by A. L. Tyler
Everyone went back to eating breakfast. A few seconds later, Devin spoke up in a quiet tone from the other end of the table. He didn’t actually eat meals with them because he was on a special diet, but liked sitting with them all the same. Today, Lena had asked him down with a purpose; he didn’t know everything, but he might as well have. “If you’re worried about them going alone, I could go. I mean, I don’t actually have a license, but I know how to drive. I actually have some human relatives out there. We’re not close, obviously, but I might like to see them if it’s okay with you.”
Of course, Devin didn’t actually have relatives in South Carolina. Or at least not to his knowledge; his understanding of his biological family was limited to what he knew about his dead grandparents.
Howard sighed. “Well then, you couldn’t drive the car. And I’d want to talk it over with the doctor before you went, because that might not be such a good idea. But I guess I could try to put something together.” He looked directly at Lena. We’ll discuss it later.
After the meal was over, Lena found her way up to Howard’s office and waited patiently until he arrived. When he came in, he went directly to the opposite side of his desk and sat down, looking much more casual than Lena had expected.
Without actually looking at her, he started in a serious tone. “Do you really feel comfortable doing this? Rollin is still out there.”
Lena cast him a nervous glance. “But he hasn’t been heard from in months…not since what he did to Devin, right?”
Howard shrugged. “Right. You know as well as I do.”
Lena shifted uncomfortably. She knew he was still out there, but preferred not to think about it. Everyone knew he was still out there—but what he was doing, or planning to do, remained a frightening enigma. “Are you comfortable with me doing this?”
Howard glanced over at her and sighed. “It’s not about me. You’re old enough to make this call. I think you should take some time to really think about this, and I’ll say I said no if you’re not okay doing it. But if you’re ready to go, I’m ready to let you. But I need to know you can handle being the adult in the situation—Cheryl’s responsible, but she’s still just a kid. And you know I like Devin, but he’s not someone I would leave in charge if given an option.”
Lena nodded. She looked down at her knees. “But you think I’m ready?”
“I think you’re ready if you think you’re ready. It’s a big responsibility, even with taking Cheryl and Devin. You’ll be in charge. I doubt anything will go wrong, but if it does, it would be your job to take care of it.” Howard’s grey eyes scrutinized her.
Lena took a deep breath. She looked back up at Howard. “I’m ready. I can handle this.”
A week later, Lena found herself in a pair of low slung jeans and a T-shirt, casually propping herself against the driver’s door of the grey sedan as Howard worked the last of the heavy suitcases into the trunk. She hadn’t been dressed down to such an extent since her induction into the Council, and while Mrs. Ralston kept eyeing her exposed midriff with deep disapproval, she found that the clothes seemed to enhance the effects of her lifted spirits. For the first time, she was stepping out to attend to her own business, and not anyone else’s. This journey was hers alone.
She was keeping her secrets and her word to Warren Astley. She hadn’t spoken to him since the church in Crystal City, but her present arrangements were sufficiently public that whoever had informed him last time would probably tell him again; she had already booked three nights in a hotel in Missouri. She had laid the plan out very carefully with Devin and Cheryl; they were hoping to meet up with Warren Astley sometime between the extended stay in Missouri and the next extended stay in South Carolina. Hopefully Warren would consent to traveling with them for a while, just so that Devin and Lena could oversee the introduction, and then, if everything went well, Cheryl would be staying with Warren. She would still come out to visit them, but she would be living with her biological father. Lena realized that someday she would likely have to reconcile the facts with Howard, but she was hoping to wait for a time when he didn’t already have so much on his mind.
Of course, Lena hadn’t told either Devin or Cheryl what her business in South Carolina was, despite the fact that Devin badgered her with questions every time they were alone. She had finally sworn him to secrecy and said that she thought she had found some of her own lost relatives in the area. Ones the Council didn’t know about.
Devin’s joking expression slipped. “Which branch of your family tree?”
Lena tried not to let her uncertainty show. She had found another family tree, and it didn’t mesh with the doctor’s story; this one showed that Edward Daray’s grandmother was named Olesia. The doctor was under the impression that Pyrallis’s wife had relatives in South Carolina, but with this new knowledge it was quite possible that Edward had named his daughter after his grandmother. “No one the Council would be concerned about…but still, I don’t want them knowing. This my last retreat, Dev. The last time I am counting on going anywhere that's a secret, and I have a good reason. I don’t want to bring all of this down on some poor unsuspecting people when I don’t even know for sure if I’m related.”
He had agreed to keep the secret, of course; he was too good of a friend not to. And then the day came, and the three of them were getting into the car; Devin took the front passenger seat, and Cheryl crammed herself into the seat behind Lena’s next to the surplus luggage that wouldn’t fit in the trunk and a cooler they were taking along with ice and drinks in it. Lena put her new sunglasses on and waved to Howard as they took off down the unpaved path to the gate at the end of the property. Lena took a deep breath as she crossed the threshold, and then they were off on their own at forty miles an hour.
They blasted the radio for the first four hours just because they could. They had greasy drive-thru food for lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner; the doctor had warned Devin against too much greasy, fatty food, to avoid indigestion for a few weeks, and soon they found themselves pulling over to buy antacids at a little gas station in Kansas. As they pulled back onto the road, Lena felt her cell phone buzz persistently against her right hip. She checked over her shoulder, pulled onto the highway, and then flipped the cell open.
“Lena Collins.”
Static cut through the line, and then cleared. “Lena, it’s Howard. Are you pulled over?”
Lena checked her blind spot before passing a slow moving RV. “Of course I am.”
“Because you know I won’t be happy if you get put on government record in a state that you don’t live in for talking and driving.” His didactic tone made her role her eyes.
She heaved a sigh. There was hardly any traffic on the road, and the only people they encountered were the ones Lena was passing. “Fine!”
She threw the phone into Devin’s lap. He picked it up. “Hi Howard. How are you?...Well, you know, Lena forced a couple of cheeseburgers down my throat and now I’ve got it out both ends…But it’s okay, really. Oh, really?”
The way his voice had picked up at the end caused Lena to look over. Howard wasn’t just checking in.
“Hmm…” Lena saw Devin’s eyes narrow. “That’s awfully convenient. Yeah, glad I’m not the only one.”
“What?” Lena glanced over. “Dev, what is it?”
“Hold please, Lena’s being a control freak,” he covered the phone with his hand and looked over at her, “I believe you're supposed to be concentrating on driving, so why don’t you do that. An old friend of ours dropped Howard an email today.”
Lena furrowed her brow. “Who?”
Devin seemed annoyed that Lena couldn’t guess. “Oh, you know, a certain card-hating, butt-kissing, laundry-inept someone…”
Lena felt her eyes go wide; she was glad she was wearing her shades so that Devin didn’t see. “Griffin? Really? What’d he say?”
Devin raised the cell phone to his ear again. “Yes, now she wants to know what he wants. I’ll tell her.” H
e turned to Lena. “Apparently he has a bad feeling about you going on this trip, and requests that we turn around now. He says he’s afraid for your safety, given that Rollin hasn’t been caught.”
Lena grunted. “Figures.”
“What?” Devin had gone back to the cell phone. “Yes. Okay. Thanks, Howard. Yeah, you too. Bye.”
He clapped the phone shut and then made an exaggerated sigh. “We’re still going?”
Lena didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Yes. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Because he said we should go home…”
Lena checked over her shoulder again and passed a slow moving van. “He’s not my keeper. Not anymore. And he’s freakin’ paranoid…It’s probably that he’s worried about my being out and him not being here,” She made an expression of mock overprotection. “You know, separation anxiety.”
Everyone broke into a hearty laugh. But as Lena went to pass the sedan in front of her, Devin yelled and grabbed the wheel. The semi coming on their left seemed to miss the car by inches, the oversized wheels taller than the grey sedan itself causing panic to leap in Lena’s chest as it rolled on by, horn blaring at her stupidity.
“Take the wheel.”
Lena took a moment to steady herself. Adrenaline pulsed through her; the silence had returned. She looked down and realized that she must have jerked her hands back when Devin had yelled at her, because he was the only person steering the car now. She but her hands back onto the steering wheel and Devin let go. No one spoke.
Several minutes later, Cheryl finally spoke up. “What was that?”
Lena answered slowly. “That was nothing. It was an accident because I let myself get distracted.
“An accident like that, right after you get a phone call like that? Does that seem like a coincidence to you?” Cheryl’s voice had been calm at first, but her pitch had changed, becoming higher. From her window, she’d had a clear view of exactly how close a call it had been, and the experience had left her rattled.
“No…no. It wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t a premonition, Cheryl. It was us getting a phone call that distracted me, and the distraction caused me to do something stupid. Simple cause and effect.” Lena glanced into the rearview mirror.
Cheryl still looked cross. “Lena, there hasn’t been any traffic until you got that call!” She stared into Lena’s eyes in the mirror. “Pull over!”
“I’m not pulling over. We’re fine.”
“Maybe we should pull over,” Devin echoed. Lena glared at him, and he immediately tried to backtrack. “I’m just saying, let’s pull over until everyone’s calm, figure this out, and then we’ll get going again.”
Lena sighed. She wasn’t going to win this one; Cheryl looked on the verge of tears. She flicked the blinker and pulled the car off the side of the road. It rolled to a halt and Lena put it in park. She looked over at Devin, who seemed to be deep in thought and somewhat troubled.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Dev…”
“Shh…” The sound barely escaped his lips and they all sat together in silence for several long minutes before he spoke again. “Lena, does this feel right to you?”
She must have looked at him like he was crazy, but he gave no indication that he cared. Did it feel right to her? What was that supposed to mean? Her heart rate was finally sinking back to normal, but she still felt the buzz from their close brush with the semi. It might have been the sweat drying on her arms, but the car suddenly felt positively chill.
She reached forward and turned the heat on, flashing Devin a smile. “I feel fine…why?”
“He’s a full Silenti, and from what I understand, he’s one of the best.” Devin avoided her gaze. “Don’t you think we should consider…?”
“No,” Lena said simply, “I don’t. Devin, he’s across the country. He doesn’t know. You’re getting yourselves worked up over nothing!”
Her words died in the cool air. The sun was starting to go down, and they still had fifty miles to their first intended stop. She wasn’t turning around; Cheryl still looked worried and skeptical. Devin was trying to send her private glances, questioning how sure she really was.
“Look,” Lena started, “maybe you’re right. Maybe he…I don’t know, maybe he somehow foresaw the semi or something. From this distance, personally, I’ve never known him to be that good, but maybe he did. I still think it was self-fulfilling, because we probably would have blamed it on whatever the first thing to go wrong was, even if the semi hadn’t been there. I’m not ready to turn around yet, and it’s a shorter distance to the next hotel than to go back to the last town. I’ll call him tonight if it’ll make you feel better.”
It was a bold faced lie that the last town was further than the next one, but neither Devin nor Cheryl seemed to have been keeping track. They looked cautiously from Lena to each other.
“Does that sound okay?” Lena prompted as calmly as she could.
She gazed down at the steering wheel.
From the backseat, she finally heard Cheryl’s whispering voice. “Sure.”
Lena turned the ignition and they got back onto the highway. There was some small talk, but they mostly kept to themselves after that point. When they finally arrived at the next town and found a motel, Cheryl was positively pale.
They grabbed the bags they needed and moved into their room. Lena and Cheryl would be sharing one bed, and Devin was taking the other. Cheryl was so exhausted from worrying that she fell asleep almost immediately. After they had finished moving the bags inside, Devin pulled her outside the room to talk.
“She’s really freaked out.” He said, shaking his head.
“I’ve noticed, Devin, thank you.” Lena glared at him. “And I don’t get what the big deal is. Just because Griffin tells us to turn around, you’re that ready to do it?”
“It’s not just that, Lena, it’s the fact that it’s him. Look, maybe you haven’t noticed, but full-blooded Silenti tend to be right about these things. I don’t have that ability, and I don’t know if you have that ability or not. But you know what? I’ve known for a while that Cheryl does have that ability, at least a little, and she’s worried. The fact that she’s worried, and he’s worried, worries me.”
Devin gave her the sternest look Lena had ever seen from him. The jokes were gone, and Lena wasn’t sure what to say. “I…well, she’s worried because of the weird coincidence. I think she’s just a little shaken, that’s all.”
Devin didn’t blink. “Call him.”
Lena sighed. “Devin, it’s late. It’s hours later where he is and—“
“Call him, just to put my mind at ease. And if he’s okay with this, I’ll help you convince Cheryl.”
Lena took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay.”
She grabbed her phone and dialed Howard, had a quick conversation telling him that they had checked into a motel and everything was fine, and he seemed good with it, and then she asked him for Griffin’s new phone number.
“Isn’t it the same as his old number?” Howard asked.
Lena paused and looked over at Devin. He wasn’t going to be happy about this. “No…Howard, his old number was canceled weeks ago. He didn’t send you a new one in that email?”
“Well, let me check…”
Lena hoped the number was there. She couldn’t believe her trip was about to make an about face over human-born superstition that full Silenti knew everything.
Howard came back on the line. “Ah yes. There it is.”
Lena breathed a sigh of relief. Howard told her the number and she jotted it down on her palm using a pen from the car. She said goodbye to Howard, and then dialed Griffin. He didn’t answer. She dialed again, and there wasn’t an answer until the last ring.
“Hello?” His voice was muffled and tired. Lena thought she heard a television running in the background.
“Griffin? It’s Lena.”
He paused. She heard the television turn off. “Oh.”
“Okay,�
�� Lena tried to ignore the fact that while she knew she was elated to be talking to him again, he didn’t seem to care at all. “Howard told me you emailed him, and that you think it isn’t a good idea for me to be out?”
“It was just a thought.” He paused. “You’ve got to call at a decent hour next time. This is ridiculous.”
She heard blankets ruffling in the background. He must have laid back down on the bed; and he wanted there to be a “next time.”
“Well, your life must be boring lately if you’re that excited about it,” he mumbled.
“You have no idea, Griffin. It hasn’t been boring at all. Maybe you should come out and go with us if you’re so worried—I might be doing something that would interest you.” She hoped he would take it. She was worried about him, and it might have done him some good to find out that all of Pyrallis’s lies might not have been lies, or at least that there may have been some truth.
“Us?”
“I’m out here with Devin and Cheryl. You didn’t get the memo?”
“Devin?” She heard the sudden interest in his voice and her heart dropped.
“Not like that, Griffin.” She explained quickly. “It’s not like that at all. We’re close, but it’s not—“
Griffin’s tone was exasperated. “Congratulations on his survival, then. I didn’t think he was going to make it, but apparently the both of you are doing well. Good for you. I think I’ll sit this one out.”
“But Griffin,” she pleaded, “You can’t be doing much out there in California. Come out and see me.”
“I’m busier than you think.”
Lena felt the frustration rising in her throat. He always had to be so difficult—their first conversation in more than a month, and he had to be moody. “Well what the hell are you doing, then?! The whole Council’s about to become a bloodbath, and you’re off in California, being busy doing what, Griffin?!”