“I have a ton of case files to go through tonight, but I always have time for you,” he said with a broad smile. “What’s up?”
“The super ultra mega big news is that we know Farouche is holding Angela Palatino—Idris’s mom—at his plantation.” Excitement flickered, but I did my best to hold it in check.
He let out a low whistle. “That’s definitely super ultra mega,” he agreed.
“Right. If we can get her to safety, it takes away much of the Mraztur’s hold over Idris.” I put a hand on his arm. “I was hoping you could give us some special help.”
Zack went still, tilted his head. “What sort of special help?”
“Special help as in going and getting her out.” I gave him a hopeful smile. “Demahnk help.”
In an instant his face slipped from open and relaxed to grim and haunted. “Kara, I can’t.”
My smile melted, and I slumped. Even though I’d known his cooperation wasn’t a sure thing, the pang of disappointment remained sharp. “I don’t understand.”
He shook his head. “I know you don’t. I’m sorry.”
“Can you at least try to explain it to me?” I asked, baffled.
He looked away and remained silent.
My confusion increased. He’d helped us in so many ways before. Even though Zack had initially balked at bringing Mzatal to the warehouse, in the end he had done so. Why was this so different? “Zack, all you have to do is go get her and bring her back,” I said. “What am I missing?”
“I can’t,” he repeated and met my eyes again. “It’s complicated.”
I gripped my head, certain it might explode from frustration. “Would you please stop doing that?” I snapped, far more harshly than I’d intended. Releasing my head, I smoothed down my hair, tried again. “Please stop evading me. Please stop giving give me lame shit like ‘It’s complicated.’ I’m not a child, so could you grant me some basic courtesy and at least help me try to understand?”
I expected him to look defensive or chagrined, but instead his entire posture slumped into apparent weary sadness. “Even that crosses the line.”
Time to regroup my thoughts. “All right, then let’s take a step back,” I proposed. “Tell me what the line is.”
He regarded me for a second, then swept past me to his car. At first I thought he was walking away from the discussion, but instead he yanked the driver door open and dumped his laptop case onto the seat. He closed the door with a little more force than necessary, though his demeanor made me think it was more general frustration than anger at me. He jerked his head toward the back of the house, then briskly strode off.
I followed, though at a more ordinary pace. No way could I match that long-legged stride without running. As I rounded the corner of the house, I saw him heading toward the pond trail. Mzatal sat motionless on the mini-nexus as I passed, and I sensed him deeply involved in the flows. Sparrows twittered their business in the trees as though all was right with the world, and a crow announced its presence with a raucous triple caw. When I reached the pond a ripple of potency touched me, like a breeze through an open window. On the far side of the water, Zack crouched beside the valve and worked his hands over it in unfamiliar patterns. I felt shifts in the potency, but othersight revealed nothing more than transparent shimmers in the air above the coruscating blues and greens that marked the valve itself.
Puzzled, I slowly made my way around the pond. “What are you doing?” I asked quietly.
“Pulling some potency before I collapse,” he told me with a low sigh that I realized was born of exhaustion. After a moment he looked up. “I created this branch valve. It’s one of thirty-three off the valve trunk in the north of Rhyzkahl’s realm.” A sad, nostalgic smile touched his mouth. “The first full system in place after the cataclysm.”
Zack had to have been in a near-constant state of damage control since that catastrophic event centuries ago, I realized. And now he had the care of Szerain on top of that? No wonder fatigue seemed to permeate his every cell—far beyond any sort of normal tiredness.
He continued to work his hands over the valve. I sat cross-legged beside him, reminded of an orchestra conductor as I watched him move. After a time he brought his hands together, and the rippling potency breeze died away, as though he had closed the window.
He sighed softly, lifted his eyes to mine. “You asked what the line is,” he said. “It’s those ancient agreements, oaths, and decrees that frustrate the hell out of you.”
Decrees. That implied an enforcer. I filed that away. “That’s an understatement,” I said with a wry smile. “I’d like to move beyond that.”
He shifted from the crouch to a sit with one knee up. “You’re right.” He rested his forearm on his knee as he regarded me. “You’re not a child. Not anymore. You’ve grown so much, through betrayal as well as love.”
“I’m not the same person I was a year ago, that’s for sure.” My throat tightened. “Sometimes I’m not sure who I am anymore.” I shook my head, scowled. “And not because of Rhyzkahl’s stupid rakkuhr virus either.”
Zack plucked a long and heavy-headed piece of grass and rolled the stem between his fingers. “No. And I know it’s hard to find your footing.” He let out a soft snort. “My being a confusing pain in your ass doesn’t help.”
“You’re not.” I did my best to smile, but I had a feeling it ended up more like a rictus of pain. “I don’t understand what the rules are, so I feel like I’m trying to find the walls of the room with all the lights off, and I keep bumping into furniture and knocking shit over.”
A dragonfly zipped and hovered around Zack’s head like an iridescent green helicopter. Off to my right a frog croaked and entered the water with a plop. Further into the woods a squirrel chattered its displeasure at some other creature.
“I said earlier that any explanation crosses the line,” Zack said quietly.