by Ivy Baum
I started to reply, but he was getting to his feet.
“We’re going to cool our heels for the next few days. Then, if the purebloods haven’t found us or we haven’t died of boredom, we’re going to make a run for Sanctuary. Your best bet is to keep your head down and hope we keep you alive long enough to see it.”
I felt a flare of anger. “Is that what you do? Keep your head down?”
“I’ve had years of experience. You’ve barely Manifested.”
“I have real powers. Maybe I can’t control them yet, but—”
“Stop.” He gestured angrily. “If you’re going to survive, you need to get this through your head. Being a half-blood doesn’t make you special. It just means some Noble couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
He stalked away.
Cheeks burning, I muttered, “You could have just said you weren’t interested.”
I’d said it under my breath, and he shouldn’t have been able to hear it. But he stopped in his tracks.
Then he kept on walking, leaving me alone on the steps.
Chapter 18
“See that guy over there?”
I followed Clover’s discreet nod at the restaurant across the street. “Yeah?”
“Do you think he’s staring at us?”
“Definitely. He finished his lunch, like, twenty minutes ago.” I took a sip from my styrofoam cup of gas station coffee, only to find that it had gone cold. “But so what? Everyone in this town stares at us. At this point, I’d be suspicious of anyone who didn’t.”
It was our third day in Prairieview, North Dakota. It was the kind of town with a single Main Street and a whole lot of nothing all around it.
The clerk at the motel had asked whether we were there to visit the Standing Rock Reservation, which was nearby, if you thought of fifty miles as “nearby.”
Sol had flashed his charm-on-demand grin.
I was pretty sure that this—not some kind of Aristoi magic—was what had won over the student population of White Falls High.
“Actually, we’re on our way to Yellowstone, but the girls got tired of driving.”
The woman raised a penciled-in eyebrow. “Your girlfriends?”
“Sisters, actually.”
Deo hadn’t even come out of the van until after we got our keys.
Sol had insisted on it. “Otherwise, I’m going to look like some kind of sex trafficker.”
Already, I could feel the eyes that followed us wherever we went. We were “those college kids on a road trip”—instantly recognizable as outsiders.
Every day, Sol would take Junie and Deo to the southern edge of the Dead Zone so that Deo could cross over to “sniff” for Hunters. He hadn’t picked up any traces—other than the ones we ourselves had left.
But it was always possible that the Hunters had crossed over into the Dead Zone in our wake, effectively masking their magical footsteps.
For all we knew, the man sitting in the restaurant across the street from us really was a Hunter. Waiting for…what? A chance to kill us?
Or maybe whoever was following us had picked some likely route of exit and was camped out on the other side.
Just waiting for us to cross that invisible boundary.
Clover threw her cup in the trash. We’d gotten the coffees so that we’d have something to do while we loitered around the town’s sleepy Main Street.
We were supposed to be watching—on the lookout for anything unusual or suspicious.
Unfortunately, that meant being watched ourselves.
I gave Clover a look. “Maybe you should buy a hat or something.”
Even after enduring a “makeover” courtesy of Junie, Clover stood out in a place like Prairieview.
She raised a pierced eyebrow. “It’s not like I’m going to blend in any better with a big green John Deere hat.” She grabbed my coffee and threw it away. “Come on. Let’s walk back to the motel and see if we can get anyone else to stare at us.”
I doubted that Sol expected us to run into any actual Hunters—let alone identify them and live long enough to report back. This was busy work, meant to occupy us while he ran around with Deo and Clover—doing the important stuff.
For all I knew, he’d assigned Clover to babysit me.
She wasn’t exactly rude—but she obviously resented being stuck with the newbie.
Or maybe she just didn’t like me.
Can you blame her?
Back in White Falls, I’d barely noticed Clover—until I was forced to move to Ionian Gardens and stand next to her at the bus stop every day.
I had vague memories of a time when Clover was something different. Back before middle school, she’d been painfully shy, dressed in long-sleeved jumpers. Someone whose parents were so religious that she wasn’t allowed to go out for Halloween.
Then, in eighth grade, her parents had gotten divorced and Clover had turned into…well, Clover.
I glanced over. “Those other half-bloods—the ones who died. Did you know them?”
“You mean the real Junie and Rob?”
“I—” I stopped as the truth hit.
Somehow, I had never put two and two together. Junie and Deo hadn’t just waltzed in here after the other half-bloods had been killed. No, they’d taken on their identities.
I stared. “They replaced them? How is that even possible?”
“It was something Nev did. Something with her magic. And Junie’s Voice helped too, I’m sure.”
“But their families—”
“Dead.” Clover’s voice was flat, emotionless. “The Hunters got them, too.”
White Falls was a big school—nearly two thousand kids. But surely I would have remembered if two students and their entire families went missing…
And then, crazily enough, I did. Not clearly—not enough to piece together an actual story. But somewhere, buried in the remote recesses of my brain, there was something—a rumor. Two local families had run off with a cult.
It had been a re-occurring theme in the news for at least as long as I’d been in high school. Kids—or entire families—snapping and running off to join some cult. And there was always some perfectly-coiffed news anchor to solemnly attribute this to the pressures of modern life…
Clover said, “I didn’t know Junie. She hung out with the Equestrian Club—the horse girls. Not my crowd. But I knew Rob a little.”
She looked away, her cheeks growing pink.
I remembered, then, that Clover was involved with Deo, who had taken Rob’s place.
I wonder if they have therapists in Sanctuary.
Back at the motel, the others were packing up.
Clover grasped the implication a second before I did. She turned to Deo. “Did you sense something?”
He shook his head.
Sol said, in a tone of artificial cheer, “We decided that it’s time to go. This isn’t a big-budget operation, and while I am getting an excellent rate on these rooms, we can’t afford to stay here indefinitely.”
There was a nervous energy in the room—one that even Sol’s brisk tone couldn’t hide.
“So we’re making a run for Sanctuary.” Clover’s voice quivered with excitement—or fear.
I surprised myself by speaking up. “What’s the plan? I mean, assuming the Hunters didn’t get bored and take off…”
Sol raised an eyebrow. I still couldn’t quite meet his gaze.
“We were just discussing our options.”
Clover folded her arms. “And those are?”
“In a nutshell? North, south, east, or west.”
Deo added helpfully, “As you can see, they all suck.”
Junie pulled the map from her bag and spread it on the bed. The rest of us gathered around.
“This is the most direct way.” She pointed to a spot not far from our current location.
The Dead Zone stretched out a hundred miles north and at least fifty miles to the east. Junie’s proposed route was the only one that would get us close
r to Sanctuary.
But Sol shook his head. “They’ll be expecting that. What if we take this route north…” His finger traced a line up the map. “…Then we swing back down at the top here?”
Junie said, “That’ll add hours to our trip, if not days.”
“Probably a day and a half, at least,” Sol agreed. “But the other way might be…risky.”
“They’re not stupid. It’s not like they won’t think of that, too.”
Clover said, “And if we go the way you want, we’ll be even farther from Sanctuary.”
Sol made an irritable noise. He gave Deo a belligerent look. “I suppose you agree with them?”
Deo shrugged, his mild expression unchanged. “Any way we go, there’s risk. That’s life.”
“No,” Sol snapped, “that’s half-blood life.” He sighed. “Fine. We do it your way.”
I noticed that no one had suggested taking a vote. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Sol was the leader—and that the others seemed comfortable with that arrangement.
But as they went to go back to their packing, he held up a hand. “Listen, I expect all of you to be ready for whatever we have to deal with—before we step over that border. Deo, I expect you to be sniffing like a dirty old man at a co-ed dormitory—”
Someone made a disgusted noise.
“—And you, Clover, need to be covering his tracks. Junie?”
“You want me to talk you into liking this plan?”
He smiled. “Maybe later. Honestly, your power is kind of a last resort. Who knows? This may be your big chance to finally bribe a traffic cop when he pulls us over for going a hundred miles an hour.”
Chapter 19
We crossed out of the Dead Zone.
I didn’t even know we’d done it until Junie let out a shaky breath and Clover high-fived her.
No one attacked us.
Somehow, that seemed to make Sol more—not less—tense.
When we hit Montana, he announced, “We drive until we hit the edge of the Patrol Zone. Then we get a room somewhere cheap. We need to scout things out before we make our final run for the front door.”
This drew protests from the others—though some were more vocal than others.
Junie said, “The Patrol Zone is a joke now. Even the purebloods know that no one’s coming to Sanctuary anymore. And the Hunters would rather hang out in more fertile territory.”
But on this issue, Sol was unmovable.
Personally, I was relieved. The sun was already halfway to the horizon, and it would be dark in a few hours. To make it to Sanctuary, we’d have to drive through the night.
And maybe part of me just wasn’t that eager to get there.
Afterwards, I crawled to the back of the van, where Junie was rummaging through a box of protein bars. “What’s a Patrol Zone?”
“The purebloods won’t attack Sanctuary—not directly, anyway. But they try to make damn sure that no one ever makes it there. Or at least they used to.”
Clover, I noticed, had her head cocked in our direction; she was listening too. Like me, she’d never been to Sanctuary.
I wondered how she felt about it.
Junie sighed. “Even so, Sol is right to be cautious. The last thing we need is to run into a band of Hunters. Even your average patrol would be a pain the ass.”
There’s no magical training montage. Sol had made that much clear. But the closer we got to Sanctuary, the more I worried about what would happen if we ran into trouble.
What was I supposed to do—hide behind the others?
By the time we stopped at the next Rest Area, the sun had set. All that remained was a fading orange glow over the horizon.
The others had all gone inside. I nearly followed out of habit—then ducked around to the side of the building instead.
There wasn’t much out here—just a pair of ancient vending machines.
I stood there, hugging my hoodie to my shivering frame. Wondering why I wasn’t inside with the others—and already knowing the answer.
How was it that I felt as bad as I had the night of Homecoming?
I’d come all this way, traveled this far out of White Falls…only to find that I didn’t fit in here any more than I did in my old life.
It made the pit of despair inside me grow to bottomless depths.
Just as bad…
That gave me an idea.
All the times my magic had worked before, I’d been in some heightened emotional state. Anger, humiliation, fear—somehow, those negative emotions had always preceded the magic.
I’d been pacing the small patch of pavement. Now I stopped.
I could feel the energy right there, coiled in a tight ball inside me. I reached for it, but it seemed to slip through my fingers.
Sol’s words echoed in my head. Most half-bloods get picked off by the Squads long before they learn to harness whatever piddling gifts they might possess…
The words brought a flare of stinging humiliation.
What if he was right?
Once more, I reached for the energy.
It was like trying to wrap my arms around water, or wind. It was there—until I tried to grab it. Then it was nowhere.
After a few more attempts, I swore in frustration. Then I gave up.
I stopped trying to grasp it—stopped even trying to find it inside me.
And that was when I felt it.
In that moment of letting go, something had rushed inside me. It was something alien, terrifying, and exhilarating.
It went into all the places the anger and fear and humiliation had hollowed out—and filled them.
My power had returned.
But what to do with it? I hadn’t actually planned that far ahead.
You’re not in control. The thought was unnerving, but I ignored it.
It was better than feeling powerless.
And so I let it burn through me.
The vending machine exploded.
Well, not quite.
I felt, more than heard, the impact. Then the vending machine began to smoke and pop, and I watched, enthralled and terrified.
The glass cracked as something bright flared inside.
Then I heard the shouts, and the sound of footsteps coming from around the corner.
Uh oh. You didn’t exactly think this through, did you?
And now the thing had actually caught fire—or at least the panel of buttons, which now emitted a horrible burnt-electric smell.
I was backing away when Sol appeared around the corner.
“Kes! Are you okay?”
Deo was right behind him. “How many are there?” He looked around, as though he expected to see a gang of Hunters.
That was when they noticed the smoking vending machine—and the fact that I was alone.
Sol’s voice changed abruptly. “What happened here?”
The euphoria had begun to bleed away. But I still wasn’t quite with it. I had the strange feeling that I was a spectator observing my own life—from afar.
Deo had gone to search around the building. He returned, looking more puzzled than alarmed. “Who attacked you?”
“No one attacked her.” Sol’s voice was flat.
Deo frowned. “But that spike of magic—”
He seemed to understand, then.
“I did it.” My voice sounded dreamy, faraway. “My magic works.”
Minutes later, we were joined by Junie and Clover. Deo made a half-hearted attempt to put out the small fire.
The vending machine, however, was toast. Literally.
Clover eyed the blackened plastic and cracked glass. “Should we put up an ‘Out of Order’ sign?”
Sol was not in the mood for jokes.
He turned to me. “What were you thinking?”
The euphoria was completely gone now—and the cold reality of what I’d done was beginning to sink in. “I—I just wanted to be useful.”
He scowled. “You thought it would be useful to
blow up a vending machine?”
Something inside me snapped. Suddenly, I didn’t care how I looked. “I had to do something! What am I supposed to do if we get attacked? Lay down and die?”
“Well, congratulations. You just waved a giant red flag for anyone who might be after us. Were you or were you not here when I explained that magic is something Hunters can use to detect us?”
I felt a stirring of defiance. “You guys use magic.”
“When we do it, it’s useful. And necessary.” His eyes narrowed. “You just wanted to see something go boom.”
With that, I felt the last of my anger, my defiance, go out of me.
“No. Magic.” His voice was like a lash. “Don’t even try. Not until I say so. Do you understand?”
I took a deep breath. Forced myself to meet his gaze. “I understand.”
“Good.” He seemed to remember that the others were watching, and straightened. “Next stop is the Patrol Zone. No more detours. No more distractions. And for the love of God, let’s get our heads out of our collective asses so that we can make it to Sanctuary in one piece.”
Chapter 20
“Junie? You want to come over and take a look at this?”
Junie flashed me a distracted smile, then moved to the other bed, where Sol had a large map unrolled.
She left behind the map she’d been showing me. It showed the entire country, and was riddled with several sizable chunks of shaded pencil—Dead Zones.
There were a lot of them.
We were on the edge of the Patrol Zone, in a single motel room meant to give us one last chance to prepare for our final approach to Sanctuary.
“They’re getting bigger, you know.”
I jumped. Deo had come up so quietly that I hadn’t noticed. I was surprised by how stealthily he moved for someone well over six feet.
He was gazing down at the map.
“The Dead Zones, you mean?”
“Yup.” His finger traced one of the shaded areas. “People don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. I’ve seen it. They get bigger with time…and a new one pops up every few years.”