Page 23 of House of Marionne

“It’s Mom; I think she’s trying to get me.”

“Yes, I know how it works, dear. I procured it from a reputable Trader myself.”

She did? There’s so much Mom never told me. So much I still don’t know. Grandmom sets the key chain on her desk. “I may be able to reverse trace the key chain’s magic to locate your mother, if you don’t mind leaving it with me for a bit.” She gazes out the window, her back to me. “Would you like that?”

“You would do that?”

“Of course. After all, we have much to update her on, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so.” Guilt tugs at me, and I can almost see Mom’s worn expression. She’s sacrificed so much for me. An ugly, undeniable truth that I’ve shoved back down time and time again rises like bile in my throat.

The safest place for Mom is out there away from me.

I glare at my hands. I have to get rid of this poison. She would say my plan is too dangerous. But I know in my gut, I can do this. I was so good in Dexler’s. I can’t put her in danger anymore, not when this option is right in front of me. I blow out a big breath. Away from me, she is safe. When we’re back together, she, too, will have a life. I didn’t have a choice when we fled before, but I do now.

I have to do this.

To free both of us.

EIGHT

YAGRIN

Yagrin appeared on the rain-soaked cobbled road that ran through Emancipation Park. It gave the area an Old World aesthetic. But it was more than mere architectural design. The quaint park near the west bank of the Mississippi was access for those who knew where to look. The freckle-faced girl had evaded him. But there couldn’t be many places someone with her affliction could go. And he knew just the place to find out where someone like her might hide, a spot ripe with Order gossip—the Tavern.

Yagrin wanted an honest life. But the thought was laughable. Fear was the lifeblood of the Order, the shackle of duty. In the end, it was all about fear or being feared, his father’d taught him. And while he wasn’t sure he bought it, here he was chasing another assigned target. Being the monstrosity expected of him. He kicked his boot on the rocky surface, shuffling through the muddy puddle, hoping it was just mud.

He pursed his lips, ruminating on Freckle Face, the odd way Mother spoke about this new target. The way she hesitated to give him her full name: Quell Jewel. His heel found the familiar spot, a loose rock in the path. He looked around. Lovebirds tangled around one another were on a park bench completely uninterested in him. Emancipation was still. The stone walls that wreathed its memorial courtyard and interior gardens stood like a sentry in the night’s glow. He kicked the shifty pebble and sucked in a breath, letting his magic work its way into his fingers, up his arms. Heat swirled in him, and he tightened his stomach, holding in a breath, to shove it up to his head.

He directed his magic at the stone, and the ground opened like a dead man’s throat, stairs descending into darkness. He took them one at a time, the Tavern’s revelry swelling louder the deeper he went. It was the hangout for Order members in the southern quadrant. Usually teeming with eager students who hadn’t yet debuted, prattling with gossip like baby birds anxious to leave the nest. Several recent debs, that is débutantes and débutants, hung there, too. And even a few dregs of older members popped in from time to time, but the desperate ones, never the classy ones. His parents wouldn’t be caught dead in the Tavern. It was “beneath them.” The thought put a pep in his step as he slipped inside.

Noise swelled like a balloon, and Yagrin skimmed the place for another of his kind, from his House. But he only spotted one Dragun from another House whom he didn’t know well. Karaoke blared from a side room adjacent to a long run of gambling tables. A few loitered over drinks. He searched for a place to land out of the way of people, where he could size up anyone coming through the door. He felt like a maggot coming in here, stinking like death wherever he went. He scowled, but his heart thrummed as he fell into a chair at the bar with a sigh.

He undid the tie of his trench coat and scanned the crowd for someone worthy of interrogation. It was thinner tonight than usual, considering the Tavern was a notorious meetup for slimy Traders and their seedy customers. More magical goods were exchanged by covert handshakes, over card tables, and during drinks than money flowing in and out of a bank.

Yagrin’s Dragun coin might still feel foreign at his throat, but he’d grown up in a powerful Order family, and his father had primed him, instructing him on how things were done. How to get what you wanted from people, until Yagrin came of age and was handed over to his Headmistress, who made sure the lessons stuck. Tonight he would let muscle memory take over. He intended to obtain highly proprietary information: where someone with toushana these days would look for safety.

Posted against the wall in a shadowed corner was a gangly bearded fellow with his fingertips tucked in his vest pockets. Yagrin smiled at the ripe opportunity. He knew if he snatched the stranger’s hands out of those petite pockets, they’d be stained deep blue, nails bloody, some missing. A Trader.

The fellow’s dusty brown eyes matched the bang swooping across his face. Yagrin stared and it unsettled the fellow’s cavalier posture. Yagrin grinned. He’d found a guitar worth plucking. He approached, but the fellow moved, likely uninterested in a conversation with a Dragun. Yagrin needed to disarm his suspicion. Draguns were the enforcers of decorum in the Order, but he wasn’t here to hem him up about the exploitive business he dabbled in.

“Feel like a game of cards?” Yagrin gestured to a nearby table where a dealer was two short. The Trader’s eyes flickered with ambition, and after a moment he inclined his head. Challenge accepted. Trust was a fickle thing, and you could tell a lot about someone over a game of cards, his father had taught him. Their measure of judgment, how easy they were to read, and especially what winning meant to them.

Spades was Yagrin’s favorite. Red had taught him how to play. His lips curled. He needed to make time to see her again. “It’s all about hedging bets and winning tricks,” she’d explained one night they spent camping, her body curled around his under the stars. She was more right than she knew. The truth was always in the eyes. That’s what he loved about Red. She wasn’t in the Order, knew nothing of magic, a daughter of a farmer who lived in the middle of nowhere. Her entire life plan was to figure out how exactly aquaponics worked and to ride a horse bareback without falling off. She was sharp but turned off by complexity. Detached is how she lived. Because she wanted to.

He pulled up a chair at the card table, and the Trader sat across from him.

“Wager?” the dealer asked.

“A favor,” Yagrin told him.

The dealer smirked. Not every day a Dragun offered his services as a wager.

“And you?” the dealer asked the Trader. He was stoic. But Yagrin could sense his elevated heartbeat pumping with anticipation. Traders, by nature of their dealings peddling stolen goods, had many enemies. A favor from a Dragun wasn’t an offer most would refuse.

“Source Enhancer. Ancestral quality, from the caves of Aronya.” He held up a red stone. “Retrieved it myself.”

That part was a lie. Traders stole anything of value they managed to get their hands on. But it was authentic; its hue and shine were unmistakable. There were many who’d pay generously for such a prize. When it was folded into a deb’s dagger, its possessor could sense the presence of any magic, once bound. Broken down to liquid form by a complex Shifter, it was a powerful ingredient that could manipulate any elixir. Even an Anatomer could use it to cover their tracks.

---