Twenty-five
I WOKE TO THE smell of sausage and eggs and squeezed my eyes shut to savor the dream, knowing when I opened them, I’d be lucky to get bruised fruit and an energy bar.
“Rise and shine,” a voice whispered.
A paper bag rustled. Then sausage-scented steam bathed my face. I opened my eyes to see Simon holding a familiar take-out bag in front of me.
“McDonald’s?”
“Shhh.”
Simon pointed at Tori, still snoring beside me, then quietly retreated from the delivery bay, motioning for me to follow.
He led me into an alley, where a fire escape ladder hung, then he boosted me onto it. We climbed up to the roof of a three-story building.
I walked to the edge and looked out. There was a park to the east, glistening with dew, the sun still rising behind it, tinting the sky pink.
“Nice, huh?” Simon said. “That park wasn’t quite so empty last night or we would have slept there.” He set down the bag and drinks on the rooftop. “So is this okay for breakfast? Up here?”
I looked at the view again. After last night, this was better than the fanciest breakfast in the fanciest restaurant. It might be the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for me.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Good. If it wasn’t, I’d have blamed Derek.”
“Derek?”
“He suggested we come up here and helped me pull down the ladder. Breakfast was my idea, though. We saw the Mickey D’s last night and I thought you might like a bickering-free breakfast.”
Derek picked the spot? Had he been hoping I’d be blinded by the morning sun and stumble off the edge?
“Pancakes or sausage McMuffin?” Simon asked as I settled onto the rooftop.
“Which do you want?”
“I’ve got mine.” He lifted a wrapped sandwich. “I thought I’d buy you both and, whichever you don’t want, Derek will eat. Nothing goes to waste with him around.”
I took the McMuffin.
He lifted two cups. “OJ or a strawberry milkshake?”
“I didn’t think you could get milkshakes in the morning.”
He grinned. “I can.”
When I took the shake, his smile grew. “I thought you might like that.”
“Thanks. This”—I waved at the food and the spot—“is really nice.”
“And well-deserved after your cruddy night. By the way, there’s a cut on your cheek. We should get that cleaned up later. I know Derek gave you the gears last night—more than once.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Going at you about raising that zombie? That was out of line, even for Derek. He’s been…”
“Crankier than usual?”
“Yeah. I think it’s because he Changed—or couldn’t Change—but that’s no excuse to vent at you, not after what you did for him.”
I shrugged and took a long draw of my milkshake.
“About what you did that night, staying with Derek while he was trying to Change…” Simon shook his head. “I don’t know how you kept your cool. Finding him like that when you didn’t even know he was a werewolf.”
“I figured it out.”
Simon took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, looking out at the sky before saying, “I wanted to tell you. Especially after he forced you to admit you were seeing ghosts. We argued; he won, as usual. But if we thought you could ever have stumbled on him like that, we’d have warned you. Even knowing what he is, I doubt I could have stuck around, much less helped. It took guts.” He caught my gaze. “It really took guts.”
I’m sure I turned crimson. I glanced away and chomped into my sandwich.
“I appreciate what you did for him, Chloe. Derek appreciates it, too, though I’m sure he hasn’t said so.”
I swallowed my mouthful and changed the subject. “So, about your dad…You never did tell me how he disappeared.”
He laughed. “Enough about Derek, huh? Unfortunately, Derek is where this story starts. It was after he broke that kid’s back. When it got a mention in the Albany paper, Dad decided it was time to move on. He must have known the Edison Group was still trying to find us. We should have left right away. But…”
Simon picked a burned piece off his muffin. “This happened a lot. At the first hint of trouble, we’d pack and move. Derek and I didn’t understand why, so we’d complain.” He paused. “No, I’d complain. After growing up in that lab, Derek was happy as long as the three of us were together. I hated moving. It always seemed I’d just made new friends, just made the team, just met a girl…”
“I know what that’s like. Well, except the part about meeting girls.”
“Yeah, but I bet you never complained. You’re like Derek. You make the best of things. I bitched and moaned, so Dad always tried to make it easier on me. That day, I had a basketball game I was hyped about, so when Dad saw the article after we’d gone to school, he called Derek’s cell. He told him not to mention it to me, but that he’d meet us after school and we’d take off. He never showed.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Simon shook his head. “We got home, found the car packed, the keys in the kitchen. He’d taken his wallet or had it in his pocket when…whatever happened, happened.”
“You think someone kidnapped him?”
“I don’t know. Derek couldn’t find anyone’s scent in the house. It was like Dad just walked away, which he’d never do. Derek wanted to take off. Again I screwed up. I thought there was some logical explanation—maybe Derek misunderstood Dad’s message. The next morning, I gave in and we left, but it was too late. They caught up with us the next day.”
“The Edison Group?”
“They said they were child services. We believed them. They took us back to the house to see if Dad had returned, and when he wasn’t there, they said that we had to go into a group home until they figured stuff out. Since we’d been born in Buffalo, that’s where they put us. Which should have seemed weird, but we didn’t know better. So that’s how we ended up in Lyle House.”
Simon continued, explaining that, since we’d escaped, he’d been casting some kind of seeking spell his dad taught him, but he couldn’t detect him. Using library computers, Derek had searched on their dad’s name and aliases, but found nothing.
“And now, with all this about the Edison Group, and Liz and Brady and Amber murdered…” He looked out over the parking lot. “I’m starting to think it might be a waste of time. That he’s not out there. That they killed him.”
“But Aunt Lauren was sure the Edison Group wasn’t involved in your dad’s disappearance. And she seemed certain he’d still be alive. Do you know any other place he could be? Or anyone who might know something?”
“I thought about going back to Albany, maybe talk to people he worked with, our neighbors, someone who might have seen something that day…”
“We could do that. We have enough money.”
“Derek doesn’t want to.”
“He wants to stay here?” That didn’t sound like Derek.
“No, he just doesn’t see any point in going back—and says it’s probably dangerous. But there is someone we could go to. This friend of my dad’s. Andrew Carson. He lives outside New York City. Dad said if we were ever in trouble and he wasn’t around, we should go to Andrew.”
“Have you called him? Maybe he knows something about your dad.”
“That’s the problem. Dad put his number on our cell phones, but they took those when we were tossed in Lyle House. We know his name and where he lives—we’ve been there plenty of times. But when we tried looking him up on a computer, we couldn’t find anything.”
“His number must be unlisted. Or he’s using an alias.”
“Or he’s not there anymore. It’s been a few years since we saw him. He and Dad had a falling-out.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t contact him then.”
Simon crumpled his wrapper. “I shoul
dn’t say ‘falling-out.’ A disagreement. Dad and Andrew kept in touch; we just didn’t go visit him anymore. He was still our emergency contact. So we should go see him, like Derek says. I’m just…not ready to give up on finding Dad. But with you and Tori here, and your picture everywhere, Derek’s ready to buy the bus tickets.”
“How about another solution? I need to get out of Buffalo. You need to talk to this guy. What if Tori and I go find Andrew while you and Derek look—”
“No. I don’t trust Tori with you, especially after last night. Derek wouldn’t go for it either.”
I wasn’t so sure. He might jump at the chance to get rid of me.
Simon continued, “Even if Tori’s not homicidal, she’s careless and reckless. Worse than me, which is saying a lot. We’ll find another way.”
Twenty-six
FOR MOST OF THAT day, both Derek and Tori steered clear of me, like I had a bug they didn’t want to catch. I didn’t see a lot of Simon either. He went off with Derek to the library, still trying to find their dad or his friend Andrew. Tori tagged along. I stayed put in a lovely dank alley Derek had chosen for me. Simon left me with a movie magazine, snacks, a hairbrush and soap, and promised they’d get me to a bathroom after dark.
It was mid-afternoon when I heard footsteps tromping down the alley and I scrambled up to meet Simon. Derek might be bigger, but it was Simon who made all the noise. Derek was only loud when…
Derek stomped around the corner, scowling.…when he was mad.
He had a newspaper rolled in his hand, bearing down on me like a puppy that had piddled on the carpet.
“Bad Chloe,” I muttered.
“What?”
I’d forgotten his bionic hearing. “Bad Chloe.” I gestured at the rolled-up paper and put out my hand. “Get it over with.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No, I think it’s tiresome.”
He slapped down the paper. In the bottom corner of the front page was the headline “Missing Girl Spotted” with a picture of me. I skimmed the short paragraph, then turned to the rest inside.
It had happened last night, when Derek had been yelling at me after my run-in with the street girls. The windows around us may have been dark, but a woman had been watching from an apartment over a shop, drawn by Derek’s voice. She’d seen “a girl with light hair and red streaks” being yelled at by “a large, dark-haired man.” So now police speculated that I might not be a runaway but a kidnap victim.
“Well?” Derek said.
I folded the paper carefully, my gaze down. “Guess you shouldn’t have yelled at me in public.”
“What?”
“That’s what caught her attention. You chewing me out.”
“No, what caught her attention was your hair. If you’d kept your hood up like I said—”
“Of course. Totally my fault. After nearly getting my face carved up, how dare I forget my attacker yanked down my hood. Bad Chloe.”
“So this is a joke?”
I looked up at him. “No, it’s not a joke. It’s a serious problem. The joke is this.” I waved from him to me. “You’ve been sulking all day, brooding—”
“Brooding?”
“Just itching for me to screw up so you can rip me a new one, your favorite pastime. You couldn’t just come back and calmly say we have a problem that we need to discuss. Where’s the fun in that?”
“You think I enjoy—”
“I have no idea what you enjoy, if anything. But I do know what you’d like. Me, gone.”
“What?”
“I’ve served my purpose. I got Simon out of Lyle House. Sure, you were willing to make a half-assed effort to find me, so it looks good for Simon—”
“Half-assed?”
“You showed up hours late. Left a hidden note. Came by once a day. Yes, half-assed.”
“No. Ask Simon. I was worried—”
“I’m sure you faked it well. But, unfortunately, I found you and, worse, I showed up with Tori in tow and a price on my head. So it’s time to activate the backup plan. Make me so miserable and unwelcome that I slink away.”
“I’d never—”
“No, you won’t.” I met his gaze. “Because I’m not going to slink away, Derek. If I’m too much of an inconvenience to keep around, then at least have the guts to tell me to get lost.”
I brushed past him and walked away.
I didn’t get far. I bumped into Simon and Tori, and Derek caught up with us. And then he got his way. Not about driving me off—he still had to work at that. But this new development gave him all the ammunition he needed to persuade Simon it was time to go to their father’s friend’s place. The bus left at four. First, though, the half-million-dollar runaway needed a disguise.
Derek took me to a restroom in the park I’d seen from the roof. The building was locked for the off-season, but he easily broke the locks and got me in. He made sure the water hadn’t been turned off, then slapped a box of hair color on the counter.
“Gotta get rid of that,” he said, pointing at my hair.
“I could just keep my hood—”
“Already tried.”
He walked out.
I strained to see by the bit of light coming through a row of tiny, filthy windows. It was hard to read the instructions, but it looked similar to the red dye I’d used, so I applied it the same way. I couldn’t tell what color Derek had chosen. It looked black, but the red dye had, too, so that didn’t mean much. I didn’t think too much about it until I washed out the dye, looked in the mirror, and…
My hair was black.
I hurried to the door and propped it open to get better light. Then I went back to the mirror.
Black. Not sleek glossy black like Tori’s hair, but dull, flat black.
Before now, I hadn’t been thrilled with my latest haircut. I’d had my long straight hair chopped shoulder length in a layered style that had turned out wispy and waiflike. Still, the worst I could have said was that it made me look “cute”—not what a fifteen-year-old girl wants to be called. In black though, it was not cute. It looked like I’d hacked my hair off with kitchen shears.
I never wore black because it drained any color from my pale skin. Now I saw there was something that washed out my face even worse than a black shirt.
I looked like a Goth. A sick Goth, white and hollow-eyed.
I looked dead.
I looked like a necromancer. Like those ghastly pictures of them on the Internet.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked them back, grabbed some tissue, and started awkwardly trying to daub leftover dye onto my pale eyebrows, praying it would make a difference.
Through the mirror, I saw Tori walk in. She stopped.
“Oh. My. God.”
It would have been better if she’d laughed. Her look of horror, then something like sympathy, meant it was as bad as I thought.
“I told Derek to let me pick the color,” she said. “I told him.”
“Hey,” Simon called in. “Everyone decent?”
He pushed open the door, saw me and blinked.
“It’s Derek’s fault,” Tori said. “He—”
“Don’t, please,” I said. “No more fighting.”
Simon still shot a glare over his shoulder as Derek pushed open the door.
“What?” Derek said. He looked at me. “Huh.”
Tori hustled me out the door, brushing past the guys with a whispered “jerk” for Derek.
“At least now you know never to go dark again,” she said as we walked. “A couple years ago, I let a friend dye mine blond. It was almost as bad. My hair felt like straw and…”
And so, Tori and I bonded over hair horror stories. We put our differences aside and by the time we were on the bus, we were painting each other’s fingernails.
Or not.
Tori did try to cheer me up. For her, this situation seemed to warrant more sympathy than having a dead guy crawling over me. But the closer we got to the bus station, t
he lower her mood dropped, coinciding with a rising discussion of finances—how much did we have, how much would the tickets cost, should I try to use my bank card again…
I did use an ATM we passed. Derek figured that was okay—if they thought we were still in Buffalo, that was good, considering we were leaving. He didn’t expect my card would work though. It did. I suppose that made sense. The bank or police might have told my dad to lock it, but he wouldn’t cut off my only source of money, even if he thought it could make me come home.
That, of course, made me think about him and how much he must be worrying, and what he was going through. I wanted so badly to contact him, but I knew I couldn’t. So all I could do was think about him, and think about Aunt Lauren, and feel awful about everything.
To get my thoughts off my family, I concentrated on my companions. I knew not having money bugged Tori. So I tried to give her a couple hundred. It was a mistake. She lashed out at me, and by the time we reached the station, we weren’t talking again.
Simon and Tori bought the tickets. I wondered whether they’d catch any flak—unaccompanied teens buying one-way tickets to New York City—but no one commented. I guess we could just be traveling alone. We were old enough to do that.
Not that I’d ever traveled alone. Not even on a city bus. That got me thinking about who I normally traveled with—Aunt Lauren and Dad. When I tried to stop worrying about them I only thought about someone else I was leaving behind: Liz.
Liz said she could find me, but I was sure she’d meant “in Buffalo.” How long would she search for me? Could I summon her without her green hoodie…from hundreds of miles away? I’d need to try really hard, and that wasn’t safe.
Maybe she’d move on to the afterlife. That was probably a good thing. But at the thought of never seeing her again, my mood sunk lower than Tori’s until, by the time the bus arrived, it was as black as my new hair.
Simon had gone to grab sodas for the trip. Tori was already out the station door. When I struggled to get my backpack on, Derek grabbed it and threw it over his shoulder, which would have been nice if I knew he wasn’t just hurrying me along.
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