Resonance (30 page)

“Maybe everyone should,” I said, and leaned my head against Simon's chest. My hands were bloodstained but rock steady. “Maybe the time for secrets is over.”

C
HAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

E
LIOT DROVE TO AN EXTENDED-STAY
motel near the airport. Laurel let us into the suite, so similar to the Free Walker base camp I half expected to see Rose come out of the adjoining room.

Simon must have read my mind, because he drew me inside, saying, “We didn't want to risk going anywhere the Consort might track. And we weren't sure how long we'd be here.”

This was my life now: living out of motels, running from the Consort. Exactly as Addie had predicted. I stood in the middle of the room while Laurel, Addie, and Eliot conferred in the corner.

Simon helped me to a chair. “You need to rest. What can I do?”

“Coffee would be good.”

“Chamomile tea,” he replied. “The last thing you need is caffeine.”

He caught Addie's eye, and she sat down next to me while he ducked into the tiny kitchenette.

“You're going to tag-team me, aren't you?”

“I would think you'd had enough alone time,” she replied. “You look awful.”

“I feel awful.”

“You need a shower,” she said. “Laurel brought some clothes that should fit you. We'll burn the stuff you've got on.”

The appeal of being clean battled with the appeal of staying in one spot. But when I looked down at my shirt, stiff with blood—mine, Rose's, Simon's, the guard's—I couldn't argue.

Addie helped me to my feet as Simon brought in tea, steaming and fragrant. The paper cup was similar to the ones I'd stacked in the oubliette. Hands shaking, I pushed it back toward him, swallowing down bile. “No.”

He took it away silently, exchanging a worried glance with Addie.

Addie led me to the adjoining room with a king-size bed and a typical, hotel-room cramped bathroom. She turned the shower on, the mirrors fogging up immediately, and left, promising clean clothes.

I was alone again, with only the rush of the water and the knocking of the pipes for company. I could hear the rest of the group down the hall, but they sounded distant, like they were miles away. Gingerly I peeled off my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. I even untied the splint on my finger, hissing at the pain. We could reset it later. For now, I wanted to scrub away every trace of the day.

The spray burned, but I welcomed the distraction, letting it beat against my muscles until they began to ease. The water swirled at my feet—rusty, as the worst of the blood was washed away, then pink, and finally clear. But it couldn't carry away the memories, or my grief, no matter how many times I lathered and
rinsed. Slowly I began to take inventory: the cuts and bruises purpling my skin, the broken finger, the lump at the base of my skull, the still-tender cheekbone. Even my scalp hurt, as I shampooed again and again, trying to coax the knots out.

For an instant I luxuriated in feeling clean, until I remembered where I was—in a strange shower with a line of bruises down my side and eyes gritty from tears—and I couldn't stand, not for a second longer. I crouched at the foot of the tub and wept for all we'd lost today, and how close we'd come to losing so, so much more.

And then Simon was pushing aside the curtain, turning off the water, easing me out of the tub, wrapping a cheap white towel around me.

“I'm here,” he said, but I couldn't answer through my sobs.

Dimly, I heard Addie ask if she could help, but whatever he told her must have sufficed, because the door closed again, and he sank down to the floor, pulling me onto his lap. He tucked my head under his chin and stroked my hair, carrying away the grief as surely as the water had, bringing solace in exchange.

Eventually I sat back and studied him. His eyes, the dark glittering blue I'd missed so much, were quiet and worried. “Better?”

“I think so. Sorry,” I said, gesturing to his soaked shirt. “I dripped all over you.”

“It'll dry. Besides, if you think I'm going to complain about having a wet, naked girl on my lap, you don't know me at all.”

“I'm wearing a towel,” I pointed out, and smacked his shoulder.

“We need to get you bandaged up,” he said, and I nodded. “You're going to be okay.”

I didn't reply.

He scooped me up and carried me to Laurel's room, depositing me gently on the bed. “Sleep,” he said. “I'll tuck you in.”

“I keep seeing them. Rose, and Simon, and . . .” I brushed my fingers over the scar at the corner of his mouth. “He looked like you.”

My breath hitched as the tears threatened again.

“Sleep,” he said firmly, pointing to the stack of clothes Addie had left on the bed. “Can you get dressed on your own?” He stood at the edge of the bed, shifting from side to side.

“Yeah. Don't leave. Just . . . don't look.” I didn't want him to see the bruises. Didn't want him to see the damage instead of the girl. I put on Laurel's clothes—a thin navy T-shirt and pajama pants, the cream-colored flannel sprinkled with stars.

The bedsprings squeaked as I sat on the edge of the mattress, and Simon turned around.

“Lie back,” he said.

“He looked like you,” I repeated. “He wasn't you, but I couldn't stop thinking . . .”

“I know the feeling,” he said. “I woke up, and you were gone. All I could think about was that I knew what Lattimer had done to my dad, and I knew what he'd do to you.”

“I had to,” I said. “Rose, too. We bought the Free Walkers time.”

“But it's not done,” he said. “Let's say Eliot uploads that video, and the whole world knows about the Walkers. There's still tons of work to do.”

“Then we'll do it,” I said softly. “Together.”

He traced my features, skimming along my hairline, over my good cheekbone, down my nose, across my lips. He kissed my eyelids and my mouth and my collarbone, featherlight and healing, the first touch that hadn't hurt since I'd crossed the threshold of CCM, days ago.

“He thought I'd stolen his life,” he said. “I did, kind of.”

“No. That was your father and Rose. Neither of you had a choice.”

“I guess not. He didn't have to tell you about the cauterization, though. He could have died, and let the rest of us die along with him.”

“He would never have done that,” I said. “The Free Walkers used him, but he wasn't going to punish you for it. He was setting you free.”

“We have to tell my mom,” he said, bleak as midwinter.

“Tomorrow. We'll tell her tomorrow.”

“What about Monty?” Simon asked.

“Let the Free Walkers handle him.”

“He told you how to save me,” he pointed out.

“He's the reason I lost you,” I replied, and sighed. “I know. I get it now, how easy it would be to lose yourself when you look for someone. Rose lost herself too, I think, in the opposite way. She was so focused on the Free Walkers—on the mission—she lost all the people she was fighting for.”

“I'm glad they got a few more days together,” he said.

“What do you think he'll do now?” I asked.

“Keep going,” he said. “What else can he do?”

I wasn't so certain.

•   •   •

The sound of a door easing open, then shut, woke me early the next morning. I slipped out of bed, and Simon reached for me. “I'll be back,” I said. “Promise.”

He froze, but let me go.

The suite was dark. Eliot slumped over the desk, snoring in the blue light of his monitor. Addie and Laurel curled together on the couch, fingers entwined. Monty was nowhere in sight.

I padded outside, not bothering to stop for a coat or shoes. Monty stood on the balcony, looking out at the sleepy city, the purple-blue dawn, and the winking red lights of planes landing and taking off. He wore a green parka and a plaid newsboy cap, gnarled hands gripping the railing.

“Where will you go?”

He turned, his face tired but pleased. “She's still out there.”

“Grandpa,” I said. Grandpa, not Monty, because it was like I had told Simon. I understood, finally. “She's gone. I saw it happen.”

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he said. “Think they'll hold a service?”

“I'll make sure of it.”

He nodded. “I'm glad. Your mother could use some closure. Isn't that what Addison's always calling it?”

“You could stick around,” I pointed out.

“Nah. That'll be her body. Her soul's what I loved. Her soul's
what I've been chasing after all these years, and when she died, it left her. People aren't just atoms or cells or strings, Delancey. It's the movement within that makes a person, their music. When Rose died, the music went out of her and into the multiverse. She Walked through worlds and left a trail of that music, and I'm going to follow it.”

“You'll get lost,” I said. “You won't be able to find your way home.”

“Sweet girl,” he sighed. “How many times have I told you? Rose is my home, and she's everywhere.”

“But—”
You'll never come back
, I wanted to tell him. But he already knew. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering in the icy morning air.

“You're a better Walker than I ever was,” he said looking out over the traffic.

I shook my head in protest, but he continued. “I taught you everything I knew, but it wasn't enough. I didn't have your heart, or your fight. I thought without Rose, I wasn't me, and it left me hobbled.

“You're entirely yourself, Delancey. It's why you're able to fight for that boy in there, and for Echoes you've never seen, and a future you can't imagine. You're strong in a way I'm not, and you can love in a way I couldn't. With your whole heart. It's a better way—to be complete, and love completely, instead of trying to fill a gap. And it's how I know you're going to be all right.”

He shuffled over and kissed my cheek, the familiar scent of shaving cream and brown sugar wafting over me. My eyes filled,
and he patted my hand. “It's all right. Nothing's lost. Nobody's ever lost, not truly. Just changed.”

“Grandpa—” I paused. “Thank you. For teaching me.”

“Oh, Del. My best, brightest girl. It was absolutely my pleasure.”

He headed down the stairs, toward the stoplight at the corner. I dashed my hand over my eyes, and when I looked again, he had vanished, the sunrise catching on the edge of a pivot where he'd been standing a moment ago.

•   •   •

Inside, Simon pulled me back under the blankets, gently rubbing warmth back into my limbs.

“Monty's gone,” I said.

“I figured.”

“It'll kill him,” I said. “He can't last out in the Echoes.”

“No. But he'll be happier, for whatever time he has left.”

“You don't hate him?” I asked.

“He saved my life,” he said quietly. “He told us how to save you. It balances out.”

And maybe it did. Maybe that was the secret of the multiverse, that tragedy was balanced out by joy—not canceled, but countered. Maybe what allowed the Echoes to keep unfolding was a delicate system of loss and growth, and we were no different. Entropy breaks the world apart, and love brings it back together.

C
HAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I
SHOULD GO WITH YOU,”
Addie said, two days later. “What if they call the Consort again?”

“They won't,” I said. “Not till they hear what I have to say. Once I've said it . . . I don't think they'll want to.”

The news from CCM was a jumble. Lattimer's death had thrown the Consort into chaos—and the fact he'd killed an Original had given the Free Walkers' claims credibility. The Walkers were listening, and more importantly, asking questions. The Major Consort was stepping in, but even their presence couldn't gloss over the cracks in the Consort's facade.

I didn't doubt Prescott and her team were planning how best to shatter that facade completely, but we hadn't heard from them. I wondered if we would—if they still believed Simon was their weapon, or if they could start a revolution without him.

I simply wanted to say good-bye.

We were sitting in a distant Echo of my attic bedroom, on a burnt-orange velvet couch someone should have sent to the dump, and instead had stashed up here amid cobwebs and cardboard boxes.

“Do you think the Free Walkers will win?” I asked.

“I think the Consort is going to have to change,” she said. “If you upload that video, there's no going back.”

“That's what I'm counting on,” I said. “What will you do?”

She nibbled a thumbnail, considering. “They'll have to rebuild. I could be good at that.”

“You want a seat on the Consort?”

“If we even have one after this, maybe.” I made a face, and she shrugged. “I'm not like you, Del. You see rules as something to be broken. I want to make better rules. I can't do that by taking off.”

I bristled. “You think I'm bailing?”

“No. But we can't all be the leader of the rebel forces. I'll do what I can to help, with the Major Consort, with the fallout. But I want to do it my way.”

“I wish Rose were here,” I said, fingering the pendant Simon had returned to me. “I always thought I'd bring her home.”

“We've got answers, at least. That's better than questions.”

Was it? I couldn't help thinking that answers were an end. It was the questions—the asking and the searching—that made me feel most alive.

Addie gestured toward the pivot humming across the room. “Go on,” she said. “Simon's waiting for us.”

I approached the rift slowly, my good hand outstretched. My broken finger had been wrapped and splinted. We wouldn't know how much movement or sensation I'd lost until the splint came off, but this path was easy to follow.

I pushed my way into the Key World, into my quiet, dim bedroom. Light streamed through the octagonal window, highlighting
the disarray the Consort had left behind after they'd searched for leads while hunting me. But there was a faint trace of dust on the music stand, and the musty smell of a closed-off room.

My entrance stirred the air, dust motes dancing in the shaft of light, my origami garlands—the few the Consort hadn't torn down—swaying gently. I went up on tiptoe to grab one, coiling the string around my hands and tucking it in my backpack.

There wasn't much I wanted to bring with me—some of my favorite sweaters and jeans, the sheet music I'd written with Simon, Rose's violin. I trailed a finger over the intricately carved music stand. Addie would take care of it. I might even come back someday, and the idea pleased me. I could come back, and I'd be different, and my place here would be different too. A song in a new key, a variation on a theme, a second movement. This was an ending, in the same way the horizon was both the end of the earth and the beginning of the sky.

Violin case in hand, I took the steep, narrow stairs to the first floor, past the music room with its jumble of silenced instruments, and down the hall to the kitchen, stopping before they saw me.

They sat at the kitchen island, the same one Addie and I had done homework at, and argued over, and rolled out cookies on for our entire lives. But it was swept clean now, empty of everything except teacups and their hands, loosely clasped. My mom dabbed at her eyes, as if pushing tears back inside, and gave a shuddering sigh. My father rubbed a thumb over her knuckles.

“They'll find her,” he said softly. “They'll let us know as soon as they find her.”

“I don't understand it,” she said. “Where would she go? She knows how much trouble Del's in; she knows how it would look to disappear.”

Addie. They were worried about Addie, which meant they thought I was still locked away at CCM.

“She's probably with Laurel,” he said. “Or off on some assignment and they haven't tracked her down. At least Del's safe.”

“Being in custody isn't safe, Foster. The Major Consort's not going to accept Del's apologies.”

I stepped into the light. “I'm not apologizing. I haven't done anything wrong.”

“Del!” The word came on a gasp. My mother flew across the room and wrapped her arms around me. “What on earth—why didn't you tell us they released you?”

My dad approached more slowly, taking in the bruises and cuts, the splint on my finger, the way I winced at my mom's embrace.

“Because they didn't,” he said.

My mom's arms fell away.

I pushed my hair out of my face. “Addie's okay. She'll come by once things settle down.”

“You're hurt,” my dad said, and the words seemed to snap my mother out of her daze.

“Sit,” she ordered, guiding me to my old chair. I let her ease me down, watched as she put on the kettle for tea. My hands rested in my lap, and my father looked at the splint, eyebrows raised.

“What happened?”

“Lattimer.” The word burned as I said it, caustic in my throat.

“He promised us they only wanted to talk to you,” my father said, eyes welling up. “He knew you were confused, that Monty had been manipulating you all along. He was sure that they could make you see sense. Prove to you that the Free Walkers were spouting nonsense.”

“He talked to me in an oubliette. He gave me this.” I held up my hand. “And this.” I pulled my hair back so they could see the green-and-purple bruise of my cheekbone. “And more that you can't see.”

My mom's eyes shimmered, her lips tightening, color draining from her face. “We didn't know, Del. You've always been so headstrong . . . we believed him. ”

“You still do. All of you do.” I shook my head. “I get it. Why you believe the Consort, why you fall in line.”

“The Free Walkers,” she murmured. “The boy who died . . . none of it makes any sense.”

“It would, if you'd listen to me.”

“It's the only way,” my father said. “The Key World . . .”

“Is ours to protect. And so are the Echoes, whether you like it or not.”

He drew a breath, but I held up my hand. “I'm not here to argue with you. You believe what you have to. It's going to change soon, and when it does, when the Walkers start over, maybe we can too. But that's not why I came.”

My mom's fingers knotted together. I'd never noticed before that we all did it—Rose, my mom, Addie, and me. A nervous habit, fighting back the urge to reach for the strings, to reach for other people, to reach out and find comfort or strength or direction.

I covered her hands with mine. “Rose is dead. Not gone. Dead. She died helping me escape from the oubliette.”

She rocked backward, taking the news like a blow, and my dad was beside her instantly. I'd always envied the bond between them, so strong that it crowded out the rest of us. Now I was grateful for it, because it meant that even after I left, they wouldn't be alone.

“Did she suffer?” my mom asked, barely a whisper.

My dad's eyes met mine. There is a limit to how strong any one person can be, and my mother had just reached hers.

Rather than break her, I bent the truth. “She was brave,” I said. “She was smart and brave and fierce, right up to the moment she died.”

“What about your grandfather?”

I exhaled slowly. “Without Rose, there was no reason for him to stay. He's Walking the Echoes. I don't think he'll come back.”

She sank into the chair, shoulders shaking, face in her hands.

“And you?” my dad asked. “What are you going to do? Run from the Consort for the rest of your life? That's not a future. They'll find you again. Not through us, never again, but they will find you.”

“They're going to have bigger problems to deal with, believe me.”

“You can't leave,” my mom said as I stood. “Del, please. We're sorry. We didn't know what they'd do, and if you stay, we can figure out some way to get you out of this. But you can't leave us, not now. Not after we almost lost you.”

“You wanted me to choose my future,” I reminded them, keeping my tone gentle. “And I have. But it's not here, and it's not among the Consort—not as it stands now.”

“You're joining the Free Walkers? ”

“I'm joining the rest of the world.”

•   •   •

Addie was waiting for me on the front porch of the Echo, scowling.

So was Prescott.

“We need him back,” she said. She looked painfully thin, eyes haunted behind her glasses.

“Addie,” I said. “This is—”

“I know who she is,” Addie replied uneasily.

Prescott held up her hands in a “hey look I'm harmless” gesture, and I realized Addie's distrust of Free Walkers wasn't entirely philosophical.

“We need Simon back,” Prescott said. “We're about to go into CCM and we need proof. We've got the tape from the parking garage, but it's not enough. We need Simon, or nobody's going to believe us.”

“How will he prove anything? Are you going to bring in his Echo and cauterize them, see who survives?”

“We wouldn't—”

“You'd do anything to serve your cause, same as the Consort. You would have let Simon's Original die to prove a point.”

She flinched, her face going pale. “We'd hoped it wouldn't turn out that way. We thought it might be possible for both of them to survive.”

“But not probable.” Addie touched my shoulder, but I shook her off. “I don't trust you and your people, Prescott. I don't like the way you lie. I don't like your dirty secrets, and the way you play God. I don't like how little you value the lives right in front of you. And do you know what I think's going to happen, if you waltz into the Consort and take them down? I think it'll be more of the same. You're so desperate to destroy them that you will become them. You want change? You want to make the Walkers better? Start by
being
better. Simon's life—and death—is more than enough.”

I headed down the steps, Addie behind me.

“I grew up with him,” Prescott called, and I turned to face her. “We weren't like you and Eliot—we moved around too much for that. But he was the closest thing to a friend I had, when I was a kid. And then when we were older, he was . . .” Her breath hitched.

“He was
your
Simon,” I said, my anger dissipating as I realized the enormity of what she'd lost: Simon. Rose. Her mother.

“He might have been,” she said, her voice thick. “This is all I have left now, Del. The mission. If we're going to destroy the Consort, we need Simon.”

“I've had enough destruction,” I told her. “I'd rather have a change.”