Betrayals in Spring (14 page)

She nods and disappears inside. When Pax and I make our way to the back porch and slump down for more waiting, Griffin shimmers back into his regular form in front of us.

To my surprise, he says nothing about his day or about what he likely just overheard between Leah and us—even though he must have questions about why she knows us. I meet his purple gaze and find the truth behind it, as hard as a jewel.

He isn’t going to ask because he doesn’t want to know.

Because for all of his arrogance and posturing, Griffin knows good and well that there
is
something Pax and I are capable of that he isn’t—keeping secrets.

***

Griffin leaves before the porch lights extinguish at nine p.m. He says it’s because he can’t be missed in Rapid City, which might be true, but he seems more beaten than I’ve ever seen him and I wonder if it isn’t something more—maybe he realized today that not only can he not help us, but that we have no idea what we’re doing.

He promises to meet us in the park tomorrow in the morning, after free hour, to take us back to the cabin. We might be able to travel on our own with the bracelets that link us together, but Pax and I don’t know how to control our destination, so we agree.

In Leah’s room, the sense that we’ve done this all before hits me hard. It makes me realize how little ground Pax and I—and Lucas—have covered since we were here last winter. I itch with the knowledge that even though Cadi said time is running out, we haven’t gotten very far at all.

Leah’s clean face shines with pleasure, presumably at the company, and her tiny frame can’t diminish the way her personality pushes outward and fills up the room. Pax watches from the window seat and I sit on her bed, filling her in on Lucas’s return and that he’s off taking care of another matter.

“But what have
you
found?”

“Oh, right. I wish I could show you, but I didn’t know you’d be here and I left it for Brittany earlier today.”

“Left what for Brittany? And where?” Pax demands, sounding irritated at Leah for not knowing we were going to show up out of the blue.

When Leah tenses I can almost see the hair stand up on the back of her neck like Wolf’s fur does when he feels defensive. Her black curls bounce as she whips her head around to confront Pax. “Hey. I’m risking a lot here, all right? And Brittany and I worked out a system where we can share knowledge without getting caught talking about it, so that’s what we’re doing. Is that okay with you, Pax?”

He looks stunned for about thirty seconds before he chuckles. “By all means. Carry on.”

“Right. So I’ve been doing some textbook reading about the substances that made up Deasupra. What I learned is that it was far older than Earth, or than many places, and its crust was formed by things called primordial nuclides.”

“What are those?”

“I’m not sure. There’s got to be a way to find out, though. Brittany might have an idea—she’s smarter than you think. Smarter than me, probably.”

“So, you’re thinking if we can find out what primordial nuclides are, and what kinds made up the Others’ home planet, we might be able to compare them to the substances that are present on Earth?” Pax puzzles out loud. When Leah nods, a look of hesitant expectation in her gray eyes, he gives her a tight smile. “It’s a good starting point. You might even narrow it down further if you could find the same information for any of the other planets they’ve stopped on in the past.”

“That’s a good idea.”

The two of them are excited, learning toward each other, and I can almost see the wheels turning in their brains. It’s impressive, what she’s learned so far, and if she and Brittany can identify the substance the Others are mining from Earth it would be a huge piece of information.

“This is really great, Leah.” I smile at her, even though my mind is going a mile a minute.

“It could be. I’ll keep digging.” She slides her short legs under the covers. “Tell me what’s going on with you guys. Have a plan yet?”

I look helplessly at Pax, unsure how much to share with her and unwilling to dampen her hope.

He comes to my rescue. “We’re getting there. In order to be strong enough to have a chance to beat the Others, we need our fourth—there are four of us. We’re working on a way to find him now, and then hopefully you’ll have more information for us, and we’ll go from there.”

We talk for a while longer, and it’s funny to watch Leah’s brain try to compute the idea of music when Pax tries to explain it. Finally, I can’t stop the yawns escaping me every couple of minutes and Leah keeps catching them, even though she and Pax have been brainstorming ways to find out the makeup of the other planets.

She lies back on her pillow, tugging the comforter up to her neck. “Are you guys leaving tonight?” she croaks through another yawn.

I meet Pax’s eyes, and he shrugs.

“We can’t leave until after free hour tomorrow. But we’ll go. You need sleep.”

“Don’t be silly. Just sleep here and sneak out during breakfast. Althea can share the bed, and you can use the window seat. There’s an extra blanket in the closet.” She tosses a pillow over and it smacks Pax in the head, causing Leah to snort. “I hope your reflexes are better in a fight.”

Even though caution tries to stop me, to remind me we’re not invisible anymore because Ko is dead and Cadi probably is, too, the bed beckons. Without changing out of my jeans and sweatshirt, I slide under the comforter next to Leah. After a minute, Pax crosses to the cleansing room and shuts the door.

Leah rolls over so we’re facing each other and smiles. “He’s nice.”

“Pax? Sure.” I pick at balls of lint on the pillowcase, unfamiliar with this kind of conversation and nervous about screwing it up for some reason.

“I mean…he doesn’t act like I’m stupid or anything just because I’m not like you guys.” There’s something new and odd in her gray eyes, the way they’re soft instead of sharp, and all of the sudden it dawns on me—she
likes
Pax.

Something like jealousy swells inside me, even though I have no right to feel any such thing. After a moment it settles into something more akin to protectiveness, perhaps like what Griffin feels for Greer. “You’re
not
stupid, Leah. Pax will expect you to pull your weight, now that you’re in.”

The door to the cleansing room swings open and Leah and I fall silent. My eyes close to the sounds of Pax getting settled in the window seat, and by the time he whispers good night, I barely hear him.

CHAPTER 11.

The next morning Leah lets us use the shower, making me glad we took her up on the offer to stay. The smallest amount of guilt tries to ruin the moment, reminding me that we don’t know where Lucas is or what he’s going through, but I squash it. Lucas made the decision to leave, and he can make the decision to come back to us. Until then, I have to do everything in my power to move our quest forward without him.

And I’m not turning down a hot shower when it’s staring me in the face.

Pax goes after me, and while he’s in there Leah offers to loan me some fresh clothes. She’s at least four inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter, but the thought of clean clothes is too intriguing to dismiss without trying, so I wander into her closet to poke around.

I pull a thick purple sweater over my head, then snort when the sleeves land well short of my wrists. It’s stuck around my ears when Pax’s muffled voice comes from the bedroom.

“It’s not like the books at Cell. It’s like…the person who wrote it made up the people and what happened to them. You can keep it if you want.”

“I can? What’s it about?”

“It’s about a man who drinks people’s blood and a man and a woman who are trying to stop him. It might scare you.”

He’s describing
Dracula
, the book I had no interest in. And doing a horrible job, from what I can tell. I hadn’t realized he’d brought it with him.

“Does it scare
you
?” Leah challenges.

“Not really. It’s made up.”

“Then why should it scare
me
?”

I’m trying not to giggle, running my fingers over more of Leah’s miniscule clothes—which would come closer to fitting the waist-high half-breed who came to get Lucas than they will me—when a third voice lands in my stomach like a mass of writhing snakes.

“Leah, honey— What? Who is this?” The voice falters, confused.

It’s a sound I’ve heard before, one that rushes like a howling wind between my ears, and I step out of the closet. A woman, taller than Leah but with the same mass of black spiral curls, still has her hand on the doorknob. Her dark eyes are glued to Pax, her mouth opening and closing but no sound emerging. When her eyes start to flick madly around the room, between her daughter, Pax, and me, I know what’s coming next.

“Pax, she’s going to Break. It’s happening now. Her veil’s coming loose.”

“I…I have to go downstairs, notify the Wardens. You shouldn’t be here. I have to report you all.” She sounds unsure of whether or not she wants to bring the Wardens’ attention to her daughter, as though somewhere in the rational part of her brain she realizes they’ll take her away. “I have to,” she whispers again, staring forlornly at Leah while backing up to leave.

Leah gets hold of herself, dropping
Dracula
onto the bed and crossing the room. She presses her mother’s free hand between hers. “Mom. Mom, it’s okay. These are just my friends, they came over for free hour.”

“That’s not going to work, Leah. People see us now.” I move to her side, pry her mother’s other hand off the doorknob, and force her to look at me. I haven’t put a veil back up since the fat Healer last autumn, and that working was pure luck.

I don’t know if it’s going to work. I didn’t take the veil down, and I can’t make her unsee us. But we can’t let her report Leah. We need her, but more than that, we’re responsible for her being in danger in the first place. “Pax, come here.”

He joins me without asking why. I grab his hand. “I’m taking some of your power. I’m going to try to fix her—maybe we have a better shot with two of us.”

Pax nods and a moment later, the ripe scent of apples and spicy cinnamon, fills my nose. I see Leah’s head whip around in surprise at the thickening smells, her gray eyes wide and scared. I ignore them both and stare into Mrs. Olsen’s rolling eyes.

It’s okay. We’re not here; you never saw us. Leah’s alone, so there’s nothing to report. Just a normal Saturday morning. Close your eyes
.

To my great surprise, she follows my instruction.

You’ve just come into Leah’s room to get her for breakfast
.

Her eyes stay closed and I pull Leah into a quick hug and mouth,
I’m sorry
. She shakes her head once, tears filling her eyes, and jerks her chin toward the door. I turn Mrs. Olsen loose and grab Pax by the hand, tugging him into the hall. At the last minute, when we’re out of her sight, I pull a bit more power from Pax and think,
Open your eyes
.

Pax and I race down the stairs as quietly as possible. The sound of the shower rustles from the master bedroom, so we let ourselves out the back door and make our way to the park to wait for Griffin.

I don’t realize I’m crying until we stop—and I see that Pax is, too.

***

Griffin takes a long look at our twisted faces when he arrives in the park but says nothing. Instead, he simply makes us a portal in the shimmering morning air, and by the time we step through it, he’s disappeared.

The inside of the cabin brings on a bout of cloying claustrophobia, and not even Wolf’s kisses can make it better. Pax’s frustration with what happened in Danbury bursts out in a fit of rage that resulted in a broken window. One minute he is standing in the middle of the living room, the next he picks up a heavy candlestick from the end table and hurls it through the window.

Now he squats down, picking up the pieces of glass after he’s covered the opening with a blanket. It reminds me of the ranger’s station we sheltered in not so long ago. The slump of his shoulders makes him look like I feel—awful and buried under guilt.

Leah could be in trouble right now. They could be taking her away, or her mother could be permanently damaged by my blundering attempt to reinstate the Others’ control in her mind. It’s one of the reasons Lucas and I hesitated last autumn to involve the humans; a lot of the time we hurt them, and after Portland last winter it is clearer than ever that we don’t have a clue what we’re doing when it comes to veils.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Pax that I know exactly how far we are from Deshi, and that we need to get there as soon as Lucas returns, but then I realize I can’t. If he knows about my trip into the tunnels alone, he’ll be angry. Honestly, thinking about the confrontation wears me out.

Instead I don’t say anything as he finishes cleaning and takes the shards of glass into the kitchen. I fold up the maps and tidy the table, then crawl onto the couch with the
Holy Bible
book, but the words are confusing and there are too many of them. When Pax ambles back into the living room and grabs his jacket off the rack, I look up with interest.