Ava didn’t argue, instead scrambling over the seat to take the girl’s hand. “Sophie, listen to me. You need to stay calm, okay? Try to breathe with me.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain everything, but first you need to calm down. You see what’s happening?”
Through the mirror, Caleb saw her glance up at the roof of the car as snowflakes began to drift through the interior.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Sophie murmured. “What’s—why is it snowing?”
“It’s you,” Ava said quietly. “You’re upset, and your gift is reacting.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Sophie choked on a sob, and Caleb felt the telltale prickle of another Race signature along the edges of his consciousness.
“I feel them now,” he said, sitting taller in the seat and leaning forward as if willing the car to go faster.
Ava didn’t respond but remained focused on Sophie.
Caleb felt Ava’s gift and knew she was letting it flow into the girl a little to try and relax her.
“We’ll help you.” Ava voice was soft and soothing. “We’ll help you learn to control it, but for right now, you need to calm down. Breathe with me, okay?”
Sophie nodded and swallowed tears as she tried to match Ava’s inhale and exhale.
The snow stopped.
“That’s good.” Ava nodded encouragingly. “Keep breathing. I need you to stay calm. Someone’s coming, and I’m guessing they’re after you.”
Sophie’s breath caught, and the ice gathering on the dashboard cracked.
“It’s okay,” Ava hurried to say. “Keep breathing. Stay calm. We’re going to keep you safe.”
Sophie gripped Ava’s hand, but she kept breathing slowly in and out. “How?”
Ava smiled. “You asked what I could do? Well, I’m about to show you.” She turned backward and knelt on the seat, her eyes focused on the stretch of road behind them.
Caleb felt his heart race as he looked back and forth between the rearview and side mirrors to watch for what they knew was coming.
It didn’t take long before a speck appeared. All too quickly, the speck grew to the size of a black SUV and filled his driver’s side mirror.
“What are you waiting for?” Caleb growled. “They’re right on top of us.”
“Objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” Ava said under her breath, her fingers digging into the back of the seat.
Caleb sensed a swell of her power and then, just as quickly, a blast smashed the car forward, as though a large object had hit them.
“What was that?” Ava shouted as Caleb fought to keep the car on the road.
“Must be Devon.” Caleb checked his mirror and saw the SUV closing in again. “Protector. Moves air.”
Another blast hit the car.
Sophie clutched the door handle, her knuckles white. “He’s doing that with air?”
The snow started again.
“Stay calm,” Ava said distractedly.
“Easy for you to say.”
Ava turned again to focus on the people behind them as Caleb flicked his gaze from the road ahead to the rearview mirror.
The SUV was almost on their bumper.
“Now would be good, Ava,” he said through gritted teeth. “He’s going to hit us again.”
With a loud boom, the front of the SUV jumped up then hit the road again, the driver fighting to correct a swerve.
“What did you do?” Caleb didn’t let off the gas, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the rearview mirror.
With another boom, not quite as loud, the SUV shuddered to a stop in the middle of the road.
Devon shot one more blast their way, but it barely hit them, a quiet smack echoing through the frame and breaking a shower of ice loose from the windows before they sped away.
Ava twisted and collapsed into the seat, pressing her fingers to her nose.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked.
She nodded, fumbling to get a tissue out of her jeans. “Fine. It’s not bad.”
“You sure?”
Before she could answer, Sophie held up her hands. “Okay, what exactly just happened?”
Ava swiped at her nose and showed the tissue to Caleb with a roll of her eyes. “See? Nothing,” she said, waving it around.
It wasn’t much blood. That was true. Still, Caleb wasn’t really reassured.
“It was Protectors, sent by the Council we told you about,” Ava explained. “They must have picked up our trail from your house.”
Sophie looked out the rear window. “Can they still track us?”
Ava shot a glance at Caleb, who was already reaching for his phone. “I’ll call ahead for Balaam,” he said.
“He can lure them away,” Ava told Sophie. “You don’t have to worry.”
Sophie nodded, but her eyes were wide. “And the car? What did you do to it?”
Ava smiled. “I blew the tires. Well, technically, I changed the air in the tires.”
“Changed it?”
“Into gravel.”
“Gravel.” Sophie stared at Ava, stunned.
Caleb smirked.
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” she said, a little defensively. “And it’s pretty easy.”
“Easy?” Sophie squeaked.
“Yeah, well, they’re rocks, you know? No moving parts. No complicated bits and pieces.” Ava wiggled her fingers and grinned.
“So . . . how?”
Ava shrugged. “I just concentrate and picture what I want to be there and—poof—it’s there.”
“Poof?”
Caleb scoffed. “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“I can rearrange atoms and stuff,” Ava said, waving it off as if it was nothing. “But I can’t make things that I don’t have personal experience with.”
Sophie swallowed and nodded, saying nothing. She released the door handle and took Ava’s hand between hers. “Can you make me a margarita? Because I think I really need one.”
Ava laughed, and Caleb kept one eye on the road as he placed a call to the Colony.
Chapter 2
After meeting Balaam in Kenora, it had been almost midnight by the time they arrived at the Colony. Balaam’s ability to impersonate any Race signature was exactly what they’d needed to keep everyone safe, but he had to make at least brief physical contact with the signature he was imitating. The diversion had added another hour and a half to the trip, but Ava felt a lot safer when they’d left the mimic to guide the Protectors away.
“What happens if they catch him?” Sophie had asked as she watched Balaam jog down the block and disappear around a corner.
“They won’t,” Caleb had assured her. “Balaam is very good at what he does.”
Gideon was waiting for them when they arrived, but he held off asking any questions, personally showing Sophie to her quarters next to Ava’s instead.
The girl was brimming with questions herself, but Ava had assured her they’d all be answered in the morning, and Sophie had been too tired to argue.
They were all exhausted, and Ava’s head had been lightly throbbing ever since the incident with the Protectors. She swallowed another couple of painkillers dry and laid back in her bed, hoping sleep would bring her some relief.
Instead, she found herself in a dark forest, the moon a mere sliver overhead, and a cool wind whistling through the trees. Ava knew it was a dream, but she also knew it was something more.
Since her experience with Emma, she’d come to identify the feelings, the instinct, that came with dreams influenced by her Race intuition. They were clearer, sharper, and also sparked a knowing deep inside her.
That knowing told her that she needed to move through the trees toward an unknown force pulling her forward, but with every step she took her legs grew heavier, as though they were bogged down in heavy mud. The trees grew thicker, barely enough space for her to squeeze between them, and she struggled with
sharp branches scraping against her skin. Still, the pull continued, demanding she keep moving . . . keep pushing.
A sharp pain shot through her head, and she pressed her palms to her skull as if she could force the pain away. She fell to her knees and started to crawl, knowing she needed to get . . . to get to . . . she needed to get to him.
A branch swept across her face, and she shoved it away, gasping when her palm came back covered in blood. She swiped at her nose only to discover more blood running down her arm and dripping onto the ground. She shook her head and pushed forward, crawling along the damp—
No, not damp ground. Wet ground.
The muddy bog splashed around her as she struggled to keep moving, the water growing deeper and deeper, pulling her down, sucking her in.
She stopped to push her hair out of her face and gaped as she inspected it closer.
That’s not water.
Thick red flowed in a river of blood around her, and the current pushed against her in ripples of sticky crimson.
“No!” she shouted as she struggled to her feet only to have them swept out from under her. She tried to swim, choking on the liquid heat as it dragged her down. She had to keep moving. She had to fight, to breathe. She had to—
One last gasp and a wave crashed over her, yanking her under the surface into the thick, swirling darkness.
Ava awoke with a start, blinking and squinting to focus as early morning sunlight filled her room with a soft glow. She panted, trying to catch her breath as she ran her hands over her face, her arms.
No blood?
Nothing but a sheen of sweat sticking her clothes to her skin. Her head still throbbed slightly, but other than that, she was fine.
She collapsed onto the bed as her breathing eased. This was why she’d wanted her own room.
Well, one of the reasons.
Gideon had assumed that she and Caleb would share, and Ava suspected Caleb had as well, but he’d hidden any surprise and simply nodded when Ava had moved her things into her own quarters.
She couldn’t let him witness one of her attacks, or worse, see her like this afterward.
It was still early, barely after six o’clock, so Ava slipped out of her room to the communal bathroom for a quick shower to erase the last remnants of the troubling vision. She had no idea what it meant and, not for the first time, cursed her intuition, which seemed to want to tell her things but not in a very clear manner.
Her headache intensified a bit as she brushed her teeth and slipped in her contacts, and she frowned when she noticed she’d taken the last of her painkillers the night before.
Talia. I have to find Talia.
Ava dressed quickly, hoping to catch the healer before the rest of the Colony woke, especially Caleb.
Her shoes crunched on the ground as she made her way through the outer ring of buildings to the residences in the center of the Colony. Talia’s office was also her home, and after all this time, Ava knew the way well.
She rounded the corner of the squat building, checking over her shoulder before she knocked on the back entrance and slipped her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She clutched her arms across her chest and bounced a little in the early morning chill while she waited.
After a moment, the door opened and Talia greeted her with the familiar rise of one perfect eyebrow. “Didn’t know you were back.”
“Got in late last night.” Ava blew into her fists. “I know it’s early, but can I come in?”
Talia stepped back, gesturing with one arm and a slight nod. “I was about to make some coffee. You want some?”
Ava nodded, intentionally avoiding looking in Talia’s direction as she shrugged off her coat and hung it on a hook by the door. The healer hated when people stared, and it was something that Ava had been working on. She followed the woman into the small kitchen and took a seat at the island, picking at the cuffs of her shirt.
Talia made the coffee with quiet efficiency, not saying another word until she’d poured two cups and slid one across the countertop toward Ava. “So what’s up?”
Ava lost herself in the soft grey eyes and sighed. Talia lifted her cup to sip from it, and Ava jumped at the movement. “Sorry,” she mumbled, taking a scalding gulp from her own cup.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I know it bothers you.”
Talia arched one shoulder delicately upward in a half shrug. “How are the headaches?”
This time it was Ava who shrugged. “I’m out of the pills.”
“I can give you some more. I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about telling Caleb?”
Ava set her cup down a little too forcefully, and coffee sloshed over the lip. “No.”
Talia sighed. “I think that’s a mistake.”
“You’ve made that all too clear.” Ava immediately regretted sniping. “Sorry,” she said, reaching for a napkin to clean up the spill. “I just don’t want to worry him.”
“And you don’t want him to make you stay with us when they go to New Elysia.”
“They need me.” Ava avoided Talia’s knowing gaze. “You know they do.”
“Which is the only reason I haven’t forced the issue.”
Ava’s eyes widened. “This is you not forcing the issue?”
Talia laughed, shaking her head. “Come on. Let’s go into the clinic. I should at least examine you before I drug you up and send you on your way.”
Ava followed the healer into the small examination room off the living room, which also served as a waiting room for the clinic. She hopped up onto the exam table, used to the routine by this time.
Talia had been away from the Colony when the Rogues attacked but had returned shortly after. She had trained with physicians in New Elysia before joining the Guardians when she was no longer able to reconcile her Hippocratic oath with what had been done to the Half-Breeds. It was that oath and the promise of confidentiality that had led Ava to trust her.
Gideon had told Talia about the headaches and nosebleeds, of course. That was no secret. But only Talia and Ava knew how bad they’d gotten, and Ava aimed to keep it that way, at least until the Rogue threat was dealt with.
“Anything new?” Ava asked, as she always did.
Talia had been conducting her own research into Ava’s condition.
“Nothing,” she said, shining a light into Ava’s eyes then checking her ears. “You know the Council has bet—”
“No.”
“Ava—”
She looked the healer in the eye. “I promise. I’ll talk to the doctors in New Elysia when we get there. Just . . . not yet.”
Talia’s mouth tightened, but she nodded and continued the examination. “Headaches worse?”
“They come and go.” At Talia’s suspicious look, Ava sighed in resignation. “Yeah, they’re worse. And it’s not just my head.”
“What else?”
“Muscle aches. All over, really. Like I’ve got the flu or something. Nausea sometimes.”
Talia hummed and made a note in Ava’s chart. “Have you noticed anything in particular bringing on the attacks?”
“Well, when I use my gifts, of course,” Ava said. “Sometimes when I have the dreams. Sometimes for no reason at all.”
Talia frowned. “That’s new.”
“I know.”
Talia grabbed her stethoscope off a hook on the wall and warmed the chest piece with a few breaths. “Breathe in and out, slowly,” she said as she listened to Ava’s heart and lungs and made a few more notes.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Ava shifted a little on the table, the worn vinyl creaking with the movement.
Talia nodded, still writing in Ava’s chart.
“Do you ever miss, you know, going out there . . . into the world?”
Talia glanced at her then looked back at the chart. “Not really.”
“Sorry, I know it’s none of my business,” Ava said quickly. “I was just curious. I mean . . . I’ve never re
ally met anyone like you before.”
Talia sighed, closed the chart, and tapped it on the edge of the table. “I know it must seem strange to you.”
“To be too beautiful to go out in public? Yeah, kinda.”
She smiled, and Ava was stunned by it for a moment. “You know we have to keep under the radar,” Talia said. “For people like me, it’s difficult.”
“I would think that someone like you could do whatever you wanted,” Ava said. “Be a model or an actress or . . . anything, really.”
“But I wanted to be a healer,” she said quietly. “I wanted to help my people. And being noticed isn’t part of who we are.”
Ava braced herself and looked directly into Talia’s eyes. She still hadn’t gotten used to the full impact—the carved cheekbones, golden skin, light-and-dark grey eyes. Even with the Veil, the woman was unearthly . . . ethereal. There was no way she could walk down the streets of New York or Paris and not stop traffic.
“At least here, I can be myself. I don’t have to try to hide.”
“Do you ever . . .” Ava swallowed nervously, but she was so curious. “Lift your Veil completely?” Talia was mesmerizing even with a Veil. Without? Well, Ava couldn’t even picture it.
Talia shrugged. “No need. It’s part of me. Like all of us, I don’t even have to try to keep it up.”
“Well, not like all of us.”
Unlike the others, Ava had no Veil. It was all part of her father’s plan to make her look ordinary—human.
“True.” Talia tapped her pen against her lips. “Sorry.”
“It’s no big deal. I can handle being, you know, normal.” Ava wiggled a palm back and forth. “Ish.”
“Well, at least in one respect,” Talia said with a wink before moving toward a tall cabinet and scouring the shelves.
Ava handed over her medicine bottle and waited as the healer refilled it and handed it back. “Thanks,” she said, hopping down from the table. “Oh, by the way, I’ll probably be by later.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m sure Gideon will want you to take a look at the woman we brought back.”
“The Half-Breed, yes.” Talia nodded. “He told me.”
Ava chewed on her lip. “Well, that’s what we thought. I’m guessing she’s a little more, though.”
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