“Wait in here.” The female Air directed Aya into a windowless room in the center of the false church but did not enter herself. She nodded toward a closed door on the opposite wall, set with a mottled glass window that gave the vague impression of bodies moving behind it. “He’ll let you know when he’s ready.”
She left, closing the door, and Aya heard a subsequent click. On her last visit, they hadn’t locked her in. There was no place to sit.
A burst of raised voices, all male, maybe three in number, made her jump, her head swiveling in the direction of the mottled glass door. The voices ramped up to overlapping shouts, their words indistinct but the anger very, very clear. Something crashed to the ground, followed by a heavy thump against a wall. More crashes, more shouts, then the door flew open.
A male Air stomped out, and not just any Air. Him. The one with the curly hair and pale blue eyes. The one she saw last time she’d been called here. The one Nem had mentioned.
Inside the office, the premier and Aaron stood in the middle of a disaster. A bookcase had been overturned and something glass lay in shards on the wood floor.
“Go do your penance, Jase,” the premier growled.
The curly-haired Air halted in the center of the room, his back to the door. Fists balled at his sides, he closed his eyes and snarled back, “The name’s Jason now.”
“Ha. Changing your damn name doesn’t absolve you. You still owe me. You still need to pay for her.”
Jase—Jason’s—eyes opened, the intense stare spearing straight ahead, straight through Aya, even though she stood not three feet away.
“Fuck you.” Razors laced his whisper. Aya felt them slice across her human skin.
“Reno,” said the premier, his cowboy boots crunching on glass as he went to the door and gripped its edge. “Get it done.” The door slammed with such force the entire wall vibrated.
Jason drew a deep breath, his chest rattling as it expanded and collapsed. Then he blinked at Aya, shook his head, blinked again. “Who the hell are you?”
An earthquake of odd sensations shook Aya’s body and mind as she stood under Jason’s powerful scrutiny, anger flushing his skin and a terrible loss clouding his eyes. She did not understand what she was feeling, how to parse the peaks and valleys of the effects of such direct attention.
“We’ve met before,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “No, we haven’t.”
She shook her head as a strange heat crept up from her chest, traveling the length of her neck to settle in her cheeks. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Last time I was here I merely . . . saw you.”
Last time he’d been standing, dead-eyed, just behind the premier, looking like he’d been sentenced to prison. That was when he’d taken over for Madeline, so perhaps that’s exactly what had happened. Aya had never realized before that the Airs used their mind-wipers as a form of punishment.
Jason inched closer, and though most people were larger than her, right then he seemed impossibly tall, as wide as a mountain. His gaze traveled over her face and hair, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Who are you?”
Clearing her throat, she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I am Aya, Daughter of Earth, here to see the premier on Senatus matters.”
“I see.” He nodded, the back of his teeth making a terrible grinding noise. “You don’t look how I thought you would.”
“What do you mean? What were you expecting?”
He let out a hollow laugh. His eyes made a general sweep of her body. Different than how Nem had looked at her, however. Jason’s study was critical and detached. Still, standing there wrapped in the suit of woven grass that suddenly felt too constrictive, a new kind of warmth spread out to her extremities. Never one to cower, though, confident in her decision to evolve, she stared back.
“A Child of Earth?” he finally said with a faint snort. “Dreadlocks. Hairy legs. Bells on your wrists and ankles.”
None of that made sense to her and she made a mental note to look it up.
“But you’re none of that. Are you?” As his voice turned distant, his wandering gaze settled on her hair—still not entirely human, she knew, with its color, or lack thereof, and the way it tended to move on its own—growing, curling, wrapping around her neck and body.
With another sudden jerk and shake of his head, he threw off whatever ghosts clung to his thoughts and leaned closer. Filling her vision with his face.
“Don’t worry, Senatus,” he spit, “I’ll do what you fucking want me to.”
Aya opened her mouth—to ask what he meant or to defend herself or to deny she had anything to do with whatever it was the premier wanted of him—but Jason kept talking, his tone spiraling into the same ugly one he’d used on the premier.
“I’ll do it,” he said, “but you tell him that after this one, I’m done. This is the last mind I fuck with.” Swerving around her with the force of a gale, Jason lunged for the exterior door, rattling the knob so hard Aya thought he might rip it off. “Nancy.” He pounded on the wood. “Let me the fuck out.”
Aya only stood there, knowing she could not reveal herself to this man. Knowing she could not tell him that she was just as abhorred by the Senatus practice of mind scrambling as he was.
Jason glared at her and she had to clamp her lips shut to keep from begging him to give her time. To hold on until Griffin succeeded and the two of them could start to steer Senatus thinking and practices in different, better directions.
Nancy, the Air who’d met her at the gate, unlocked the door and Jason fled the waiting room so fast Aya wondered if he’d used his magic to ride the wind. In his wake, she stared at the space he’d once consumed, still able to see his shape. Still able to sense the force of his emotion. Evolution had brought that to her, that blessing and that curse of being finely in tune with what others—Primary or Secondary—felt. And there was no doubt over what she’d just experienced.
Jason hated her.
• • •
How much time passed before the door to the premier’s office opened, Aya couldn’t say. The hole in her gut had eaten much of her present awareness. Her mind was spinning away, thinking about the human who would suffer so terribly at Jason’s will because they probably inadvertently saw something they shouldn’t have. Hating how, yet again, all she could do was stand here and watch it happen.
Was that what this was about? This midnight summons? Did the premier want to see her about Jason or a new threat coming out of Reno?
“Aya.” The premier’s voice hadn’t lost its snarl.
She turned, giving him a slight inclination of her head and noticing with consternation how his icy eyes pierced her. “Premier.”
Aaron stepped out of the office, beckoning her inside. Too late she remembered how human skin was susceptible to sharp edges. She stepped on a small shard of broken glass and hissed. A sliver of red leaked out from her sole.
The premier didn’t notice. In fact, he stood in front of his desk, arms crossed, hair dented by the cowboy hat now lying upside down in a corner. Staring.
“I know a lot more about you now,” he said, his voice chilly, “don’t I?”
She swept a long look around his office, glancing pointedly at the ceiling where the huge Christian cross sat atop the false church. “And I you.”
He didn’t seem to hear her, or if he did, he chose to ignore her. “How you move about under the earth. How you can change your shape. Quite unusual. Quite fascinating. It’s why you always insisted the Senatus meet outside. In the dark. In remote places.”