And Garrett froze.
“Don’t stop!” Milo and I both shouted at him. “Keep going! Go, go, go!”
“I can’t!” he shouted back, his voice almost as high as Rochelle’s highest octave. “I can’t move! I can’t move!”
And then—holy crap—I couldn’t move. And then Milo couldn’t either. And—double crap—he’d let go of me for a moment to help Garrett with Jilly, so we weren’t touching and now we couldn’t communicate with just our thoughts, which probably didn’t matter since Rochelle knew what we were thinking anyway. But still, I didn’t want to die like this, all alone, and dear Lord, for the first time I realized that we were all probably going to. Die. Here. Now.
“But your glorious blood will live on in me,” Rochelle intoned.
“She’s got some kind of super-telekinetic powers,” Milo shouted to Cal and Dana, who were both still moving. Dana sent the second of the bookshelves at Rochelle, who blasted it into splinters. “She’s holding Sky and Garrett and Jilly and me. We’re frozen in place!”
It was remarkable—the amount of power that a jokering D-addict could access. Dana had a similar ability—to encompass another person in a telekinetic straitjacket, so to speak. But she couldn’t use it to control more than one person at a time. She certainly couldn’t lock down four of us like this.
“Oh, fuck!” Dana said, and I saw with a sinking heart that Rochelle had frozen her now, too. She was unable to dodge the spray of wood and dust that the joker sent back at her, and the force knocked her down and pushed her back until she hit the wall. And this time she didn’t get up. “Damn it! I can’t move! Cal!”
“I got this!” We were down to Cal. Our last best hope was a D-addict himself, and for once I was grateful that he was wearing his scary face, head tilted down so that he gazed at Rochelle from beneath furrowed brows, his teeth barred in a snarl.
But Rochelle just laughed, and that, too, was so loud it hurt my ears. “You think you’re so dangerous,” she intoned. “But you are nothing!”
And with that, she somehow turned Cal’s power back on him, zapping him with his own electrical current. Just like with Dana, the force sent him backward until he hit the wall. He slid down so that he was sitting several feet from her. Now he couldn’t move either.
Without Cal’s electrical current buzzing, the fans spinning overhead were creaking noisily, and Rochelle looked up and exploded first one and then the other. After the dust finished raining down onto the tile floor, the silence was deafening.
Milo spoke up. “What now?” he said. “Sky? Dana?”
“Now? There is nothing you can do to escape,” Rochelle said as she moved toward Garrett, who was still holding Jilly.
I expected her to kill us. All of us. Right there, the way she’d killed Ashley, but Rochelle turned to me and said, “What, and miss the fun?” And I knew instantly that this joker was one of those who, as Dana put it, enjoyed playing with her food. She was going to kill us, but she was going to do it slowly.
That was both good and bad. Good because it gave us some time, and time was definitely on our side. Bad because of the whole killing-us thing.
Meanwhile Dana ignored Rochelle and answered Milo’s What now? “I don’t know. I’m working on it.”
I knew she was doing the same thing that I was—going down my entire list of G-T abilities to see if I had anything in my pocket that could help us here. I could run really fast, but not while in this TK body hold. I could still move liquids, maybe burst the pipes or create a giant wave to crash into the house, but I’d have to stop saving Jilly’s life to do it—I couldn’t do both at the same time. I didn’t have that kind of power or control. Also? If I flooded this place with water while none of us could move, it was far more likely that we’d drown long before Rochelle.
All of my other powers—my ability to home in on a person I’d met, my ability to smell evil, my psychic-ish dreams and visions, my eidetic memory, my self-healing skills—were useless to us now.
Except…my super-memory meant that I remembered everything that Morgan had told me about D-addicts and the detox process—the idea that stopping Cal’s heart would make the Destiny in his system burn itself out…
“We need to get her to burn through the D in her bloodstream, so she’ll go into withdrawal and, you know…” I called out to my friends, even as I strained against the hold Rochelle had on me. I didn’t want to say the word die and piss her off. “This can’t be easy—holding six of us in place like this. We need to figure out a way to make it even harder. Maybe if we all struggle? Maybe one of us can get free!”
Rochelle was looking hard at Jilly, at the bag that was emptying instead of filling. She turned and looked directly at me with her crazy eyes. “Stop doing that,” she ordered. “I want her blood!”
“Let’s all talk,” Calvin suggested. “Maybe she’ll overload if she tries to gag us, too.”
“Absolutely, let’s try it,” Dana said as Cal began reciting the alphabet, and Milo said, “I love you, Sky, you know that, right? And we’re gonna get out of this, I know we are. And then I’m going to let you see my entire childhood, in real time if you want to…”
“I wanna go home, I wanna go home,” Garrett chanted as I alternated between telling Milo, “I love you, too,” and saying, “Everyone push back on three. One…two…three! One…two…three!”
Rochelle spun to glare at each of us in turn as we spoke, and I could tell she was trying to use her powers to shut us up, but she couldn’t. Of course, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t develop the ability to gag us eventually. A jokering D-addict’s powers often got stronger and stronger, just continuing to grow—until the joker’s head exploded. Often literally. Please dear Lord, make her head explode soon…
“Silence!”
We didn’t shut up, and she started to scream, a wordless, plaintive wail that got our complete attention. And when we shut up and she finally stopped, she glared again at me. And pointed to Jilly. “Stop! That!”
“Nope,” I told her. “One…two…three!”
It worked—it worked! For a fraction of a second it had worked. I saw Rochelle stagger and I’d moved my arm—just a bit. But I’d definitely moved. “Dana?” I asked.
“Yup,” she said. “Let’s keep it going. One…two…three!”
Rochelle just laughed and turned on her unequal heels—but again, she’d wobbled just a little as she went into the closet.
“Don’t push her too hard,” Milo said to me quickly and quietly. “She’ll lash out and she’ll kill you.”
“No, she’ll lash out and kill you,” I whispered back, my heart hammering in my chest. “She wants my blood.”
And sure enough, Rochelle came out of the closet—out of her home Destiny lab—with IV tubing, a needle, and an empty plasma bag. She wasn’t carrying them—she was floating them telekinetically beside her as if to emphasize how unconcerned she was by our attempts to tax her abilities.
In her mind, her powers were limitless. But I knew better. She was starting to sweat. I could see it beading on her upper lip and along her hairline.
“One…two…three,” I whispered, and we all pushed hard.
Rochelle just laughed again, and the rubber tourniquet wrapped itself around my arm, which she’d used her powers to jerk straight. And yes, there were my veins. Ouch. The needle pricked as it slid in and my blood began to flow out.
“So who do you save now?” Rochelle taunted me. “Jilly or yourself?” She turned to look at Dana as another blood bag and IV tubing came dancing out of the D-lab closet. “Or maybe…your precious Dana?” She smiled that awful smile at me. “I know your TK powers are limited and that you can’t save more than one of you at a time, you poor, pathetic little waste of powerful and delicious blood. So who, exactly, is it going to be?”
————
I was frozen—and not just because R
ochelle had me in that TK body lock.
But then I realized that this was what she wanted. She wanted me paralyzed—and not actively fighting back and forcing her to use up more of the D in her system.
Dana and Milo were both hammering me with variations on, “If you die, everyone else will, too.”
Dana said it best. “Always put the oxygen mask on yourself first.”
Still, I knew if I stopped sending that blood back into Jilly, she was in serious danger. I could handle losing a bag of blood. I looked at it again. It was a very big bag.
But I also knew that Dana hadn’t recovered yet from donating blood into Calvin’s private Destiny fund. It wouldn’t be long before I was going to have to choose between Jilly and Dana, and I’m sorry, but I was going to pick Dana. But I was going to hate myself for the rest of my life—I knew that, as well.
But then Cal spoke up. “Bitch, please,” he said. “We all know Skylar’s gonna choose herself—because that’s what we all do, right? When it comes down to it? We always choose ourselves. So why don’t you let me get the hell up, so I can go and get that batch of D that’s cooking out in the trunk of my car—add it to what you’ve got going here. Because if you’re making Destiny with all three of these girls’ blood? That shit is gonna rock. And I want in.”
Dana started to cry. “Oh, Calvin, no,” she said. “Please, no, don’t make me kill you, too.”
Rochelle had turned to stare at Calvin, but now she looked hard at Dana. “She’s lying,” she reported in her crazy triple voice as she turned back to Calvin. “She will never kill you. She is not able. But you… You are not lying.”
My heart sank. I had been so certain that Cal was playing her—convincing her to set him free, so he’d suddenly… I didn’t know what. Save the day? Somehow. We desperately needed someone to save this extremely awful day.
But now…
Rochelle stepped closer to Cal. “You…want to help me. I see this in you.”
“That’s right,” Cal said, and my heart was in my throat because his eyes looked as crazy as hers. It was worse, because he was Calvin. Except he wasn’t. Not anymore. Oh, dear Lord… Was jokering contagious?
Except he wasn’t looking at me. His full focus was on Rochelle and only on Rochelle. His gaze didn’t waver, like she was the only person in this room he could see.
“Calvin, no,” Dana sobbed.
“Dana won’t have to kill you, Cal,” I spat out through gritted teeth as I strained against Rochelle’s hold. “I will!” He flinched—just a little—but he still didn’t look at me.
“No,” Milo said quietly. “I will.”
Rochelle did her truth-o-meter thing, looking first at me—“Lying”—and then Milo. “Not lying.”
Calvin laughed—the tiniest chuckle in the back of his throat as he kept his gaze glued to Rochelle. “Thanks, Miles. Good to know. Come on, sweet thang,” he implored the woman with a great big smile. “Cut me loose. Let’s have us some fun.”
Rochelle nodded and did it. I was waiting for her, and as I pushed and strained against her hold on me, I felt her control give just a little bit. Just enough for me to get my hands free and to rip that IV from my arm. Ow!
She whirled to face me at that, crazy eyes sparking, her focus on locking me back down as behind her Calvin sat up, released from her hold. It was only then that he finally shot me a look—a slight widening of his brown eyes in an expression that said Seriously?—even as he reached for Dana, wrapping his arms around her as he shouted, “Now, now, now!”
He wasn’t on Rochelle’s side after all! I was right! I was right!
And it was insane what happened then. It was as if by touching each other, Dana’s power somehow combined with Cal’s, because the force they blasted out toward Rochelle was tinged with Cal’s blue electricity, but it was bigger; it was better; it was super Greater-Than. It picked up Rochelle and it flung her all the way across the room and slammed her against the far wall with a crash that shook the entire house.
And just like that, the TK hold Rochelle had on us was gone. Garrett sank down onto the floor, with Jilly still in his arms.
I could move again, and I reached for Milo, who also grabbed for me.
Are you all right? I am. Is Calvin…? He was lying to her! How in God’s name did he manage to lie to her?
But Cal and Dana weren’t done. They sent another bolt of their combined power at Rochelle, who was lying motionless across the room, and then another and another, until Dana finally spoke. “Cal! That’s enough. That’s enough, babe. That’s enough.”
And then they lay there, arms still around each other, both breathing hard.
Garrett asked what we were all thinking: “What the hell…?”
“Apparently one of my new abilities is some kind of telepathic blocking,” Cal told us. “And that whole weird knowing thing? Different than the numbers or addresses I blurt out, although…twenty-two! I don’t know what that means, but twenty-two. I got a big honking twenty-two echoing in my head—do with it what you will. But I somehow knew that I could do it. That she’d believe me even though I was lying. Kinda the same way I knew that if I grabbed hold of Dana, our powers would combine. And can I just state for the record? That. Was. Awesome.”
I asked the next important question. “Is she really dead?”
Dana pushed herself up off the floor and—still holding tightly to Cal in case they needed to blast her again—went over to check. “Yes.”
“Whoa,” Garrett said. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
Alarmed, I turned to look, wondering what new monster had appeared that we’d now have to fight, but saw that it was Jilly who was making Garrett go all whoa. She’d roused—apparently enough of her blood had returned to her system for her to be able to regain consciousness. She was trying to pull the needle from her arm.
“It’s okay,” Garrett told her. “The blood’s going back in.”
The bag was almost empty. “I’ll see if there’s any more in the back, in the lab,” Milo said and went to do just that.
But the girl was still disoriented and upset. Garrett had to hold her hand to keep her from removing the IV. “It’s all over,” he tried to reassure her. “You’re safe. Rochelle is dead.”
Jilly started to cry. “Oh Jesus, oh no!”
“Rochelle being dead doesn’t make Jilly safe,” I reminded Garrett. “She thinks she has to go back.”
“Because I do,” Jilly said, sobbing. “I have to go back. And then it all starts again! Please, please just let me die.”
“Okay,” I said. “We will. We’re going to. You’re going to die here. Today.”
Now Dana, Calvin, and Garrett were all looking at me as if I’d jokered.
But Milo had recently spent time in my head, and since I’d been thinking about this for a while, he knew exactly what I meant. And as he brought another bag of Jilly’s blood out of the closet, he said, “Skylar has a really good idea. It was from something Garrett said. About how the only way Jilly will ever be free is if she dies.” He knelt down next to the girl and told her, “So we’re going to make it look like you died. Here. Today, just like Sky said.” He looked up at me. “We’ll have to burn the place down.”
I nodded. “I figured Cal could start an electrical fire. It’ll be an accident. Rochelle’s body will be found, along with her dear friend Ashley, and the body of a teenager that Garrett can identify as Jilly. That, plus we’ll leave behind the tracking device from Jilly’s arm…”
Dana was following, partly. “Hello. This means we need the body of a teenaged girl.” As she said the words, she, too, figured it out. “We’ll go into Harrisburg. And buy one.”
I nodded as I put the new plasma bag on the end of Jilly’s IV and gently sent that blood back up the tubing.
Most people in Harrisburg were desperately homeless. They couldn’t buy food let alone pa
y for burial costs when a loved one died. So a truck went around every morning, picking up the dead. Some of the cadavers were sold to the university and colleges up in Palm River. The others were buried in the local landfill. It was awful to think we could buy a dead girl, but if it meant saving Jilly…
Jilly looked from Dana to me to Garrett, and for the first time, she had a spark of hope in her eyes. “But…I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You can stay with me,” Garrett said, not entirely gallantly.
Dana shook her head. “That’s not a good idea. Your father’s eventually gonna come home. I think she should go to Orlando. Stay with April and the others. They’re doing a good job taking care of Lacey…”
Calvin took her hand. “That’s a really good idea.”
“For now, anyway,” Dana said.
Garrett cleared his throat. “I’ll go into Harrisburg and get the, you know, body. That’s something I can do. You guys have been carrying most of the weight today.”
“Thanks, G,” I said. “That would be great. Meanwhile, we’ll get Jilly ready to travel.”
Garrett cleared his throat again. “But I kinda need…money. Sorry. I’m broke, and I’m betting the guy with the bodies won’t take my plastic.”
Dana nodded. “You and Cal go upstairs, see what Rochelle has in her wallet. If there’s not enough cash, go shopping in her jewelry box. We don’t want to take it all. We don’t want anyone to think there was a robbery here—just an accidental fire that burns itself out.”
And it would burn out. Coconut Key’s skeletal fire department would, at best, only be called in to prevent the neighboring houses from igniting.
“Let’s do this,” Dana said. But before Cal followed Garrett upstairs, she pulled him in for a long, lingering, thank God we’re alive kiss.
And I realized then that this dangerous day wasn’t over.
We still had to deal with Calvin’s addiction. The words he’d told Rochelle echoed in my head.
When it comes down to it? We always choose ourselves.
I knew he was lying when he said it—that he didn’t believe it, because it wasn’t true. We were all still alive because we always chose each other, because we worked together, because we relied on and protected one another.
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