Stolen (7 page)

The heads at Meredith’s table were blond, black, blond, brown, brown, and spiky red. She was scanning their faces—looking for…what exactly? Cayne?—when Meredith grabbed her, squeezing hard. She slung Julia around, and for a moment, as Julia stared at the people in front of her, she felt a surge of
surreality
. Like she wasn’t really here, alone among other “Chosen,” plotting to break Cayne out of prison.

“Julia—” Meredith’s hand raised, her finger pointing from person to person— “this is Marilee, Charles, Carlin, Anise, and Herbert. They’re Candidates.”

“Except me,” the guy with spiky red hair said; his accent was Scottish. He smiled good-naturedly and took a swig of his soda.

“That’s right. Herbert isn’t a Candidate. He’s our groupie.”

“He’s my brother,” said a young blonde girl with short, curly hair. “I’m Marilee. Herbert is eighteen, I’m twelve. I can make things disappear, and Herbert can influence people.”

“Do you like me yet?” he joked, winking.

“Definitely,” Julia said weakly.

“
Har
har
,” Meredith patted his spiky hair. “This guy, Charles—” she pointed to the lanky brown-haired guy who’d slapped Julia’s back— “is from Chicago. He can manipulate energy.” She smiled.

Carlin, a pretty girl with an oval face, chocolate-colored curls, and big hazel eyes, introduced herself with a slight Spanish curl. She smiled, a small quick thing that showed a certain
reservedness
. “I’m from Ronda, Spain.”

“She can fly,” Meredith added.

Carlin’s eyes slid to Meredith; her cheeks were red. “Only sort of.”

Another blonde, this one stocky and muscular, like an Olympian, raised her glass to Julia. “Anise,” she said. Her accent was unmistakably German.

No one mentioned what Anise could do, and Julia thought it rude to ask. Of course, the next second, Herbert pinned her with his blue eyes and asked, “What do you do?”

“I sprout scales.”

Marilee’s eyes widened. Carlin’s lips twitched. Herbert said, “What color?”

“Glittery silver,” Julia told them.

“Do it!” Marilee said, so excited Julia felt disappointed to admit she only saw auras and healed people.

“A healer,” lanky Charles said. “You’re a good one to have around.” Like she was a trading card.

Meredith grabbed a gray plastic chair and pulled it to the table. “Tell me what you want to eat.”

She glanced over to the counter, where three aproned Chosen their age were serving steaming plates.

“You can have anything. Seriously, anything.”

And that’s when Julia noticed—everyone’s meal was vastly different.

Marilee was having a burger and macaroni with a chocolate shake and a side of gummy bears. Carlin’s plate was an unfamiliar meat and veggies dish, while Anise was eating sushi. Her eyes flew to Meredith’s plate—some kind of soup.

“Anything,” Marilee told her.

Meredith escorted Julia to the counter, where the only thing she could think of was pizza. “Hawaiian,” she said. “With ham and—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the aproned guy pulled a plate out from under the counter. On it was an enormous, fragrant slice of Hawaiian pizza.
 

“How did you—”

“Magic.” He smirked.

Dinner was decent enough, Julia figured, considering she didn’t want to be there and was beginning to go crazy with claustrophobia and Cayne-concern.

Despite her bad attitude, she learned that Charles was nice but kind of dry. He was a fan of Tim Dorsey books and Jimmy Buffet, and in that meandering way of his, he confessed that he really wanted to have a house at the beach one day. Marilee was charming and sweet, the twelve-year-old Julia had never had the chance to be. She seemed sheltered, which made sense when Julia learned that she and eighteen-year-old Herbert were the children of a poet and a playwright—who, naturally, were both killed tragically (scaling a mountain in India).

Anise was the kind of girl Julia had a little trouble relating to. The blonde was so quiet and serious, Julia was worried she seemed inane in comparison.

A few minutes into dinner, she decided she really liked Carlin, who seemed sincere and sharp and funny. In another life, she thought she, Carlin, and Meredith might have made a good trio.

None of these people matter.

Neither did being a Candidate.

Which was unfortunate, because Candidates were an even bigger deal than Meredith had described. The One had been, if not prophesied,
expected
for an alarming number of centuries. Once Candidates turned eighteen, their candidacy was considered over. According to Herbert, Chosen were deemed Candidates based on their “potentiality.”

“It’s a matter of capability. Kind of like an IQ score for ability. It doesn’t matter what you can do at the moment, just what you could do.”

Herbert had been a Candidate until July, when he’d turned eighteen. Julia was surprised, then not, when Carlin said that Nathan had also been a Candidate.

“It probably killed that guy not to be The One,” Charles said. “He really does love being Chosen.”

Julia noticed Meredith open her mouth, but she quickly closed it and went back to her soup.

By the end of dinner, Julia was having a hard time not liking these people. It got even harder when Meredith pulled her into the humid, blue-tiled dish room.

“Who is he?” she whispered.

“Umm, huh?”

“Your man.” Meredith wiggled her eyebrows and lowered her voice to a whispered hiss. “I heard something about a
Nephilim
. Is he…”

Julia couldn’t get her mouth to move. She shook her head.

“Julia,” Meredith groaned. “I’m your bro.”

“I’ve only known you for three hours.”

“Read my aura!”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“So trust me.”

Julia brought a hand up to her face, pinching the bridge of her nose. Through the shelter of her fingers, she said, “Yes. He is a Nephilim.”

Meredith snorted. “No wonder Nathan’s got his
tighties
in a wad.”

Chapter 7

Standing there with her hand still covering her face, Julia murmured, “Please don’t…tell anyone else.”

Meredith held out her pinkie. “Promise.”

When Julia didn’t extend her hand, Meredith grabbed it and linked their fingers together. “Pinky swear. Here’s how you know that you can trust it: I had a feeling earlier, that you were thinking of a prison. Thinking of
getting someone out
of a prison,” she said pointedly. Then she mimed zipping her lips.

Julia kept her face blank, shifted her thoughts to Charles’ beach.

Meredith laughed, a little hoot. “Good job. If you’re around anyone else, say…Dizzy or Adam, just do that.”

“Okay. But how do I know Dizzy and—”

“Meredith!” A loud voice bellowed into the room, echoing off the damp tile walls, followed milliseconds later by a tall, dark guy with slender shoulders, gently curling hair and a sweet-looking face. Julia thought he might be Indian.

“Meredith—”

“That’s Adam,” she hissed behind her hair.

“—where were you for serving duty?”

Julia glanced from Adam to Meredith. Her new friend stood a little taller. “I was talking with Julia. Julia, this is Adam.”

Adam nodded. His eyes met Julia’s. “Hello. Glad you made it.” He sounded bored, and Julia tried to reconcile his hoodie-and-jeans, hands-in-pockets appearance with Meredith’s implication that he was threatening.

Adam waved at both of them. “You’re washing. Get going.”

He looked over his shoulder as he turned to go. “I’m asking Nathan about this, Meredith.”

She smiled sweetly. When he was gone, Meredith grabbed two packs of green rubber gloves and tossed one of them at Julia.

As Julia wiggled her hands into the gloves, she said, “I hope you’re not in trouble.”

“Me? Oh, heck no,” Meredith said.

She shrugged, and Julia saw the smallest, briefest flame fan out around her. Julia opened her mouth, surprised and intrigued. She didn’t ask her question.

She didn’t know Meredith. She just didn’t. She didn’t know anything about anyone here—who was friendly, who was on whose side. As she grabbed a sauce-smeared plate, she shut her eyes, praying she hadn’t already messed things up.

Meredith flitted around the tiny dish room, talking animatedly as she and Julia worked their way through a giant pile of dishes. There were too many for them to do without reinforcements, but as it happened, they were joined by a deaf 11-year-old girl named Shea.

“So she can’t hear? At all?”

“Nope,” Meredith said.

“How does she learn? Like, there are classes here, right?”

Meredith nodded. “I think they work around it.”

“That sucks. Seems like she should be at a school that has at least a little experience with deaf kids. Who does she have to talk to here?”

Meredith shrugged. “I think there are a few students with hearing aids and that kind of thing. She usually hangs out with another girl who knows sign language.”

“If she’s not a Candidate, why is she here anyway? Why is anybody here?”

Meredith huffed. “I can’t imagine, personally. Shea is from someone in Quebec, I think. She has a younger brother, and their parents live in the Hall of Bishops—”

“That’s a rank or something, right?”

Meredith nodded dismissively. “So are you gonna tell me about jail-break boy?”

Julia shook her head. As they’d talked, Shea had started sorting the clean dishes. Julia couldn’t remember how, but sometime in the last few minutes, all the dishes had been sorted and shelved.

“That’s her talent, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing at the pig-tailed girl. “She’s good at sorting things or putting things away.”

“Illusions,” Meredith said. “I don’t know how she puts them up, but she uses magic so we don’t notice.”

“That’s cool.”

Only it wasn’t really. Everything felt wrong. She had a fleeting memory of that Disney movie,
The Little Mermaid
. How Ariel sacrificed her voice to get her human form, and she didn’t even know it till she found she couldn’t speak.

*

As it turned out, school-aged Chosen were housed by age, and Julia’s hall was for “seniors”: 16, 17, and 18-year-olds. Her neighbors were Anise and—oddly—Andrew.