by K. C. Archer
The exterior paint was no longer a warm golden yellow but faded and cracked. Weather-beaten asphalt shingles peeled off the roof. The front shutters swayed off the window hinges, which protected nothing but broken panes of glass. Tangled weeds replaced the carefully tended garden. And the front door? The door that her mother had opened time and again in Teddy’s dreams and beckoned her inside? Gone. Nothing left but an ugly, gaping hole.
Pyro’s hand landed softly on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “We’ve seen it. We can go if you want.”
“No.” Teddy steeled her nerves and reached for the door handle. “I’m going inside.”
Pyro shook his head. “This is probably Yates’s idea of a joke.”
Teddy shook her head. “Dara was right. That isn’t like Yates. If he brought me here, it’s for a reason.” She slipped out of her seat and heard the other doors slam behind her in quick succession. And then her friends were at her side.
“So, this is it,” Dara said, sizing up the house. “Definitely worth nine hours driving with Jillian.”
Jillian, as though she’d been waiting for her cue, chose that moment to squeal, “Oh my gosh! Look!”
Teddy nearly jumped out of her skin. Pyro wheeled around while Dara shrieked, “What?”
“There! Just beyond that bush—a greater sage grouse! Do you have any idea how lucky we are to see one? They’re just off the endangered list!”
Teddy let out a shaky breath. Beside her, Pyro did the same. “C’mon, Jillian,” he said, “could you just give us a warning next time?”
If Jillian heard him, she gave no indication. She went down on all fours, trying to coax the startled bird out from behind the bush where it was hiding.
“That’s it,” Dara said. “I’m done. I am not driving back with her. I’ll ride in Pyro’s back seat. I’ll skateboard. I’ll hitchhike. I’ll walk. But I will not spend another moment in the car with her.”
Teddy ignored them all. She approached the house and climbed the rickety front steps. She passed through the threshold, and she was inside. Dust, mold, and animal urine assaulted her nose. Although the interior was too dim for her to make out much initially, she heard the scratchy panic of mice scrabbling against the floorboards. Then her eyes adjusted, and she took in the rooms around her.
Bare of nearly everything. Stripped and neglected. Nothing left in the entryway but a broken wooden chair and pieces of shattered pottery that might have been a vase or a bowl. Faded rose-patterned paper, half-peeled from the wall. Teddy took it all in. Every despairing detail. This had been her home. She’d hoped to see something familiar, something that triggered a memory—an echo of her mother’s voice, an image of her childhood—but all she saw were stripped walls and broken floorboards. There was nothing left. Nothing whole. Everything was wrecked, destroyed, abandoned.
She scanned the room, searching for clues to what had happened here, as if the place were a crime scene. Like she’d learned in her classes at school.
Having finished with her sweep of the lower level, she moved toward the staircase and proceeded upward. When she reached the second-floor landing, a voice greeted her.
“I was wondering when you’d show up, Theodora.”
CHAPTER THREE
DEREK YATES STOOD IN THE doorway of an upstairs room, mere feet away. For months, he’d remained elusive. And now that the man stood in front of her, it felt, well, anticlimactic. In prison, he’d appeared polished and put together. Despite his circumstances, he’d emanated power and control.
But the Yates standing before her wasn’t the Yates she remembered. His beard was overgrown, his hair unkempt, his clothes unwashed. He’d lost weight. And though he appeared a shadow of the person she’d met in San Quentin, one look into his eyes told her that he wasn’t someone to be trifled with. There was no mistaking the glittering intelligence lurking there. She sent a pulse of energy to her mental shield, willing the electric walls higher. She wasn’t letting Derek Yates into her head, whether he took the guise of a psychic spy or a panhandler who slept beneath highway underpasses. Either way, he was dangerous.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Teddy laughed despite herself. This wasn’t her home. There was nothing for her here. Nothing but Derek Yates and his games. She’d been played by him once again. He’d passed on a kernel of hope, and she’d devoured it like a last meal.
“What do you want?”
“It’s about what we both want, Theodora.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Information.”
He held her gaze, and she stared right back. She expected him to push into her head, or try to, but . . . nothing. Nothing on top of the piles of nothing that she had already collected early this morning.
Then he took a step toward her. As he moved from the doorway, Teddy could see into the room behind him: a sleeping bag on the floor, a pile of clothes, a neat stack of canned food, a cache of water bottles. Derek Yates had been living here. Not just waiting for her. She stashed away the piece of information as he closed the door behind him.
“Teddy?” Pyro called up the stairwell.
“Good, you didn’t come alone.” Yates brushed past her and walked briskly down the stairs. “We have work to do.”
He left no choice but to follow. Down the stairs, back to the entryway. Yates looked between her friends. It was then that she realized they’d never seen him in person. She’d told them about her encounter at San Quentin, about the note she’d received at the Cantina. But they’d never met. “Pyro—I mean, Lucas—Dara, and Jillian,” Teddy said, gesturing to each of her friends. “This is Derek Yates.”
He scanned them dismissively, as if he’d sized them up and found them wanting. “I suppose they’ll have to do.”
Pyro gave one of his signature smirks. “We don’t have to do anything, you—”
Yates narrowed his eyes. Pyro stumbled back as though an invisible hand had shoved him against the wall.
“What the hell was that for?” Pyro said, catching his breath.
“Respect,” Yates said. “Show some.”
Pyro lunged for Yates, but Teddy grabbed hold of his jacket to stop him.
“If we’re finished with theatrics, we have business to attend to.” Yates smoothed his shirt deliberately, even though Pyro hadn’t been close to laying a hand on him. “I brought Theodora here—”
“You sent a cryptic string of numbers via Jillian’s boyfriend,” Dara interrupted.
“You figured it out. Anything else would have led them straight here.”
“Who?” Teddy said. “The Patriot Corps?”
Yates’s eyes flashed, but he didn’t reply. As if on cue, a rumbling in the distance. Trucks. “There’s been activity at the base nearby. I need to confirm who’s behind it. And why.”
The base nearby. Teddy didn’t know why it hadn’t hit her sooner. She’d known she’d be returning to the yellow house that haunted her dreams. But her subconscious had resisted putting two and two together. If she was going to Jackpot, that meant she was going to Sector Three.
She raced through the entryway, out the door, down the steps. The morning desert air was cool against her suddenly flaming skin.
“Wait,” Yates called from behind her. “Wait.”
Teddy felt him at the edges of her mind, but her shield held strong. He caught her wrist, jerked her to a stop. “Not yet. You’re not ready.”
Teddy pulled free. “Which way? Where is it?” She was probably less than a dozen miles from where her parents had been tortured. Where her father had died. In the anticipation of seeing her childhood home, where her story began, she hadn’t realized that she’d also be within reach of where her father’s story ended.
“All in good time, Theodora. Come back inside. We have matters to discuss.”
Time wasn’t good. Time wasn’t on her side. “No,” she said, “I’m tired of waiting. I’ve waited all summer. I’ve waited my whole life.”
Yates scanned the horizon
as if following the sound of the trucks in the distance. He glanced at the doorway, where Pyro, Jillian, and Dara huddled together, watching them. Then his gaze settled on Teddy. “You look like your mother,” he said. “But you sound like your father. Impatient. Impulsive.” Birds chirped around them. The sun had risen and broken through the ghost of desert mist. It would be a good morning for a hike, or some other normal outdoorsy hipster activity, if she didn’t have other shit to deal with.
Yates continued, “When I finally decided to abandon the Patriot Corps, I asked Marysue to come with me. But she wouldn’t.” He studied Teddy. “After all they had done to her. After what they did to your father. She still wouldn’t leave. She told me she had chosen her path.”
Teddy felt her body stiffen. For years she’d been desperate to learn anything about her birth mother. All summer, she’d been trying to rationalize why Marysue had stayed with the PC. She didn’t want to believe Yates. Didn’t want to believe that her mother could have committed the crimes she’d read about, been a willing participant in a group that had caused such atrocities.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m many things, Theodora. But I’m not a liar.”
She thought back to when she’d met Yates in San Quentin and acknowledged the truth in that. Derek Yates was manipulative, self-serving, cunning. But he wasn’t a liar.
“Before we went our separate ways,” he continued, “Marysue asked me to find you. To give you something. The fact that I’ve been in prison for years has delayed her request, but we find ourselves in an interesting situation: now, I think, we find ourselves on the same side.”
The same side? Absurd. Last year she’d thought he was innocent, but he’d used her. He probably would again. She should turn and walk away. Jump in Pyro’s truck and head back to school.
But Yates had something for her. Something from her mother. She had nothing from her birth parents. Only an old photo. Another object delivered by Yates. Another move to manipulate her into doing his bidding when the timing seemed right. And still she felt herself yearning for it, for some connection to her past. “What is it?”
“If you agree to help me, I’ll give it to you.”
Teddy narrowed her eyes. “That wasn’t the deal. That’s not what you said. You said my mother gave you something to give to me.”
“A promise I intend to honor—with certain conditions, of course.”
Naturally. “What do you want?”
A quick shake of his head. “I don’t like having these conversations in the open. You never know who may be listening. We’ll talk inside.” He turned and made his way back to the house, clearly confident that she would follow.
Teddy dug her nails into her palms. Ever since starting at Whitfield, she’d felt like everyone else held all the cards, and no matter how many moves ahead she tried to play, she was always playing from behind.
No longer. That ended now. With each step toward the house, Teddy’s resolve hardened.
“You all right?” Pyro asked, as she followed Yates into the house.
“I’m fine.” She was done with Yates parceling out information at his own pace. She wanted to know why she was here. Now. “Enough with the games, Yates. Whatever my mother wanted me to have is mine. So give it to me.”
“Agree to help and it’s yours. Trust me, Theodora.”
“Teddy, what’s he talking about?” Pyro asked.
Ignoring Pyro, she held Yates’s gaze for a long, steady beat. Trusting Yates was about as likely as a royal flush on a flop. But using him the way he used her? That she could do. So she’d give her word, agree to help him. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. Not the most honorable move, but that was exactly what Yates would do. He’d use her and then disappear.
She thought for a moment, then said, “What would be different this time? You’d get what you want and then vanish.”
“Couldn’t you find him telepathically if he tried to get away?” Jillian said.
The corner of Yates’s mouth twitched. Teddy knew that breaking in to his head was like breaking out of Alcatraz. He reached into his pocket for a pencil and a scrap of paper. Wrote something down, then passed it to Teddy.
She glanced at it. “A post office box in Santa Fe?”
“Write me and I’ll come to you. And don’t for a moment consider staking out the post office for my arrival. That will be forwarded to another city, and then another, until it comes to me. No email, no phone numbers. We’re going old-school, Theodora. Safer for everyone that way.”
“And I’m supposed to trust this?”
“It’s more than I’ve given anyone else before.”
Not perfect. Not even close. But at least she had some link to Yates. A string she could pull when she needed it. “You have a deal,” she said.
Yates nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the Misfits alone in the hallway. Her friends stared at her in appalled surprise.
“Teddy, what are you thinking?” Dara said.
“She’s obviously not,” Pyro said, “if she’d willingly make a bargain with Derek Yates. Jesus, Teddy.”
She shook her head, ignoring their concerned stares. No time for explanations. Yates returned with a small bundle wrapped in beige muslin and passed it to her. She studied it for a moment in agitated silence. Something from her mother. It should have been hers years ago. But would she have been ready for it? Before she’d known about her birth parents, Whitfield, Sector Three, psychics? She wanted the moment to be private. Instead, her friends and Yates looked on as she carefully unwrapped the yellowing fabric. Inside, a familiar object: a large purple stone in a silver setting, hung on a matching chain. Teddy recognized it from the photograph she had of her parents. “It’s her necklace.”
“What does it do?” Dara asked. “Or is it just sentimental?”
“Crystals help certain psychic abilities,” Jillian said. She stepped closer, peering at the stone. “Ametrine. It’s a combination of amethyst and citrine. Rare to form together in quartz. Every stone is different. It has properties of both, but it harmonizes them, too.”
“There wasn’t a note?” Teddy asked. But a note would have been too easy. And Teddy Cannon’s life was anything but. She held the pendant between her fingers, felt the smooth surface of the polished crystal. She’d expected answers, not a memento. She turned the stone over in her hands, studying it for a clue, waiting for something, anything, to happen. But nothing did. Her frustration rocketed. Essentially, she’d just made a deal with the devil for an accessory.
“So, what, that’s it?” Pyro asked.
“That’s it?” Yates mocked. He looked ready to push Pyro through the wall, not just up against it. “Marysue Delaney was a powerful psychic. An astral traveler.”
Astral travel. The ability to move through both space and time. Clint had mentioned her mother’s skill last year, but so far, Teddy hadn’t shown any aptitude for it.
Yates continued: “I don’t know how that stone works, but she always had it on her, Theodora. I never saw her take it off. Not once. Not until I told her I was leaving. And then she begged me to get it to you.”
“But how do I use it? I’m not a traveler, I can barely—”
A low groan interrupted her. Dara stumbled, clutching her head. “Crap. It’s happening again.”
“A death warning?” Jillian said, worry in her voice.
“I’m not sure. It’s jumbled. Fire and explosion. And—” Dara’s knees buckled. She reached for the wall to steady herself. “I see the Sector Three symbol.”
“A past vision,” Pyro suggested. “The explosion. Teddy’s father—”
“Old news,” Yates interrupted, his cool demeanor back in place. “There are larger things at stake here. What concerns us at this moment is the present—what’s happening on that base today.”
An echo of her conversation with Pyro in the diner ran through Teddy’s mind. Pyro had told her to forget the past and focus on the future. Yates was telling her the
same thing. But she had to understand her past in order to move forward. That was the point of all this, wasn’t it?
“I have a plan,” Yates said. “But you’ll have to follow my instructions exactly.”
Teddy watched him look around the room, sizing up her friends. And that was when it hit her. Yates needed her. Needed them. He hadn’t brought them here just to deliver her mother’s necklace. His next words proved her assessment correct: “We’ve got to move fast if we want to get in before the guards change shifts.”
“Wait a minute,” Pyro said. “What guards? Get in where?”
Yates delivered a withering look, then unzipped a slim backpack. Teddy watched as he loaded in a small camera, a knife, water bottles, and a heavy piece of rope—supplies, she realized—before zipping it closed and putting it on. He walked to the door, then paused. “I thought you would have figured it out by now. We’re breaking in to Sector Three.”
CHAPTER FOUR
TEDDY FOLLOWED DEREK YATES OUT the back door and down a path that ran east, carrying them deeper into the desert. As soon as she’d realized that Sector Three was mere miles away, there’d been no question that she’d do anything to see it. But her friends? She tried to guess without going into their heads what had motivated them to agree to join Yates’s mission (that was psychic friendship 101, after all, and especially frowned upon for a student at Whitfield Institute).
It hadn’t been necessary with Jillian, anyway. When another greater sage grouse ambled in the direction of the reactivated base, Jillian proclaimed the bird’s appearance as a sign. Teddy didn’t know much about signs, or the endangered wildlife of the Nevada desert, but anything that turned her once reluctant friend in the mission’s favor worked for her. Dara, Teddy guessed, wanted to see the source of her latest vision, or maybe search for Molly. As for Pyro, he’d probably come to make certain they didn’t get caught, hurt, or, considering Yates was involved, worse—killed.