Round Trip Fare

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  Published by The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,

  Hartwood Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona

  www.hartwoodpublishing.com

  Round Trip Fare

  Copyright © 2016 by Barb Taub

  Digital Release: April 2016

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Round Trip Fare by Barb Taub

  Is it wrong that shooting people is just so much easier than making decisions? Carey wonders—and not for the first time. But the Agency claims this will be an easy one. A quick pickup of a missing teen and she won’t even have to shoot anybody. Probably.

  Carey knows superpowers suck, her own included. From childhood she’s only had two options. She can take the Metro train to Null City and a normal life. After one day there, imps become baristas, and hellhounds become poodles. Demons settle down, join the PTA, and worry about their taxes. Or she can master the powers of her warrior gift and fight a war she can’t win, in a world where she never learned how to lose.

  And then there is…him. For the past two months, a dark stranger has persistently edged his way onto the mental game board behind her eyelids. Well, whatever trouble he's selling, Carey Parker is not buying. Her to-do list is already long enough: find her brother and sister, rescue her roommate, save Null City, and castrate her ex-boyfriend. Preferably with a dull-edged garden tool. A rusty one.

  She just has a few details to work out first. Her parents have been killed, her brother and sister targeted, and the newest leader of the angels trying to destroy Null City might be the one person she loves most in the world. And her sexy new partner’s gift lets him predict deaths. Hers.

  Dedication

  To my daughter Hannah, inspiration and patient listener for all things Null City.

  I’d also like to thank my incredible critique partners, Jaime Munn and David Bridger, for all the invaluable help, insight, and suggestions. If I used your suggestions, it’s because you’re geniuses. If not, it’s because I’m an idiot.

  Author Notes

  When I was working in Seattle's eclectic Fremont neighborhood, my office wall of windows faced the soaring George Washington Memorial Bridge. This was not a perk. Known locally as the Aurora Bridge, it has seen hundreds of suicides since its construction in 1932, making it the country's second deadliest bridge. My office had a horrific ringside seat. A dedicated group known as Seattle FRIENDS worked tirelessly for years to promote construction of a suicide prevention barrier, which was finally completed on February 16, 2011. This story takes the liberty of extending that date by an additional six months.

  Prequel

  Accords Academy Recruitment Notice:

  Newly-established Academy offers professional training for Wardens in policing and enforcing the Accords Agreement of 1998. Now accepting cadet applications for inaugural class of 2006.

  —Are you willing to work long hours, face overwhelming odds, and risk extreme personal danger?

  —Can you call yourself an expert in one or more fighting styles, with or without your personal weapons of choice?

  —Have you named any of your personal weapons after your favorite fanfiction characters?

  Do you find it easier to sleep if one —or more— of your named weapons is in the bed with you?

  —Do you secretly think it’s just possible that your Hogwarts letter was misplaced?

  —Are you an orphan?

  Preference given for prior battle and/or vigilante experience. —Full scholarships provided.—

  Chapter One

  2002: St. Helens Ranch, Eastern Washington State

  “I need a bigger sword.” Carey ran her finger along the edge of the slender blade before laying it on the picnic table. Her twin grunted but didn’t raise his eyes from the book in front of him. She pulled a knife from her boot, dropping it also onto the table.

  “And now that I have the mixed martial black belt, Master Park says I need to train with a Kalaripayattu studio.” The knife was followed by several shuriken, Japanese throwing stars and darts in their startling variety of shapes. “Harry says you’re only as good as the last person you defeated, and not as good as the next one who beats you. Well, I’m already as good as anyone here. Except maybe Harry.”

  Connor’s eyes flicked up. “You said Harry cheats.”

  They recited their guardian’s favorite phrase in unison. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Connor’s laughter was a rare gift, capturing her attention as she looked up. Over the past few years, her twin had shot past her in height. At almost sixteen, he was nearly a foot taller than her own despised five feet and some change. Her English teacher once described her too-large, dark eyes and high cheekbones as “Dickensian orphan about to go feral.” But the same features lent her brother a look of brooding mystery that had girls sighing behind his back. They sighed to his face too, actually, but he never seemed to notice.

  Two other knives from her inside pockets joined the picnic table’s growing arsenal. She glanced at her brother and hesitated, then added the small purple pistol from her back waistband.

  Connor raised a dark eyebrow identical to her own.

  “It’s not loaded. And don’t try to do the eyebrow thing. It’s bad enough when Harry does it.” Despite the chill and lengthening shadows of the autumn day, she wriggled out of her leather jacket to reveal two sword sheaths strapped across her back.

  “So talk to Harry if you need more training.” Connor went back to his book.

  Carey added the sheaths to the table and pulled the rolled flag from the second sheath. “I tried. He ran like a little girl.”

  “You’re a little girl, Midget.” Connor didn’t look up as she reached back to release her knot of dark hair anchored by a balanced set of long straight shuriken. “And you never run from anything. Except when Harry tries to get you to eat vegetables.” At her growl, he sighed, slipped a leaf onto the page as a bookmark, and closed his book. “I’ve never seen him run away either. What did you do this time?”

  “Nothing.” She finished braiding her hair into the ruthlessly tight plait that Master Park warned her was still vulnerable to an assailant’s grasp. Hey, she reasoned. I’m skinny, I’m short, and I have no boobs. I should at least get the girl hair. Shrugging, she rolled up the flag her opponents didn’t realize she’d already captured and stuffed it into her back sheath.

  As she pulled off boots, socks, and cargo jeans, she eyed the twenty-foot flagpole six feet away. From their table, incongruously perched on a plowed hilltop surrounded by winter wheat, they could barely spot the matching table and flagpole silhouetted against the hill across from them. Here’s where all that training with Harry pays off. With an economy of motion that belied the wiry strength in her arms and legs, she started up the pole.

  “Okay.” She was breathing hard; answering her brother gave her an excuse to pause, clinging with her knees in one of the moves she’d learned online
because Harry was so unreasonable about recruiting an actual pole-dancing instructor. “I may have told Harry I was having really bad cramps with my period.” She drew a deep breath and released it. Again. “And I might…possibly…have told him I had some questions about it.” She grinned as she resumed her climb. “And that’s when he took off.”

  Clinging with one arm at the pole’s top, she clipped the flag’s grommets onto the pole ropes with her free hand and extended that arm to unfurl the flag she’d stolen from the other team. She took a moment to look over the winter-brown hilltop, the highest point on St. Helens ranch. The short autumn day was already shadowing toward evening, and she had to squint to make out the four men sitting around their table under a matching flag pole.

  Although her guardian, Harry Daniels, called them ranch hands, most of them never even sat a horse before their arrival—or, in most cases, before their departure a few months later. And, with few exceptions, most of them didn’t want to be stuck in Eastern Washington, miles from the nearest town of Whitman—itself little more than a few blocks of stores and businesses. Luckily, the real ranch work was managed by the farmer who, like his father before him, leased most of Harry’s barns and fields. One way or another, Harry had owned the St. Helens ranch for a long time. A very long time.

  Carey christened them the Leftfeet shortly after the first two, Simeon and Orin, arrived. Simeon, the whip-thin Spaniard who had brought her first sword, was the only one who stayed. Both he and Carey recognized that his lifetime of expertise still included things for her to learn. With the reclusive Simeon, she eventually achieved a mutual respect that bordered on friendship.

  Most of the other Leftfeet tried to treat her like a little girl. From there, the relationship usually degenerated rapidly into active dislike.

  “It just doesn’t set right.” She’d eavesdropped from the barn loft when Orin, who taught hand-to-hand, explained his departure to Harry. The wiry veteran looked at his own hands and shook his head. “Teaching a little girl to fight. And as if that’s not bad enough, I wasn’t here more than eight months before she could beat my best moves. She said she was connecting to what I was gonna do next. Like that makes a pissin’s-worth of sense.”

  Orin had been followed by Erik for archery, Paolo with knives, Derik on electronics, and a seemingly endless string of Leftfeet. In addition to Simeon, there would usually be two or three who would arrive, teach what they could before the cocktail of resentment and isolation—topped with chagrin at being first matched, then bested by a teenage girl—would signal their exit.

  From the top of her pole, she pulled the flag to its full width and waved it to catch the attention of the current Leftfeet roster. Looky, looky, boys—I’ve captured your flag, and you didn’t even know it was gone. She smirked as she saw four pairs of binoculars trained on her. As one, they turned to look up at the flag they were guarding.

  Even though she couldn’t make out their expressions from this distance, her mocking smile turned to a full-on grin as they pulled the ropes to lower their flag enough to pull it taut, revealing her picture pinned to its inner folds. She guessed by his slight bow in her direction that Simeon was smiling. She was pretty sure the others—a pair of Texans who had come to work on her tracking, and an intense Austrian sharpshooter—were not happy.

  “I won. Again. I’m getting sick of always winning.” At her brother’s snort, she glanced down. “Okay, I love winning, but not when it’s this easy.” She breathed in the dry air blowing over the Palouse, flavored with the smell of the sheep and the winter wheat reaching for the gray November skies above Eastern Washington. “I’m not a little girl any more. We’re both almost sixteen. And Gaby…”

  Connor looked up sharply at the mention of their missing elder sister as Carey’s voice trailed off. “Come down.” He waited as her wiry form slid down the pole. Wincing as her feet slammed the ground, Connor put a hand on her shoulder.

  She felt his harmonia gift surround them, the pulses of gentle love and peace stealing her breath for a heartbeat before slipping like water through his fingers. Like her, he was a harmonia, capable of sensing connections normally hidden from others. But where the gift manifested in Carey as warrior, Connor’s harmonia concord gift meant he could be capable of sensing and even manipulating emotions and perceptions in others. He made a sound of disgust as the pulses he was sending dissolved.

  She put an arm around her twin. “You need training too. Tell me you haven’t been practicing your concord mojo on the horses again.” When he didn’t answer, she followed his gaze across the valley to see their two riderless horses ambling toward the barn. Crap.

  She turned back as Connor slipped his book into his jacket and held a bag out to her. “I hate that bag. A real warrior would wear her weapons.”

  He snorted again. “You may be a badass harmonia warrior wannabe, but Harry says you’re too accident-prone to wander around armed to the teeth. He’s tired of having to get you patched up all the time.”

  Carey sighed and began loading her weapons into the bag. “Well, you may be a badass harmonia concord wannabe, but I need you to stop trying to influence the horses. I’m tired of walking home.”

  »»•««

  On the walk back to the ranch house—the long walk, because the sniggering Leftfeet in their pickup passed them without offering a ride—Carey thought about her sister Gaby and the last time she’d let herself cry.

  Of course, it wasn’t the first time their lives changed completely. There was the day the nervous police officer came to their door, back on Bainbridge Island. She couldn’t remember anything he said, but she could never forget the way the lowering sun glowed around him while his face was completely shadowed. And she remembered the tears, the way Gaby—barely eighteen herself—held onto the bewildered eight-year-old twins. Carey hadn’t understood how parents could be killed in a war nobody had ever heard of, but she knew Gaby would take care of them.

  Four years later, they were in the Null City Metro Station, and there were more tears. It was the day after their makeshift Thanksgiving feast, and Carey always thought it was somehow appropriately named Black Friday. Although their parents had raised them on Bainbridge Island outside of Seattle, Carey knew a little about Null City. She knew she was named for her lots-of-greats-grandmother, who helped found Null City as shelter for those with special gifts who just wanted to lead a normal life. She knew the Metro train was more than Null City’s lifeline; it was an entity in itself that traveled through dimensions—including time.

  She even knew that Gaby’s wartime mission was to recover a book that was supposed to help end the Nonwars that had killed their parents, protect the Metro, and save Null City. What she didn’t know was that the Metro would refuse to issue tickets to let her and Connor go with Gaby.

  Carey remembered Gaby’s voice, low and fierce. “I’ll come back for you.” She had watched through her tears as Gaby hugged Connor, then wrapped arms around Carey. “And until I do, I want you to promise you’ll remember our Thanksgiving. And eat vegetables.”

  And Carey would never forget Connor’s arm around her, his fledgling gift offering faint pulses of comfort despite the tears streaking his own cheeks. His voice sounded like he needed to clear his throat. “We’ll be fine. We can take care of each other. And—” He tightened his grip on Carey. “—Carey can make Harry’s life a living hell.”

  Harry had looked alarmed, but Carey managed a watery snort even as Gaby climbed aboard the already-moving Metro and disappeared along with Luic, her…employer? Friend? Lover? Whatever.

  Once the Metro was out of sight, Harry explained more about their options. They could, he told them, remain safely in Null City. After a day there, the harmonia gifts that each had just started to manifest would disappear and they could live as normal humans. Or they could come with him to his ranch in Eastern Washington, and he would try to arrange for the training they would need to develop those gifts. “I’ll do my best to watch out for you, but—” He se
arched his pockets and handed her a handkerchief. “—you might still be targets.”

  “You know, you really suck at comforting kids.” Carey wiped her face and handed the handkerchief to her brother, who blew his nose and gave it back to her. “You’re supposed to tell us you’ve got this, and everything will be fine.” She held out the handkerchief to Harry.

  “Keep it.” Harry took a step back. “I’m kind of hoping I never see that again.” He took another step, and they followed him. Nobody brought up staying in Null City again. Ever.

  Of course, that was all before the Metro’s little joke sent Harry and the twins twenty-five years into the future, a destination that eliminated all other choices. Now a fourth Thanksgiving was approaching without any word of Gaby and Luic’s whereabouts, but Carey refused to talk about it with her twin. And Harry, Luic’s best friend and now their guardian, never mentioned it either.

  Carey automatically slid her right hand into her pocket as they followed the paths between gold fields of winter wheat toward the ranch buildings. Her thumb rubbed the cool brass length of the little kaleidoscope Luic had given her as they left. She shuddered at the memory of the one time she’d looked through it, hoping the patterns would reveal something about her sister’s fate. Like the rest of her family, she was a harmonia, gifted with the ability to perceive connections that remained hidden from most people. Since her own gift was warrior, it showed her structure and form in fighting and related strategy, while Gaby’s gift of harmony traits revealed patterns in financial details and numbers that danced into information.

  Also like most harmonia, Carey couldn’t look through the handmade kaleidoscope, a souvenir of Harry’s former rock band, Kaleidoscope. Where normal people saw beautiful designs, harmonia were tortured with the splintered patterns of the kaleidoscope’s designers who chose the bits of glass and other items—why they made those choices, and what they meant. No matter how the harmonia’s gift manifested—financial, mechanical, warrior, or whatever—those fractured elements in the lives of the kaleidoscopes’ creators made their patterns horribly broken and painful for harmonia.