Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (16 page)

“It’s just the
sun,” I said. “Daylight.”

“I know. But I
didn’t see it very often,” he said, before taking a bite of his
sandwich.

“I’m Ava.”

He nodded. “My
name isn’t Emmett,” he said, and my heart sank. “They called me
Unit Twenty-Four last time the numbers changed. The higher you get,
the worse it is. Unit Twenty-Four.”

“That’s not a
name,” I said, and I gazed at his eyes. Peter’s eyes. “Your parents
called you Emmett. Your name is Emmett.”

He closed his
eyes and lifted his face toward the sun. “I want to be Emmett,” he
whispered. “Are you my mother?”

“No. I’m
nobody’s mother. Your mother died… when you were taken. Everyone
thought you were dead, and your father… he’s been looking for
whoever took you ever since.”

He glanced
around as if excited. “Where is he?”

I sucked in a
breath. “He… he’s the one who hit you.”

I watched with
horror as he flinched. “He didn’t mean to,” I tried to explain.
“You looked like the thing that stole you from him. He panicked. He
loves
you.”

“I can’t
remember him,” he said after a few silent moments. “I can’t
remember lots of things.”

“Where were
you? Before here.”

“Somewhere
dark.” He screwed up his face. “There were lots of kids. Most left
when they were younger than me. I was a reject, they said. Not
worth enough. But a girl took care of me there. She was a reject
too. So they left me alone, mostly, except for the tests. Until
now.”

“Can you
remember where it was? How you got there? Who took you?
Anything?”

“They made us
drink the water that made us forget. I didn’t like the taste, but
they made us. Ava,” he said, as if testing out the sound. “Did you
buy me? Is that why I’m here?”

“No.” I began
to weep. I couldn’t help myself. He patted my hand awkwardly.

“You’re safe
now,” I said when I managed to pull myself together. “They won’t
take you back into the darkness.”

“Good. I didn’t
like the dark. What about the others? Are they still there?”

I swallowed
hard and looked up at the sky. “I’m working on that, Emmett.”

That night, I
slept in the spare room and let him sleep in my bed. In the middle
of the night, a scream woke me.

I ran to my
room, and Emmett sprang from the bed and into my arms, wrapping his
own around my neck. “Make it stop. Make it stop,” he said over and
over again.

“Hush, hush.
I’m here. I’m here. I have you, Emmett. I have you. Everything’s
okay. It’s okay.”

I rocked him to
sleep, feeling my own tears slide down my cheeks at his night
terrors. He was barely aware of me, only seeing the nightmare in
front of him. I wished I could make it stop, erase whatever he had
seen, and make his father act like a father. He might not recognise
Peter, but he needed his father.

Maybe Anka was
right. Maybe every child needed their real family. Maybe that was
what was so wrong with me. I didn’t know how to take care of a
child. I was trouble, danger, everything he didn’t need. Yet when I
cradled him on my lap, I felt whole.

I left a dozen
messages on Peter’s phone after I settled down his son. I highly
doubted he was asleep after everything that had happened, but he
didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t reply to my texts. He ignored
me. He ignored his son. And I wanted to punch his face in for
it.

Emmett awoke
the next morning as if his nightmares had never happened. He ate
breakfast in silence, and I wondered at the difference between him
and Dita, a child who questioned constantly. Even when alone, she
chatted to herself or her imaginary friends. She was vocal
constantly, yet Emmett remained still and silent until I encouraged
him to speak.

“How are you
feeling?”

He stared at me
blankly before turning back to his food. “Good.” And after a few
minutes, he asked “Can we go outside again?”

“Of course.
But, Emmett, we don’t want anyone to see you. Do you understand
that?”

He nodded
obediently, and I wondered how many other commands he had accepted
without complaint.

Out in the sun,
I turned to Emmett with a question I had been dying to ask. “Why
did they want you? Why did they take you?”

He shrugged,
suddenly looking like a normal kid. “I saw things. But not
enough.”

“Like what, the
future?”

He smiled, and
suddenly, he was beautiful. “Like the woman with you.”

A breeze blew
the back of my neck in answer. I craned around to try to see her,
but as usual, I couldn’t. “You see her? Is it Maeve? What does she
want? What’s Eddie doing with her?”

His face
crumpled. “Her name is Maeve, but she doesn’t have long with you
before… oh, she’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone
where? Where is she?”

He shook his
head, looking pained. “She said the bad man was taking her, then
she was sucked away. I don’t like seeing things, Ava. I don’t like
it.” He rocked to and fro, one hand yanking his hair

“Hey, it’s
okay, kid.” I was contemplating what else I could say when a little
face popped over the wall.

“Who’s your
friend?” Dita asked, eyeing him curiously.

“Just someone
visiting me for a while,” I said lightly.

Emmett glared
at me. “For a while?”

“Hush,” I
whispered back. “Secrets, remember?”

“Can your
someone play with me?”

Emmett glanced
at me, and I saw the eagerness in his eyes. Play. Had he done that
before? Would that help him?

“Maybe, if your
mother says it’s okay, you could come over for a while,” I finally
responded.

“Great! She
hasn’t any good stuff, so I’ll bring some over, ‘kay?” she called
out cheerily to Emmett. Ten minutes later, true to her word, Dita
came over with a trailer full of toys, even colours and colouring
books. Real kids stuff, rather than video game hell.

“I knew you
wouldn’t have anything good,” she told me as she sauntered through
my home and toward the backyard.

“Wait, Dita. My
friend’s name is Emmett, but you can’t tell anyone about him,
okay?”

She stopped
moving and stared at me solemnly.

“And he’s been
in a bad place, so it’s your job to cheer him up. Not too many
questions, and try to be nice to him if he doesn’t know some of the
same things that you do.”

“I’ll be nice
to him, Ava. Don’t worry,” she said earnestly, and I realised that
I had never seen her with a friend. Maybe it would be good for her,
too.

I watched them
play for a while, feeling a little proud of Emmett as he jumped
straight in after about thirty seconds of careful watching. Dita
didn’t seem fazed by the fact he had to be told what some things
were, but he had obviously seen some of them before.

After a while,
afraid of him getting sunburned despite the amount of sunscreen I
had plastered onto his skin, I encouraged them both to come inside
for a drink, but really I wanted them to colour indoors. I was
getting edgy for some reason, half-afraid someone would jump over
the back wall and take Emmett back again.

Seeing him
falter whenever he heard his real name only added to the ache I was
already feeling.

The colouring
idea went down well. Dita told us she was creating a comic book.
She tried her best to influence Emmett to be her co-creator, but he
had other plans. Biting his tongue, he went to work, and even Dita
paused to stare at him. Under his hand, a beautifully morbid world
was created. He was talented, but everything he drew held a tint of
horror: dark colours, scarred faces, monstrous hands and claws
creeping out from behind walls and beds. Dita gulped and glanced at
me, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do. When Emmett finally
stopped, he seemed relieved, as though he had drawn away some of
his fear.

When Dita left,
still in awe of Emmett, he was finally ready to talk to me some
more.

“It was always
dark. There were lights, but the shadows were so dark that
sometimes it felt as though someone could be hiding there, watching
us, without us ever seeing them.”

I shook my
head. “What did the house look like?”

“It wasn’t a
house, not like this one. It was like this.” He selected a blank
page and scribbled vigorously.

“What is that,
a cave?”

“I don’t know.
It was big, really big, and you couldn’t go past the darkest
shadow, or you never came back. Sometimes, after our food, we would
all fall asleep, and when we woke up, things would be
different.”

“How so?”

He pulled a
hair from his already sparse eyebrows with a ferocity that scared
me. I didn’t think he even realised what he was doing.

“Some kids
would be gone. Or there would be new kids. Or sometimes, people
were hurt.”

“Hurt?”

He waved his
hand over his face. “Just purple here. Or there would be a smell,
and someone would cry, but nobody ever talked about what
happened.”

“Were you
hurt?”

“I was okay,
mostly. But I wasn’t worth anything because what I see doesn’t help
anyone.”

“It helped
me.”

He smiled.
“Good. Ava, why am I here? What am I supposed to do?”

“They wanted to
give you back,” I said after a couple of seconds. “So you’re back.
But Peter—your father—thought you were dead, so he’s kind of scared
right now.”

“Maybe he
doesn’t want me back,” he said thoughtfully.

“That’s not
true, Emmett. He wants you desperately. He’s been looking for the
people who took you; he hasn’t stopped. We’re all looking. That’s
why it’s important that you tell me anything you might
remember.”

“It’s hard!” he
shouted, making me flinch. “I don’t
want
to remember. I
don’t
like
the dark.”

“Emmett, look
at me.” I hesitantly reached for him. “I promise you I’ll keep you
out of the dark. But I want to help those other kids, the ones who
are still there. I want to stop the ones who took you from taking
anyone else.”

He huddled in
the corner of the sofa and stared at the floor for a while,
withdrawing into himself. I sat near him, not touching, and
eventually, he moved closer and leaned against me.

“The woman is
back,” he said softly. “She wants you to be careful. She says it’s
dangerous.”

“Ask if she’s
trapped,” I said, suddenly having an odd idea.

“She can hear
you,” he said.

“Are you? Are
you trapped?” I asked loudly, turning to the cool presence to my
left. “Is it Eddie? Is he keeping you here?”

“She says yes,”
Emmett said. “He made a mistake. He’s not who he was, not since she
died. And he’s going to make another mistake if you don’t stop him.
But that’s dangerous, too. He took her again. It’s scary when that
happens, Ava.”

He shuddered,
and I wrapped my arm around him. “I’m sorry,” I said, but all I
could think about was what Eddie was going to do next.

I waited
impatiently for Emmett to wake up the next morning. Maybe it was
the company, maybe the fact he was Peter’s son, but I couldn’t help
feeling fond of the kid. We had a weird connection. Me and him, me
and Dita, me and most of the mixed-breeds or underdogs out there
shared something.

But he wasn’t
mine. And I couldn’t keep him.

I called Peter
again, then Carl. No answer from anybody. I was in no man’s land as
far as Emmett was concerned. I was afraid Yvonne would show up and
try to take him, but she didn’t answer my call either.

Dita came over
to play again. The games resulted in a little rough and tumble that
somehow seemed to upset the girl. She got up, brushed herself off,
and stalked away, her chin in the air.

“What was that
about?” I asked Emmett.

He shrugged.
“Girls aren’t fun.”

“I’m a
girl.”

He grinned,
which was a huge reminder of who his father was. “It’s not the
same. In the dark, we were separate. Boys on one side. Girls on the
other. Can I colour again?”

I nodded and
followed him inside the house. He drew faces, quite human-looking
faces. Although when I looked closer, I saw small details that
marked them as other: tiny bumps, too sharp teeth or claws,
serpent-like eyes. There were many secrets in Emmett’s
pictures.

“Was there
anyone there who was nice to you?” I ventured when he paused to
pick up a different colour.

He shrugged. “I
don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

That afternoon,
Mrs. Yaga turned up with bags of shopping. “I thought you might
need a few things, seeing as his father hasn’t shown up yet.”

“He will,” I
told her.

She shook her
head as if she pitied me. “Food in these two bags. Little boys need
a lot of food, you know. Clothes in these bags. He’s less pale
today. That’s good.”

“He’s been
playing with Dita a little.”

Her eyes
sparkled. “That will be good for both of them. I hope he isn’t
letting her boss him around.”

I laughed. “I
think he’s got that covered. She walked off in a strop earlier, so
he isn’t shy at getting his own way either.”

She handed
Emmett a bag and told him to start putting things in the fridge.
Gripping my arm and making my scars sting, she pulled me aside.
“I’ve put some extra protection on the houses. I don’t think
anything will come here, but in case it does…”

“We’ll be
fine,” I said. “They don’t want him. They’ve no reason to come
here.”

“They want you
to stop poking your nose in their business,” she said. “Surely you
understand this.”

“What am I
supposed to do? Leave the kids in what might be hell?”

“What are you
saying?” But she sucked in a gasp.

“Emmett reckons
he was in the dark all of the time. Nobody can tell me where the
kids are being kept, and this… what are they called? Brethni,
that’s it. The brethni told Peter his son was in hell. I thought
they were trying to get a rise out of him, but now I’m not so sure.
And an old woman told me that the old gods abandoned her village,
and that the gates opened, gates that set free creatures who stole
special children. Tell me it doesn’t add up.”