by Rysa Walker
“These are parlor tricks, Anna.” The Senator flashes me a malicious smile. “And we can play, too. You’re outgunned, outmanned, and definitely outmaneuvered. Do you think this is all the force that we can bring to bear against you? If you’ve been listening to my son, remember that he’s been insane since birth. I let him keep his pets and run his little science experiments to humor him, hoping we’d find something the military could use. And we did. I think they’ll find you and a few of your friends very useful. Those who can’t be employed will take the cure we’re offering and have a chance at normal lives. The only alternative you offer them is a life cut tragically short.”
Maria’s voice fills my head, at a volume much lower than Little Bear. The volume is even low for Maria, and there’s an underlying note of panic.
More weapons. Five more jeeps coming. Go back to home base!
Many of the kids obey instantly, clambering back into the woods or across the dunes toward Sandalford. Others, mostly the older adepts, hold their position at both edges of the fence. Colonel Smith’s eyes keep moving in that direction. When I glance back, I see his son, Dalton, standing with the others.
And then, just as Maria said, headlights appear down the shore. I’m angry at myself for standing here, listening to the Senator ramble on when we were facing just the one guard who was resistant to Little Bear’s nudge. Maybe Daniel could have stepped in, pushed him harder.
But I know that would only have delayed the inevitable. It’s five jeeps now, but it could be fifty within a few hours. At some point, we have to show them we will not be bullied.
The only person on this beach I have any desire to hurt is the Senator. And maybe that resistant guard just a little bit, because his smirk is pissing me off. I don’t want to hurt the people in those approaching vehicles. But I can’t let them hurt these kids. If they will not deal fairly with us out of compassion, then I will make them deal fairly with us out of respect.
“Why didn’t that one drop his gun?” Little Bear asks. “Is Maria okay?”
That second question alarms me, because I’m unsure why she’s asking. My answer is the same for both, however.
“I don’t know. But he’s going to drop it in just a minute. And when he does, I want you to run back to the van, okay? Deo, stay close.”
“Right behind you.”
The guard may be resistant to psychic force, but he is not immune to physics. I send a chunk of wood toward his temple, but before it connects, a second object—a shell, maybe?—knocks the gun from his hands with such force that it flies out over the ocean. I don’t know what the second object is because I didn’t throw it. The gun splashes into the water at almost the same instant that the man topples over onto the sand.
That gets the Senator’s attention. Smith is looking beyond me, however, toward the line of adepts standing with his son.
I’m not done. Let’s see how they like these parlor tricks.
One small shove, and the jeep closest to the shoreline flips twice, landing upside down. The money the Senator tossed onto the seat drops to the sand, and waves begin lapping at the stacks of bills. A second flick of my hand, and the other jeep rolls backward like some invisible driver has shifted into reverse and floored the pedal. The back end lodges into a sand dune about fifty yards away, and the vehicle pops an extreme wheelie and lands on its back, the still-smoking tires spinning in the air.
A waterspout is now approaching the shore. Caleb is sitting up, his legs hanging over the edge of the van. His funnel rises out of the ocean and spins lazily for a few seconds before traveling toward the toppled jeep. The wind picks up, sending drops of seawater toward us like horizontal rain, as the water churns and spins, taking the jeep and the money out to sea.
But the headlights are still rolling this way, close enough now that I can tell there are indeed five sets. I focus on the sand in front of the jeeps’ lights and shove downward. The sand buckles and rises into a sand berm high enough that I can no longer see the headlights, and seawater rushes in to fill the gully. If they come at us now, it will be on foot and through water.
Colonel Smith surveys the damage and says, “Anna, you’re only making this more difficult. I don’t like the situation either. But I have orders, and if I don’t follow them, they’ll just send someone else. Someone who might not be averse to mistreating these kids. This is not a battle you can win.”
From behind me, Dalton Smith screams, “You’re talking about putting us in a cage! Locking us up. How is that not mistreating us?”
He says us each time, even though I’m sure he knows that his father can find a way to remove this cup from his own son. Dalton was sent here for his protection, after all, and rank has its privileges. But the fact that Dalton has chosen to cast his lot with his fellow adepts is not lost on the Colonel. I can’t tell if he’s angry or proud. Maybe both.
“You are being dangerously naive,” Senator Cregg says. “Those men you just blockaded have already called for support. Helicopters will arrive within the hour. Even if you’re willing to risk your own life, do you want these other lives on your conscience? Because if you fight us, many of these children will die, Anna. And it will be your fault.”
Those last two words are a tripwire.
“NOT MY FAULT!” My mouth screams the words, but they’re not mine. “I didn’t make her do anything. You shoved her out that window. You!”
In the part of my brain occupied by Graham Cregg, a young boy who once stood on a patio with his mother’s broken body at his feet panics as his collar tightens around his throat and he’s lifted off the ground. And the part of my brain occupied by Penelope Cregg, whose spirit could only watch helplessly while her son was manipulated and abused, dissolves into a wall of white-hot rage.
Her anger combines with the rest of my hitchers—all Furies now—and launches like an arrow with pinpoint accuracy toward Ronald Cregg, who seems to realize he’s made a grave miscalculation. Perhaps he notices a slightly different light in my eyes, a light that reminds him of his late wife. Whatever the reason, Cregg starts screaming several seconds before the others. Several seconds before almost everyone on that beach, including me, receives an up-close-and-personal visit of their own worst nightmare.
I don’t know what Ronald Cregg’s imagination conjured up in that moment. His heart was sixty-eight years old and not in the best of shape, so he will never tell us. I like to think, however, that he saw the same thing I did the first time Penelope Cregg took me on a bad trip. I like to think he saw a giant spider-rat with human hands. And I like to think that’s what he still sees in his nightmares, wherever in hell he may be.
Carova Beach, North Carolina
April 29, 2020, 11:16 a.m.
Two emotions are at war in my head today. One is an emptiness that extends to my very core. The part of my heart that connected me to Kelsey is a raw, gaping wound utterly at odds with another emotion—an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
Aaron lies beside me, still sleeping. Deo and Taylor are somewhere in this vast house, unharmed, probably with Ein stretched out between them, happy that his mom and dad are home. Not a single wabbit was killed on the shore last night, and none are in cages. No fence surrounds Sandalford now. We’re even down a few glass walls.
The relief is also because I have only one hitcher inside my head this morning. The Furies are gone. If any remained on that beach last night, I could not sense them. Their desire for justice or maybe even vengeance must have been the one thread that tethered them here. I don’t know what that says about their final destination, but I will not judge them.
A part of me continues to judge Graham Cregg, however. If hell exists, I suspect he’s there. But perhaps it’s only a minor hell, because I don’t think he’s there alone. Whether or not Penelope Cregg earned that fireside seat, I believe she’s there with him, gladly enduring fire and brimstone to be with her child, as many parents do.
The one hitcher who remains already feels faint. I know Ashley
is mostly here to help ease the transition for Caleb, but I think there’s a little something else holding her back, too. Something she needs before she can move on.
My mom is right back where she wants to be—with my dad, enduring the shared pain of a shattered leg and probably making plans for a trip to Colorado to visit my aunt when all of this is over and my father is, hopefully, free to travel. When I asked her what she needed in order to move on, she said she has everything she needs and she’ll move on when my father does. ’Til death do us part. Or not, I guess. It isn’t exactly a traditional marriage, but hey, it’s lasted fifteen years.
I’m a little nervous about the four new file cabinets inside my mind office, though. Graham. Penelope. One marked simply The Furies. They shared a name, and apparently, they’re willing to share a filing system. But the one that looms largest is marked Myron. None of the cabinets are behind a wall, or under lock and key, but Myron’s is still wrapped in several layers of duct tape. Baby steps.
I don’t know if I’ll inherit all of my former hitchers’ abilities. Part of me hopes I don’t, and it’s not something I’m going to test today. But I’ll handle all of their exit dreams gladly. They’re not real. And none of them will hurt as much as the nightmare I faced on the beach last night.
If I’d known what was happening, I might have tried to rein it in. Not to spare Senator Cregg. Not even to spare Colonel Smith or the guards, because they needed a wake-up call. But there were still dozens of kids on the beach. Deo, too. Taylor says there was a moment of sheer, unbridled panic at Bell Isle, where she and the rest of Team Beta had secured Magda and her few remaining guards.
Even at Sandalford, Aaron said he was convinced for a split second that the entire beach was engulfed in flames and he couldn’t get there to save us. It’s not the same nightmare he faced last time, but your worst fears can change. I know, because mine changed, too.
There was no spider-rat this time. Instead, I’m holding Kelsey’s body in the doorway of the house on Crane Road. Her spirit is somewhere. I can hear her, sobbing. But I can’t find her. I can’t help.
Only four people escaped Penelope Cregg’s Magical Misery Tour—Sophie, Lily, Caleb, and Little Bear, whose actual name is Abby. Maria and Daniel escaped the worst of it, since they were in the back of Bell Isle with Dr. Batra and one of the nurses. Daniel says Maria wouldn’t have been alive if the medical team hadn’t been there to stabilize her.
And Maria is the only reason that Abby left the van. Maria couldn’t get a message through the block, so she crept around the fence, over the bodies of Miller and Ugly Bear, and told Abby that no one blamed her. That the wabbits all knew someone who wound up with the Senator and Dacia through no choice of their own. Most of all, Maria convinced Abby that she was needed, and like Dalton Smith, she chose to lend us her voice.
The bullet caught Maria in the side on her way back to the van, seconds before Abby disarmed all but that one stubborn guard.
Senator Cregg spoke one true thing just before his final words. Helicopters arrived within the hour—one of them to medevac Maria, my father, and three wounded guards to the nearest military hospital and one to carry away the bodies.
Not Kelsey’s, though. I strongly suspect most of the people who died last night in front of Bell Isle will be disposed of without ceremony. But Kelsey has a family who loved her. In fact, she has two families. One by blood, and one by choice.
Aaron’s mom called this morning to say she’ll contact Kelsey’s family. I protested that it wasn’t fair for her to take on such a sad task, but she wanted to help. She said it was one thing that she could do, one thing that her overprotective children would let her do, and so I agreed. Deo and I have never spoken to Kelsey’s family, and I don’t know how much Kelsey told them about us. But she must have told them something, because Deo will eventually be holding the blue velvet pouch of ashes that I saw in my vision.
When Aaron wakes, we pull on semi-clean clothes and go to the rec room. Taylor is already there. We’re supposed to have a video conference with Colonel Smith at noon to iron out the details of the tentative agreement we reached last night on the beach, after everyone recovered from their waking nightmare.
“Is Deo still asleep?” I ask.
“No. He said he needed some time alone. And maybe he does, but . . . I think it’s more he just didn’t want to deal with this meeting. I would have put it off, but there’s a lot that has to be decided.”
I’m of a similar mind to Deo, so I tell her I’ll go look for him. Not that I actually have to look. I know where he’ll be.
When I get to Kelsey’s office, I tap on the door and then push it open.
Deo is sitting on the carpet, with Ein next to him. His eyes are dry, but yesterday’s purple eyeliner is even more streaked than it was last night.
“Can I come in?”
He gives me a duh look, and I join him on the floor. Ein gives me a feeble tail thump in greeting. Does he sense what happened? Or is he miserable only because we are?
“I didn’t want to be around anyone else yet,” Deo says. “So I thought I’d come in here and sit where I usually sit and it would be like talking to her, you know? And then when I got here, I couldn’t sit in my chair. It just felt wrong without her here.”
“I know.”
“Taylor wanted me to go to the meeting. Thought it might help . . . distract me. But I’ve heard all about it from her anyway. She gets into this stuff, all of the politics and the strategies, but I don’t really want to look at how the sausage is made. At least not right now. Does that make sense? I want someone to fix it. To make things right, but . . . this part? Kelsey? That can’t be fixed.”
We sit there silently, each scratching behind one of Ein’s long brown ears.
“Kelsey wasn’t still . . . there . . . when you found her body. Did your dad pick her up?”
“No. I asked. And I couldn’t find her. So . . . I guess she moved on. At least, I hope she did.”
“She was murdered and she didn’t know we were okay. Didn’t know her other patients were okay. Does that sound like someone who could instantly move on? I mean, I hope she did, but it doesn’t fit to me.”
It doesn’t fit to me, either. All I can think of is my nightmare on the beach, but sharing that won’t help Deo right now.
“I checked the house on Crane Road, D. Before I went to bed last night, I also checked in here and in her room. I’ll keep checking, but maybe she was able to let go without answers.”
We sit there for few minutes longer, and then he gets up. “Taylor was right. I need a distraction.”
So we join the meeting, already in progress.
“It’s not like we’re asking for the West Coast,” Daniel says. “We’re not even asking for a state or a city. And don’t pretend the government is giving us anything out of generosity, because you’re getting a lot out of this bargain. There may be minor stuff we haven’t thought of, so don’t hold me to this until it’s in writing, but we have three major requirements. First, no adept will be forced to work without his or her consent. If it’s physically dangerous or violates their moral code or they just don’t want to do it, they can opt out. Second, no adept will be forcibly medicated, unless it’s for his or her own safety. That includes this so-called cure. Third, we need a safe space that isn’t a damned prison. The adepts aren’t criminals, and we’re not going to allow them to be treated that way. Those who want to live in the larger society will be allowed to do so as long as they do not draw attention or use their abilities in an illegal or unethical way.”
“That last bit will be hard as hell to enforce.” Smith’s face is tired and drawn. “One option for the safe space would be the Brushy Mountain facili—”
Taylor says, “Which is a prison. We tell you no prison, and the first option you mention is a prison.”
“My point,” Smith says, “was that we could renovate it. It’s isolated and secure.”
“It’s the secure part that’s troub
ling,” Daniel says. “Secure for whom? But here’s one option. There’s a huge expanse of public land to the north of us, just across the Virginia line. It’s definitely isolated. It gets a handful of hikers, but that’s it, because there are no roads.”
“And it would require more paperwork than you can imagine.”
Taylor smiles sweetly. “So . . . how much public land has been sold to private buyers by this administration? They’ll find a way.”
I’m not sure whether the sound that Smith makes is a huff or a laugh. “Listen, we don’t have to work everything out today. As long as Daniel and Pfeifer are both willing to testify on the agreed points, the administration seems to think they can make this fly. Their key concern is whether all the formulas that were distributed illegally really were the temporary variety. Because if they weren’t, and if we have a whole new crop of adepts out there, no agreement is going to last.”
“They were all either temporary formulas or the blocker,” I say. “My guess is that Dacia and Lucas were planning to wait and sell the permanent variety to governments. But that takes longer to set up, and they’d have been much more credible once they’d stirred up a solid panic.”
Colonel Smith seems a little unnerved by my presence, which is both totally understandable after what he saw me do on the beach last night and also amusing, since we’re on Skype. Although I guess the fact that his son is under the same roof as me, at Dalton’s insistence, might make him a bit nervous, too.
My mind keeps straying back into my grief each time something reminds me of Kelsey. When Smith mentions sending in new staff, including a counselor. When he mentions that Magda Bell is returning to London today, with her girls and a very questionable “cure.” There’s nothing Smith could do aside from warning her that it could harm the girls. They’re her daughters, and not even US citizens. Even though I know Smith is right, it still makes me uneasy. It would make Kelsey uneasy, too.
The topic has changed when I tune back in, and I realize with something close to amazement that the administration is seriously planning to spin the past few months as a massive hoax perpetrated by Senator Cregg. And yes, it was, in one sense, but . . .
