The Child Thief 4: Little Lies

by Bella Forrest

  Making sure we followed close behind, she took us down the hallway that led to the left wing of the Hall, a direction we hadn’t ventured in before.

  “Nathan always throws a party when we get a bunch of new recruits in,” she said as we swept through the space. The walls were wallpapered in a muted, mottled gold here that managed to remain tasteful. “It’s a kind of a ‘welcome to the family’ sort of thing. It gives him a chance to introduce you to his philosophy, I guess. Although, if you want to know the truth, it’s really just an opportunity for him to brag.”

  She offered this last bit with a glint of the eye and a smile she kept at the side of her mouth.

  I laughed, catching the giddiness from her. “So we’re being bribed with cake and music to listen to him talk about how proud he is of himself?”

  “You’ve got it,” she replied. “Still, it’s important. Team building and all that.”

  Abe, who was walking next to me, frowned. “How exactly are we having a party with just us? We’ve been working as a team for a long time, so I don’t think we really need to practice that. Just seems like a waste of time, if you ask me.”

  Alexy gave him a surprised look. “When I said it was for everyone from OH+, I meant everyone. All of OH+ is here, and then a bunch of LJ staff who have wriggled in on their night off.” She chuckled. “You think Nathan ran that whole recruiting mission just to get seven of you?”

  She drew to a stop in front of a set of large, decorative wooden doors, cast a gleaming-eyed look over her shoulder, and threw the doors open.

  I gasped. I couldn’t help it. Beyond the doors was a massive ballroom that might have been the largest room I’d ever seen. The lights were dim, although the row of windows along one side still let in a good amount of natural sunlight, and in the dead center of the room, an enormous, glittering ball hung from the ceiling. The place was covered in streamers and confetti and balloons, the streamers hanging from the ceiling and running around the room on the walls, bunched up here and there in decorative knots and roses, and the balloons were decorating both the ceiling and the floor. Everything was purple and blue and green and sparkly and…

  “Completely wonderful,” I breathed.

  It was the truth. The older version of me wanted to be somewhat affronted that they’d prepared this for us, but the little girl in me was jumping up and down in glee at the decorations and the lighthearted feel of it all.

  This was worlds away from what lay outside the force field. Out there, the world was ruled by an authoritarian regime that stole people’s children and dictated how lives were to be lived. Out there, we’d been branded as terrorists and were running for our lives from the government’s secret police. Out there, things were dark and dangerous and unknown.

  In here, at least for a moment, we were going to be allowed to be children again. And right then, I realized that Nathan could see what I hadn’t: this was a gift to us, this momentary pause in the action, when we could just laugh and no doubt eat too many sweets and mingle with other new members of the family—plus, it seemed, some of the people who’d been here for a while. I didn’t know Nathan, but the fact that he was introducing himself with an event like this certainly altered my opinions about his character.

  “Gotta love a guy who knows how to throw a party,” Henry said from next to me.

  I gave him a cold look, but then allowed a faint smile. “Gotta love a guy who throws a party just for us,” I murmured.

  I glanced around, taking in the other partygoers, half looking for Jace and half wondering at the numbers. There were more people than I’d expected. At a quick estimate there had to be around five hundred, aside from us.

  “This is everyone?” I asked.

  Alexy shook her head. “There were supposed to be more. Originally, he’d meant to bring in all of OH+ and Operation Hood itself. But we got awfully short on time, thanks to that mess at the warehouse, so we had to improvise.”

  “Who are all of these people?” Nelson asked.

  I wondered that too. I didn’t know how many people had been in Operation Hood, but I knew OH+ hadn’t reached five hundred. Even if we had, I wouldn’t have known them on sight. We hadn’t seen all of the OH+ members, even at the large meeting we’d had before the disastrous warehouse raid that had started us on this path. I’d known most of them only through the portal, via their screen names. I’d definitely never seen their faces, which accounted for all the strangers in the room here.

  Alexy gave me a quick look. “OH+, obviously. Plus, all the techs on the list, plus everyone whose address appeared on the other list of addresses. Anyone the Ministry or the Authority might have found.”

  The List of Five Hundred. Of course! We’d never figured out exactly who was on it, but it had to be a combination of Operation Hood and OH+ members, given that it was found in the OH+ portal itself.

  Now I looked back out at the crowd, wondering how many of these people I already knew. Or rather, how many of their names I knew. I’d only ever met Nelson’s group when it came to Operation Hood. But I’d talked to a number of the other members when we were doing large brainstorming sessions, and when I’d first joined the network and was looking for friends and a group to join.

  My gaze drifted from the people in the room to the edges of the dance floor, finding tables full of not only more balloons, but also punch bowls and plates of sweet and savory snacks. There were also a number of cakes on raised stands, each a different pastel color.

  “This looks like a seven-year-old’s birthday party,” I muttered to no one in particular.

  “It’s supposed to,” Alexy replied. “Parties like this are the only time we get to stop holding our breath and running for our lives. We’re supposed to feel like seven-year-olds about it.”

  I digested that for a moment and was just about to answer when the music started.

  It was unlike anything we’d ever had in the outside world, and for a moment I was overwhelmed by the riot of sound booming from the speakers. It was so chaotic and loud and fast and driving. And the singer sounded so excited. In a world where music was, for the most part, slow and measured, with the occasional fiddle or acoustic guitar thrown in for fun, this was outrageous. And yet…

  The pace and volume and energy all fell into place, and the rhythm started making sense. I began to feel it in my muscles and bones, an electric warmth traveling to my toes and getting them tapping. At that moment, I had the most bizarre urge to start jumping around and dancing as wildly and freely as I could, unrestrained by the laws of mere physics.

  “What is this?” I shouted to Alexy.

  “Rock and roll!” she answered, laughing. “More specifically, this is punk! It’s really old, from like a hundred years ago. Some band called… Wink, I think. Wink and then a bunch of numbers. The name makes no sense, but it was super popular then. Nathan is really invested in the idea of knowing where we came from and what the USA was like before the Burchard Regime took over.” She did a little shimmy. “This is part of what he calls diving into the experience. Come on, dance!”

  She grabbed my hands, yanking me out onto the dance floor, where a few people were already gathered, and started doing something I would never have considered dancing. It was just jumping up and down in time to the music, arms raised, head swinging back and forth. She was exuding absolute joy, the kind I hadn’t felt for a very long time.

  I bounced once, not really putting much effort into it.

  “Higher!” she shouted. “Come on, Robin, where’s that sass you’ve been building up since the last time I saw you? Jump!”

  I froze with embarrassment, but then listened to the music as it thundered out of the speakers around us. The beat was driving, calling to something in my blood, something wild and uninhibited, and I started moving up and down to it. I felt stiff, awkward, out of place, certain everyone was watching and judging me for this ridiculous display. But the music drove me onward, and before I knew it, I was jumping higher, timing my jumps to th
e beat, then going bigger… and bigger. My movements grew less controlled, more fluid and instinctual, and pretty soon I was laughing just as hard as Alexy.

  It was unabashedly ridiculous, yet I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything so wonderful in my entire life.

  I spun around so I landed facing my friends and saw six equally aghast looks on six familiar faces. But I didn’t care.

  “Come on!” I screamed, gesturing to them. “You can’t judge until you’ve done it yourself!”

  I was unsurprised when Ant and Abe were the first to join me. Within seconds they were bouncing like pogo sticks to the music, both of them laughing maniacally at the release of tension and emotions. A second later Nelson joined them. Kory didn’t take much convincing, and he was soon howling and jumping in sync with Nelson, his shoulder against hers.

  I then spotted Jace. He was frowning at us all, as if he was well and truly questioning our sanity. Then he noticed that he and Henry were the only people still standing there, and hustled out onto the dance floor to join us. He wasn’t as graceful as the twins were, being a lot more muscular, but once he let his guard down and started putting some heart into it, a grin began to stretch his cheeks, his eyes shining with the joy of being unapologetically frivolous, just for a moment.

  Soon most of the room had joined us, a leaping, yelling, laughing crush of bodies. It was the best gift Nathan could have given us. And if we’d only had that one dance, I would have been eternally grateful to him for the release I saw shining on my friends’ faces. But it wasn’t just the one dance. It was song after song, and then a break for punch and cake, and then more dancing, until we felt as if we were going to be sick from eating too much and leaping about immediately afterward.

  For a while, I allowed my brain to turn off. I gave myself permission to stop thinking about all the things that had happened, all the things that had gone horribly wrong, and just live.

  It was glorious.

  Then, quite suddenly, the punk and rock and roll died out, and a different kind of song came on. It started very simply, just a single instrument plucking out an up and down sort of beat. Then another instrument was added, and the sound became… fuller.

  A man started to sing. His voice was like nothing I’d heard before, so beautiful, but also sad, singing about strangers and knowing people and learning to trust them—or not.

  The words shot through me. I closed my eyes, swaying to the music, and, for some reason, the lyrics made me think of… him. His golden honey eyes. The way his hand held mine. The way he always seemed to be catching me when I fell. The feeling that he’d always known who I was and had never once expected me to be anything else, but also that he knew who I could be. He’d respected and trusted what he saw in me, from the very beginning, before I could see it for myself.

  I needed to find Jace.

  My eyes snapped open, and I turned, searching, searching, searching the crowds for him.

  And then there he was, walking toward me. His eyes found mine, and I stood there on the dance floor, waiting for him. When he reached me, he held out a formal hand and lifted one eyebrow.

  “Dance?” he asked, almost too quietly for me to hear.

  I took his hand and drew him to me. He tucked the hand to his chest, gathering me in with his other arm until I was right up against him, and I stared up into his eyes, wondering how he’d known what I was thinking. Surprised he’d come to find me, after the tension of our last encounter.

  “The song made me think of you,” he said simply, as if my question had been written all over my face, and I felt myself flush.

  “Made me think of you, too,” I murmured.

  I let my answer stand for what it was as we swayed to the music and the melancholy voice kept singing in the background—this time about love. Love and strangers. Strangers like Jace. Falling in love with strangers.

  “I don’t fall in love with every stranger I meet,” Jace said, answering the singer’s statement as if it had been part of our conversation. He bit his lip, closed his eyes, and then leaned closer. When he opened his eyes, I thought how easy it would be to drown in them.

  “Robin, I know things have been weird lately… I mean, I know I’ve been making things weird.” The corners of his lips twitched in a half smile, before his expression went serious again. “I understand things with Henry are complex, and I shouldn’t have interrupted earlier. But I…” He swallowed, his eyes going glassy. “I’ve seen enough death in my time to know that life is short. Too short, sometimes. Certainly too short to rush through it without appreciating the gifts the universe gives you. And too short to keep from telling the people you care about that you care.”

  His words, simple yet beautiful, sent warmth spreading through my chest. I reached up with the hand that had been wrapped around his shoulder and pulled his face down toward me, stopping when we were only a breath from each other.

  Our gazes locked, held, and I saw the tiny smile returning at the corner of his mouth, bringing out that dimple I could never resist. Not in a million years.

  I reached up with one finger to brush at it, and in that moment all the confusion and fear fled from his face, and he closed the distance between us, his mouth descending to my own. His lips were incredibly soft against mine, and every thought in my head disappeared in the explosions of heat that erupted in every cell of my body.

  He dropped my hand to bring his own up to my cheek, pushing his fingers into my hair and gripping it lightly, as if he was never going to let me go. His other arm tightened around my waist, pulling me closer than I had ever been to him, and pressing me up against his body.

  I melted into him, unable to stop myself, my legs going weak, and moaned softly against his mouth. Then my hands were creeping up his chest, moving over his cheeks and into his hair. I pulled his head closer to mine, the pent-up emotions and longing rushing to the surface.

  This. This was what I’d been waiting for. I’d wondered for so long whether he felt the same way I did, or whether I was fooling myself, and this was all the answer I needed. All the answer I would ever need.

  When we broke away from each other, it took a full second for my eyes to be able to focus on his face. From the look in his own eyes, he was having the same problem.

  We grinned bashfully at each other.

  “I can’t believe Ant just saw that entire thing,” I said, trying hard not to giggle at the adrenaline and endorphins racing through my blood.

  Jace put his forehead against mine so that we were eye-to-eye. “I don’t care who saw it,” he murmured. “I’ve been wanting to do that for such a long time. It’s just…”

  “Just that we’ve been sort of busy running for our lives?” I murmured back.

  I saw the skin crinkle at the corners of his eyes with his answering grin. “That. And… and I wasn’t sure you felt the same way,” he admitted.

  “Jace Huxley.” I shook my head, forehead rubbing against his. “That’s just stupid.”

  He tipped his head a bit. “Hey, caveman, remember? I haven’t exactly had a lot of experience with female sorts.”

  That made me feel absurdly special, and I adjusted my mouth to kiss the tip of his nose. “I’m glad you chose me, then. But why here, of all places?”

  He drew back and took my hand to pull me up against him again, and we began to sway once more.

  “Henry,” he said bluntly. He tipped his head in warning when I opened my mouth to speak. “I know. You had a kid together. I think that’s probably all I need to know about your history. It’s just, the distance I’ve felt opening up between us… it’s been killing me. I felt like I was losing part of myself, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Figured I’d better tell you how I felt before it was too late. Or something.”

  I threw my arms around him and held him close. This was a man who had given me a chance when few people had been willing to do so, and had been showing me as often as he could, ever since then, how much he valued me.

  I wasn’t
sure I could ever repay him, but I was willing to spend an awfully long time doing everything I could to show him I was just as attached to him, and whatever history I shared with Henry had no bearing on my future with him.

  I dropped my arms from around his neck and let my gaze drift toward our group of friends, already anticipating the looks on their (and Henry’s) faces, but realized they were distracted by something else.

  Jackie had appeared, complete with a wheelchair, and was staring at me, grinning like a maniac. I grinned back, feeling as if the last puzzle piece had just dropped into place, and everything was going to be fine.

  We were together again, Jackie had survived, and Jace had just kissed me. My skin was vibrating, my blood humming, and I couldn’t see anything ruining that feeling.

  I should have known it wouldn’t last. No feeling that good ever did.

  12

  Without warning, the music cut out and the soft lighting in the room changed. Spotlights flared to life, all pointing in the same direction. Following the illumination, my hand still in Jace’s, I turned toward the one end of the room bordered by a set of blue curtains, which were now lifting to reveal a stage, complete with speakers and a microphone stand.

  As we all watched, a man walked out onto the stage. The spotlights hadn’t quite settled yet, and so his face was still wreathed in shadow. Once he reached the center of the stage, though, he threw his arms out to the sides, a true showman, and introduced himself.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! I am your host, sometimes called Mr. Montague.”

  Montague… At that moment, I had the strangest moment of recognition. Though a lot of things had happened since the last time I’d heard it, the connection was quite plain. Little John. Montague. He of the exo-suits, and the man to whom we’d made one of our first visits when I started working with Jace.