Storm in a Teacup (39 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

I hate being wrong.

Even more than being wrong, I hate being trapped.
 

As soon as they pull the blindfold off my eyes and twist my arms behind me, I'm both. There's no use in playing dead. They want me awake now.

The guttural roar rips through the sunset, shredding the golden remnants of the day into sad tatters.

Mason.
 

He's alive.

But that's all he's got going for him.

They've chained his entire body into a metal cocoon. He looks like he's been wrapped up to eat later by a giant spider. Only his head is free, and his indigo eyes glow orange in the fading light.

The sound that pierces the air happens again. If he could reach me with his eyes alone, he would.
 

I'm not the bait.

We both are.

I want to say I'm sorry. I want to tell him many things. That I got him a phone a few days too late. If I'd followed that instinct earlier, he might have warned me. I might have helped him.

Now we're both about to end up minced.

I meet Mason's gaze, and he quiets, his chains going slack as his muscles relax. Not slack enough.

The field is full of Mediators. Faces I know, like Mira and Ripper and Ben. Alamea and Gregor. No Devon. He's probably still in traction, hearing only snippets and trying to see a tapestry in the lace doily of information he's given.

None of them meet my eyes.

Not one of them will look at me.

I don't know if it's because to them, Mason and I look like the leads of a tragic romance novel. If it is, they're far from right. Whatever feelings I have for the chained man with eyes like the night sky an hour after dusk, they don't matter as much as the lives of beings who never asked to come into the world. Who were forced to birth themselves by destroying the ones who give them life.

The shades who, after that gruesome beginning have the ability to make other choices for their existence.

Neither Mason nor I have any choices left to us.

He seems to sense my thoughts. The corners of his eyes lose some of their tension, their tautness. His skin goes slack like the chains.

The Mediators stand around, oblivious. Alamea and Gregor have taken point, a few feet in front of where Mason and I are held by nameless others. MITs? Mediators from Chattanooga? I don't know them, and they certainly don't know me. To them, I'm simply a traitor who betrayed the tenets of the balance.

How are they going to make this work?

I can see Alamea's face only in two-thirds profile. She reaches one hand into her jacket and flings something into the field like a frisbee.

It's not a frisbee.

It's the metal talisman that was left sitting on my dining room table when Gryfflet drugged me.

The one Hazel sent to the office.

Last time, the demons appeared with Lena at the instant the sun vanished beneath the horizon. I try to catch Ben's eyes, but he's staring staunchly ahead into the grasses of Miller's Field as if he's reading tea leaves and they're not telling him what he wants to hear.

Will Alice be among the demons tonight? Will I have to watch her get torn apart to birth a new shade?

I keep my eyes trained on the Mediators, alternated with glances out into the field. Maybe living with Mason has heightened my awareness of the shades, or maybe the Mediators are just looking too hard, because I'm the first one to see the creatures who rise from the grass.

It's Saturn I see first. He frowns when he sees me, and a flash of anger tightens his cheeks when he spots Mason to my left. I want to shake my head at him, get him to go, tell him it's a trap. But I think he already knows.

One of the Mediators holding Mason's chains lets out a low moan. The scuff of feet on the ground tells me that the shades have been spotted now.
 

Whatever's going to happen is about to get started.

"We just want to speak to you." Alamea's voice breaks through the field, the first words I've heard since the holding cell.

This time I do shake my head, as tiny a movement as I can. Just speak. That's not even possible. Saturn gives no indication that he saw it.

"Strange way to show it." Saturn crouches in the grass and plucks four long blades. His nimble fingers begin weaving the grass together as he goes on. "If that were true, you wouldn't have to drag my friend out here in chains."

Friend. Singular. Thanks awfully, Saturn.

Mason goes very still.
 

"We knew of no other way to get you to come."

"Don't be ridiculous," Saturn says. "I'm only a baby by your standards, and I can think of a more mature way of going about it. For instance, asking politely."

I try to count the shades behind Saturn. Twenty, at least. Compared to how many Mediators? Fifty? But darkness is falling, and there could be more shades beyond, hiding in the grass or even in the trees. Saturn's not stupid.

"We didn't think that would work." Gregor shifts his weight to his left foot.

"You mean you didn't think we'd be civilized enough to speak to you without resorting to violence." Saturn tugs on the ends of the grass he's woven, accordion-like. It reminds me of a craft we did as children. Did Lena make those as a child?

I can only see as much of Gregor's face as Alamea's, but the right side of his face scrunches up, lips turned downward. I take it as a confirmation of Saturn's accusation, and from the sardonic twist to Saturn's smile, he does too.

"Give us Mason, and we'll leave. You'll never hear from us again — or of us." Saturn's fingers still push and pull the little grass accordion between his hands.

There's an undercurrent to his words, sharp like biting down on tin foil. Don't give us Mason, and you'll see how uncivilized we can be.

The Mediators sense it as well as I do. A whisper of discomfort reaches my ears. Small outbursts of breath. Determination. Resolution. And not a little bit of fear.

Alamea gives it voice. "And if we do not?"

Saturn shreds the accordion with a flash of his fingers.
 

Bits of grass drift to the ground.

One of the Mediators holding Mason's chains loses his head in a shower of blood.

The two others stumble backward.

Their faces look like a child's splatter-paint experiment, each with a different spatter of bright red.

Mason is gone.

It takes a moment for me to find him, between Saturn and one of the shades Mason and I met in the woods just a week ago.

I forgot how fast they were.
 

The clearing fills with the hiss of swords leaving scabbards.

Saturn wags a finger at Alamea. "He's all we wanted. Move and more of you will die just as quickly."

He takes hold of two segments of chain and jerks the links apart with a crack of breaking metal. Mason's free. His hand clasps Saturn's shoulder, and something passes between them.

I don't know what it is.

I'm so busy watching the shades that I miss the sword until the cold blade presses against my throat.

Oh good.

I was wondering when I'd become the star of this show.

"Don't move, or I'll kill you." The breath of the speaker warms my ear with his whisper.

Because the pointy thing against my throat was so ambiguous.

Amateur.

To hell with it. I'm probably dead already.

Only Saturn's hands on Mason's arms keep him from running at me.

And not just Saturn's — two other shades hold him back. I was right; Saturn's not stupid. He knows what the Mediators are doing, maybe better than I. They were goading him. Now they're goading Mason.

I hear a small metal chinking sound, and something flies through the air toward the shades. My muscles tense against the blade. It bites into my skin and sends a trickle of blood down my throat.
 

A chunk of metal thumps onto the grass. A grenade. Since when do the Mediators use fucking grenades?

Saturn and the others don't seem to know what to do, but Mason's been watching all sorts of action movies sprinkled into his rom-coms, and his eyes are trained on my face. My mouth is open, drawing in sticky humid air. Mason grabs Saturn and blurs to the edge of the field.
 

There's a moment of total quiet. Even the wind pauses.

The remaining shades separate and scatter in a whir of motion to the edge of the field and vanish.
 

The grenade detonates, chunking a crater the size of my holding cell into the center of Miller's Field.

I'm expecting it, but whoever it is with the blade on my neck falters with the boom. I wrench my head backward. It connects with the head of the guy who threatened me. My skull screams at me, but the sword slips away from my skin. I twist away and slam my foot into his kneecap.

A hand grasps at me. I duck and veer to the side.

Thank the gods no one thought to tie my feet.

I run toward the crater in the center of the field, choking on the smoky cloud of earth and grass. I can't see any shades. No Mason, no Saturn.

Something grabs me from behind, and I'm wrenched off my feet away from the churned dirt.

"Shhhh."

I topple into a hard body. Mason. We're behind a tree just off the edge of the field. The Mediators still stand tense in their places, and I can hear raised voices though I can't make out what they're saying.

He breaks the ties on my wrists, and my hands spring free. My shoulders hurt from being pushed together. I shift them up and down, trying to loosen the tension.
 

"Are you okay?" I check over Mason's body for any injuries. There's nothing but the indents from the chains. "What did they do to you?"

Mason chuckles. "Nothing much. I was stupid. It was your friend Ben. He saw me coming out of the ravine by where Saturn lives and said he just wanted to talk. How'd they get you?"

"Drugged my coffee."

Mason's hand tightens on my arm.

Saturn was right. It's the Mediators who are playing dirty.

Not that I had any doubts after Gryfflet's excursion into assholery.

Twilight suffuses the sky. The Mediators won't be able to see as well as the shades, and I can still see them gathered in the field.
 

Saturn appears to my right. I give him a wry smile. He wasn't about to snatch me away from the Mediators.

My smile seems to make him uncomfortable. Saturn goes very still when he looks at me. "I didn't want to let on how much you'd helped us. I thought they might be worse to you."

I don't know if I believe that, but it doesn't matter.

I can't see the talisman in the field. There's no way Alamea has retrieved it. That's the real reason they're all standing there still.

Worse is still coming.

CHAPTER FIFTY

"Ayala!"

It's Ben. His voice calls through the growing darkness.

I lean into Mason's shoulder and peer around the tree. Ben walks to the crater, waving his hand behind him as if brushing off an annoying dog.

"Ayala, I just want to talk!"

That sounds awfully familiar.

I pitch my voice low enough that only Saturn and Mason will be able to hear it. "For some reason, I don't believe him."

"Please come out here. I know you're still watching." Ben's voice has turned plaintive, as wheedling as his surname would imply.

"I'm not going out there without a weapon." My now-dirt-smudged slacks don't count.

Saturn gestures, and another shade comes forward with a sword. "That was on the man holding Mason. We grabbed it when we got him."

The sword is standard issue. Bright steel but no beauty. Not like my blade. But the hilt in my hand feels solid, even if it doesn't feel at home there.
 

Neither Mason nor Saturn tries to tell me not to go out into the field. I want to hear what Ben has to say and see if I can figure out why Alamea and Gregor would let him say it.

I step out into the field, and Ben's shoulders slump. He takes two steps toward me. I shake my head at him. He stops on the edge of the crater.

I stop on the opposite side and stare at him from across the hole. "What do you want?"

"I'm sorry."

"That's nice."

"They promised they wouldn't hurt you. And they didn't hurt your...friend."

He doesn't even know Mason's name. I spare a glance at Gryfflet. He could have told them. Maybe he didn't. But why wouldn't he?

"Not the best way to win over the girl you've been badgering for a date for months." I cluck at Ben, sticking the point of the sword in the ground at my feet and leaning on it. My head still throbs from the impact with Mr. Subtle-Wanna-Threaten, and I hope to all the hells and heavens that Gryfflet can't make my brain spasm from across a field.

"I know. I'm sorry. But you put us all in danger."

"No. You put us all in danger." I gesture around the field with my free hand, pointing to the body of Mason's holder. "That's the price of your duplicity. More bodies. That's not on me."

"Then why are you helping them?"

He doesn't have to explain who he means.

This time I want to be heard. "Because one of them saved my life!"