The Flame Never Dies (4 page)

“You want to
what
?” Devi demanded, and I laid one finger over my lips to shush her. Across the dusty second-floor den of a long-abandoned house, Tobias was curled up on my bedroll in the glow of twice the number of candles we would normally have burned at night, in case he woke up and was afraid of the dark.

He'd fallen asleep in the truck around the time the sun set, so I'd carried him up the stairs myself.

Melanie slept just feet from him, on her own mat on the hard floor—we avoided carpet whenever possible, because after a century of neglect, most soft materials had become havens for mold, mildew, and entire colonies of parasitic insects.

We'd been lucky to find a ghost town so soon after the sun went down, and luckier still that that particular town had been abandoned during the war, rather than razed or torched. It wasn't safe to drive across the badlands at night, because headlights could lure degenerates from miles away.

“I want to take him home,” I repeated. Then I held my breath, watching the others for their reactions as candlelight cast dancing shadows on the six other faces in our huddle.

“Okay, first of all, he doesn't
have
a home,” Devi insisted, and though her voice was softer, it had lost none of its bite. “He's an orphan twice over. He must be the unluckiest damn orphan in the
world.
I mean, who gets adopted by demons?”

“They spared his life, but you want to abandon him,” I pointed out. No need to note that demons only spare children so they can be possessed once they've suffered through puberty and can reach the high shelves. “Sounds like meeting
you
was his unluckiest blow yet.”

Grayson covered a grin with one hand, but Devi only scowled at me and continued. “Second of all, I'm not sure that returning him to a Church children's home would be much of an improvement. Those are run by demons too. All we'd be doing is delaying his inevitable possession.”

“So your solution is to keep him?” Reese whispered, intentionally misunderstanding her to support my point, and I could have hugged him.

She abandoned the rest of her argument in surprise. “Of course not. A kid's the last thing we need.”

My brows rose, and I aimed a pointed glance at my sister.

Devi pulled a long rope of dark hair over her shoulder and leaned back against a couch too musty to risk sitting on. “We don't have any choice about that one. But that doesn't mean we should start collecting more of them!”

But I could practically hear the part she hadn't said out loud. Devi wasn't worried about life in the badlands with an infant—in fact, she rarely even thought about that impending challenge—because she didn't think Mellie's baby would survive.

Despite my determination to see that baby live at all costs, the heartbreaking truth was that Devi was probably right. But Tobias
was
alive, and we couldn't just leave him for the degenerates. So I took a deep breath and forged ahead. “Look, I know you all wanted to head south, but we don't have a destination in mind, so what difference does it make if we head west instead?”

Finn squeezed my hand. “It's nearly a thousand miles, Nina.” Because in our wanderings, we'd never strayed more than a hundred miles or so from New Temperance.

“So what?” I stared into the deep green of his eyes, trying to understand his reluctance. “Are we on some schedule I don't know about?”

Maddock exhaled slowly as he painstakingly peeled the label from an empty bean can as if it deserved more of his attention than my suggestion did. “No, but it's not safe. There's too much empty space between the cities out west. Caravans will be few and far between.”

“We've never been better prepared for that,” Reese argued, and I gave him a grateful smile. “We just scored the biggest haul we're ever going to have. That'll give us some breathing room while we learn to spot those plants Mellie and Ana have been reading about. And it's spring.” He shrugged. “Hunting will be easier.”

“Nina, what does it matter where we leave him?” Finn asked softly, stroking my knuckles with his thumb. “I hate to say it, but Devi's right. He'll be raised by demons no matter where we take him, so why not drop him in one of the cities on our way south?”

“Because he's lost everything! Twice! The least we can do is return him to the only home he's ever known, where at least he'll have some friends.”

Maddock set his can down with a firm clank against the wood floor. “We're not going west, Nina.”

I glanced at him in surprise. He'd always been a good leader precisely because he never made illogical, unilateral rulings, but something had changed. Something was
wrong,
and Maddock might not be willing to talk about it, but that didn't mean the rest of us had to stop talking. “I say we vote on it.”

“No vote.” Maddy leaned back against the couch next to Devi and crossed his arms over the new T-shirt he'd found in the cargo shipment. “We're not going.”

My gaze narrowed on him and I let go of Finn's hand. “We're a team. We decide together.” I glanced around our candlelit circle, hyperaware of the sudden tension in our ranks. “All in favor of taking Tobias back west, to Verity, raise your hand.” I held my left hand high above my head, and a second later Reese did the same.

Devi crossed her arms over her chest and raised one eyebrow at me in challenge. That was no surprise, and neither was Maddock's nay stance, but what I couldn't understand was why he looked genuinely sorry to be voting against me.

Anabelle raised her hand, and I smiled at her.

“You don't get a vote!” Devi snapped.

“The hell she doesn't! There's a price on her head too, and she lost just as much as the rest of us when we fled New Temperance,” I said hotly.

“She gets a vote,” Maddock said. But he didn't seem very pleased with his own ruling.

Fair enough.

But when Finn's arm remained at his side, my chest suddenly felt tight. “Sorry, Nina. I vote we go south.” His deep gaze pleaded with me to understand, and I tried not to be hurt that he'd sided with Maddock rather than with me.

“That's three to three,” Devi said, irritation flashing in her candlelit dark eyes, and we all turned to Grayson, who would have the deciding vote.

After a couple of seconds of contemplation, she raised her hand.

“Damn it!” Devi snapped.

Grayson only shrugged. “If we don't go with Nina, she'll go on her own, and we're safer together than apart, no matter where we wind up.”

She was right on all counts.

Maddock glanced over my shoulder to where my sister lay snoring lightly on the wood floor. I could see what he was thinking, but I shook my head. “If you wake her up, she'll vote to take him home,” I said, and no one disagreed.

Maddy sighed. “I'll take first watch. The rest of you get some sleep.” His eyebrows dipped low. “In the morning we're westward bound.”

When everyone but Maddock and Finn had curled up on their sleeping mats, I checked on Tobias and found him fast asleep on my bedroll, which meant I'd have to double up with someone. I grabbed Finn's mat and tossed my head toward the door, silently asking him to join me in another room.

He nodded with a steamy smile, his pupils dilating as he picked up one of the candles, and heat flooded my cheeks when I realized he'd misread my request for privacy. Finn followed me into the dark hallway, then through another door and into a bedroom where most of the linens had long ago rotted away from the mattress.

“Are you mad at me?” he whispered, pushing the door closed at his back. I turned to find that the candle cast only a small dome of light around us, leaving the rest of the room in deep shadows. The lit space between us felt as intimate as his softly spoken question, and suddenly I realized I could count on both hands the number of times we'd been alone together.

“If I were mad at you, I'd be cuddling with my sister right now.” I watched the candlelight flicker in his eyes, thankful that they stayed the same no matter whose body he wore. If the eyes truly were the windows to the soul, at least I could be sure I was seeing some real part of him even when the rest belonged to someone else.

I'd first met him in Maddock's body, and the revelation that his form wasn't really his own had come as a shock to me. But I'd grown used to the guard he'd worn for months now, in part because I had no previous association of those arms or hands or face with another person. And in part because he wore the body easily and used it
well.
As his comfort level had risen, so had mine.

“I would like to know why, though,” I confessed as he set the candle on a dust-coated dresser. “Why does it matter whether we go south or west?”

Finn sighed and tucked a fallen strand of brown hair behind my ear. “Maddy was born out west.” His hands trailed slowly over my shoulders and down my arms, and I fought the urge to lean into his touch in that rare private moment. “He had it rough as a kid, and he doesn't want to go back.”

“I get it. I don't want to go back to New Temperance either.” Yet the doubt in Finn's eyes told me that I couldn't possibly understand. Not really. “But we're not taking
him
home. We're taking Tobias home.”

“I know. But Verity's too close for comfort.”

My brows rose and I studied his gaze. That was the closest he'd ever come to mentioning a hometown. “Is Maddy from Verity? Are
you
?”

“No. And I don't know.” He took his sleeping mat from me and unrolled it on the floor a few feet from the door. “I don't remember anything from before I met Maddock.” Which he'd insisted over and over.

His early memories were as strange and inexplicable as his incorporeal state. Though playing with Maddy was the oldest thing Finn could remember, no one else had been able to see or hear him. Maddock's family had assumed he was talking to and playing with an imaginary “friend,” which was how Finn got his name—that was as close as toddler Maddock could come to properly pronouncing the word.

Finn sank onto the bedroll and patted the spot next to him. “What I do know is that when Maddy's upset, I'm upset.”

“That makes eight of us,” I said, settling in next to him, and Finn's green eyes took on a grateful shine as he leaned in to kiss me. He was as glad that I liked Maddock as I was that he liked Melanie. “Mind if I share your sleep roll tonight?” I whispered against Finn's mouth as his hand slid into my hair, gently tilting my head for a more accessible angle. “Tobias is using mine.”

“You can share everything I own.” Finn's mouth met mine, and he sucked my lower lip between his for one heart-pounding second. “Which is pretty much just this sleep roll,” he admitted, his lips brushing mine with every syllable. He kissed me again, and I decided that if the Church was right and carnal contact really was a sin, it was a sin well worth paying for….