But as one and then two hours passed, Mae saw no signs of pursuit or patrol. Either no one monitored these hinterlands, or else she’d been too fast for her crimes to catch up with her. Mae was starting to think she’d actually pulled off the impossible—twice—tonight when the van began to sputter and tremble. Mae felt the motor choke up and finally stop altogether, forcing her to guide it off to the road’s shoulder.
“I knew this thing sounded bad,” she muttered, staring bleakly at the instrument panel. Cecile leaned toward her.
“I think it’s out of gas,” she said, pointing toward a dial aimed at the letter E.
“We haven’t been on the road that long,” protested Mae. “Even with the detour.” Admittedly, she hadn’t checked the fuel gauge when setting out. She hadn’t thought to. Gemman cars, even most of the manual ones, ran on solar power or highly charged batteries. Those that did use fossil fuels were so efficient that she would’ve expected even half a tank to last longer than this. The cars themselves also would’ve told her if they were running low on fuel. “I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing where we could buy gas,” she said. They’d passed a place on the main highway when starting out but had seen nothing in some time.
“No woman would ever go buy gas anyway,” said Cecile.
Although she was fascinated by Mae, she’d also picked up quickly that there were some things Mae just wasn’t savvy to.
Mae got out of the van and stood on the side of the dark road.
Night insects chattered around her, and a humidity reminiscent of what she’d grown up with dampened the air. They were surrounded by fields scattered with trees and had no other landmarks or signs of civilization.
Looking up, however, Mae found guides in the sky. It was a perfectly clear night, filling the sky with more stars than she could remember having seen at once. Her father used to stargaze with her when she was younger and had taught her the basic constellations, many of which she could see now: the great bear, the small bear, the dragon. One in particular caught her eye, Cassiopeia—the queen. Mae remembered her father teaching it to her on a small tablet, which had overlaid an image of a crowned and enthroned woman across the stars. There was probably an old myth behind that constellation, one that Justin would know.
He lingered on her mind for a moment, but as Mae gazed at the cluster of stars and thought of that crowned woman, it was her guiding goddess who soon dominated her thoughts. This time of year, the queen was almost directly to the north. Now, it would seem, was the time for faith and divine favors.
Cecile came up beside her, with Monica and the girl whose coat Mae had borrowed not far behind. “What are we going to do? Some of the little girls are getting scared.”
“And they want to use the bathroom,” added Monica.
The girl Mae had traded coats with held out something. “This was tangled in your old coat,” she said nervously. Mae took it and saw Justin’s charm, the one that obscured her from being recognized as one of the elect. So. That explained why the Grand Disciple had reacted as he had. She fastened the necklace back on and couldn’t spare any extra worry for what the consequences of that slip might be.
Instead, Mae’s eyes focused on the stars a few seconds more, and then she fixed her attention on the dark shapes of the two girls beside her. “First, some of you are going to help me push this van off the road and out of sight. After that, we’re going home,” she said. “On foot.”
CHAPTER 22
A Long Two Days
Hannah’s disappearance wasn’t discovered right away, giving Justin some time to brief Lucian that their world had just been turned upside down. Ironically, Mae’s raiding of the salon down the highway caused enough of a stir that first night that no one in Carl’s family spared a thought for Hannah.
“They said it must’ve been a whole team of guys,” Walter told
Carl. It was late, and most of the household would’ve normally been in bed if not for the breaking news. Walter and some of his other brothers had just returned from a local tavern where they’d gotten the scoop.
“Everyone shot dead except one, all the girls taken. Heard there was a fire or something too—like maybe they tried to burn the place down to cover their tracks.”
Justin was lounging in a stuffed arm chair in Carl’s study, trying to appear casual, though anyone looking closely would’ve noticed the death grip on his untouched scotch. After the exhausting evening with Hansen’s followers, Justin couldn’t have stomached the alcohol if he’d wanted to, and the latest developments had only reinforced the need for sobriety. Across the room, Lucian’s drink was equally untouched, and his eyes met Justin’s at the mention of “a whole team of guys.” A whole team—or one Mae.
Justin almost felt bad for Lucian. Justin had at least been semi-prepared, knowing about Mae’s last secret visit to the salon and her niece. That didn’t make tonight’s developments any easier to handle, but Lucian had had it much worse when Justin had essentially told him in sixty seconds that Mae had run off to liberate stolen Gemman girls and left a fugitive Arcadian concubine in her place.
“Damn,” said Carl, stamping a cigar butt into his ashtray.
“Pittsfield had some fine girls there too.”
“Is this common?” asked Phil, legitimately curious. He was, as of yet, blissfully unaware of the disaster unfolding in the Gemmans’ laps.
“Not usually around here, this close to the city,” said Carl. “Out in the real country . . . yeah, you’ll get all kinds of barbarism. People stealing their neighbor’s daughters. It’s savage. Makes me sad to see it happening here.”
“Someone must’ve thought it was worth the risk,” said Jasper, leaning forward with clasped hands. “Figured they could make a lot of money—or maybe they wanted to keep the girls for themselves.”
“What’s so special about this group?” asked Atticus.
Carl leveled a warning look at his sons. “Just a particularly pretty group. Smart thing would be to sell them. They lose half their value once they’re bedded.”
Justin felt mildly ill, but it was getting difficult to tell if it was from Arcadian gender politics or his continuing recovery from divine powers.
“Do they just raid salons?” asked Phil. “Any chance that prowler you had here the other night was connected? You said that place is relatively close, and I’ll come out and say it: our women are a particularly pretty group.”
Carl frowned, not liking the suggestion but unable to deny it. “I already upped the security, but I’ll have the boys do some extra watches too.” Said boys didn’t look thrilled about this but offered no complaint.
Lucian, however, had plenty to say afterward, once the Gemmans had retired to their guesthouse for the night. He ordered Justin to his room and immediately turned on him, after politely asking Val to step outside.
“If they increase security, Mae’s going to have a hell of a time getting back in here,” said Lucian.
Justin shook his head. “Didn’t you follow what I said? Mae’s not coming back.”
“No!” exclaimed Lucian. “And that’s the problem. I didn’t follow half of what you blurted out earlier. Why would Mae do that? Why would she abandon the mission to raid a salon and—so help me—kill a bunch of Arcadians! We’re supposed to be here to promote peace!”
“The salon was holding Gemman girls,” said Justin, trying to make a logical argument for something he knew was illogical. “Girls stolen from our country.”
“Mae couldn’t have known that,” argued Lucian.
“Come on, you only have to look at them to know! Plus . . . one of them was her, uh, niece.”
That took Lucian aback, and Justin sketched a hasty explanation of the Koskinen family’s sordid history. He blurred the details of how Mae had obtained her intelligence, though, citing a vague connection to the Swedish mafia, which wasn’t entirely a lie since Mae had once tried to work with them.
Lucian sat down on the bed, looking about as far as possible from the dazzling and cheerful politician Justin usually saw. “You know, she mentioned that she was looking forward to this trip, and I dared to hope—well, it doesn’t matter. She’s out there now, and I don’t know how the hell she’s going to get back home.”
“She’ll find a way,” Justin insisted, not that he had any idea either.
“And in the meantime, there’s another situation you should know about.”
Lucian’s head jerked up. “Really? Something worse than one of our soldiers going rogue and forcing us to smuggle a defector back home, in order to save our asses?”
Justin considered that. “I guess it depends on how you define ‘worse.’ You know I had that meeting with the Grand Disciple, right?
Well, it looks like Hannah isn’t the only Arcadian we’re going home with. I made arrangements for the Arcadian cultural lecturers to visit us, uh, immediately.”
For a moment, it almost looked like Lucian thought there was some joke going on, and Justin couldn’t entirely blame him for the mistake.
“You said they were missionaries in disguise and that letting them in would be a terrible idea,” Lucian reminded him.
“Turns out I was wrong,” said Justin. “They’re actually hackers in disguise who want to stage an act of data terrorism.”
And so, he delivered his second bombshell of the night, about how they’d be escorting a group of Arcadians back home, half of which were defectors while the others harbored plans to usher in an attack upon the RUNA. Again, Justin did some serious editing, leaving out Odin and playing up the Arcadian defectors’ motivation to start a new life in the RUNA in exchange for selling out their countrymen.
“You should probably let Atticus know soon,” added Justin helpfully. “You guys are going to need to get in touch with the people back home to get that delegation into the country.”
Lucian was quiet for so long that it actually started to become disconcerting.
You might have really done it, Horatio told Justin. Here’s someone who deals with tough situations and scrutiny on a daily basis without cracking his smile, but you may be what finally breaks him.
“How,” began Lucian at last. “How could you and Mae possibly wreak this much damage in only a few days? I mean, I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but did you really want to get back at me for something this badly?”
Justin sat down beside him. “You can’t think of it that way. Think of it as an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?”
“Greatness. You said you wanted this trip to prove something to the people.” Justin held his hands up in the air. “Can’t you see it now?
Lucian Darling, the senator—the consul—who uncovered a plot to undermine our country and who secured the release of innocent Gemman girls stolen from their homes. Imagine how happy their families will be. The RUNA’s never been in better hands.”
Lucian thought about it for several moments. “The odds are good some of those girls were sent away, just like Mae’s niece. Are their families going to be happy?”
“The media doesn’t need to know that. All we’ll need is confirmation of their genes in the registry and then an adorable photo op with you.”
“Good will with my own people is going to worsen things with Arcadia.”
“The Arcadians don’t vote, and they’re the ones who’ve worsened relations with this media stream plot,” said Justin, warming up to all the spin potential. “And when they’re caught, their government’s going to disavow all knowledge of those hackers. We’ll let it be known that the girls were recovered through the assistance of our new defector friends and leave out the part about a rogue soldier killing Arcadians. The government here’s going to be so concerned about backpedaling and keeping us from retaliating on the data stream conspiracy that they’ll let the girls slide. So, really, we come out looking good, and relations aren’t that much worse than before.”
Lucian gave him a long, scrutinizing look. “How do you do that?
How can you talk people into anything? Do you think of this stuff in advance, or does it happen on the spot?”
“Are you impressed?” asked Justin.
“Kind of terrified, actually. But glad you’re not in politics.”
Perhaps now would be a good time to ask if he’d like to learn about Odin, said Horatio. You’re on a roll.
Justin ignored the bird but felt a little unnerved that in many ways, he was doing now exactly what he had back at Gideon’s house: spinning tales and converting hearts and minds. He wasn’t really sure if it was genius or trickery.
It’s both, said Magnus, almost affectionately. And this is why our god has chosen you.
“This dream plan only works if Mae gets those girls in without being caught,” warned Lucian. “That border isn’t easy for anyone, on either side, to cross. If the Arcadians find her, we’re going to be the ones having to do a lot of disavowing. And if it happens before we leave the country, there’s no way they’ll let their delegation come with us. Hell, who knows if we’ll be able to leave.”
Justin thought back to his last encounter with Mae. He’d had no sign that she was planning anything of this magnitude. Her concern had been for him, and if he would’ve let her, she’d have gone to the temple too. Something must have happened, something must have driven her to act. Something that probably had to do with that damned knife. And if that was the case, he had to believe she wouldn’t do this without a concrete plan to get back to her own country. What that plan was, he couldn’t fathom, but he believed in Mae. He had to.