Round Trip Fare Read online

  Except…she eyed Connor speculatively. Gaby said Connor’s concord gift, one of the rarest among harmonia, made him capable of sensing and even manipulating feelings and emotions in others. Over the past several years, while Carey trained with Harry and the ever-changing ranks of Leftfeet, Connor had struggled on his own to develop his gifts. His frustration was a tangible wall, growing brick by brick between them with each failure. She pictured his gift swelling behind that wall, an angry torrent battering for release. What would he see in the kaleidoscope?

  They paused at the top of the ridge overlooking the ranch house and its surrounding barns and bunkhouses. Normally they would have avoided the sharp ridge with its treacherously unstable edges, but without the horses and the sun sinking quickly behind them, it was the shortest way back.

  Carey looked down at the ranch buildings snuggled into the small valley immediately below their ridge. At one end was the U-shaped one-story ranch house, its raised porch spanning the front of the long center link. Across from the house was Harry’s pride and joy, the beautiful post and beam barn completed the year before. Several small bungalows behind it housed current Leftfeet and other staff. The open center courtyard behind the house faced a pair of guest cottages used by visitors or occasionally as a recording studio. Smoke curled from several wood stoves, venting into the late autumn chill. The trees and gardens softened areas between the buildings, blending away hard edges. It was beautiful, but that wasn’t all. It was refuge and comfort. It was home.

  “Harry’s back.” Connor’s gaze noted the little convertible, red and still sleek despite its coat of dust, parked in front of their house. “Looks like he’s got a girlfriend.”

  Carey shrugged. “Girls are always trying to hang around Harry.” She pulled the shuriken from her hair—Harry was so unreasonable about her wearing knives on her head—and dropped them into the bag of weapons at her feet.

  “Huh.” Connor shook his head. “Looks like Harry is doing the hanging this time.”

  Carey squinted at the couple getting out of the convertible. Gaby had said that Harry reminded her of one of those remote, beautiful saints she’d seen in pictures of medieval churches. But today he looked more like the rock star he had once been than a rancher or a saint. Dark gold hair was tied back at his neck, and he wore his usual dark glasses, leather jacket, jeans, and high dark boots. With the roof down on the convertible, she could see his guitar in the backseat. The woman pressed between Harry and the car was…different. She had a red suit jacket with short skirt and matching high heels. Blonde hair cut with a severe precision lay like a helmet against her long neck.

  Snorting to herself about just how impossible the newcomer would find it to walk around the ranch in those heels, Carey turned to Connor in time to see him take an unwary step toward the edge of the shale shelf they stood on. She lunged for him, pulling him back even as she felt the edge beneath her own boots crumble. With all her strength she thrust her twin up toward the path, the action sending her backward into a headfirst dive down the rocky slope.

  She tucked her head and tried to roll, but crashed into a boulder. Even as pain exploded in her left shoulder, the next bounce smashed her right ankle. Wrenching her other arm over her head seemed like a good plan, except it left the back of her head to slam against the next rock. As she continued to roll downhill, she would really have liked to pass out. But her merciless harmonia brain went on cataloging every scrape, bang, and cut until she finally rolled to a stop.

  “Don’t move!” Connor’s voice was fierce, and she could hear him scrambling down to her. Move? She didn’t even want to open her eyes. She sensed her brother going to his knees next to her. “What hurts?”

  “What doesn’t?” She tried bending her knees. Painful, but doable. Her left arm wasn’t going anywhere, and her right ankle blazed. She squinted at him. “You have two heads. And I have to…” Turning her head, she vomited, moaning as the spasms shook her shoulder.

  Connor took a breath. “Should I try?”

  “Do it.” Carey felt his hands on her head. The warmth built, and her vision focused. His hands moved to her shoulder, and grew even hotter. She felt something snap back into place, but the heat continued to grow. “Connor! Stop.”

  His hands twitched, but didn’t move away. The heat was blazing, and she screamed his name. She opened her eyes, but his were staring blindly and he was panting. Burning up! She was on fire, but she couldn’t pull away. Someone was screaming. Her? Connor? Dimly, she registered the sound of footsteps running toward them, but her eyelids squeezed against the pain. The air around her was so hot she couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe.

  A woman spoke, her calm voice audible despite Carey’s shuddering screams. “Connor! You’ve lost the pattern. Look for one small part of the pattern. Can you find the connection?” There was an agonized moan from Connor. The steady voice continued. “Good. Follow the pattern, gather up all the pieces, and pull them back into you.” He must be shaking his head or maybe it was his whole body shuddering through his hands on her. The calm voice was firm. “You can do it. I know you want to help your sister, but until you can hold the whole pattern, you will just hurt her. Now gather the pieces, and step away from the pattern.”

  It took a few more repetitions of that voice talking Connor through it, but finally his hands left Carey. The wall of heat surrounding her cut off like the slice of a knife. Panting, she squinted against the sunlight to see her brother’s eyes roll up in his head as he folded beside her. She reached a shaking hand to his face, holding it over his lips until she felt his breathing—steady, shallow—and then she could breathe again too.

  She looked for the source of the calm voice. Harry’s friend in the red suit was looking down at them both, a dark silhouette against the setting sun. Carey turned her head with agonizing care to see the woman was barefoot on the rocky slope, and the foot nearest to Carey was bleeding.

  Harry was beside her. He let out a breath and sank to his knees. Reaching across Carey, he picked up the bag of weapons that had tumbled down after her. The little purple gun fell out and he sighed. “Marley Trenton, meet your new students. My wards, Carey and Connor Parker.”

  »»•««

  “Shut. Up.” People were shouting, voices thundering around her. Why was everyone yelling? Minutes passed, and Carey thought about going back to sleep. She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard her name, but she snuggled deeper into her pillows with a groan. “Noooo, Harry. Saturday. No school. M’sleepin…”

  She heard Connor laughing. Laughing? Connor never laughs. She pried open one eye and squinted. Her purple quilt with the dancing monkeys was tucked around her. Over Connor’s horrified objections, she’d asked Harry for the quilt when the twelve-year-old twins first arrived at the ranch. But she wasn’t in her room. “Why is it so bright in here?” She looked around—hospital bed, traction hoist on one ankle, IV line to her arm—and sighed in disgust. “I’m back in the hospital. Again.”

  “Doc says if I keep paying all those bills he sends every time you end up here, they’re going to name the room after you.” Harry sounded unruffled as usual, but his hand was gentle on her forehead.

  “Doc thinks he’s funny.” If there was a bedpan involved in this setup, she was just going to unhook that ankle and hop out of there.

  “Come on, Midget. Open your eyes.” That could not be Connor sounding so happy. “Or I’ll take the last of your Captain Crunch.”

  Their voices were thunder against the ache in her head. “Both of you. Stop yelling, you underwear-peeking perv.” How did he find out about the box of forbidden sugary goodness she hid behind her underwear? “And if you touch my cereal, I’ll tell Sarah Anders—that Mensa candidate who asked if we were identical twins—that you want to ask her to Homecoming.”

  Connor’s reply was an exaggerated whisper. “I already asked her.” At his smug satisfaction, she managed to open her other eye and peer at him.

  “Who are you, and what hav
e you done with my brother?”

  BETWEEN

  The only sound in the impossibly light-filled room is the tapping of fingers on the keyboard. Fed by the smallest part of her awareness, the celestial light reflects off the monitor facing the white-robed figure. She absently dims it and checks the clock icon. To the Eldest, she knows, time has little relevance and email even less.

  Multiplayer online games help.

  She’s in a chat window with her favorite Words With Friends opponent, a demon from Fallen Court, when the elders arrive. Light blazes to full glory, softly outlining each of them. Blanking her screen, she folds her hands into the sleeves of her robe and waits. Her face, while from the same perfect model as the Eldest, hints at an unfinished spark not visible in her three visitors’ serene features.

  As the Eldest looks at the paper in his hand, she breathes out the tiniest of sighs. She just cannot persuade him that he doesn’t need to print out copies of her emails.

  “First event target is a complete loss,” he reads aloud. “The human team has successfully captured the first target; retrieving Archangel Raziel’s Book and using it to power Null City. Odds of acquiring the Book if we capture both remaining targets have now decreased to 78.3 percent.”

  The silence that follows is absolute.

  The faces of her three elders could be carved from marble. Finally one speaks. “If we don’t retrieve it, the Book of Divine Knowledge could unmake creation.”

  “Our inability to interfere with free will has cost us.” The Eldest’s voice is gentle. “For the next target, we will block the Parker twins through an agent who is not subject to that restriction. We must recover the Book, even if it means Null City will be destroyed.”

  “But what about the other one?” At her words, all eyes turn to her. “We know that humans can use Raziel’s Book to destroy Creation. But for Raziel to put divine knowledge into his Book, it has to have existed in him as well. If we capture that Book, couldn’t he just make another one for the humans? Aren’t we going to have to do…something…about the Archangel Raziel too?”

  The light flickers.

  The Eldest glances at his companions and looks back at her. “We have an assignment for you.”

  She waits until they’re gone to relax her lips. It could almost be called a smile.

  Chapter Two

  2002: St. Helens Ranch, Eastern Washington State

  Carey pulled one of the long, pointed shuriken from her hair and cautiously inserted it into the cast that had covered her left arm since getting back from the hospital three weeks earlier. The itch was crazy-making, but the shuriken didn’t…quite…reach the spot. Forget this crap. She pulled her knife from her boot and started to cut the cast.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Carey barely missed slicing her arm as the voice came from behind her. How does Marley keep sneaking up on me? She palmed the knife and slid it back into her boot’s hidden sheath before frowning at the woman standing in the doorway to her bedroom. “Aren’t you supposed to be training Connor to use his concord gift?”

  Marley looked around Carey’s room without comment. Carey followed her gaze as it swept over the purple monkey quilt on her unmade bed, the walls each painted a different—and clashing—color, sword on its wall holder, clothes scattered across the floor. Her gaze paused at the two framed pictures next to the open laptop on her bedside table. One, taken by Simeon last Halloween, showed Carey with Harry and Connor, the three of them dressed as members of a seventies rock band.

  The other picture was a drawing Harry had done of Gaby. No family pictures had survived their time jump, but Harry seemed to understand how desperately she missed the sister who had raised her. Despite working from memory, Harry’s pencil had captured Gaby’s delicate beauty and even the humor gleaming in her eyes and smile. Carey hobbled to the table and laid the frame face down across the book of fairy tales kept as reminder of the nights big sister Gaby would read to them, with Carey always lobbying for her beloved Puss in Boots.

  Marley smiled. “We’re finished for today. Connor is doing his homework.” Carey had to remind herself not to shiver at that smile. Although the current Leftfeet found plenty of reasons to stop by the pretty little guest cottage Harry had assigned to Marley, Carey couldn’t figure out why they didn’t notice that her serene smile never warmed the austere chill of her eyes. Maybe they didn’t make it past the whole blonde hair/long legs/perky boobs package. Frankly, Carey thought Marley’s scary smile was the coolest thing she’d ever seen. She’d been practicing in front of her mirror, but just couldn’t seem to nail it.

  Marley stopped in front of her. “Harry didn’t ask me here just to train Connor.”

  “Oh?” Carey managed not to snort. Much. Because the casts on her wrist and ankle had made it hard for her to sleep nights, several times she’d seen Harry heading to Marley’s cottage. Although she stayed up and watched, she never was awake long enough to see him return. Carey tried for a copy of Marley’s ice-eye smile. Somehow, Carey didn’t think it was a success because Marley’s lips twitched wider. Note to self: my enigmatic smile needs work.

  “You can’t practice with your weapons while you have the casts, but you can work on your harmonia gifts.”

  Carey wished she could do Harry’s eyebrow lift, but she had to be satisfied with rolling her eyes. “My gift is warrior. Working on weapons and fighting is the way I train my gift.”

  “Really? Who are the greatest warriors you’ve ever heard of?”

  Carey pretended to think. “Alexander the Great? George Washington? Um…maybe that guy Hannibal who took the elephants over the Alps?”

  Marley nodded. “And are any of them remembered for their skill with weapons?”

  “They must have been.”

  “What they’re remembered for is their tactical skill, their command of the loyalty and determination of their troops, or to put it simply, their ability to lead. Your gift could take you there too, if you train it. You can also learn about the others.” Marley’s glacial smile widened. “Attila the Hun. Leonidas of Sparta. Robin Hood. Genghis Khan.

  Carey narrowed her eyes. Books on each of the leaders Marley named were hidden under her bed. Just great. First Connor found her sugar stash, and now Marley knew what was under her bed. Was nothing sacred?

  Marley was just getting started. “There are more. Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who ushered in the era of the Shogun in Japan. Kalid ibn al-Walid, called The Drawn Sword of God. Yue Fei of China. William Wallace of Scotland. Joan of Arc, who at seventeen was the youngest person known to have commanded the entire army of a nation.” Marley paused, then went for the kill. “You’ll need to learn from their successes—and their failures—if you’re planning to look for your sister.”

  Matching Marley’s icy tones turned out to be easy after all. “You and I do not talk about my sister. Ever.” Harry was the only one allowed to know, because she needed him to bring in the trainers who could teach what her harmonia warrior needed to learn. Harry had lost too—his best friend, Luic, and their band, Kaleidoscope. He didn’t ask for or offer sympathy, so Carey accepted his aid. She listened to his suggestions, teased and tormented him without mercy, and loved him with a single-minded intensity second only to that given her brother.

  Her parents were murdered, she and Connor targeted, Gaby lost in the mists of the past. They’d celebrated their sixteenth birthdays while she was still in the hospital, but she wasn’t old enough. Not trained enough. Not ready. Yet. So for now, she would protect Connor, of course, but every day she pushed herself harder, mastering one more skill, learning one more move, focusing on only one goal. Find out what happened to Gaby, and if she was still alive, bring her back. If Gaby was dead, she would bring back her killers. Of course, if she wasn’t big enough to haul back her enemies whole, she was good with just bringing back more manageable pieces. Like their heads.

  Marley nodded as if Carey had voiced her agreement. “I can teach you that part. Are you ready?”


  Carey handed the shuriken to Marley and gave her own hair a one-handed twist with her good wrist. But Marley pushed her hand aside and picked up her hairbrush instead. “You have beautiful hair.” Carey felt her cheeks warm as the older woman finished brushing, expertly braided the hair into a thick plait that fell almost to her waist, and anchored it with the shuriken. Before Marley could step away, Carey grasped her arm. “Who are you, and why are you here?”

  Marley’s lips smiled while her eyes got even colder. “Let’s just say I’m not one of Harry’s Leftfeet that you can outfight or outthink. When you can beat me at strategy, I’ll tell you the rest.”

  Carey looked into frozen blue eyes and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  »»•««

  “Checkmate. Try again, and this time pull on your connections.”

  Carey sighed and looked longingly out the window. A run would be nice. Maybe some sparring practice if Simeon or one of the Leftfeet was available. Damn casts. “Fine.” She watched Marley’s hand move a chess piece with casual precision that said she knew every move Carey could try and more importantly, every move to stop her. Carey obediently pulled on her harmonia senses. There…yes, she would move her pawn. Then Marley would move the rook. She resisted the urge to sigh. How was this supposed to teach her to win? “It’s no good.” She winced at the frustrated whine in her voice, dropping the hand wavering over the chess pieces. “I can tell what you’re probably going to do next, but that doesn’t tell me what to do to stop you.” And she won’t tell me what she is until I can beat her.

  Every day Marley drilled her mercilessly. They reviewed history, not just the battles Carey liked but the political and economic forces shaping those conflicts. They talked about timing, elements, and evaluating the odds that went into developing strategy. There were uncomfortable role plays, usually ending with Carey’s “death.” Marley had an almost endless supply of computer games to challenge Carey’s decision-making abilities. Intriguingly, Marley was good at the multiplayer games. Unbeatable in fact.