A mosquito stings my shin.
I slap at the spot, and notice another mound. Off in a lonely corner, as fresh as Jillian’s. I told the Rivards to dump my grandmother’s body in the river. Or burn it like the patients at Shady Wood, but they insisted on burying it. Murderer and murdered, laid to rest less than fifty yards apart. Without any thought or intention, I creep closer until I’m sitting in the dewy grass with my grandmother’s leather straps clutched in my fist. They’ve been in my pocket ever since I pulled them off her. She couldn’t see the mark. Only I could see that. Scarface must have warned her and so she covered it with these. I wrap one around my ankle and toss the other on the mound.
As dusk begins to settle, somebody sits beside me.
It’s Cressida.
“She doesn’t deserve to be buried here,” I say.
“She was a human being.”
“Not a good one.”
“She wasn’t an all-bad one, either.”
Laughter escapes in a huff through my nose, leaving a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. “She killed Jillian. She was willing to kill Link and Luka in order to hand me over to Scarface. All for her freedom.”
“She also raised your father. And spent the majority of her life tormented by evil and locked up against her will.” Cressida plucks a blade of grass and twirls it between her fingers. “Your grandmother wasn’t the enemy, Tess. She was used by the enemy. It’s something we should never forget.”
Someone approaches behind us.
I twist around.
It’s Luka. We haven’t spoken since I told him to leave me alone in the library.
Cressida pats my knee, and with her words echoing in my ear, she pushes up to standing and leaves the two of us alone. Luka sits beside me, careful to keep his distance. It’s only a few inches, but it might as well be the Grand Canyon.
“I spoke with Cap. He wants us to leave with Hezekiah as soon as possible.”
“Does his car have enough room for all of my baggage?”
Luka doesn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question, anyway. Instead, he gently takes my forearm in his hand, frowns at the angry red welts on my wrist, then nods at the leather strap around my ankle. “Why are you wearing that?”
“As a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“Of who I never want to be.” When I first found out about my grandmother—that she suffered from psychosis, I was terrified I would turn into her. A crazy person locked up in Shady Wood. Then Dr. Roth told me and Luka who we were—members of The Gifting. We weren’t crazy at all, and that terror melted away. Now it returns. I’m afraid of turning into her all over again—a woman who let fear win. Someone willing to sacrifice lives in order to get what she wanted.
“You’re nothing like her,” he says.
I’m not so sure. “Sometimes I wish our roles were reversed.”
He looks at me with those eyes. I could get lost in them a thousand times over, all in a single day. “What do you mean?”
“I wish I was your Keeper. I wish the only thing I had to consider was you. Your safety. Your happiness. Your life.” I reach into his lap, slide my fingers down his palm, and thread them with his.
He grabs on tight, like my touch is his life raft. “But you’re not.”
I shake my head. No, I’m not. It’s time to stop hiding from the things that cause him pain. It’s time to stop ignoring what’s right in front of my face. “As much as I want to think about you and only you, I can’t. I don’t have that luxury.”
“I know.” He pulls me into a kiss, so soft and gentle it makes me shiver. “I promise not to hold you back.”
He says it bravely.
Confidently.
Like the words don’t kill him.
Chapter Thirty
New Home, Familiar Faces
Cressida gives us a new notebook that contains each of the prophecies we’ve been studying, along with the list. I guess she’s been working on it ever since we arrived. We thank the Rivards for their hospitality, and under the cover of night, we slip into Hezekiah’s sedan and drive away from New Orleans, one person fewer than when we came.
I sit in between Link and Luka in the back seat. Link sleeps against the window. Luka stays awake, looking out of his window, his knee touching mine while he messes with the attachments on his Swiss Army Knife, pulling each one out and snapping it back into place, over and over again. His own version of Link’s Rubik’s Cube.
At two in the morning, we stop in a small West Virginian town for gas. We drive through a sparse downtown, consisting of a bar, a pharmacy, an antique shop, a Hardee’s, and a dilapidated park with a chipped bell-shaped statue. I jot a note to Agent Bledsoe and duct tape it to the inside of the bell. Luka has finally fallen asleep, so I don’t have to explain. I haven’t told him that Link and I’ve been doing a little dream hopping at night.
When I’m finished, I climb back into the car and stick the ear bud in my ear—the one that puts me to sleep. Bledsoe’s dream is hazy, disjointed. But stable enough for me to find him and tell him what I need to say.
We’ll see if it works.
*
The closer we get to Newport, the sparser civilization becomes, until eventually, we’re the only car on the interstate. Dark clouds swirl overhead. A warning to stay away. To stop and turn around before it’s too late. Hezekiah pulls off the interstate and stops in front of a tollbooth with a heavy-duty metal traffic gate barring cars from going any further.
I can see why.
A giant bridge looms ahead, a monstrosity climbing up out of Narragansett Bay, with crumbling towers and broken suspender cables. It looks on the verge of collapse.
“Are we driving on that?” Link asks.
A very legit question.
After twenty-three hours in a car with only two paranoid pit stops, I’m as eager as anyone to reach our destination and stretch my legs. I’m just not sure I want to risk plummeting to our deaths in order to do so.
Luka nudges my knee with his, his eyes pointed up and to the left. I follow his line of vision to a security camera. It swivels, then stops with its lens pointed directly at us. A man wearing sunglasses and a navy blue windbreaker steps out from the tollbooth, and for one panicked moment, I’m positive we’ve been tricked. Hezekiah isn’t trustworthy either. He’s led us straight to Agent Bledsoe.
But the man’s nose is straight.
I release a stream of shaky breath. My heart, however, is still racing over that security camera. Our faces are being plastered on every news station across the country. We may almost have Bledsoe on our side, but he’s just one person in the entire FBI. Society knows us as armed and dangerous criminals with a quarter-of-a-million-dollar bounty on our heads, because that’s what the media has fed the public, and the public eats what the media feeds it. And here we are, sitting complacently in the back seat of a sedan, letting this man and this camera see us.
“What’s going on?” Luka mutters.
“It’s all right,” Hezekiah says. “He’s on our side.”
His words offer little comfort. I wish I could trust that Hezekiah is who he says he is. Thanks to Claire and Clive and my grandmother, trust is hard to come by. Their betrayal has tinted everything in a shade of suspicion.
The man gives Hezekiah’s window a rap with his knuckle.
Hezekiah rolls it down.
“I’m sorry,” the man says. “You’re gonna have to turn around.”
“We’re here to see Felix.”
The man loops his thumbs through his belt loops. I can practically see his eyes behind the sunglasses, zooming in and focusing on each of us just like the camera overhead. After a beat, he returns to the booth. There’s a clattering. A clanking. And the metal gate lifts.
Felix must be the magic word.
I lean forward. “I’m assuming that guy knows about The Gifting?”
“He’s part of The Gifting.”
“Really?” I twist around, trying to see him again, but
he’s out of sight.
And we’re driving onto the bridge of death. There are parts of the bridge that have been blown off completely, so only one lane remains with no guardrails. Hezekiah veers around a hole. Not a pothole. A literal hole.
I grip the edge of my seat and force myself to look at the ceiling as the wind blows and our tires bump over loose chunks of gravel. The bridge is already long, and since Hezekiah has to go extra slow to avoid the whole plummeting-to-our-death ordeal, the trip across the bay drags into agonizing eternity.
When we arrive, raindrops spit at the windshield. Newport—or what’s left of it, anyway—is all rubble and ash and charred buildings that stand at half-mast. We’ve entered a war zone while the rest of the world celebrates peace.
“I visited the city a few times before the attack.” Hezekiah turns on his wipers. “Had a cousin in the navy.”
“Was he here when it happened?”
He nods grimly, and I take note of the past tense. Had a cousin.
“Do you think they’ll ever rebuild it?” Link asks.
“Not as long as the meters keep showing radioactivity.”
My unease quadruples. Radioactivity? “Are we going to grow an extra arm or something?”
“Tests aren’t hard to fudge.” Hezekiah’s gaze meets mine in the rear view mirror. “There are more people on our side than you realize. Felix is very well connected.”
Felix. That name again. I’m assuming he’s the captain of our new home. Makes me wonder how our own Cap feels about his demotion to mate.
The spitting rain turns into a downpour. We drive without speaking as the wipers squeak against the windshield and rain pounds the roof of the car and the clouds press lower overhead, spider webs of lightning crackling across their darkened underbellies. I think we’ve reached the naval base now, but it’s hard to tell.
Finally, Hezekiah stops. “Welcome to your new home.”
I look out the rain-smeared window at a building that was probably large once upon a time. Now, however, only the first floor remains and that looks about as stable as the bridge we just crossed.
“Push the button at the front doors.” He shakes each of our hands, tells us it was a pleasure—that we’re welcome in his tavern anytime—and that’s that. We climb out into the rain and Hezekiah drives away.
The three of us run toward the front doors, out of the cold and the wet. A buzzing sound draws my attention upward. Another camera swivels in our direction, like it can detect movement. I shift behind Luka, who presses the button.
A computer automated voice crackles from an intercom. “State your identity.”
“Luka Williams, Teresa Eckhart, and …” Luka looks at Link, apparently stumped. Link isn’t his real name. It’s a name he goes by because that’s his gifting.
“Andrew Wyatt,” Link says.
There’s a loud click, like a lock being released. Luka grabs the handle and pulls the door open. We step inside to nothing. No sign of life. Just rain leaking in through the large holes in the ceiling and lightning flashing through broken bits of wall.
Not too far ahead is a doorway with a staircase sign above it. We walk through and begin our descent, my anticipation building. It’s like we’re in the belly of Detroit again, walking toward the red door, falling deeper into Alice’s crazy rabbit hole. There’s another door at the bottom, and a second security camera. We state our names, wait for the click, and step inside a small, sparse room.
This time, there is life.
A girl. Maybe my age, a little older. And a man, terribly thin. If not for the girl’s healthy proportions, I’d probably worry about the food situation down here. He smiles at us while standing by a door across from the one we just walked through. She sits behind a sort of welcome desk looking mostly bored, chewing a wad of gum. Her gaze lingers longest on Luka.
“Welcome to headquarters.” She picks up a walkie-talkie and presses a button on the side. “The new recruits are here. Do you copy?”
There’s a brief pause, then a blast of static. “Copy that. Begin the new recruit procedure. I’ll meet them as soon as I can.”
“10-4.” The girl lets go of the button. “Ralph’ll show you around. When you’re done, you’ll have your interview and get your ID badges. Felix’ll introduce himself whenever he’s free. Dinner’s over, but if you’re hungry, I’m sure the cooks’ll let you grab something to eat.”
“What about Cap?” I ask. Surely, he’s waiting for us.
“Who?”
“Josiah Aaronson.”
“Is that the guy in the wheelchair?”
I have no idea why this annoys me. “Yes.”
“He’s probably with Felix.” She turns her attention to the skinny man standing across from us, her expression softening, like she’s talking to a small child. “Ralph, you want to take our new guests on a tour?”
Ralph bobs his head eagerly.
She skims a printed list in front of her and removes two keys from a lock box in one of the desk drawers. “Rooms 14 and 35. Make sure to come back and get your tokens when you’re done.”
Ralph takes the keys with an enthusiastic thank you and holds his badge up to the door. It unlocks and he waves us through. We step into a room—at least three times the size of the common room in the hub—with a large screen television, air hockey, a pool table, an old pinball machine, and several bookcases spanning the length of one wall. The room is filled with three times the amount of people, too. Sitting on couches watching TV. Chatting in small groups. Reading by themselves. I spot a girl with dirty-blond dreads and a nose ring flipping pages off in a corner. Ellen.
The familiarity of it lifts my spirits.
I raise my hand to wave at her when a small body catapults itself into Luka’s arms.
“You’re here!” Rosie squeezes his waist, hugs Link and then me. It feels like a lifetime since I saw her, and yet it’s only been a week and a half. She says hello to Ralph, who says hello back. “You won’t believe this place. It’s huge. Way bigger than the hub.”
I glance around, doing a rudimentary headcount. “How many people live down here?”
“A lot. And I’m not the youngest, either. They put me on babysitting duty while the parents are in meetings.” She points to a small group of kids playing with action figures on the floor. The biggest looks around five or six. The smallest, a dark-haired little boy who can’t be any older than two. “Where’s Jillian?”
The question whacks me in the chest. Did Cap really not tell her? I turn to Luka and Link, unsure what to say. Link looks every bit as uncomfortable as me.
Luka cuffs Rosie under the chin. “Why don’t we catch up tomorrow at breakfast? We have to finish this tour with Ralph.”
Her big dark eyes fill with concern. Rosie’s no fool. But before she can press for answers, the dark-headed boy shrieks and hits one of his playmates. She turns to us with an exaggerated eye roll and leaves us with Ralph.
He flattens his thinning hair with his palm and begins the tour, sharing facts about our new home with buoyancy in every syllable, like this place is the most interesting place on the planet. “This used to be a naval hospital. It was built all the way back in 1909. A long time ago, there were rumors that it was haunted by the ghosts of soldiers who passed away within the walls.”
Link and I exchange a look.
Ralph keeps plugging along. “When it was shut down in the early 1990s, they left behind a lot of the rehab equipment, which comes in handy.”
It doesn’t take long to get my bearings.
Headquarters is much bigger than the hub, but the layout isn’t nearly as confusing. There are three sections.
The main one has a gymnasium in the center with cement floors and a smattering of exercise equipment. Off to the side, in a walled-off corner, a smaller area contains mats and punching bags, similar to the one in the hub. There’s the common room on one side of the gym and a cafeteria (which Ralph calls the mess hall) on the other, the welcome center in front,
and a sort of general store (with snack food and toiletries, playing cards, magazines, and other odds and ends) behind.
Then there’s the west wing and the east wing. The west consists of two parallel hallways, one of which Ralph leads us down. It’s mostly classrooms and offices, with an infirmary at the end. The second hallway is closed off by a door marked authorized access only.
“What’s down there?” I ask, interrupting Ralph’s enthusiastic history lesson.
He shrugs. “They don’t let me in.”
I want to linger, ask more questions. I want to know what’s behind the closed door, but Ralph leads us toward the east wing, which he calls the barracks.
“There’s laundry at the end of the hall. Bathrooms and showers, too.” Ralph unlocks a door marked 14. There are two single beds inside, a dresser, and a desk. “You boys will bunk in here.”
“We’re sharing a room?” Luka asks.
“Everybody shares. Unless you’re Felix. He has his own.” Ralph smiles, oblivious to the tension in the air.
Luka and Link—roommates? That ought to be interesting.
Ralph waits for them to set their bags inside and waves us further down the hall, stopping in front of door thirty-five. “You, Little Miss, are staying in here with Joanna.”
I drop my bag on the floor, wishing I were rooming with Jillian. As soon as I step back out into the hallway and close my new door, another one opens.
A girl steps outside holding a towel. The familiarity of her hair, the slant of her shoulders, turns my breathing shallow.
I blink once. Twice. Three times.
But what I see doesn’t change.
She sees us standing there in the hallway and stops, her pale cheeks flushing pink.
Ralph raises his hand and gives Claire a friendly salute.
Chapter Thirty-One
Surprise, Surprise
I scratch the inside of my wrist. Claire can’t actually be here. I must have fallen asleep in the backseat of Hezekiah’s car and this, right here, is a dream. But my skin burns and she’s still there, a beautiful frozen statue four doors down, her back straight, her posture regal, her attention sliding from me, to Link, to Luka.
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