by Trisha Leigh
Sophia, who’d rather be called Sophie, brings nine of her Cellmates to the park after Cell that afternoon, and this time a boy and a girl stomp off, unsure they believe us or that they want to help. Sophie says they do believe, that it’s impossible not to, once the veil is down, and that she can handle it.
Both Matt and Alice seemed pretty adamant, though, so I hope she’s right.
Des Moines the next day is the hardest city, since Deshi’s the one who stayed here for three years and none of us know who to approach. We loiter outside the pizza parlor during free hour, which is where most of the kids are since the weather here has decidedly not turned toward spring. We settle on a boy named Mark who stood in the center of attention most of the time, at least from what we can see through the windows, but walks home alone.
We make sure no one sees us, and later that night Pax and Lucas hold him still while I remove his veil and calm him down. It’s not the worst thing we’ve done to a human, but I feel pretty horrible about scaring him like this.
He’s a good choice, I decide after another night full of question-and-answer. Smart—maybe the smartest one we’ve chosen yet. The next afternoon, the nine kids he brings us are all calm and collected, despite two girls—Katie and Laura—who ask questions until their free hour is minutes from expiring. We leave them with two maps, the list of primordial elements, and instructions to head to the cabin if they haven’t heard from us in two months.
Portland is last, and easiest because Monica recognizes me almost immediately. She gives me a hug and listens raptly half the night while we explain everything. Val’s unveiling goes smoothly the next day, and we’ve almost finished everyone when a girl—I think her name is Candice—starts to wail.
CHAPTER 22.
It’s not like Sophie where the tears were born of sorrow over what she’s lost. This girl is completely Breaking in front of our eyes. When she starts to scream, I know this isn’t going to work. “We’re going to have to try to put it back up.”
“Are you sure? Maybe—” Pax’s protest cuts off when Candice makes a run for the park entrance.
He and Lucas chase her down and bring her back, Lucas’s hand muffling the shrieking cries from her lips. The girl’s face blanches white, her brown eyes huge and rolling around in her head. The sight of her recalls Mrs. Morgan the night I Broke her in the kitchen, and the breakfast we had at Monica’s that morning threatens to spew out of me. “Hold her still.”
The rest of the kids stand in a ring around us, mouths hanging open, horror lining their faces. One or two make a move as though they’re going to help us, or maybe try to stop us, but in the end no one does either. Pax and Lucas manage to grasp Candice between them, and she slumps, defeated and moaning a little.
I force her face up to mine, and when it stays, I reach out and borrow power from Pax and Lucas.
It’s okay. You came to the park for free hour, but it’s almost over now and you’re not feeling well. Nothing else happened—you talked to a few friends, that’s all. Go ahead and start home.
She stops making noise, and when Lucas and Pax drop her arms, she looks around, taking in each of our faces with a blank gaze. Her eyes flicker when they pass over the three of us, the Dissidents who don’t belong, but other than a wrinkle between her eyebrows she doesn’t react.
A minute later she disappears from view, headed toward the park exit. A horrible sense of foreboding twists between my shoulder blades, and even though the whole endeavor seemed like a success until now, I know this one mistake could be our undoing. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.
It takes longer here than the other cities to calm these kids down, after what they saw happen to Candice. A huge boy named Lamar helps convince his friends they should trust us, but they’re all jittery. I can’t say I blame them, since it shook me up, too.
Before we leave Portland, I give the same speech I’ve given to them all, with Pax on one side of me and Lucas on the other.
“We might not be able to win, but we definitely can’t do it alone. It’s important— imperative—that you go about your routine the exact same way you have every day for the entirety of your lives. If you don’t, they’ll take you. Worse than that, they might guess what’s going on if they keep finding more and more of you outside their control. This is your planet. It’s our planet, and together maybe we can find a way to save it. We’re not promising anything.”
They nod, their jaws set in determined lines while their brains work through the transition from content, controlled person to free-thinking human who still has to act happy. They leave the park with fake smiles plastered on their faces, if anything a little quieter than normal. Val and Monica stay behind and press me into a hug, bolstering my belief that people will remember things from their real lives if we can find a way to give them back. That things will be okay in Portland despite Candice’s meltdown.
The last of the kids leave the park, and exhaustion winds through my limbs. It’s been four days since we left Brittany, and we’ve got thirty-nine kids, besides the three of us, who know everything and are willing to fight for their planet.
We have two more stops before we return to the Underground Core and try to wrestle Deshi away from his captors. The knowledge that Kendaja is likely there, too, probably drooling all over him, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It tastes suspiciously like fear.
Lucas casts a glance my direction, displaying the dark circles ringing his own eyes. His gaze rakes over me, more of a survey than anything tingly, and his mouth tightens. “We’re going to have to get some sleep before we go in there. It’s not going to work if none of us are at full strength.”
Pax answers in a voice gravelly enough to betray his own exhaustion. We’ve barely closed our eyes in over four days. “We can crash at the cabin once we get Brittany there. If she’ll go.”
Nerves infect me at the thought of what we might find at the cabin after a week away. “As long as it’s still secure, that’s a good idea. It will take a little time to get her settled and answer all her questions about Griffin and Greer, anyway.”
“Of which she’ll have many, I’m sure,” Pax replies wryly.
***
We return to Brittany’s house the same night we leave Portland. We wake her and confide everything that’s transpired in the other cities, that almost forty kids are informed and ready to move, if we need them.
“Okay, good. So, why are you here now?” She yawns, and it infects me next.
Lucas steps in. “We were hoping you’d be willing to come back to the cabin in Deadwood. Some of our friends are there, but they’re pretty sick and need help.”
“Plus there are books there—history and maybe some geography that could be helpful, I don’t know,” Pax adds.
Brittany’s quiet for a good two or three minutes, but none of us move to rush her. This is a big decision, agreeing to leave everything for the Wilds. She’ll be all alone for the foreseeable future. I won’t think less of her if she declines, even though it means that despite our efforts, Griffin and Greer probably won’t survive.
She picks a last piece of skin off her lower lip and slowly nods, her mouth pulled down into a frown. “Well, and that way I could kind of coordinate if everyone else ends up there, too.”
I’m not really surprised she’s agreeing to come along to the cabin; she’s not the type who likes to be left behind. Brittany’s a girl who likes to be in charge, and barring that, she definitely prefers to be in the know. “Who’ll we leave in charge here?”
“I asked Jordan. That’s why I had her keep the maps instead of you. Will she be a good choice?”
“As good as anyone, better than some. She’s tough.”
She swings her legs from under the covers and shuffles into the closet. When she emerges a minute or two later, she’s dressed warmly and her hair’s braided. “Give me a minute, okay?”
It’s less than that before she’s dumped some toiletries into a shoulder bag. While we watch, she scr
ibbles what must be a note to her parents, folding it carefully and leaving it on her desk. They will report her missing—she doesn’t have the benefit of the enchantment that used to let us come and go unnoticed—but there isn’t much we can do. The Others don’t have a way to track her through a sinum, so at least they won’t know where to look.
This battle, this war, isn’t underground any longer. In a day or so, the Others will know for sure that we’re not going away and, whatever happens, we’re not going to run and hide any longer.
Brittany takes a deep breath and moves between Pax and I. Our power slows down as it passes through her, as though she’s made of substance that’s not conductive, making me worry this isn’t going to work.
At the last moment Lucas pulls his hand from mine.
“What are you doing?” I ask, sweating and panting a little from the buildup of elemental force inside me.
“I just thought of something. We don’t have to take this risk with Brittany.”
“What are you talking about?” Pax asks, sounding a bit breathless himself.
Lucas doesn’t answer. Instead he slings his backpack around to his front and pokes around in the ratty front pocket. The sight of it, battered and green and the same one he had the day I met him, knocks the breath out of me for a moment. If anything, it’s a symbol of where we began—and a reminder that I still want what I wanted that day when I walked into chemistry and saw him sitting in the back row, handsome and shy and different.
To have friends. To be able to walk around feeling however I feel that day, without living in fear of being snatched off the street for being unhappy. I want love, the real kind. The way Lucas’s arms and kisses, his desire to protect me at any cost, make me feel deep in my center.
All of a sudden it seems like it’s not too much to ask, those things. That maybe everyone deserves them.
“Got it!” Lucas crows.
He holds up something brown. It’s hard to see in Brittany’s dark bedroom, so I conjured another fireball in my palm, surprising everyone. I shrug, trying not to display my pride in my newfound use for my talent, and push my hands closer to Lucas’s. The familiar chill sends shivers down my spine that are only half caused by the cold.
“It’s the piece of tree! To the portal.” Pax grins, but Brittany displays obvious confusion, so I explain for her benefit.
“The people, er, beings, you’re going to take care of at the cabin aren’t human. They’re a mixture of Others and an ancient race called the Sidhe.”
“What’s that?”
“Trust me, if they wake up you won’t be able to get them to shut up about it,” Pax replies, rolling his eyes.
“It’s true.” I shrug. “We don’t really know all that much about them. Supposedly they’re really old, part of nature, and they can manipulate time and space. The girl, Greer, made a portal at the cabin and this piece of bark opens it. We just need a tree.”
To her credit, Brittany decides to go along with our bizarre explanation and motions us out the door, picking up a large purse and her own backpack, meager belongings for a girl who probably isn’t coming back. I think of the note on her dresser addressed to her parents.
I’m sure leaving’s not as easy as she’s making it look, and as we step onto the street I reach out and grab her hand. I drop it after a squeeze, sensing she’s not a touchy-feely girl, even though she must be feeling emotions now.
She gives me a suspicious glance from the corner of her eye. “What was that for?”
“Thank you for helping us. Leaving them couldn’t have been easy.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for my parents, and Leah, and everyone else. Not that I don’t like you or whatever, but I really don’t know you very well.”
“Fair enough.” I smile in the darkness, pleased once again by her forthright nature. It reminds me a little of Leah, and it’s easy to see why the two of them have always been chummy.
When we get to the park, Lucas presses the bark into the first tree we come to that’s not visible from the street, and a shimmering door yawns open in the trunk. The edges bob and shift, glinting pink and blue like bubbles made of soap.
Brittany steps through into the unknown without a hitch, leaving the three of us staring at a tree. With a shrug, I follow her back to the cabin in Deadwood, South Dakota, where hopefully no dead Sidhe await us.
CHAPTER 23.
“It’s pretty here.” Brittany pulls her down coat tighter around her, then nods her head toward the cabin. “That where we’re going?”
Without waiting for an answer, she trudges that direction through the soggy grass. It sucks at our feet as we hurry to catch up. I don’t know about Pax and Lucas, but I’m a little worried about what she’s going to find inside, and it won’t work in our favor if she decides to turn tail and run. I’m way too tired to chase her.
Silence greets us at the door, followed quickly by Wolf, who leaps at me so hard I fall backward onto my rear. His tongue scrapes every uncovered inch of me until I dissolve into giggles and push him back, scratching him behind the ears until he’s had enough from me and goes to greet Pax and Lucas with similar enthusiasm. Despite our tired bodies, they can’t help but smile, too, and gratitude for Wolf floods me until getting up off the floor with limp-noodle legs feels impossible.
Brittany reaches down a hand and hauls me up, then takes her turn petting Wolf when he noses her hand. “You forgot to mention taking care of your dog.”
“His name’s Wolf,” I remind her, twisting my fingers in his scruff. “He can pretty much take care of himself, but since you’re here to let him out, we can patch up the hole in the window so it won’t be so cold.”
“I don’t mind. I like him.”
I remember how taken she and Leah were with Wolf last winter. It makes me believe she’ll be okay here with him, will maybe even like having a pet around, since the rest of her company must still be down for the count.
“Althea, why don’t you build Brittany a fire while Pax and I check on…everything else.”
“Okay.”
A stack of wood remains by the place where the fire goes—the fire place, I guess—and after wadding up a few strips of torn cloth to the logs the flames crackle and pop within a couple of minutes. Brittany sits on the couch, absently rubbing Wolf’s head with more of a shell-shocked look on her face than I’ve seen since we first undid her veil. “You okay?”
“No. But, yes, if you’re asking if I can handle it. It’s pretty wild, seeing you make fire like that. And I’m petting a dog at a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”
I grin. “Pretty crazy night, huh?”
“I’d say so.”
While we’re waiting for the boys to come back, I show her how to keep the fire going without me by adding bigger logs at night and then smaller sticks in the morning to bring it back to life. My nerves are stretched almost to breaking by the time Lucas and Pax return.
I hop to my feet. “What took you so long?”
My worry dissolves at the twin expressions of merriment flitting across their features. They’re laughing within seconds, dragging Brittany and I into the bedroom where we left Greer and Nat.
Greer kicked the covers away from her feet at some point, dangling her legs over the side of the bed from the knee down while staying buried under the blankets from the waist up. Underneath her feet are piles of dead flowers. Mostly daisies, from what I can tell, with maybe a pansy or two thrown in for good measure. It is funny, the way they make waste, and I remember the boys have never seen her do it. But one glance at her face kills my amusement.
Her pretty face sinks in under the eyes and cheekbones, leaving dark spots where healthy plumpness used to be. The golden hair, usually glowing and bouncy, lays limp and greasy around her face, and her legs look weak. And they’ve only been here a few days.
Nat looks worse than she does, and there’s no evidence of waste on his side of the bed. I have no idea how the Others make it, or if they have
to. Maybe it’s something they can turn off in dire situations. I know from my multiple experiences with injuring Others that they slip into an involuntary sleep state while healing, so Nat could be fine. Except he looks worse than Greer does, skin completely white. His hair has turned white, too, black veins visible underneath his skin. The covers near his face are crusted with black blood.
“What’s wrong with her?” Brittany’s eyes are glued to Greer’s face, no amusement evident in her, either.
I cross the room, smoothing my friend’s hair back onto the pillow, leaning close enough to verify that life still moves through her body. The soft tickle of breath on my cheek brings tears to my eyes, and I pick up her limp hand, pressing it to my cheek. “It’s hard to explain. This is Greer. That’s Nat.”
“Is he a Warden?” She draws back, looking from Nat to the three of us as though we’ve tricked her. “What’s he doing here?”
“He’s not like the rest of the Others. He and Greer are sort of courting. They tried to kill him when they found out, so we saved him, too. He won’t hurt you,” Lucas answers. “They’re alive. Griffin, too, but he looks about as bad as she does.”
Brittany looks unconvinced, staying rooted to the spot while we leave the room. She follows after a moment, joining us in the living room, but pins the three of us with a stare that says she means business.
“I want an explanation right now. If I’m going to take care of them, I need to know what’s going on. All of it.”
After we tell her about the Sidhe and Nat, and how they fell into our care, she still wants to stay. We’re all exhausted, but Pax is the only one brave enough—or maybe tired enough—to crawl into bed beside Griffin in the other room. Brittany collapses onto the sofa, covering up with the hateful scratchy blanket I’ll never be sorry to leave behind, and her breathing evens out within minutes. It’s been a long couple of days for all of us.