by Julie Kagawa
* * *
The food court was a madhouse, as usual. I breathed in the sweet, greasy smell of hamburgers, eggrolls, pizza, corn dogs, waffle cones and cinnamon buns, and sighed. Oh, yeah. If I could eat General Tso’s chicken every single day for the rest of my life, I could die happy. The crowds were much thicker here, dozens of voices blending into a general cacophony of noise, and Garret seemed tenser than usual.
Still, he was a perfect gentleman, buying lunch for us at Panda Garden, attempting to teach me how to use chopsticks, which I’d never gotten the hang of. After I accidentally launched a piece of the general’s chicken at his head, which he impressively dodged, he finally acknowledged defeat and let me have my plastic fork.
Dragons don’t eat with tiny sticks.
“How long have you been here?” Garret asked once I’d plowed through most of my food. He probably realized he wouldn’t get very far if he tried talking to me while I was starving, and in this, the boy was observant. I took a sip of Mountain Dew before answering.
“Not long.” I shrugged. “Just since the beginning of the summer.”
“Where did you live before?”
“South Dakota, with my grandparents.” I speared a carrot with the fork and shoved it in my mouth. “Our parents died in a car crash when Dante and I were really young, so I barely remember them. Our grandparents took us in after that.”
“What brought you here?”
Questions. For just a moment, unease flickered. Our instructors always cautioned us about too many questions, particularly questions into our history and personal lives. It could be genuine curiosity, or it could be something far more sinister. Many a hatchling had been murdered by the Order because they’d said the wrong thing, revealed too much.
Garret? Could he be...? I glanced at him over our plates. Settled back in his chair, he was watching me, a thoughtful expression on his face. The way he was looking at me with those bright gray eyes made my stomach dance. No way. I’m being paranoid. He’s too young to be a ruthless killer.
Besides, I already had the answer ready to go. “Grandpa Bill developed lung cancer and could no longer take care of us,” I said, reciting the script flawlessly. “Dante and I came to Crescent Beach to live with our aunt and uncle until he recovers. I hope he’ll be okay, but to tell you the truth, I like it here better.”
He cocked his head, adorably puzzled. “Why?”
“There aren’t many oceans in South Dakota.” I sighed. “There’s not much of anything, really. I think I’ve always been a Cali girl at heart. If I left the ocean now, I might shrivel up and blow away on the breeze. What about you?” I waved the fork at him. “You’re from Chicago, right? Won’t you miss this when you leave? Or do you get homesick?”
It was his turn to shrug. “One place is as good as another.”
I didn’t understand that, or the flatness in his voice. “But you have friends, right? Back home? Don’t you miss them?”
“I guess.”
Now he seemed uncomfortable, as if this conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d expected. I let the subject drop, and he fell silent, gazing at his hands. His eyes had gone blank and cold, his expression closed off. I blinked at the change, at the wall lying between us now, wondering what I’d said to shut him down. Morosely, I picked at my food, but then perked up at something over his head.
“Wait here,” I told him, rising from my seat. “I’ll be right back.”
When I returned, I placed a large gooey cinnamon bun on the table in front of him and smiled. “Here. Dessert is on me.”
He eyed it curiously. “What is it?”
“A cinnamon roll, duh.” I sat and took a large bite out of mine, feeling the warm, cloying sweetness spread right through my teeth. “Just try it. I got you the extra, extra sweet roll, with the caramel-pecan icing on top. You’ll like it, trust me.”
He took a cautious bite, and his eyes got huge, before his face scrunched up like he had swallowed a lemon. Swallowing, he coughed twice, reached for his soda and took a long sip before leaning back in his chair, like the bun might suddenly leap up and force its way into his mouth again.
“Too sweet?” I asked innocently, biting my lip to keep from cackling with laughter at his shocked expression. “If it’s too much, I could help you eat it.”
“You go ahead,” he rasped, taking another long sip of his drink. “I think I can feel my veins clogging.”
Giggling hysterically, I finished mine, snagged his napkin and pulled the abandoned bun toward me. He gazed back with a slightly exasperated smile on his face.
“You should smile more,” I told him, biting into the Sweet Cinnamon Bun of Death. Oh, yeah, this was a diabetic’s nightmare. My teeth were screaming for mercy. “You’re very cute when you smile, you know.”
He cocked his head in that puzzled, adorable way. “Don’t I smile?”
“Not very often,” I admitted. “Mostly you look like you’re trying to decide where the next sniper attack will come from. Some might call that paranoia, but you know...” I shrugged and took another bite of Death by Icing.
He chuckled. “It isn’t being paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”
I blinked at him before I realized he was making a joke. Laughing, I threw my wadded-up napkin at him (he caught it, of course) and shook my head. “See, I knew you had it in you somewhere.”
Finishing the last of the bun, I wiped my hands and stood, tossing our trash into a nearby bin. “Well, now that I’m sufficiently hyped up on sugar and preservatives, wanna go shoot some zombies with me?”
Garret
I was beginning to reach the point where Ember’s sudden, random phrases didn’t startle me quite so much anymore, but still, this one threw me a bit. “What?”
It wasn’t exactly my fault. This morning, I’d woken with a massive, raging headache, the inside of my mouth feeling like I’d swallowed cotton soaked in vomit. The events of last night were a bit of a blur, but I think it involved Tristan, a karaoke bar and alcohol. Lots of alcohol. When I’d stumbled into the kitchen this morning, red-eyed and bleary with pain, my partner had laughed, slid a cup of black coffee my way and pronounced me a real man. I was too hungover to talk, so I had to be content with flipping him the finger.
Fortunately, I had a high recovery rate, and by this afternoon I’d felt almost normal again. Enough to track down the girl partially responsible for my temporary lapse of judgment, anyway. But apparently, I wasn’t one hundred percent recovered from my first experience with hangovers, because I was almost certain Ember had just said something about shooting zombies.
She laughed, taking my hand and pulling me upright. My senses buzzed at her touch. “I take it you’ve never been to an arcade before, either. Come on. I’ll show you.”
She led me across the crowded mall, past dozens of clothing stores interspersed with the random phone or jewelry kiosks. Finally, at the end of the mall in a dark little corner, she pulled me toward an entrance lit with hundreds of flashing neon lights. Strange sounds came from within: automated shouts and screams, revving engines and metallic buzzers, bells and whistles.
“What is this place?” I asked, peering through the door.
“It’s an arcade,” was the reply. “I always see it when I’m here with Lex and Kristin, but they’d rather shop and do boring things, so I’ve never been inside.” Her arm rose, pointing to a boxy black machine near the front, a screen glowing blue in the center. “See that one? It’s a zombie shooter. I’ve always wanted to try it, but the girls aren’t interested and Dante is never at the mall, so...”
She looked at me hopefully. I followed her gaze, trying to understand what she wanted. Zombie shooter? At least the “shooter” part was somewhat familiar. “This is...a game of some kind?” I guessed.
“Well, yeah. Of course.” Her eyes sparkled
as she glanced back, eager and excited. “How ’bout it, Garret? Wanna give it a shot? Or are you scared I’ll beat you?”
I smiled. A game that involved shooting things? She didn’t know who she was dealing with. “Lead the way.”
A few minutes later, I stood in front of a boxy black machine, a flimsy toy gun in my hand, gazing at the screen in the middle. Island of the Hungry Dead, it spelled out in dripping letters, just as a deep, automated voice said the same. Ember grinned at me and hefted her “gun.”
“Ready?” she challenged.
“This is extremely impractical,” I told her as a dark swampland appeared on the screen before us. “There’s no way a firearm like this would shoot anything.”
And then a zombie lurched out from behind a tree and lunged at the screen. A bright, fake spatter of blood appeared on my side, and Ember hooted, clicking her plastic gun. The zombie exploded into completely unrealistic clouds of red ooze and disappeared, and the girl blew on the muzzle of her fake pistol like it was smoking.
“That’s one for me,” she announced as more zombies lurched toward us with arms outstretched. A grin quirked her lips as she glanced at me, smug and challenging. “Come on, Garret, aren’t boys good at this kind of stuff?”
I looked back at the approaching zombie horde, raised my gun and smirked. All right, I thought, imagining myself back in the Vasyugan Swamps, facing a murderous juvenile dragon and its gang of human smugglers. You want me to shoot things? Here we go.
* * *
“You are a total cheater,” Ember announced later that afternoon, after our fourth play through. I grinned at her, the handle of the toy gun smooth and familiar in my palm. She glowered at me, small form bristling with annoyance. “And a liar.”
I blinked innocently. “What do you mean?”
“There’s no way you haven’t played this before,” she raged, pointing firmly to the screen, where the words Victory! Player Two were flashing again. “No one can be that good a shot on their first try. You’ve done this before. Admit it!”
“I have never played this before,” I told her honestly, hoping she wouldn’t ask why I was so good at shooting things with a toy gun. Because I’m very good at shooting things with a real gun. She gave me a doubtful look, and I held up my hands, grinning. “I swear.”
“Okay, fine. I believe you.” She brandished another quarter, eyes gleaming. “One more round?”
“You’re on.”
At that moment, however, my phone buzzed. I dug it out of my pocket and held it up, immediately recognizing Tristan’s number flashing across the screen. “Sorry,” I told her, backing away. “I have to take this. I’ll be right back.”
Retreating to a more quiet corner, I ducked behind a flashing crane-type game and put the phone to my ear. “Yes?”
“How’s the mall excursion going?” Tristan’s voice held traces of amusement. “I assume you found your target, because I know you haven’t been walking around for three hours doing nothing.”
A bell rang out somewhere behind me before I had a chance to answer. Tristan’s voice took on a suspicious tone. “What the heck was that? Where are you guys?”
“Uh, the arcade.”
“Well, it’s good to know that while I’ve spent the afternoon researching our potential targets, you’ve been messing around at the arcade.” Tristan’s voice dripped sarcasm. “Did you at least get any useful information out of her?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“Fine.” Tristan didn’t sound convinced, but he backed off for now. “If you say you’ve got this. I just wanted to tell you a few things I discovered about the Hill residence. Seems the original owner never put the property up for sale. And when the lot did sell, it sold for twice of what it was worth.”
“Sounds like somebody bribed him just to acquire the house.”
“Exactly. And get this—according to the home owner’s association, extreme renovating around the property isn’t permitted, but the new owner had a team of contractors at the house for nearly a month, and nothing was changed on the outside.”
“So, they might’ve changed the inside extensively, perhaps to set up a base for Talon operatives.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” Tristan’s voice turned contemplative. “Of course, we’re going to have to get inside to investigate. Breaking and entering is out, obviously—if we’re wrong, it could spook the real sleepers into moving, and if it is a Talon base, they’ll likely have a ton of alarms set up. We can’t risk alerting the targets. So it looks like it’s up to you.”
“Anything unusual on the surveillance?”
“No. All clear on this end so far.”
“Garret?”
I turned. Ember stood behind me, phone in hand, looking abashed. “Kristin and Lexi are leaving in a few minutes,” she announced. “But they want to know if I’ll need a ride home.”
I was confused for a second, before I realized what she was asking. “Understood,” I told Tristan quickly. “Gotta go.”
I hung up. Ember still waited, green eyes watching me expectantly. “It’s your call,” I told her. “If you need to leave with your friends, I understand. Or I can drive you home.” And if I drove her home, perhaps there was a way I could get her to ask me inside. Though, if I was being honest, I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. And I didn’t think she was, either.
She smiled. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Only if you agree to one more game of zombie island.”
The grin grew wider, and her eyes flashed. “Deal.”
Ember
We played three more times. I think he let me win the last one, but I wasn’t complaining. I could never get Lexi or Kristin to play games with me, and Dante was rarely at the mall, so having Garret around was pretty great. After we got bored with shooting zombies, we tried a racing game (I won that one), a fighting game where we were pretty evenly matched (I still beat him), and then Garret absolutely stomped me in air hockey. His reflexes and hand-eye coordination were amazing, better than I’d ever seen in a human before. My supercompetitive side would’ve been annoyed but, unlike my brother, he was so damn humble about it. Plus, he really seemed to be having fun.
Later, we revisited the food court, as I was hungry again and needed a snack after a long day of shooting zombies. As I munched a slice of pizza, Garret sat across from me with a soda, his expression thoughtful.
“What?” I asked at last. “Do I have pepper stuck in my teeth or something?”
He smiled. “You keep surprising me,” he said, resting his elbows on the table between us. “I have several things I need to get done today, but I keep getting pulled into zombie games and racing and buying mall food. I’ve never done that before.” The smile twitched into a smirk. “I’ve decided it’s your fault. You’re very distracting.”
I cocked my head. “Good distracting, or bad distracting?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, when you figure it out, let me know. I’ll be sure not to care very much.” Finishing the last of my crust, I wiped my hands on a napkin, then noticed Garret’s arm resting on the table, lean and tan and muscular.
I blinked. A jagged, pale circle marred his forearm near the elbow, shiny and white against his tan skin. I looked closer and saw another scar near his wrist, like an old, faded puncture wound, and several tiny ones scattered between the pair. They were faint, the smaller ones barely visible, but judging from the larger two, his arm had definitely taken some damage.
“What is this from?” I asked softly, tracing one with a finger before I could stop myself.
He jerked back, drawing in a sharp breath, and I froze. For a second, we both sat there, rigid. Then, not really knowing why, I slowly reached for his arm, cupping my fingers around his wrist. Garret didn’t move, his steely eyes trained on me
as I gently drew his arm forward again. His skin was cool, and I could feel the strength in his hands, in the muscles coiling back like a spring. But his arm remained perfectly still as I touched the scar again, tracing the circle with a fingertip. “It looks like it hurt.”
Garret let out a shaky breath. “It was fairly painful, yes.” His voice was tight, as if everything had seized up and he could barely breathe.
“What happened?”
“An accident. I was attacked by the neighbor’s Rottweiler a few years back.” His arm shook a little, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m told I was lucky I didn’t lose any fingers.”
Fascinated, I turned his palm over. Another scar marred his forearm, and a thick, jagged line crossed his wrist, making me shiver. As a general rule, dogs didn’t like me. I was sure they could sense something wasn’t quite right, because they usually fled or barked at me threateningly from a safe distance. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do if I had a giant Rottweiler hanging off my arm, but it would probably involve a lot of singed dog hair.
I looked up and found Garret watching me, the intensity of his gaze making my breath catch. Heat rose to my cheeks, and my heart pounded, as he continued to stare at me. The rest of the world faded away, and all I could imagine was leaning forward, meeting him halfway across the table and...
My phone chirped, indicating a new text, startling us both. Abruptly, Garret pulled his arm from my grip and rose, sliding back the chair. I blinked, startled again by how quickly he could move; one moment his hand was in mine, his skin cool beneath my touch, the next he was gone, and I was gazing at an empty seat. Frowning, I dug my phone from my pocket and looked at the screen. There were several missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize, so they were probably spam or telemarketers. But the text was from Dante, which almost never happened, and the message was even more ominous.
Where are u? Come home RIGHT NOW. T is here.