The Inquisitor's Mark (12 page)

DINNER WAS LATE. NOT
late as in
not on time
. Late as in
after nine o'clock.
Worse, it was in the fanciest restaurant Jax had ever seen. There were too many forks and plates, including a special one he apparently wasn't supposed to eat on. The waiter gave him a dirty look over his mistake.

“
This
was your bread plate,” Uncle Finn said, pointing out a small plate off to one side. He sounded amused.

Jax tugged self-consciously at his collar. He was dressed in the clothes of some Dulac clan kid.
Funeral clothes
, his dad would've said—a thought that only brought back memories of the last time he'd worn a suit: his dad's memorial service. Jax squirmed in his chair, obliterating the memory by looking around.

The restaurant was full of rich people, many of whom stopped to say hello to either Jax's aunt and uncle or his grandparents. Jax could tell if they were Normals
or Transitioners by the way they greeted one another. Normals shook hands; Transitioners showed their mark.

He was shocked by how many were Transitioners.

“Are there a lot of people like us?” he'd once asked Riley.

“A few,” Riley had replied. He'd never mentioned that many of them lived in Manhattan and seemed a lot wealthier than Riley and his vassals.

“Sheila is intent on conversation with Calvin,” Jax's grandmother commented, looking across the restaurant. “Do you think they have news from Wales that's any different from ours?”

The appetizers arrived, thankfully, because Jax was beginning to think he'd have to eat his napkin. He snatched a fried something off a serving plate before the waiter even set it down.

Meanwhile, Jax's grandfather leaned closer to his wife and yelled, “What did you say?” in an accent that made him sound like a deaf and slightly senile James Bond.

“I said,” Gran replied in a louder voice, “Sheila Morgan is meeting with Calvin Bedivere.”

Jax looked up from his food.

“Huh,” grunted Gramps. “Interesting.”

Jax pushed a whole stuffed mushroom into his mouth, listening intently while pretending not to. The person they were talking about was Deidre's mother. He scanned the
restaurant, trying to spot her.
Which woman looks like she's carrying a small arsenal?

“I'd give my eyeteeth to know if they've found anything more useful than our people have,” Uncle Finn muttered. “We're getting nothing but stories about the Girl of Crows appearing at Oeth-Anoeth. What claptrap.”

“You should've gone yourself,” Gramps said.

“I had business here, Father.”

Jax's phone vibrated. Glancing around, he decided the adults were busy with their own conversation. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and checked his message.

Jax decoded the spelling error and looked warily around the restaurant. He did
not
want the Donovans making a big distraction.

He wondered if Mrs. Crandall was with them. She'd
given up texting him and was probably as mad as a hornet that Jax wouldn't respond. But he really didn't want to get yelled at.

“He certainly keeps a tight rein on you,” Aunt Marian remarked from across the table. It took a second for Jax to realize that Aunt Marian had spotted him texting under the table. Her comment caught Uncle Finn's attention.

“It's not him,” Jax said. Did they really think he'd contact Riley in their presence? How dumb did they think he was?

“Then who is it?” Without any warning, Uncle Finn grabbed Jax's phone.

Resisting would have caused a scene. But before Jax let go, he punched a button to delete the texts. Instead, he accidentally called up Tegan's profile—her number and a blank avatar.

“Who's Tegan?” Uncle Finn raised an eyebrow.

“My girlfriend,” Jax blurted out. What else could he say?

Billy choked on a cocktail shrimp and burst into laughter, spraying the table with seafood. “Dude!” he exclaimed. “Really? Aren't you afraid her brother'll beat you up?”

Jax's cheeks burned, but his obvious embarrassment and Billy's teasing did the trick. Uncle Finn handed back the phone. “Like father, like son.”

Gran frowned. “The boy's too young for girls.”

“You think so?” Uncle Finn apparently found that funny. “Don't you remember Rayne's girlfriend who wore the leather skirts? That was in eighth grade.”

“Pink hair,” Gramps grunted disapprovingly.

Uncle Finn counted on his fingers for his mother. “There was the girl with the horses, the girl with the Rollerblades . . .”

“The girl with the boat,” Aunt Marian added.

“The girl with the beach house,” Uncle Finn went on.

Jax's face felt hotter and hotter, and it wasn't the lie about Tegan or the fact that his father had been some kind of teenage Romeo. What was much worse was how casually his uncle had taken his phone and how easily he could have looked through all the information stored on it. Phone numbers, call records, texts. His uncle had just held all that in his hand.

Giving back the phone had been an act of showing off.
See,
Uncle Finn was telling him.
I can overpower you and
choose not to. Because I'm such a nice guy.
It was just like Aunt Marian, going through his backpack and not even bothering to hide it.

Jax had been careless and stupid, carrying so much information with him. He'd put both Riley and Evangeline at risk, and he should've known better, after all the commotion Mr. Crandall had made about Jax calling Billy on his computer! Beneath the cover of the table, he popped out the data card, dropped it on the floor, and crushed it beneath his heel. Then he put the disabled phone back in his pocket. It would be useless in a couple of hours anyway.

Meanwhile, his grandmother was denying that Rayne had spent his teenage years dripping in girls, but she did admit he liked loud rock music, dyed his hair absurd colors, and kept vermin as a pet.

“The brownie,” groaned Uncle Finn.

“Stink!” exclaimed Jax's grandfather.

“Of course it stank,” said Gran indignantly. “Don't they all?”

“No, that was its name, Mother. Stink.”

“Did
he
call it that?” Aunt Marian asked. “I know that's what the rest of us called it.” She turned to Jax. “My family lived on the seventh floor, and my mother hated that brownie with a passion! It ran amok all over the building, turning up in everyone's kitchens, overturning garbage, and annoying the whole clan. And heaven forbid anyone try to kill it. Rayne would've had a fit.”

“I don't suppose you ever saw it?” Uncle Finn looked at Jax.

“Uh, no,” Jax said.

“Thought it might still be around. Those things live forever.” Uncle Finn sighed. “Unlike the rest of us.” He picked up his wineglass and held it out across the table. “To Rayne.”

Aunt Marian clinked her glass with his. “To Rayne.”

Gran put her fingers to her lips with one hand, as if overcome with emotion, and lifted her glass. Gramps did too.

Dorian grabbed his glass of soda and joined in the toast. “To Uncle Rayne.”

“To Dad,” Jax said, his voice close to breaking.

Spending time with these people was like walking across a fun-house floor that bucked and tipped beneath his feet. One moment he hated them; the next, he didn't.

By the time they finished dessert, it was almost midnight. Jax's grandparents parted ways with them outside the restaurant. “I need to be at the Stock Exchange early tomorrow,” Gramps said.

“The Stock Exchange is open on the eighth day?” Jax asked.

“The Secret Stock Exchange,” Dorian muttered. “The
one where deals are done privately, prices fixed, takeovers planned . . .”

“Isn't that illegal?” Billy asked.

“Shh! We don't talk about it like that.” Lesley glanced at her father, who was trying to hail a cab for his parents. Jax frowned. Lesley had been jumpy and tearful for most of the day. Dorian had come home from school upset about something. There was all kinds of stuff going on here, but Jax reminded himself that his cousins were not his problem. His job was to get Billy and Addie out of Dulac hands—and keep Riley and Evangeline as far away from Aunt Ursula as possible.

A weird contraption that was part carriage and part bicycle stopped to pick up Gran and Gramps. “What the heck is that?” Jax asked.

“Pedicab,” said Dorian. “They can't use a taxi this late on a Wednesday. They'll get stuck at the change. The blue pedicabs are run by Transitioners—or Normals tethered over to do the job.”

Uncle Finn saw his parents off, then rubbed his hands together. “Everybody ready?”

Manhattan at midnight was not as crowded as it was at noon, when Jax had arrived yesterday, but the streets were still full of cars. The roads would be impassable on Grunsday, with all those vehicles frozen and going nowhere for twenty-four hours. Jax saw several blue
pedicabs on their way to Rockefeller Center. Tourists stopped to take pictures of themselves in front of fountains and landmarks. A street performer strummed his guitar with his case lying open in front of him, hoping for donations.

Uncle Finn produced handcuffs from inside his suit coat pocket. “You want to do the honors?” he asked Jax, nodding toward Billy. Meanwhile, Aunt Marian fished another pair out of her purse, and Lesley held out her wrist.

Nobody around them batted an eye when Jax handcuffed himself to Billy's good arm—except for Billy himself. “Should I brace myself?” he asked.

“Not really.”

Two seconds later, the cars stopped in the streets, the sound of engines cut off like someone had flipped a switch. The fountains died away, and the lights of the city dimmed, reduced to the afterimage of leftover light. More than half the people on the sidewalks vanished, although some of the tourists continued to take pictures with disposable box cameras.

The guitarist didn't miss a beat, but a voice joined in with him. A young woman had appeared beside the musician—a woman with fair skin and silvery blond hair, her voice as clear as a bell. She took up the song in the middle as if continuing from where she'd left off last week.

Billy gaped at the changed world around him. He
turned in a circle, dragging Jax with him. “Uh,” Jax said to his uncle. “The keys?”

Uncle Finn took Jax's wrist and turned the cuff around, showing him a button on the side. “They're trick cuffs. Special order, so we don't have to worry about losing a key.” The cuff fell open, releasing Jax's wrist. “We use these more than you might think.”

Jax glanced around the plaza and remembered what Dorian said about the pedicab driver. “Not all these people are Transitioners.”

“No, not all. Just as we've trusted your friend Billy with this secret, other Transitioners have trusted their friends—or business associates—or employees.” Uncle Finn surveyed the crowd with a critical eye. “It would be better if fewer people knew. Many Transitioners in Manhattan have become . . . careless.”

Jax watched his uncle shrewdly.
You think you should be the one to decide, don't you? You and the Dulacs.

“Look,” exclaimed Billy. The sound of generators replaced the silenced engines as all around Rockefeller Center, stores and vending carts powered up. Lights came on in some of the shops that had been dark a few seconds ago. At one café, someone in an apron rolled up the iron security gate while a waitress lit candles on the streetside tables.

The twang of an electric guitar came through an amplifier, followed by a brief drumroll. “One . . . two . . .
three . . . testing . . .” a voice said through a microphone.

“Dude, there's a band. Did you know there was a band?” Billy shook Jax's arm.

“I had no idea.” Nothing Riley had ever told Jax would have led him to imagine Transitioners and their Normal friends making secret use of Manhattan on Grunsday.

“Can you spare some change?” Jax looked down and realized he'd almost passed a homeless man without acknowledging his existence or noticing he was Kin. Looking into those piercing blue eyes, Jax fumbled in his pockets for money before remembering these weren't his pants. Then he thought,
A rich kid's clothes are more likely to have cash in the pockets than mine!
He started checking the suit coat pockets.

“Come on,” Uncle Finn said roughly, taking Jax by the back of the neck and directing him away from the man crouched on the sidewalk. “He's using his magic on you.”

Was he? Jax looked back. The homeless Kin man met his eyes, then turned away. Meanwhile, the guitarist and his Kin girlfriend were being ordered to move on by an aggressive Transitioner wearing a band T-shirt. The musician hurried to get his guitar back in the case, while the girl cowered behind him.

“This is awesome,” Billy whispered, his attention directed in front of them. “Retro nirvana.” Vendors unfurled tents, revealing temporary storefronts. Most of them targeted Transitioner needs—including out-of-date
technology, which was the only kind that worked on Grunsday. Mechanical clocks. Vacuum tubes. Ham radios.

Jax stared at racks of VCRs and 8-track players from the seventies and eighties. “Do these actually work?”

The vendor standing beside the cart looked insulted. “You think I sell stuff that doesn't work?”

“I mean, do they work on the eighth day?”