“Were you ever?” he asked.
She sighed. “Not the first night we were together. Or the second. But when you told me about her, how you two were once supposed to get married and that you were still working together, I felt . . .” Keko trailed off, and Griffin thought that maybe it was because she didn’t actually know any words for those kinds of emotions. It had been obvious to him she was used to going through life with two speeds: on and off. Everything else in between wasn’t worth a glance, let alone a thought.
His head dropped, and even though she couldn’t see him, he shook it. “You never had any reason to be jealous. She and I . . . what we were supposed to be . . . it wasn’t ever . . .”
His turn to scramble for descriptors.
“What?” she said.
“Love.”
The word hung there. Maybe it could have been love once between him and Keko. When they’d parted in that hotel room, when he’d held her hand as she drove him to the Senatus meeting site for the last time, it had seemed like love might have been an exciting, easy road to begin to travel together. But now?
The divide between them was too great. Years and distance and near wars and ugly cultural mishaps, not to mention their separate races, had filled it in with nothing good. The chasm had just gotten deeper and wider the longer they’d been apart.
“I hear you’re getting what you want,” she said, tonelessly.
I don’t have you. The force of the unexpected thought almost pitched him forward down the stairs.
“And what’s that?” he asked.
“The Senatus. I’m sure this one will go better than the last. I won’t be there to distract you.”
“Keko—”
“You said that if I hadn’t fucked you, none of this would’ve happened.”
Breath hissed out between his teeth. “There were two people in that hotel room. Two adults. Makaha still came after me. Even if you’d told me about the magic rule, I would’ve defended myself. No use rehashing it.”
“But I think about it a lot.” The way her voice turned distant started to frighten him. She didn’t sound like herself at all. “When I roll over in the Common House and see Makaha sleeping, half an arm thrown out to one side, I think about how I could’ve served him better.”
“Great stars, Keko. The Common House?” He remembered all too well her description of the place, what it meant—or didn’t mean—to Chimeran society. Griffin had called the concept barbaric. “They sent you there?”
“Chief did, yeah. He told the people I was wrong about my reasons for going to war. He didn’t tell them about you.” Keko cleared her throat. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”
Now she definitely scared him. Being general had meant everything to her. More, maybe, than the Senatus meant to him. She’d been on track to be the next chief.
Through the line he heard the continuous pelt of rain, then the honk of a car horn and the swoosh of it driving through a puddle on pavement.
Griffin jumped up. “You told me there was only one phone in the Chimeran stronghold.”
And Cat had told Griffin that there were only two or three vehicles in the whole Chimeran valley on the Big Island. No paved roads.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
Still no answer.
“Keko, why are you calling? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I figured out how to serve my people again.” Her voice drifted high and far away. She sounded eerily at peace, strangely at ease for all that she’d been through. “I’m calling to say good-bye to you.”
“Good-bye? What the hell is going—”
“We’ve parted on such shitty terms too many times, Griffin. Just this once, this very last time, I wanted it to be good.”
Panic enveloped him. “Wait—”
She hung up.
He stabbed the redial button, but it just rang and rang and rang.
THREE
One hour northwest of Madison, Wisconsin, there was nothing except the sword of the rental car’s headlights slashing at the skeletons of the cold, late-March forest, a sky heavy with stars, and the Senatus.
Griffin fidgeted in the passenger seat as David swerved the car through the hilly, dark countryside. Griffin’s knee bounced and one fingernail scratched consistently at the underside of his thigh. Anxiety drew down the corners of his mouth. His vision was a bullet shooting into the night, all his other senses hyperaware, desperate to pick up something—anything—that might clue him in as to what was about to happen.
Keko had called to say good-bye. Why? Why now? What the hell for? What was she going to do?
“Got your game face on, I see.” From behind the wheel, David threw a wry, obvious glance at Griffin’s twitching leg. “Might want to check that before you walk in there.”
Griffin immediately stilled and sank deeper into the seat, but didn’t respond. He hadn’t told David about the phone call from Keko. He’d stewed about it all last night—not getting a wink of sleep—and the entire travel to the Midwest. He couldn’t’ve called the chief even if he’d wanted to. Griffin’s sole connection to the Senatus was the premier, and he didn’t want to press his luck by asking how to contact the Chimerans directly. He also didn’t want to compromise Keko—whatever it was she’d gotten involved in now—because he had no idea what the chief did or did not know.
And he still had no idea what he would say or ask when he finally came face to face with the head Chimeran.
David glanced into the rearview mirror, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “SUV coming up fast behind us.”
Griffin swiveled in his seat. The headlights of the massive black truck flashed twice. He glimpsed red and blue on the license plate: Illinois. Gwen, driving up to meet them from her home in Chicago.
“This it?” David braked and pointed at a sign for a private campground, the CLOSED FOR THE SEASON tag dangling from a pole.
Griffin double-checked his GPS for the coordinates the Senatus premier had sent him earlier that day. “Looks like it.”
David steered the car off the two-lane paved road and onto a gravel drive. The bones of bare branches stretched for them as they slowly rolled past. The drive seemed to go on forever, slicing deeper and deeper into the forest, until it finally opened up into a small clearing, a shuttered shack at one end, a ring of stones surrounding a giant, unlit bonfire at the other.
They parked next to two other vehicles, their headlights illuminating the premier and Aaron, the chief and Bane. No Aya as far as he could tell. Gwen swung her giant SUV on the opposite end of the line.
The signatures of Secondary magic zinged through Griffin’s mind. David ground fingers into his forehead, indicating he was feeling it, too. “At least we know we’re in the right place,” he said.
Gwen and David were waiting for Griffin to move, but he just sat there, peering out the windshield, memorizing the scene and the players’ placements.
The premier and the older air elemental Aaron huddled on the right side of the fire pit, the white vapor of their breath puffing out, and then dissipating. The premier, dressed in jeans and a bulky plaid flannel coat lined with fleece, still wore the same cowboy hat Griffin remembered from three years earlier. Short and slight, he shifted from foot to foot, stamping in the cold.
To the left stood the two Chimerans. Shirtless, shoeless, muscular, and powerful as all hell.
“Showtime,” Griffin said, and David killed the engine. The headlights died, then Gwen’s quickly followed, throwing the gathering into blackness.
Griffin unfolded himself from the car, heading for Gwen. It had been two months since he’d seen her, and though he wanted to pull her in for a hug, he didn’t.