’t hold this against them. Because, when Paul asks
Will, “You’ll call us when you get there?” he’s referring to how we’ve told him
we’re moving to Glasgow so Cameron can be close to a sick relative. And that
stings, because while I value their honesty, I’ve never reciprocated in
kind—not even here in the end.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Will says. He’s moving slowly
today; Erik says he’s got three broken ribs for sure. The sooner he can see a
Shaman, the better I’ll feel.

“Told you they’re shacking up.” Frieda knocks her shoulder
into Ginny’s. She’s a strong girl—she’ll never let me see her tears. But I know
she’s upset we’re leaving.

I’ll miss her. Miss them all.

I just give them a small, sad smile in response. There is
more gentle hugging, more promises made to keep the ties we’ve created between
all of us meaningful even though distance will spread us apart. And then we
walk out of the Moose and into Lee Acacia’s nondescript rental waiting at the
curb.

“Everything taken care of?” Karl asks. He insisted on coming
with us, despite needing to rest, giving some bullshit excuse about needing to
talk with Lee about a mission. I’m positive the real reason was that he doesn’t
trust me anymore. He wanted to make sure I didn’t run again.

I don’t blame him.

I lean my head against Will’s good shoulder and stare out of
the window as Lee pulls away from the curb. Anchorage is beautiful. It was
home, if even for a tiny moment. “Yeah,” I tell him.

I’m holding onto Nell’s leash as
Erik pushes me across the tarmac in a wheelchair. He got his way, saying there
was no good enough reason on this green earth for me to walk to a plane when I
can be pushed. Will and Cameron are already on the small bush plane Erik owns;
he’s flying us to Juneau and then coming into Annar for the first time in
nearly fifteen years, thanks to Karl’s suggestion that it might be helpful to
have a Métis with us when we discuss the situation with the Council. At first,
Erik and a number of other Métis were reluctant, saying they’d worked hard for
years to distance themselves from Annar. But I think they also understand that
we’re all interconnected—and that people stand more firmly on the ground when
they have others to stand with them.

It’s a lesson I’m learning myself.

Erik rationalized his addition to our little party by
claiming he needed to stick with us, at least until we got to the hospital in
Annar, to oversee our injuries. I think he’s nervous, though. He left Annar
much in the same way so many Métis do—in anger while filled with justifiable
hurt. His mother, a prominent Elvin Shaman who’d had an affair with an army
doctor she’d met on the Human plane during the Vietnam War, refused to leave
Annar and her work. Despite her obvious distaste for him and what he
represented, Erik had stuck it out for years, shuttled back and forth between
his parents (who, according to what he’d told us last night, still refuse to
speak to one another; worse yet, his father doesn’t even know his mother is a
Magical and believes she lives in Europe). But when he realized his mother
basically saw him as merely an obligation rather than her son, he left and
didn’t look back until today. He moved in with his dad, thought about attending
medical school, but eventually chose to pursue being a nurse practitioner
because he knew it’d piss his mother off.

And now we’re asking him to go back to Annar, possibly face
his mother (who would probably be swell friends with my own mom, what with the
stories I heard of her yesterday) and all the memories of people and places
that tried to make him feel less than he was. I didn’t say it to him, because I
don’t think Erik is the sort to be reassured by words, but I made a mental
promise to him that I was going to do everything in my power to end the
struggle Métis face in our community.

Because I’m going to do this Creator thing my way. I’m going
to own it. I’m not going to sit back and be a passive participant in the
Council who waits for her marching orders. It’s the only way I can survive it
all.

I glance at the snow-covered mountain range in the distance,
and their majestic beauty strikes me. I make myself another promise.
I’ll be
back.

And then we go up the ramp, Nell’s nails clicking on the
non-skid strips next to me. “You okay?” Erik asks quietly. Him talking to me
directly is so rare I jerk in the chair.

But his eyes are kind and filled with concern. If anyone
knows what it’s like to fight for what you want for your life, it’s him. So I
don’t resent his question, which everyone and their brother keeps asking me
lately. “Yeah,” I tell him.

Because I think I finally, truly am.

When the first flash goes off, I dismiss it as nothing. When
the subsequent dozen nearly blind me, I realize there’s a problem as I gingerly
step out of Transit Station and onto the streets of Annar for the first time in
over half a year. There’s what seems to be a handful of photographers shouting
at me, questions about where I’ve been and who the people I’m with are, as well
as a rapidly growing crowd of rubberneckers that form a living wall difficult
to breech.

It’s like a nightmare come to life. How did they know I’d be
here?

Karl yells at everyone to back up, but as he’s suffering
from a few bruised (and possibly broken) ribs, his voice doesn’t boom like it
normally does. Will loops his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in closer,
one of his arms coming up to block my face from all of the critical eyes around
us. Erik hovers behind us, hands pressed against our backs like he’s trying to
keep us upright in this madness. From behind us, I can hear Nell barking her
warnings, and Cameron’s stern voice trying to keep her from attacking anyone
who comes too close to us.

Chloe, the people around us yell, Councilwoman Lilywhite, is
that you, you look so different, where were you, what happened, did the Elders
get you like we all feared? Who are these people? Why are you blonde? Who is
the guy? Why is his arm around you? What happened to you? Why do you look like
you’ve fallen off a ten-story building and barely made it out alive?

Chloe, they keep asking, why won’t you answer us?

But the truth is, I don’t think I could get the words out
right now if I even tried. Pain twists and blooms through every breath, every
step, making any chance at grabbing my breath damn near impossible. These
people, they’re reaching out, trying to touch me, but their touches are needles
against my injuries.

More shouts circle us; only these aren’t from the crowd, now
edging into the hundreds. I spot Giuliana Arancionestella, a friend from the
Guard who protected Jonah and Kellan several years ago against the Elders,
pushing her way through the crowd while ordering people to back away. And then
I see Kiah Redrock, Kopano Melesi-Yellowbird, and Iolani Popolohua doing the
same. Somebody’s called in the cavalry.

“Get us the hell out of here,” Erik snarls at Karl. “If any
of these people were to smash hard into the three of you . . .” He doesn’t have
to finish, though. We already know what hell we’d suffer through, since it’s
already started to happen.

I’ve been bumped into at least a dozen times already, and
each jostle makes my already shallow breath harder to find. The effects of my
pain pills are coming to a close, making each uneven step one I’d rather not
take. The agony in my thigh threatens to completely overtake me. As curling
into a ball and crying until I pass out on the street below us isn’t an option,
I push myself forward, alongside Will and Karl who are in similar boats as I
am.

Only, a hundred feet take five, grueling minutes to
traverse. My head swims in sharpening agony. I stumble on the sidewalk, and my
wounded leg buckles under me. Nell barks furiously. Will and Erik grapple to
catch me, but the jerking motions steal the air right out of my head.

And then I do something incredibly, pathetically
embarrassing. I collapse right there in front of hundreds of Magicals and
flashing cameras and cellphone videos. Worse yet, when I look up, I see a
nightmare from the past—gorgeous Sophie Greenfield standing just a few feet
away, malicious anger flashing in her eyes.

What is
she
doing here?

She turns on her heels and disappears back into the crowd.
As I track her departure, a flash of white hair catches my eyes. Is that—

“I’ve got you,” Will grunts, his voice echo-y but still
solid. But he’s hurting, too, and stumbles just as surely as I did as he tries
to pick me up.

“The hell you do,” Erik says above me. “Pick her up and
we’ll be having to carry your sorry ass out of here, too. Cameron?”

“I’ve got her, son.” Cameron materializes to rest a hand on
his son’s tender shoulder. “Erik’s right. Karl’s on his last wind, too. We need
to get out of here as fast as we can. Here, take Nell.” And then the man I see
as my father picks me up and carries me the rest of the way to the hospital.

Kate Blackthorn, Shaman
extraordinaire, is not currently in Annar at present. Zthane Nightstorm, who
met us in the lobby, informs our small group that she’s currently on assignment
back on the Human plane. I try not to think about what she’s doing—Kate’s
renown for her work with debilitating, nasty viruses. Instead, Sjharn
Thunderbridge, the Guard’s lead Shaman, is the one to meet us in the room
Zthane had reserved. He looks exactly as I remember him: stern, with a craggy
face and skin so dark green it’s nearly black.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say there was a leak
about Councilwoman Lilywhite’s return,” he says to Zthane in a deeply accented
voice as he washes his hands in the nearby sink.

Will, who is sitting on the couch next to Karl, is outright
staring at Sjharn like he doesn’t know what to think or say. I’d told him about
Goblins, and of all the other races, but I know it’s got to be a shock for him.
Cameron and Erik are sitting on an adjacent couch, quietly talking to one
another, not bothered in the least by who’s joined us in the room. But then,
both have lived in Annar before, leaving Will the odd man out.

Zthane leans out of the door, shouting orders at somebody
outside about the consequences if anybody he hasn’t approved first comes within
three hundred feet of the room. Then, once the door is firmly shut behind him,
he says to Sjharn, “No kidding. Heads are going to roll when I get back to the
office. What a mess.” He sighs, then focuses on me. “Hello, Chloe. I cannot
tell you how happy I am to have you back in Annar in one piece.”

Sjharn blocks my view when I wheeze a greeting in return.
“Leave the girl alone, Nightstorm. You can talk to her when I’m done.”

Karl lets out a laugh from where he’s sitting when Zthane
sputters in indignation, but it’s short. He winces, his good hand automatically
going to his chest. “Remind me to never go on a mission without a Shaman
again.”

Sjharn says nothing as he presses his large but thin hands
against my thigh. I jolt from the initial pain, but it melts away as he starts
to work on me.

No offense to Erik, but I’ve got to agree with Karl here.

“It’s funny,” Zthane says evenly, “but you never mentioned
until two hours ago that you all were going to need to come to the hospital. I
wonder why that is? Especially since the three of you look like you’ve been put
through meat grinders.”

There’s a beat of silence in the room before Karl says, “I
figured—”

But I cut him off. Technically, I outrank every single
person in this room. And the truth is, Will and Karl wouldn’t be as injured as
they are had it not been for me. “We were in a skirmish with some Elders.”

His hands don’t leave my body, but I can hear Sjharn’s
breath suck in in surprise. Zthane’s does, too.

Will finally speaks up. He scoffs, “Skirmish? Is that what
that was? Funny, I thought it more like a bloody life or death battle.”

Zthane whips around to face Will. Karl sighs, but then
winces as his lungs expand. His mouth opens, but Zthane lets loose a string of
biting reprimands.

“These stitches are good,” Sjharn says, cutting Zthane’s
rant off. He glances over at Erik. “Your work?”

Erik stands up and comes over to where we are. “Yes.”

The Shaman’s eyes narrow as he takes Erik in. “You look
familiar.”

“As I tend to look more like my mother than father,” Erik
says flatly, “I am not surprised.”

Zthane throws his hands up. “Somebody better start talking,
and they better do it soon.” He rounds on Karl. “You do not get into
skirmishes
with the Elders without telling me about them! Gods, Karl! You helped me write
the most recent sets of Guard protocol, and now you’re choosing to only
selectively follow them?” He switches over to Erik. “You obviously know about
our kind—and I want to know why!” To Will and Cameron, “The same for you two!
Why a non is fighting Elders with two Council members . . .” His fists clench.
To me, “And for the gods’ sakes, where the hell have you been for the last half
year, Chloe?” He snaps his fingers. “I want answers, people! NOW.”

So we give them to him. I tell him everything, including the
truth about my Connections to both Whitecombs. We tell him about the Métis,
their colonies, and how the Elders are attacking them, too. We explain how
Cailleache tracked me down in Anchorage, how I discovered I could destroy her
kind. Of what happened in the warehouse just days ago. Hours pass, people are
healed, and Zthane finally gets all his answers.

“Holy hell,” is what the head of the Guard says when the
truth is laid bare for him to see. And then, to Karl, “Well, this is a game
changer, isn’t it?”

Karl laughs quietly, but any mirth is replaced with
exhaustion.

Zthane rubs at this hair, pacing the room for a good ten
seconds before coming back over to where I’m sitting with Will. “This has been
an official debriefing, Councilwoman Lilywhite. I will send you the paperwork
concerning just such to review and sign tomorrow. Until then, I advise you not
to talk to anybody else about what you’ve just told me.” His dark eyes flick
over toward Karl. “I know you are tired, friend, but we have much to discuss
tonight. You might as well call Moira and tell her you won’t be home until
late.”

Karl nods and pulls out his phone.

“Will you be heading to your old address?” Zthane’s question
is quiet in the already sterile room.

Is my old address even still mine? I shake my head. “I’ll be
staying with . . .” I turn toward Cameron, who smiles and finishes for me, “Us.
Let me give you our address, in case you have need for further clarification.”

While Cameron types in his address in Zthane’s proffered
phone, the Goblin says, “I’ve heard tales of Molliaria Hellebore’s work before.
She could do things to metal that many Smiths only dream about. There’s still a
plaque in the front of HQ that she fashioned.”

Will stands up and goes over to one of the windows to peer
out into the fading sun. “Too bad she had to go and have me, right?”

“Son,” Cameron warns softly, but Will is already issuing a
bitter apology of his own.

Awkwardness fills the room; Zthane’s feet shuffle uneasily
against the parquet floors. My next question only adds to the unease. “The team
that went missing while protecting me from the Elder attack in the Elvin forest
. . . were they ever found?”

Zthane’s lips thin. “Unfortunately, no.”

I swallow back the rising guilt. “What about Jens
Belladonna? Was he ever found?”

Zthane slowly shakes his head.

As much as I disliked Belladonna, my heart sinks over his
continued disappearance just as strongly as that of my team. “Are you guys
still looking for them?”

A sigh precedes, “No. We don’t have the resources or the
time to spend searching anymore.”

Not when they were searching for a runaway Creator, is what
he isn’t saying to me.

I ask quietly, “When will Jonah be back?”

“If all goes as planned, tomorrow morning.” Zthane steps
forward and hugs me; I sink into his familiarity, grateful for his willingness
to not treat me like the pariah I deserve to be. “Go easy on him, Chloe. Go
easy on them both.” He smiles sadly. “That said, don’t be mad at the escort I’m
sending with you to the Danes’ apartment. I don’t want a repeat of that melee
outside of the Transit Station.”

He’s worried I’ll run again. I bite back my own sadness and
nod. I really have no one to blame but myself for the doubt that’s replaced
years of hard-earned trust.