Becca, Jim, and Emmett rode with me and the sheriff, and we reached the closest hospital in a little under thirty-five minutes. It probably should have been closer to fifty, but Sheriff Hatcher drove fast—a kind of quiet, furious speed that left no room for conversation in the cruiser. I carried Emmett across my lap, my hand staunching the blood from his neck with a wad of bandages.
The time at the hospital—Fort Smith Baptist General—passed in a long blur. Austin showed up, along with Temple Mae and Jake and Kaden. By that point, Kaden had woken up, but he wasn’t saying much. None of us were. We just sat. Austin held my hand, and we waited some more.
The first one that they let us see was Becca. She was in bed, propped up by the elevated mattress, and a noxious fluorescent light bleached the color from her face. She had a bandage around her upper arm, but when she saw us, she began waving her good hand like she was clearing smoke from the room.
“It’s fine,” she said, and her voice had a lilt to it. Judging by her dilated eyes, I decided they’d given her some whopping good pain meds. “Everything’s fine.” Then her lip quivered, and tears rushed into her eyes, shimmering as they hung ready to fall. “Is everything fine? Oh, God, it was such a mess.”
“We haven’t heard anything about Mr. Spencer yet,” Jake said. He had an arm around Temple Mae, but it looked like that protective touch was more for Jake’s benefit than Temple Mae’s. Her face, dark and brooding, made me wonder what inner demons had awoken during today’s confrontation. Temple Mae had avoided me—and had avoided her powers—for a reason. She had killed to save me, now, on two occasions. When her eyes moved towards me, now I was the one who looked away. Killing wasn’t a thing that could be paid back.
“My uncle’s ok,” Kaden offered. He had deep circles under his eyes, dark enough that they looked like bruises, but his tone was even. “I checked with the nurse right before we came in.”
“And you’re awake and talking,” Austin said, squeezing Kaden’s shoulder. Austin didn’t smile, but the relief on his face and in his voice was palpable. “So that just leaves Emmett.”
“I shouldn’t have told him,” Becca said. Her pupils, like black holes, were trying to devour me. “I shouldn’t have been so persistent.”
“Why don’t you tell us about it?” Austin said. “What happened?”
In a voice hazy with narcotics, Becca said, “He grabbed me at school and wouldn’t let me go. He was angry, but it was more than that. Psychotic, almost. He had me pinned against the wall in the commons, and his eyes were different, like I was in the way and if I didn’t help or jump clear he was going to clobber me. He kept telling me to calm down, he kept saying that he was just angry, really angry with Vie because of something Vie said. But the more he talked, the more I could tell there was something really wrong. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. Austin scooted one of the molded plastic chairs towards me and, to my surprise, sat down. His arms wrapped around my waist and sat me on his knee. It took a moment, but then I relaxed into the curve of his arm and the firmness of his chest. Even through the stink of smoke and cordite that clung to all of us, I thought I could smell the tobacco and cedar I associated with Austin. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I wanted it to be true, and I let myself sink into him.
“He was angry about Makayla, I realized,” Becca continued. “She had lied to him. Had been lying to him ever since she showed up, I guess, and he knew it. He talked all about it—it had been building up for days, but he hadn’t wanted to say it.”
“There wasn’t anyone he could say it to,” Austin said. His chest rumbled against my back. “Not after we’d been so goddamn confrontational about her.”
“I don’t think that was it,” Kaden said, shaking his head. “I think he didn’t want to admit it to himself. It was too much—he wanted it to be true that Makayla had come back, he wanted it to be true that nothing had changed, that they could just pick up from where they’d left off.”
Becca giggled. She tried to lift her injured arm, gave a pained frown, and settled for pointing with her other hand. “You two are cute.”
“Huh?” Kaden said, glancing from her to Austin.
This time, Becca exploded in giggles. “Not you two. You two.” More giggles. With the exaggerated patience of a child explaining the obvious, she said, “Vie and Austin.” Then her eyes moved to Temple Mae and Jake, and she added, “You too.”
“God, don’t encourage them,” Jake said, softening the words with a roll of his eyes and—to my surprise—a blush. “They’re already all over each other.”
“Emmett knew Makayla was lying to him.” The words came out of my chest with a sound like bats thronging in a cave: loud and somehow papery and insubstantial at the same time. “Go on.”
“Ease up,” Austin murmured into my shoulder.
“Sorry.” I rubbed my eyes; they felt like someone had poured itching powder in them. “I’m not—I can’t think straight right now.”
Austin rubbed my back silently, and the others glanced away.
“He said you told him to talk to me,” Becca said in a subdued voice. “He went on and on about how he’d tried to get into his dad’s files, about how he knew his dad was hiding something, but mostly he was just talking himself into a fit. I showed him everything I’d found about Belshazzar’s Feast, about Mr. Warbrath, about all of it. Even the shoes.”
“What?”
“The shoes. And the dresses.” When I didn’t respond, Becca gestured at Austin. “The pictures from the hospital.”
“The ones I took on my phone?” Austin said. “So what? He saw her in those clothes, Becca. He was there when we found her.”
“But you’re all boys. You weren’t even paying attention.”
“It might have more to do with a girl coming back from the dead,” Kaden said, “than with us being boys. We had a lot to deal with.”
With a sniff, Becca ignored the comment and continued, “And because you’re boys, none of you noticed that the clothes proved that they weren’t telling the truth.”
“No,” Kaden said, with surprising force. “I’m a guy, Becca, but I’m not that blind. I paid attention. Their dresses were dirty, stained, and ripped to shreds. I know they were lying, but they still managed a convincing disguise.”
“For boys,” Becca said.
Kaden opened his mouth again, but Temple Mae spoke first. “Pay attention. She’s saying the shoes were new.”
Becca nodded. “Brand new. They had a few scuffs from the run, but those shoes hadn’t ever been worn before—they weren’t even close to broken-in. So I showed the pictures to Emmett, along with everything else, and that convinced him. Or maybe that’s the wrong word. He already knew, I think. I think he just needed something he could put his finger on. That was when Austin called.”
Shifting, Austin adjusted me on his lap so that his stubble-covered jaw touched the side of my arm. “When you and Kaden ran out of the locker room, I knew something was wrong, but I just figured that you’d been attacked again. I was too slow, and I was stupid: I ran into the girls’ locker room first because I thought you were still there. By the time I got to the hall, you and Kaden were already out of the building. I probably wouldn’t have figured out what happened except Colton saw you two leaving the building. I asked him what you were running from, and he looked at me like I was crazy. Then I started thinking about everything else and—”
“And you realized I’m a fucking murderer,” Kaden said in a quiet voice.
“Not a murderer,” Austin said.
“Might as well be.” Kaden shook his head savagely. His hands lashed out, wrapping around the brushed chrome railing of Becca’s bed. “I might as goddamn well be a killer.” He shook his head again, and it had a frantic, almost maddened look to it, as though there were something trapped inside that he were desperately trying to knock loose. “I let them into the building.” The chrome railing trembled under his hands. “And I was the one who met with Seg when they killed him.” The chrome rattled even harder, so hard that it threatened to shake the bolts loose. No, I realized with mounting shock. It wasn’t that he was shaking the bolts loose. The bolts were coming loose—unthreading themselves without anyone touching them. “And I—” His voice broke. Metal pinged, and one of the bolts flew free from the bed frame. It drove itself into the wall with a burst of dust.
My eyes flew to Temple Mae’s face—everyone’s eyes, except Kaden’s, went to her face. Pale, her lips pressed into a white line, she shook her head.
It took me a moment to shake off my lethargy. I didn’t want to talk; I didn’t want to help Kaden feel better. I wanted to sit there and feel sorry for myself and let Austin rub my back. But I also didn’t want someone to get a screw or a bolt or a dinner fork in the eye because Kaden was feeling guilty.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “They would have killed Seg and anyone else they needed to kill, regardless of what you did. And they certainly would have killed Mr. Warbrath without your help. You were the inside man. Your uncle needed you. To be honest, even though we didn’t know it, we needed you.”
“Yeah? For what?” Kaden’s voice was thick, but the tremors running through the metal in the room had quieted.
“At the very least, for keeping your uncle informed. Without him, the others wouldn’t have been able to track Fred Fort’s car. And if Fort hadn’t taken us to Belshazzar’s Feast, we might never have found it.”
“Yeah,” Kaden said. “That’s a pretty nice way of—ah. God.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, ducking his head until his chin nearly rested against his chest. A moment later, he let out a groan, and the steel rings in the privacy curtain shivered along the track, dragging the curtain closed inch by inch. “My head.”
“Kaden,” I said.
“Oh, Christ.”
“Kaden, open your eyes.” I slid off Austin’s knee and nodded towards the bolt that was still sticking halfway out of the drywall. Austin nodded and retrieved it. “Right now, Kaden.”
“What—what did they do to me? Jesus, Vie. I can feel it, like—like—”
“Like your head has been ripped open,” Temple Mae whispered.
Tears leaked out of the corners of Kaden’s eyes.
“Feel this?” I asked, pressing the bolt into his hand and wrapping his fingers around it. Then, before he could respond, I opened my inner sight and slipped into the other side. As with Emmett, I brushed against Kaden’s mind and unleashed . . . something. It didn’t come from me, just as it hadn’t come from me when I had tricked Emmett into sleeping. It was more putting my hand into a stream: as long as I kept my hand in place, the water diverted, but as soon as I withdrew, it would go back to normal. With an ease that I wouldn’t have believed possible even a day before, I gave a gentle push: clouds scudding across a blue sky, and the gray slash of the canyon, and crystal-clear water at the bottom, with gravel crunching under his boots; the whisper of wind through the trees, carrying the scent of pine and old campfires; a long drag off a joint at the end of an even longer day.
When I slipped out of the other side, I saw the change; everyone must have seen the change: his shoulders had lowered, his breathing had eased, his chin came up off his chest and his eyes opened.
“Feel this?” I asked again, squeezing his fingers around the bolt.
“Yeah.”
“No. Do you really feel it?”
“I said—” He broke off, and then, with a tone of wonder, said, “Yeah. I really do. It’s like—I don’t know how to say it. I can feel all of it.”
“Temple Mae?” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her mouth clamped shut, but then, in a rush, she added, “That’s not what it’s like for me.”
“Let go,” Kaden said. “I want to see something.”
I loosed his hand, and he uncurled his fingers, revealing the bolt that lay in his palm. It quivered. At first, I thought I had imagined it, but then it happened again. And then it jerked in a quarter-circle, twisting in Kaden’s palm. By fits and jerks it rose into the air, hovering an inch above Kaden’s hand.
“That’s why they were taking the children,” I said. “That’s how Makayla and Hailey got their powers. Lady Buckhardt.”
“And me,” Temple Mae, and when I looked at her, she was so white I thought she might faint. From the muscles straining in Jake’s arm, it looked like he was the only thing holding her up.
“And Jim Spencer,” I added. “And Luke. And God only knows how many others.”
“But not you,” Becca said.
“I don’t know.” I hesitated, unwilling to reveal what Lady Buckhardt had said to me. “Mertrice Stroup-Ogle told me that my dad wanted to know about Belshazzar’s Feast. Maybe they took me there when I was younger and I just don’t remember.”
“You couldn’t forget it,” Kaden said, and the bolt plunked back into his palm. “Not the way she touches you.”
Temple Mae let out a breath like she’d been punched and nodded.
“Why?” Becca said.
“Because it’s the worst fucking thing you can imagine,” Kaden said.
“No, not that. Why do they do it? Why create people with powers? I mean, this is exactly the thing that would happen—you create too many people with too much power, and they come back to kick your ass.”
Again, Lady Buckhardt’s last words came back to me, and again I kept them to myself. Whatever they meant—whatever she had meant—I didn’t want to share them, and even as I kept silent I cursed myself. I’d already hidden things once and it had almost cost me Austin, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. I didn’t want them to know how much of a freak I really was.
“Maybe we’ll never know,” I said.
“She didn’t die,” Kaden said. “In the house, I mean. She didn’t—you didn’t kill her.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe she’ll run,” Kaden said. “Maybe she’ll be too scared.”
“She won’t.” Temple Mae shrugged off Jake’s arm and slid into one of the molded plastic chairs. “She won’t run because she’s never been scared in her life. She’ll be back. She’ll keep doing it.”
“Then we’ll deal with it when she does,” I said.
“And Mr. Big Empty?” Austin said, his bristly cheek scraping my arm.
“He wasn’t there.”
“So he’s still out there somewhere. He’s still trouble too.”
Before I had to answer, a nurse came into the room. She had a face like a wooden plank, and for one dizzy moment, I knew Emmett was dead. I knew it, the way you know left from right, the way you know up and down. It was in me like gravity.
What she said, though, was, “Emmett Bradley will not stop asking for Vie. Which one of you girls does he mean?”
My face was on fire as I got to my feet. A nervous chuckle ran through everyone, even Austin. And somehow that reminded me what was really important to me. I reached down, taking Austin by the tips of the fingers, and pulled him after me.
“He means me,” I said. “Come on, Austin.”
Austin tried protesting. He insisted, rather sweetly, that it was fine, and that he didn’t care, and that if Emmett wanted to talk to me, then I should be the one to go. I settled it by kissing him, maybe too forcefully, in the hallway and saying, “I want you to come with me.”
The tips of Austin’s ears had turned pink, and he couldn’t quite meet the nurse’s eyes, but he chuckled again and let me drag him along to Emmett’s room.
It wouldn’t be precise to say that the room was dark, but it gave that general impression. The curtain was drawn, although plenty of afternoon sunlight nosed its way around the fabric, and the main bank of fluorescent lights were off, but plenty of secondary lights made up the difference: a lamp over the bed, the glow from the TV, and the banks of lights on different pieces of medical equipment. In that pseudo-darkness, Emmett lay flat on his back, his neck tightly bandaged and stabilized, his eyes huge and dark—the darkest spot in the whole damn room. You could have put him in a tanning booth set to fry and you still would have thought the place needed some brightening up.
This time, I didn’t end up in Austin’s lap, but we did sit side by side, and I took his hand in a firm grip. The calluses on Austin’s palms were familiar now. In at least one way, they were like my personal tally of scars: they were a sign of the places we had been, the things we had done, the people we had become. I squeezed Austin’s hand tight, and for a moment I couldn’t see because my eyes were watering. I knew Austin would misinterpret. I knew he’d think this was about Emmett. But damn him, I didn’t care—it was those calluses. What was I supposed to do?
“All right,” I said, fighting the choke in my voice and trying to work some anger into my voice. “You saved our lives. Is that what you want to hear? You want me to say thank you? You want me on my knees, telling you how awesome you are? Well fuck that. You screwed up. If you’d listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this mess. As far as I’m concerned, saving our lives was the least thing you could—the absolute least. It doesn’t make us even. It doesn’t clear the slate. You owe me, and you’d better get up and out of this hospital bed and pay me back.” I broke off, the world swimming again as I blinked.
“Maybe take it easy, eh?” Austin whispered.
Emmett spoke without hearing him. His voice was cracked and dry and flat. I thought it could have been ancient, that voice, like something that’s been rattling around in a tomb since the last millennium. “You suck at acting like you’re mad,” he said in that hoarse rasp. His gaze never moved from the ceiling. After a long moment in which he seemed to struggle inwardly, he said, “It’s your eyes. Dead giveaway.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t get the stupid idea that just because your throat got cut, that your life is in danger. Don’t even think about getting any worse. You’re going to get better. You’re going to do it fast, hear me?”
No one spoke for a long time. When he answered, it was in that horrible, desiccated voice, saying, “The brain’s funny, right? All I can think about is her, and everything seems like a sign I should have seen.”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” Austin said, leaning forward to pat Emmett’s leg. “It’s not your fault, no matter what this guy says.” He elbowed me for emphasis.
“I think I knew. The minute I saw her running down that canyon, I knew. It was too perfect. It was exactly what I wanted, and part of me the universe never gives you what you want. It keeps serving you shit; it just cooks it in new ways. But I wanted to believe it. I wanted it to be true. God, I wanted it.”
I think he tried to turn his face away, but the bindings on his neck were too tight. Instead, he screwed up his face in a mixture of sorrow and pain as he sobbed. The pain to his lacerated throat must have been intense, but I don’t even know if he felt it.
Austin disentangled our fingers and kissed my temple. Running a hand through my hair, he gave my head a little shove towards the bed. “I’m going to get a Coke.”
“Austin, I don’t . . .”
He smiled, and it was a sad, knowing smile, like he’d already flipped to the back and guess what, here’s how it ends. He gave me another of those little shoves and left. For a few minutes, I stayed where I was, watching Emmett cry, and feeling a helpless anger. Not at Emmett or Austin, but at myself, and at the universe for throwing me into a game I couldn’t win. Emmett was right: this was same old shit just cooked a new way.
And then I eased my weight onto the bed next to Emmett, and I slipped an arm around him, and I ran my hand through his hair as he wept.