Just the thought made her lips turn down, a sick feeling cramping her gut. She’d spent the first half of her life hiding, the second glorying in her freedom. She wanted more, not less.
Jason made a slow turn, his silence familiar. It had bugged her when they were dating, and it bugged her now. “I’ll stay in the car if you want,” he said, perfectly in control, perfectly reasonable. “But it’s stupid to go out alone. Hoc can’t call 911.”
Her fingers drummed once on the roof of the car. She had a fool’s hope that Zach would be cooperative, make both of their lives easier. So far, she’d managed to convince his mom everything would end happy. Zach would probably not go along with it. A fairy-tale hope had her out here. A fairy-tale hero was what she needed.
“You’ll wait in the car?” she said, and he stared at her, his expression giving nothing away. “Let my voice be the only one raised at his placement trial?”
“If that’s what you want me to do.”
A quiver ran through her. A part of her wanted him to be there. He’d speak favorably for Zach, freeing her to say the truth and still allow the Strand to have their way. Grace stared out the window, the heat rushing over her as she quietly panicked.
Suburbia had given away to a dusty, hard-packed road running straight through a young-sapling forest out to the gravel pit. The sound of insects rushed over her as the memory of working with Jason rose through her. There had been twenty of them in the high-needs class, doing mostly team-trust exercises to develop the skills to meld one’s energies with someone else’s. She and Jason had melded easily. It had taken two weeks of practice to harmonize her erg wavelengths to Boyd’s. You could have a partner that you never melded with, but being able to was a huge advantage.
They bumped over a rut, and Grace caught the edge of the window.
“You got quiet,” Jason prompted, driving with one hand, and she shrugged. He looked different even if he was still wearing his uniform—casual, relaxed. She knew he wasn’t. He was tighter than a piano string, the faint energy lifting from him making her skin prickle and her watch tick a shade too fast. His control had always sucked.
“I was remembering coming into the Strand scared and full of the lies they tell about us.”
Jason chuckled. “I was terrified they were going to cut my balls off.”
That got her to smile. “That most throws have families didn’t mean anything to you?” she said, and he put both hands on the wheel.
“It’s easier to believe the scary stuff.”
Grace’s smile faded. “He reminds me too much of me,” she said with a sigh. The gravel pit swung into view, abandoned and holding green water.
“I know. What are you going to do, Grace?”
Grace tightened her watchband. “My job.”
“Fine, throw your career away,” he said, jaw tight as he turned to the silent cutting building. There were three dented, late-model cars already there. Tall grass grew up next to the three-story building, broken mortar and graffiti marring its surface. “Still want me to stay in the car?” he asked as he swung around and parked so that he had a clear shot out the only entrance.
Grace listened to the car’s engine tick as it cooled. Hoc sat up on the seat, his ears pricked. The wind brushed her face to bring a clay smell to her. Saying nothing, she got out, slapping her thigh to bring Hoc to her. Three cars could hold a lot of angry friends. “No.”
“Good.”
She jumped when Jason slammed his door, and she pushed her own door shut hard in a show of bravado. A face showed and vanished at a dusty second-story window, and her pulse thudded. Jason was looking up at it, squinting before he reached back in the car and put his cap on. It turned him from a good old boy to a cop. Doubt slithered through her. She was not going to kid herself that the Strand chose their collectors solely on ability. She was good at her job because she and Boyd looked harmless. Jason had attitude, and it wouldn’t mix with whatever was in that building.
“Jason . . .”
He jerked, and they both turned at the sound of grit scraping. Zach was standing at the door, three young men his age behind him. Frowning, Grace pushed Jason out of her mind. Forcing her shoulders down, she tossed her hair behind her shoulder and told Hoc to stay.
“Your mom told me where you were,” she said as she came forward, hoping Jason didn’t move from beside the car’s front door. “I just want to talk.”
Jason snorted. “That ought to do it, Grace.”
Scowling, and she remembered why she’d requested not to work with him. “She’s worried about you, Zach,” she said, stopping ten feet before him. “She has every right to be. I’ve been exactly where you are right now. I know you’re scared.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and the electrical balance in the air shifted as Zach’s expression turned ugly. “Get the hell out of here!” he shouted, gesturing, and Jason jerked his hand off the roof of the car. The smell of burning rubber rose up, and Hoc whined, feeling the large disturbance. “I’m not scared of you!” Zach exclaimed.
Grace stifled a jerk when the headlamps exploded in a superheated burst. It was hard to learn how to throw energy, but the car was a big sink, and she wasn’t as impressed as his friends, hooting and giving each other high fives behind him. The outflow had the sharp feel of caffeine, and her doubt grew.
“Then come out and talk to me, big man,” she taunted, drawing on four years of dealing with scared adolescents who thought they knew everything.
Behind her, Jason leaned against the car to ground it through the metal in his trousers and the metallic toe clip on his shoes. “Okay,” he said as he squinted up at the sun. “I take it back. You’re pretty good at this.”
Grace’s smile lasted all of three seconds as Zach pushed his way into the parking lot, the three guys swaggering out behind him. One had a pipe, the other a pool stick, the third, a length of chain that he dramatically wrapped around his fist. Zach’s hands looked stiff—not good.
“Ah . . .” Jason pushed up from the car, immediately becoming a threat.
Grace motioned Hoc to stand down. Four against three. Not bad odds. Part of her job was to scare a potential initiate into a last desperate act to evaluate them at their worst. Zach wasn’t there yet, but he was close. She had to get him alone. “You and Hoc get the norms, I’ll get the throw.”
“Okay.” His voice was unsure, and she smiled. He was worried about her. Perhaps working with him—just this last time—might be just the thing to get him to grow up.
Focusing on Zach, Grace pushed the sight of the three angry men behind him out of her thoughts. Zach was looking at Hoc, a whisper of doubt marring his teenage superiority complex. “I started his heart back up,” she said, dropping her hand onto the dog’s head. “He never even knew he was down. My partner is okay, too. Just taking a few days off. It’s okay, Zach. All the best operatives run. There’s a place for you, if you’d relax and listen.”
As she expected, Jason edged away from her, mirroring the three guys looking eager for a fight. Zach was left alone, and he cocked his hip. “You ran?” he said in disbelief, shaking his too-long hair out of his eyes.
“Across four state lines,” Jason offered, shifting his weight to find his balance. He was itching for a fight, and Grace wondered if she should have told him to take it easy on the three guys. “Taking her down shut off six square miles of grid.”
Grace flushed. “It was three state lines,” she muttered. “Zach, give me a chance.”
The kid flicked his eyes over the dusty car, then his buddies. “It’s just the two of you?” he said, discounting Hoc completely.
A tingle of adrenaline went through her. He wasn’t going to make this easy. She would have to play this all the way to the end.
“Mistake,” the guy with the pipe said, smiling stupidly, and his buddies laughed.
The thin tracing of energy from Zach prickled along her soul. Deflecting it into the car, she leisurely came forward as Jason dramatically gesture
d for the norms to come at him. Unaware that she’d shifted his focus, Zach sent a blast of heat through his trace. Behind her, the car’s electrical system shorted out in a flash of sparks. Used to it, Hoc still cowered. Zach froze, shocked, and Grace shook her head.
“You’re good,” she said, focused on him. “Got a lot to learn, though.”
Jason grunted. Just within her peripheral sight, she saw the three go at Jason in a seemingly unfair fight. Pipe high over his head, one came at him, screaming. Jason sidestepped him, touching the back of his neck in passing. Grace’s field shivered, and the man dropped, out cold. Seeing him down, the guy with the chain yelled and came forward, only to get Jason’s shoe in his gut—the Strand’s martial arts training standing him in good stead. The third man with the pool stick was harder, and Jason spun in an elegant turn, blocking the man’s first strike and downing him with an electric-supported jab to the kidneys.
“Get him!” Zach exclaimed, and the guy with the chain staggered to his feet. Head hanging, he came at Jason, the chain whirling. Grace winced when Jason reached for it, the chain wrapping his hand and probably bruising if not breaking a knuckle or two. Thinking he had him, the man grinned and yanked Jason forward into what would be a bear hug.
His face grim, Jason went, but the man was falling even as his arms reached for him, his mind shocked into a temporary state of nonfunctioning through the chain itself. “Damn, that hurt!” Jason said half to himself as he was almost pulled down by the man, shaking his hand to disentangle the chain from himself.
All through this, Grace kept moving forward, Hoc at her heel. Zach stared as the last of his buddies fell. She shrugged and held out her hand as his eyes came to her. “It’s up to you, Zach. Ready to grow up and find out how powerful you are, or do you want to stay here and impress your friends with making the lights glow and warming up their beer?”
Zach took one gasping breath of air. Hoc jerked when he turned and ran back into the building, and Grace grabbed his ruff, stopping him. Fine. She could use a little stretching of her legs.
“Stay,” she said, letting go. “You too, Jason!” she shouted, her adrenaline pounding through her as she jolted into motion, following the panicking kid.
“Are you serious?” Jason shouted from outside, but she had halted just inside the door. It was dark and chilly, the thick walls keeping out the heat. There was more graffiti, and the place smelled like urine. Sun spilled in the far side where huge bays gaped open to where the granite had been brought in to be cut, and a scuff pulled her eyes to the stairway snaking up to the roof.
“Run from me, you little ant piss,” she muttered, angry now as she took off after him. She thundered up the metal staircase, blowing into a heated fog Zach had made from the water spilled through the ceiling.
“Nice!” she shouted at him, listening to his running steps as she gently warmed the mist until it rose. “I’m telling you, Zach, you’re a natural at this, probably get yourself into the elite. What I’m wondering is why you’re still running from six months of flirting with girls just like you. You aren’t alone. It’s an entirely new world. Damn it, will you stop for a minute?” She hesitated at the top of the stairs, not wanting to run into a nasty surprise in the next room.
“I like my old one!” he shouted, and she nodded. Third office on the left.
“Then you can come back to it,” she said, catching her breath as she inched down the hall.
“After you burn me!” he screamed. Zach was trapped with nowhere to go, and he knew it. His subconscious was fighting against him, putting him somewhere he couldn’t run from. She’d done the same thing after two weeks of hiding. She liked her life, but something in her still wondered what might have happened if she had just kept running.
“I can’t argue with you,” she said softly, knowing he could hear her when his feet scuffed from the third room. “If you aren’t honest with them, they’re going to burn every last nanometer of brain that can throw energy. Why would you want to do that? We’re not the enemy.”
Senses alert, she peeked into the next room. It was empty. She stared at the wide window and the drop beyond. Had he jumped?
A soft pad of feet behind her was too small a warning, and she cried out when he hit her from behind, instinct shifting her erg balance until his blast of energy faltered and died. She managed to turn as she fell, and she hit the floor hard, her breath knocked out of her as Zach landed, pinning her there.
“I’m going to kill you,” he snarled, his eyes wide, panic making him face drawn and ugly. “I’m going to kill you and anyone else they send after me. You’ll never find me!”
Her breath finally came in. Eyes narrowed, she wiggled, finding he had pinned her securely. She couldn’t move. She wouldn’t have to. “Wrong on all three counts,” she said, her back hurting. “I’m sorry, Zach. I did try.”
Teeth clenched, he flooded her with energy, trying to stop her heart.
Expecting it, Grace nevertheless gasped, her heart pounding and her head exploding in pain. Lungs on fire, she felt the waves of his energy coursing through her, going askance to her own rhythm. The discordant flow crested, worsened, and she struggled to match it, feeling her body start to warm and the tiny capillaries in her lungs begin to explode.
The pain of that galvanized her, and aching, she began to shift the balance of her body to match his, equal the pressure he was applying and match his energy flow, resonating to his own pulse. Changing hers to match his snuffed the threat and filled her with a sense of well-being, almost euphoric. As if like magic, the pain vanished. The heat in her fell to nothing, and she exhaled it in a breath of steam. Her eyes opened to find Zach’s.
He stared, wide-eyed, knowing something had shifted.
If he had been schooled, he could kill her still, but he wasn’t, and something in her raged as she decided she couldn’t allow him entrance to the Strand, the elite be damned. She could forgive a lot in the fear collectors engendered, but he wasn’t suited to the rigorous morals of the Strand. He could not be allowed to keep his talents. Damn Jason and his offer.
“Get the hell off me,” she snapped, angry at herself and smacking him smartly on the cheek as she shoved him away.
“Wha-a-a?” Zach stammered as he slid three feet, shocked that he hadn’t downed her.
Grace stood up, pissed. Yes, she’d promised his mother she would take care of him, but screening possible recruits was her job, damn it. It wasn’t a collector’s responsibility to simply bring in throws, but to scare them into the worst place they’d ever been to see the way their moral compass pointed. Now she knew. Zach would misuse his gifts, give them all a black name. She didn’t care if the Strand was willing to overlook his moral faults. She wasn’t.
“Trying to kill me was rude,” she said as she felt her middle. Nothing felt ruptured, and the blood she spit out was probably only from broken capillaries. “You really thought you would be better than me?” Zach stared up at her, still on his ass with his legs askew. “I know everything about you, you little ant piss.”
The jingle of Hoc’s collar grew louder, and she shifted from the door, knowing that Jason wouldn’t be far behind. He’d given her room to work—to flush her own career down the can—and now that her evaluation was done and her decision had been made, he could interfere all he wanted. It would be her testimony at his hearing, and no one else’s.
Zach scooted back, his gaze darting behind her. “How did you do that?”
“Balancing your resonance to someone else’s is first-year stuff,” she said, edging farther into the room, knowing if he tried to flee, he’d run right into Jason. She almost hoped he would.
Zach’s eyes went to the door when Hoc and Jason entered, Hoc’s nails snapping on the dusty wood. Grace didn’t look at either of them, shaking not from fear, but anger. She wasn’t going to lie to gain entrance into the elite. Jason could suck eggs and die. They all could.
“You are a limp-dick, rude little boy,” she said, hands on her hips
. “I could have taken you in standing up, walking beside me free and unfettered to learn how to control the gifts that the universe gave you, but no. You have to go and try to kill me.” She leaned over him. “I’m going to personally see that you get every last erg-sensitive synapse burned out of your thick skull.”
White faced, Zach scrambled up and put his back to the wall. His eyes darted to the three-story drop out the window, then to Jason standing at the door. Jason sighed, making her face burn. Telling an unregistered throw what his or her fate was before the formal trial was a mistake, but she wanted Jason to know she thought he was scum. She would not lie for them.
“Grace . . .” Jason pleaded.
“Go screw yourself,” she snarled. “Both of you.” Hoc slunk to hide behind Grace, knowing she was unhappy. Ticked, Grace felt the small of her back, thinking a massage might be in order after she visited Boyd and told him how scummy the elite were, drowning their joined sorrows in pretending both their worlds weren’t collapsing. She had thought the Strand was beautiful, pure. But it was as corrupt as everything else in the world.
“You. Out,” she demanded, her head pounding when she spun a wad of energy out of her cells and shoved it into her hand to make the air around it glow like St. Elmo’s fire.
Zach’s eyes widened. His shoulders slumping, he edged past Jason. Jason reached out to grab his arm, and Zach spun, making Hoc yip and skitter sideways. There was a flash of silver, and Jason grabbed Zach’s hand now pressed into his side, the knife in his fist already deep in Jason’s ribs. “You’ll have to kill me to take me in!” the kid shouted. “You’re all brainwashed bastards!”