I returned to my tree, scooting my stepladder over a couple feet. I was almost done, but my dependency on the damn ladder really slowed me down. “Around, eh?” Snip.
Carlos stood with his back to me, apparently still assessing his new target. “I don’t know. Maybe it was in one of those art books Zoe and Sam are always looking at together.” I thought I caught just the faintest hint of envy in his voice.
“You know,” I said, doing my best to sound nonchalant. “Zo loves talking about all of that art stuff with people—Sam, Becca…” I choked on a swell of panic mixed with terror. Zo… Clearing my throat, I continued, “I’m sure she’d jump at the chance to do art lessons with you, too.” My voice was noticeably shaky, but I chose to ignore it, just like I chose to ignore the glassy feeling of tears welling in my eyes and the tightness in my chest. And, thankfully, so did Carlos.
“I don’t know,” he said, snipping his first crooked branch off the tree. Snip. Snip snip. “I guess.” So vague; he could be such a teenager sometimes.
I bit my lip, grasping my amusement at his stereotypical reaction with all of my might. I laughed under my breath, when what I really wanted to do was fall to my knees and pound on the soggy earth and scream out my rage at how unfair the world had become. Swallowing roughly, I reached for another off-shooting branch. Snip.
For minutes, the only sounds were those of our shears clipping branches and the faint hum coming from the beehives nearby, along with their roaming brethren. It felt somehow empty outside, now that so many of us were absent. It was too quiet, unsettlingly so.
But if there was one good thing about the lack of hustle and bustle around the farm, it was that sound carried remarkably well.
Clip. Clop clip. Clop clip.
I stood taller on the step stool, peering out at the road beyond the pond. There were trees blocking my view, but I had other senses.
“Hey!” Carlos’s head snapped to the right, his eyes searching the trees. “I think I heard—”
I nodded. “It’s them. They’re back.” I scouted out their minds, finding not only Chris, Grayson, and their horses, Cookie and Bernard, but four others, one equine and three human. I lowered my shears and slowly backed down the stepladder, setting the tool on the top rung. “They’re not alone.”
Carlos glanced at me, frowning. “I don’t hear an engine, either. No car.”
I shook my head, my right hand finding the pistol resting snugly in my thigh holster, just making sure it was still there. Touching it made me feel more secure, a new development after Zoe and Tom uncovered my memory about Jason’s abduction.
I pulled my hand away from the weapon. I recognized the minds. It had taken me a moment, because it had been so long, and two of them had changed so much, but I had zero doubt. I grinned despite all of my anxiety and fear at what would happen next—tomorrow, or next week, or next month…
“It’s Biggs,” I said, laughing and tearing up at the same time. “It’s Biggs and the twins!”
~~~~~
“They said no,” Chris said, handing me a small, warm bundle of gurgling baby wrapped in pink. She slid down from Cookie’s saddle, but I couldn’t look away from Ellie’s face.
The nearly seven-month-old baby had sticky-outy ears accentuated by a green and purple headband and the most perfect face in the world. She smiled at me, not just with her adorable little mouth, but with her endless blue eyes.
For the briefest moment—the mere blink of an eye—everything made sense. My place in this new, terrifying world. The new, terrifying world itself. Zoe’s situation and the crash. Jason’s abduction. Everything Dr. Wesley had done…and the General. Cam’s death, and Grams’s and Callie’s…my mom’s…my father abandoning me before I’d even been born. For the first time in a long time, I understood. It all made sense, and I felt at peace, completely and utterly.
“Dani!”
Blinking, I looked up at Carlos. He was standing in front of me, both hands on my shoulders, squeezing almost painfully. “Owwww…” I wiggled out of his hold, Ellie squirming in my arms. “Carlos!”
He held up his hands defensively. “Sorry, but you were in, like, a trance or something.”
“She got baby-whammied, that’s all,” Chris said as she dug through her saddlebag. “Ellie there got me good, too.” She paused in her search and stared up at the cloudy sky, then whistled. “Thought I was seeing the light.” She resumed her search. “Can’t remember a bit of it now, though, and no matter how hard I looked into her eyes, she wouldn’t do it again.” Chris shook her head.
“Sorry about that,” Biggs said. He strode toward Carlos and me, a second bundle of joy asleep against his chest in a cloth carrier. “She just started doing it a couple weeks ago, and she and Everett are the only babies in New Bodega, so nobody knows what to expect where Abilities are concerned.”
I offered him a smile. “It’s fine, really. I can’t actually remember what happened, just that I felt, I don’t know…at peace, I suppose.” I stared down at the innocent-looking baby nestled in my arms—which were growing tired. I adjusted her higher up. “You sure are getting big, Ellie-girl.” Of course, part of the problem was that I wasn’t nearly as strong as I’d been even a month earlier.
Biggs rubbed my arm, and I looked up, meeting his eyes. “How are you doing?” His lips spread into one of those closed-mouthed, gee-this-sucks-but-you-can-do-it smiles. And where such an expression on most people would make me want to punch them, on Biggs, it actually comforted me. Of course, that could’ve just been Biggs being, well, Biggs.
“Okay, I guess.” I glanced down at Ellie, then back up at Biggs. “Did they tell you about—that I’m…” I struggled to form the words with Ellie in my arms.
“Yep,” Biggs said, nodding slowly. “I think, well…just know that the twins are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He grinned broadly, his eyes glassy. “They’re my everything.” His conviction was both wonderful and terrifying.
I cleared my throat, searching for a new topic. Any other topic besides children. “So,” I said, “what are you guys doing here?”
Biggs smiled again, this time with less conviction. “I’m here to help.” He nodded toward Harper, who was walking to the stable with Chris and Cookie. “Looks like I’ll be riding up to Sacramento with Harper.”
I eyed him skeptically. “What about Chris?”
He looked off at the hillside, and I had the impression that he was avoiding looking at me. “She wants to stay here, and I’ve been getting restless. And my conscience won’t let me do nothing.” Everett wiggled gently in his cloth prison, and Biggs started rocking from foot to foot. He smiled at me, hopeful this time. “Besides, I could use a little excitement.”
All I could do was shake my head. Because deep down, I could totally relate.
~~~~~
I snorted myself awake, and my head shot upright. I blinked as I looked around the farmhouse’s living room from my preferred spot curled up on the sofa. Annie was lying on the floor with Jack, Cooper, and Sam, a board game—Sorry, it appeared—set up between the little girl and pre-teen boy. Sam was handling the news about Tavis really well, but I could only assume that was because Chris was keeping close tabs—and an even closer hold—on his mental and emotional states. It was difficult for any of us to deal with the loss of someone we loved, but it had to be so much harder for a kid who had only a few of his friends around for comfort.
Chris couldn’t exactly feel others’ emotions like Zoe or Tom could, but she could sense the chemicals in a human brain and had become very well accustomed to what was normal and what was abnormal brain activity, not to mention a virtual expert at regulating those chemicals to mimic “normal” brain function. In my opinion, it was Grayson who’d described Chris’s Ability best, comparing her to a clockmaker, someone who’s knack is keeping an eye on a myriad of tiny working parts and making small tweaks here and there when necessary to keep the whole thing working properly.
“Good nap?” Ch
ris asked from her perch beside me on the couch. Her ever-present spiral notebook was resting on her knees, a pen balanced precariously behind her ear. I figured that by now she must’ve built up a stash of at least a dozen notebooks, all filled with her theories, hypotheses, and “experiments.” Though, to her credit, the experiments had taken on a much more methodical nature once Gabe joined our group and became her partner in scientific crime.
Narrowing my eyes, it crossed my mind that Chris and Gabe’s close working relationship—if you could even call anything a “working relationship” these days—might be part of what was causing such friction between Gabe and Harper. I dismissed the notion without a second thought. Just because I was prone to jealous fits didn’t mean everyone else was.
“Dani?”
“Hmm?” I focused on Chris, who was studying me with a perplexed look on her face. “Yeah?”
“Your nap…you were asleep,” she said, though it had the mild lilt of a question. It took me a groggy moment to figure out that she was wondering if I’d been drifting.
I blushed, despite having done nothing wrong. Drifting in the midst of the others had quickly become a faux pas, unless it was an emergency. Understandably, it rubbed my human companions the wrong way if I chose to mentally leave their company in favor of time with my animal friends.
“You were drifting?” Chris’s voice took on a disapproving tone.
I shook my head. “No, no, I wasn’t. Promise.” Arching my back, I stretched my arms over my head and groaned. My spine cracked and popped in several places, and I sighed as I flopped back against the sofa cushions. “I conked out, that’s all.” I curled my knees up and rested my left hand on my belly. My brow furrowed.
“Don’t worry.” Chris leaned closer and gave my knee a squeeze. “I didn’t start showing until my second trimester, and I had two boys growing in there.” Hurt, loss, regret, longing—so many emotions flitted through Chris’s eyes, there one second, gone the next. She smiled. “You’re doing just fine.” She glanced at the kids and dogs playing on the floor, then at Carlos and Grayson, who were sitting side by side at the kitchen table for one of Carlos’s nightly interdisciplinary lessons, the twins only a few feet away, fast asleep in their carriers.
We watched the older and younger man discuss the allegory of the cave for several minutes, the splash and clink of Mase and Camille washing the dishes in the kitchen soothing background noise. Carlos and Grayson’s discussion of Plato heated, verging on an argument. Chris and I exchanged a fond smile.
“Did you dream?” she finally asked.
I nodded.
“Gabe?”
I nodded again, wrapping my arms around my knees and hugging my legs to my chest.
She shot another glance at Sam and Annie. “Anything new?”
I shook my head. “Just more of the same.” Meaning a couple more super brief glimpses of Zoe’s sleeping mind, but none that lasted long enough to pinpoint her location. Sure, they were searching Sacramento for her, but the search was akin to the proverbial needle in a haystack. “I told him Harper and Biggs are on their way.” They wouldn’t make it to the outskirts of Sacramento until the following night at the earliest, even with the change of horses they’d taken with them, including Wings. Sending her had been less about her physical prowess—she was average in terms of speed and strength—and more about my strong connection with her. A side effect of all of the time I’d spent drifting with her, I could find her mind anywhere with barely any effort, just like Jack’s. Which meant I’d be able to find Harper’s and Biggs’s minds almost as easily. It was the next-best thing to actually being able to go with them.
“And Sanchez?”
Again, I shook my head. “Her Ability’s still acting wonky.” I hesitated, biting my lip, then said, “I could keep trying to find their minds. Then we wouldn’t have to rely on Gabe…plus it would give me a better idea of where to focus the nonhuman search for Zo.”
It was Chris’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t want you to wear yourself out any more tonight.” She flashed me a lopsided, lighthearted grin. “Why do you think you passed out like that in the first place? Besides, it’s enough trying to stay connected with Wings so far away. Searching for their minds is too much when you don’t have Jason here to boost you.”
I shrugged sheepishly, the mention of Jason’s absence not nearly as painful as it had been a week ago. The power of hope…
She patted my knee and stood. “Come on.” She nodded toward the mudroom, just through a door in the kitchen. “Let’s check on Vanessa.”
I eyed Sam meaningfully. “You sure?”
She smiled, but it was coated in sadness. “He’ll be okay.” Her smile turned mischievous. “With the right motivation, I’m better than the best kinds of drugs.”
Rolling my eyes, I shook my head and stood. “Don’t I know it.” Though I hadn’t let her fiddle with my brain chemistry much lately, I’d experienced her brand of pharmaceuticals plenty of times before. Lucky for me, my current emotional crisis was being managed quite well by our nightly talk-it-out therapy sessions, and my healthier state of mind was already reflecting itself in a healthier me.
When we were outside and able to speak more freely, minus the presence of young, perceptive ears, I crossed my arms over my chest and shivered within the shelter of my down coat. “What if they don’t come back? What if none of them come back?”
Chris wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled me close against her side. We bobbed slightly out of synch as we walked through the grass to the driveway and stable. “Then we go on—you, me, Sam and Annie, Daniel, Carlos, and Mase and Camille.” She squeezed me closer. “We’re a family, whatever happens.”
“But—”
“It’s no use worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet,” she said, cutting me off. “It’s wasted energy, and it probably upsets the baby. Besides, I’ll believe the others are gone for good when I see their bodies myself, not a second sooner. I think this whole Jason situation has taught us all that much, at least.” She gave my shoulders a jiggle. “They’re coming back, Dani. Until we learn otherwise, that’s what we’ll know, okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to be steady if I spoke.
Chris released me to slide the stable door open, shooing me away when I tried to help. “You might have your appetite back,” she said, reaching through the doorway to retrieve one of the oil lanterns hanging on a hook beside the doorframe, “but you’re still weak. Try not to overdo it, okay?” She lit the lantern quickly, and we stepped into the stable, making our way down the aisle toward Vanessa’s end stall.
“I hardly think opening the stable door is overdoing it,” I said dramatically.
Chris snorted.
“No, Rosie!” Vanessa’s voice was high-pitched and panicked. “I don’t want to! I won’t!” There was a moment’s pause, no doubt while Vanessa’s hallucination of a dead teenage girl took her turn in an argument only Vanessa could hear, and Chris and I exchanged a look. “I mean, I don’t know…I guess when you put it like that, it seems like the right thing to do.” There was another pause. “I know, I just don’t want Annie to get hurt, too.”
“Looks like it’s a not-so-good day for the kid,” Chris said to me under her breath.
I hesitated, lagging behind a few steps, and folded my arms over my abdomen. “Maybe I should go. The last two nights went fine, but maybe it was just a fluke, and…” I hunched my shoulders as Chris turned around, holding the lantern up to better see my face.
“Are you kidding me?” The lantern light bathed Chris’s features in a warm glow. “This is perfect! I was hoping she’d be in one of her moods. I’ve got a theory to test, and it involves you and her”—she nodded behind her toward Vanessa’s stall—“and squirt in there,” she finished by pointing at my shielded midsection.
“You do?” I asked, full of skepticism.
Chris nodded and continued on down the stable aisle. She seemed to have no doubt that I wo
uld follow. Which I did. “I’ve got all kinds of theories about that kiddo, especially now that the twins are here and we’ve seen some of what they’re capable of…and they’re barely six months old! Imagine what they’ll be able to do in a year—or ten years!” Her voice was filled with wonder, whereas my face was no doubt filled with worry. There were so many unknowns, both for the twins and for the child growing inside me.
Chris stopped in front of the door to Vanessa’s stall, and the one-sided argument within halted mid-sentence. “How are you doing tonight, Vanessa?” Chris’s voice was soft but authoritative. It was the perfect mother voice. I frowned, doubting I’d ever be able to master the mom voice even half as well as her.
I joined Chris just outside the stall door and stared through the bars, searching the moonlight and shadows for our resident Crazy. I found her perched on the edge of her cot, her eyes glassy pools in the relative darkness.
“I—I’m fine,” she said with an unusual amount of hesitation. She was often so vociferous and free with her opinions and insults, especially when I was around. Except for the past two nights; she’d been subdued, almost calm, and, to Chris’s and my surprise, almost sane. Vanessa spoke again, her voice quieter. “I’m glad you came back…both of you.”
“Vanessa,” Chris said, drawing the teenager’s name out, “The past couple nights you’ve seemed different. Does something change with them when Dani’s out here?” She held up the lantern, allowing the dim light to shine into the stall.
Vanessa nodded slowly, almost like she was afraid. “I—I don’t know why.”
“What happens?”
“They—they get quiet.” She looked up at us, the lantern light glinting off her dark irises. “They go away.”
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 154