MATCHBOX GIRLS is out!
I’m so proud to share that MATCHBOX GIRLS, from Candlemark & Gleam, has officially been launched into the world. You can still enter for a free copy by checking out the ongoing blog tour (linked below). I also figured out how to reorganize the menus at the top of the page and now there’s a landing page for the book linked in up there.
Here’s the schedule for the blog tour! (swiped from the Candlemark & Gleam post)
2/15: Bibliognome
2/16: Fantasy Nibbles
2/20: Rowan Cota on G+
2/21 (release day!): The Discriminating Fangirl
2/22: Adventures of 2.0
2/23: Hopeless Bibliophile
2/27: Candlemark & Gleam
2/28: Books Make Me Happy
3/01: Jo the Booky
There will be digital book giveaways at some (all?) of the blogs, plus there’s an overall grand prize which includes a paperback copy of the book and a number of other goodies. Here’s a widget to enter (or you can go to the main C&G post linked above). It’s one of those ‘earn multiple entries’ kind of thing, so check it out.
Illumination 7.8: The Box
Natalie refused to make it easy for them, because she had to fight back somehow. They were going to move her, and she had to be ready for any opportunity to escape. What she would do if she escaped into the labyrinth of the enemy Tower was beyond her. Run. Try to find the exit to the land beyond. It had worked for Surge when he’d invaded her home, after all.
But what was important was that she fought. She couldn’t make it easy for them.
She was careful with her food and drink, tasting it carefully and waiting. They wouldn’t drug her that way.
They didn’t.
She didn’t know how they’d slipped her the sedative. She only realized they had after the darkness started gently rotating around her head, black rainbows dazzling in the blind sky. And at first, she wasn’t even afraid. It took way too much energy to be afraid, and the spiral of ebony light was really interesting.
But then real light came, and Hatherly and Malachi and Surge, and a box. The sight of the box woke up her horror. It was a crate the size of a dishwasher, and she understood immediately what they intended on doing with her.
Malachi levered the top off the box, while Hatherly moved to Natalie with some cord in one hand. “Are you sleepy? Let’s tie you up anyhow.”
Natalie scrambled backward but as soon as she tried to stand up, she fell over. Her legs were tree trunks, and her arms were too long, and she wept. Surge stepped around the box and behind her, one clawed paw coming out to catch her. She turned and started climbing over his back, and Hatherly caught her foot and pulled her back again. Frantically, she tried to call her weapon, but nothing happened. She had the queerest sense she wasn’t herself; why would her weapon come to her? Then she lashed out wildly, her fist clipping Hatherly on the jaw.
He smiled, and pushed her to the ground, on her stomach. Surge’s paw settled on her back, holding her down as Hatherly tied her hands and feet. Then the men picked her up and dumped her into the box.
It was lined with several furniture pads, and not quite big enough for her to sit in. She remembered hiding under the dining room table with Seth when they were young, the tablecloth for the holiday dinner making a tent.
Then a hand reached in and pushed her head down, and they replaced the crate’s cover. The pleasant memory vanished.
She was in a box. It closed all around her. When something picked the box up, she fell against one side and started kicking the crate with her tied-together feet. Her kicks were weak, but it had to be making it harder for them.
She had to fight.
Hatherly laughed, and thumped the box back again. “Tick tock. Don’t wear yourself out too quickly.”
Natalie sobbed, and then panicked again, because her face was covered in snot and she couldn’t wipe it off. She struggled and twisted and fought her own body until she dragged her hands under her legs and she could scrub her face against her arm. Then she pressed her face against the single airhole in the side of the crate and dragged in a breath. The overwhelming panic receded, but the dreamlike wooziness rose in its place. It wasn’t better.
A moment later, she felt the void of portal transition. They were taking her through Earth to the new Tower. Hope flared. If she could do something— The Echthroi still used the same emergence points as the Guardians, as far as she knew. She had to come up with something to do, some way to leave a message near the emergence, so her friends would know she was still alive and sane.
She thumped into another wall as the box tilted, and Hatherly said, “Careful, Surge.”
Her weapon wouldn’t come to her. She couldn’t reach that place of focus. The dreams whispering in her head argued with her. But if she could, if she could hurt herself enough to bleed—
A few spots of blood on the pavement. It would mean nothing to a passing Nightlight, not even looking for her. Because they weren’t looking for her, were they? It was policy. Laurel had wanted them to look for Aya, and look what had happened there.
And here she was, utterly powerless and how far from a mirror could they be? In the dark, carried by a monster, in a box with the walls closing around her, and she couldn’t move more than a few inches in any direction and she was trapped.
She tried to scream, but what emerged was just a whimper.
From the depths of the dream came a memory. Malachi, standing beside the crate, looking at her. Calm, impassive. Empty. Void, the Cambions called him.
A breath of clarity blew through Natalie. Powerless. In all ways but one.
She could make a Cambion, too.
She tried to remember what Hatherly had said, and what Surge had told her about the process. But all she could remember was Malachi, after he killed the human attackers in the alley in Shanghai. How haunted and sad and anxious he’d seemed. How he hated and loved humanity at the same time.
Tears filled her eyes again, this time for Malachi the murderer. How could Hatherly consider him a failure?
Another memory emerged from the dream-depths. Soon after she’d been rescued by the Guardians, Jehane had asked them if an Awakened could ever be a friend, could ever do something productive. It had been a stupid child’s question at the time, but that was before Natalie saw soldiers with Awakened protectors, before she’d seen Surge’s inquiring intelligence. Now, she was desperate to make it true.
It was a horrible paradox: create a child of despair and madness to assure those who loved her she wasn’t beyond hope. Would it even be true? Could she even do it?
They won’t come, whispered a dream-Hatherly. You’ve dedicated your whole life to their ideals, carrying Seth along with you, pulling others into their service, but they won’t come. They have already given up. You are a monster, and Guardians kill monsters.
They loved me. They trusted me. I had more responsibility than anyone my age.
They loved the Nightlight. They loved the honor student. They loved the shield, the babysitter, the excuse, so good, so helpful, everybody’s darling. Such promise, squandered. But broken Natalie, who can’t exist without pacing like a caged animal, starving and lost and shattered, a snuffed star? Best to forget about her. You are already gone. You are already ours, one way or another. And they will never know otherwise.
They’ll never know I fought. They’ll never know I tried. They’ll bury a golden girl in a box while she’s still alive.
And they’ll secretly think that the mess left over is the weakness, and the weakness is the truth. That you were never good enough. That they were wrong to trust you. This all started when you brought Ajax home, after all.
They’ll never know. They’ll never care.
I am alone.
The thought filled Natalie, top to bottom. She felt herself split into two.
Illumination 7.7: Uncomfortable Truths
Seth ambled along the corridor to the dining hall, keeping a sharp eye out for people he didn’t want to meet. His mother hadn’t been working her usual shifts in the Tower kitchen since Natalie was taken away, but he didn’t know when that would change. It was easiest to go get food during the shifts he knew she preferred to spend at home. Everybody in the dining hall knew him, of course; they’d watched him grow up. But they weren’t pests. His mom was such a strong-willed woman that nobody really knew what to do when her own son was avoiding her, but it was, they seemed to think, best to stay out of the line of fire.
Even alone, Seth smiled at the thought, or at least his face stretched along familiar lines. It was best. It was all for the best.
“There you are,” a voice growled. He jerked around wildly, then relaxed. It was only the Tanist, advancing on him with murder in her eyes. He’d sort of been avoiding her, too— not with the pathological precision he avoided his mother and siblings, but just skipping the mentoring meetings she kept trying to arrange.
“Hey, Tanist, where have you been? You never call, you never write. But oops, look at the time. I was just going to go get some dinner. I’m a growing boy, you know.”
Her hand closed on his arm. “Hell with that.” She dragged him into a side corridor. Bemused, Seth let her. A moment later they were at a small lounge looking out onto the conservatory. “What is with you and your attitude, boy? Don’t you ever learn?”
A little irritated, Seth said, “Hey, I haven’t mouthed off to you in weeks, lady. What’s your problem?”
She frowned at him. “You’ve been horrible to your family.”
Seth flopped into one of the overstuffed chairs and hooked a leg over the arm. “I’ve been perfectly polite to my father, so I don’t know what you’re worried about.”
“You treat your father just as you always do. By the way, I do know it wasn’t him that made you ‘apologize’ to me, so don’t pretend it was. But I’m talking about your mother.”
Frowning, Seth asked, “Why do you care about how I treat my mother? I thought you hated my mother.”
The Tanist looked astonished. “I don’t hate your mother at all.”
Seth yawned to cover his unease. “You fooled me. You’re a true bitch about her to my father, every time she comes up.”
A tiny smile flickered across the Tanist’s face. “I am often a bitch to your father. It’s the least I can do for him. But Valeria… it’s not her fault.”
“What isn’t?”
The Tanist hesitated, then shook her head. “You take after your father too much. Look, Natalie’s absence hurts all of us, kid. I had such high hopes for her. She was worth every damn.”
“Ouch,” he said mildly.
“You deserve it, just like your father does.” She sighed. “But look, I can’t threaten you anymore because Val’s been hurt enough. Just… make up with her. She deserves a better elder son, but what she’s got is you, and I will damn well find a way to make up for your father’s lapses if you don’t get your act together. And that’s a promise, not a threat,” she added.
Seth stared at the Tanist until suddenly two brain cells banged together and a new idea was born. “What the hell? And here I thought you had a thing for my dad.” He considered, or added thoughtfully, “Or maybe that Prowler, Linc. A guy, anyhow.”
She gave him a cool look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And Linc? God, no. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You were so upset when he was injured,” Seth pointed out. “You went jumping down everybody’s throats.” He considered. “You never really stopped, either.”
She gave him a funny look, then said, “And thus I have a ‘thing’ for him? I wonder if you’re listening to yourself. Have you noticed how upset you are about Natalie?”
Blandly, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The Tanist curled her mouth like she’d tasted something unpleasant. Then the expression melted away and she sighed. “Once your mother and I were very close. I wanted to be closer than she did. But I don’t blame her.”
“You blame my dad instead? Because that makes sense. No, wait, it doesn’t.”
She shrugged. “I don’t deny that he loves her. But she doesn’t love him any more than she loved me. He won through virtue of being male, and I punish him for not being the man she could truly love.” She smirked at him. “Does the truth hurt, kid?”
“Uh. It’s certainly uncomfortable.”
“Well, you’ve moved out. You’re all grown up. You’ve earned your grown-up truths.” Her expression sobered. “But make up with your mother. She does love you, the moron.”
Seth narrowed his eyes. “Only because she gave birth to me. She’s always loved Natalie and the kids more.”
“Boohoo. You’ve always loved Natalie and your mom more than your father, haven’t you?”
“Hey, it’s not like he’s Ajax’s dad. He’s just… not my role model.” He eyed the Tanist. “Though I may have to reconsider. Hanging around you all these years, knowing how much you dislike him. That’s some premium provocation right there.”
Stiffly, the Tanist said, “I’ve always understood it to be an attempt to smooth things over. Besides, it’s not like we can avoid each other living in the Tower.”
“It’s not so hard. But you just keep telling yourself that.” Then, under his breath, he added, “Go, Dad!”
To his disappointment, the Tanist only rolled her eyes and blew out her breath. “You know, you’re too much like your father, but you’ve got your mother in you, too. More than I bet you realize. You can project whatever you want onto Jake, but he was the good kid. Valeria was the one who got into trouble. She made mistakes. And God, I can’t believe I just defended Jake.”
“I can’t, either. What kind of trouble did she get into?”
The Tanist smiled. “Ask her.” Then she blew him a kiss, and strolled away.
Seth stared after her. Then his face tightened and he muttered, “As if,” before returning to the hunt for dinner.
Illumination 7.6: Souls
Jehane, quiet and still, sat in her room. A tablet sat in her lap, the screen dimmed as she stared off into space. When the knock came at her door, she turned her head slowly to look at it, blinking as if she’d forgotten what a door was. “Come in.”
Ajax stood silhouetted in the doorframe for a moment, before Seth shoved him to one side. “You didn’t come to dinner.” Both boys pushed their way into her room. Or rather, Ajax stepped into the room, fending off Seth, as Seth tried to push him.
Jehane sighed. “I will leave if you two must fight here.”
Seth shrugged and grinned. “Hide and seek!” Jehane looked down at her tablet rather than at his face. She’d thought he would return to normal, return to the Seth she thought she’d known so well. They could hope for Natalie. She might be suffering, but they’d seen no evidence yet that anything had taken her beyond the point of no return. Whatever that point was.
But now she wondered if this was the true Seth, this creature, twisted and cracked, full of pain and rage and self-loathing. She wished she could teach him hope, but the concept seemed alien to him.
As happened so often these days, her thoughts drifted to Malachi. She wished she could talk to him as she could Seth, without weapons between them. She could reach him—
She covered her face with her hands, as if she could block out the insanity. Instantly, Ajax was at her side. “Are you sick? Why didn’t you come to dinner?”
“Not sick, no. I was doing research, and then… thinking.” She’d lost track of time, and neither her body nor Elian had reminded her.
Ajax sat back on his heels, his eyebrows raised. “Did you discover something exciting?”
“Lyman Waskin. PhD in neurophysics, among other things. From Los Angeles. Perfect driving record. He was suspended from his last research position for ethics violations. After investigating his home, police are looking for him so they can make inquiries connected to several missing persons. He vanished one day, apparently a few days before anybody noticed.”
After a moment of silence, Seth said, “Tainter.” Jehane nodded.
“So he’s, like, a serial killer or something. And Hatherly luminated him the same way Seth luminated me. What was his goal? His background?” Ajax stared at Jehane intently.
“Maybe he just wanted to see what happened when a crazy person was luminated,” Seth said.
“Maybe he was like me,” said Jehane. “Except nobody found him as a child and explained what was going on.”
Ajax frowned. “Is that why you’ve been digging into this? Are you feeling sympathetic to him?” He shook his head. “First that Malachi guy and now Tainter? I promise you, Jehane, Tainter is pure psycho.”
It’s a spectrum, she thought, but what she said was, “Not sympathy, no. Not exactly. I only wonder if I might turn into him someday. I was born insane, after all.”
Seth said, “Well, let’s see. Have you ever taken a secret pleasure in hurting other things? If so, you must keep it very secret.”
Startled, Jehane looked at Seth. “Not I, no.” And she looked into Seth’s eyes for a long moment, until she could no longer bear the green sparks kindled there. Seth understood Tainter too well.
“So a crazy person can become one of the bad guys. We already knew that, from Hatherly’s example,” said Ajax.
“I’d be interested in learning how he made a Cambion if he he was already insane,” Seth admitted. “Stark raving insane, I mean. Hatherly never seemed to lose touch with reality.”
“Maybe Cambions don’t come from being insane,” said Jehane.
Seth gave her a skeptical look, and she shrugged. “Did you understand the Awakened who fought for the soldiers in Detroit? We do not know everything, Seth. I’m just saying that maybe there’s something else that makes a Cambion, something unconnected to a supposedly irreversible personality shift.”
“This is about Natalie again, isn’t it?” Seth was suddenly savage. “And Malachi.”
Jehane’s fingernails pressed into her palm. “Everything is about Natalie for you, so what if this is? How would that be different?” She took a breath, then rushed on before he could interrupt her. “But it’s not, not specifically. It is about souls, Seth, and people.”
Seth shook his head, as if what she said couldn’t penetrate his blond skull. “I’m not going to stick around for this kind of talk. That’s the kind of thing Hatherly would talk about.” He slammed the door open, then slammed it closed behind him.
Ajax watched her warily. “Good job getting rid of him. I appreciate it.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Uh, are you going to cry? Because I can leave. Give you some privacy.” She looked at him, and he added quickly, “Or stay. You know. I’m good either way.”
She laughed, but only a small laugh, and curled her fingers around the tablet. “I’m not going to cry. I am a little hungry, though.” She stood up and moved to the snack pantry in one of the room’s alcoves.
“Oh, good. Hey, can I ask a question? Why do you always go on like you’re only one or two steps away from Hatherly’s crew? Or talk like you consider yourself insane? You’ve never seemed crazy to me.”
Jehane’s smile was tinged with sadness. “I’m still a juvenile so the term is ‘emotionally disturbed’. And it’s hard to escape your life as it was before you were eight, is it not?” Ajax didn’t say anything. She looked over her shoulder, and he was staring at the ground. “Would you like a snack as well?”
He looked up, startled. “No. I.. I think I’m going to head out, too. I’m glad you’re not sick.”
And a moment later, he was gone. Jehane looked down at her bowl of cereal, then sat down alone to eat it in silence.
Illumination 7.5: Sludge
The next time Natalie saw Hatherly, he was smiling. “My apologies for not visiting you again. I had work to do.” He sat in a chair Tainter had left behind, the light shining up into his face from its place at his feet.
Natalie rose to her knees, resting her hands on her thighs. She’d torn her fingernails to the quick, but she didn’t want him to see that. She watched him warily. She’d seen plenty of Tainter and Malachi by now, and even of the Cambion Surge. They’d become, if not safe, at least predictable. And they had no expectations of her.
“I understand you’ve been busy, too,” Hatherly went on. “All that physical activity. It’s smart of you to keep in shape. So many people locked away from the world let themselves fall apart. Would you like to hear what I’ve been working on?” He waited for Natalie’s response.
She slowly nodded.
“You and your brother seriously damaged Gate, but a clever man can always see an opportunity in every setback. In this case, Gate’s template needed tweaking anyhow. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, until you damaged him.” Hatherly smiled again. “I’ve completed the basic updates, and he’s quite functional again.” He paused, apparently to see if Natalie had a reaction to this. But she felt dull and empty, as if his words were motes of dust in a vast chamber. “For the next stage, we need more korlathi material than this tower has on hand, but Surge has found another that should have a sufficient supply.”
Natalie stared at Hatherly for a long moment, until a question finally bubbled up from the sludge her brain felt trapped in. “Your cambions are part machine. How?”
Hatherly seemed pleased by the question. “Antecessor machines are strange things. Cambions aren’t too different from the creatures manufactured by the shattered towers. Once I understood that, everything else fell into place.”
Another thought crawled out of the darkness. “You think if you keep me here long enough, I’ll join you voluntarily, don’t you?”
“My girl, everybody voluntarily joins me. The problem is that most of them go too far. Their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t have what it takes. Maybe they weren’t strong enough.” He sighed. “But I’m always adjusting my training methods, just in case. Others will reach the point I’ve reached. It’s an evolutionary inevitability.”
A memory flashed and sparkled. Somebody had said something. “Whatever point you reached, I heard you aren’t there anymore.”
Hatherly’s face twitched. “That isn’t an appropriate topic of conversation!”
Natalie shrugged. “They’ve got to talk about something. None of us are watching the latest TV.”
Hatherly stared at her, his breathing heavy. Then it deepened, steadied. “The encounter in Detroit was challenging in more than one way. The Tanist’s betrayal, and the means we used to escape both hurt me. I don’t have the balance I had before. Sometimes punishing them seems very important, and my dream seems so hopeless…” He shook his head. “But I wrote everything down. I remember. Surge remembers, too. I have you now. I always knew I’d need more than myself.” He trailed off into silence, staring down at the light.
Natalie shifted uncomfortably, and brought her fingers to her mouth. When she tasted blood, she tucked her hand under her thigh.
Then he looked up, his eyes bright. “We’ll be moving you soon, to the new tower. I don’t think it would be nice to spring that on you, do you? But please don’t try to plan anything surprising, because we’re going to take all sorts of special precautions to ensure your safety.” He stood up.
Natalie remembered what Tainter said about anticipation and fear being important, and wondered if Hatherly believed what he was saying. She realized she’d much rather have Tainter in the room, not just because she was starting to predict him, but because of the way he treated her. It wasn’t pleasant, it was if she was a science experiment and he was a mad scientist. But when he watched her, he watched her. Hatherly seemed to be looking at a vision projected on an internal screen. No matter what she did, she couldn’t know how it would translate on the screen in his head. He would hurt her, and not even know that what he was doing caused pain.
She shuddered, and stretched out on the floor again, closing her eyes and waiting for him to go away.