Seeker (Riders #2)(4)

I stand. "All right. Good talk."

"Gideon, hold on a second. Now that you're here, there's something I want to discuss with you."

I ease back into the chair, but now I'm on my guard. "What's up?"

Cordero closes her laptop and sits back, giving me her full attention. It's only now that I notice my right hand is in a fist. Cordero notices this as well. "Want to close the door?" she asks.

"Do you want me to close the door?"

"If it'll make you more comfortable."

"Are you going to psychoanalyze me?"

"Not intentionally."

"Then open's fine."

"Open it is."

My knees are almost pressed against her desk, so I push the chair back and try to relax. Jode's laugh carries from the warehouse behind me, rising above the patter of tapping keyboards and humming generators. He has a high chuckle that reminds me of a little kid's laugh-a psychotic little kid's laugh.

Our team's technically nonmilitary. Totally off the grid and comprised of three out of four horsemen-me, Marcus, and Jode-plus Cordero; her assistant, Ben, who's one of three MIT prodigies; Sophia and Soraya, the other two; and eight special-ops soldiers who were with us in the final showdown against the Kindred-the rebel group of demons we shut down in the fall. 

Almost shut down. Samrael's still out there. Still in there, to be precise. In the realm he managed to open by coercing Daryn. And by cutting off my left hand. Which he's going to regret the hell out of next time I see him.

Not a day's gone by that I haven't thought about Bastian and how to get him back. I think Cordero's motivations for going after him are professional. She never met Bas, but she's been studying occult and paranormal phenomena her entire career. This whole task force was created for that specific purpose. I couldn't care less what her motivation is, though, as long as she helps us. For Marcus, Jode, and me, this is personal. Bastian's one of us.

Cordero removes her glasses and sets them down on her desk. "How are you doing today, Gideon?"

"Great. You?"

"Good."

She nods, so I nod.

Actually I've struggled to keep my frustration under control today. I have a feeling that's what this little chat is about. Everyone feels it when I get riled up. A fun part of being an incarnation of War is that my anger's literally contagious, so. I'm kind of a liability. Fortunately over the past six months, Cordero has developed a solid toolbox for disarming the Gideon rage bomb. "How about we run through what we know again?" she suggests.

Ah. Redirection. Refocus my attention toward something productive. This is awesome when it works. "Sure."

"You saw your sister standing alone at Marcus's graduation. Tell me again what made you go to her?"

"Twintuition."

Cordero's smile is faint, almost exclusively in her eyes. A couple of months ago, she told me all about the research paper she did as an undergraduate at Yale about telepathic connections between twins. Anything that defies explanation, Cordero loves.

I actually do feel super connected with Anna sometimes, so it's weird that she doesn't know about any of this stuff. My sister has no clue that I'm War. Or that her boyfriend's Conquest.

Jode, man. Talk about the worst guy for your sister to be with. It's not right.

The best the guys and I can tell, we're incarnations of the horsemen not because we're bringing about the end times, or Judgment Day. We are what we are as a kind of lesson. Me, for example. It'd be fair to say I have anger issues. It would also be fair to say I've had my share of internal unrest. As War, I've had to learn to deal with it. Really learn. Same goes for Jode, aka Conquest, who's got his superiority issues to deal with, and Marcus, who, as Death, has had to fight harder than anyone I know personally for a good life. We're walking metaphors, you could say. Human works in progress-but we are progressing. Every one of us has grown in character and in faith because we wear our weaknesses so openly.

"Give me more," Cordero prompts. "You saw Anna and noticed something unusual. What was it?"

"Hey, Cordero. Doesn't this remind you of the time you were questioning me but you actually secretly wanted to take my head off?" This entire moment, me sitting here and answering her questions, brings back bad memories of when one of the Kindred, a shape-shifter, impersonated her and interrogated me.

"That wasn't me, so of course I don't remember it." Her eyes narrow just slightly. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, thanks. I'm good." It's not that I don't trust Cordero. It's just that it's hard to forget. "You were asking about Anna. Why I went over to her." I lift my shoulders. "I just knew. She had this look on her face like something was going on. She told me a girl had come up to her and that she'd looked nervous. She introduced herself as a friend of mine and asked Anna to give me the key."