CHAPTER TWELVE: MANHUNT
Summer, 1997
Heart
Heart’s keys jingled urgently in the apartment deadbolt. Michael’s lips covered his own, the taste of his tongue a burning intoxicant. They stumbled for a moment, trying to maintain their balance against the doorjam. The lock finally gave way—thank the Guides—and the two of them staggered inside. Heart kicked the door shut behind him. It slammed hard enough that his neighbors would complain later. Fuck them.
They pulled each other closer, fingers urgently working at buttons and belts. Their shirts hit the floor. Jackets. Pants. And down and down until they were—finally, desperately—skin to skin. The studio was dark, the flow of air through the cracked window chilling their bodies even as they clung to each other, moving to the bed and falling atop the blankets in a hungry tangle. For a blessed time, the world went away, and all was right in the small world of a dark apartment in South Tacoma.
They lay together in the half-light, pressed up against one another, sated for the moment, when Michael said, “I want you to come with me to my brother’s wedding.”
Heart stared up at the ceiling, the words he’d hoped for and dreaded echoing in his ears and forcing him to contemplate a response that he didn’t want to have to make. He took a deep breath, pulled the other man closer, and said, “If I go, it will only hurt you, and hurt me.”
Michael sighed after a moment of silence, turning to look at him. His beautiful face was edged in gold from the exterior streetlight. “I’ve told you, my family doesn’t care about that, and especially not Matthew.”
Heart brushed his fingers over the stubble that lined the other man’s jaw. “I know. But they will care about the fact that I’m an Outsider.”
“No, they won’t.”
Heart smiled and shook his head sadly. “I love you Michael, but you’ve got those rose-colored glasses on again. You may not believe the unspoken laws of your blood, but people like me have never had a choice.”
Michael’s arms tightened around him. It was home. It was the breath that put oxygen in Heart’s blood, which made the words all the harder to hear. “I don’t care about those rules, Jonathan.”
His first name was like a song from Michael’s mouth. Heart returned the press. “I know,” he said softly. “But they do, and they will, and if we make this public, they will make us pay for it.”
“My brother,” Matthew said, “is marrying a Commoner. Diana was a retainer before he freed her of her oath. You know this. Jonathan, he made her his champion. She wields Swansong in his name. Of course, some in my family grumble and growl, but he ignores them because what they have is real.”
Heart closed his eyes, as if doing so could make the sweet words hurt less. “She’s a powerful Physic, Michael. I am not. Your brother is a Prince. You are not. The rules don’t bend so easily for us.”
Michael closed his eyes, and Heart watched the spasm pass over his face. Hoped against hope that another refusal wouldn’t put an end to the best year of his life. At length, the other man sighed and said, “You frustrate the hell out of me. Fine. I’ll leave off for now, but only if you promise not to leave, because those words sounded dangerously close to goodbye.”
Heart smiled, his own relief flooding his senses. “Never, my love. Never.”
Autumn, 2000
Heart slipped past the yellow tape, dread coiling heavily in his stomach, making every step seem to sink lead-like into the dirt. He didn’t want to move. Didn’t even want to think about moving, but he had to see. Had to know. The Lake House was Michael’s. Had he been here? Was he…
… The sight of the ruined building stamped itself across the back of his retinas like a curse wrought in charcoal and ash. Heart’s throat dried, and as he crept closer, the smell assaulted his senses. Not just the stink of ash and burned plaster, but the sweetness clinging to everything, the faintest hint of something like barbecue, which made his stomach twist and revolt, knowing its source.
It was a clear, cold night. The bodies had been moved yesterday, the grounds scoured of everything that might identify this place as having belonged to anything but a mortal family. Heart stood in the cold, dark silence. The retainers had done their work. He made his way slowly towards the front steps, the stone blemished by ash and littered with broken pieces of burnt wood. He summoned a pale green light into his hand, testing the floorboards of the remnants of the wraparound porch. Inches past his toe, the wood terminated in the jagged edge of a maw-like hole in the ground into which the rest of the house, save the jutting remnants of broken walls, had collapsed. Heart looked over his shoulder, back along the long stone path through the front yard to where the tape roped off the ruins, and the distant streetlight beyond. No sign of anyone. It was as safe to try as it could be.
Heart had never used his gift for something like this. As a child, his Seer’s power to look into the past had been used to identify the many sins of his abusive stepdad. To find lost pets in the neighborhood. Once, when he was seven, he’d used it to understand what happened in a car crash across the street from his mother’s apartment complex, until she’d caught him, before he could witness the horrifying spectacle of people being thrown through the windshield of a moving vehicle.
This was the first time he was going to try it at a place where so many had died. He knelt at the top step of the cavernous hole of a foundation and rubble-filled basement, hoping this was close enough. His hand shook as he placed it on the ground. “Please,” he whispered. “Tell me he wasn’t here.”
Time rewound. The sun rose and set in reverse. A swarm of retainers covered the property as ashes petered out, the house burning backwards. Further back. His fingers ached with the strain of maintaining the enchantment. The vision became… indistinct. Fire roared through the windows of the house. The front door vomited smoke and light across the grounds. Running feet. Someone fled onto the front law, their body burning, a broken glassblade in their hand. Further back. Murmurings from inside. Words he couldn’t make out.
“… Calling to…”
“… What was forgotten…”
“… Beyond…”
Further back. Heart’s head was hurting from the effort, sweat standing out on his brow. Guests gathered on the lawn. So many faces Heart knew only at a distance. Cousins. Uncles. Elderly. Teenagers. Children. Heart forced himself to focus. Searched the sea of faces for Michael. For any sign of him. He held on to the vision as long as he could, until his fingers ached, and his legs shook, and his back burned in agony.
Matthew and Diana stood alone in front of the house, their eyes towards the gate to the street.
“Are you certain?” Diana asked, her dark hair wound up behind her head, wedding ring glinting on her finger.
Matthew leaned on his cane. The sapphire eyes of the silver swan twinkled in the twilight. “No,” he said. “But it’s our best chance.”
Heart’s will gave out. He collapsed forward. His breathing was heavy. His whole body ached. For just a second he teetered on the edge of the dark maw that Michael’s house had become, the grave of a dynasty… but not him. Whatever horror had happened here, Michael hadn’t been present. Had not stood alongside his brother as he died.
And that meant that he was out there somewhere. Heart straightened and looked back towards the street. Then he started back towards his broken old car. You’re alive.
He broke into a run.
I’ll find you. I promise.
Autumn, 2013
The door of the car slammed shut behind him and Heart jogged across the pavement. The scene before him was nightmarish in its implications. A crater near twelve feet across had been smashed into the middle of Broadway Avenue, and the siding of the ground floor of the US Bank building had been smashed nearly half a foot in. The street was already cordoned off by police tape and blocked by a fire truck. The first responders, however, were milling about, glassy-eyed and going about their jobs with rote repetition.
Beyond the tape, the retainers were working. “If Adelin and Tyre are the only ones allowed to investigate,” Jacob’s orders echoed in his head, “We’ll be left in the dark until they bring whatever they can find to the Council.”
Heart’s chest sank the moment he saw the first lapel pin: Adelin. They’d gotten here first, which meant there were members of the family present. Adrian’s House used the fewest retainers, believing their kin should do their dirty work themselves. And I just threatened Frank days ago. Heart squared his shoulders and walked towards the barrier as two more vehicles pulled up behind him and a handful of other Vallais retainers got out.
Andrew Fisher met him by the barrier. They hadn’t had a chance to meet since that morning at the Spar, and the Adelin retainer who had first put Heart on the murder case looked like he’d barely slept for the entire span of time since. “I’m afraid you can’t go any further,” he said, the glass pin of the griffin glinting in the streetlights on his lapel. “Houses Adelin and Tyre are seeing to this matter.”
Heart’s fellow Vallais retainers stepped up behind him, four others in total. Not enough to contest the scene; but to express their Liege’s discontent and present a show of force, it was sufficient. “And House Vallais has a right to know the truth,” Heart said. “What happened here?”
Fisher looked back to the crater for a moment, then took a step forward to Heart’s side of the barrier. He assessed the five retainers, then gestured for Heart to step a few feet away. Heart hesitated for just a moment, looked back at the others, all younger than him. “A moment,” he said to David—a Traveler, and one rank less senior than him.
They stepped away from both the barrier and the people on either side of it. Fisher twitched his fingers, and the air shimmered around them for just a moment as Fisher used an enchantment to limit the range of their voices. He then looked at Heart with a strained expression on his face, putting a hand on the Vallais retainer’s shoulder. “This is nothing you or your Liege need to be concerned about,” Fisher started, his tone a plead for sympathy. “Broadway Avenue is currently under House Adelin’s protection. Please, Heart, you don’t need to get involved with this.”
Heart shook off the touch. “I damn well do, and you know it. I come in the name of Prince Jacob. You know by Council Law that I’m entitled to demand the truth.”
Fisher paused, letting out a small sigh and lowering his head for just a second. Then he looked back up and said, “the binder?”
“A few things,” Heart admitted. “But none of those concern the here and now, and none of them are substantial.” Careful, Heart thought. He still serves your enemies.
Fisher watched him, clearly considering and weighing something in his mind. Then he said “I can’t tell you what happened… but if you stay off to the side and don’t draw attention to yourself, I can let you… do your thing, if you take my meaning. Just be quiet about it.”
Heart fought to keep the surprise from showing on his face. He didn’t yet know Fisher’s Aspect, though both men had dug up dirt on the other as they’d become… not exactly friends, but at least non-hostile acquaintances with occasionally overlapping goals. That Fisher knew what Heart could do, when Jacob kept Heart’s unique Seer’s gift on a strictly need-to-know basis… that was a leak in the boat that couldn’t stand, and either Fisher was revealing that he knew it as a show of good faith, or he was stupid beyond belief and letting a huge card of his Liege’s hand slip.
Nevertheless, it was an opportunity Heart couldn’t let go, and that meant he had to hope the other man hadn’t confided this secret in his superiors. In the moment, he had no choice, and that was frustrating beyond words. Heart nodded, and turned, walking back to his group. A few members of the Adelin family had gathered near the barrier and were glaring at the Vallais people. Heart snapped his fingers and gestured back to the cars as he headed for his own. His power—the very same that had secured his position as a retainer—only worked out to a certain range, and he had to hope that he could make it work from inside the vehicle. The door shut again, and Heart watched as people in suits swarmed over the crater as police and firefighters acted as if they weren’t even there.
The efficacy with which the power of the families dismissed all mortal law and simply sidestepped temporal authority was disturbing, and Heart was acutely aware in that moment of his complicity with that system.
He took a rattled breath. He had made a choice, thirteen years ago, discarding loyalty and history and community for one singular purpose, and he could not walk away now. There was nothing to go home to. Heart breathed out, pressing his hand to the dash as his subordinates stood watch outside the car. All around him, time began to rewind. Emergency vehicles appeared and drove backwards up the road. The world was ghosts and silhouettes moving backwards. It started to speed up. He forced it to stay measured with his will, lest the vision spiral beyond what he was looking for and he be overwhelmed by his own power to see. One hour ticked back, then minutes, then seconds, until a burst of cratering rock erupted from the road and Heart watched as Michael Schwan and a man he recognized as the rogue retainer Carlyle faced a creature whose like had not been seen in ages.
Heart’s hands shook. His eyes widened, and everything froze, focusing on a specific point in time. He almost got out of the driver’s seat and walked towards the image that stood suspended in his vision, such a short distance away. Almost slammed the door closed and ran. Almost reached out, unable to keep himself from attempting to touch the face that he knew damned well was nothing more than a memory frozen in time.
Michael was alive. Or at least, he had been alive a few hours ago. The realization wrenched Heart’s entire world off-course and sent it spinning. A second later reality crashed into him as the confirmation of Michael’s survival mingled with the reminder of which family was currently investigating the ground on which he’d stood.
It was House Adelin.
House Adelin would kill him if they found him.
Heart let the vision evaporate and stepped out of the car once again. His gift was one of a kind, to the best of his knowledge, and was the source of the value his liege extracted from him. Unless Michael had left something telling at the scene, there was no reason to assume that they would know that he’d been here. Still. If they were to learn the truth…
And that was leaving aside the matter of the Vacant One. Heart’s pulse pounded as he approached the cluster of Adelins and Tyres. He needed to find Fisher. Their relationship had always been measured, but given what the man had passed onto him, there was at least a measure of trust. There was a chance that the Adelin retainer was willing to listen to him.
The Vacant One had pulled back when confronted by Michael and Carlyle. Heart had made a study of the old stories of the enemy and could think of only one reason it might have retreated: it was called away.
“Fisher,” he said as he drew near the other man. “We need to talk.”
“Not now,” the other man replied. Then Heart caught him by the arm.
“You entrusted me with something important,” Heart pleaded. “I now must do the same.”
“Fisher,” another voice said, and Heart glimpsed a member of the Adelin family approaching, though not one he recognized. “You’re needed over here.” A pause followed, then the man noticed Heart, his eyes flicking to his lapel pin. “What does the House of Vallais want here?” He nearly spat the word.
“A message from my Liege,” Heart said.
“My Lord,” Fisher interrupted. “A moment only. I will get rid of them.”
The Adelin paused, then gave a grunt and a nod before saying “Michael Schwan has been spotted. He still has to answer for the killing of four of our retainers, over a decade ago. We’re going to find him. Get a move on as soon as this business is done, am I understood?”
No. Heart felt panic rising in his throat, muddying his clarity of thought. Michael had killed retainers? Why? There had to be a reason. Had to be. Where have you been for thirteen years? Heart desperately thought. Why did you never come to me, and what must I do to save you?
“Fisher,” he said quietly as the two moved away from the group. “I ask you now not as a retainer nor as a servant of your enemy, but as a person who desperately needs time: can I trust you?”
Fisher’s eyes watched him in a mixture of surprise and alarm, and then a crease formed in the retainer’s youthful forehead before he gave a quiet nod. “We understand one another,” he said.
“Michael Schwan is not our enemy,” Heart desperately whispered. “And if you can just give me time to find him, I can prove it. To the Council. To everyone. I need you to stall for time. Delay the investigation. Anything. I need time. Give that to me, and I will never ask another thing of you again.”
Fisher watched his face, and Heart begged whatever supernatural force watched over Wielders and mortals alike, whether god or angel or the long-lost Guides, that the sincerity in his words showed on his features. This was everything he’d striven for for a decade and three years, balanced on the edge of a knife called trust.
Fisher paused, then slowly nodded, and said “I will buy you what time I can, but you have to hurry. I can only stall for so long.”
“Back to Cliff House,” Heart said to the other Vallais retainers. “From there you will disperse to the individual households you serve. Listen to me, everyone, every single member of the blood royal is in danger tonight. A Vacant One is loose in Tacoma.”
Eyes widened. One of the retainers, a woman named Michelle, said “Are you sure?”
“My visions don’t lie,” Heart said. “I’m contacting Prince Jacob now. Get to your cars.”
Another woman, Rebecca, started “but—”
“NOW.”
Heart pulled out his phone, moved through his contacts, was about to press the icon when the smartphone started buzzing with Jacob’s name at the other end. Heart hit “accept.” Held it up to his ear. “My Liege?”
“I need you back at the house. Now.”
“My Liege I have dire warnings of—”
“Heart,” Jacob sounded out of breath. “Claire’s window is open. She’s gone.”