The Deepest Roots

by Miranda Asebedo

  Together we walk to each end of the trailer, peeking in the empty bedrooms. Like we expected, no one’s here. If Mercy really is somewhere in the ruins, she’s deeper inside. I can’t hear anything, no rustling, no voices. Just the sound of Lux and me breathing in the stifling, damp heat, the gas fumes even stronger now that we’re inside.

  Lux moves back into the kitchen, where she gingerly pulls a beer bottle out of the sink.

  It’s the closest thing we have to a weapon so far.

  I struggle with the back door, hoping that it lines up with the door on the next trailer. Miraculously, it does, with barely a foot of bright air and open space between them, but the door to the next trailer is locked, the brass knob in the cheap, bleached wood holding strong. Like someone doesn’t want it to be opened.

  I feel around on the floor of the trailer we’re standing in, looking for something small and sharp that I can jam into the keyhole. Lux pulls her driver’s license from her pocket and reaches out across the open space to the next trailer and wedges it next to the lock, sliding the license in and adjusting it slightly as she tugs on the handle. I move away from the door to give her space.

  The knob turns, and Lux lets out a sigh of relief.

  “Nice,” I murmur, and Lux shrugs.

  We step across the open space between the buildings, the ground nearly six feet below us, a tangle of dead grass and twisted metal and broken glass. The next trailer is even darker, and I realize this is because we’re in a laundry or mudroom. There’s another door just inside, and thankfully this one is unlocked. But it creaks when we open it, and Lux and I both freeze, holding our breath.

  “How far back did he take her?” Lux mutters to me.

  I step forward and the floor sags under my weight. I leap back, bumping into Lux.

  “What?” she hisses, raising her beer bottle, ready to strike.

  “The floor is rotten,” I whisper. “Be careful where you step. You might fall through.”

  I light up the screen on my phone and shine it on the floor. Not five feet away, the dirty linoleum is bowed completely. “Go around that,” I whisper to Lux.

  There’s black stuff everywhere on the floor, so much that my feet slide around in it. At first I think maybe it’s rat shit, but when I see it’s on the walls I realize it’s mold.

  We creep slowly around the sunken area, moving toward the front door. I don’t know what the odds are that it will line up with the next trailer. We’ve been lucky so far.

  When we reach the back door, Lux holds her beer bottle aloft as I slowly twist the knob. It turns, which I take as a bad sign, because if Garrett didn’t bother to lock it before he left, Mercy’s probably not in this trailer. I crack open the door, and we are met with a wall of rusty metal siding. We can’t make it into the next trailer.

  “There’s got to be a way,” Lux says. “If Garrett and Mercy made it through, we should able to, too.”

  “Unless they came in a different door,” I say. “Or what about a bedroom window?” I think of our trailer at home. If the windows line up, we may able to sneak through that way.

  “Good idea,” Lux says, and together we inch down the hallway through the trash and mold.

  I try the first door, but it’s a linen closet, and a bat whooshes out over our heads.

  Lux stifles a scream and jumps about a foot in the air. The force of her movement makes the floor drop beneath our feet, and the subfloor crumbles. We leap away before the linoleum gives out, our shoes squeaking and skidding on mold.

  Standing on what must be a joist, because it feels firmer here, we take a moment to catch our breath.

  Lux gestures at a door farther down the hall.

  This one opens with resistance, and I realize it’s because there’s a big, black bag of trash on the other side of the door. We push carefully, hoping that we’re not about to knock over a pile of something that will make a lot of noise.

  When the opening is just wide enough for us to squeeze through, I go first and Lux follows me. It’s even darker back here, and it takes my eyes a minute to adjust. There’s a low bed, and above it, a window hung with dusty, shredded curtains. The air is sour and sticky.

  Lux uses her phone’s light to see more clearly, tucking her makeshift beer-bottle weapon under one arm. The bed is covered by a blanket that no longer has any discernible color beneath the dirt and mold and mouse pellets. Lying on the bed is an old doll, its hair matted and dark. It’s wearing a diaper and one shoe. One eye is closed and the other eye is open, like it’s watching us or maybe winking, like it’s saying, Good luck, but you’ll never make it.

  We climb up on the bed and Lux pulls the curtains back from the window. “Look!” she whispers. “It lines up with a window on the other side!”

  Opening our window is easy, but getting the other window open is a real feat. It takes us working together, leaning halfway out of the window of the trailer we’re in, to jimmy it open, shifting it back and forth in the swollen frame until we push it up just enough for one of us to squeeze through. It’s not very quiet, but the fact that Garrett doesn’t appear confirms he’s not here, and Mercy must be tied up or trapped somewhere alone. Lux pokes her head through. “It’s a bathroom,” she says. “And it smells fucking awful.” She climbs all the way inside, stepping down onto the open toilet ring and then the floor.

  “Do you see anybody?” I ask. “Any sign of Mercy?”

  “No,” Lux whispers back. I lean out farther to cross over and Lux helps me slide through the small window without falling headfirst into the toilet.

  It’s quiet, and dark, and unbelievably hot in this trailer. Sweat rolls off me in rivulets, dampening the shirt between my shoulder blades and under my arms. I wipe my brow with my forearm, wondering if we’ll have to climb through all seven trailers before we find Mercy.

  But then there’s a shuffle, the sound of someone shifting in a chair, maybe farther down the hall. My heart jumps up into my throat. Tears prick at my eyes. Someone is alive in here. Mercy. Please let Mercy be alive.

  Lux looks at me, grabbing my hand in hers. “We should call for her. Let her know we’re coming. Maybe she can signal where she is. Rick has to be here soon, right? He’ll get here before Garrett does.”

  I nod. If we’re wrong, Garrett might light the ruins on fire with all of us inside. But Mercy is worth any risk. If there’s a chance we can get her out safely, we have to go for it. Lux squeezes my hand again, as if she knows what I’m thinking. We’ve got to try.

  “Start shouting for her,” I say. “I’m going to try to call Rick again.”

  I pull my phone out of my pocket and start dialing as Lux yells, “Mercy? Can you hear us? We’re coming!”

  But instead of an answering call, there’s an unmistakable rush of footsteps in the hall. Lux shoots me a look of terror, and before either of us can think to brace it, the bathroom door bursts open, knocking us backward into the bathtub. Lux’s beer bottle goes flying and shatters against the wall above us. My phone lands on the floor with a clatter, sliding away. The tub is full of dead beetles and mouse shit, and we scramble to get up before the click of a safety being let off a gun stops us.

  “And now there’s more of you,” Garrett says, and when I look up at him I see the gun is trained right at us. It’s some kind of pistol, small enough to be hidden in a holster beneath his jacket, but big enough to kill either of us easily. “You probably won’t be any more help than the one I’ve got, but why don’t y’all come on up out of there real easy and join us?” His Oklahoma twang and blond Ken-doll hair seem out of place in this dirty hole. He lifts the heel of his boot and crushes my phone with one swift stomp. I don’t know if it connected with Rick or not.

  We climb up out of the tub, and I feel Lux shaking next to me. Her eyes meet mine in the dark, and they’re wide and scared.

  We are in deep shit now.

  Garrett pauses to touch Lux’s hair as she passes, and when she makes a small sound of revulsion, I crouch and grab my
phone, stuffing it in my jeans pocket. The screen is shattered, our plan is broken, and I’m not sure I can Fix any of it.

  Twenty-Three

  THE LIVING ROOM IS LIT by three gas lanterns perched on piles of trash. The smell of gasoline is dizzying. Another gas caddy waits in the corner of the room. We were right about Garrett getting ready to burn down the ruins sooner rather than later. As my eyes adjust to the flickering light, I find Mercy sitting on a dilapidated couch. Her arms are behind her, presumably tied, and her dark hair is a tangle around her face. She squirms when she sees Lux and me, using a shoulder to try to tug down the red bandanna gag on her mouth.

  “Oh my God,” Lux croaks. She holds her hands up to show Garrett she’s not trying anything as she carefully crosses the room to Mercy. As Lux pulls the gag down from Mercy’s mouth, the strangled sound of relief Mercy makes nearly rips my chest open. There’s a rotting wooden coffee table in front of the couch, and Emmeline Remington’s diary sits on top of it, the cottonwood leaf etched into the leather making it easy to identify. I pull my broken phone partway out of my pocket. There’s a faint light that suggests it might still have power. Garrett looks over at me, and I jam it farther into my jeans, pretending to be rubbing nervous, sweaty palms on my pants instead.

  Garrett looks back at Lux and Mercy. “Sit the fuck down, girlie,” Garrett says to Lux. “You don’t do anything unless I tell you to, got it?”

  He uses the gun to gesture at me to sit down on the couch, and then stands across the coffee table from us. “Well,” he says, one hand on his hip, after I’ve sat down on the other side of Mercy. “Now I’ve got three of you. What the hell good does that do me?” He spits on the floor. “The Finder girl was supposed to have Found that stupid chest by now. She’s not much of a Finder, is she?” he asks me. “We wandered all over those hills last night, and we didn’t Find a damn thing. She said it was the roofie I gave her messing her up, but she wasn’t much good this morning, either.”

  “So you really think that if you suddenly find the missing deed to the Remington land, the town won’t question it?” I ask, hoping that if we stall for long enough, Rick and a SWAT team and some helicopters with machine guns will show up. Okay, probably the helicopters with machine guns are a little farfetched, but some backup would be good. Garrett has a gun, and we’ve got nothing. “You don’t think they’ll wonder when the three of us go missing?”

  I reach forward and touch the diary, as if we’re all sitting around at a party and not being held at gunpoint. I open it, laying it out flat on the table. Hoping the three of us together with it again will make something happen. The pages rustle a little, like a cool breeze is stirring the air.

  Garrett’s eyes dart around the room, as if he’s searching for a cracked window. “My granddaddy told me when I was a boy that the deed to the Remington land is in that chest, and that it’s rightfully mine. And that bitch’s diary confirmed it. All eighty acres of prime fucking real estate. We’ll clear all the crappy trailers out and build a real town here. Something the Remingtons can be proud of.”

  “Then let us help you Find it,” Lux says, hazarding a glance at me that says, Whatever I do, just play along.

  “How the hell are you going to find it if this little Finder girl couldn’t?” Garrett asks.

  “We’re stronger when we’re together,” Mercy tells him. And it’s true, but not like he thinks. “We’ll look again. I’ll Find it this time. And then you can let us go. We won’t tell anyone where we were. I’ll just say I ran away.”

  “You just ran away?” Garrett laughs, pointing the gun at her forehead. “Nobody’s going to believe that.”

  Lux smiles slowly at him, like a predator looks at its prey before it launches a killing blow, and a shiver runs down my spine. “Garrett,” she croons, her voice soft. Her Siren talent is stronger when she knows the name of the man she’s trying to ensnare. “We can do it that way if you want. Or you and I can just get rid of these two after we Find the chest. Let’s do it, Garrett. Let’s all just go outside and Find it.” She flicks a dismissive hand toward us, her eyes still locked on him.

  Garrett’s eyes briefly shift to her hand, then track back to Lux’s face, his gun still pointed at Mercy’s head.

  The pages of the diary flutter, as a breeze moves through the cramped, dirty trailer.

  Lux’s full lips are in a playful smile, her green eyes even more catlike in the glow of the lanterns. “Come with me, Garrett,” she whispers, her words like a caress. “Let’s all go outside. I want to see you in the daylight. I bet you’re even handsomer in the daylight, aren’t you? Let me help you find the chest, Garrett. You’re going to make this town something the Remingtons can be proud of.”

  The gun lowers slightly, his finger sliding infinitesimally on the trigger, as if he’s ready to take it off.

  “Come on girls,” Lux trills, standing up. She will be the one to do it now, to protect us no matter the cost, as Emmeline wanted. Lux will use her curse to save us, even though she hates it and everything it’s done to her. She gestures for us to get up, and we do, though Mercy stumbles a little with her hands behind her back. I glance down and notice that her hands are free now, but she’s still pretending they’re not, unwilling to spook Garrett. Lux purrs, “I want to go outside with you, Garrett. You’ll take us outside, won’t you?”

  “There’s a quicker route,” Garrett replies, his words slurring together a little under her spell. “I can show you. You’ll like it,” he says, grinning at her.

  My heart is thumping wildly in my chest as the gun lowers a little more.

  “Can you show me, Garrett?” Lux croons again. “I’m a little scared of the dark. I know you’ll protect us, but I’d be so much happier if you took us outside. Take us outside, Garrett. I want you to.”

  Lux steps forward, reaching out with a trembling hand, and I know she’s going to touch his skin to strengthen the hold she has on him. Lux is going to save us. She will do whatever it takes to get us out of here.

  But at the last second, Lux falters, her hand poised just above his bare forearm as it glistens with sweat in the heated room. For a few seconds she is gone, not here with us, but in some other moment that only she can see, and she recoils slightly with a sharp gasp. Her hesitation is all it takes for the hold she has over him to waver.

  Garrett jerks his head as if trying to clear it of the fog Lux has created. “You little bitch!” he roars, and the hold snaps.

  The spell is broken. Garrett swings the gun back at her, and I watch the tendons and muscles moving through his hand, pulling his trigger finger in slow motion.

  And then I jump, shoving Lux out of the way as the gun goes off.

  Twenty-Four

  THE FLESH JUST BELOW MY shoulder is ripped open by fiery claws, cleaving and shredding through muscle and bone. It’s hot, so hot, and it’s as if time has briefly stopped so that I can appreciate the full extent of the pain, the way it spreads through every fiber of my body like oil spilled on the floor of the shop. I’d been moving forward, pushing Lux out of the way, but the force of the bullet has me reeling, and I fall backward onto the coffee table. The rotten wood of the table splinters beneath me, and I slam against the dirty floor.

  Suddenly my blood is everywhere. It’s pooling beneath me, and just as fast as the fire burns within me, it’s replaced with an icy, aching cold. So this is what it feels like to die.

  Mercy is shrieking, and Lux is scrambling to get up from where I’d pushed her into a pile of trash. Lux throws herself at Garrett, ramming her shoulder into his gut and pushing him back into the wall. Mercy reaches me, her face splattered with my blood where it hovers over mine. She presses her small hands on my wound, tearing a scream from my chest. At least, I would be screaming if I could get any sound to come out of my mouth.

  I never wanted to die in a trailer.

  But here I am.

  My vision is starting to blur, but Mercy shakes me to keep me awake. Lux is wrestling Garrett, trying to ge
t the gun, and I bet wishing for those same helicopters and SWAT team I’d been hoping for earlier. Maybe even the beer bottle.

  “Rome!” Mercy begs. “Stay with us, Rome!” She takes my hand and places it over my wound, and hot, sticky blood pulses out between my fingers. Then she jumps up and tries to help Lux tackle Garrett, because there’s no way any of us will make it out alive if we don’t get that gun. Garrett throws Mercy back on the couch, and she reaches between the cushions and pulls out a beer bottle. She flings it at his head, and it strikes his temple, sending him reeling back. As his arms pinwheel, the gun goes off again, this time into the floor a foot from my head. I would have flinched, but it seems like a lot of work right now.

  Mercy reaches back into the couch as he raises the gun again, and she pulls out another bottle because she is an Enough. The bottle is broken, and this time she flings herself at him with it. She knocks the gun out of his hand with the broken bottle, and the pistol goes skidding across the floor, leaving a trail in the mold and dust. Lux jumps on his back, clawing at his face and screaming like a banshee, and Mercy is hitting him with the broken bottle and saying swear words I didn’t even think she knew. They’re trying to keep him from finding the gun, but neither one is strong enough to hold him while the other grabs it.

  My hand slides away from the hole in my shoulder, and I think that the blood on my hand might be freezing into tiny crystals.

  Why is it so fucking cold in here?

  I find the phone in my pocket, and I rub the screen with my hands. If I can do one last thing before I die in a goddamned trailer, I’m going to try to get them help. I smooth the cracks with my fingers like I did with the car radio in Red’s shop, but I’m just smearing blood on the screen. Maybe my talent’s leaking out like all this blood on the floor around me.