Midnight Mage

21

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I looked at the sky, where heavy-bellied clouds moved swiftly southward. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but asked anyway, "What happened to her?"

"She volunteered several times a week at a botanical garden in the city. One day, she went to the gardens and never came back."

"How do you know it was the Liberati?"

He paused. "We don't, not with certainty. But they prey on the weakest among us, and Gabriella was that. She would not have willingly left Riven, ever."

My heart hurt.

My brain hurt.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

He dragged a hand down his face, scratching the blond stubble on his jaw. "Riven is a complex man. Even I, his right hand for nearly thirteen years, sometimes think I don't know him at all. If he grieved when Gabriella disappeared, no one saw it. What I did notice, however, was a growing fixation."

I got a funny feeling in my stomach.

Adam nodded at the frozen expression on my face. "Yes, with you. Even before Delilah spoke of you, he knew who you were. There was a bidding war of sorts between Primes when you participated in the first Census. Riven happened to be in Los Angeles that day. He won the rights to you by proximity and wouldn't back down when the others wanted to meet you. They would have offered you anything you wanted, taken you from your home, and turned you into a weapon."

Isn't that what Connor's doing?

But I didn't ask. I sat very still. Quietly.

Zen. I am Zen.

I remembered Census. Sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, sweating bullets and praying that Mal's amulets and spells would keep my charge from surging. Ignoring the itching beneath the wig that concealed my singed scalp. Answering questions for an Emerald Mage while another, lesser mage typed my responses.

After, I'd been left alone for close to an hour before the Emerald-a kind-faced woman who reminded me of Betty Crocker-had reentered and proclaimed me a cipher.

And I also remembered the two-way glass in the room.

"He was watching that day," I guessed. Adam nodded. "He recognized me. Alisande says I look like my mother." "You do."

"So he kept tabs on me for four years, then when Gabriella disappeared, he started stalking me?"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," he said dryly. "More like he began monitoring you more closely."

My throat was dry as dust as I swallowed the lump in it. "And here I'd always thought I was free, when I simply couldn't see the prison walls."

He said gently, "Perhaps it's not captivity but fate. The road set before you by forces unknown."

The fault lines of my world stretched, opening a void beneath my feet. I stared into Adam's eyes until everything else drifted away. And I suddenly knew, with absolute conviction, that he'd kept the worst from me.

"What else did my mother tell him, Adam?" He began shaking his head, but I grabbed him by the collar of his sweatshirt and yanked our faces close. "What. Else."

He didn't even try to fight me, eyes staying brown and anguished. In a broken voice, he whispered, "That you would bring his love back to life."