“Chase,” I said, relatively calmly too, considering. “Did you hear about the meeting tonight?”
Zayvion’s ex-girlfriend was nearly my height. If I had seen her walking down the street, I’d think she was a model, not a Closer. Her pale skin was almost luminescent in the low light, and her eyes belonged to a cat, framed by the blunt wedge of dark brown bangs. I’d never seen her use makeup, not that she needed it. I’d never seen her dress in anything other than jeans, T-shirt, and flannel.
Tonight was no different.
“I heard about it.” She took a step toward me, her hands very obviously held with fingers spread, as if she was looking for a spell to grab hold of.
A sound behind me made her look up. She bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile. And not a very pretty one.
“Hello, Zayvion. Still babysitting all the troubled children for Mommy Maeve?”
“I do what I can,” he said. Unconcerned. Zen. “Are you done running away?”
“Running away from what?”
“Greyson.”
Chase held very still. Something moved across her eyes, a shadow, sorrow, pain. Maybe fear. Maybe hope.
“I’ve never run from him,” she said. Flat. Emotionless. What she didn’t say, what none of us was saying, was she still loved him. And she blamed me and my father for changing him into a monster. I was pretty sure she’d do anything to get him back, to see him be a man again.
I know I would feel that way if it were Zay in that cage.
“They wouldn’t let me see him,” she said. “Not without Jingo Jingo being there.”
Zayvion crossed his arms over his chest and strolled closer, his footsteps silent across the wet, noisy gravel. “You’re going to listen to them, aren’t you?”
“Be a good girl and do as I’m told?” She raised one eyebrow. “Have I ever done anything else?” It was a challenge.
Zayvion didn’t reach out for her, but his voice was softer. “It will work out, Chase. We’ll find a way to help him. Trust that.”
That tone got through. She swallowed and looked off over his shoulder. “Trust. Just like that.”
“You’ve been doing it for years. Don’t stop now.”
I could see how much it cost her to look back at him. Could see the emotions she was fighting back. Looked a lot like rage and grief. “No, that’s what you’ve been doing. Trusting. Trusting it will all work out. No matter how blind or stupid that makes you.”
“Trust isn’t a weakness,” Zay said.
“So says the man who begged for the chance to be the hero, the keeper of the gates, user of all magic, light and dark, no matter how much it destroys him. Do you get off on taking the fall, Jones, or are you just too stupid to know that’s what they’re using you for?”
“Are you done?” he asked, a hint of fire rising behind that ice.
She glared at him.
He ignored her. “You joined this fight for a reason. You joined this fight to make the world better for the people you cared about. Not for me, not for them, but for who you love. Who do you love, Chase? Other than yourself?”
“Fuck you.”
She took a step, but he moved, silent and swift, to stand in front of her. They weren’t touching, weren’t drawing on magic. Yet.
“That’s over. Remember?” he said. “You ended it.
Ended us. For him. For Greyson. And now you’re going to have to risk a little trust to save him. I think that’s a small price to pay, not even a price at all. Or maybe you’re just looking for an easy way out again.”
“You have no right—,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes, I do. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t turn your back on the Authority. Don’t choose that ending.”
And that threat, that anyone in the Authority, even a Closer, could be Closed, got through too.
She unclenched her fists and shook her bangs out of her eyes. “I’d do anything to have him back,” she yelled. She looked down, swallowed a couple times, as if trying to get the rage down. Then she looked back up at him. “I don’t turn my back on anything I love.” She looked at me, then back at him. “But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, Jones?”
She strode off toward the inn, leaving Zayvion and me alone in the rain.
Chapter Four
I touched Zay’s arm and jerked back as if I’d been burned. The anger seething under