The Ylem (42 page)

“Caleb, Caleb,” Gavran said in a singsong
voice. “Always so impatient. Forget your gut and use your head. The
book is our only concern right now, and throwing punches is not the
way to get to it. It’ll only hold us back.”

“Are you saying we’re going to let them—”

“No.” Gavran cut me off. “We're going to make
them pay. But that’ll be our reward after getting the jackpot.” He
paused and twisted his lips into a wicked, knowing smile. “And how,
I wonder, are we going to get it?”

“The girl,” Nick answered, figuring out
Gavran’s plan immediately. “We’re going to snatch the girl.”

“And make her talk,” I added. “We’ll keep her
with us until she spills out the truth.”

Gavran nodded, satisfied with our logic. “And
what better place than this cave to keep her captive?” He looked
around the dim chamber. “We’ll wait for a few weeks. Her guard will
be down by then. In the meantime, we’ll settle down here and get
ready.”

“Are you forgetting her almighty boyfriend?”
Nick started pacing. “Her guard might drop over time. But him? He
won’t let it down that easily—and we can’t even smell the guy,” he
said, worried.

“Are you forgetting something, too, Nicolai?”
Gavran said. Nick stopped pacing and looked at him. “He can’t smell
us either. The only reason he found me was because I was with her,
because he could smell
her
, not me,” he explained. “Just
like we spent days without being discovered, we’ll do it again—only
with a lot more caution.”

The chamber fell silent. Nick and I pondering
on the situation. Each one of us looking at the nuts and bolts of
the plan in our heads. After a moment, it all came down to one
issue.

“Which one of us will go?” Nick asked.

“Isn’t the answer obvious?” Gavran raised his
eyebrows. “Caleb is way too impatient and impulsive. Nothing
guarantees us he won’t launch himself on the pack once he’s there.”
He looked at me with a dark face. “I, on the other hand, can’t go
because Kalista already knows me. It’s a risk we can’t take.”

“Wait—what did you say?” I asked. My face
wrapped in tension.

“Don’t start complaining, Caleb.” Gavran
waved his hand in the air. “You know you would attack them the
mo—”

“No. I meant the girl. What did you say her
name was?”

“Kalista.”

I felt as if my stomach plunged into ice-cold
waters. My heart pumping faster at the sound of that word.
Kalista
. He’d said her name was Kalista. Was it a
coincidence?

“So this leaves us you, Nicolai.” Gavran
continued with the details of his plan. But I wasn’t listening. A
tempest of emotions was sweeping through me—confusion and worry and
bewilderment knotting my insides.

I hadn’t seen the girl yesterday night. I’d
been too focused on the others to pay attention to something else.
Something I’d considered unimportant in that chaotic moment. Now I
wished I’d done otherwise. The questions bombarding my head were
creating a firestorm of doubt, burning me alive.

I ran my hand over my face. Chewy’s real name
was Kalista, and the last time I saw her was twelve years ago,
which meant she was…eighteen now. The image of her sweet little
face with her plump cheeks gleamed in my mind. I never thought of
her as something more than a child. It never crossed my mind. She’d
always been that cute Cookie Monster who whined over not winning a
game of Hide-and-Seek. But, even though she was still that little
girl in my head, in the real world, she wasn’t anymore. She was an
adult. An eighteen-year-old, just like the girl we were planning to
rip out from her life.

I leaned back, placing myself directly under
the shaft of sunlight cutting through the chamber and looked up.
This girl couldn’t be the charming toddler I’d loved as a
sister—that I still loved as a sister. Having the same name didn’t
mean being the same person. And she was living in New York, not in
Ruidoso.

But…what if she’d moved?

No, it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be
her.

“Start getting ready, Nicolai,” Gavran said.
“She won’t be easy. She’s a fighter.”

I looked at Gavran with a pang of fear, the
shower of sunlight pouring down on me making me feel as if I was in
the spotlight of a pitch-black, tragic scenario.

“This time, Kalista better submit to me,”
Gavran said, with menace edging his dark voice. “Or else, it won’t
be pretty.”

My stomach twisted.

Heavens, please don’t let it be
her
.

About the author:

When not writing, glued to her husband, Mr.
Keyboard, or reading books into oblivion, Tatiana Vila can be found
watching tacky reality shows, singing in the shower, eating way too
many Wonka candies, and fantasizing about her next book.

Her motto: let the mind run wild.

Visit her blog at
http://tatianavila.blogspot.com