A Taste of Ice (39 page)

The front door opened behind Xavier, and a soldier ushered Michael out. He was walking now—like a man who’d done a whole bottle of whiskey with a beer bong, but walking. Still no speech, but plenty of coherent looks and a messy flapping of the lips. He was covered in blood. He ignored Xavier as the guard helped him down the steps, but as he passed Cat, he stared at her good and long. Cat faced him without fear, and Xavier’s heart swelled with pride.

The soldier stuffed Michael into the truck holding Sean and Lea.

“I want to learn about him,” Griffin said, almost to himself. “And the kid. What’s his name again? Sean?”

Reed had pulled the skullcap over his head again and watched the scene with arms crossed. “Are you taking them to the Plant?”

When Griffin nodded, Xavier shuddered. “Experiments, Griffin?”

The Ofarian leader moved to stand right in front of Xavier. “Those days are over. Just discussions, I promise you. You told me what Michael and Sean can do. I haven’t heard of anything like it. I may be wrong, but I don’t even think the Senatus knows. Maybe if we find out something new, we can present it to the Senatus and be granted a seat—”

“You mean the Senatus that’s about to declare war on you?” Reed scoffed.

“You mean you’ll
use
them?” Xavier added, disbelieving.

“Fuck.” Griffin’s troubled eyes swept over the line of vehicles surrounding the fountain and landed squarely on Lea, who was barely visible through the tinted truck windows. “When did this become such a mess?”

Xavier had an answer to that. When Nora had hired Reed to kidnap Gwen five years ago, that’s when the Secondary world had shifted.

“I won’t use them,” Griffin said. “Who knows what the hell’s going to happen to Michael, what sort of state he’ll end up in, but Sean is alert and young. Maybe he’ll be willing to partner with us, if he’s no longer under Michael’s thumb.”

“Sean used to be in a federal hospital,” Reed added, “under government surveillance. They knew about his powers, or at least, they thought they knew. If Adine’s willing, maybe she can patch in, try to gain access to his old files. Maybe Sean’s looking for a little bit of extra protection. Keep that in mind.”

Ofarian orchestration, Ofarian manipulation. Xavier looked to the snow-filled sky.

“So what about Michael?” Griffin asked. “He can’t just disappear. That’s when Primaries start asking questions. He lived in their world, not ours.”

Xavier took a deep breath and told them how Jase had returned Michael’s rental car. “But that’s not enough,” he
added, and he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “The Primaries need to think he’s dead.”

Griffin’s thick eyebrows drew together. “Go on.”

Xavier looked to Cat. He’d do this for her—to protect her and the bond she’d just formed with the Ofarians. “Michael’s a high-profile guy. You’re right; he can’t just disappear. He needs to die. In the Primary world, at least.”

“Wait.” Reed pushed past Griffin and came right up to Xavier. “You’re talking about what you did with Gwen five years ago. How you made that dead homeless guy look like her.”

Xavier shivered with the memory, but nodded.

Griffin’s expression brightened. “Shit. Yes. We completely fell for it.”

Xavier held up a hand. “But I didn’t use my own power.” He really,
really
couldn’t believe he was doing this. His next words came out barbed, resisting their exit. “It worked because I made that man swallow
Mendacia
. I can make a tennis racket look like Michael’s dead body, but the second anyone touches it the illusion will die. I need
Mendacia
.”

Which would be impossible, considering Xavier had used every last drop of
Mendacia
to disguise the ship carrying the freed Tedrans as it rose out of Lake Tahoe and soared out of Earth’s atmosphere. He still remembered how terrible and glorious that had felt. All that power, underneath his skin. All that power, made from Tedran lives.

“I have a bottle. At my house.” Griffin’s olive skin paled. He slanted his gaze toward the sun gleaming behind the mountains. “I’ve kept it all this time to remind me what we once were. What we’re trying to be.”

Trying
to be. If that wasn’t telling.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Xavier told him, “but if you can get it to me, I’ll help you out.”

Griffin immediately spun away, muttering into his phone.

A hollowness ate away at Xavier, but he would do this, because Cat’s safety depended on it. How strange, given that just two weeks ago he had been so intent on wedging himself into the Primary world. Now, once again, he was trying to sweep it away.

The wind picked up, making him think of Jase.

“Gwen will take care of her,” Reed said at his shoulder, with a meaningful look toward Cat.

He exhaled, the pain in his chest worth the weight of a mountain or two. “I know. There’s so much I don’t know, but I know that.”

“All right.” Griffin came back to them. “The bottle will meet us at the Plant.”

All strength left Xavier’s body. “No. I can’t—”

“Xavier, if we wait for it to get here we lose time with Heath Colfax. We need Cat to get what’s in his head and we need it
now
. My people can drive the
Mendacia
to Nevada faster than they can get it to Colorado by plane. Who knows where Kekona is now, who she’s contacted. We’re relying on hours here, not days.”

The wind swept Xavier’s hair across his face and he swiped at it, wishing, for once, that he had the nerve to go as bald as Reed. Cat hadn’t asked him to go to the Plant with her, and he hadn’t offered. Now he had no other choice.
Face it like a man. A
healed
man
.

“All right,” he said.

Griffin had the grace to look humbled. “Thank you, Xavier. I feel like I say that to you every time we’re together.” He clapped a hand on Xavier’s shoulder and Xavier winced. The adrenaline had vanished hours ago. Now rushed in the pain from all the fights and the debilitating exhaustion.

Griffin frowned, then waved over an Ofarian soldier. “My EMT will look at you. Don’t say no.” Then he lifted his phone to his mouth again and barked into it. “I want evidence Michael Ebrecht is leaving Colorado on a private plane tonight. False departure records. Aircraft registration. Everything. And I want a plane we can set on autopilot to drive into the ground outside of Reno…”

Xavier didn’t hear the rest. He was already walking toward Cat. Gwen saw him approach, gave Cat’s arm a squeeze, and fell back toward Reed.

Xavier stood in front of her, his beautiful, brave Cat. “I’m going to the Plant.”

Her chin quivered, but she clamped her jaw shut and the emotion transferred to her eyes, making them all clear and lovely. Like water. Never in a million years would she have
asked him to go back there. He knew that. But some tiny part of her was glad they’d be together. And maybe he felt the same.

“Xavier,” Griffin called out. “Everything’s all set.”

Xavier acknowledged the Ofarian leader with a lift of the chin.

Cat blinked up at him. “Set for what?”

He inhaled deeply. “I’m going to Nevada in order to fake Michael’s death with glamour.”

She touched her lips. “Oh, God. You’d do that?”

“I don’t have a choice. They need to make sure Michael’s not a threat while all this stuff with Kekona goes down…” He reached out, slid his arms around her waist. “And I’m going for you, too.”

She smiled, but it was broken. “Don’t say that. I don’t want to be the one responsible for sending you back there.”

“You’re not sending me.” He pulled her even closer. “I can stay here in Colorado and watch you fly away. I can be a prick and demand that I’ll only help Griffin on my terms. But the thing is, this place, this town, won’t ever be the same to me without you. It’s my fucking hang-ups that screwed everything up between us—”

“No, that’s not true.”

“But really, what am I going to do? Go back to my job, my house, and sink back into that hole that I’d tricked myself into believing was contentment? I’m going back to Nevada because that’s where Griffin needs me. It’s where—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—innocent Ofarians need me. I’m going back to Nevada because if I want to move on with my life, I should be able to leave my past in the past, right?”

Now her hands slid around his back, making his whole body come alive. He touched his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “And I’m going back with you. If you want a hand to hold when you meet your father, I’ll give you one.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want that.”

At this point, he’d do anything she asked. Anything.

Cat got her first and last look at
Mendacia
when an Ofarian
named David met them in the middle of the Nevada barrenness. When he passed the small vial to Griffin, she could see the worn-out places on the silver label where the leader’s fingers fit so well. She could picture him sitting alone in his office or home or wherever, holding the bottle and staring into everything that had gone wrong for his people.

For
their
people, she corrected herself.

Without emotion, Xavier snatched the bottle from Griffin and the cage holding two rats from David. Xavier held one rat in his palm, popped the vial’s cork with a thumb, and poured the thick liquid down the rat’s throat.

Cat gasped.
Mendacia
was the exact color of Xavier’s eyes.

She stood with David—who said he’d been good friends with Gwen since junior high and Griffin since high school—and watched, fascinated, as Xavier manipulated his magic.

He fed the other rat, then wove an illusionary spell on both animals, making one into a pilot—whose identity the half-Tedran tech master Adine Jones had created in less than an hour solely to serve his death—and the other into Michael Ebrecht. Xavier had gotten it eerily right. Cat went up and touched the new Michael, his skin real but chillingly not real. An Ofarian stuffed Michael’s wallet into the faux-Michael’s pocket and they sent the small plane up in the air on some sort of sophisticated remote and autopilot.

Cat and Xavier, Griffin and David, were speeding down the highway, deeper into the cold Nevada scrub, when David, sitting next to her, played with buttons on a handheld computer.
She swiveled in her seat to watch the tiny plane fall from the sky and crash in a great fireball in the middle of nowhere.

She thought of Helen and how, despite Michael’s many, many shortcomings, his “favorite former stepmom” would be devastated.

The whole ride to the Plant, Xavier sat next to her with his head bowed. He didn’t fidget; he didn’t wield that invisible knife. He just sat there, breathing, eyes on his knees. When the giant, gray building, with no outside markings and nothing else around for miles, appeared in the distance, she knew it had to be the Plant.

She reached for Xavier. He’d said he’d hold her hand, but she wanted to take his first.

The moment Griffin and David guided them into the Plant, Xavier’s head lifted. He was going in with his chin raised and eyes opened, and Cat felt a surge of love for him. He didn’t have to go inside. He’d done what he came to Nevada to do. He could have waited in the car out in the parking lot. But he didn’t.

Gwen and Reed should have arrived hours earlier with Lea. Griffin had refused to allow Lea time with her father until they knew everything she knew. Gwen had volunteered to interrogate her sister regarding her actions and the probable Ofarian mole, an assignment that garnered Gwen a whole heck of a lot of respect from Cat, given that the only two surviving members of Gwen’s family were imprisoned here.

Michael and Sean would be given quarters and taken care of in the Plant until their situation was evaluated. The two Ofarians who had also been Lea’s victims were to be taken away for questioning and medical checks by the head Ofarian doctor, who was also David’s wife.

Now Cat and the three men—two Ofarian, one Tedran—walked slowly through the quiet, dimly lit corridors of the Plant. When they passed through a narrow hallway lined with doors that had been bricked over, the newer rectangles a lighter shade, Xavier shut down. He squeezed her hand so hard she lost feeling, but there was no expression on his wan face. Griffin awkwardly cleared his throat.

It was a world without windows, a life without light. And somewhere in here was Cat’s father. Gwen had said anyone and
everyone directly involved with the Plant—anyone who’d knowingly perpetuated the horror without trying to stop it—had been imprisoned here. Cat wasn’t sure if that seemed fair, especially given Colfax’s circumstances for seeking employment here in the first place.

They entered a cell block, a wide corridor whose cinder block walls had been painted a light blue. The place was carpeted, and each cell had a bed and a couch. Books. Not cushy by any means, but comfortable.

Xavier stopped, tugged his hand from Cat’s, and slowly turned around to face Griffin. “I see you redecorated.”

Griffin shifted under Xavier’s harsh stare and said carefully, “There was a lengthy debate over how to modify the Plant to accommodate the new Ofarian prisoners. Some felt the place should be left exactly as it was so the Ofarians would get the exact same treatment as the Tedran slaves. Others wanted to essentially make it a hotel.”

“So you made the executive decision to spruce the place up?” Xavier bit out. “Make it a little cheerier for your own?”

Griffin’s jaw ticked. “Big decisions are done by vote now. I’m a moderator and, in some cases, a tiebreaker. Not a dictator.”

“Aha. So the Ofarian people at large didn’t want to see their own criminals sitting in a gray cell with the constant buzz of neutralizer lights picking at their brains and destroying their sanity.”

Griffin drew a deep breath through his nose. “There are basic rights that all people deserve—Primary and Secondary. We recognized the grave mistakes we’d made for many generations and wanted to send a message that we are changing. Evolving. It was a very, very difficult choice to make, Xavier. Do not walk in here and assume these criminals have it easy by any definition. They’ve all been given enough
nelicoda
to fry their water magic, the very thing that makes them Ofarian. They are incarcerated. They are being punished. They will be in here the rest of their lives. And you are free.”