by Cady Vance
“What is it?” The gut feeling something is very wrong sucks the intense heat from my body, leaving me cold and scared. “What happened? Where’s Aiden?”
“Aiden is gone again.” She sags against the doorframe and closes her eyes. “The jackass.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Lucas pushes off from the floor and crosses the room to Florence’s side.
She throws her hands in the air, smacking her one dangling earbud so it spins in a vicious whirlwind. “He’s just gone. I walked up and down the block looking for him, but he’s nowhere out there. I thought maybe he was having a think like before and standing in a doorway somewhere, but he’s not. He’s nowhere out there, and I don’t know if he’s run off, but what if he hasn’t run off? Do you think he’d just run off? Thora, your brother…what if they? What if they, what if they!”
“Breathe.” Lucas places his hands on either of her shoulders and forces her to meet his gaze. “I’m sure he’s fine. We’ll all go look for him, okay?”
Florence doesn’t look convinced, but she nods anyway. I know she doesn’t believe Lucas any more than I do. I don’t think we’ll find Aiden outside. He is gone. I know it deep down inside. I can only hope my hunch is wrong…Aiden is the Hunch King, after all. Not me. At that memory, weariness pushes down on me even harder. How much worse can tonight get? I just have to hope he didn’t put up a fight. I can’t even bear to think about what would happen if he did.
The three of us hurry out of the environment, down the stairs and outside onto the cracked, well-worn sidewalk. Aiden is nowhere in sight, and I don’t say aloud what’s on my mind. It’s well-lit here. It would be hard to lose him to the shadows. Still, we make our way around the block searching for any sign of an insomniac smoking in the building crevices. A few moments later, we find ourselves before the black Dream House door again, sans Aiden.
“He was rather upset.” Lucas finally breaks the tense silence. “It’s possible he…went home.”
He leaves off the actual thought on all our minds. It is possible Aiden cut his losses and got the hell out of here. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. But, the truth is, it’s also possible he didn’t, and I find it hard to believe he’d disappear without saying goodbye. Which only leaves one other possibility. One I don’t want to acknowledge, but I have to.
“We can’t assume that.” I take a deep breath. “The Sleepers could have taken him. What do we do, Lucas?” I ask, hoping he’ll have the answer, hoping he’ll know what to do because I don’t have any idea at all.
He jams his fingers into his hair and looks up at the night sky. “Right. You two are going to get your next clue. I’m going to make some calls and see what I can do about forming a team to find Aiden. I’ll do everything I can, but you need to go on ahead.”
I nod. I’d rather help Aiden, but there’s nothing I can really do right now. I decide not to ask Lucas about his mysterious-sounding calls or how he’s able to form a search party or how he has even the slightest clue where to look for our friend. I already know what he would say. I can’t tell you now, Thora. Soon.
“Florence?” Lucas asks. She’s been eerily silent since we came outside, and I can’t tell at all what’s going through her head. She could be toying with the idea of running off into the streets herself, and the thought of losing them both to the Sleepers freezes the very core of my bones.
“Yeah, just find him, okay?” she asks in a small voice.
“Brilliant. It’s settled then.” He buzzes the third floor. “We need to get you the clue so you can go to the next location.”
The door squawks, letting us in. The three of us shuffle up the stairs quickly and quietly. At the top of the third flight, the woman is waiting on the landing again, only this time, her kind smile is gone. Her eyes move past me and land on Lucas. She shakes her head and holds out a phone.
“Call for you.” As Lucas takes the phone, she turns to me and Florence. “Sorry girls. You’ll have to wait in here while he’s on the phone.” She gestures toward two metal folding chairs inside the entrance. I start to ask what’s going on as we settle into the seats, but she shakes her head again and walks away. Something isn’t right. Again. A thick rope squeezes my heart at the thought.
I lean around the doorframe to see into the hallway, chair creaking underneath me. Lucas is staring down at the ground, grimacing as he raises the phone to his ear like it’ll chomp off his skin if he lets it get too close. “Hello?”
“What’s going on?” Florence whispers. Her hands clutch my shirt as she pulls me back from the door.
“I have no idea.” I hold a finger to my lips, wanting to hear Lucas’s side of the conversation. I know it has to be about us. No normal phone calls would happen on a night like this.
“What do you mean? You can’t be serious.” Lucas’s voice comes out harsh and angry.
Florence’s eyes widen to frisbees, and I stare right back with eyes I’m sure as wide. I force myself to look around the door again. Lucas is leaning heavily against the wall, obscuring his expression from me, but I know from the sagging of his shoulders, he feels defeated.
“No, you can’t do that.” A pause. Then, a sigh. “Yes, he’s gone. I was going to—” Another pause. “Right. I assumed as much.” I squeeze my eyes tight and swivel away from the door, leaning back into my chair. “Come on. Don’t do this to them.” At those words, my stomach rolls over a thousand times. This call really is about us. Something bad about us. “Right. Okay. Bye.”
When he rounds the corner and his tortured gaze meets mine, my fingernails dig into the sides of the folding chair. Maybe if I hold on tight enough, his news won’t be as bad as I fear. He takes two steps closer to us and stops.
“Just spill it.” Florence shifts in her creaking chair and drops her head back against the wall. “It’s not like tonight doesn’t already suck a gazillion eggs.”
“I’m afraid this is going to make it quite a bit worse than that.” He chokes out a bitter chuckle. “After everything that’s happened, the Cafe…well, they’ve canceled the search for new members. It’s off. It’s over.”
Nineteen
The Hypocretin is the neurotransmitter in the brain involved in the control of sleep. We monitor this in our Stage IV Insomniacs in hopes to develop a cure.
- The Chronic Insomnia Handbook for Patients
I jump up from my chair so fast the world spins. “What? Off? Over? What do you mean?” I try to calm the hysteria bubbling up inside me, but it feels as if it’s reached boiling point.
“I’m sorry. They’re locking things down.” Lucas shakes his head and looks down at his hands, palms wide and facing up like they’ve somehow failed him. “Apparently, there were about ten of you starting out, but the Sleepers have taken all but you two.” He levels his gaze with us. “They’re rather certain it’s what happened to Aiden, and after what happened with your brother…”
My heart trips in a painful beat, and I collapse back onto the folding chair. Everyone taken. The hunt over. My brother. The Clinic. I’ll never find out what’s wrong with me. No home to go back to. I groan and drop my head into my hands. I force out the next words in a scratchy whisper. “I have nowhere to go. I can’t go back now. I just can’t.”
“I promised I wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to you, and I meant it.” Lucas squats down in front of me and takes my hands in his. A warmth spreads into my fingers and through the rest of me, even though my heart is frozen solid with an icy mixture of helplessness, hopelessness and confusion. “I’m going to explain everything to you, we’re going to find Aiden, and I’m going to get them to accept you into the Cafe, even though you couldn’t go through all their clues and tests to find them.”
I look up to meet his steady, calm gaze, and a bit of hope flickers to life in my heart. “I don’t understand. How can you do that?”
“Thora,” he sighs. “I’m part of the Cafe. I’m an insomniac. Like you.”
My breath feels sucked out of me, even
though I’m not at all surprised. Even though it makes total sense. Even though I suspected it myself with the way he showed up everywhere we went and seemed to know things he only could if he were one of them. But still, hearing the confirmation, knowing it really is true…every part of me seems to swell with a strange sense of…comfort.
“I knew it!” Florence throws herself forward in a rush of blond. “I knew you had to be an insomniac.”
“I knew it, too,” I say with a small smile. “The only thing I don’t understand is, well, you don’t really…” I look at Florence, at her clear gray eyes and pale skin that matches my own, before turning back to Lucas. Lucas with his bright blue eyes and brown skin.
“I don’t look like the rest of you, I know.” He grins. “I’m not meant to.” He points to his eyes. “Contacts.” And then to his skin. “Spray tan.”
I drink him in and notice for the first time he’s only a couple inches taller than me. For some reason, he’s seemed much taller all night, even though he isn’t. I look deep into his eyes, trying to imagine how he’d look without the sparkling blue. Even though they shine so bright, I find myself wishing I could see what they actually look like. I want to see him how he really is.
“You had me fooled,” I finally say, and I find myself smiling, despite the fact the proverbial rug has been pulled out from under tonight’s plans.
And then it hits me. “Wait a minute.” A new fear begins to creep into my head. “Another friend of mine is out there. If we’ve all been taken, they’d have her, too.”
“What’s her name?” Lucas asks with a frown.
“Gemma.”
Lucas smiles. “Gemma? She found us last weekend.” He cocks his head. “Don’t tell me you’re the friend she was going on about.”
“Oh my god.” I stand from the chair, relief flooding through me. “She’s there. She’s actually there. She’ll get us in. I know she will. Can you call her?”
The smile slides from Lucas’s face. “I can try, but I doubt that will work.”
I shake my head. I don’t care. “Just try.”
“Okay.” Lucas turns, pecks a number into the phone and waits. I can hear the ringing sound drifting out of the tiny speaker. It rings. Again. And again. The hope I have threatens to burst into a thousand tiny bubbles, but I still hang onto it anyway. Maybe we can’t get to the Clinic now, but as long as I know my best friend is there, all is not lost. It can’t be.
Lucas clicks off the call and turns back to me.
“I’m sorry. I had a feeling he wouldn’t answer. Gabe is rather paranoid,” Lucas says after the Dream House woman enters the room and takes the phone from him. It’s then I notice the dark tan smudges near his fingernails from his spray tan job. “We should go.”
“Where are we going?” I ask as Florence and I follow him down the creaking stairs.
“Somewhere we can talk without being overheard.” He glances back up the stairs at the woman watching our descent with a sharp, unnerving focus. Florence and I take the hint and don’t speak another word, our shuffling feet the only thing keeping us from falling into eerie silence.
When we step onto the sidewalk, Lucas throws his arm across my chest and pushes me back. My shoulder blades slam into the brick wall, and the rough stone scratches my skin through my shirt’s thin material, reopening the wound from our earlier encounter with the Sleepers. I meet Florence’s eyes over Lucas’s shoulder and see she’s trapped against the wall by his other arm. My heart lurches, and I scan the empty streets laid out before us. If Lucas has seen something, and he’s trying to keep us out of sight, he’s doing a terrible job. With the bright lights from the streetlamps and the way he’s acting, we’d catch anyone’s attention.
Still, I hold my breath and wait.
“Come on,” he says in a low voice. He inches away from the building, turning us left. “I think someone’s there. Don’t turn around.”
“Where?” I ask in a whisper as we push away from the building.
“Behind us. Don’t turn around.” He places a hand on the small of my back, and through my fear, I can’t help but focus on the heat of his hand pressing against the cotton. If he moves his hand any lower, his fingers might touch the skin where my jeans and shirt meet. “My guess is whoever got Aiden came back for you two.”
His words blink me out of my heated daze, and I feel my body shuddering, the fear spiking nails into my throbbing head. I grip my hands into fists and force myself to stay focused on what’s before me instead of what’s behind. The blinking crosswalk only steps away, the empty sidewalk, the eerie silence. Absolutely no one is around, and any shadows of buildings have been melted away by the lights lining the streets.
“Should we be out in the open like this?” I ask, picking up the pace as we reach the end of the block. The crosswalk blinks red, but we pass through it anyway. There are no cars to stop us now.
Lucas tightens his hold on my shirt, bunching the dark cotton up on my back. “There’s only one of them. We’ll lose him.”
“I have an idea.” Florence whispers so quietly I’m not entirely sure I’ve heard her. “How far back is he?”
Lucas stiffens but doesn’t slow the pace. He cocks his head slightly as if he’s listening to what’s behind us. My ears try to find our potential attacker, too, but I can’t hear anything but our own footsteps. Suddenly, they seem far too loud to me, like fireworks exploding in the sky.
“He’s keeping his distance,” Lucas says. “What did you have in mind?”
Florence flicks a finger at the end of the next block we’re approaching. “Which way are we supposed to go here? Right, left or straight?”
“Straight.” He clears his throat. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve trusted you this whole time.” That wicked smile of hers plays across her face for the first time since Aiden disappeared, and even though I’m a little wary of whatever crazy idea she’s come up with, I’m glad it’s back. “Trust me for this part. I’ve got us covered. At the end of the block, we’re going to go left. Run. Quietly. Until I say stop. But be quiet.”
Okay. I can do this. I can run a little more. I bounce on the balls of my feet as I take each step, trying to pump myself up. The end of the block grows closer and closer until it looms ahead of me like a monster ready to chomp me into tiny pieces the moment I take my first step left.
“We’ll be fine,” Lucas whispers, folding his other hand around my clenched one so that now, with one hand still on my back, he’s practically holding me. My fingers loosen at his touch, and a small part of my tension melts away.
And then we’re here, turning the corner. Lucas jerks me forward. I’m running. My feet slap the pavement, and I try to silence the horrible smacking my slippers make against the pavement. Each pounding step reverberates from my feet all the way up to my head.
“Okay, stop!” Florence hisses. I stumble to a stop, jolted by the sudden change in speed. Lucas holds me steady as Florence rustles through her bag. She pulls out a rope with a rock woven through one end. She spins it in a circle like a lasso.
“What is that?” I whisper as she lets the rope go, and it flies up into the air. I follow it’s path and see the rock soar through the rung of the nearest building’s fire escape ladder. My stomach drops along with the rock as it sinks closer to the ground, Florence easing it toward her by using the rope like a pulley system. “Oh my god, you can’t be serious.”
“Shhh.” The rock slides down into her hands, and she gives a quick tug to both ends of the rope. The fire escape ladder whirs down to us. Heart pounding, I glance at the end of the block. The Sleeper hasn’t rounded the corner yet, but he can’t be too far behind us.
Florence turns to me when the ladder shudders to a stop just above the concrete. “You first.”
My slippers curve over the rungs as I place one foot over another in a hurried climb, cursing myself when the ladder shakes at a volume I swear travels all the way to Connecticut. Behind me, Florence scrambl
es up with Lucas taking the rear. Rusted metal flakes onto my palms, and I try not to think about what other damage this fire escape has taken over the years. I push myself off the ladder and onto the first rickety metal platform.
Lucas and Florence climb onto the platform. Florence quickly pulls the ladder up behind us. It shakes and groans, and I’m terrified whoever is following will hear the clamor and know exactly where we are.
“Should we move up another flight?” I whisper to Florence. She shakes her head and points down the block. A second later, a figure emerges around the corner, walking quickly. I freeze and hold my breath, sure we’ve somehow given our position away. The figure strides down the block toward us, facial features hidden under the nighttime shadows.
The figure freezes. He swivels his head from side to side as if he’s searching the streets for any sign of my group. He takes off down the street at a run, coming right at us. I squeeze my eyes as tight as I can, like that will keep him from spotting us as he passes underneath our urban treehouse. When I reopen them, he’s running down the sidewalk past us. I’m too scared to even breathe.
He stops at the crosswalk, looks one way and then the other before uttering a muffled curse. He chooses a direction and runs. Soon, he’s out of sight.
“What now?” I whisper-hiss at Lucas whose eyes are trained on Florence beside me. I whip my head around and see she’s staring straight up at the sky. I raise my eyes but only see the inky blue, nothing more. I wonder if she’s finally cracked.