by Sarah Jaune
It was a mark on just how bad things were that Ivy didn’t even consider her father as family. Eli could respect that, though. He didn’t consider his father, the Overseer of Chicago, as family either.
“Eli’s father is one of them,” Annamarie asked quietly.
“Yes,” Eli confirmed. “My sisters and I ran away almost six years ago.”
The older woman turned to Ivy. “What about your father?”
“I don’t know,” Ivy replied with a shrug. “I’ve never met him. My mom was crazy, though. She went downhill in a few years.”
“So,” the Overseer drew their attention back to him. “There are children, no older than sixteen that you’ve seen, who have more than one power. What they have in common, sides from age, is at least one parent who has slowly gone insane?”
It was as close to a summary as they could have come up with. “That’s about it,” Eli agreed. “Ivy and I may, or may not, liberate the kids of their crazy, violent households. They may or may not relocate to someone else’s place.”
“What we do know is that if you tell anyone, we’re all dead,” Ivy assured him quickly. “This has to stay a secret.”
Kasper nodded, then glanced to his wife. “We will keep your secret, and we will help you in any way that we can. I do not like the games that some of the Overseers play with their children. It is as though they were pawns on a chessboard.”
Eli had only ever played chess once, and he hadn’t been very good at it then. His nanny had tried to show him, but it had been a long time ago. He did understand the reference, though.
To his father, Eli’s life was no more than a stepping stone to Campbell Hunt’s greater goals in life. He was to be used and molded to be exactly what his father wanted.
“You must leave,” Annamarie said quickly. “You need to take Zen with you. We will tell the Overseer of Miami that Zen has run away again, and we do not know where he is.”
“I shall have the car brought around and supplies loaded,” Pistol offered as he headed for the door.
Kasper Morton ran a hand through his hair and turned to stare out of the window into the night sky. “I think it would be best, Zen, if you went to my sister in the Saint Louis Zone. I shall write up directions for you. It would be best for you to stay there, stay hidden, for at least a month, maybe more.”
Zen nodded without a single protest. “Let me grab a few things and I’ll be ready,” he agreed as he also left the office.
Eli and Ivy were left alone with Zen’s parents. There was only one thing Eli could say. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not be sorry, ever, for doing the right thing,” Kasper told him gravely. “Do not be sorry for standing up for the weak. I wish my son could go to New Orleans and help there, but I know better. You do as well. He would be kept there, and I would have to go to war to get him back. I did not always appreciate my son’s gifts, but I see now…” his voice faded off.
“Zen’s magic is the most powerful one of all,” Eli said without hesitation. “What he can do is so much better than anything I can do.”
“We agree,” Annamarie assured him as she stood to join her husband. The two linked hands and gazed into each other’s eyes. Eli could see the tangible love that flowed between them. They had an attachment. Eli knew that, but this one was older, steadier, stable. This was love born of years. Zen’s mother turned back to them. “Please look after my son. Please get him there safely. I know this is what you do, but I need to hear you will keep him safe.”
“We will,” Ivy promised, without mentioning that they’d only done this once. Still, they didn’t have to sneak Zen out from under his parents’ noses. They were letting him go for his own good.
Kasper nodded and moved over to shuffle the papers on his desk. He grabbed a pen and started scribbling furiously until he had a list of instructions. “My sister is not in the seat, proper, which will make this easier. She’s on a small ranch on the west side of the city. It’s a little tricky to find, but she can offer you shelter if you want to rest for a few days before continuing on.”
“Thank you,” Eli said as he pocketed the instructions. “Thank you for everything.”
CHAPTER 28
RUNAWAY
It only took ten minutes for them to get moving onto the streets of Savannah, but they were ten of the longest minutes of Eli’s life. He knew that it was five hours from where they’d dumped Price, almost literally in a lake, and that it had only been two since Kasper Morton had been warned they were coming, but it didn’t make him feel any better. The moment Zen threw his stuff into the back seat and hopped in, Eli was off.
They would have typically headed northwest out of Savannah, but since they knew that the Overseer of Miami would be coming in from the west from Atlanta, where they’d dumped Price, Eli pointed the jeep straight north towards the Charlotte Zone. It was several hours of tense, almost silent driving as they booked it away from Zen’s home.
“You know,” Zen said thoughtfully as they spotted the lights of Charlotte’s main city. “The last time we were together, we were running towards my house.”
“It is a little different this time,” Ivy said with a yawn. “I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks.”
“You haven’t slept well in weeks,” Eli reminded her. “Before we left there were the wolves.”
Ivy groaned loudly and dropped her head back against the headrest. “I’d sort of forgotten about that, actually.”
“What wolves?” Zen asked them curiously.
“We went running in the forest near our town,” Eli explained as he turned left onto a road that would take them west to the Nashville Zone. “We were attacked by a pack of wolves. It was a miracle we weren’t hurt more seriously.”
Eli saw Zen’s hand move forward to touch Ivy’s shoulder. “You still have internal bruising.”
“Do you?” Eli asked her, a little shocked.
“Just some twinges which Zen just took care of,” Ivy told him. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Zen replied casually. “You are, after all, saving me from a not so nice fate by driving me out of here. But I have to ask… what happened in New Orleans?”
Eli stared at the road as the clock tolled past midnight. “It was a series of really weird events. The first part that was strange was we took a road, then stopped for refilling the jeep, and found a little girl.”
“You found a girl?” Zen asked quickly. “Like on the side of the road?”
Ivy stuck her feet out and reclined her seat a bit. “More like in a house in a town that had been cleared out. She’d been there alone for a while.”
Zen let out a low whistle. “What are the odds of you finding her?”
“Slim,” Eli agreed. “But there’s more. She was magical, and not only was she magical, but we found out she was the sister of the guy we were going to try to find in New Orleans.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Zen held up his hands. “I thought you were sent to save a woman.”
“It’s so much more than that,” Ivy assured him gravely. “We weren’t the first ones sent in to try to save the New Orleans kids. When the first guy stopped making contact, we were sent to find him. We found his sister, then went after him. We ended up finding out that he was in jail.”
“What’s his power?” Zen asked curiously.
Eli tapped absently at the steering wheel. “Magnetism.”
There was a long pause before, “So, why didn’t he escape?”
“The first meal he ate had some kind of tranquilizer in it. They kept him sedated,” Ivy explained bitterly. “Eli saved him, then we started to plan, but there was bad news.”
“This is where it gets really weird,” Eli told Zen, who snorted. Zen had a point. The whole thing was already strange enough. “The guy who was supposed to marry the girl, the one we dumped in Atlanta, was the other guy’s brother.”
Zen laughed. “That made no sense.”
“We found Claire,” Ivy informed him. “Claire’s brot
her, Thane, was in jail. Thane is the middle child, Claire the youngest. Price was the groom.”
“Woah,” Zen said in alarm. “The ones you saved first are the younger children of the Overseer of Miami? Thane and Claire are from Miami?”
Eli nodded. “That’s about right. That is how we figured out what was going to happen to Haleigh, who is the eighteen-year-old that we saved. Thane had seen his father and older brother, Price, in New Orleans and heard orders going around the city for things you’d need for a lavish wedding.”
“And then we learned that Thane is attached to Eli’s twin sister,” Ivy said as she rounded off all the weird connections. “It’s been a very strange few days.”
“You can say that again,” Zen said as he sat back in his seat. “Why did you have Price with you?”
Eli drummed his fingers for a moment, nervous now for no particular reason except that he’d been under the impression that he’d be able to take down almost anyone. “Price found us, Haleigh and me, as we were escaping. I fought him for a bit, but he nearly won. Thane, his younger brother, is stronger than Price is, and he came to my rescue. We took Price along because I realized that we could make it appear as though Price and Haleigh had run away together with the younger kids. Haleigh still had a brother that we left behind, but he’s following the game.”
He didn’t mention the bruised and battered face that Haleigh had worn as they sailed away.
“The mermaids were helping us,” Ivy explained. “They were stuck in this lake that no man could go on. The locals told us that they’d stick their wives out to fish the lake.”
“That makes sense,” Zen agreed as though that was a forgone conclusion. When they remained silent, he said. “Mermaids prefer women, and their pearls don’t work on women.”
Ivy spun in her seat to stare back at him. “Really? I wonder why that is.”
“Because women are better,” Zen answered her smoothly.
“Cute,” Ivy’s sarcasm was laced with humor. “Really, though, why wouldn’t they work on women?”
“I dunno,” Zen replied with a yawn. “How much longer do you think we have?”
“Way too long,” Eli said as he pushed down the accelerator to speed them up. Now that they were on the open road, he could push it a little more. It was impossible that they were being chased, but he still felt like there was someone coming after them.
“So,” Zen drew the word out until it practically rolled around the interior of the jeep. “How does it feel knowing your sister is attached?”
It was such a radical shift in topic that for a moment, Eli didn’t know what to say. “I…”
Ivy laughed and pushed at his arm. “I teased him about it, too. Also, Thane is really good looking, tall, muscled, and—”
“Alright,” Eli cut her off as he forced himself not to crack the steering wheel in half. “You made your point.”
“Now this is interesting,” Zen said, clearly winding up to drive Eli crazy.
“It’s good, actually,” Eli said, deciding to puncture their fun. “I was able to get to know Thane and see that he’s a good guy. My sister deserves a good guy. When he talks about her…”
Ivy knew what he was thinking. “It was like the sun rose upon her. I guess you know what that’s like, Zen.”
“I do, yeah,” Zen agreed with a sigh. “I really want to be in New Orleans helping people, but from what you’re telling me, I’d be captured by the Overseer straight away, and I wouldn’t be able to help anyone.”
“Basically,” Ivy agreed as she reached back to squeeze Zen’s hand. “Coral told us about what you two want to do. I think it’s really a great idea, but I’m just not sure how you’ll be able to make it work.”
Zen sat in the back silently brooding for a good ten minutes. Eli let him have the silence, though. It was a heavy burden. Finally, he responded with, “We’d really need a body guard like you two in order to make it happen safely. It isn’t even the regular people that would be a problem! It’s those Overseers who want all the power and glory to themselves. It seems like the only reason that some of them don’t grab even more land is because they’d be put to death. It’s only those strict regulations that keep them in check. Otherwise, it would be just a few people who would take over the world. I mean,” here his anger spilled over completely until he was almost shouting. “I didn’t expect everyone to share everything nicely. That never works out, but why do these Overseers feel like they deserve to have everything at the expense of everyone else?”
It was a question that had plagued Eli for a long time. Even some of the Overseers that weren’t as crazy, still wanted to grab all of the land, money, and power. “But your dad is okay, Zen. Some of them are fighting the good fight.”
“He has his own issues, but yeah,” Zen waved his hand as though he was shooing a fly. “For the most part he’s a good man out to do what’s best for his people.”
“We should table this for now,” Ivy said to them. “I need to get some sleep so I can drive in a few hours. I think it would be best if we didn’t stop for longer than a few minutes.”
“Agreed,” Eli and Zen said at the exact same moment.
Eli was left with his thoughts while his friends slept and the miles crawled by. He stopped to switch with Ivy once they were in the Nashville Zone. By that point, he was so tired, Eli was sure he would sleep for a week.
When he woke again, the sun was up and the jeep was stopped along a deserted stretch of road. There were trees along both sides, and a sloped hill to their north. He glanced around to see his two friends outside, eating sandwiches.
Eli stretched his sore body and pushed the door open. He didn’t say much as he made himself some food, but there wasn’t much to say.
“It’s only another few hours,” Ivy told him. The skin under her eyes was bruised, and her gaze was clearly exhausted. “I’m going to crash in the back.”
He nodded once. “I’m going to run for a few minutes, then we can go.”
Ivy waved him off and after shoving the last bite of food into his mouth, he took off as fast as he could up the hill, dodging rocks, trees, and startled deer. It was exactly what he’d needed to loosen up his tense mind and aching body.
He didn’t linger, even though he wanted to, because the view when he turned around was spectacular. The valley below him was green, full of fields and trees, sparkling in the morning light. Eli drew in the fresh, tangy smells and headed back down the hill at a slower rate.
Zen and Ivy were just cleaning up when he made it back.
“Feel better?” Ivy inquired as she closed the rear hatch of the jeep.
“Yep,” Eli replied as he moved around to the front of the car. “Let’s hit the road.”
The feeling he’d had as they’d left Savannah, the one of being chased, was gone now. In its place was a firm resolve to make it safely to Zen’s aunt’s house in a couple of hours. If anyone was following them, they were hours ahead. Once at his aunt’s place, they could hide for a bit to make sure the trail went cold.
“What’s your aunt like?” Eli asked Zen, who had his hands constantly tapping a tune on his thigh.
“She’s a really chill lady,” Zen told him. “She’s not magical, but her husband was. They never had kids, so she likes coming to see us. She has a ranch out there where she raises cattle and chickens.”
Eli hadn’t ever been on a ranch before and had a difficult time picturing it. “Did her husband die?”
“A few years ago,” Zen said quietly. “He was thrown from his horse and broke his neck. He died instantly. He was a good guy. I liked him a lot. My aunt kept going, though. She took over running the whole operation herself.”
“What’s the township called?”
“It’s Hopewell,” Zen explained. “It’s sort of weird looking there. There are a lot of empty, and burned out buildings that have nothing to them, but a lot of the land has been turned back to farms. Also, there is a small town center, but it’s no more than
a few houses and one store.”
A lot of towns looked like that to Eli. It made him curious about what life had been like before, way back when there were clearly more people in their world. That was before the magic, of course, but Eli didn’t know how far back it was. Most of the history books had been lost or destroyed. “She’s really not going to mind us dropping in?”
“Nah,” Zen shrugged that off. “She’ll put us to work while we’re there. Aunt Cate will be glad for an extra set of hands.”
Zen, it turned out, was right. They turned off the main road on the west side of the city of Saint Louis and made their way along some back roads, following Zen’s father’s instructions until they reached the burned out township that Zen had described to Eli.
