Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

they stayed—it trailed starlight and moonlight, comets sparking and universe dust shimmering. It could slice through just about anything, but slice wasn’t exactly the right word, either. The blade won. It won like the night won, like the darkness won. It simply descended. Farooq-Lane suspected there was only one other weapon that would stop it: the sun blade last seen strapped to Ronan Lynch’s back.

“It suits you,” Liliana said with an amused smile when Farooq-Lane took it out at the latest short-term rental cottage. The blade cast jabbering, checkered patterns of light through the dormant jasmine-covered pergola they stood under. It was a little chilly to sit outside but Liliana did anyway, to be close to Farooq-Lane, tucked into a faded wicker chair, knitting and bobbing one of her feet in a good-humored way. She was in her middle age now, the prime of her life. Her hair shone at this age, the many-sided tone that was red hair, in its own way impossible as a dream thing. As always, she’d tamed it with an ever-present blue fabric band, but the knot at the base of her pale neck was coming loose. The skin there always seemed as if it would be very soft.

Farooq-Lane swung from chaos again, studying it, trying to understand both the sword and her fascination. “A weapon can’t suit someone.”

But it sort of did, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It was a dream, and she’d been working very hard to kill those for months.

Farooq-Lane used the sword to write CARMEN in the dark. This really was a very nice cottage they were staying in at the moment, a sweet little bungalow with this pergola and a koi pond and vegetable garden behind it. All of the cottages were nice. They had to be. That was Liliana’s requirement to work for the Moderators. She had to be put up in places that felt like homes and she had to be put up in them with Farooq-Lane. A simple transaction. Stability for her present in exchange for visions of their future.

Farooq-Lane’s relationship with the Moderators was supposed to be as equally simple. In exchange for her services as a Moderator, she received a sense of purpose. And it was simple, she told herself. Once one found out the world was in danger, who could walk away from that?

“They never found any of my brother’s weapons,” Farooq-Lane said. She hadn’t realized she was going to say it out loud until she did, and then she almost immediately wished she hadn’t. She hoped Liliana hadn’t heard.

But Liliana stopped knitting.

“Do you really want to talk about this?” Liliana asked.

“No,” Farooq-Lane said. Then, the sword dipping a little in her hand, “It’s all right.”

“That sword’s deadly and you are afraid of how you like it.”

Liliana knew her well at every age. Farooq-Lane said, “You didn’t see her face. Jordan Hennessy’s. She wasn’t bringing out a weapon on purpose. Whatever that thing was that I cut … this sword seemed made to destroy it. That’s the opposite of intentionally destroying the world.”

Liliana began to knit again, jiggling her foot once more.

“You aren’t going to say anything?” Farooq-Lane asked.

“You already said it,” Liliana replied in her gentle way.

Farooq-Lane swung the sword again. “Accidentally ending the world is still ending the world, though.”

Liliana held the knitting out from her body. It was turning into a sock or a scarf or something long.

“So they have to be stopped no matter what,” Farooq-Lane said. “Well, controlled. We already know the apocalypse has to be generated by these Zeds. There’s no other explanation for why they keep showing up in your visions, even if we can’t tell what they’re doing.”

The Potomac Zeds’ acts of industrial espionage were getting bigger and bigger, although the Moderators had had as much luck intercepting them at this as with anything else. It was difficult to divine the purpose, but there undoubtedly was one. Even in light of this, though, Lock had recently announced they were going to return to their previous method of taking out other Zeds. The Potomac Zeds couldn’t blow up transistors and protect other Zeds, he reasoned. By taking up their old methods, the Moderators could stop one or the other instead of just twiddling their thumbs. Back to business as usual, he said, as soon as the location intel was processed on the next vision.

Business as usual.

“I’m going to quit,” Farooq-Lane said suddenly. She put the sword back in its scabbard, instantly reducing the light of the chilly backyard to just the subtle dazzle of the twinkle lights strung through the pergola. “I’m going to quit the Moderators.”

Liliana’s knitting needles clicked faintly as she did another row.

Farooq-Lane’s heart was thudding in her ears and her hands felt ice-cold. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

It had been a little over a year since Nathan had killed their parents. Since she found out her brother was a serial killer. Since she found out he was a Zed. Since she found out the end of the world was coming. Since she had helped kill Zed after Zed while the fire got closer and closer. She’d lost most of her life with the murders and given the rest of it away to join the Moderators. Without them, she’d have to devise an entirely new future for herself, whole cloth.

“Liliana,” Farooq-Lane said. “Anything at all?”

Neatly folding her scarf-sock thing and setting it on the chair, Liliana stood. She walked to Farooq-Lane, took the scabbard from her hand, and leaned it against the pergola support. The twinkle lights made a galaxy of night stars in her eyes as she stepped close.

Then she gently brushed Farooq-Lane’s hair with the palm of her hand, and she kissed her.

Farooq-Lane closed her eyes. She put her hands where the knot of the blue fabric was coming loose. The skin there was very soft.

When the kiss was done, Liliana said, “What are you going to do instead? I will come with you, of course.”

It was