“Hey, I’m the only one of us who knows where we’re going,” I remind them.
“Yeah, because you’re a big fat sneak,” Pollyanna grumps as she climbs into the front seat. “Shotgun!”
I ignore the comment about my clandestine visits to town, especially because Mole probably suspects I’d gone to see Jude and I don’t want to get into that right now, and slide behind the wheel. “Get in, suckers. I’ll try not to kill us.”
Haint shoves Pollyanna toward the center of the bench and takes the spot by the passenger-side window, leaving the three boys to cram in the back. “For the record, I think this is a really bad idea.”
I give her a rueful smile as we pull onto the bumpy lane, noticing her feet, hands, hair, and ears are almost defined, now. Goose and Athena have to get out and clear away brush from the long, winding driveway more than once, replacing the twigs and such carefully behind us. It’s best if we leave things the way we found them.
We don’t know if we’ll be back, but for everything else it is, Saint Stephen’s is a sanctuary for people like us. There’s more than a slight chance we’ll need just that in the future. None of us wants to be unexpectedly booted the way we were from Darley, and even though we’re more than a little leery of the Olders’ intentions, Saint Stephen’s might become a necessity someday.
The twins get out again to move the heavy iron gate at the front of the property, covered with overgrown vegetation and ivy. I pull the car onto a gravelly and pitted dirt road for a few hundred yards before the paved blacktop of Highway 17 erupts from out of nowhere, ready to carry us into Beaufort.
Chapter Nine
When we got to their dad’s house in Beaufort, the twins opted not to show their faces. Goose ran in empty-handed and back out with a laptop and an iPad mini. The whole thing took less than ten seconds. We’ve been away two weeks and I guess they decided to leave well enough alone.
I know they left a note before we went after Flicker the night before Christmas Eve, thanking their father for taking them in and for making them feel a part of his family, so that’s something. They also promised him that nothing was wrong and they weren’t in danger, simply that something in their old lives needed to be taken care of and they didn’t want him involved.
I left something similar for my dad, too, but it doesn’t staunch my guilt.
Knowing the twins, I’m positive that my letter contained more sentiment, but the gist was close enough to surprise me. None of us felt it was right to drag our newfound families into the mess of our lives. We were never meant to be a burden to them, not even before we came into this world.
Athena and Goose have been quiet in the backseat during the hour-plus drive up the coast to Charleston. It’s so unlike them that it’s stretching my nerves closer to their breaking points, even though nerves turn out to be a kind of relative thing when you’re dealing with them every minute of every day.
We’re waiting on Haint now while she grabs a few fresh sets of clothes at her grandparents’ house in the Charleston suburb of Mount Pleasant. My mind wanders to the big, old house on Water Street that had been my home for too short a time. It tiptoes down the block and around the corner to Maya’s giant antebellum off Meeting Street, then leaps to the outskirts of town and Jude’s humble, cluttered one-story. I want to see them all, hug every one of them, tell them I’m sorry I left and I’ll never do it again. But I can’t say any of that because none of it’s true.
Not even the part about being sorry I left, not really.
I’m sorry I had to leave, but I’d do it again for the exact same reasons. My father and Jude and Maya and everyone else…they don’t belong in my world, wherever that ends up being. No matter how much I want them to.
“Hey.” Haint catches me off guard when she yanks open the driver’s-side door and slides behind the wheel, shoving me into the middle of the bench seat. Her body looks…well, present, if not solid. I can still see through her, though.
There’s a glint in her eyes and wet spots on her cheeks. She doesn’t mention it, and neither do the twins.
“You okay?” I ask. As hard as we try sometimes, we’re not emotionless automatons.
“I’ll be fine. They seem good, I don’t know.”
She doesn’t say anything else, but I can almost hear the million words churning on the back of her tongue. They never form, sliding backward into her belly or her heart, somewhere inaccessible to me no matter how literally transparent she can be.
Haint puts the Oldsmobile into drive and steers us out of Mount Pleasant. It takes the better part of an hour to pilot us into Charleston, and we pull into the historic downtown a little after two in the afternoon. I finger the house key in my pocket. My father won’t be home until the evening when he gets out of work. He has Wi-Fi, too, so once I add my laptop to the mix, we could spend a few hours surfing the web for information.
I’m torn between hoping my dad hasn’t changed the locks and praying he has, and it’s hard to say which would be worse—that he’s written me off or having to come face-to-face with my brief life under his roof.
The key turns easily in the lock, admitting us all to the mudroom that holds a washer, dryer, and a few racks for drying clothes. It smells like the fresh detergent my father’s housekeeper favors, and the scent drops pellets of regret into my stomach.
I push on, into the kitchen, because we’re all having a bad day and I’m not keen on being the one to fall apart. My friends continue into the living room and I stand in the threshold watching them settle into chairs and onto the squishy, comfortable couch. We’re only staying for those few hours of research—we’re going to try a homeless shelter to spend the night—and no one makes a move for my old bedroom.
I thought I’d be content to stay away from the more personal spaces of this house, too, but now that I’m in here the past reaches out, long fingers digging into my skin. My heart craves space, distance, just a few moments to feel sad about everything I’ve lost without looking over my shoulder to see who’s judging me for not focusing on the problems at hand.
The ones we can still change.
My feet make no noise on the carpeted steps up to the second floor. Everything looks exactly as it did a few weeks ago—I don’t know why I expect it to look different. It’s me that’s changed, my life that’s been dumped upside down for the second time in as many months. The bathroom and my dad’s office have little to say about it.
I rest a sweaty palm on the cold, nickel-plated doorknob of my bedroom door. After a few deep breaths through my nose, I give it a twist and let the door swing open wide.
It looks the same, too. The comforter my father let me pick out the weekend after I’d arrived, along with the school supplies—namely my computer and piles of notebooks and pens—still stacked in neat rows on the desk. There’s nothing sentimental left because I took everything that made my heart ache with me when I left on Christmas Eve, which is why the tiny silver phone on the nightstand catches my eye.
The out of place item, resting on a square sheet of paper, draws me toward it like a magnet. My knees go gooey underneath me but the familiar softness of the bed is there to cradle me as I push the phone to one side and pick up the envelope with trembling fingers.
Sometimes it feels like there are two people living inside me. Maybe it’s because I’m both Gypsy and Norah Jane Crespo, but my heart is constantly at war with itself. Right now is no different. I want to read the note, which must be from my father. Does he hate me for leaving? Want me to come home? The simple fact that he left this here on the slim chance I’d drop by when he wasn’t home hurts all over.
Or what if it’s not from my dad at all? What if the note and the phone are from the CIA or someone worse, someone we haven’t even met, who has stolen my father in order to get to me. Talk me into being an Asset for the government, for fulfilling the purpose I never agreed to in my mother’s womb seventeen years ago.
I tear open the envelope, my hands still shaking and my h
eart in my throat. The sight of my father’s handwriting has me breathing hard and sweating.
Knowing it’s from him doesn’t make reading it any easier. Whatever he has to say could make me second-guess my decision to leave. It could make me wonder if joining the government, using my paltry ability to do whatever they bred me to do, might allow me to keep this life with my father. I could go to work every day, the same as everyone else, then come home at night like a regular person.
Even I know that’s a silly thought. Spies, even ones without supernatural abilities, don’t have normal lives.
Even as my heart swells at the thought, my mind conjures images of the other Cavies. Because of what they can do—violent, invasive, horrible things—the stakes are so much higher for them. As much as I loved living here with my father, as hard as I’ve hoped for some semblance of a normal life, the Cavies are my family.
That fact, solid and true and unchangeable, gives me the courage to actually take the note out of the envelope completely this time.
Norah,
I read the note you left me in your (sweet) Christmas gift and decided to leave you one of my own. I understand that you feel like there are things about your life before now that you can’t share with me, and I respect that you believe you’ve done the right thing.
I do, however, want to tell you that you can trust me, that you are always welcome in this home, and that I can take care of myself. The phone is untraceable (don’t forget the charger) and all my numbers are in it. Call me anytime, day or night.
I love you,
Dad
The end of the note blurs in front of my teary eyes, and a drop hits the page, making ink run in the outer edges of the splatter. He’s not mad. He loves me and he wants to help, and as I feared, that means the decision whether or not to involve him is on me. The temptation is great, but selfish. There’s nothing he can do to help, and involving him only puts him at risk.
I read it two more times, my heart lingering over the last couple of sentences. Trust him. I think I do, which is odd enough in itself given that I just met him. With my heart, with my life. But not at the expense of his.
It’s hard to say whether or not any of us can take care of ourselves, except maybe Mole. And Pollyanna. They’re pretty well protected. One of the things we want to try is sharing our talents with each other the way the Older did, teleporting us all out of the warehouse. We don’t know where to start, but now that we have Madeline, I make a mental note to ask her when she arrives.
I tuck the note in my back pocket and drop my laptop and the phone in my purse in spite of my better judgment. It’ll be a temptation but also a comfort, and even though it’s hard to say what the consequences might be, I put one of the pretty rocks I’ve been picking up at Saint Stephen’s in place of what I took.
My dad will know I’ve been here. The thought makes me smile through the tears still pooling in my eyes.
Chapter Ten
My emotions are back under control by the time I walk into the living room. Haint and Pollyanna are staring blankly at the television. I worry for a second that the noise might cause a neighbor to come check or call the police, but they’ve got it on too low to even really hear what the news anchors are saying. The majority of the neighbors are at work, anyway.
The twins are manning their laptop and iPad, fingers flicking and poking and clicking. Athena looks more than a little nervous that his brain might be about to get melted, closing his eyes every time he pushes a button, but it’s not stopping him from trying.
I sit next to Goose and pull my laptop out of my bag, connecting to the internet.
“What time do we need to leave?” Haint asks, listless as though the day has sucked out all her energy. We’re a pretty motley crew at the moment.
“My father never gets home before six.”
“We’ve got a little time, then,” Athena grunts, trudging to the overstuffed chair under the window, the one flanked by full bookcases. He flops onto his back, legs askew on the ottoman, and looks up. “Goose is researching Hatfield. I’m trying to find out something about the virus. So far, all I’ve been able to learn is that they think it originated near Siberia.”
“I’ll check out that area, then. Maybe there’s a history of weird crap or a more information about this terrorist group or something.” I cast a glance at Goose. “Anything on Hatfield yet?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s a totally anonymous parent company that owns a slew of applied-science research firms.”
“Well, that’s suspicious.” My head spins with the possibilities. Research firms? Applied science? That type of business would be the perfect candidate to team up with the Olders at Saint Stephen’s, but it doesn’t tell us why. We’d need a way to contact them.
“Yeah, and what’s even weirder is that I can’t find any information as far as who owns Hatfield or even who manages it. No address, nothing. It’s privately held. The only thing on their website is a mission statement.”
“What’s it say?” Haint asks, her eyes bright.
“The Future Belongs to the Brave.”
No one seems to know what to make of that, and it’s too vague to really tell us much, anyway. We lapse into silence, the only sounds in the room the soft murmur of the news on the TV and the clicking of fingers on computer keys. Haint falls asleep, and Pollyanna and Mole go for a walk, leaving those of us with access to the internet to our research. I have a hard time finding anything of interest in the vicinity of Siberia until one bizzare story about a group of college students disappearing back in the fifties catches my attention.
I spend half an hour clicking on one story after another—their mysterious deaths are still unsolved, and there are enough theories to fill an eight-hour miniseries. The way they were killed makes it seem as though something supernatural took place out on the tundra, but I don’t believe in things like that. There’s nothing that hard facts and science can’t accomplish.
Which makes me wonder whether people like us could have been involved. Whether their “talents” could have killed those kids and that’s why the government covered it up.
“Why are you staring at the computer like it has herpes?” Athena’s eyebrows knit together as he watches me from his spot by the windows.
“Why are you staring at me like a creeper?”
“Get over yourself, Gypsy.”
I sigh, not even knowing why I snapped at him. “Sorry… There’s just a weird story about these kids who were cross-country skiing in Siberia back in the fifties. They disappeared, and when a rescue party found their bodies the scene was…abnormal.”
“They died?” Goose purses his lips. “And what do you mean by abnormal?”
“They clawed their way out of the tent from the inside and ran out into the snow in their underclothes, for one.” I squint at the screen, scanning for details. “One group froze to death, but there was one girl with massive internal injuries and another whose tongue was missing.”
“Her tongue?” Athena turns green. “Do they think it was an animal?”
I shake my head. “They don’t know. The case was marked classified right after it happened and never solved. The official ruling was some crap like a compelling natural force.”
“Sounds like an unnatural force to me,” Goose muses. “Which means the real question is, what were they covering up?”
“It’s interesting, for sure, but I don’t see how it could relate to this current virus. There were barely computers in the fifties.” Athena looks back to his iPad, having lost interest in the story that grabbed my attention.
“So, how are you holding up?” Goose’s soft brown eyes catch my blue ones as he scoots a little closer to me.
“Me? Fine. Why?”
He rolls his eyes, tugging on the ends of his red hair as though he wants to slap them into place. The exercise fails when he lets go and tufts spike out in at least four different directions. “Why? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because everything’s gotten fl
ipped on its head sixteen different ways since we left Darley Hall almost three months ago? You can pretend all you want, but I’ll be honest and say I’m not fine. I don’t know which way is up, and since we started taking those injections, I’m terrified that I’m going to lose control of my ability. That I’m going to start running and not be able to stop. How’s that for going first?”
I pause, wary of breaking the seal that’s holding back the flood of my emotions but also wondering if it wouldn’t be a giant relief to be able to let someone else share the storm. “I miss my dad. I miss my friends. I’m worried about Jude and Reaper and Flicker—even Dane for some reason—and I don’t like that the Olders are keeping things from us. I want it to be the ten of us again. Even if it was usually just really seven or eight.”
“Those were the days, right?” He shakes his head with a smile, but his gaze doesn’t leave my face. And he doesn’t stop asking questions. “What about your visions? Are you still seeing details about people’s deaths?”
It’s like he read my mind, knew which part of my worries I was smothering. I swallow, then suck in a deep breath, knowing the time for keeping secrets has passed. My powers are what they are, whether they ever become useful or not, and I’m done feeling inferior. “Yes. And a little bit more every day while taking the injections. When I touch the headstones now it’s like…I don’t know, like I’m transported to the scene of the person’s death.”
Goose furrows his substantial eyebrows. “What do you mean, transported? Like, you actually leave?”
“Not actually. And it’s not like they can see me or anything. But I can hear what’s happening and smell the room, and somehow I sense how they’re feeling.”
“That’s intense. But you haven’t tried it with anyone alive to see if it’ll work that way, too?”
“No.” Fear makes my mouth go dry. “I don’t want to know that about any of you.”
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