The Progeny (10 page)

“You’re an ass.”

He goes back to cleaning.

“So now what?”

“I don’t know, Audra!” He slams his hands down on the seat. “This hasn’t gone the way it was supposed to. None of it!”

“How was it supposed to go?”

He sighs and pushes out of the passenger seat, paces several steps away, kicks a piece of glass. “This was supposed to be behind us both! No more Progeny. No more hunters. A normal life. Whatever that is. That’s how it was supposed to go. But of course God, fate, whatever couldn’t let that happen.” He turns back, laces his hands together on top of his head. “So here we are. You can’t go back to Maine. I’m not trying to scare you, but anywhere you start over, they’re going to be looking for you. Now, more than ever. They won’t stop. So where we go from here . . . your guess is as good as mine.”

“Who am I protecting?”

“Audra, are you listening to me? Right now you need to worry about yourself.”

“Tell me who!”

He lifts his hands. “Progeny like you. People who help them. You didn’t tell me names! It wasn’t safe. And trust me, you didn’t want me knowing and I didn’t want to know.”

“I didn’t want you knowing because you were supposed to
murder
me. Then you decided to protect me? And here you are still following me around. What are you, my personal stalker?”

“Something like that,” he says, lifting his chin. He looks angry. “Yeah. Your personal stalker. That’s great.” He walks away, and for a minute I think he’s going to actually take off.

I watch as he picks up something in the parking lot, chucks it at a light post. A moment later he comes striding back.

“You know your story sounds a lot like the one Rolan told me,” I say.

“Listen.” He drops his head, shakes it, as though second-guessing what he’s about to say. “Rolan. Was lying. Because he wants what you knew. Very badly. Acting like your buddy was the only chance he had of getting it. By the way? I don’t know what story he told you, but no Progeny would knowingly keep a photo of another Progeny on their phone. Not in a million years.” He shakes his head. “And right now, the more I tell you, the more dangerous it is for you—and
everyone
you know.”

I don’t tell Luka that Rolan never claimed to be a Progeny. Somehow I have a feeling he’ll tell me the same thing Ivan did: There’s no such thing as Watchers.

“I don’t know anyone,” I say and realize just how true that is. As unsavory as they might be, the introduction of Luka and Rolan in the last few days has increased the grand sum of my dubious social circle to two. Four, if you count the nonexistent Clare and Madge at the Fly Shop, though it doesn’t look like we’ll be socializing much anymore. And I realize now there is no one I trust.

I wonder if I have ever felt so alone.

“You did,” he says, biting out the words. “You did know people. You had access to a lot of information from your mother.”

“What do you know about my mother?”

“She was a radical. Infamous in Progeny and Scion circles alike. She was determined to find a way to end it. Which made her dangerous. To everyone.”

My eyes narrow. “You said you didn’t know anything.”

“I said I didn’t know names. But anyone remotely plugged in knew hers.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was at the front of a movement among Progeny who’d rather die than live in secrecy one more generation.”

“That’s why they’re after me?”

“They’re after you because you’re
alive
. But even more because of who you are and what you used to know. Your mom prepared for the day a hunter caught up to her—and protected a lot of people and information in the process. Information you acquired.”

“You’re full of crap.”

“Am I? Weren’t you doing the same thing when you had your memory erased? Creating a fail-safe in case that day came? That’s exactly what you did! But you did it better.”

“On what planet is this better?” I demand. “Whatever she knew, the hunters have it now! So what was the point?”

“Whatever you learned from her, you found more. You went further. Even before we were friends, you—”

“We were
friends
?” And I know I’ve just screwed up my face like I ate something disgusting.

He leans in through the back door, his eyes dangerous. “Oh yes. Because I got involved in your life, remember?” he hisses. “Yeah, I was
that
hunter—intent on bringing the big haul back. And you had it. Enough to fill in a slew of blanks. To set me up for life when I turned it all in. And you had no idea how close you were to dying. The daughter of Amerie Szabo. You were the mother lode.”

Gone, the man who called me Bronco and tried to sell me nonalcoholic cider at the grocery. His expression is feral.

“Until the day I realized I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want you dead. More than that, I wanted to keep you alive. So the joke’s on me. The ambitious one who got too close instead of just getting it over with and taking whatever you had in that mind of yours. Now that’s gone and you don’t know who you are anymore. Well, neither do I! So here we are. The Historian will know soon—if he doesn’t by now—that you’re alive and I’m a traitor. So who knows. Maybe Rolan was shooting at me after all.”

“For all I know, I erased my memory to keep it from
you
.”

“I’m not the enemy here. Not anymore. Not for a long time.”

“How am I supposed to believe that?”

Luka straightens and practically shouts: “Because it’s true! You might not know me anymore, but I still know you, Audra!”

“I’m so sick of hearing people say that!”

“Yeah, but I’m the one
not lying
to you. Did it occur to you that if I wanted to kill you I would have done it before you erased your memory? You trusted me. You still do. Listen to your intuition,” he says, and for a moment it seems like he’s actually pleading with me.

I shrug. “Sorry. I got nothing. I wish there was some way to prove it.” And a part of me really does mean it.

He drops his head and walks away, hands on his hips. A minute later, he turns back. “I
can
prove it. I know things about you you don’t share with others.”

I wait expectantly.

“You hate math and don’t know how to cook.”

I roll my eyes. “You just described three-fourths of the population.”

“The first guy you had a crush on was some kid in seventh grade.”

“Every girl has a crush on some kid in seventh grade.”

His blue gaze fastens on me. “Your parents died in a freak boating accident four years ago. Your dad was an avid fisherman. You studied art for a year and a half at the University of Chicago. You used to take meds for ADHD, which you don’t have. You have a photographic memory. You superimpose shapes on things in your mind when you’re thinking. You never forget a face. Well, I guess you have now, huh?”

I go very still. For a moment there’s only the occasional whir of a car on the highway.

He nods toward my arm. “You have a scar on your right elbow where you crashed riding your bicycle. You were fourteen. You call it your salami scar, because you skidded on the pavement and it looked like salami. Still does, a little.”

I don’t move, except for my eyes, which turn toward my sleeve.

“There’s another scar on your right shin that looks like a dent, where the bike landed on you, pedal first. You haven’t ridden a bike since. You took martial arts as a kid. Swam in high school. Love eighties music—Devo especially, because you’re basically a nerd. You don’t like makeup. Hate black coffee . . .”

“Stop,” I whisper.

“You touch your hair when you’re nervous, used to have a dog named Attila. Your litmus test of a true history geek is whether or not they know Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed. You love mulligatawny but won’t eat soup unless it’s hot enough to scald—”

“I said stop it!”

My hands are shaking. But even as I tell myself I could have shared any of these things under the guise of friendship and that he’s conning me, I can’t help the fact that I am desperately clinging to a shard of hope that he’s not. Four days ago, I was considering that I could never be honest with anyone, that no one would ever really know me. That sense of despair only got worse as I listened to Rolan’s entire story about where I came from, what I am. Now there’s a person in front of me who knows it all, better than I do. Or claims to, at least.

“You said yourself you acted like my friend to find out what I knew. Any so-called friend would know things like that.”

“I said I got too close and
became
your friend.”

“Same thing.”

“It isn’t to me.”

“Then prove you’re no longer hunting me. Let me go, and leave.”

He crouches down in the open door in front of me. “I can’t do that. I promised I’d be here afterward. We made this decision together, remember?”

“No, I don’t remember!”

“Maine was a new start for me, too—you’re not the only one who lost that. So if you take off without me, I’ll just follow you. Because I made a promise. And because that’s what stalkers do, I guess.”

I stare at him for a long moment before glancing down at the leg of my jeans. Without a word I lift up the right hem. And there it is: the scar like a little dent, nestled against my shin.

Even as my pulse trips, I tell myself anyone could have seen it and made up some story. I remind myself I never said anything in my letter about Luka. But I never did about Clare or Ivan, either.

Ivan.

I look around, and then at Luka. “Do you have a phone?”

“Yeah . . .” he says cautiously.

“Give it to me.”

He hesitates, then pulls the phone from his pocket, unlocks it, and holds it out.

I dial in the numbers.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“You want me to trust you? Trust me for a minute.”

Ivan picks up on the first ring. “Did you get away?”

I slide from the backseat, walk out of earshot.

“Yeah.”

An audible exhale on the other end. “Did he get anything?”

“Please, how do I know you?” I say.

“Did you give him anything?” the voice insists.

Luka storms over and reaches for the phone. I spin away.

“No. Because I don’t
know
anything! I went back to the Center and my records are gone.”

“What are you doing?” Luka hisses.

“Who’s with you?” Ivan says.

“A friend.” I stumble on the word, shoot Luka a warning. He’s glaring, looks ready to rip the phone from my hand.

“The fact that you’re alive is enough,” Ivan says. “They know you’re hiding something important or you’d never have done this.”

“
They
who? The Scions?”

And then, a faint exhale: “It isn’t . . . it isn’t possible you found it?”

“Found what?”

“Where are you now?” he says quickly.

“Near Chicago,” I say, glancing toward the highway. “Please. Whoever I did this for—I think they’re in trouble. You have to tell them. You have to warn—”

“Audra, they’re not just after your life.”

My parents—all of them, ostensibly—are gone. “I know. They’re after the Progeny I knew.”

“No. No, something much more important.”

“Than a life? What else is there?”

“If you found what I think you did, you and anyone close to you is in far worse danger.”

“Found—what?” Luka is staring at me.

“You have to get here. We can hide you. If nothing else, at least you’ll be safe for a while.”

“I can’t come to Croatia! I’ll go to a battered women’s shelter, or—”

“Audra, get out of the States. Now.”

“I don’t even have a passport!”

“You’re Progeny. Get one. I have to get rid of this phone. I’ll leave you a new contact in the next five hours.”

The line clicks off before I can say anything else.

I stare at the space between Luka and me for a stunned moment, and then, belatedly, at the phone in my hand.

Without a word I pull up a browser, type in “University of Chicago” and “library.” Tap on a list of images.

The Harper Memorial Library comes up.

And there it is: the cathedral of learning, with its vaulted ceiling and rows of long tables I remember.

There is an actual place with real records of my existence. If I had an ID with my old name on it, if I weren’t supposedly dead, I would be able to walk in and get my student record, find something about my former life.

I realize Luka’s watching me. He looks pale.

“Okay,” I say, more to myself than to him.

“What was he saying about rediscovering something?” Luka says. He looks ill.

“He wouldn’t say. Something he thought I found.”

Luka’s gaze is locked on mine. An instant later he walks to the driver’s side and gets in.

“He’s right,” he says. “We have to get you out of the country.”

13

“I
can’t just go to Croatia!”

Back on the two-lane highway in flat Farmville, USA, we might as well be talking about one of Pluto’s moons. I hug my arms around myself against the cold, touch my tongue to the inside of my lip where it got cut.

“He’s right. You’ll be safe. No one knows how to hide like the Progeny,” Luka says, eyes on the road.

“There have got to be Progeny here somewhere.”

“Not like there. If the Historian knows you’re alive, that you faked your death and erased your memory to protect something . . . something important enough that he sent Rolan to get you to rediscover it . . .”

“So he could kill me and then harvest my memory and give everything to the Historian—I get it.”

Luka’s jaw twitches, the set of his mouth flat.

“What does he think I found?”

Luka’s quiet for a moment before he says, “The diary.”

“Diary?”

“That has to be what he meant,” he murmurs. He passes his hand over his face and then pounds the rim of the steering wheel with a curse.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t what we planned!”

“What diary?” I demand.

“Bathory’s. People have been searching for it for centuries. I knew Rolan would let you live long enough to find something you remember, but if they’re talking about the diary . . .” He looks shaken, even in the dark. “You’re lucky to be alive.”