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  “Which nobody was,” Shakes groused, rattling empty bottles in the minibar.

  “Sounds like paradise,” Wes joked, kicking his legs up to the seat while Shakes poked around, rooting for treats. “This ride have any heat, vids, tunes?”

  Farouk bobbed in his seat, his fingers running across the stream on the screen, playing some video game Wes couldn’t see. He was the youngest of Wes’s former team members and a know-it-all. He could fly or drive anything and was better on the nets than any other kid they’d worked with. “Yeah, this baby’s fully loaded, but you need a key card to turn on the goodies. That’s why I carry portables. Gotta ride in the cold and can’t use the toys. I don’t even get to chauffeur the bigwigs. My job is to drive the cars back to El Dorado after I drop off the tourists.” Farouk adjusted the rearview mirror as the enormous New Vegas perimeter came into view. “Fence is coming up, you guys know what to do.”

  Wes and Shakes made for the trunk, pulling down the seat and clambering into the dark space, then pushing the seats back into place. The casino bosses paid the right bribes, so the hotel logo on the side door meant they were waved through the checkpoint without a word.

  “Might as well be invisible.” Farouk beamed. “Like I’m not even here.”

  “Yeah? That pickup line work for you?” Wes asked as he edged his way out of the trunk and climbed back into his seat.

  “Man, this whole ride is my pickup line,” Farouk said, snapping his fingers.

  “This ride is your pickup truck,” Shakes said. “Only not as nice.”

  But they were relieved to scramble back into their seats as the car pulled away.

  So far, so good. But getting out of the city was only the first step. Wes still had to figure out a way to get into El Dorado. The holes in his plan were big enough to fly a drakon through, but there was no use worrying the boys right now. He would figure things out as he went; he always did. He always had.

  I’m not going to let Eliza down now.

  The roads heading north toward Salt Lake were white with snow, stark and gleaming against the black lines made by the cars ahead. Traffic was infrequent, the sky gray, the air white and alive with snowy flakes. But in the distance Wes glimpsed patches of green—a sight that might have been unthinkable a few years back. The world was changing, little by little. Whether the earth was coming alive again because the Blue was spreading as Liannan said, he didn’t know, but he hoped she was right. Maybe once all the lights went out in every casino in New Vegas and every city in the RSA, they would be able to see the stars again. A new world could begin. He smiled. One trip on the black ocean had turned him into a pilgrim, but unlike many, he had actually seen Nat’s drakon, had seen the Blue with his own eyes. The world was changing, whatever that meant. He just hoped to live long enough to see it happen.

  As they drove, the only noise came from Farouk’s headphones, a small tinny sound. Wes was used to the rowdy camaraderie of soldiers, of blasting music, screeching punk-metal-rap mash-ups, the blaring of video games, Shakes laughing; he found the quiet downright depressing.

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so.

  The limo suddenly braked hard, making both Wes and Shakes lurch forward. Farouk swung his arm over the seat and turned to them, annoyance written all over his face. “You two going to tell me what’s wrong or am I going to have to dump you on the side of the road? Come on, spill.”

  “You trying to kill us?” Shakes rubbed his head where he’d hit the window.

  “Yes. Kill you, and then talk to you.” Farouk looked at them expectantly.

  “It’s Liannan and the boys,” Wes said finally. Because in a way, it was. It was Nat, of course, and Eliza. But as far as Farouk needed to know, it was also the issue of their comrades, the rest of their crew—the beautiful sylph who was Shakes’s girlfriend and the pair of smallmen, Brendon Rimmel and Roark Goderson. Everyone was gone now.

  “I knew it.” Farouk slapped the steering wheel. “Where the ice are they?”

  “That’s the thing. We don’t know. They just disappeared one day. We don’t even know if they’re dead or alive. That’s what’s wrong.”

  As he said it, Wes just wished it was the only thing.

  Chapter 7

  NAT HAD TO RUN TO CATCH UP TO Faix. His footfalls made only the softest sounds—not because he was weightless, but because his every step was carefully considered. He stepped over twigs and leaves, never cracking a fallen branch or crunching leaves under his feet. She felt like a large, lumbering fool next to him. It was as if time passed more slowly for him, allowing him to choreograph his every movement with graceful and delicate balance, to ponder every word before he spoke. Nat remembered how Liannan had been able to walk across the water. The sylphs were gifted: quick, light, living in harmony with the world around them.

  In comparison, Nat might as well be made of mud.

  But she followed in his shadow, trying to stay close. He was moving quickly, leaping over rocks and logs like a gazelle. It reminded her of Wes. Fast-moving, quick-thinking Wes, who only had his wits and good humor to help him survive the cold. She missed them all—Shakes with his jolly demeanor, Liannan’s warmth, Brendon’s and Roark’s staunch loyalty, Farouk with his wide-eyed enthusiasm for the world.

  Wes had promised to return to her, but it was difficult, somehow, to picture him, in his worn fatigues, gun belt slung low on his hips, with that sardonic smile on his handsome face, accepting the somewhat mystical nature of Vallonis. What would he think of Faix, she wondered, and his ability to read minds?

  Nat . . .

  A faint voice echoed through the forest.

  Nat . . .

  “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  Faix turned around and shook his head.

  Perhaps it was Wes? But it wasn’t. She knew the sound of his voice. She wished she knew how they had been able to see each other earlier, so she could do it again. Nat decided to ignore the voice for now. Maybe it had just been an echo.

  They came to the edge of the forest and Faix pointed to the distance, where a tall white city floated high in the air, casting a deep shadow over the land, hovering above sandstone cliffs that seemed to reach toward it but just stopped short of meeting its foundation. “When the city was called Atlantis, it floated above the ocean. During the second age, it was called Avalon and its walls were hidden in the mist. In Avalon’s Mirror, a relic from that age, we can see the past and sometimes a hint of the future. This is Apis, our city in the sky, and it is more splendid than any incarnation before it. It is the home of our queen and her court.”

  Nat marveled at the city of stone high up above the clouds, defying gravity, defying reality. But how? she thought, knowing Faix would answer.

  He gestured at the great empty expanse of nothingness below and around the city. “Those in the gray world only see emptiness, but here in the Blue, there is no such thing as a void. Your scientists call it the dark matter of the universe, that which does not reflect light and cannot be touched or sensed, but is nevertheless real. Your world also calls it ‘magic,’ but I assure you the ether is as solid as the ground we stand upon. Our power comes from being able to use and control that invisible matter. We harness the power of the ether, of the very wind that bends the tree, the force that tosses leaves into the air. You’ve used this power your whole life. You used it when you were three years old and you pushed that little boy across the living room.”

  It didn’t surprise her that he knew about her past, but it was still disconcerting to hear it spoken about so casually.

  Yes, I’ve known about this power, but not how to control it, she thought.

  “This is why you are here now, why I must teach you,” he replied. “The people of Vallonis are able to channel this power to their will. We call it ‘sculpting the void.’ Weavers use the ether to make illusions, to manipulate reality, while others
use it to move objects or to render themselves invisible. Along with the ability to create fire, drakonrydders are usually gifted with what your world calls telekinesis, hence your ability to move things without touching them. You have the ability to learn other skills as well as honing the ones you already possess.”

  Other skills . . . what other skills?

  This time Faix’s smile was wide and full. “With the power of the ether at your command, you can do anything you can imagine. We are artists of the unseen. Like any art, you must possess raw talent, but you must also practice. Our medium is the ether; our tools are our minds. We sculpt with our imagination, our thoughts. This task requires a strong will and a clear mind. In Vallonis, to be marked means we are blessed by the ether. We use it to build, to create, to imagine a different world from the one we know. If we do not exercise our power, if we do not use it correctly, we suffer, like you suffered.” Pain flashed on his face for the briefest moment.

  As I know you suffer now, Faix sent.

  The doctors had made her believe the mark was a curse, and the flame on her chest was a symbol that nearly cost her life many times. Nat had been frightened and ashamed of her power; it had warped her, it had filled her thoughts with helplessness and destruction, but now she understood the source of that rage. It was the passion of an artist unable to paint, a poet unable to write. Denied a true understanding of the gift she’d been born with, she was unable to express her power, and so she had turned it inward, and lived with anger in her soul.

  She had been groping in the dark, but now, looking at that tall white city suspended in the sky, Nat felt as if she had stepped into the light at last.

  Chapter 8

  IF FAROUK WANTED A STORY, HE WAS going to get one. Wes started talking and didn’t stop—almost as if he couldn’t. He began with the part that Farouk already knew, about how when the team had returned to New Vegas from the Blue, they found the city taken over by the military.

  It had been dangerous for anyone who looked like Liannan, Brendon, or Roark to move around in daylight. The beautiful Liannan had disguised her golden hair with dye and her violet eyes with contacts, but it was harder for the smallmen to conceal their nature. Since they couldn’t stay anywhere legally, Wes decided it was safer for them to squat in one of the old burned-out casinos, where they could blend in with the junkies, homeless vets, and burnouts. No one was supposed to live in the abandoned towers, but hundreds occupied it anyway. The place used to be one of the casino’s fabulous penthouses, and although it was dirty and abandoned, it still had working lights powered by stolen electricity, a kitchen with a real stove, and enough insulation to keep out the worst of the cold. It wasn’t the best way to live but it was far from the worst; there was a room for each couple, and Wes didn’t mind sleeping on the ratty couch next to the kitchen. If Wes and Shakes had to work outside the city for a couple of days, they hired runners to send supplies to the suite.

  It wasn’t exactly a home, but it was something like it. Given the circumstances, it was their own imperfect paradise. Some days were harder than others; Roark and Brendon started to catch a little cabin fever, and once in a while Wes would find them up on the roof. He told them to knock it off, someone would see them and report them, but they kept doing it. One day they finally showed him why they were up there. Wes couldn’t believe it at first. The smallmen had rigged a tent to make a sort of greenhouse, and in the boxed garden they had planted turnips, squash, cabbage, and carrots from seeds Liannan kept from the Blue.

  Small magic indeed, Wes marveled. That anything could thrive in Vegas was nothing short of a miracle. The toxic floods had poisoned the entire planet, and there were compounds in the water that no filter could clean. It was why everyone drank Nutri—the “nutrition” process countered the worst effects of the toxins with chemical vitamins. But up here, on an abandoned rooftop, a garden was growing.

  More than just a garden began to flourish. Wes missed Nat, but he had his friends, and that was something. Liannan would sing, Shakes cooked, and Brendon and Roark would always find something during their scavenger hunts around the abandoned hotel—little treasures like a bar of chocolate or a bottle of wine from a forgotten minifridge. Every so often a flock of brightly colored birds would arrive at their windowsill at dawn, with offerings of fruit for Liannan. Animals of all kinds were devoted to the sylph. Wes still remembered the taste of the fruit they brought—tart and fresh and unlike anything he’d ever eaten before—real fruit, not grown in the domes or under a heat lamp. Liannan said the birds and the fruit meant that life was returning to the gray lands. Wes knew more than anything how badly she wanted to believe that.

  Then one day it was over, as suddenly as it had all begun. Wes and Shakes had been running a weekend job over in Little Tijuana, and when they returned to the suite, their friends were gone. There was no evidence of a scuffle—no blood, no footprints or bullet casings. Nothing. The suite was just as they had left it. Neat. Tidy. The garden was the same. No smashed tents, no planters turned over, no sprouts or seedlings uprooted. Wes thought they might have gone out for a walk, but Shakes was worried.

  They waited for them to come back. Maybe the others had gone on a scavenger hunt in the hotel; they did that sometimes. But night came, and still they didn’t return. It was eerie and quiet, and Wes began to get a really bad feeling that Shakes was right, that their friends had been stolen.

  When they didn’t return the next day or the next, Shakes went on a rampage, up and down the tower, kicking down every door, pummeling neighbors with questions. He suspected that one of their runners had turned on them, that the MPs caught one of them making a supply run to their squat. There was no way to be certain.

  They searched every port they could, called up every favor, every shady connection in Garbage Country and beyond, but it was as if their friends had disappeared into thin air. No one had seen them anywhere, on any ship or any list of prisoners or refugees. Not even at the morgue.

  Maybe they’d left, maybe they’d had enough of the crew, of New Vegas, of the two of them. Who knew? But Wes couldn’t believe they would just abandon them without a word or a note. Even so, he didn’t know what to think.

  It was hard to make sense of—and even harder to speak of, usually—but today, when Farouk had asked, Wes couldn’t shut himself up. As if he had done something to drive them away, as if these were his sins to confess.

  Wes told Farouk everything in a quiet monotone, while Shakes kept his hat on his face and remained silent. They missed the little guys, and losing Liannan had hit Shakes the hardest, of course—seeing as the sylph was the closest thing he had ever known to love—but in his own way, Wes was just as bereft. Liannan was their last link to the Blue, and to Nat. Sometimes Wes thought the journey over the ocean was just a dream, that he had made it all up, but Liannan was living proof that Nat was real. Having the sylph on his crew gave him hope that he would find his way back to the Blue and see Nat again. But that hope vanished when he lost his friends.

  “That’s messed up, man,” Farouk said, sighing heavily. He didn’t ask any more questions. Wes could only imagine how his friend was now regretting having forced the story out of him.

  “Yeah, well,” Wes grunted. Because really, what else was there to say?

  At least he had a chance, however slim, to save Eliza. If he couldn’t be with Nat, if he couldn’t find his crew or his friends, at least he could do what he could to save his only sister. The information he had was solid, but the odds of success were still long. When he was a runner for the casino bosses, there’d been unlimited resources at his fingertips, money for bribes, inside contacts. On his own, Wes had a few watts and two soldiers. He was counting on his luck and wits to come through.

  So she was being held in a RSA hospital. Where had she been all these years? He’d always assumed she’d been taken because she was marked, but he wasn’t sure. His memory of the night she was kidnapped was
fuzzy at best. Wes wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.

  He just wanted her back, like everyone and everything else that had been taken from him.

  From all of us.

  He tried to put the image of the crowd surging into the form of the drakon out of his mind. He wasn’t Nat. He wasn’t here to save the world, or even New Vegas. He wasn’t a hero. He was just some kid who grew up in the casinos, someone who lived on the scraps and the leftovers.

  Just get the job done. In and out. Like the old days. As if anything was the same as it was then.

  Wes closed his eyes and tried not to think at all.

  They’d been driving for a few hours when Farouk stopped the car again. “Flood,” he said, annoyed. “Come on, help me get the chains on.” The snow had melted into a giant puddle in the middle of the road.

  Wes and Shakes got out of the car and helped Farouk rig the wheels with a couple of rusty chains. As the car churned slowly across the slush, Wes asked Shakes if he ever wondered where the ice came from.

  “My ass.” Shakes snorted.

  “I’m being serious. You never thought about it?”

  “He thinks about his ass all the time, man. This is Shakes you’re talkin’ about.” Farouk was enjoying the conversation.

  “What do you mean?” asked Shakes, in a surly tone. “It got hot, then it got cold. Second Ice Age. Duh.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. He knew the facts like any kid in the RSA. It was 111 C.D., one hundred and eleven years after the Catastrophic Disaster destroyed the earth and wiped out 99 percent of humanity. Global warming supposedly melted the polar ice caps and caused ocean temperatures to drop dramatically, and the massive earthquakes and tremendous blizzards that followed were similar to the severe cold spell that occurred in the last Ice Age, almost ten thousand years ago. The Big Freeze turned oceans into sheets of glass and buried cities under impenetrable layers of ice.