Chapter 9 #3
Kaden gave her an odd look. Yes, it was possible she’d watched too many crime shows during her time in Dead Earth. Not that she was going to admit it. “What? I can’t consider the worst case scenario?”
He shrugged. “You usually don’t.”
“Then it is good she is starting to be more careful,” Evra said. She said it with a distinct frostiness in her voice that implied Kaden really didn’t need to bother offering aloud any further insights he might have.
Morgen frowned at her, which told Nyx she hadn’t imagined Evra’s tone.
Something was definitely up between the and Kaden.
She had a vague, drunken recollection of Kaden saying Evra would kill him if she came back to the hotel and found Nyx on the couch.
It was the entire reason he’d picked her up.
Which probably meant she could drop fifty percent of the blame for last night’s splendidly bad turn of events on the , if Nyx didn’t feel like taking full responsibility, which she really didn’t.
She was about to say something—anything—to try and lessen the awkward tension now permeating the group, when Valerie and the two others started walking, saving her the trouble. Nyx rose, intending to follow. “I’ll meet you guys back at the hotel.”
“No, you will not,” Evra said. “We will be coming.”
“I can’t Hide all of you here. Not well enough, given what else I’m now Hiding.” Too many accidental brushes into other people, especially if they hit when Mary was tugging at her Hiding again, and Nyx would lose one of those battles. “I can take one of you.”
She had a second to decide which one. Normally, it would be Evra. But right now, Nyx wanted to know what was going on between Evra and Kaden, and Evra wouldn’t tell her. Neither would Kaden.
“Morgen, let’s go.”
“What?” Evra asked. She’d already stood when Nyx had.
“The two of you”—she indicated Evra and Kaden—“solve all of your problems with physical violence. I may need nuance.”
“Nuance is my middle name,” Morgen said solemnly.
Nyx rolled her eyes. “Come on, Morgen Nuance. Our quarry is getting away.”
She threw a cloak of Hiding over both of them, struggling a little to get it over them and force it into place, her magic stretched thin. Hiding memories truly was a bitch. If she didn’t hate her mother so much, she might actually respect her for keeping Nyx’s amnesia so complete for so long.
Nyx got the last stitch of the cloak together as they walked out the door, trailing Valerie and her companions. If the three of them got into a cab, Nyx was fucked, but with any luck, they were walking to their destination.
“Though I am, of course, honored to be your first choice for this mission,” Morgen said as they walked down the block, “would I be correct in assuming you have ulterior motives for choosing me?”
“What’s going on with Evra and Kaden?”
Morgen sighed. “You noticed that, hmm?”
“It was kind of hard not to. And it isn’t the first time. She seems like she’s pissed off at him, but she won’t really say anything to me. Did he do something to her?”
“No. I asked her the same thing and she assured me he hadn’t. So I asked him what was going on.”
“Let me guess.” Nyx gave Morgen her best impression of Kaden’s deadpan stare.
“Pretty much.”
“Has he had any more”—how to phrase this delicately?—“issues? Like on Calista?”
Morgen’s lips thinned. “Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
Nyx shrugged. “Something Evra said last night when I left you guys. That she didn’t trust him with me.”
Morgen was quiet as they rounded another block, Valerie and the others only twenty or so feet ahead.
When he finally spoke, his tone was cautious.
“Understand that I’m not trying to make excuses for him.
I’m very aware of what could have happened to you on Calista, and I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.
But he wasn’t himself in that moment. I know he hasn’t made the best choices with you, but he would never try to hurt you under ordinary circumstances. ”
“I know. That’s what I told her.”
Surprise showed in Morgen’s eyes. “You did?”
“I know that being a soldier can fuck a person up even when their duties are considered routine for that job. I’m sure you and Maruca have your own share of that. There are things about the way Kaden was when we were together—little things—that make sense in that context now.
“And I know that when people are exposed to things that are not as routine, sometimes it fucks them up so bad they don’t come back from it. Kiev was…I don’t know that there are words to describe how awful he was, and I don’t even know most of what he did. And Kaden worked for him for months.
“I don’t want to know the things he saw.
” She definitely didn’t want to know the things he’d been made to do.
“So I know what happened in Calista had nothing to do with me. It would have happened to anyone who’d been in that room.
I blame Kaden for a lot of things he deserves, but I don’t blame him for that. ”
“Thank you. It…means a lot to me.”
Valerie and her friends darted across a street to the blaring of several angry car horns.
Nyx would have worried they knew they were being followed, despite her Hiding, and were trying to evade them, if she hadn’t seen by now that ignoring a crosswalk’s don’t-walk status was apparently how this city operated.
She and Morgen had to wait to cross safely, since drivers couldn’t see them, and then jog a little to close some of the distance between them and Valerie.
Where was this woman going? They must have passed at least three other coffee shops since the one Nyx had met her in, but as a fourth came into view, Valerie and the others went into it.
“You know you don’t have to thank me, right?” Nyx said, as they paused outside the shop, waiting. “And you know Kaden isn’t your responsibility? You’re a good friend, but he can handle his own life.”
“I know he can. But…I wasn’t always. A good friend. So I suppose sometimes I feel like I still have a lot to make up for.”
Nyx couldn’t hide her incredulity. “What could you possibly have to make up for? You are the nicest person I know.”
“Yeah. The thing about that you have to understand? I try hard. Because I was a spoiled little shit as a kid.”
Nyx gaped at him. “You?”
He nodded.
“Explain.”
“My mother essentially raised me by herself. My father didn’t care about being a dad, but he’d show up every few months or years when I was little and act like we were going to be a real family, and I’d buy it. So would Mom. It was hard not to.
“You think I’m charming? You should meet a full-blooded Siren. My father could sell you sand in the desert. I though he was the greatest person in the universe. Every time he was home, I was so happy. But he was only ever there for a few weeks. Sometimes only a few days.
“And every time he left, he made sure to slip in some comment that made me understand it was my mother’s fault he was leaving.
So he’d be gone and I’d be heartbroken, and she’d be there to blame.
We didn’t have much at that point, but she still always made sure I had everything I needed, no matter what it cost her.
“The last time I saw my father was when I was seven. When he left, he told me I wouldn’t see him again, because my mother had told him to never come back. I screamed and screamed at her and she just…took it. Tried to make up for the fact my father wasn’t there, and I didn’t appreciate it.”
“You were just a kid,” Nyx pointed out.
“Yeah, but I was still an asshole. Especially after Mom brought Kaden and Maruca home. I think she took them in for a lot of reasons. For one, no one else was going to. The Moors lived on the outskirts of our community. They’d shown up a few years prior, when Kaden and Maruca were toddlers, and they never integrated.
They never even tried. Nobody knew why they were there, and when people tried to include them in things, they rejected it, so eventually people quit trying.
“It’s why when the adults went missing, no one knew.
Not until Maruca got caught stealing food at the market, and the vendor dragged her home to have a word with her parents, only to discover it was pretty obvious there hadn’t been any parents for a long time.
Long story short, Mom took them in temporarily, and when it turned out no one could find any relatives and they were going to go into the interplanetary adoption system, Mom just said that if no one else wanted them, she did, and that was that.
“I think she hoped my having siblings would fill the void my father left, but I also think she needed kids who appreciated her, because I certainly didn’t at that age.
Maruca didn’t talk much at first, but she followed Mom everywhere, wanted to do whatever she was doing.
Kaden would do things for her—clean and help her with the house, that kind of thing—but he didn’t talk at all. For the first five years.”
Nyx looked at him. “Five years?”
Morgen nodded. “I hated him. I disliked Maruca on principle, but Kaden was the one I suddenly had to share half my room and things with, and I couldn’t even argue with him because he wouldn’t talk, and if I tried to pick a physical fight with him, he wouldn’t fight back.
“I was very popular. I had a lot of friends and I complained about Kaden constantly. I made fun of him, so everyone else did too. One day, some of the older kids—” Morgen broke off for a moment, the expression in his eyes haunted.
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what happened.
No one involved would talk about it, including Kaden, but…
they beat the shit out of him. Fractured six of his ribs, broke his collarbone.
His left eye was swollen shut. He lost partial vision in it that could only be fixed by a Shaman, so it didn’t get fixed until we went into the Enforcers. ”