Charlie walked behind Johnny and put his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, man,” Charlie said. “I get it. You should have seen what they did to Ethan. They left him in the road like a dog. It’s fucked up, but we’re all in serious shit if we don’t haul ass out of here. One, whoever did this may not be gone. Two, the cops will nail us for this. Think about it: Glow dealers murdered? With Ethan, they made it out like a turf war. We need to get out of here.”
“Oh, God,” Caitlin said, a deeper realization. A wail. Her eyes cleared, and she looked around the room, frantic. “Where’s Fana?”
“Who?” Charlie said.
“Bea-Bea,” Caitlin said. She rushed to the Rolfsons’ bathroom to look for Fana.
But Fana wasn’t in the bathroom. Johnny remembered clearly now, because he always noticed Fana: She had come stumbling out of the basement to see why he’d been yelling, and she’s stopped short when she’d seen the writing on the wall. She’d stared and stared.
Then had been seen her slip into Nate’s room and close his door, mumbling to herself.
Fana had been zoning, but he couldn’t judge her. He was zoning, too.
“She’s with Nate,” Johnny said. “She said she would try to bring him back.”
The bloody rooms were no worse than last night’s dreams of wind, rain and death, if only this was a dream too. But the waking sunlight told Fana the truth.
No dream. She was awake.
And blood toucheth blood.
Fana sat on Nate’s bed, her hands on her knees as she stared down at his body on the floor. The bed still smelled like freshly bathed skin, scented sweetly like a boy. His toys were everywhere: Action figures, games, comic books, trophies, a GamePort like Hank’s at the foot of his bed. Gum wrappers on his nightstand, another pile on the floor. A pair of spotless white Nikes on a shelf beside his closet, treasured. The weight of his unfinished life.
And blood toucheth blood.
Fana felt herself turning to ash, flying away.
Trance. Trance out. Quiet.
“Nate,” Fana said aloud, so she would not forget why she was here. Her eyes snapped open, full of the room’s horror. Her call became more urgent. “Nate?”
FANA?
She heard Nate, faint but distinct. Somewhere else.
Nate was confused. Confusion was inevitable, at first.
When Grandpa Gaines had been killed in the ditch, Fana had realized she could hear the dead. She had been in meditation, and his startled confusion had washed over her with a long gasp that had not originated from her own lungs. Through her, Grandpa Gaines had sucked at the air until she’d thought her chest would burst, filled taut with his last taste of the world.
And then he’d let her go. Let the air go. Let the world go. Goodbye, Fana, he’d said. She had heard his giddy glee, as if he’d been riding his favorite horse, Moonshine, at a gallop. He still visited her dreams, and sometimes he brought others with him, those he insisted she must meet properly: Randall. Lucille. Patricia. Charlotte, who answered to Lottie. John.
Nate had not found his place yet, nor his people. Nate’s freedom confused him.
Nate was much farther from her than Grandpa Gaines had been when he’d died. Far, but not too far to hear. Unbound. Untethered. Leaving had taken him by surprise in the night, and her voice bewildered him more. She was a remnant, a memory of longing. Nate wanted to come to her because he knew nothing else yet.
WHERE ARE YOU? Nate said. A childlike whine.
She might have brought him back if she had come in time. Maybe she would have chased after his spirit if his heart hadn’t already cooled in his chest, or if his mother had been wailing at the memory of him sucking at her breast. Fana might have convinced him it wasn’t time yet, coaxing him back to the world of skin and sensation, away from the music and lights.
But it was too late. He was following the sound of his parents’ laughter on the flight his grandparents had blazed for them. What right did she have to try to stuff him into a cold corpse, even if she could? For whose sake would she bring him? Her own?
Fana shivered. Her desire to bring him back despite everything scared her.
Too late. Her throat and face burned. She had forgotten how painful grieving was, the lesson she’d first learned at three, too late for a baby’s oblivion, but too soon for her heart.
Good-bye, Nate. Travel well.
GOODBYE FANA
He was gone. All he’d needed was assurance. For an instant, Fana thought she smiled.
Then came the withering doubt and fear, unceasing. The barrage of questions.
Did I do this?
Was it me?
For the first time since she was three, Fana remembered how a man had died when her mother had taken her to the colony in Ethiopia. He had been a big man, and he’d frightened her. He had tried to hurt her, which had filled her with rage, and blood had seeped from his face and pores. Had she dreamed her rage? Had it come to life while she’d slept, rampaging above her, mindless?
Am I this awful?
Fana suddenly felt that the others were in the room with her. She didn’t know how long they had been talking, or what they had said to her.
Hands clasping hers, indistinguishable. Colliding voices, murmuring.
Trance. Trance out. The questions hurt too much.
“Fana?”
A living voice brought her back. Eyes the color of Grandpa Gaines’s saddle, and lashes like black down. His scent cradled her, fresh spring soap. His hands warm in hers.
“You’re safe, negra,” Charlie said. “You’re safe with us. We have to go now.”
Fana rose.
Caitlin’s chest jabbed her when she saw the hidden cabinet in the garage open, the broken lock on the floor. The lock had been pried off. Shit. She kneeled in front of the cabinet, and two barren shelves stared back.
All twenty-five bags of Glow were gone. The Glow had such a high potency that the mixture had been dark pink instead of clear. Those twenty-five bags could have been diluted to hundreds more. Thousands, handled properly. All of it, gone.
But that figured, Caitlin thought. The immortals always took back their blood.
Caitlin’s nose and cheeks were raw from tears. It almost seemed funny now: On a morning like this, she had expected to find the Glow?
She still had Fana. There would be more Glow.
“You missed us, you assholes,” Caitlin whispered. “We were right underneath you, and you missed us.”
Despite the smudges of blood beneath Caitlin’s fingernails, the dead bodies inside the house didn’t feel real yet. Caitlin had washed her hands for ten minutes, but she hadn’t been able to get all of the blood out, just like the scene from Macbeth she had first read in Mitch’s tenth-grade class: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hands?”
When a cigarette appeared in front of her, Caitlin snatched it without looking up and clamped it into her mouth. Charlie’s lighter was there a heartbeat later.
Caitlin coughed, surprised by the taste.
“Clove,” he said.
Caitlin took a deep drag. She didn’t like clove cigarettes, but nicotine was nicotine. She felt guilty that she could salvage any pleasure on a morning as horrible as this, but feeling better was almost like feeling good, for a quick sip of time.
“Protocol says we split up,” Caitlin said.
“I wish,” he said quietly. “But Fana’s zoning bad. She’s pretty fragile for the Raiload, isn’t she? And young. Whose idea was it to let a kid run away from home?”
Caitlin’s face vibrated, as if she’d been slapped. Her eyes ached, but no tears came. She suddenly saw Mitchell grading papers at his desk a week after Lawrence Flanagan had been hit by that old man who’d run a red light, when his parents had been about to take him off life support. I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Rolfson, but you have to promise you’ll never tell anyone.
Caitlin’s stomach felt like it was bleeding. “Please don’t fuck with me rig
ht now.”
“Never mind,” Charlie said, looking toward the Cruiser. Fana was sitting in the backseat with Johnny, her head on his shoulder. “I like her. I’m worried about her.”
“Let me worry about her.”
“We’ll go together,” Charlie said. “That’s what Fana wants. All of us.”
“And if we get caught together?”
Caitlin hadn’t known Charlie long, but this morning had taught her that he was invaluable to Laurel’s operation in Canada. She was embarrassed about the way she had gone off on him in the bedroom, accusing him of the killings. When she had whispered in Fana’s ear to ask her if Charlie had done it, Fana had shaken her head. Fana would know.
“I don’t get caught,” Charlie said. “I’m ghost at the first sign of trouble.”
Caitlin studied him to see if there was any irony in his eyes; there wasn’t. Good for him. The Railroad needed survivors now.
“Ride your bike,” she said.
“Right behind you.”
Behind her. Why was he trusting her to lead?
“I like your idea about Mexico,” he said.
“We’re being followed. They knew where to look.”
“They didn’t know enough,” he said.
“They might be waiting for us.”
Charlie reached around to the back of his waistband, his hand returning with a nickel-plated .38. “I’ll be waiting too,” he said. “This was in Mitch’s closet.”
Caitlin remembered Sheila as a staunch gun control advocate, so she was surprised there was a gun in the Rolfsons’ house. She was grateful, but sad. She wished she could go to the police and confess. She hadn’t killed the Rolfsons, but she was responsible. If not for Fana, Caitlin would have gone to jail gladly.
“You’re right,” Caitlin whispered. “I shouldn’t have brought Fana.”
“Screw that,” Charlie said. “Can’t change it now. We’ve just gotta’ make sure nothing happens to her. It’s up to you and me.”
“Johnny was going to sneak out right before he found the bodies,” Caitlin blurted. It was a relief to have backup. She’d been on her own too long. “I found a note he wrote me.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. He glanced toward the car, where Johnny was sitting in the backseat beside Fana, waiting. “You think?…”
“I know there’s no way Johnny killed those people,” Caitlin said.
“Then how did the killers get past the alarm?”
“I don’t know. Someone with skills could rig an override. I know Johnny, and killing isn’t in him. But he did shut off the alarm this morning. Even if they were already dead, he would have left us exposed. He’s definitely zoning too. So like you said, it’s up to us.”
Caitlin couldn’t be mad at Johnny. Fresh tears burned her cheeks. She had hurt everyone she cared about. Caitlin wanted to tell Charlie everything, suddenly. About her father. About Fana and the immortals. About the blood. Caitlin’s hands shook violently as she was overcome by the loneliness of the secret. She remembered her cigarette and took another drag. She should never have told Charlie Fana’s name, she reminded herself. She was falling apart.
“I’ll be fine once we’re on the road,” she said, trying to convince herself.
“Take a minute,” Charlie said. “They were your friends.”
Firmly, Caitlin shook her head. “We don’t have a minute. No more mistakes.”
“No such thing, chica,” Charlie said. “There’s always one more.”
Always one more, Caitlin thought, newly terrorized as she realized what a holocaust her life had become. Until the last one.
Nineteen
Highway 10
9:45 a.m.
Fana’s eyes were dry from not blinking, but blinking was dangerous. Fana needed her eyes to stay open and take in the light. The light kept her from drifting. She catalogued everything she saw as the miles flew past her window: Eight Burger Kings. Five gas stations. Six Taco Bells. Ten Subways. Anything to occupy her eyes.
She looked for Charlie again, but he was nowhere in sight in the heavy flow of midmorning traffic. Motor homes, eighteen-wheelers and panel trucks blocked her view beyond a few yards in any direction. Fana’s heart sped. Had he peeled off at the last exit?
If he had, he might be safer. Why had she asked him to come with her?
They’ll end up like Aunt Alex. Or Nate Rolfson.
Fana didn’t want to stay awake to remember her carnage at the Rolfsons’ house. She was her friends’ worst nightmare, in plain sight. Worse than a nightmare.
She had to go home. To see Teka. Her parents.
But Caitlin would never agree to drive her home without invasive mental prodding, and Fana couldn’t drive herself. Johnny would leave with her in a heartbeat, but how could she be sure she wouldn’t lead him to more trouble? And she didn’t dare take a bus or a train alone, where she might accidentally kill someone with a thought if she slept.
Trance. Trance out.
A motorcycle’s engine revved beside her, waking Fana’s mind. It was Charlie, riding alongside the car. He ducked down, smiling at her: You all right?
Fana’s insides warmed. She sat a bit straighter, not the hunched ball her body kept twisting into. Seeing Charlie helped her breathe.
Fana smiled back at him even though she didn’t mean to; if she could stop smiling at him, he might go away. After a wave, Charlie fell away from them, drifting to the outer lane. He had been floating beside them since they’d left Casa Grande, in and out of traffic.
“‘And blood toucheth blood,’” Fana said.
Caitlin glanced back at her, startled. “What?”
Fana’s heart pounded. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “That message on the wall, ‘And blood toucheth blood.’ I was thinking those words yesterday. I heard them, in my mind.”
Caitlin’s attention went back to the road. “Like your dream about the priest?”
“Except…much stronger. It made me feel sick. I had to lie down. I th-think…”
Could she make herself say the words?
“A premonition,” Johnny said. His voice was weary to the bone as he stared out of his window. “My grandmother has those. Dreams that come true…” He looked like he wanted to go on, but he only sighed. Thoughts of his grandmother in Georgia were torture to him; he was afraid of shaming his family.
“I…killed them,” Fana blurted.
Johnny’s head bobbed with surprise. He peered at her with slitted eyes.
Caitlin’s eyes locked with hers in the rearview mirror. “What?”
Fana’s jaw shook. “I killed them,” she said. “All of them.”
Johnny shook his head. “Maybe it feels that way—”
“Don’t say that, Fana,” Caitlin said. “That’s not true. They knew there were risks. Having a premonition doesn’t mean you made it happen. And it doesn’t mean you could have stopped it,” Caitlin said. “But the next time you get that feeling, we definitely need to know. As soon as it happens, Fana. Understand?”
Fana had spoken the words she had been most afraid to utter, and neither of them had heard. Would they be more willing to believe if she told them about the man she exsanguinated in Lalibela? Or another she’d killed at the airport in Rome? Da Vinci airport. A sick man staring at a little girl the wrong way. Staring at me.
The past didn’t seem so distant and hazy anymore. At the airport, Fana had stopped the beating of a man’s heart simply by thinking the words Bye Bye. No wonder she’d made herself forget. Had it been that easy to her then? Could it still be that easy now?
Fana trembled. Her bones were trying to fly away from her, too.
“Hey, Fana…it’s gonna’ be OK,” Johnny said. He was petrified, but his desire to comfort her made him sound so certain that she believed him. “I promise.”
And blood toucheth blood. Fana was angry at herself for not telling Caitlin about the eerie words in her head, but what could Caitlin have done? Fana realized she had heard that gravelly voice bef
ore, when she was young. That voice had encouraged her to hurt people.
Fana wanted to stay far from that voice, but she had to find the source of it! Could the voice tell her more about the immortals who were stalking them? Fana’s heart pounded. She probed as far as she could in any direction.
Her mind nearly buckled. She felt blind.
“They’re close to us,” Fana said. “One of them is masking. I feel it.”
Fana gazed behind her, looking for Charlie. She could no longer see him clearly; he had fallen back several car lengths. There! He was coasting at a steady speed behind a Hummer, with the faded kneecap of his jeans occasionally drifting into sight. Even a nudge from a car could send him crashing to his death. She wished he’d been riding in the car with them. It would have been safer.
Fana remembered Charlie’s last smile outside her window so clearly that she could see his face reflected back at her in the glass. The memory of last night’s kiss plowed its way past the morning’s horror and filled her stomach with a gentle glow. Her first kiss.
Fana tried to imagine a blanket over their car, and one stretching as far back as Charlie. Could she mask him? She hoped so, but she wasn’t sure. He felt far away from her now.
“We have to hide,” Fana said. “Somewhere secluded.”
“You’re damn right we do,” Caitlin said. “First stop, Mexico. Then…who knows? After I turn around some Glow, we can go wherever we want. Anywhere, Fana.” Caitlin glanced back at Fana in the rearview mirror, bravely smiling while her eyes looked for police cars.
“Police aren’t our problem,” Fana said. “We have a tail. He’s watching us.”
The person chasing them was a man. Suddenly Fana was sure of it. She tried to refine the mental impression, but it only vanished. Gone. Fana scanned the faces in the cars behind them: Mothers. Businesspeople. College students. She knew them in passing: Running late. Lost a job. Pregnant. Dying.
As the collection of lives roared to life, Fana felt police nearby, too. The officers’ thoughts were a clear drumbeat: White PT Cruiser.
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