Copper Ravens(10)

She was a Peacekeeper. My lifelong best friend not only turned out to be a Peacekeeper, but she had known where my missing brother was all along. Frickin’ bitch. I hope she got fired after we rescued Max.

“Who’s Mike Armstrong?” I asked, hoping against hope that he was someone I’d never heard of.

“Juliana’s uncle,” Max replied. “The head of the Institute for Elemental Research.”

“The who of the what?” Feigning ignorance, I took a long pull on my drink, both surprised and disappointed to learn that it was the Otherworld’s version of Kool-Aid. Based on the direction this conversation was heading, I wanted something eye-wateringly alcoholic.

Almost ten years ago, Peacekeepers had stormed into the Raven Compound and arrested Max for his so-called crimes against humanity. That was political speak for the fact that he wouldn’t stop practicing magic, which was his birthright as a metal Elemental. There was a sham trial that we, his family, weren’t even invited to, and then Max was hauled off to prison. At least, that’s what we were told.

What had really happened was that Max had made a deal with the Peacekeepers. They were methodically eliminating the Inheritors, those gifted souls who came along once a generation that had a more intense affinity with their Element, or so it seemed. In reality, the Peacekeepers were capturing and attempting to study them, but the Inheritors were decidedly against being lab rats. Ultimately, they all perished, all save one—the Inheritor of Metal.

After the last Metal Inheritor, Olquin, died, no one knew the identity of his replacement; no one, save my parents and Max, knew that Sadie, the youngest Corbeau, was the new Inheritor. That fact was one of the main reasons Dad had so readily gone off to fight in the Magic Wars; for all we knew, he was still fighting today. Before Dad left, Max had promised our father that he would protect the family by any means necessary, so once Dad disappeared, and Olquin was dead, Max felt like he was out of options. He’d contacted the Peacekeepers, represented himself as the Metal Inheritor, and went willingly to the Institute.

According to Max, all had gone as well as could be expected for the first few years, until he’d found a bit of metal out in the exercise yard, shaped it into a lily, and had given it to a girl as a love token. Things went downhill from there, and by the time Micah and I had rescued him, Max was nothing more than skin and bones, held in a plastic coffin with wires and tubes stuck all over him, his days spent in a drug-induced stupor.

And now he tells me that Juliana’s uncle was the man responsible for all of it.

“You didn’t know?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I snapped. “Juliana lied to me about everything.”

“She didn’t have much of a choice,” Max said, surprisingly without rancor. “Sometimes, I think she was way worse off than I was.”

“Yeah. I’m sure her cushy job as a Peacekeeper kept her up late at night.” Max gave me a sidelong glance but dropped the subject of my former friend.

“Anyway, her uncle runs the Institute,” he reiterated. “And now, he wants to run the world. His platform is that his research on Elementals gives him an edge to keep the Mundanes safe.”

“You mean his research on you,” I grumbled.

“There were others,” Max said, tracing the edge of his glass.

“There were?” I recalled my own brief forays into the Institute. There had been lots and lots of Mundanes, guards and lab coats and such, but the only Elemental I ever saw was Max. Then again, I’d only been concerned with finding my brother. “Are they still there? Should we help them?”

Max shook his head. “I outlived them. All of them.”

“Oh.” I shuddered, the specter of dead Elementals I’d never even known chilling me. Desperate for a subject change, I continued, “So what if this Mike Armstrong wants to be president? What’s the difference—” Recognition hit me like a ton of bricks, so hard I almost fell off my stool. “Wait. Uncle Mike?”

Max’s eyes slid back to mine. “You do know him.”

Uncle Mike was a fat, jolly man, a lot like Santa without the beard. Or much other hair, for that matter. He was the patriarch of the Armstrong clan, being that his brother, Juliana’s dad, had died while she and her little brother, Corey, were very young. He was the man who had looked out for Juliana and Corey and their mom, making sure that Corey got to attend music school and that Juliana and her mother were always well cared for. I remembered the Armstrong summer get-togethers, with Uncle Mike manning the grill, burning hot dogs, and slipping us beers when we were way underage.