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  And I was never going to let anyone take that away from me.

  We probably burned two hours, although most of what we talked about was personal, and maybe that was just in case someone had managed to sneak some sort of spy-ear in once they knew where we were. Or maybe it wasn’t. He told me more in that two hours about my parents than I had ever known before. Nothing like biographies, of course, because I already knew that—it was the little things, like how my mom killed in chess, and my dad could not stand the taste of fish, that both of them had been big fans of old fantasy vids and books, and things like that. He told me what a joker my dad had been when the two of them were growing up, and the kind of pranks he pulled, like completely disassembling an old junked tractor and reassembling it on the roof of the police station without the police having any idea until they saw it the next morning. So the people I only knew as a couple of photos started to become…people to me.

  He hugged me again when we were done, kissed the top of my head, and sent me back to headquarters in my own pod with a promise that this was only the first of many more times we’d get to be together. And a promise that those times together would be a whole lot longer than just two hours.

  Which was a better reward than anything I’d gotten since I arrived here.

  “So, I’ll ask what no one else is asking,” Josh said as the driverless car whisked us off to the Strauss Palais. “How much free time are you going to have now?”

  Besides Uncle taking me out to lunch, Josh had asked me out again. This time my gown was all silver lace over a dark charcoal lining, with a kind of fan collar, and I had lacy silver hair ornaments that matched a lacy silver necklace.

  They’d had other outfits for me too; I didn’t need any lessons in dancing this time, so while the gown was being made, I had—a photo session. It was for those posters and splash-screens you saw everywhere, the ones that featured an Elite and said “Your Hunter Elite, making the Allied Territories safe!” Yes, like some sort of vidster or rockster, I was set up to pose against a green background with and without my pack, with and without weapons, wearing various examples of the design team’s imagination.

  Part of the job…part of the deception. For now, I had to put up with the deception.

  “It’s so weird,” I had told Josh after I’d described the session to him. “When I look at newsvids, it looks like something out of pre-Diseray. So many people in gray and black and silver—even that reporter Gayle!”

  “Well, what do you expect?” Josh had asked archly. “I’ll bet a lot of those people used to be wearing Ace’s colors, and they can’t exactly do that anymore, now can they?”

  I was afraid Josh was going to ask me about Ace now. And I didn’t know anything about him, beyond what everyone else knew—mostly, it was things I didn’t know. The army hadn’t let him talk to anyone that wasn’t them. And, come on, that was some craziness even for a guy whose brother had been killed…because even if he’d killed me, the result would have been the same! His Hounds would have left him, and he’d have been hauled off and taken away, so he had thrown everything away no matter whether I lived or died. And I still didn’t know if he was the one responsible for Karly’s death, or if it had been someone else. And that was fairly crazy too. It just didn’t match with the Hunter who had held the number one spot all this time. Crazy people can’t do that. Had he just snapped? Or had someone given him a push down the wacko slide? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed likely he’d been led into nutter-land.

  I did know this much: I had asked Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai about the Vamp in the sewer. They had looked at each other, then solemnly at me, and said, It was not something we knew, nothing we helped with, which at first had suggested rather strongly it hadn’t been Ace. And I don’t think even he would have been good enough to plant the Vamp without his Hounds. But then they had said, But he kept much of his mind closed to us, which opened up all sorts of possibilities.

  Apex couldn’t afford to lose me now, and no matter how highly placed Uncle’s enemies were, I was now considered so necessary, even though I would literally be less visible, that everyone in the city was going to be aware of me. And no one was going to forget me. Not when I was the only Hunter, ever, to have a pack of eleven.

  “So. You’ve been very quiet. Are you still going to have time to see me?” Josh asked, relieving me, since he hadn’t asked me anything I couldn’t answer honestly.

  “I asked Armorer Kent about that before I left the building tonight,” I said, not mentioning how surreal it was to have all the Hunter Elite on speed-call on my Perscom. “He said I’d have to be prepared to drop a date right in the middle, but yes. ‘All work and no play makes a burned-out Elite,’ is what he said exactly.”

  “Well,” Josh said ruefully, “this isn’t going to be as much of a date as I had hoped, I am afraid. I’ve been given my orders, which I am to relay to you. We’re only allowed one dance together per set.”

  I sighed. Of course, I should have expected something of the sort. “So…I guess that everyone at the Palais tonight is going to be some sort of notable notable? And dancing with me is the prize they’ve won.” I made a little face, but really, it wasn’t so bad. “If it’ll help Uncle, how could I say no?”

  It wasn’t bad. In fact, it was kind of fun.

  And when Josh leaned toward me in the pod on the way home, I hesitated for just a second, wondering if he had another note to pass or some other ulterior motive. But no. It was a completely lovely, toe-curling, thrilling kiss; it made a whole flock of butterflies erupt and fill my insides. And just as I was thinking it was a good thing this pod was nice and roomy—and driverless—the darn thing pulled up at HQ and popped the door, which pretty much put an end to it.

  So Josh pulled away, reluctantly, and helped me out—which I needed in that ridiculous dress, to make sure I didn’t catch it on something. He held me for just a few seconds, then his Perscom beeped and we both jumped.

  He swore, looking at it. “No rest for the wicked,” he said, and smiled. “Let’s do this again soon, Joy.”

  I smiled. “Good. Maybe we can even do it incognito.”

  He laughed at that. “I doubt it, but who knows? You have a habit of surprising people.”

  The pod door closed before he could say anything more. I waved as it rolled off, then picked up the trailing end of my dress and went back inside.

  Sometimes I wish I was stupid, I thought, as I undressed and got into something comfortable. If I was stupider, I’d be happier. After all, I had a life people in Spillover could only fantasize about—heck, a life regular Cits could only daydream about. I had rockster fame. I had my pack. I’d won myself some peace. There was Mark, who was certainly the best friend I had here, and there was Josh.

  Okay, granted, I had a job that could easily get me dead if I wasn’t careful—but I’d had that job since I was knee-high to a goat, and I was kind of used to it.

  I fed power to the vid-screen and discovered to my embarrassment that someone had thought it would be a great idea to put one of the photo-shoot pieces up as wallpaper. There was this—girl. Someone I scarcely recognized. She was wearing a mostly silver outfit that was so tight it left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She was bracing a big-ass rifle on one hip, and staring out over the head of the observer, with her pack ranged alertly behind her. The background was the cityscape of Apex—the nice part of it, anyway. I guess she looked sexy. She didn’t look like me, even though I remembered that exact shot being taken.

  Part of me thought that I would have traded every fancy outfit, every gourmet meal, Mark, Josh, and my personal bathroom to go home again. I’d have traded an awful lot of it just to be able to talk to my Masters. I wanted to talk to people who knew me. Even a letter would be wonderful, but I didn’t dare send one, because the Monastery and everything in it were not supposed to exist. I wanted that so badly it was an ache in my throat.

  Oh, how I wished I was a Psimon, or that there was some magical way
to carry message—

  I felt my eyes widen as an idea hit me. I scrambled to my feet, then drew and cast the Glyphs.

  Bya came through and stood there, looking at me.

  He was laughing.

  At me.

  Of course he was. It had certainly taken me long enough to figure this out.

  “You can take messages to the Masters, can’t you?” It was more of a demand than a question.

  Of course. No apology. No explanation of why he hadn’t offered. I knew, of course. This was one of those things I was supposed to figure out for myself. After all, I knew they could bamph. I also now knew they could carry things with them—like me—when they did it. So, I was the idiot for not figuring it out until now.

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied, you know,” I said a bit crossly.

  Well, you’re not now. Bya jumped up on the couch next to me and settled down. So write your letter.

  I knew it was going to be more than a letter, of course. I was going to have to tell them everything that had happened to me and around me, before I could start asking for advice. But everything has to begin somewhere, so I got a pen and some paper and sat myself down beside Bya, and began to write.

  MERCEDES LACKEY is the New York Times best-selling American fantasy author behind the Heralds of Valdemar series, the Elemental Masters series, the 500 Kingdoms series, and many more. She has published over one hundred novels in under twenty-five years.