Angela Knight - Unbound

Someone was in there. Moving around. Yet she’d given everyone, even the janitors, the day off. A surge of protective anger burst inside her. No one was messing with her clinic. She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall—the only available weapon she could think of—and flung open the door.

A female Ofarian soldier, dressed in black, rose calmly from where she knelt by the garbage can. Each piece of trash had been removed and now lay neatly organized on a sheet of plastic on the floor.

“Who the hell are you?” Kelsey demanded.

The woman shifted uncomfortably, then glanced to her right, to the line of lockers.

David stood at Emily Pritchart’s locker, the door open, its contents lined up on the bench.

Kelsey dropped the fire extinguisher, the giant clank giving her an instant headache. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

David actually had the gall to not look guilty or regretful. Instead, he closed the green metal door with a muted click and came toward her with the same graceful poise he had in the hotel hall last night. Minus the lust.

“Gathering evidence,” he said.

She started to quiver with fury. “This is my clinic—”

“This is an Ofarian clinic.” His voice was infuriatingly soft.

“I told you about Wes’s letter. You already talked to Emily. What more do you want?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, a defensive gesture if she’d ever seen one. “I suspected that wasn’t the only contact between Wes and Emily, but I needed further proof.”

“Holy shit, David. You broke into my clinic and are destroying Emily’s privacy because of a hunch? Since when did you turn into the Board? Did you go through my patient files, too?”

Deep red seeped up his neck.

“Oh, God. No. You didn’t.”

She spun and raced into the main room, going for the central computer. She heard David following.

“Kelse. Wait.”

The main computer was on, the screen bright. It showed a table of patient names.

She whirled on him, rage coloring her vision. “How could you?”

He showed her his palms. “It’s not what you think. Let me explain.”

“What’s there to explain? You are the Board.”

He jabbed a finger at the floor. “This situation means Griffin’s life. It means the safety and future of our people. Do you understand that? A little sacrifice—a little understanding —please.”

She recoiled. “Was last night your way of trying to butter me up so I’d let you in here? Let you snoop around?” She’d dismissed him as a manipulator too soon.

“If you really think that”—his voice quieted so much it fought with the whir from the air ducts—“there’s nothing I can do or say to change your mind.”

She glanced into the locker room, taking in the neat lines of trash on the floor, and Emily’s dog-eared biographies and candy stash on the bench. The list of patient names on the computer screen glared at her.

“Confidentiality was a joke to the Board. And now you’re making my clinic into a joke, too,” she said. “But then again, that’s what you’re good at.”

He went so still she thought he’d somehow stopped time. That had been wrong to say—far-fetched and cutting and spoken out of heat. But an apology might have been misconstrued as permission to go ahead with what he was doing, and she couldn’t do that.

“You’re right,” he said, and she heard his pain. “That’s exactly what I’m good at.”

No man was worth this, this desecration of her dreams. She was too angry to argue anymore, and too furious to stand there and watch people who weren’t her employees rifle through what she’d created. She turned and fled, reaching the street in record time.

In the not-so-distant past, she could have contacted her mom, and the head Ofarian doctor with deep, powerful contacts within the Board would have made a single phone call and all would have been well. The thought actually made Kelsey sick. Which situation was better? Which was worse?

Only when she raised her arm to hail a cab did she notice how it shook from fingertip to shoulder.

“Doc.”

So they were back to that name, were they? Wasn’t that indicative?

She didn’t want to turn, but it was like her body had been trained, tuned to his presence and the sound of his voice. David stalked across the sidewalk toward her.

He’s going to apologize, she thought, heart in her throat.

“The day I came here injured, you told me Emily was in charge of routinely following up with patients. I was checking the lists of names to make sure all the Ofarians on record actually existed, that she wasn’t passing information under the pretense of false names. I never opened a single patient file, just verified the names were real people.”

Kelsey gaped. “Why on earth would you think she’d do that?”

“Because of what she’s already done.” He reached into his soldier’s vest and pulled out something pink. She blinked at it, hardly believing what he held contained any matter of consequence. Slowly, never removing his eyes from her, he unfolded the greasy, crumpled El Tamale Loco bag.

The pink paper was covered in doodles—figures and silly characters Kelsey had seen Emily draw countless times over the years. In between them, just barely distinguishable, ran a line of random letters. Unreadable, a mess.

David dragged a finger across the gobbledygook. “See this?” His voice was painfully lifeless. “It’s a rail fence cipher. Know what it says?”

She couldn’t swallow. “No.”

“It says, ‘Delivery successful.’ A direct threat has been made against Griffin, Kelsey. We’ve been monitoring Emily, and when she came to the clinic today when we knew it was closed, we followed her. Caught her going through the trash looking for this, to change it or remove it or something. You said she gets tamales from this place every week. Chances are she’s been communicating this way with Wes for a while.”

Kelsey’s mouth dropped open, but she found no words.

“We have her in custody. She said she doesn’t agree with the lack of social structure. And that she objects to your experiments with Primary medicine and Secondary magic. She’s not your friend.”

By the time Kelsey’s brain fumbled back into motion, David had gone back inside.

David didn’t answer his phone all afternoon, but then, Kelsey hadn’t expected him to. He’d made his point.

She sat with her parents, as was tradition, at the top of the rapidly filling amphitheater concealed in the cold forest two hours north of San Francisco. Winter wind blew off the Pacific and swirled through the tall trees. The Ofarian population, wrapped in bulky coats and scarves and mittens, took their seats facing the stage. The drone of formal greetings and water blessings passed from person to person, but there was very little enthusiasm behind the words or actions.

A heavy, somber cloak of uncertainty hovered above the crowd. The Rites—as opposed to the Star Gala—had always been solemn, but now the sharpness of volatility gave the whole thing an edge that had Kelsey’s knee bouncing in unease.

The elder Pritcharts hadn’t come.

Dissidents two rows back whispered that the Pritchart parents had taken Emily and had splintered off to be with Wes. Other detractors speculated they themselves might join the Pritcharts, and that if enough Ofarians left San Francisco, Gwen and Griffin would be without power. They said that Gwen had already backed away from her own world, and that Griffin didn’t have a handle on things.

Kelsey felt sick, believing none of it, but unable to say anything. David hadn’t released news of Emily’s arrest, so it wasn’t up to Kelsey to reveal.