Robert Crane - Soulless

“What?” I blinked, still thinking about what we’d been talking about a sentence before. “Oh, sure.”

“Your treat, right?” She gave me a wide grin. “Not all of us have high-paying gigs with the meta cops. The rest of us have to make our money honestly, and I blew the last of my cash getting back into town. Haven’t had a chance to stop by the…ATM…yet.”

“Sure.” I nodded at her and reached for my purse, which was hanging at my side. “My treat. There’s a Greek place over in Eden Prairie that’s really good—” My attention was caught by the sudden ringing from my bag. “Sorry.” I grabbed my cell phone and answered it while Charlie looked on with an eyebrow raised. “Hello?”

“Are you off-campus?” Ariadne’s voice was clipped, urgent, washed out slightly by the connection.

“Yeah.” I looked around the living room. “I’m just at my house, checking to make sure everything’s still all right.”

“I need you at Headquarters immediately.” Her voice was pinched, more hurried than usual. “The Director and I need to speak with you.”

“Umm.” I swallowed, heavy. “Is this about—”

“I’m not going to discuss it on an open line. Report to the Director’s office in forty-five minutes.” I heard a click and looked at the screen of my phone. She’d hung up on me.

I looked up to see Charlie staring at me, her head slanted to the side. “About this Greek place?”

I felt the tension in my guts and wondered if I was about to get a thorough ass-chewing back at the Directorate. “I can’t. I just got called back to work.”

Charlie’s jaw dropped slightly and then twisted to a kind of cold disbelief. “I just threw out the Ramen.”

“I’m sorry.” I put my phone back in my purse and my hand pushed my hair behind my ears before it fell over my eyes. “I have to go.” My hand came out with ten crisp twenty-dollar bills and I handed them to her. “This should cover dinner and a little more. I’m sorry to leave so abruptly, but—”

Her eyes lit up and she took the money a little quicker than I would have thought. “It happens.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and bit her lip as she counted the bills.

“How long are you in town this time?” I tried to catch her eyes, but they were on the money still.

“Not sure.” Casual indifference. Great. “A day or two, maybe more, maybe less.” She smiled, oddly infuriating me. “You know how it is. Sometimes I get the call and I have to get outta town.”

“Yeah, maybe you can explain how that works to me sometime.” I laced it with irony. “I need some help, when we get a chance, you know, keeping them under wraps—”

“Pfffff.” She turned her exhalation into a full-blown insult by rolling her eyes at the same time. “We’ve been over this. You absorbed them, not vice versa. It’s not that hard. You just make them do what you want them to do. It’s your body, not theirs. If they give you any flack, tell them to sit down and shut up, that it’s your head and you’ll run it however you please.”

I pondered how to explain to her how powerful Wolfe could be when he wanted to assert himself. The drug that Dr. Zollers had put me on helped keep him on a leash, along with some other pointers about building a wall in my head that Charlie had given me over the last few months, but I didn’t feel like it was enough. He was still back there; I could feel him sometimes, and I hated it. “All right. I gotta go.”

“Call me, kiddo. We’ll do lunch sometime.” She winked at me and started toward the bedroom.

“Just make sure you do the dishes before you leave.” She stopped in the hallway and shot a look back at me, a little frown with a slanted down eye that made me wish I hadn’t said anything. “You left them in the sink last time and I didn’t find them for a week.”

“Ugh, fine, yes, Mom.” She said it with a laugh and another roll of the eyes. “Tell your bosses I said hi.”

“Yeah, right. Because you want the Directorate to know about you.”

“Hell no. I’d like to remain far off their radar, if you please.” She tugged on her waistband. “They’ve probably got a file on me. You should check sometime.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “They don’t have any record of my mom having a sister.”

“Uh huh. If you were the suspicious sort, you might think something of that – like I was lying?”

I started toward the door. “I don’t think you’re lying, Charlie.”

“Why’s that? Doesn’t everyone in the meta world want a piece of you? Having someone pretend to be your aunt when you still don’t totally know who to trust? Seems like kind of a winning strategy to get close to you, if it worked.” She was stock still, waiting for me to respond.

“You’re right.” I opened the door. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I smiled at her and a puzzled look crossed her face. “You may be my aunt, but I don’t trust anybody.”

I caught a flash of a smile from her as I backed out the door. “Heh. You really are just like me. See ya later.”

I closed it behind me, stepping out onto the warmth of the porch, and felt the heat pervade me again. “Guess it runs in the family.”

I wondered if I was in trouble the whole way back to the Directorate, pondering if the man in charge (Old Man Winter, we called him, because he was old, a frost giant, and his name was Erich Winter) was going to run me through the mill for what I’d done to one of his stars. I parked in the Headquarters building and took the elevator straight from the garage to the top floor, where his office was. It was still sunny out when I arrived, in spite of the fact that it was nine o’clock at night. And ninety degrees. I love Minnesota.

It was damned quiet when I knocked on the door, and a muffled call of “Come in,” was followed by the door swinging open to reveal Glen Parks, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. I checked to make sure I was in the right place. Old Man Winter was sitting at his desk, his back to the window, gray hair and cold blue eyes visible even at this distance. Ariadne was at his shoulder, but her clothing had changed since I had seen her on the grounds earlier. Her red hair was pulled back and her blouse was white.

Parks moved aside for me to enter and I blinked as I stepped into the office. Scott Byerly and Kat Forrest were seated in the chairs in front of Old Man Winter’s desk, Kat still looking slightly washed out, and Scott was quiet, his fingers resting on his chin, eyes forward. “Looks like the party started without me.” I clutched the strap of my purse a little tighter, wondering if I was about to get smacked down. No one said anything.

Scott stood as I approached the desk, offering me his seat. I smiled and shook my head, then turned my concentration back to Ariadne and Old Man Winter, who both stared at me, Old Man Winter with his usual stoic calm, Ariadne intense, her eyes almost on fire. Scott found his way back into the seat and the silence continued, unabated, as I shifted my weight between my feet for the next thirty seconds or so, hoping someone would say something before I had to resort to small talk.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we called you all here.” Ariadne was the one that spoke, the lines visible at the corners of her eyes.

Kat and Scott exchanged a look with each other. Kat sat up straighter in her seat, her eyes a little wide. “Um…because Sienna nearly killed Eve?”

“I didn’t…” I stopped myself just in time. I didn’t look at Old Man Winter. “It was an accident.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have time to hash over training accidents at the moment.” Did I detect a note of regret and acrimony in Ariadne’s voice on that one? Her mouth remained a severe line. “We have other business.” She looked over Kat’s shoulder to Parks.