Page 10 of Snag (Conduit #2)

Coda punches a couple of keys, expanding a vid on the top middle monitor so it fills the screen. The footage clearly shows a light-blond-haired, tanned-skin male in his midthirties sitting at a corner booth by the windows, facing the entrance of a small but bustling cafe.

Seeing him after almost forgetting he even existed is disconcerting. Because of course I recognize my aunt’s chosen.

Devlin.

Devlin, whose eyes crinkled around the edges when he laughed.

Devlin, who loved surprising my aunt with small treats, roses and seashells and hand-painted greeting cards from whatever city my aunt had chosen for our training sessions.

Devlin, whose explosive essence, similar to Gigi’s but with many more years of experience and the connection to my aunt to fortify it, parted crowded markets or sidewalks without any effort.

Devlin, who was much older than he appears in the vid. Just like my aunt’s other two chosen, Mack and Ingrid. Because the tie to my aunt came with almost enough advantages to outweigh its one gigantic complication.

My aunt dying — being murdered? — also killed all her chosen. Though I haven’t yet found Devlin’s body, an easy extrapolation puts the combat mage at Disa’s side when she died.

“When was this? And where?” I ask Coda.

The tech doesn’t answer, tapping a key to slow the vid to half-speed as two dark-suited Authority agents slide into the booth across from Devlin.

My aunt’s chosen greets them with a stiff nod and a sip of his coffee.

Though Coda is extremely talented, the vid isn’t sharp enough for me to read the expression on the combat mage’s face, but his body language seems tense.

“What the fuck?” Rought snarls. “That’s Reck’s current crew.”

The Authority agents, he means. The red-haired, ruddy-skinned shifter, Brett Shaw, and the tall, slim, dead-gazed mage, Clara Wilson.

My heart twists in my chest. An odd reaction, so I try to ignore it.

Coda pulls up another feed from a camera I had no idea existed. Maybe it’s new. It’s a live feed that displays the mouth of the estate driveway. My driveway. It’s angled toward the two Authority agents sitting in their armored SUV.

Shaw, the shifter, has half-healed red slashes across his lower face and neck, running below the collar of his white dress shirt.

Wilson, the mage, appears unharmed from the shoulders up.

As far as I can tell. She’s rolling, or maybe dipping, her dark-wood wand in an ornate silver-plated box situated on the dashboard.

I can’t see the interior of the box, but even through the vid, I can see a glimmer of essence threaded around it.

Most mages who work with wands or other essence-enhanced objects refuel them with salt-and-herb-based spells.

That said, with the easily-discernible-even-on-vid deadened look in Wilson’s eyes, I wouldn’t be surprised if her fuel of choice was more like … nightshade and arsenic.

“Fuck,” Rought snarls. “Gigi said something about the Authority when she pulled up, but I got distracted.”

Coda snorts knowingly, presumably because they share the same distraction addiction — anything tech related.

Grimacing, Rought pulls out his phone, seriously pissed and already texting. “Were they here all night?”

“No,” I murmur. “Early this morning, I think.” Though I’m able to sense the Authority agents on the edge of the property, for me in the now, the Authority as a whole is just another pending confrontation that I’m not interested in triggering yet. So I’m ignoring them.

Rought huffs and turns away, still texting.

“Coda. I need to know when they met. And where.” I haven’t shifted my attention from the vid of Devlin and the agents in the diner, but I’m still not quite certain what I’m witnessing.

An arranged meeting between my aunt’s chosen and agents of the Authority?

Or just an opportunity to harass Devlin while he was off the estate, where the Authority has no jurisdiction?

Usually piecing together the why of it all isn’t my purview.

Or, let’s be honest, even a specific talent of mine.

I fix things.

But I can’t fix the past. So I generally avoid it.

What I now know of my own past has settled in a low-grade ache around my heart. All the reasons I am the way I am are inextricably linked to it, including my need to constantly survive in the present.

Without looking away from his phone, Rought settles his hand on my lower back again.

And that tiny glimmer of understanding, of my own psyche, settles within me.

It’s difficult to be concerned about a past, about the past, when you don’t realize you’re missing a massive chunk of it.

Maybe ignoring that disconnect as thoroughly as I did was self-preservation.

But now … now I need to know .

“Coda?” I prompt. The tech awry isn’t ignoring me, just buried deeply in their essence-wielding. “Was this right before my aunt went missing?”

Coda grunts in the affirmative. “Tracking back from when you … you know … about seven days before that. In a border town on the edge of California. No sense of Disa being in the area, but I never could track her. I’ve only got you now when you’ve got the phone on you.”

Coda is using the day that the powers of the Conduit transferred to me to build a timeline as they piece together my aunt’s movements. As I am now, Disa was always obscured from Coda’s sight. But tracking Devlin should be easier. Well, somewhat easier.

“Reck’s obviously involved,” Rought says, his tone dark edged and not at all surprised.

“I don’t have your brother connected to any of this,” Coda says, slightly cautious, which in and of itself is unusual. The awry tech doesn’t generally worry about ramifications stemming from the truths they uncover.

“Fucker.” Rought’s phone vibrates in his hand with multiple text messages flashing on-screen. “It’s always him. I’m taking care of it.” He steps across the trailer, opening the door and stepping down and out into the rainy late morning.

Actually, it might well be early afternoon by now. My sense of time is seriously skewed.

“Well, that seems like it’s going in a bad direction,” Coda says quietly.

“Do you care?” I ask, suddenly weary.

The tech actually turns from their monitors to eye me. Then they smirk. “Might be a good show.”

“Can you tell me if this is the only meeting between the Authority agents and Devlin?”

“Not yet.”

“Can you make any other connections between them? Any payoffs or … indication that he was one of their informants? Was he a former agent and they’re just keeping tabs on him?”

“No, Zaya,” Coda says quietly. “If he’s betraying your aunt here, I don’t have any evidence of it. Or any evidence that he’s an undercover agent or anything else you might be thinking.”

My stomach sours. Could the Authority have embedded someone into my aunt’s life? But if so, wouldn’t the essence-based connection between my aunt and her chosen mean they couldn’t have kept such secrets from each other? Wouldn’t the universe have stepped in if Devlin wished Disa ill intent?

But the universe hadn’t saved her from whatever death had been her final death either.

Coda is watching me, not the monitors. Actually facing away from the information still flashing across those screens.

It’s somewhat disconcerting. Coda would normally prefer to never look away, to be even minutely disconnected from their current traces and information gathering.

It’s like breathing for the tech. Essential.

“Devlin could be meeting with the agents by Disa’s request,” Coda says. A note of caution still threads through the tech’s supposition.

“I don’t see why,” I say, feeling just a little helpless.

Adrift. Again. This is why I don’t like mucking around in the why .

Plus, I can feel Rought pacing around outside the trailer, as if his concern is seeping through to me from the intersection point.

Even without me purposefully reaching for it.

“The Conduit doesn’t answer to the Authority. ”

“A collaboration, maybe?”

I shake my head. “Again, why? Disa is the most powerful being in the world. Why would she need them?”

“You could go ask them,” Coda says. “Since they’re sitting on you right now.”

Silence settles between us. Coda watches me for a moment. Then, seemingly satisfied that I’m not going to implode, or maybe even explode all over their precious tech, they turn back to their keyboards.

The light tapping of Coda’s fingers — working on tracking the dire mage, I assume — fills the strange void swamping my mind. It’s oddly comforting to be tucked away with Coda, and knowing that even if I’m taking this moment to process things, the investigation is still ongoing.

I feel the moment Rought shifts outside as he heads down the driveway. Presumably to confront the agents.

Perhaps I should be the one to interrogate them.

Perhaps I don’t always have to do everything on my own.

Coda still has the live vid of the agents parked in the SUV displayed on the upper right monitor. I could watch for Rought, see how he handles the situation.

“You should eat something, Coda,” I say, turning away from the monitors. “Have a shower, a nap, maybe.”

“In a few minutes. I just want to get this all set up and running. It’ll drop a pin on any hint of the dire mage’s movements to and from the salon and notify me. I’ll have the rest of the feeds from Newport integrated within the hour. And I’ve got the border crossings all covered as well.”

Nodding, still comfortably empty-headed, but with an almost aching awareness of Rought’s movements, I decide to head to the house for some more food. Or a nap. Though maybe a thick vanilla milkshake —

“You …” Coda says quietly, not looking at me. “You’re the most powerful awry in the world. It’s not Disa, not now.”

“Yes,” I say, speaking by rote but not belief.

I’ve been taught my entire life that the Conduit is the most powerful being in the world.

That even living as a lesser Gage is the ultimate privilege, as well as a terrible burden.

And not that Disa ever appreciated even the mere mention of my father, I’ve technically got the power of the slumbering gods running through both my primary bloodlines.

Unless my ancestors are seriously full of shit.

But I don’t feel powerful at all.

I feel the power of the intersection point. I understand that the power of the universe flows through me — as it flowed through my Aunt Disa. But every other powerful awry I know controls the essence they wield. Even my aunt seemed so focused and formidable.

Maybe it’s just the transition period and a lingering sense of all the conversations I never had with my aunt. I should have had decades, even a century, to have those conversations. Maybe I actually needed those decades to be mentally and physically ready to hold this much power.

Maybe it’s everything I’ve unknowingly lost.

But I don’t feel like the Conduit. I’m certainly not focused or formidable.

Coda doesn’t speak again, and I have nothing constructive to say. So I jump down and out of the trailer and close the door behind me.

Taking five deliberate steps, I stand within the overgrown orchard. Bare branches twine all around and above me. The plums and peaches must be on the verge of budding, but it will be a few more weeks for the apples and pears. I think.

I lift my face to the rain, closing my eyes to the cloud-shrouded sky, and I just try to breathe. Only for a moment.

I don’t have any choice but to be the Conduit now.

I could hide away, ride out this transition period. I could wait for the universe to nudge me into play. I could redirect Coda’s investigations into my aunt’s death and drop the pursuit of the dire mage until the universe makes it my business again.

I could ignore all the truths cracking open before me, ignore what has been stolen from me.

The phantom scars of Chains’s life force — the life I ripped from him — feel permanently etched into the skin of my forearms. A punishment from the universe for stealing Precious away from her immediate future? Just like dying on the beach while trying to rescue the young awry was a punishment.

Just like having my soul-bound mates torn away from me was a punishment?

For what ?

What could I possibly have done at age seventeen to deserve losing those connections? Then being banished from my own life, set adrift when I didn’t even know it?

I take a shuddering breath, then another.

When I open my eyes, I know I’m not walking away from any part of my past or present.

I don’t give a fuck that the Conduit exists only in the present, only moves at the universe’s prompting.

I want answers.

I want what has been stolen from me.