Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

And by
crafting
, I’m not talking about glue guns and papier-mâché. You see, my mom was a Nejeret carrier, and carriers are special: not quite like us, but not quite human, either. They’re a whole brand of
other
, unique all to themselves. They don’t get to live forever or benefit from superhuman healing and heightened senses, but they haven’t totally lost the genetic lottery, either—especially not if they know what they are and what they’re capable of.

Some people call it a sixth sense, or insight. It’s the eyes in the back of parents’ heads and the gut reactions some people feel so distinctly they can’t
not
trust them. It’s the unshakeable sense of déjà vu, the heebie-jeebies, the mother’s instinct. It’s the sense of knowing, in your heart, what can’t be known. The realization that wakes you in the middle of the night. The hairs that stand up on the back of your neck. The urge that makes you pick up the phone just before it rings. It’s all part of being a Nejeret carrier.

Many carriers are born, live their lives, and grow old totally unaware of their full potential. Others, like my mom, are raised knowing what they are, fully aware not only of the wondrous world closed to them but of the mysterious in-between that belongs to them alone. And some carriers, like my mom, capitalize on their unique abilities.

Fortunes were her expertise, mostly palm reading and tarot cards, but she discovered early on that she had a talent for sensing physiological vibrations. She could read people better than most Nejerets who’d had thousands of years’ experience. Or rather, she could read
most
people. She hadn’t been able to read an Apep-possessed Set, my father—
shudder
—and hers.

The thought was truly vomit-worthy.

And
my mom must’ve been fooled by Carson, both before and after he’d been possessed by Apep. My lip curled into a sneer. I wished I could bring Carson back to life just to kill him slowly. His death had been way too fast and far too painless. He deserved worse. More. But I couldn’t bring him back to life, so I’d have to settle for hunting down the other members of the Kin instead.

I shrugged off my messenger bag and set it on top of the round table in the center of the room, then pulled a tablet from the bag with shaking hands.

At the sound of a key being fitted into the lock of the shop door, my head snapped up. The bell over the door jingled, and I spun around, fingers clutching the tablet. Through the beaded curtain and the shadowed shop floor beyond, I could see only a dark silhouette backed by blinding sunlight.

“Mom?” It was irrational, I knew. She was dead,
I knew.
But part of me fully expected her voice to be the one that answered. My whole body tensed, waiting. Hoping.

“It’s me, Kitty Kat.” It was Nik.

I covered my mouth with my hand just before a sob broke free. I leaned back against the table and hugged the tablet to my chest, taking deep breaths. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?”

“Nothing,” I snapped. Who did he think he was? This was
my
place. Mine and my mom’s. Nik had no right to be here, let alone to pry into my business.

“Not true,” he said. “You’re definitely doing something. Sharing is caring, Kitty Kat . . .”

“Fuck you.”

“Thanks, but teens aren’t really my thing.”

“Fuck
off
.”

“Hmmm . . .” His silhouetted hand traced along the edge of a display table. “Don’t think so.”

I gritted my teeth. “Why are you here?”

“Curiosity.” He wasn’t moving and I couldn’t see his face, but I had the disturbing impression that he was watching me through the curtain.

I was quiet for a moment. “Yours?” I asked. “Or Re’s?”

Nik started across the shop floor, slowly nearing the beaded curtain. “Re thinks you matter. He claims you’re important for some reason—you’re fated to be the catalyst for something epic.”

That was the last thing I wanted to hear. “Like what?”

“Don’t know. He doesn’t share everything with me.” Nik stopped in the doorway, just on the other side of the beads. “All I know is that if you run off and get yourself killed
now
, everything he’s worked so hard for will turn to dust and blah blah blah . . .”

Can I just point out how
not
happy I was with the revelation that Re thought I was important. What bullshit. I did my important thing, helping break Lex out of Apep-Set’s prison in the At back in June. It was a way more important thing than I’d ever expected to do in my lifetime—help to rescue the literal mother-to-be of the gods, the messiah of our people, the world, and the whole damn universe—and I’d paid the price for mattering. I was stuck in the body of an eighteen-year-old. Forever. And let’s not forget that my forever could last thousands of years.

So yeah, I tapped out from doing important things after that. Washed my hands of mattering. Re was free to think whatever the hell he wanted to think about me, but it wouldn’t change a thing. I was done.
Done.

I straightened my spine. “I have no intention of getting myself killed.”

“Oh, Kitty Kat . . .” Nik stretched out his arms and planted his hands on either side of the doorframe, then pushed his face through the curtain. “So naïve.”

26

Watch & Learn

There was nothing I could say or do to make Nik leave. Sure, I could’ve packed up and left to watch the video files elsewhere, but I had little doubt that he would follow me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t anywhere else to go, anyway.

“Just don’t break anything.” I watched him through the beaded curtain while I fished the thumb drive out of the zippered pocket inside my bag. “And don’t turn on the lights,” I added as his hand hovered over the switch on the wall to the right of the doorframe. “I don’t want anyone thinking we’re open.”

He lowered his hand. It wasn’t like he needed any light, anyway. He was a Nejeret; he’d be able to see more than well enough once his eyes adjusted to the dimness.

“Would it be so bad—people thinking you’re open?” he asked.

I pulled out a chair and sat—not my mom’s vintage violet armchair, but the other, smaller padded chair clients used to use during their readings. It was where I always used to sit when I was there after school, doing homework or playing on my phone when I wasn’t covering for my mom out on the shop floor.

“We’re not—the
shop
isn’t open.” I turned on the tablet. “It’s probably in some sort of legal limbo now, anyway.”

“It’s not.”

I stared at him through the curtain. He tossed his long, black leather jacket onto the checkout counter, then thumbed through the business cards displayed on the end, his back to me. “What do you mean?” I shook my head. “How do you know—”

“Dom transferred everything of your mom’s over to you.”

“I—” I swallowed and licked my lips. “What?”

“Seventeen.”

“
What
?”

Nik straightened, and he looked at me, his eyes glinting in the shadows. “File number seventeen. Watch it. You’ll understand better.”

I glanced down at the thumb drive. “You’ve watched them?”

Nik moved on to the outdated fliers posted on the bulletin board hanging on the wall beside the counter. “Marcus made the whole Council watch them all. His attempt to nudge the other Council members out of inaction.”

“It didn’t work.” It was impossible to keep the bitterness from my tone. If the Council of Seven wouldn’t man up and go after the Kin, then I’d do it for them. Actually, I preferred them sitting on their thumbs. It would keep them out of my way.

Nik’s shoulders rose and fell. “They’re afraid.”

I snorted. They’d be stupid not to be—and however slow the Council was to act, intelligence and wisdom were not things they lacked. Which apparently made me a moron, because all I felt was hunger for the hunt . . . excitement for the kill. “Are you afraid?” I asked Nik.

He laughed, a harsh, dry sound. “I’m bored.”

I plugged the thumb drive into the tablet’s sole USB receiver. “And what—you think following me around is the most direct route to excitement?” I still didn’t really know why he was here, other than the bit of insider information he had from Re. What did he want? “
Awesome
plan. How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s yet to disappoint.”

I frowned and muttered, “Well, don’t blame me when it does.” Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my headphones. “Will you be able to entertain yourself for a couple hours?”

Nik grunted. “We’ll manage.”
We.
Right, because he wasn’t alone. Far from it. He’d been sharing his body with a being with near-infinite knowledge for thousands of years; they probably still had tons to talk about. Like me, apparently.

I tucked the earbuds into my ears, adjusted the tablet’s volume, and opened the thumb drive. My eyes scanned the file names, unconsciously searching for number seventeen. As it turned out, it was one of the files with “Kat” and a timestamp written in parentheses at the end of the date-time file name.

Tapping on the video file, I shot a quick sideways glance to the curtain but didn’t see Nik. He must’ve moved into one of the alcoves to study the jewelry in the glass cases or the crystals, stones, and candles on the bookshelves. Whatever. So long as he didn’t intrude further, I didn’t really mind him being there.

The video opened, engulfing the tablet’s small screen. Once again, my mom appeared. She was sitting on the far side of a table, facing the camera, just like before. Only this time, she wasn’t in the underground holding cell but in a white-walled room, empty but for the table and two chairs.

I watched with bated breath as Dom came into view and sat in the chair opposite my mom. His body didn’t block the camera’s view of her, but that didn’t stop me from scooting my chair closer. Like it would make any difference.

“Let’s continue where we left off yesterday,” Dom said, and my mom nodded.

She watched him, attentive. Willing. I could see it on her face. She wanted to help.

I cleared my throat, and I leaned in closer.

“Tell me more about the relationship between Mei and Mari,” Dom said.

“What do you want to know?”

I had no idea who or what they were talking about, beyond the fact that Mei had supposedly been the leader of the Kin before Carson freed Apep and she was killed—maybe even by his hand. And I only knew that much because Neffe and Dom had been talking about it one morning at the breakfast table and hadn’t heard me come down the stairs. Sometimes it was like they all forget that I, an out-of-the-loop Nejerette with pretty dang good hearing, lived there, too.

After double-checking the timestamp at the end of the file name—16:07—I slid the progress bar to the right, too curious and impatient to wait a whole fifteen minutes for them to get to the relative good part. I needed to know what Nik had been talking about just a moment ago, not to mention what Dom had deemed significant enough to note as being of specific interest to me. Like, now.

“. . . and I respected her for that,” my mom said. “Mari was the closest thing Mei would ever have to a daughter. Mei loved her unconditionally . . . would’ve done anything for her.”

“So you felt you could relate to Mei?”

My mom didn’t say anything, just nodded and turned her face away from the camera. She was crying. My own eyes stung with tears.

Dom pulled something from his back pocket and held it out across the table. When my mom accepted his offering and dabbed under her eyes, I realized he’d handed her a handkerchief.

“Thank you.” My mom coughed to clear her throat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean for this to keep happening.”

“There is no need for apologies. Truly, I understand.”

My mom made a sound that slightly resembled a laugh. “I’m afraid I forgot the question . . .”

“Ah, yes. Did you feel Mei’s motherly relationship with Mari made her easy to relate to?”

“Absolutely.” I was surprised by the level of conviction my mom could pack into that single word. “Everything she did was to protect Mari. If the Council ever found out about her, they’d view her as an abomination, someone too dangerous to let live. Fear would have driven them to hunt down and destroy her, along with all of the Kin with sheuts, simply for the crime of existing. At least, that’s the way Mei saw it.”

“You are aware of Nuin’s mandate against pre-manifested Nejerettes from having sexual intercourse with men, Nejeret or otherwise, and that the purpose of this mandate was to prevent Nejeret with sheuts from ever being born?”

My mom nodded. “But Mei viewed that as merely an excuse. She taught that Nuin’s ‘mandate’ was a convenient law the Council used to legitimize their fear of the more powerful Kin. There was no proof that it had even been Nuin’s wish—no record of it in the At that Mei or any of the other Kin could find.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” My mom leaned forward, forearms on the table and hanky balled up in her right hand. “Do you really? Because Mei believed it was all a Council ruse—evidence of their corruption. In her mind, she had no choice but to amass an army and overturn the Council of Seven. If she didn’t, they would kill her and everyone she loved.”

“And you, Gen? Is that why
you
betrayed the Council? Did you fear for your daughter’s life?”

“I—” My mom slumped in her chair. “Yes, I did. Kat is also a product of broken mandates. What Set did to me—”

“
Apep
-Set,” Dom clarified.

“Maybe Apep was in control, but it’s Set’s genes that run through my and Kat’s blood.”

Dom nodded once. “Fair enough.”

“I—I feared Kat would become an outcast once her incestuous
lineage became commonly known.”

“And . . . ?”

“And then after she was forced to manifest . . .”

“Another broken mandate?”

My mom nodded, but it was seconds before she actually spoke. “Kat—my little girl—she became not just one, but two things the Council forbade based on Nuin’s ancient laws.” My mom stared down at her hands, joined together on the table. “I was afraid for her. I still am. She’ll never be accepted, not with the way things currently stand. I couldn’t just sit back and let that happen, not when I had the chance to change the world she lived in . . . to make it into a place that would be more open and accepting.”

My chin trembled, but my eyes remained glued to the screen. Here was yet more proof that my mom got tangled up in this mess because of me. Because she loved me. And I’d been mad at her, ashamed of her. I’d called her a traitor alongside everyone else.

“I see,” Dom said. “Now, I’d like to go back to talking about Mei and Mari.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to derail us . . .”

“No apology needed. Now, tell me, please, what was Mari’s relationship with Mei like?”

“Well, she called Mei ‘Mom’ most of the time, so . . . I’d say that’s how she saw her. Mei was grooming Mari to be her successor. Everyone knew it. I think it’s a natural thing for a parent to want to feel like all of their hard work won’t go to waste, to know that we’ll leave something behind for our children . . . something our children will
want
to take over once we’re gone.” My mom shook her head and sat up straighter. “I’m sorry, I got sidetracked again. Yes, I believe Mari loved Mei like a mother. But . . .”

“But, what?”

“The past month or so . . . I don’t know. Mari seemed off, somehow.” Again, my mom shook her head. “Something changed between her and Mei.”

“How so?”

“Well, Mari’s a little more passionate than her mother. Or maybe vehement is a better word for it. Anyway, you have to understand that Mari was raised to believe the Council of Seven wants to kill her. A few weeks ago I overheard her and Mei arguing. Mari was saying that the Council is evil and that all who follow its rule are tainted and must be ‘cleansed,’ and that if Mei wasn’t strong enough to do it, Mari would take over and do it for her. Her conviction was terrifying.”

“Are you suggesting that Mari may have had some involvement with Mei’s death?”

“I think it’s possible, but that’s in the past. You should be more worried about the present.” My mom pressed her palms down on the table and leaned forward. “With Mei gone, you should all be worried that Mari will find a way to unite the Kin under her more radical views. If she can mobilize them against you . . .”

Dom shifted in his chair. “I see. I’ll make sure your warning is passed along.”

“Good.” My mom relaxed a little. “Dom, can you tell me—what’s going to happen to me?”

There was a long pause, and I held my breath. The answer both mattered and didn’t. She was already gone.

“Your fate is in the Council’s hands,” Dom said finally.

“Oh, alright. Um, w—what do you think that fate is likely to be?”

“I’m sorry, Gen, but I honestly cannot say.”

“Oh, well . . . I understand.”

“I think we should take a break.” Dom scooted his chair back and stood.

“Dom?”

He stopped halfway to the camera and turned around to face my mom.

“Would you mind—I’d like to make a will. Whatever happens to me, I want to make sure Kat’s okay.”

“Of course,” Dom said. “I’ll get started this evening and have a draft for you to review at our morning session tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

Dom turned away and approached the camera.

“And will you tell Kat—”

“—that you love her and would like to see her?” Dom said, like he’d heard it a million times before. I could only see the side of his black leather belt and the bottom of his tucked-in shirt now. “Of course.”

The video went black.

Heart thudding, I wiped the wetness from under my eyes, then pulled up the folder and clicked on the first video from the sixteenth of September, when my mom and Carson first showed up. I pulled my sketchbook from my bag and grabbed a pen from the outside pocket to take notes. I wanted to know everything—more about Mei, this Mari chick who might or might not have killed Mei, and more about anyone else who’d tricked my mom into believing their bullshit. I wanted to know who had been in league with Carson, who else had believed releasing Apep and siccing him on us—and using my mom to gain entry to the compound—was a grand ol’ plan.