“Then why are they coming here now when we are preparing for war?” I watch him closely after asking my question. Now more than ever, it is a bad time to be a Godling, if you do not want to kill. The Eroi will come. David’s lackeys will come. To kill or take. Either way, they will come. We must fight them, and win.
“It’s too dangerous for them to stay on their own,” Chris says. “I worry about them traveling, but the council could go after them. I kept their location private, but it’s not hard to imagine them finding out and getting to her.”
Chris brought up his family to forge some sort of bond with me. To build trust. To show he understands. His fingers are pulled into fists as anxiety eats at him, thinking about his family being unprotected. I have two questions for him, but ask one before the other. “What did your wife say when you told her you sided with us and asked her to come?”
“She was scared,” Chris says, “but she didn’t question my decision. She’s dedicated the last seven years of her life to teaching and training our children, not because I wanted it that way, but because she also wanted to protect them from being torn apart by the Godling machine.”
“Why,” I ask slowly, “were you worried about her reaction then?”
He forces his fists to relax. “Because we make decisions together.”
“Like shooting that Eroi and getting caught on camera?” I ask drily.
Chris surprises me by saying, “Yes.”
Turning to face him fully, I watch every aspect of him, from movements and ticks to expressions and eyes. “You planned to be caught and discussed it with your wife beforehand?”
“Yes.” His reply is simple, oddly believable, but needs explanation and he gives it. “She knew I couldn’t keep doing what I had been. That was my only way out. She didn’t like me exposing my gift to the council to use as they saw fit, but it was a trade we were willing to make.”
“Your gift of finding more gifts,” I say. Chris seems mildly surprised I guessed his gift, but he knows mine as well, so it shouldn’t be hard for him to realize I could see how his power scans everyone he meets.
Chris doesn’t press me to speak, and doesn’t fill the silence with more questions. He waits for my thoughts to settle and return to my other question.
“The council. What do you know of them?”
“They’re as ruthless as David.”
“They are gutless, is what they are,” I mumbled under my breath. They are supposed to be powerful, yet they ran.
Chris nods, but says, “They fell back to gather strength, which they will. They’ll pull operatives in from the field to rebuild their strength before they come after us.”
Trained militarized troops against children. It disgusts me. “How many are in the council?”
“Seven.”
“All have sided against us?”
Chris nods. “As well as those in David’s inner circle, the ones who pulled all the strings at the compound.”
It is not news, and not surprising. It is illuminating, however. After Emily’s visit this morning, it is easier to stay focused. Emily has no gifts, but I understand what Chris said about his wife. Gaining her agreement and support is like knowing Emily accepted and stands by me even in my current state and status. It’s taken away a heavy layer of self-doubt and anxiety. Joshua brought happiness, which also helps. Now I can think a little more clearly and see more.
“We will need help,” I say. “The children will not be enough. Not all the teachers remained to train them, but I doubt there will be enough time for much of that anyway. Neither attacker will wait long.”
Nodding in agreement, Chris says, “No they won’t wait, and you’re right that we can’t win that sort of fight. We need reinforcements.”
“Is that something we have?” The way I ask makes it clear I am scoffing at the idea. I rejected such thoughts quickly after realizing our danger. Chris surprises me with his answer.
“We have a chance, a small chance, but we might be able to recruit them. They have no love for David or the council.”
“Recruit who?”
Chris squares up, as if already preparing for the difficult task. “The rogue Godlings.”
Chapter Eight: Only Option
(Zander)
Staring out at my house as I have been for the last half hour, I wonder how much longer I’ll be living here. The Godlings have always had lawyers on staff, and the three assigned to the compound chose to join us rather than run. Honestly, I think they were tired of trying to clean up David’s messes. All three are prepping for when my grandma dies and Van’s guardianship comes into question. Chris says they’re good, which I don’t doubt, but I worry all the same.
Even after they help me secure custody, I still have to decide whether to stay or move to the school. I’ve tried discussing it with my grandma, but she’s not always coherent when I visit, and even when she is, she mostly just says she trusts me to make the right choice. Annabelle is more helpful, but she holds off giving any firm advice because she doesn’t want to pressure me one way or another.
Gravel crunches as a car pulls in next to mine. Annabelle looks exhausted as she gets out of her car, but smiles when she sees me waiting. I force myself out of the truck and walk over to her. She folds into my embrace as soon as I reach her.
“You doing okay?” she asks. The roll of my shoulders in response to her question isn’t much of an answer. She slips out of my arms and takes my hand. “It was nice to see everything go so well with Emily’s visit.”
“Did they make it back before you left?” I ask.
Annabelle nods. “Oscar has them settled in his room with him. He was so good with them, doting on Joshua every second. I’m so glad they’re together again.”
That brings a smile to my lips. “Yeah, me too. You were great with Joshua, by the way.”
“He’s adorable.” Annabelle grins at the memory. “How old is he? I meant to ask Emily, but it slipped my mind.”
“He just turned a year old last month.” It makes me sad that we weren’t able to celebrate with Emily, but it should be the last birthday we’ll miss. I really can’t even begin to express to her how incredible I think she is for sticking by Oscar, keeping Joshua hidden from the Godlings, and holding down all the regular life stuff as well.
We reach the porch, and start up the steps as Annabelle says, “I told Emily we’d be happy to babysit if she needs a break. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” I lean down and kiss her, making her smile. Every time I look at her, my world seem less dark. I don’t even understand how she can hold onto her optimism and hope when we have so much against us right now, but it gives me strength. “Thank you for staying here with me tonight.”
Annabelle leans up and kisses me again. “Any time. Your place or mine. I sleep better when you’re with me anyway, and I know you do, too. Plus, I don’t like being away from you. I’ll stay as much as you want me to.”
“Always,” I say without thinking. Annabelle smiles and reaches for the door, but I grab her wrist as my own words hit me and I realize how true they are. She must have taken what I said as teasing or longing, because when she looks up at me there’s a hint of confusion in her expression. My head feels clearer than it has all day. “I mean it,” I say. “Every night. Here. With me. That’s what I want.”
Annabelle blinks. “Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I say more forcefully than I probably need to. “I don’t want to have to ask you to stay with me. I’ll be asking every night, anyway. You’d be safer here than at your apartment, and we’ll be spending the summer together helping at the school. No one will object, and I wouldn’t care if they did. I want you with me. I want you to move in here. Later, I don’t know, we can do something different, get our own place or stay here. We can figure it out. I just know that right now, this is what I want.”
Her mouth curls up in a smile. “That’s a lot of reasons.” She chuckles as she presses against me. “I only
needed one, though. You asking me.”
“Then…yes?”
“Yes,” Annabelle says before kissing me until I nearly forget what we were talking about. When she pulls back, I don’t want to let her go, but she puts a little space between us without breaking out of my grip. “Now, even though it’s a beautiful night out here and I’m ecstatic that you’ve asked me to move in, we need to talk about the Richiamos and this gift you’re supposed to have. If Chris is right, it’s the only real chance we have of finding Isolde and rescuing Sonya.”
Sonya. That name sends ice through my veins. Ivy’s little sister. After giving up the last of her life force to help Oscar defeat David, this was all she asked for, her sister spared from Isolde’s poison. If I really can find the Richiamos, it would kill two birds with one stone. Both of Isolde’s known compounds have been abandoned, but I know she’s still close by, watching and waiting for her chance to claim the true Gift she believes Van holds, and use her for her own purposes.
“I don’t even know where to start with that,” I say, “but I do know we need a few more answers about Sonya, and Van’s the only one who has them.”
“Do you think she’s still up?” Annabelle asks.
Sighing, I nod. I know she’s still up. The last two nights have been sadly reminiscent of the weeks after our parents died. Ketchup has been here, so I’m not running down the hall to calm her when the nightmares come, since he’s staying in the spare room next to hers, but I sit up with both of them until she falls back asleep. I should probably send Ketchup back to his room once she does, but I don’t have the heart. Van’s not in the right state of mind for that anyway.
When Annabelle and I walk into the living room, Van and Ketchup are curled up on the couch watching TV. Ketchup is half asleep, but Van’s eyes are wide and alert. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey, can we talk?”
“About Annabelle moving in?” Van shrugs. “Sure. I’m good with it.”
Annabelle tries to hide a smile. “You heard us talking?”
“I had the volume down so I didn’t wake Ketchup.”
“I’m awake,” he says, yawning a second later. Van rolls her eyes.
“Thank you for being cool with Annabelle moving in, but I was talking about Sonya, actually,” I tell her. “I need whatever details you can give me.”
Now Ketchup really is awake. He pushes up to sitting, but stays close to Van. She leans against his side and wraps her arms around her knees. “I only know what Laney and Ivy told me, which wasn’t a whole lot.” Her expression pinches and she sighs. “I guess I should have suspected something was wrong since their stories didn’t quite match up, but I just passed it off as Laney getting mixed up.”
“Speaking of Laney,” Ketchup says, “is anyone going to tell her about Ivy?”
I hesitate answering, but Van needs to be prepared for her friend’s reaction. “Chris is taking care of it.”
“What do you mean?” Van demands.
“After I nearly killed Ivy and her family disappeared, the Eroi fed Laney’s family the story that her dad had been called back to California because some bigwig at the firm left unexpectedly or whatever. Laney has no idea her aunt and uncle were killed by the Eroi months ago. Now that Ivy’s gone too, Chris has someone staging some kind of car accident that will make it look like all three of them died in the crash. There will be a fire so there’s no chance of identifying them short of DNA, which no one will ask for if it’s their car and all that.”
“But,” Van asks looking pale, “what about bodies, a funeral?”
Images of the memorial service the Godlings held for Ivy before we abandoned the compound try to surface, but I push them away for now. I need to focus. “Laney’s parents will be sent cremated ashes.”
“Who’s ashes?” Ketchup asks.
I shake my head, not really wanting to know. “Look, I know this sounds insensitive, but it doesn’t matter right now. We need to focus on finding Sonya and Isolde. Van, I need you to tell me what you know.”
She’s shaken by what I’ve told her, and I hate pushing her right now, but I have to. I wait patiently until she collects her thoughts enough to speak. “I was trying to gather clues about Ivy, and Laney was the easiest way to do that. I asked about her family, if she knew them very well, why Ivy didn’t have any siblings and never visited, that sort of thing. I originally thought that maybe Ivy’s parents weren’t really her parents, like she was adopted or something, or her aunt and uncle trained Ivy themselves. Anyway, when I was asking about all that, Laney mentioned Sonya.
“She acted like it was common knowledge in her family that Sonya had been born with some kind of rare genetic disorder and died shortly after birth, so I didn’t think much of it.” She pauses, her mouth turning down as she thinks. “I can’t even remember what brought it up later. I think Ivy said something about Oscar and genetics, and Laney piped in about Sonya. Ivy looked sick when Laney brought her up, but losing a sibling isn’t fun to talk about. Still, I asked her about Sonya anyway, because at the time, I didn’t really care about hurting Ivy’s feelings.”
Van looks a tiny bit guilty about that now, but not by much. “What did she say that differed from Laney’s version?”
“Ivy barely said two sentences about Sonya, but she did say her sister lived for several weeks before she died. Laney gets details wrong all the time, so I passed it off as a sucky thing to have happened to Ivy and moved on.”
There was a time when I wouldn’t have felt any sympathy for Ivy, even for something like this, but now I echo some part of her pain. “How old was Ivy when Sonya supposedly died?”
“Seven or eight, I think,” Van says.
“So, Isolde already had Ivy in training.” I mull that over, considering its importance. “Richiamos blood or ability, whatever it is, must be passed through family lines just like with Godlings. Isolde was prepared. As soon as Ivy’s parents had another child, she checked to find out whether or not she would be like Ivy, and when she realized she was, she took her.”
Ketchup shakes his head. “That’s sick.”
I think we all agree with that assessment. Isolde may look like she should be modeling for the cover of Vanity Fair, but there’s a reason Oscar calls her the Ice Queen. Her compassion or concern for others is subzero.
“How does any of this help you figure out how to use this gift Chris thinks you have?” Van asks. “You’ve been around Laney enough to know she has zero appeal to our hunger. Knowing it follows bloodlines is great, but your gift is still nonexistent. We don’t have any secret symbols on books to show us the way this time.”
Shaking my head, I know she’s right. There won’t be any clues to find Isolde. Even if there had been at one point, she’s hiding somewhere we’ll never be able to find through anything other than a gift equal to hers. When I asked Chris again about my gift, he assured me he was right, but that it wasn’t active for some reason. I asked him how to activate it, but he didn’t have an answer, for once. Gifts usually manifest at the same time hunger does, if not earlier. I should have been able to use it well before meeting Ivy, but no. My gift has stage fright.
I’m left feeling stuck until I remember what Van’s hunger did earlier today. What, exactly, it did, I still have no idea, but it was doing that weird thing where it jumps away from Van. Her hunger is trying to find something when it goes searching people. Nobody knows what it’s searching for. I know what mine wants to search for, but not how to get it to go and do it. Thinking about Van’s hunger does give me an idea.
“Van, do you think you could teach me how to make my hunger explore or whatever?”
Van grimaces. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure how mine is doing it.” She huddles in closer to Ketchup, but keeps her focus on me. “I feel it when it does things like jumps all over Annabelle or investigates Joshua’s cold, but Oscar says my hunger is always escaping. I don’t realize it’s doing it normally.”
“Maybe if we worked on it together?”
“Maybe,” Van says slowly. I see it in her eyes that she knows we need outside help. Neither one of us knows much about hunger aside from what we’ve personally experienced or learned over the past few months. The Godlings have been training their own for millennia.
“He might be able to help,” I say, even though I know it will piss her off.
As expected, Van’s entire body bristles. “I don’t want his help. He’s a manipulative liar and we can’t trust him.”
“Can you think of a better option?”
She hates that she can’t. Perhaps someone within the Godling ranks has more experience and ability than Chris, but if they do, they’re not somewhere we can get to right now. They’re also probably not someone we would want to trust, either. I understand Van’s anger. I really do. This isn’t something we can afford to hold back on, though.
“Fine,” Van snaps, “but this is the only thing I’m letting him help us with.
She looks ready to punch something, so I hold up my hands to appease and reassure her. “I already told you that part of your training is completely up to you. I’m only pushing you on this because we have no other options.”
It’s clear Van is done talking to me after that, so I leave her for Ketchup to calm down, and gesture for Annabelle to come with me. I’m two steps down the hallway when my phone buzzes. I pull my phone from my pocket and bring up a text I can only assume is from Oscar, though I’m not sure how he got his hands on a text-capable phone.
Rogue Godlings. I know where to find one. Chris said to wait. I’ll be back before he comes to wake me in the morning.
Chapter Nine: A Mark
(Vanessa)
Zander practically dragged me out of school this afternoon, all twitchy about getting to the Godling school. Why? Sitting here doing these stupid exercises with Chris can’t possibly be the reason. They’re not even working! His shoes tapping around me as he hovers certainly isn’t helping. I want to reach out and trip him, but his reflexes are so freaking good he probably wouldn’t even miss a step.
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