The Marked Girl (12 page)

His body slowed from a sprint into a human-capable jog, and then a walk.

“You can put me down, please,” Liv said.

Slowly, Cedric's arms released from around her waist, and he set her down on the pavement behind a giant parked SUV. She felt better the instant she was once again standing on her own two feet. The others came up behind them, slowing to a stop as well.

“Is anyone injured?” Cedric asked. Merek shook his head, but Kat motioned to her shoulder.

“Dislocated,” she said, matter-of-fact. Liv could only detect
a hint of pain in her face when Cedric gently reached out and touched her shoulder.

“I can put it right when we get somewhere safe,” Kat said. “Where did the men in blue come from?”

Cedric shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.

“Oh, uh . . . I called them . . . ,” Liv said.

Kat muttered something under her breath. Liv looked around at each of them, shaking her head. “You were being attacked. By a group of seriously pissed-off looking guys—”

Cedric looked at her in disbelief. “Wraths. I told you they were wraths!”

“Well, I know that now!” Liv yelled back. “But at the time, I didn't believe they were . . .”

. . .
Monsters
. Liv had called the LAPD to fight a gang of monsters. She saw the police officer again, the way he'd hit the brick wall, the way he'd slid to the ground. That was her fault.

Cedric let out an exasperated sigh and turned away from Liv, toward Merek. “What I don't understand,” he said, in a strained voice, “is what those wraths were doing chasing you?”

Merek's face drained of color.

“You went after them, didn't you? You went against me and sought out the wraths to speak to them, as though they were creatures to be reasoned with!”

“Not exactly,” Merek said.

“Merek,” Kat put in, “you told me you were looking for food.”

“I was not going to talk to them, only to see if they were still near the museum and maybe try to track them. But then they found me—”

“You expect me to believe that?” Cedric looked incredulous.

“I honestly do not care what you believe,” Merek retorted.

“Do you care about anything? We could all have been killed tonight.”

Merek's jaw tightened, and he averted his eyes to look at the ground.

“We do not have time for this now,” Kat said. “We cannot stay here.”

Cedric and Merek continued to glare at each other, but neither said another word.

Liv looked back in the direction of the museum. “The police are right by my car. We'll never get past them. I think we should get to a busy street and try to blend in with the crowd.”

“And why should we do what you say?” Kat's voice turned from sensible to biting as she turned to Liv with narrowed eyes. “Who
are
you, anyway?”

“I'm the only one here who knows my way around this city,” Liv shot back.

For a moment, Cedric looked between the two girls. His gaze finally settled on Liv. “Do you know somewhere safe we can go?”

Kat's jaw clenched, and she looked away. Liv ignored her and pulled out her phone.

“Not only that, but I know who can get us there, too.”

T
he gray minivan pulled up twenty minutes later, then skidded to a halt just outside of the Laundromat doorway where Liv waited with Cedric and the others. The passenger-side window rolled down, revealing Shannon's black-and-red locks and her incensed face.

“Liv! What the hell?”

Liv stepped forward and rested her hands on the van's window. “Hey, Shannon.”

“Hey, Shannon?
Hey, Shannon?
I don't hear from you since yesterday, Joe's been calling me to see if I know where you are, and then I steal my mom's van—which was much more difficult the second time around, by the way—to come pick you up halfway across town and all you can say is ‘Hey, Shannon?'”

Liv waited for Shannon to take a breath. “Thanks for coming. And for covering with Joe. And for stealing the minivan. But . . . we kind of need a ride. Then I can explain.”

“We?”

Liv gestured to where Cedric and the others stood behind her.

Shannon looked past Liv, and her mouth fell open. “Oh my God, is that . . . are they who I think they are?”

“It's kind of a long story,” Liv said.

Shannon continued to stare. “I'm sure.”

“But we really need to get out of here, like, five minutes ago. So . . .”

Shannon shook her head in slow disbelief, then leaned back in the driver's seat. “Okay, get in. But I'm going to need more details.”

Liv waved her hand to Cedric, who stepped forward, the others close behind. One by one, they all climbed into the van.

Shannon turned to Liv in the passenger seat and whispered, “Are you in trouble?”

Liv swallowed. “Kinda. Can you take me to Echo Park? Near Alvarado.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Shannon mumbled, rolling her eyes, but she put the car into drive and slipped back into the traffic on the street. Liv took the opportunity to pull out her phone and saw six missed calls from Joe. Damn. She put the phone away.

While she drove, Shannon sneaked peeks at the others through the rearview mirror. Her eyes landed on Cedric, and then on the sword he still gripped in his hands. Her eyebrows shot up.

Liv wondered how much of the truth she'd be able to tell Shannon. Certainly nothing about wraths or portals or teenage royals from another world. She'd seen that insane fight go down with her own two eyes and she still had to remind herself every
few minutes that it was all actually real, and not just a weirdly vivid hallucination.

“So what's in Echo Park?” Shannon asked. “Since we're already on the way and all.”

“Remember freshman year, when I was staying with the Hopmans?”

Shannon's hands tightened on the wheel. “Yes,” she whispered.

The Hopmans were a particularly mediocre set of foster parents Liv had lived with for about six months. They were drunks, but not like Rita. Not like her at all.

“That was when I tried to set you up in my garage and my mom caught us.”

Liv nodded. “And I had nowhere else to go, so I ran.”

Shannon's eyebrows wrinkled. “I thought Joe put you in a group home?”

“He did, eventually,” Liv said, careful with her words. “But I was on my own for a while. I fell in with some kids who helped me out. . . .”

“Like, runaways?” Shannon pursed her lips.

“That's what I was too, remember? Anyway, these kids let me in on some places I could stay—abandoned houses, foreclosed places. It's kind of like . . . a network. I just hope this place we're going is still empty.”

“Why did you never tell me any of this?”

Liv couldn't meet Shannon's eye, and was glad that they were having this conversation while Shannon was driving. “I don't know. It was just . . . easier that way. To keep that part of
my life separate from everything else.”

“You know I'm here for you, right? You can tell me anything.” Shannon's words were comforting, but her voice sounded slightly accusatory. And hurt.

“I know that, Shan. I really do.”

They drove on in silence. Liv gazed out the window at the small, artsy boutiques and coffee shops lined up next to 99-cent stores and fast-food restaurants on Sunset Boulevard. Nearly every corner was populated by a homeless person, a hipster in skinny jeans, or both.

“Here.” Liv nodded to a street on the right. Shannon turned and the van moved slowly uphill, past single-level houses painted orange, purple, and green. Some of the houses had small front lawns covered with furniture, while others were hidden behind fences bearing Beware of Dog signs. Nearly every third house was still decorated with Christmas lights, even though it was August.

The abandoned house sat, dark and empty, at the very top of the hill, all peeling paint and a sagging front porch. A foreclosure sign leaned against the front door. The house had an unusually large lawn in the front and on the sides, almost as if the houses on either side were trying to get their distance from it. It backed up to a grove of trees so thick that Liv couldn't see through them.

“We're here.”

The doors opened and Cedric and his friends climbed out of the van. Before he was fully outside, Merek turned to Shannon. “Did you know that your hair looks like it's bleeding?”

Shannon made a face. “A simple ‘thanks for the ride' would have been fine.”

Merek shrugged and jumped out of the van.

Shannon whipped her head back to face Liv, who put up a hand, speaking first. “I told you I would explain everything, and I will. But right now, I have to get them set up.”

Shannon bit her lip, then nodded. “I trust you. What should I tell Joe, if he calls back?”

“Don't tell him anything. Just till I can figure things out.”

“Okay . . . Oh, here's that shirt you asked for. What happened to yours, anyway?”

Shannon handed a folded-up, long-sleeved T-shirt to Liv. Her eyebrows creased as she looked at the tatters of Liv's shirt.

“Caught it on a nail. You know me, never met an outfit I couldn't destroy in less than a day.” Liv let out a shaky laugh and opened the passenger-side door.

Shannon eyed Liv's bandaged hand, too. “Right,” she said. “Hey, Liv? You would tell me, wouldn't you, if something was really, really wrong?”

“I'd tell you. Everything's fine. Weird, but fine,” Liv said, getting out of the van and closing the door quickly before Shannon could figure out she was lying.

The house had four bedrooms in total, but the three located upstairs were deemed unusable because the staircase leading to the second floor was almost entirely rotted through. All of the downstairs rooms were empty except for two tattered couches in the living room. The electricity wasn't connected, and the
water was shut off. Liv searched the kitchen cabinets, just in case whoever had last passed through left some cans of food behind. No luck.

Liv found a bathroom on the first floor and shut herself in. It was getting dark out, but the curtainless window let in a good amount of twilight, enough for Liv to check herself out in the mirror above the sink. Her face looked drained of color, all whiteness and shadows. A tiny bandage was still affixed above her eyebrow, from when she'd first been attacked by a wrath the night before. It already felt like weeks ago.

Liv wished she could splash some cold water on her face to freshen up, but she settled for running her fingers through her hair. Her brush was locked in the backseat of her car, along with the rest of her things. She'd have to figure out a way to get it all back the next morning. And then . . . well, she wasn't exactly sure what she'd do then. School started in a week, and she was once again homeless. That was enough of a problem
without
thinking about the fact she'd just been attacked by monsters from another world.

Liv slowly shrugged out of her jacket and turned around so that her back was to the mirror. She craned her neck, trying to see the area where the wrath had clawed at her. Her T-shirt hung from her shoulders in shreds, but the skin underneath was undamaged. She reached up a hand and pulled the pieces of T-shirt away. She brushed her fingers against the dark, twirling lines of her tattoo.

“You're fine,” she said to her reflection. “One thing at a time.”

Liv put on Shannon's shirt, took another deep breath, and opened the bathroom door. In the living room, Cedric was holding Kat's arm out in a straight line, while Merek gripped her other side.

“Ready?” Cedric asked.

Kat nodded, her face set and pale.

Cedric quickly pushed Kat's arm, and Liv jumped at the resulting cracking noise. Then Kat let out a long, ragged sigh and sank onto one of the sagging couches.

After a moment, Liv cleared her throat and looked to Cedric, who sat down as well, as close to Kat as he could be without upsetting her shoulder.

“Okay. Now that I know—or at least am pretty sure—that you're not a crazy person, I'm going to need some more answers.”

Cedric nodded. “I tried to tell you before.”

Liv sighed. “I know. But after seeing you fight . . . and those things, they weren't just men. I wanted to believe they were, but . . .”

“They most definitely are not,” Cedric finished for her.

“You said you came . . . from another world?” Liv asked.

“Caelum,” Kat said. Her voice was clipped, and she gently rubbed at her shoulder.

“Right. Well I guess that's the part I'm having a little trouble with. The ‘other world' part. So does that make you . . . aliens?”

“What's an alien?” Merek asked. He'd moved to perch at an empty window seat across the room. His fingers worked over a tarnished metal lighter in his palm.

“An alien is like . . . you know, from another planet.” Liv
gestured out the window, up toward the moon. “Like E.T.”

Blank looks all around.

“Have you never seen
E.T.
? It's one of my favorite movies of all time.” Liv put one finger in the air. “Phoooone hooome.”

“Movie?” Cedric's lips formed the word awkwardly, as if they'd never spoken it before.

“Wait. Are you telling me you've never . . . seen a movie? Ever?” Liv asked, incredulous. “
The Avengers, Star Wars
. . .
Mean Girls
? Any combination of moving pictures that tell a story, any one at all?”

Nothing.

Liv shook her head. “That's just . . . so sad. How can you have an entire planet with no movies? I mean, is Caelum really that different from here? You do seem to speak English pretty well . . . for the most part.”

“We speak the same language because we originated from this realm,” Cedric replied. “Many, many years ago our people lived here as Guardians. They were here for centuries, fighting off the wraths and keeping peace. But it was a hard, bitter place, and our numbers were small. The wraths had the advantage. And that is when the first portal was opened.”

Liv raised her hand. “Um, sorry to interrupt, and I'm not saying that history is my area of expertise or anything, but if wraths came from this world, I think I would know.”

Cedric shrugged. “This is what we have always been told. Our people crossed through a portal to seek a new world, leaving this one behind. But the wraths followed us. And they did the one thing they're good at doing, aside from causing
destruction. They populated.”

Liv pictured the all-black eyes from the wraths in the alley . . . not to mention the teeth . . . and fought off a shiver.

“I come from a long line of Guardian kings, who have ruled over Caelum for centuries. We keep the wraths from entering our territories and send out hunting parties to destroy those who come too close. That is the way it has always been, until . . .” Cedric's voice faltered, and he looked out the window.

“Until recently,” Kat finished for him.

“Until Malquin,” Cedric added, his voice hard. Kat reached out and laid her hand on top of his. Liv couldn't help thinking of how it had felt to hold that same hand of Cedric's briefly in the tunnels. She pulled her eyes away.

“The only chance we have of getting back and reclaiming the palace is to find those scrolls,” Cedric went on.

“Right, you mentioned them at the diner,” Liv said.

“We do not know much about this world, Earth, or what life was like here before our people left it,” Cedric continued. “But it is rumored the first portal was opened by a series of scrolls—”

“
Rumored
being the operative word,” Merek cut in. “There is always a chance the scrolls are imaginary, and we do not actually have a way home—”

“But we choose to believe they are real,” Kat said, glaring at Merek. She turned to Liv. “According to legend, there were three scrolls originally used to open the portal to Caelum. And those scrolls were left behind on Earth when our people crossed through. We need them to open a portal again.”

Liv's mind raced, trying to keep up. She struggled to fit the details into a larger picture, the way she would when trying to piece together a movie. “Okay, so . . . the scrolls are the MacGuffin.”

Cedric's face was blank. “Mac . . . what?”

Liv sat up straighter. “Oh, it's a filmmaking device. A thing that everyone wants to get, like the briefcase in
Pulp Fiction
or the Ark of the Covenant in
Indiana Jones
.”

“You are speaking nonsense again.” Cedric shook his head, but inched forward on the couch, his attention only on Liv. She leaned forward, too.

“
I'm
speaking nonsense? Portals and monsters and scrolls—that's nonsense. Movies have internal logic at least. They have rules so you know what's going on. Like, imagine your life is a story—”

“Now that
would
be good,” he said, and grinned.

“I can see it now. The waffle-eating prince who loved his sword too much.”

“Said the girl who spoke gibberish and drove much too fast—”