Jake wakes to the sound of murmured voices, and his heartrate spikes. He's sitting upright in an instant, cursing his stupidity of falling asleep and letting a magical creature watch his back. With quick, silent movements, he's on his feet and fading into the darkest shadows.
It's still dark, a thin sliver of light barely doing more than silhouetting Susan, but his dragon eyes can see easily enough, and he's not about to assume that whoever else is here will be as blind as Susan is.
She's at the water's edge, leaning forward and speaking in a whisper that carries with the cave's natural acoustics. "—at the Isle. It should be temporary, but if it's not…. Someone from the Council will be in touch to let you know the new representative."
"And what about you?" The voice is that of a confident woman who cannot be half as human as she sounds. Jake can't see any part of her, but he doesn't dare move closer.
"I'll be busy with family matters regardless."
There's a snort. "Exactly how tangled up did you get with the Huntsclan?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, come on. You don't need to pretend with me. You know perfectly well I'm not a shoddy detective. Just because I'm tracking a kelpie doesn't mean I don't keep an ear to the ground for other interesting matters."
This is bad.
Jake isn't sure how bad, but he knows it's worse than he'd initially thought. If this detective of the magical world knows of his relationship with Susan, even if she doesn't know the nature of their relationship, then it's entirely too likely that the Huntsclan knows about it, too.
This might have happened even if he hadn't stumbled upon the American Dragon at the shop.
This might have happened even if she hadn't been his sister.
"Besides, you don't think I'm stupid enough to believe you're here alone, do you? After all these years, you should really know me better than that." The sound of splashing reaches Jake's ears and would have covered the shck of scales on wet rock if he hadn't known what to listen for.
"What are you doing?" Susan's voice is low and urgent, but the other woman laughs.
"Your poorly kept secret is awake. They might as well join us." There's a pause, but Jake holds his breath and doesn't move. "Well?"
Susan sighs. "It'll be all right. If Dolores meant to turn you in to anyone, her people included, she would never have admitted that she'd noticed you."
Jake isn't convinced of that, but he's not convinced Susan won't introduce him regardless, so he moves on silent feet towards the water's edge. The glimmer of moonlight visible through the mouth of the cave is more than enough for him to see the mermaid that is Susan's companion even if he hadn't had dragon magic running through his blood. The position is intentional—it must be—and it's a clear declaration that she's not afraid of showing herself to him.
She's not afraid of him or what he might do—not right now, not in the future.
He wishes he could think that foolhardy on her part.
The mermaid's eyes shine white for a split second as she shifts to look him up and down, clearly pretending she hasn't already sized him up and made her decision about him, and he's left with the disquieting knowledge that he doesn't know if his eyes equally reveal him as the magical creature he is. Rose would have said something if she'd ever noticed, and Susan never mentioned anything about it in her lessons, but Jake is uncomfortably aware that his knowledge—most of which is the Huntsclan's knowledge—of dragons is not as comprehensive as he needs it to be.
Susan's eyes remain dark, deceptively human, but from what he knows of her, that's no comfort.
"You were born with that mark, weren't you?" the mermaid—Dolores—asks, and Jake has to fight back the urge to touch the dragon that snakes around his eye. Sleep—or the travel beforehand—had clearly not kept it as hidden as he'd like. Dolores doesn't seem to expect an answer from him, though, because her eyes flick back to Susan. "Why are you helping one of the ones who were born to it?"
Jake expects Susan to avoid the question entirely, so when she begins what's clearly an answer, he's expecting it to be a lie.
It's not.
"He's my son."
Dolores's tail jerks in the water, sending up a spray that catches both him and Susan, though not enough to soak either of them. Dolores says nothing as she looks between them, and Jake wonders if she's waiting for one of them to deny it.
They don't, of course.
Jake doesn't see the point in trying if Susan has already decided that this one is trustworthy. She'll tell Dolores as much as she likes, and Jake's denials are as likely to strengthen her words as to belie them. But Susan can't tell what she doesn't know, and Jake has no intention of filling in any blanks.
"Your son," Dolores eventually repeats. "Your firstborn. Little Jake, alive and well and hidden with the Huntsclan all these years. No wonder I never found satisfactory answers. So that means he— If he's not like you or his father, then he…."
Susan nods.
Dolores rakes a hand through her wet hair, but by the time her hand drops back to her side, her expression has shifted from disbelieving shock to hardened curiosity and her eyes are locked on him. "Whose side are you on?"
Jake isn't a fool. He knows exactly what she's asking. He also doesn't know why she's bothering to ask it, since if the truth isn't an answer she'd want to hear, he'd never say it, and she seems sharp enough to know that.
He crosses his arms and keeps silent.
"As long as we're on that topic," Susan says quietly, "we could use any information you're willing to give us about Huntsgirl."
"That's why you really asked to meet me, isn't it?" Dolores barely spares Susan a glance; her eyes are entirely too focused on Jake, and he can feel himself tense under the scrutiny. Even as he tries to keep his breathing even, the fingernails digging into his palm beneath his hidden arm become talons scraping against scales. He carefully relaxes the offending hand and wills it back to human form. He doesn't want to give this detective any more to use against him than she's already gotten.
"You've been my friend for a long time," says Susan into the silence. "I trust you, and yes, I know you're good at what you do. My son might be more on his own side than ours or the Huntsclan's at the moment, but he is no stranger to a long-lasting friendship."
"With Huntsgirl." Dolores's voice is flat. "Someone who would reveal him—reveal all of us—to solidify her position with her elders?"
"She wouldn't," Jake says sharply, though he regrets speaking the moment he does so. He hadn't meant to give her anything, and now—
"You can't know that unless she already knows about you," Dolores says frankly, and Jake realizes that he's glanced at Susan himself without meaning to.
He hadn't wanted to look away.
"So she does. Hmm." Dolores tilts her head, giving him another considering look. "And you think, because she's kept you a secret, that she wouldn't take a chance to tattle about any other part of the magical world you're involved in?"
Jake glowers, but at least Susan doesn't speak up for him.
"What about if that's her best option when all she has are bad choices? Do you think she'd do it then? To save her own skin?"
Jake frowns. Something in Dolores's tone makes him unsure exactly how speculative these questions are. "I trust her."
"But how far do you trust her? If it were a choice between the two of you, do you think she'd pick you over herself?"
"Dolores," Susan cuts in, wariness prickling through her voice, "what have you heard?"
"Rumours, mostly," Dolores admits, finally looking away from Jake to face her friend. "You'll want to take them with a grain of salt. I wasn't able to confirm most of them before someone brought me your message, but you best be glad they did, because now is really not the time to be risking messages in charmed bottles. If there's even a smidgeon of truth in what I heard, the Huntsclan is upset about more than just your boy here, and I'd bet they're upset enough to have someone checking every means of communication they can to find answers of their own."
Jake's breath catches. He can read between the lines, but he's not sure he likes the picture Dolores is carefully painting by what she isn't saying. Rose. He's had enough training that her name doesn't pass his lips, but she— She—
"And Huntsgirl?"
"She was out earlier tonight," Dolores says. "I was able to confirm that much."
That's not a surprise. Jake knew she would have been sent out. A confirmation of that isn't a bad thing, not in and of itself, but—
"And what you couldn't confirm?"
Dolores's lips press together in a hard line at Susan's question. "If my source is correct, her team scattered. Huntsgirl was the easy choice to follow, being Huntsgirl, but before they got close enough to be able to identify her without her mask, there was an attack."
Dragon claws dig deep into the flesh of Jake's arm and side before he realizes he's lost control again. He hisses through his teeth and turns away, wrenching his arms apart and trying to get his hands back. He can't afford to slip up, not now, especially not if Rose is in danger. He keeps moving, pretending he's going to get a drink, but he can feel their eyes on him and wonders if they can smell his blood as easily as he can.
"An attack on your source, Huntsgirl, or someone in their vicinity?" Susan asks at length. Jake is still staring at the water bottle in his talons and wondering if he can open it by pinching it between two clawed fingers or if he should abandon this pretence altogether, but he is listening.
He doesn't dare ignore the conversation now.
"Another agent armed with knives she wasn't shy about flashing around showed up before my source could get too close. Few are foolish enough to get in the middle of a fight between members of the Huntsclan, and that's what this seemed to be. I don't know how it ended. I don't even know if it began, honestly. My source bailed at the first sign of trouble, but cross-groups of agents gathering hardly seems to be standard practice, so I can't say I blame them for putting their lives and freedom above whatever payoff they might've gotten for information."
Dolores is right. It's not standard practice for agents sent out on one mission to make contact with another group. Security is too likely to be compromised when it's not an emergency, and if it were an emergency, no one would pull a knife on another agent that they intend to ask for help. They'd have one at hand—it is best to be prepared, as surprises do not always go well for everyone involved—but they'd identify themselves or give a pre-arranged codeword if contact had been deemed likely or—
"For all I have confirmed at this point," continues Dolores, "it might as well be a fish tale about getting this close to uncovering Huntsgirl's identity. You know how common those are. I'd rather not repeat this to you until I follow up myself, but you asked."
Susan presses for details her friend either doesn't have or isn't willing to give, and Jake is left with the growing dread in his stomach.
Knives.
If Dolores hadn't mentioned a weapon, or if the weapon had been something else, Jake would have breathed easier. He might have been able to convince himself that there is nothing to this, that Rose is fine, that it's nothing more than a rumour with no basis in fact beyond Rose being out tonight.
But Dolores had mentioned knives, and Jake—
18 uses knives.
She has no love for Rose.
Jake knows she would take whatever opportunity presented itself to weasel herself into Rose's position, but he hadn't thought 18 would try an outright challenge. Not yet. He hadn't thought she was ready for that. But if Rose is distracted because of Jake, because of his disappearance, because he hasn't told her nearly enough these past few months—
It could work.
No one is at the top of their game every day.
Trembling human hands finally replace talons, and the water bottle—still capped—drops from his numb fingers and rolls away.
"99?" Susan calls gently. "Is there anything I can do?"
He doesn't trust himself to answer, so he shakes his head even though he's not sure she'll catch the movement in the dim light.
"I'd say he's as fine as the rest of your family is when they get news like that," Dolores comments dryly. It's another confirmation that she doesn't see Jake as a threat—she wouldn't dare be so glib otherwise—but he can't attack her before knowing if she has any more useful information to give.
Susan would try to stop him, anyway.
For all he knows, his own magic might stop him, even if he can't see how Dolores would count as part of the oath.
"We'll give him a moment," continues Dolores. "I don't suppose you've asked him about Huntsgirl? There's still quite the reward out for the first one to identify her. Even if you aren't comfortable taking the money, splitting it up and rebuilding your network might not be the worst plan, considering your newfound family member over there."
Jake fights to keep the sudden fire burning in his chest inside his chest as Susan gives a careful answer that sets Jake's teeth on edge. "From what you suspect, knowing Huntsgirl's face may not be worth anything for long."
Jake hates the implication.
His body trembles with the effort to keep his anger contained. Heat flushes through him, pushing away the pain of his self-inflicted wounds. Now, all he can smell is smoke, and it overwhelms the salt on his tongue.
It's not that he's surprised that the magical community is set on unmasking Huntsgirl; compromising her is the easiest way to neutralize her. What infuriates him is that Susan has more than an inkling of how much Rose means to him, and she's not doing anything other than playing along with the idea that Rose might already be dead at the hands of the Huntsclan. Of their family.
Their former family.
Jake stills as a thought strikes him, honing his anger to a fine point.
Is that what this is?
A ploy of Susan's hatched before he'd woken and enacted now to try to convince him to renounce the Huntsclan? For Rose's sake?
Are they feeding him lies, hoping for this very reaction? Hoping to push him further? To cross whatever line it is that Susan so desperately wants him to cross? It's not like 18 is the only one who favours knives. It could be a lucky—or an educated—guess on their part. Besides, Susan's the one asking the questions, not him, and Dolores never made any oaths to Jake.
He needs to leave.
Now.
He'll find Rose himself, no matter the risk.
He never should have trusted a magical creature, even if that magical creature is supposed to be his family.
"He's moving," Jake hears Dolores murmur as he gets to his feet and stalks away. He'll gather the few things he'll need from their supplies in the cave and go out the back entrance. Susan won't catch up to him easily. Even if she tries to follow, there are more than a few spots that are a tight squeeze. They'll slow her down.
The camping lantern clicks on behind him, but he doesn't turn back.
"99, please, rushing into this won't help."
She might as well be rubbing salt in his wounds for all the good those words do. They sting, but that's nothing compared to what he'd thought he'd had and is now losing.
He doesn't have the Huntsclan. He doesn't have Susan. And if this hunt to unmask Rose—if this bounty on her head—is the reason the Huntsclan has turned on her….
"If she's Huntsgirl, she's not a pushover," Dolores adds loudly. "Or do you really think she'll be so easily defeated?"
He spins back with a growl even as he reads the triumph in her eyes. He thinks of all the ways he's been taught to kill mermaids, even though half those ways aren't feasible when she's in her element, and contemplates seeing how well that tail of hers would withstand his dragon talons. They had never learned about pitting magical creatures against each other—every attempt made has become a lesson in foolhardiness, given that the creatures in question invariably put aside their differences to escape a common enemy—but it's an experiment he'd like to indulge right now.
Without turning back, Susan holds out a cautionary hand to her friend, even as her other hand lifts the lantern closer to the ceiling to narrow the circle of light around them.
"I know you care about her," Susan says, even though she clearly doesn't understand half as much as she thinks she does, "but we don't even know if the attack really happened, so—"
"So what? So it's fine to talk about how much you'll get paid off once you tell everyone what she looks like? Hasn't the American Dragon already done that?" Jake can feel the heat of the flames in his throat, but he's not sure if it's the threat of flame or his words that has Susan drop the lamp. It breaks on the stone below, shrouding them in darkness again, but he's sure she's the only one blinded. "Are you getting paid off for me, too? Is that where you hoped to take me? Was that the real plan? Sanctuary for you but not for me? What happened to that not being in the magical world?"
"Haley knows Huntsgirl's face?" Susan breathes, and something of the shock in her words cuts through Jake's anger and lets the words register.
"She's been compromised for months," he hisses over Dolores's warning Su!, "and if she's been attacked now so this grand plan of yours can go through, you can consider our pact in pieces."
"This isn't my doing," Susan says, her words careful and measured like they always are, and Jake wants to scream because he should have known better than to let her get this close to him, to let her do this to him. How could he have trusted her? "Whether by action or inaction, this is not a consequence of mine."
Jake's eyes flick to Dolores, and she holds up her hands as if in surrender. "Susan's right. Even if this isn't a fish story, the attack came from the Huntsclan, not from us." Her tone softens, and she adds, "If our circumstances had been different, Jake—"
"Don't call me by that name," he snaps, and Dolores swallows back the rest of her sentence. He can guess what it would have been. We might have been allies. We might have been friends. We might have helped each other out, so we could help each other out now.
Dolores is a detective who is entirely too comfortable wearing masks for Jake's liking, playing whatever role she thinks she needs to play to get her way. He doesn't know if any part of what he's seen reflects who she truly is.
He wants information from her, but they don't need to be friends for that.
They don't even need to be allies.
They just need to trade.
She'd trade this information for her life—she wouldn't have been so free with it otherwise—and she'd probably trade it for Susan's, too, but there's an itch beneath Jake's skin that tells him he won't be able to attack Susan.
Or rather, if he can or he does, he's already lost.
But Susan's already given him one thing she's been carefully guarding all this time, and Jake doesn't need to attack anyone to use that. "Haley knows Huntsgirl's face," he says, lips curling into a smile as Susan flinches. He debates taunting her about knowing the American Dragon's name and face, about how he'd trade this information for Rose in a heartbeat if Susan has lied to him now—for all that she'd promised to answer his questions truthfully, this was a volunteered statement—but he doubts the reminder will gain him as much as a silent threat. He turns slightly back to Dolores. "But you're right. She isn't a pushover. She'd fight back."
Dolores drops her hands despite Jake's glare. "You think the rumour of an attack is true. Why?"
"She's compromised," he says tightly, but Dolores is shaking her head.
"You said she's been that way for months, so what changed?"
He isn't going to tell her about 18 and the significance of knives after letting so much else slip. "I'm here. That's enough reason for them to look more closely at her."
"Which would make her discovery your fault more so than Susan's, wouldn't it?" Dolores points out without breaking his gaze. "I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but you seem so set on assigning blame."
Jake blows out a breath. This time, he lets flame flicker with it. "Tell me what else you've heard."
Dolores shrugs. "There's a search. For you, I'd assume. More than one team has been spotted out, though I have no confirmation of a count, so any place frequented by magical creatures is going on lockdown and good information is going for a premium. My target will have gone to ground—or more likely to water—as a result, so coming to the aid of an old friend now isn't the compromise to my cover it would otherwise be."
"What about Huntsgirl's team? You said they scattered. Who was she with?" If it was 18—
"You think I'd know all that when the point of your uniforms is anonymity from a distance? My source isn't suicidal."
"Your source also told you Huntsgirl was in charge of the team."
"Yes, because she's Huntsgirl. Everyone with eyes knows how to pick her out from the rest of you."
"He's worried," Susan says softly, and something in Dolores's expression shifts and crumbles altogether.
"Fine," she grumbles. "My source saw their numbers. 88 and 89."
Jake blinks.
88 and 89 are initiates.
More than that, from what he knows, they're incompetent initiates.
Rose should never have been sent out with them.
He doubts the numbers are a guess on Dolores's part, and it doesn't feel like a lie. While her source could be mistaken or lying in turn, it's more likely the truth. Rose being with 88 and 89 makes it more likely that she would have split their group, and it makes it more likely that she'd have been attacked.
18 doesn't have the power to set Rose up with those two, though.
That decision would have to have come from higher up.
Maybe this is his fault after all.
Jake lets out his breath slowly. Deliberately. His next breath and those that follow are just as careful. It's a technique that's served him well in the past, even more so since his dragon nature had surfaced. It's kept him in control, it's kept him rational, and it's kept him alive.
He doesn't want any of this to be true.
He doesn't want to give Susan another reason to tell him he should denounce the Huntsclan.
Denouncement doesn't work like that for those past their first year of pledging, let alone those who were born with the Mark of the Huntsclan.
It doesn't.
It's futile to wish that it would.
"Do you know them?" asks Susan, and he is suddenly grateful that she, at least, won't be able to read his face. He's not sure he's doing as good a job of masking his feelings as he'd like.
"I know them as well as I need to know them," Jake mutters.
"If you give me the rest of the night," Dolores says, "I'll see if I can find out what happened to her. To all of them, if you want."
Jake frowns. "And in exchange?"
"I might need a favour in the future. Don't worry," she adds as he starts to shake his head, "I'd never ask anything unreasonable. It'd be something within your power to grant and something equivalent to or lesser than me sticking my neck out for this."
"Focus on Huntsgirl," Susan says, "and see if you can find a way to let me know."
Dolores cocks her head but doesn't seem bothered that she'll only have another string on Susan and not one on Jake. Or maybe theirs is a real friendship after all, and the strings aren't counted. "Will you still be here?"
Susan smiles. "If we're not, I'll leave you a clue about where we are. I'm sure you'll enjoy the hunt."
"Only if it's not too far inland. The rivers are atrocious, and moving around as a human is an exercise in patience."
Susan laughs even as Jake wonders what magic Dolores would be using to masquerade as a human. If the Huntsclan knows of anything, it's not something he's come across. He's never had a particular focus on any magical creatures, let alone specialized in hunting those of the water; he'd always preferred the more general approach favoured by those born with the Mark, at least until he'd spent enough time in the Huntslibrary researching dragons with Rose that he'd been forced imply he was hoping to specialize in hunting them. It's a common enough track for those in the Huntsclan that the lie hadn't been questioned, particularly when most of those who heard it assumed he was doing so in a futile attempt to keep pace with Rose.
She's always been better than him at practically everything the Huntsclan values, though, and he's tried not to begrudge her for it.
He's certainly grateful for her skill now.
If Susan and Dolores say a proper goodbye, he's too caught up in his own thoughts to hear it. He's not drawn out until he hears Dolores's departing splash and sees Susan digging through her duffel bag on her knees. When he sees her pull out a candle, he has an idea of what she means to do and says, "I'll clean up the glass. We shouldn't risk the candle, and you'll just cut yourself if you try."
They shouldn't have risked the lantern, either, but that has never been her priority. She'd had the sense not to use it while speaking with Dolores, but for all he knows, she could have used it to signal someone earlier. Or when she was writing her message for the bottle.
That is another thing he hadn't known magical creatures do.
It seems terribly ineffective, but then again, it may be significantly less so if magic is involved.
Just because Susan's dragon magic is locked it way, he's not about to assume she cannot access other forms of magic.
Everyone in the Huntsclan learns to brew certain potions, after all.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that there's one that would give Susan's bottled message more direction than it would find with the currents alone.
Jake picks up the glass in silence, cradling it in a dragon's talon until he can slip it into the bag Rose had long ago commandeered for spent supplies.
Susan settles back against the cave wall, wrapped again in the blankets he had given her, and answers his question before he gives it voice. "I had to try. Huntsgirl is too involved in your life to ignore, so any information we can get on her will help to inform your decision."
Unless Susan manages to produce Rose herself, Jake isn't sure he wants to trust her information.
Promising not to lie doesn't necessarily exclude asking others to lie for her.
He doesn't say that, though.
"It's your turn to get some sleep," he says instead. "I'll wake you before dawn so we'll still have the cover of dark if we move."
"You were barely asleep for ten minutes."
It somehow simultaneously feels like longer and as if he'd barely closed his eyes for ten seconds, but that's beside the point. "It's all I needed."
It's not, but she doesn't push him on that point. She pushes a different one instead. "You can trust Dolores, you know."
Susan can trust Dolores.
Jake isn't sure he can say the same.
Who in the magical world wants to trust a member of the Huntsclan, let alone help them? His blood hardly negates his upbringing. Even if Dolores comes back with information—real, accurate information—she might not give it up without extracting a price from Jake.
He wouldn't, if their situations were reversed.
He makes a noncommittal noise in answer, and Susan mercifully drops the conversation.
It feels like a long time before he hears her fall asleep, her breathing evening out and becoming as steady as the water lapping gently against stone.
He's still not sure if he should agree to whatever price Dolores demands or seek information about Rose by himself, with or without Susan. He's not overly fond of either option, especially if multiple teams are out searching not only for him but also for Rose. How much trust does he have to put in the hands of strangers?
How much trust can he afford to give the family he hardly knows?
How much will he lose if he doesn't take the risk?