“Where would you go?”
“That’s just it,” he says. He swallows hard as if he’s trying to hold back tears. “I’ve got nowhere to go. I don’t know anyone. And I don’t want to go to a place run by Shadowface. But I don’t want to fight Shadowface either. I just want to live in peace.”
I fight the urge to tell him that that is what we all want. That is what we are all striving for. But what good would it do? We’ve all felt it at some point or another—uselessness, the need to fit in somewhere. It’s a hopeless place to be.
“Remi, look!” Evie’s voice breaks into my thoughts. She crouches on the concrete, her head turned to face me. “I drew you.”
I glance at Stephen before I make my way to Evie and Gabe. Stephen’s eyes seem blank as he stares at the ground, lost in his thoughts. As I walk away from him, I see him as a broken man that has lost everything more than once. First, it was his family. Then, it was his second family—the people here in Elkhorn that used to look up to him. With everyone gone, he is just an empty shell.
I crouch next to Evie and look down at the drawing. It’s a stick figure, which I assume is me, a triangle around the body to show that I’m wearing a dress. My line of an arm is extended, meeting the end of another arm—a drawing of a boy.
“Who is this?” I ask, pointing.
“Gabe,” she says with a big smile.
Gabe flashes a bright smile when she says this. I think he likes the drawing a little too much. I quickly point to a different drawing. There are about thirty other stick figures, all of them seemingly moving toward the drawing of Gabe and me.
“And who are all these people?” I ask.
“Greyskins,” Evie says. “They will eat you.”
Hearing these words from such a small girl creeps me out. And to know that these things are real and not just from some story is even worse. It suddenly dawns on me that this is all Evie knows. She is literally the first person to have lived her entire life in a world where the greyskins rule. Life as I knew it three years ago never existed for her. In fact, everyone born after this point will only know this life of hardship. The thought brings tears to my eyes. I turn away quickly and stand to try to gain my composure. I move to another drawing and point at it.
“What are those?” I ask.
She talks for the next minute or so, but I don’t hear anything from her. Lost in my thoughts, images of a future generation pass through my mind. What will the future be like if we don’t stop Shadowface? What if we don’t find a cure to the greyskin virus? What kind of person will Evie grow up to be when all she has ever known is death and decay? Who will show her love in her life? Who will raise her? Take care of her? If my sister is correct at all, it won’t be me for very long. I’m going to give her away to somebody.
The thought had never made me do more than shrug before, but now that I’m with her I feel a great sense of sorrow. Guilt even. When I think on my childhood, I see images of playing in my treehouse, riding a scooter down the sidewalk, or getting ice-cream whenever I wanted it. Evie will get none of that. No child will.
“Remi,” Gabe says.
I turn to him.
“You okay?” He stands next to me and places a hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I whisper, looking down at Evie who is drawing another group of greyskins surrounding Gabe and me. My eyes travel past her to where Stephen had been standing. He is no longer there. “I guess it’s up to me to take care of her.”
“You won’t be alone,” Gabe says. “I will help.”
“That’s not what we’re here to do,” I say.
“Look at her, Remi,” he says. “She needs people who aren’t walking around comatose. Stephen isn’t good for her.”
“There aren’t other people around?” I already know the answer to that. There is no one. Most from before are dead. Those that are still alive are concentrating on helping Jeremiah. Why? Maybe because there is nothing better to do. “I figured Paxton would have come here to look for his granddaughter.”
Gabe shakes his head and shrugs.
“What does this mean for trying to find my sister?” I ask. “Will we just take Evie with us?”
Gabe looks past me, his expression goes from serious to a silly grin spreading across his face.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” he says, pointing behind me.
I turn around quickly and look at where Stephen had been standing, and in his place is my sister. Waverly.
Hot tea or coffee were the options. Someone in Jeremiah’s camp was able to scrounge up some cookies for us as well. Gabe sits at the end of the table while Waverly sits across from me. Little Evie naps silently in the corner with her blanket and a couple of pillows. I look at my sister with more sadness that I am ready for. It looks like she has been crying for a while. And when she tells me about her interaction with Ethan, I start to understand why.
“I knew the two of you were friends, but I didn’t know you cared about him so much,” I say.
“We were becoming very close,” Waverly answers. “When Mitch told me to shoot him, I felt panic, but I couldn’t control it. You know Mitch drank the Starborn blood right? He has the ability to enter someone’s mind and make them do whatever he wants.”
“Jeremiah brought us up to speed last night,” Gabe answers. “I can’t believe it. What a jerk.”
“Tell me about it,” Waverly says. “When Samuel killed Mitch’s girlfriend, Ashley, Mitch went off the rails. He thought it was my fault that Ashley got into the situation in the first place. In a way, it was, but it was her decision to bring me to Samuel, regardless of whether I shot her or not.”
Waverly shooting Ashley is news to me, but I don’t really ask about it. In fact, I just let her talk. I already know about the visions because of the notebook she left behind. But the way Waverly tells it now, the notebook was a poor reflection on how all the visions connected. For instance: knowing Ethan was going to be shot by a sniper was one thing. Finding out that Waverly was the shooter because of Mitch’s power over her was an entirely new twist. I decide not to tell her about the notebook, so long as she doesn’t ask. I can’t think of why she ever would.
“I wonder where Mitch is now,” Gabe says, staring at the table.
“Probably plotting to kill Shadowface,” Waverly says.
“Like father, like son,” I mumble.
A moment passes where all of us sit in front of steaming mugs of coffee or tea. It’s a nice moment. The silence isn’t awkward. Really, it’s just good to be sitting among friends, though the future is in the forefront of our minds. My mind, at least.
“Where have you two been for the past month?” Waverly says, breaking the silence.
I tell her about our failed attempt to recruit Paxton to help us fight Shadowface. She gasps when I tell her that I was shot, and I even lift my shirt to show her the fresh scar tissue. She learns of Orick, and Gabe even quips about Nancy’s cooking. We conclude that it was a pretty nice month, but a strange one to say the least. When I ask Waverly about how she spent her time, the conversation takes a dark turn.
Imprisonment. The torture of a girl named Amber. Her meeting with Olivia. Her escape. Each word that comes out of her mouth has me on the edge of my seat, and by the time she finishes, I feel guilty for having had such an easy month.
There is another long moment of silence and this time it is a little awkward. I look away at Evie who is sleeping comfortably with a thumb in her mouth. When I turn back to Waverly, she is smiling at me.
“Taking a liking to Evie?” she asks.
“I was kind of forced to,” I say. “Stephen dropped her on me a few minutes ago. I think he was tired of taking care of her.” I want to call her out on the vision that she lied to me about. I want to tell her that the whole thing about me walking through a field and finding a nice shiny rock was bull crap, but I decide to keep it to myself. She had her own reasons for writing down the vi
sions in a notebook. She doesn’t need to know that I looked through it. Not that I think she would actually care.
I keep wondering when we will run into the girl named Jenna. What will she be like? Why would I trust her enough to give Evie to her? Right now, I wouldn’t think much about it. Evie is just another person. It’s not like she’s special. I mean, she’s special in that you’re a kid, so you’re special kind of way, but nothing more, I think.
“I guess,” Gabe says, “the question is, where do you go from here?” Waverly and I look at him, both of us unable to answer the question. Gabe continues. “Jeremiah has his operation going on, but I don’t know if I want to be a part of it anymore. We’re so far removed from it all. I’ve spent a month away from him and his vendetta against Shadowface, and I for one am happy for it to stay that way.” He motions to Waverly. “You, on the other hand, have been under Shadowface’s watchful eye for the past month, and might have a different take than either of us. What is it you want to do, Waverly? Do we stay here and try to finish the fight against Shadowface, or do we leave and let Jeremiah fight his own battle?”
She doesn’t answer for a long while. I guess I understand. Facing the question, I’m not a hundred percent sure what my answer is either. From the moment I saw Olivia when I was hiding in the closet three years ago, I knew she was a person to be stopped. From the moment I discovered there was such a person that called herself Shadowface when I stole the journal from Paxton, I knew she was a person to be stopped. But why is it up to us? What difference does it make whether or not we stay to help? The fight will be waged with or without us.
“I can’t answer that,” Waverly finally says. “Not right now, anyway.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I suppose you can look into our futures and figure out what we’re going to decide to do, right?”
It was meant as a joke, but Waverly shakes her head with a serious, grim stare. “I never want to look into the future again unless a life depends on it. I’ve misinterpreted the visions so badly in the past…I don’t even know what I’m looking at sometimes.”
“You hate your Starborn power, don’t you?” I ask.
“More than you know,” she says. “So far it has been more of a burden than anything. I’m not going to say it hasn’t served some purpose, but I hate it. I wish it would have never come to me.”
I can’t say I know how she feels. My ability has been nothing but useful to me. But I can imagine that seeing into the future is a difficult load to carry. I guess it’s not the future itself that is so difficult to deal with rather than knowing what to do with the future she has seen.
We finish our coffee or tea mostly in silence. I catch myself looking over at Evie every now and then to make sure she is still sleeping soundly. The feelings I have for her are strange. Guilt seems to play a part, but I don’t really know why. I didn’t kill her caretaker, Lydia, yet I can’t help but think that if I had never shown up, then Evie might not be alone. If I hadn’t been there, would Stephen have gone to meet with Samuel that morning when they overheard that Waverly was at Elkhorn? Would Lydia have been where she was when she was killed? I guess the guilt comes more from trying to give up Evie to Paxton.
What a jerk, I think to myself. Part of me believed in him, but I can’t fathom why. I really thought that with the chance to see his granddaughter he would have turned. I never thought he wanted me to be kicked out. I never got the impression that he had it out for me. In fact, when he told me about his daughter before he banished me from Crestwood, it almost seemed like he was trying to give me another chance to come back and be a part of them again. But the more I look back on it, I can’t help but think that it was a task he never thought would bear any results. When I came back to tell him about his daughter and granddaughter, I’m sure he was panicked and didn’t know what to do. So, in his usual fashion, he did whatever Shadowface told him to do. He tried to kill me. And what’s even more disturbing is that he didn’t mind trying to kill Gabe too. Gabe had been his most trusted scout. But I guess whenever Shadowface spoke, Paxton listened.
Evie’s chest falls up and down with every innocent breath. Her mother died under horrible circumstances. Her father is a nobody that probably would have preferred not to meet her. Her grandfather was a lying, murderous man that did whatever evil was ordered of him—all in the name of protecting and preserving his beloved Crestwood. The only good person she really had in her life was Lydia, and now she’s dead. And for the past month, she’s been taken care of by Stephen who looks like the demons he’s been battling in his own mind have nearly taken him over. If Evie is to turn out normal in the least bit, she will need someone to take care of her and make sure she is loved.
When I look back at Waverly and Gabe, I see the two of them staring at me. They aren’t smiling, nor do they seem sad, just observant. They know as well as I that I’m going to take care of her.
Just until we find this Jenna character, I think. I’ll watch her for that long.
“You won’t have to do it alone,” Waverly says, almost as if she read my thoughts.
Gabe agrees.
I want to tell her that it isn’t really fair because I might not feel the responsibility to take care of her if I had never read about the vision in the first place. But I hold my tongue. If Waverly wanted me to know about the vision she would have told me. I’m just going to do the best I can. In fact, I’m going to make it a point to pretend like I never knew about Waverly’s vision. I won’t let it influence the way I act or treat Evie. The reason I’m here to take care of her is because Stephen is too lazy or distracted to do it himself.
The three of us talk for the next few minutes. We start weighing the pros and cons for leaving versus staying. I try to ask Waverly more about Ethan and what he might like to do, but she clams up pretty quick.
At some point, I feel a short tug on my sleeve, and when I look behind me, little Evie is standing with her blanket in her arms. “I’m hungry,” she says. Her voice sounds so sweet and innocent.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Waverly says, standing from the table. She probably wants to get away from any conversation that involves Ethan right now. “I can help you find something.”
Evie shakes her head and stands closer to me. “You take me,” she says. I look from Evie to Waverly who smiles at me briefly.
She shrugs. “She knows who she likes.”
“Why me?” I ask, but Evie just takes another step closer and wraps her arms around my waist. Gabe is all smiles too. “Okay,” I tell her. “Let’s find something to eat.”
Chapter 11 - Waverly
Two days have come and gone since I slipped past Shadowface’s tight grip. It feels strange being in Elkhorn among people I’ve never met, and the ones that I do know feel like strangers. Remi and Gabe have been nice enough, though the two of them seem so preoccupied, and perhaps even so unsure of themselves that talking with them does little in deciding what we plan to do next. Then there’s Ethan. He’s a total stranger. I’ve tried to talk to him a couple of times over the past few days, but all I get in return are short answers or a cordial nod. He doesn’t seem like the same Ethan that I knew a month ago—the one I had kissed on the rooftop. I can’t help but think that he is angry because of the shooting, but he knows that it wasn’t my fault. He knows that there was nothing I could have done. So, why can’t he move past it?
The more I think about it, the more I believe it has less to do with me shooting him than it does with the month he has had since. He told me that some man had loaded him up in the back of his truck and took him to his cabin—that the man took care of him—then the man died a week ago.
I’m not sure I believe it. All of us have had our hardships, but maybe something happened to Ethan that pushed him over the edge—something he doesn’t want to share with me. But what could it have been?
It is the beginning of my third day here and I’m walking into the ‘operation center’ as I’ve learned people call it. It’s no different
than any of the other rooms in any of the other buildings in Elkhorn. It’s a big office on the first floor where cubicle dividers have been pushed up against the walls to make room for all the men and women here. When I walk through the doors, not a single head looks up at me. It’s as if the office is being used in the way it was always meant to. There are at least fifty people moving quickly from person-to-person, each of them with his or her own purpose. In the center of the room there is a large desk where Jeremiah sits. On the walls are monitors and television screens apparently hooked up to security cameras that are placed around the perimeter of the hideout. There seems to be far more going on here than when Stephen was in charge. Though, it isn’t even the same place. Basically whatever Stephen had is gone and obsolete.
I walk through the crowd of people, some of them pouring over maps together, others looking through inventory sheets, a few are figuring numbers with pads and pencils. I almost feel overwhelmed by the business, so when I hear someone call my name, I jump. I look to my left and see Jeremiah motioning for me to come join him at his desk. Looking from side-to-side, I slowly make my way toward him.
When I walk up to the desk, there is a strong smell of cigar smoke. His eyes droop as they normally do, and I truly don’t feel like I should be here. Jeremiah motions to the chair across from his desk. “Please, Waverly, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
The metal chair is hard and cold, and it is placed so Jeremiah sits about a foot taller than me. “What’s up?” I ask.
“Just wanted to see how you were holding up,” he says with a smile.
I shrug my shoulders. “I feel out of place here.” My eyes travel around the room. “I don’t even understand what is happening. There is a sense of urgency that I don’t quite grasp.”
The Starborn Ascension: Books 1, 2, and 3 (The Starborn Saga) Page 57