A Girl Called Dust (22 page)

“Hollis says they might come after me
because of it. If the murders don’t stop, they’ll kill me.”

“Givers and Takers can be very vengeful.
They want someone to blame, and you seem like the obvious culprit. We’ll always
want compensation when one of our own is taken.”

I shivered. I would be that compensation.
Dad must have noticed the fear on my face because he said, “Don’t worry, honey.
No one is going to hurt you. We’re Givers. That means we don’t take life unless
our lives are being threatened, and no matter what happens, no one is going to
hurt you.”

I wanted to believe him. My father had
always made me feel secure, but I was afraid his protection of me would have
its limits.

Saturday morning, I went back to the lair.
Mom had wanted me to stay home and catch up on some work, but what good would
grades be if I were dead?

“She has to do what she has to do,
Claire,” Dad said when Mom looked to him for help. He was right. I needed to
learn how to sniff out a creature.

I was surprised to find that Hollis was
nowhere to be found. Cadence said he was off with his father having some sort
of lesson and that Wes would be teaching me.

She led me to the control room where I had
been the other times. On the table was a blindfold and several plastic
containers with closed lids.

“Have a seat,” Wes said as he entered the
room. He wasn’t especially friendly, but at least he hadn’t given me the look
of disgust he had given me the other time.

He tied the blindfold around my head a
little too tight, but I didn’t complain, remembering the time he had called me
weak. “Okay. I’m going to hold a container under your nose and then I’m going
to ask you what it is.”

“Okay.”

The first aroma tickled my nose. “Coffee
beans.” That smell filled the house every morning.

“Good. This one?”

The next scent was sweet and citrusy. “An
orange. No, tangerine.”

“Correct.” He let me smell the last three
remaining items, which turned out to be banana, chocolate, and lemon.

“Good job. Being able to identify those
scents will be completely useless to you.”

“What? Then why—”

“Shhhh! Just listen. I’m going to have you
smell something, and I want you to describe it. Tell me what comes to you.”

I took a long whiff of what Wes had put
under my nose, and then I immediately wished I hadn’t. “Ugh.”

“Tell me.”

“It smells putrid. Like something rotten.”

Wes sighed. “More specific.”

“Like meat that’s been left out for days.
There’s a vinegary bitterness. I smell . . . mildew.”

Whatever was under my nose, Wes took it
away. “Good. That’s what they smell like. Givers.”

He put the coffee beans under my nose,
which was meant to clear my senses. I remembered the lady doing that at the
perfume counter at the mall. “Now, how does this smell?”

A rush of delicious scents rushed through
my nostrils. “Hmmm. Cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, some kind of flower.”

“Gardenias. That’s how we smell.”

I sniffed myself. “I smell like that?”

“Yep. To a Taker who knows the sense of
smell. Now, we have to break things down. You need to be able to tell the birds
from the sea creatures from the forest creatures. You need to be able to smell
your Gemini. If your Gemini gets too close to you and you don’t recognize them,
you may very well be dead, especially with our truce in danger of ending.”

I didn’t tell Wes, but I didn’t need to
learn how to smell my Gemini. I already knew who she was. When I came across a
girl who looked like that, I’d definitely know it.

Wes took me through each creature
classification. The creatures of the air smelled like chalk. Creatures of the
sea smelled like salt and dirty water. Creatures of the forest smelled like
earth and pine. The beasts of the sixth tunnel smelled like a sewer. These
smells were hard to decipher because they were mixed in with the sweet aromas I
had smelled before.

“Now that you know what to look for, you
should be more aware of when a creature is around you.”

After that, Wes hid the containers around
the lair, and I had to sniff them out. I found them all except for the two Wes
had to help me find. We were just finishing up when Hollis and a larger version
of him, whom I assumed to be his father, stormed into the main corridor, the
door slamming closed behind them.

Mr. Mason, who was walking ahead, turned
off into one of the rooms as Hollis continued to stalk in our direction.
“Hollis? What’s wrong?” I asked as he stormed past me on the way to his room.

He stopped and stared at me as if he were
going to say something, but then thought better of it. He marched to his room
at the end of the hall and slammed the door.

“What was that all about?” I asked Wes.

He shrugged. “Mr. Mason gave him some bad
news, it seems like. Hollis is always the first to know stuff, but he can’t
really keep a secret. He’ll let us know soon enough.”

“I should probably go,” I told Wes. I’d
had enough of being underground. I didn’t know how they did it all the time.
The lair was starting to suffocate me, and I hadn’t been there that long.

“You should stay. We can practice again a
little later. Scent training is very important.”

“Yeah, I know, but we can do it again
tomorrow. My family’s going out to dinner tonight.”

Wes lowered his head. I didn’t think he
had anything else to look forward to that night besides working with me, and I
felt awful. “Must be nice.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, not really knowing
what I was apologizing for. For having a family? For not being confined to some
underground tunnel? “But thanks for the lesson. I’ll let myself out.”

Wes said something I couldn’t quite hear
and turned back toward the control room. I wondered, considering his
appearance, if Wes had ever been allowed to go above ground.

That night my family went to one of the
two Italian restaurants in town. A Little Taste of Italy was Mom’s favorite
place. While my sisters were usually gabbing away, they remained quiet. It had
been that way since the first time Hollis had taken me. When I entered a room,
they would find a reason to leave. Every night at dinner, they gobbled down
their food so they could be excused as soon as possible.

After we placed our orders, the silence at
the table grew awkward. How much did Paige and Quinn know? Did they know we
weren’t blood sisters?

“So, Quinn, how’s school going?” I asked.

She tried to smile, but she looked like
she was in pain. “Pretty good. We’re taking a trip to Washington, D.C., in the
spring. All the kids on the academic teams.”

I was proud of how smart my sister was.
She was always winning spelling bees and trivia tournaments.

“That’ll be awesome. Paige, what’s up with
you?”

She took a sudden interest in the ceiling,
probably to keep from looking at me. “Nothing much. Just the usual.” Normally
when I asked her that question, it would be like opening a floodgate of gossip.

 Mom gave me a small uncomfortable
smile, while Dad busied himself gulping down a huge glass of water.

I took a deep breath. “Are we going to act
like everything is normal?” My family would barely look at me. I focused on my
sisters. “Why are you guys acting so weird around me now? I’m still the same
Arden I’ve always been.”

“No, you’re not,” Quinn chirped. “You’re—”

Paige elbowed her in the side, and they
both looked down at their hands.

“I’m what?” I asked. What had my parents
told them? What had them walking on eggshells around me?

Mom glanced over her shoulder. “This is
not the time or the place to talk about this, Arden.”

No one in the restaurant was paying us any
attention. They were engrossed in their own conversations. “I think this is the
perfect time to talk. We’re all together, and no one can rush to eat their
dinners just so they can escape to their bedrooms.”

My sisters exchanged guilty glances.

“Arden,” Quinn said, “are you going to eat
us?”

The question sounded so ridiculous, yet it
was appropriate. Who had to ask a question like that? Someone who was living
with a monster-waiting-to-happen.

“Of course not. I would never hurt any of
you or anyone, period.”

Paige folded her arms across her chest.
“You can say that, but really you can’t control it. I looked up Wendigos. They
never get full, and they’re always hungry for Human flesh.”

A lump rose in my throat. She was afraid
of me. Dad studied his empty plate. Mom and Quinn locked eyes with each other
and then looked away. They were all afraid of me. My family thought I was going
to kill them one day.

“I—I don’t have to change if I don’t want
to. I can control it. I just have to learn how.”

Paige nodded. “Yeah, that’s the problem.
You don’t know how to control it right now. I thought you were going to go live
with those things.”

She sounded as if she were disappointed
that I had come home.

Dad lowered his voice. “Arden, there is
less than a year until your eighteenth birthday. Whatever transformation you’re
going to go through is going to happen by then. None of us knows what to
expect.” He turned to my sisters. “That doesn’t mean we treat her any
differently. Whatever happens, we’ll make the adjustments we need to make.”

Two waiters brought over a small table
that held our meals and placed them before us, but no one ate.

The fact that the people I loved the most
in the world feared me had stolen my appetite. Dad was the first to finally
pick up his fork. “And Arden, you know we love you, so please don’t take it
personally if you go through some changes and we have to do what we have to do
to protect ourselves.”

I hated the sound of that. “What does that
mean?”

Dad glanced at Mom, who quickly poured
dressing over her salad. She’d had the least to say the entire evening.

 “Wendigos are dangerous to Humans,
honey,” Dad said. “I have to do right by everyone in this family. I have to
protect all of you.”

I didn’t know what that would involve, but
I knew I didn’t want to find out.

I slid down in my seat and said something
I’d never thought I’d say. “Maybe I should see Scarlett again.” I had no idea
whether or not Scarlett would see me after how I had behaved the last time, but
I missed talking to her. Apparently therapy was helping me. If I came up with a
really good apology, she’d probably forgive me.

Mom swallowed a mouthful of food. “That’s
not a good idea. We think that since you know the truth—”

“Now that I know the truth about me,
you’re afraid I’ll say something to Scarlett. You think I’m that stupid?”

Dad was well into his plate of lasagna.
“No one thinks you’re stupid. We just have to be very, very careful. Therapy
has a way of pulling things out of you. We just can’t risk it. Honey, you can
talk to us anytime. Anything you can say to Scarlett you can tell us.”

That wasn’t true. I couldn’t completely
trust them because they had lied to me. “Okay,” I said. “If we can talk about
anything, let’s talk about
that
weekend. Where did you really go, Mom?
And don’t try to sell me that spa weekend story.”

My sisters looked at our mother, waiting
expectantly.

Mom’s face reddened slightly. “I went to
see your father.”

So why hadn’t she just said that before?
If she were telling the truth, there had to be more to the story.

“You went to see Dad for what?” Paige
asked.

Mom pressed her lips together and cut
hastily into a tomato, so Dad answered for her. “We were looking for someone.”

Quinn looked back and forth between Mom
and Dad. “Who? Looking for who?”

Dad put his fork down and closed his eyes.
One of my greatest fears was unfolding right before me.

I turned to Quinn. Someone had to tell the
truth at this table. “Your sister. They were looking for your real sister.”

I
wondered how long it would take them to find Rose and slide her right into my
place.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Sunday I went to see Wes for another
scent-training lesson. On my way to the school I tried to be aware of the
different scents I smelled in the air, but I didn’t know if I was getting any
better at it. Dad told me it would come in time.

On my way to the control room, I almost
had a heart attack. Five figures dressed in black robes and hoodies turned into
the corridor. They stopped abruptly, forming a wall in my path. Nothing but
blackness and large white eyes showed where their faces were supposed to be.

“Cousin,” one of them said. His voice was
hoarse and hollow.

What the hell? I took a step back. “Excuse
me?”

“You are Banshee,” said another, “and we
are Grims. We are both announcers and deliverers of death. We are cousins.”

“Yes, but Banshee is much, much more
powerful,” spoke a third.

“Oh, okay. Well, it’s nice to meet you.” I
scooted around them and continued down the hall. When I glanced over my
shoulder, the five Grims stood in the same spot, watching me.

“Bye, cousin,” they said in unison.

I waved and kept on my way. Creepy.

After my lesson with Wes, he announced
that he had a meeting with Mr. Mason, so he had to leave. Hollis entered the
control room and parked himself in front of the monitors. I still had no idea
what had been eating him the night before. I moved over to the table. His wings
were out, so I couldn’t sit beside him.

“Can’t you put those things away?”

He shook his head. “I can’t control them
anymore. They come out when they want and stay out until they feel like going
away.”

I sat three chairs over from him. “That
sucks. Why were you so pissed yesterday?”

He shrugged. “My dad. You know how that
goes. Sometimes I need a break. I know he has to be hard on me because I’ll be
taking over this place someday, but sometimes it’s just overkill.”

I didn’t know what to say about that, so I
said nothing.

“I know he loves me, but no matter what I
do, it’s never good enough for him, you know?”

I did know because I felt the same way
about my mother. She wanted me to be something I couldn’t be. It wasn’t in me
to be like her, Quinn, and Paige. She needed Rose. Rose would make their family
perfect. Mom and Dad would adore her. Quinn and Paige would look up to her.
They’d forget all about me.

“Hollis, the girl we saw Fletcher with
that day, what is she?”

“An Angel.”

She definitely was their daughter. Of
course she would be an Angel. Beautiful and delicate. Children dressed as
angels for Halloween and Christmas pageants. No one was afraid of an Angel. No
one worried about their Angel sister devouring them in the middle of the night.

I wanted to know more about Rose, but
Hollis and I were interrupted by Mr. Mason. “Son, give Arden and I a minute,
please.”

“Sure, Dad.” Hollis hurried out of the
room, leaving me alone with his father.

Mr. Mason sat beside me and placed a
leather-bound notebook on the table. He flashed me a smile and pulled a pen
from the pocket of his suit jacket. Hollis looked so much like his father that
it was uncanny, like Mr. Mason had made a carbon copy of himself.

He opened the notebook. “We have a little
business to take care of.”

“Okay,” I said. Mr. Mason made me feel so
uncomfortable.

Mr. Mason stared into my face for what
seemed like forever. “Someone told you that you weren’t special? Well, it’s
quite the contrary, my dear. You are the most special.”

I thought about all the exquisite
creatures I’d come across in just a short period of time, and I thought that
was impossible. “What do you mean I’m the most special?”

“You are the last and only Banshee left in
existence. Banshees were rare to begin with, and we’ve lost them all except for
you.”

“Wait, my mother, well my birth mother’s a
Banshee.”

Mr. Mason folded his hands underneath his
chin. “Your mother
was
a Banshee.”

A lump rose in my throat. “She’s dead.”

He nodded. “Unfortunately, she passed some
time ago. Some people think through natural causes, but I firmly believe the
Givers had something to do with it.”

Although I had never met my birth mother,
I had hoped to meet her someday, but now that would never happen. Even though I
had never known her, she had brought me into the world, and I would never get
the chance to meet her or even know what she looked like.

“Why would they want to kill her?” I
asked.

“Banshees are the most powerful beings.”
He pulled a sheet of cream paper from the notebook. “Younger Banshees see
death. Foresee it. But the older Banshees get, the more powerful they get. At
your peak, you will be able to cause someone’s death by merely thinking about
it. You will be the ultimate weapon for us. We won’t have to worry about losing
any Takers in combat, if things ever come to that. We won’t have to fight
anymore. All you will have to do is think death, and it will happen.”

 I didn’t want to be anyone’s weapon.
I definitely didn’t want to cause anyone’s death. Mr. Mason must have sensed
what I was thinking.

“You don’t have much choice. This isn’t
the flu. It’s not going to just go away. It’s a life sentence. You must make a
choice. You may become a Banshee or a Wendigo. Those are your only options.
Another Wendigo would be of no use to us. We already have scores of them
running amuck in the sixth tunnel. If you don’t want to embrace your Banshee
powers, a Wendigo you will be. Down in the tunnel you’ll go with the rest of
them.”

I gulped. How had my life choices turned
so bleak? One minute my biggest decision was which dress I was going to wear to
school the next day, and now I had to decide whether I was a carnivorous
monster or a Death Fairy. It wasn’t fair.

“Which is it going to be?”

I cleared my throat. “A Banshee.” Anything
to keep me from being condemned to that tunnel.

“Good.” Mr. Mason slid the slip of cream
paper across the table. There was lots of tiny writing on it. “We need you to
sign this contract. There are only six rules you need to follow. Number one,
you will take this solemn oath to never harm or hurt another Taker.
Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Number two, you will not share our
secrets or any information with a Human or a Giver.”

“Okay.”

He went on to the next one. “You will
complete whatever task has been handed to you by a superior or any task that
would benefit the group.”

“Yes.”

“Number four, you will not fraternize
romantically with any creature, Giver or Taker. After the age of eighteen, you
will be given a mate of your species.”

I didn’t know what to think of that, and
Mr. Mason didn’t give me time to think about it. He drew a line through that
number on the contract. “This doesn’t apply to you.”

For a moment, I was relieved. “Why not?”

“You may only mate with your own kind.
Aswangs with Aswangs. Grims with Grims, etcetera. It keeps the purity of each
species intact. Your parents made a grave mistake and went against their oath.
The result was you. There are only about ten mixed breeds out there because
everyone else understands the sanctity of their oaths. Now your parents have
left you to struggle with what you will become, and no matter what, you will
never be a full Wendigo or full Banshee.”

I was a mistake—that’s what I had gotten
from his words.

“Naturally, since you are a mix, you
cannot mate or breed. You’re the only Banshee who exists, and all the Wendigos
are sealed in the tunnel.”

“So you’re telling me I can never get
married or anything?”

Mr. Mason nodded. “Thank your parents for
that.”

“Number five, keep our location secret.”

That was easy.

“And number six—kill your Gemini.”

I nodded. I didn’t think that was anything
I would ever be able to do, but I would try if it came down to me or Rose.

“Give me your hand,” Mr. Mason ordered.

I held my hand out obediently. He grabbed
my right index finger and then sliced it with a silver blade on the end of his
pen. I yelped, but he ignored it as he let a drop of blood fall next to each
rule. At the bottom of the page, there was already a line with my name typed
underneath. He used my bloody finger to write my initials on the line and then
let my hand go. I sucked the blood off my finger.

“Be careful. The greater your taste for
flesh and blood, the harder it will be for you to resist changing into a
Wendigo.”

I quickly pulled my finger from my mouth.

Mr. Mason flashed me another creepy smile.
“You may go.”

Monday afternoon, Fletcher and I holed up
in his bedroom since he would never be welcomed in my house again. It was just
as well, because I didn’t feel welcomed in my own house anymore either.

“I don’t know if it’s a Wendigo doing this
at all,” Fletcher said as I made notes on a legal pad. “Wendigos eat people.
The thing that’s been attacking has only been ripping people to shreds, not
eating them.”

“So you think it’s another creature
pretending to be a Wendigo? Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know. Then I think about Ms.
Melcher and how no one has found her body. Wendigos sometimes store people for
later.”

Perhaps I was still in denial, but I
refused to believe that Ms. Melcher was dead. She could still be out there
somewhere. Maybe.

I told Fletcher what Bailey had told me
that night and how she didn’t remember anymore.

“Weird,” Fletcher said. “We’re going to
have to catch it in the act.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“It only attacks in the woods at night. We
set some bait there, and then when it comes, I’ll catch it.” Fletcher made it
sound as if we were trying to trap a bunny in a cage.

“Oh, is that all? Are you crazy? We can’t
do that.”

“No, we can’t. But I can. Trust me, I can
take that thing.”

Fletcher was a Walker, but I had yet to
see him change, so I don’t think the idea had fully registered.

From my reading, I’d learned that Walkers
could take the form of different animals. “What do you turn into?”

“So far either a wolf, a snake, or an owl.
When I get older, I may be able to turn into more things. My father could turn
into ten. Whatever I turn into, I’m always gray.”

“What do we use as bait?”

Fletcher thought for a long moment. “This
thing only goes after Givers. I guess I’ll have to ask someone from school.”

“To be bait? Fletcher, seriously, what if
something happens?”

Fletcher took the pad from me and jotted
something down. “It’ll be fine. We know how to protect ourselves. If anything,
I can turn into an owl and fly away.”

Even though I had seen some pretty amazing
things over the past few weeks, I had a hard time believing that my friend
could change himself into an owl. I was tempted to ask him to do it right then,
but I wasn’t sure that I was ready to see something like that. I’d never look
at Fletcher the same way.

“I’ll do it tomorrow night,” Fletcher
announced.

I cleared my throat. “You mean we’ll do it
tomorrow night.”

Fletcher shook his head. “You’re not doing
anything, so you don’t need to be there. You can’t even transform yet. What if
something happens to you?”

“You said this thing is a Taker. It won’t
hurt me. Don’t worry, Fletch. I want to know who’s trying to set me up. You’re
not going there without me.”

The events of the following day put a huge
monkey wrench in our plans. School had been cancelled again. Fletcher and I sat
on his porch, eating beef jerky.

I pulled another piece from the bag that
sat between us. “How’d they find him?”

“Not like the others. They only found his
head.”

I shuddered. It hadn’t been a teacher this
time. The latest victim was Ed Hurley, who owned the auto shop. He wasn’t found
in the woods either. At closing time, Ed had been in the alley behind his shop,
tossing trash into the dumpster. One of his employees realized he had been gone
too long and went to check on him, and according to Fletcher, he only found
Ed’s head.

“So,” I said, “whatever it is, it ate the
body this time.”

Fletcher nodded. “Yeah. Poor Mr. Hurley.”

“Was he, you know, one of us?” I asked.

Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know. I
had never gotten close enough to tell. My parents hadn’t either.”

A cool wind blew past. Fletcher shivered.
“Let’s go inside.”