Page 31 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
Lu wanted to vomit. Her voice shaking, she said, “And my birth father?”
Magnus exhaled heavily, as if he’d been holding his breath. “We don’t know where he is either. Or if he’s . . .”
Alive. He didn’t say it, but the unspoken word hung there.
“Honor can’t talk to him, and your mother doesn’t know his whereabouts. They were separated . . . in the . . . battle . . .”
She began to hyperventilate. Trying hard to concentrate on the sound of water rushing over some far-off streambed, she thought if only she could stay focused on that sound, she might be able to banish the images in her head. The terrible, bloody images—
“Hope.” Magnus’s voice was soft, but beneath it she heard the edge. “Your mother is unharmed. She’s a prisoner, yes, but apparently a well-treated one. And I’m going to find her. If Leander is alive, I’ll find him, too. It’s what I do. Find our people, what’s left of them. And bring them back to live here. We’re trying to rebuild, one at a time. There’s not many of us left, but . . . it’s something. It’s a start. I give you my word: I. Will. Find. Them. No matter how long it takes me. No matter the cost. I’ll bring them back to you. Or I’ll die trying.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Every muscle in his face showed his strain and fatigue, his eyes, so dark and intense, showed her his sincerity. She didn’t know if what he was promising was possible, but she knew he believed what he was telling her. And that, at least, was something.
In that moment, she began to trust him. Whatever else he was, Magnus was a man who would rather die than not honor his word, and that made her breathe just the tiniest bit easier. Even if it was short-lived, he’d just given her some peace of mind.
And he found me, she thought, studying his face. So maybe it really is possible.
After a long while, she said, “I think I might need a drink. Or four.”
That seemed to soften the hard lines around his mouth, which is what she’d hoped for.
“You’re in luck. Jack makes potato vodka that will rot your guts but will definitely put you right in the head. At least until you go blind from drinking it.”
“Jack?”
“You’ll meet her at the Assembly meeting.”
“Jack’s a she?”
His lips twitched. Was he trying not to smile?
“That she is.” He stood, helping her up by the arm. Lu leaned on him heavily, more shaky than she’d realized, and he steadied her, his eyes worried though his posture was stiff. Because I’m too close, she realized. She sighed and stepped away, noting how the tension left his body when she did.
She sighed again, scrubbing her hands over her face. Time for a change of subject.
“Do you have any gloves here? Even if they’re thin, I just . . .” she stared at her hands. “I feel naked without them
. I’ve been wearing them my whole life. And after what happened back there with Honor I’m not sure it’s safe for me to walk around without them.” She thought of Morgan’s singed jacket. “Honor wasn’t hurt, but someone else could be.”
His brows knit. “Gloves can control your Gift?”
“I don’t really know how it works,” she admitted quietly. “Just that I don’t have accidents when I wear gloves.”
“Ah, yes. Your ‘accidents.’ That’s how I knew where to find you, incidentally.”
When Lu looked at him, startled, he said, “The fire at the credit market. That was my first clue where to look.”
Seeing the confusion on her face, he said, “Just like the IF does, we monitor GlobeNet for any kind of suspicious activity that might indicate one of us living undercover.” His face hardened. “And we try to get to them first.”
GlobeNet was the Imperial Federation’s international spynet, which surveilled all citizens and communications and distributed the “news.”
So technology had brought him to her. Not those wonderful, delicious dreams, which now that she thought about it, probably were only one-sided. She knew she had Gifts she didn’t understand; perhaps dreaming about people she’d meet was one of them. She’d never met her birth mother or father in those dreams, though. Or her sister. Or her godmother.
Only him. A very different him, unscarred and smiling, full of lightness and life.
So . . . just like the rest of her life, her dreams of Magnus had been a lie.
Lu tried to feel nothing but her newly found numbness, but all sorts of other emotions were leaking through. Fun, lovely things like foolishness. Misery. Despair.
