Copper Veins(38)

Dad. Micah should have trusted me, but I knew without a doubt that he didn’t fully trust my father. And he hadn’t seemed to think my own trust meant anything at all. That thought stirred old anger in me. The way he’d made Dad so uncomfortable about his lost memories. And how he hadn’t woken me to go with him to the Golden Court to negotiate with Oriana. And how he’d screamed at me after we’d gone to see the crone, Gods, like he thought I was some baby who’d give her anything she wanted for a cup of coffee.

I remembered what Max had said before we’d gone to Moose Lake: that Micah didn’t control me. But Dad seemed to think he did, asking me about when we’d met and if he’d “coerced” me into marrying him…

Did he? Micah and I had both been dreaming when we’d first met, but now I wondered if he had somehow influenced my dream. It clearly hadn’t been the first time he’d hopped into a strange woman’s dream—he’d even implied that female Dreamwalkers attracted male Dreamwalkers for just those sorts of rendezvous. Had Micah somehow made me want him?

And then there was Dad’s reaction to the silver mark on my wrist. He’d responded as an indignant father would, assuming that Micah had forced his element into my skin. While I still didn’t know if that was even possible, I’d never gotten the chance to ask Micah, which wasn’t surprising since we couldn’t manage to make this marriage thing official either. Whether it had been one of Dad’s missions or the Gold Queen’s lunatic notions or a thousand other things, we couldn’t find time to be alone.

Does it matter how we met? I wished I knew the answer to that. I remembered the Goblin Market and how the dark magics that wafted up from the shops had reduced me to a weepy mess. Micah had sensed my distress, and he’d protected me. He was always protecting me, except for those few times I’d needed to protect him.

I shook my head, took a sip of water, and dove back into my memories. Specifically, I thought about that first dream Micah and I had shared. The beef jerky I’d wolfed down earlier became a ball of lead in my stomach as I came to an undeniable conclusion—I had no idea how that dream had started.

I had no idea if I’d called Micah into my dream, or if he’d just made me think that I had. I couldn’t even remember our first kiss.

“This is nuts,” I muttered.

“What’s that, sis?” Max called. I looked up and saw him and Jerome with their heads bent over a map. Sadie, predictably, had found a book and was propped up in a dark corner, reading it by way of a flashlight.

“This,” I repeated, gesturing to encompass the cave, and our situation. I was not sharing my relationship doubts with anyone, not until I’d talked to Micah. “We’re three of the most powerful Elementals Pacifica has dealt with in recent years, and we’re hiding out in a cave.” I strode over to the map, pretending to be confident.

“We’re working on that,” Max said. “I’m marking the known static portals, and Jerome here is figuring out which are the easiest to get to.”

I nodded—at least they’d been doing something while I’d been busy having an emotional crisis. “What about Dad’s stashed portals?”

“Too risky,” Max said, shaking his head. “If these sniffers are as strong as Jerome says, they could have cleaned them out. Better to stick with portals we know aren’t going anywhere.”

Well, that was practical. I nodded, as if I’d ever been in charge of this mission, and went to sit beside Sadie. “What’re you reading?”

“It’s a procedures handbook,” she replied. “Only, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.” She flipped back a few pages, then laid the book on the floor between us. “See, here it tells the reader that, if this location is compromised, they should report to centralized command. But here,” she paged forward a bit, “you’re told to burn everything in the cave and go to ground.” Sadie flipped back and forth between the two sections, lips pursed. “This handbook is full of these contradictions. If anyone tried to follow it, they’d be captured in a day.”

A nonsense procedural. I used to sort nonsense reports for a living, reports that told you all you needed to know about nonesense hamsters and lemon oil. I’d sorted those garbage reports for a year at Real Estate Evaluation Services, the sham job that had been created by my fake best friend, Juliana, so that she could keep tabs on me and my family.

I took the handbook from Sadie and turned to the map section. There was an incredibly detailed map of Capitol City, right down to resistance headquarters—which was smack dab on top of the Presidential Mansion, a.k.a. Peacekeeper World Headquarters.