Skykeepers (23 page)

As the days passed, Sasha relearned that story, along with so many others, during daily lessons with the
winikin
. These were followed by afternoon weaponry and hand-to-hand drills, along with basic magic classes. She wouldn’t get her true access to the power until after her bloodline and talent ceremonies, but she practiced the spells so she’d be ready for whatever came next. After dinner she often sat down with Jade, looking for holes in her knowledge, and finding a couple of places where Ambrose’s stories filled in gaps. The more they compared notes, the more it seemed likely that Ambrose had left Skywatch prior to the Solstice Massacre. Which begged the question of why he’d left, who Sasha’s mother had been . . . and whether she’d been magebred. Lots of questions. No real answers.

During those long talks, Sasha and Jade formed a budding friendship despite—or perhaps because of—having Michael in common.

Sasha saw very little of him in the days leading up to her bloodline ceremony . . . at least in the flesh. To her dismay, she still dreamed of him most nights, reliving their lovemaking in the sacred chamber. Her mind replayed each touch and sigh, and the way they’d come together without pretense, honest in their desire for each other. Magic or no magic, they had connected, or so she believed in the deep of night. In the mornings, when she awakened alone and aching, she found that she couldn’t even curse him for how it had ended. She could only wonder
why
it had ended. Granted, he was a free man; he had the right to say “no thanks.” But on the rare occasions when she did see him, he looked haggard, and he stared at her with a dark, hungry expression that he tried to conceal when he caught her staring.

More, he
did
things for her.

The first incident was her second day at Skywatch, when the king himself had broken the news that Iago had torched her apartment soon after he’d captured her, presumably to confuse the Nightkeepers’ search for her. Sasha’s initial shock had turned to worry when she realized that Ada wasn’t among the listed survivors. But Strike told her that Michael was already on it. Carter’s report on Sasha had mentioned her friendship with the widow, and Michael had taken it from there.

He wouldn’t talk to her, apparently, but he’d take the time to find out what had happened to a firefighter’s widow in her seventies, simply because she’d been Sasha’s friend. Which didn’t make any sense.

The next day, Nate—Skywatch’s resident techno geek—had shown up at her suite and handed her his latest castoff laptop, which, although a hand-me-down, still had way more bells and whistles than anything she would’ve bought for herself. Then he’d taken a few hours, taught her how to use the toys, and brought her up to speed on the latest Web sites and current events. He’d accepted her thanks but made sure she knew it’d been Michael’s idea, Michael’s request.

That had left her fuming. He’d dumped her. So why couldn’t he leave her alone?

But despite her annoyance, she kept the computer. The Net access helped her feel reconnected to the larger world without leaving the compound. The first few days, she had no desire to leave. Then, just as she was starting to get itchy to explore, Sven returned from a short assignment—bloody, battered, and drawn—to report that a couple of red-robes had jumped him just outside the gates of Skywatch. Although a thorough search of the area had turned up nothing, the magi had to assume the Xibalbans were watching the compound, which meant that Sasha wound up under house arrest, at least until her bloodline ceremony.

It wasn’t the hardship it might have been. She studied. She cooked. And when she needed some peace, she went to the greenhouse, where Jox and Tomas made her welcome, giving her time and company when she wanted it, space when she needed it. And let her know that they would have wanted her there, even if Michael hadn’t asked them to make sure she felt at home.

In fact, she heard so many variations on the theme of “He told me, ‘Make her feel welcome, damn it!’ ” that she could almost hear the words in his too-familiar rasp. She was tempted to track him down and demand an explanation, but didn’t because he was so obviously avoiding her. And because she was determined not to chase affection. Never again. So instead she studied the magic that might soon be hers and tried to ignore the fact that it felt like Michael was courting her thirdhand while at the same time pushing her away.

That is, until one morning a few days before the full moon when she opened the door to her suite and found three file-size cardboard boxes sitting in the hallway just outside her door. Her name was written above the address for the postal drop-ship location the Nightkeepers used to maintain a layer of anonymity, and the boxes were plastered with stickers that read, FRAGILE, RUSH DELIVERY, and THIS END UP. Assuming the packages contained the new mixer and bowls she’d ordered online, she lugged them into her suite and attacked the first one, punching through the layers of tape with a kitchen knife.

Instead of commercial packing, she found wadded newspaper within. A white envelope lay on top, her name written across the front in spidery handwriting.

Familiar
spidery handwriting.

“Ada?” Sasha whispered, nearly dropping to her knees when her legs went wobbly.

She reached for the envelope with trembling fingers, then hesitated, half afraid the note and boxes would disappear, proving to be a figment, a wish. Instead, the envelope crinkled beneath her touch. If this were a posthumous delivery, she had to assume Michael would have been there to break the news. Or, more likely, sent an emissary. But this . . . this had to mean her friend was alive, that she’d survived the fire.

“Thank you, gods,” she whispered.

She opened the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper, then blinked back tears at the sight of the familiar stationary, which was watermarked at the top with Ada’s name intertwined with that of her husband, Charlie, who’d been gone nearly a decade but lived in her heart. Or so she’d always claimed.
Dear Sasha
, the letter read in Ada’s nearly illegible writing.

Sasha’s mind stuttered a little, not just on the fabricated WitSec protection, which she supposed was as good a story as any to cover her disappearance, but on the words “your Michael.” She reread them a few times, then made herself move on.

The letter continued:

It was signed,
All my love, Ada
, though Sasha almost couldn’t read the signature through the blur of tears.

In a flash, she was back in Ada’s pretty kitchen, fussing with a batch of spicy shrimp while her friend “fiddled around,” as she called it, padded violin tucked beneath her chin, rosined bow sliding smoothly as she segued from Beethoven to Bach, from Mozart to others Sasha couldn’t name, some that she suspected were Ada’s own creations. “Find yourself a good man,” the widow had often said, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Someone who’ll love you like my Charlie loved me.” After Saul, when Sasha had suffered through a series of bad first dates, and a few worse second ones, she’d decided Ada had gotten one of the good ones, that there might not be a Charlie for her.

Now, her eyes locked on the name in the last paragraph.
Michael
. He’d found Ada for her. He’d asked her to send . . . what?

She didn’t even care that her hands shook as she broke the seal on the top box, hardly daring to hope that Ada had—Yes, she had! The clay pots were packed one against the next, the greens protected with inverted Tupperware containers duct-taped into place, with airholes perforated into the top. “Hello,” she breathed, knowing she should probably feel like an idiot for talking to her plants, and not giving a crap. “Do you remember me?”

Laughing a little, crying a little, she unpacked all three boxes, which yielded eighteen pots, all but two of which were her personal cooking herbs. Those last two were the fat, furry African violets that always made her smile. And smile she did, as she watered her green friends and arranged the pots in her kitchen window, setting the few shade lovers off to the side. She stood back and felt a tear fall as she saw that she’d arranged them almost the same as they had been back in Boston. Then she swiped at her face, and told herself to pull it together as determination firmed within her.

She was going to track down Michael and thank him, whether he liked it or not.

Michael’s blood was running hot and hard as he blasted away with both autopistols, one in each hand, running through his clips without pause, then slapping a fresh pair home and getting back into it before the targets could even reset. He was jonesing to run and roll and kick some major ass, but Skywatch’s firing range was static. No Hogan’s Alley here—it was all paper targets and a half dozen pop-ups he’d already Swiss-cheesed into submission. He could’ve gone hunting for a partner for the techware laser tag he’d instituted a few months earlier; the high-grade military equipment was pretty close to the real thing—good enough for training runs, anyway. But he wasn’t in the mood for company; he was in the mood to blow some shit away.

The dam was intact, the sluiceways shut, but that didn’t seem to matter these days. His inner caveman was alive and well, and loose within his skull. He wanted to throw his head back, beat on his chest, and howl into the strange orange sun with frustration, anger, and the shitty unfairness of Sasha’s being there, yet beyond his reach. He couldn’t touch her, didn’t dare. Not when she was the one who’d stirred up the darkness within him, calling it so close to the surface. Too close.

He was holding the Other at bay, but just barely. And he was spending a hell of a lot of time and energy burning off the edges.

“Whatever it takes,” he grated, slapping home another pair of clips and hitting the reset button at his right elbow. “Whatever it fucking takes.”

“Words to live by,” a voice said from behind him, filtering through his ear protectors.
Her
voice.

His whole body went tight in an instant. He would’ve given anything to scoop her up, carry her into the gun shed, lock the door, and lose himself with her, inside her. Because that wasn’t an option, he slammed down every inner shield he possessed, set the autopistols aside, stripped off his protective glasses and earplugs, and turned toward her, moving slowly, trying not to let her see how the sight of her got his body jamming.

She stood a few feet away, at the edge of the rubber-padded cement that formed the main firing platform, with its waist-high reload counter and protective baffles. She was wearing crisp new jeans that hugged her long legs and a clingy green shirt that cinched beneath her breasts. Her hair was a mass of dark curls surrounding her face, and she was wearing a touch of mascara to accent her vivid brown eyes, a slick of lip gloss that caught his eye and made him think of her long, slow kisses and the murmur of pleasure she’d made at the back of her throat when he’d touched her, when they’d touched each other.

He’d crossed half the distance between them before he was aware of moving, was reaching for her before he could make himself stop. The spark of silver that flashed through him, though, stopped him dead in his tracks, and had his voice going low and harsh. “You shouldn’t be here.”

But she shook her head, holding up her hands as though to ward him off. “I came to thank you.”

It took him a moment; he was too caught up in the edges of battle rage at first to remember. Then he did, and he fell back a step. “Oh. That.” He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I had Jox get her a fake ID, and we moved her to another apartment within the retirement complex, just in case Iago goes looking deeper in an effort to find you.” They couldn’t forget that the Xibalban wanted Sasha. And once Michael had met Ada Moscowitz and seen the older woman’s relief when she learned Sasha was okay, he’d known he wouldn’t be able to walk away without making things as right as he could. He’d wanted the widow to have some closure, wanted Sasha to have a piece of her old life within Skywatch.

And he should’ve had Strike give her the boxes and pretend it’d been his idea, damn it. But he’d wanted . . . hell, he didn’t know what he wanted. Or rather, he knew exactly what he wanted, and didn’t dare take it.

Her lips parted on a soft sigh. “Then I owe you even more than I thought.”

“You don’t owe me a godsdamned thing,” he said flatly. When that didn’t seem to be enough for the edgy heat that was kicking through his system, he added, “Don’t make me into some sort of hero, sweetheart. That was payback.”

He wanted her to be pissed at him. Instead, she rolled her eyes. “Try again, cowboy. One good deed I might’ve bought as guilt. Four or five good deeds—and those are the ones I know about—make me wonder what the hell game you’re playing.”

“Shit. I should’ve known they’d blab. Frigging Yen tas.” Trying really hard to be an asshole, he shrugged. “Fine. You’re welcome. Go away.” He lifted his protective glasses. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Her eyes went past him to the pop-up targets—this week it was a group of tough-looking men in urban gang gear, packing Uzis. Most of them were headless. “Looks like you’re doing just fine.”