Such A Secret Place (Stolen Tears Book 1)

by Cortney Pearson

“I’m just visiting my…cousin. Talon.” Talon joins us just in time to dig an elbow in my ribs. “I mean, uh, Trevon. At his house.” I gesture to the white brick home.

  Paul stares at me. Blinks. Unaffected, as usual. “You’re related to the Holkensen’s?”

  “Yeah,” Talon says without really looking at Paul.

  Paul’s eye twitches, making his freckles fidget. “Huh. Good to see you, Ambry.” He keeps his eyes on Talon as he speaks, and begins inching backward. He doesn’t stop until he gets to his faded brick house across the street.

  “That was weird,” I say, though my stomach flutters with urgency. I need to get to Paul’s. I don’t see how, though. Talon can bend Paul in half.

  “He’s probably gonna go call my mom and ask why I’m at a strange house alone with a boy.”

  “No, he won’t,” Talon says. “And you’re a terrible liar.” He leaves my side to head for the back of the house again. I follow him this time, not knowing what else to do.

  If I had magic I could use Talon’s vehicle to get away, but like auds, vehicles run on a person’s magic. There’s no power reserve there. I can’t even start the thing.

  He fingers along the base of a window. Seeming to find a point he considers satisfactory, he slides it upwards and pulls himself in, black boots disappearing.

  I don’t think twice. I bolt to the driveway, past Talon’s black vehicle, and I cross the street to Paul’s two-story house. My feet hit the sidewalk when something sharp sinks into my elbow. I try to worm free, but Talon’s grip deepens. His face is stiff, and he herds me to the open front door of the Holkensen’s.

  Talon slams the door, and I shove him away, though I mostly end up moving myself instead of him.

  “You can’t cart me around like I’m potatoes or something,” I say. “I’m a human being, okay? No more shoving me into vehicles, no more dragging me into houses.”

  “I don’t think you understand what’s going on,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself!” I nudge past him through the too-white kitchen and into the living room. Everything about this house is white. White walls, matching rugs on the boring, colorless carpets. Even the lacy curtains are off-white.

  “Bleh, I feel like we’ve snuck into a hospital.”

  Talon clomps down a set of stairs off from the kitchen and in seconds is back up. He grips my wrist and herds me toward the same stairs. I wheedle my way out of his grasp.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We both need to be in the basement,” he says. “So no one can see us.”

  “You go ahead. I’ll just sleep up here.” I head toward the light blue couches. Praise angels, they have a vid screen. Except I can’t run it. Not having magic really sucks. I peer to Paul’s house across the street and force my breathing to slow. I’ll wait for Talon to go down, then make a break for Paul’s again.

  “Ambry.” It’s a reprimand. Angels, this guy is worse than my parents.

  “What do I care if anyone sees us here?” He can’t just order me around without explaining anything. Nu-uh, this boy has to give something if he’s going to be so demanding all the time.

  “Come downstairs, or I will carry you down.”

  I fold my arms and then squeal as he bends, hugs my legs and folds me over his shoulder. The blood rushes to my head as his shoulder digs into my belly. My hair dangles, and I can smell the wind on his clothes, along with the clean smell of dirt, like woods. He lugs me roughly down steps and then dumps me onto a squashy couch beside a table where two sandwiches sit, along with two bottles of water and some chips.

  At the sight of the food the angry retort I was preparing dissolves. I feel a teeny bit ashamed of my brattiness, but not enough to say anything.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He saved my life, I remind myself. He just wants the tears. My stomach snarls, and I push up a smile and reach for a sandwich.

  “Um. Thanks,” I say.

  His jaw is tight, and his eyes flare as if he’s never heard the word. He gives me a forced smile and holds out his fingerless-gloved hand. “Can I see the tears? Please?”

  That came out of nowhere. “What color are they?”

  “Blue,” he says after a confused look flashes across his face.

  I peer up at him through my lashes. “Then I guess you’ve seen them.” And I turn to the sandwiches again.

  He yanks me to my feet.

  “It was a joke!” Angels, he’s touchy. He looks livid, and I flinch because it’s not the blank expression I typically get from people.

  “I’m not taking them,” he says. “I just want to see something. To see if the tears will let me hold them at all instead of you holding them all the time.”

  Again, I wonder why he wants them. What he thinks he’s going to do with them. The tears don’t hum out any warnings, so I take it as okay. I set them in his outstretched hand.

  Talon stands by the desk, leaving me by the couch. The instant he steps away I feel it. Like they have a string tied to my spine. They warble from Talon’s hand. My name. Or something that stands for my name.

  “Won’t work,” I say with a pang in my chest. I dash forward. The tears are white hot. It’s not painful to me, but Talon’s fingers are reddened.

  A sigh of relief drags out from my lips. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here,” I tell him. “If that’s any consolation.”

  “I’m used to being on my own, okay?” he says.

  “Apparently so.”

  “It’s just going to take some…adjusting. Having you around.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to stick around?” I set the tears on the table beside the food. I know I sound nasty, but it’s the truth. I just want to find my brother and go home. “What’s in it for me? I’ve got something you want. What do I get?”

  Talon rubs his temples. “How old are you?”

  “Does that have something to do with my question?”

  “Yes. How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen,” I say, still not seeing where this is going.

  “Way too old.”

  “Too old for what?”

  “To begin combat training.”

  Combat training? I smack his shoulder, ready to give an excited remark. In an instant he pins me to the couch, one hand on my wrist, the other stifling my neck with a biting grip. His eyes burn with malice.

  Fear treads all over me, starting at my head and rolling clear down to my calves. “What’s your problem?” I ask.

  He meets my eyes and softens his grip, releasing me. He doesn’t apologize, but stiffens and waits for an explanation.

  I rub my neck and sit up. “Looks like there’s a few things you need to learn, too. I was just being playful.”

  Did he think I was trying to attack him? A laugh escapes my lips at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks, arms rigid at his sides.

  “Oh, just the idea that I could ever pose a threat to you. Ha, it’s just funny because it’s completely impossible.”

  “Not completely,” he says to the carpet.

  “Are you saying you can teach me to fight like you? Even if I am too old?” If that’s my part of the deal, it might just be worth it. But whether he gives me something or not, I’m pretty sure the chances of me escaping are slim.

  “I can try,” Talon says. “Some of what I do is aided by magic, to give it stronger impact.”

  “Then I’m hopeless. I can’t—”

  Uh oh. Borderline huge mistake. He waits for me to finish.

  “I can’t fight like you Arcs,” I conclude.

  “I told you, I’m not an Arc.” His face is suddenly all hard lines, and he fingers the claw at his belt. Ugh. I wish he would take that thing off.

  Something is going on here. It makes no sense why he was with them at the school, dressed like them--complete with a Xian--if he isn’t one of them. Especially since he seems to have the full range of emot
ion the way they do.

  “You’re not secretly taking me to Tyrus or something, are you?”

  “Why would I give him something he wants?”

  “What, you mean me?”

  “Not you. Those.” He points to the tears still sitting on the table, buzzing slightly in my bones. “And for some reason they’ve chosen you.”

  I bite into my sandwich while Talon pulls an aud from his pocket. I’m tempted to snatch it from him, but even if I get it, I’ll never be able to make a single call.

  We sit in silence until he swears and surges to his feet.

  I nearly choke on a chip. “What? What is it?”

  He rotates the small rectangular screen so it faces me. A news broadcast displaying both of our faces takes up the entire space. Incoherent voices from the airing lull, but my attention is on my school photo, the soft smile on my face, and the red ribbon moving with words at the bottom of the screen.

  Ambry Csille and Talon Haraway. Extremely dangerous. 100,000m reward for capture.

  The words Ambry Csille and extremely dangerous do not go together, but I’m too strung up to laugh. Talon mentioned they might come after him, but it never occurred to me that my face would be beside his.

  “That sucks,” I say, pulse throbbing. “That seriously sucks.”

  “Knock, knock,” comes a deep boom.

  Talon sniffs. We swap a panicked glance and then my heart shrinks and pushes a sort of squeak out of me. Tyrus, big mustache and all, stands at the top of the stairs leading to the single room in the basement. We’ve trapped ourselves in.

  Tyrus thumps down the stairs, followed by three other soldiers, one of whom is the huge guy that took Weston’s magic at the assembly. My tongue swells in my mouth, and I tremble. He’s right here. The man responsible for this war. For Ren.

  “Tyrus,” Talon says in acknowledgement. Hold up—they’re on a first name basis?

  “Did you plan this?” I ask Talon as quietly as I dare. I was stupid for thinking I could trust him. He saved my life, but who knows if it was for some other reason? He said the Arcs wanted him. The tears must be his bargaining chip.

  Talon aims a warning look in my direction.

  Tyrus takes a few steps in the small room, dusting off his hands and staring at the yellow curtains. I itch to charge at him, to demand he release my brother.

  “I was beginning to think we’d never find you,” he begins. “Got a call, though. The neighbors knew the family who lives here didn’t have children. So you can imagine the boy’s surprise to hear two of their grandchildren were in the house while their supposed grandparents are known to stay in their summer home six months out of the year.”

  Aw, angels. “Paul,” I say.

  Tyrus ignores me. “Lucky for me, they’re not really the grandchildren of Peg and Dane Holkensen, but the two most wanted in all of Itharia!” Tyrus holds fake exultation on his bushy-mustached face. “Also lucky, that the boy happened to watch the news with his family earlier today.”

  Tyrus’s eyes veer to the small jar with the twisted neck, glowing blue and vibrating on the table. The heaviness in my chest drops to the bottom of my stomach like a boulder, and I double over, gasping for breath.

  The tears call to me harder than ever—petrified. The jar wobbles and shakes so hard it tips over and rolls off the table. In my direction.

  I don’t think. I just dive.

  My screams meet the jar before I do. Inches from my tears, my entire body seizes and levitates into the air. Tyrus, whose purple hand is still in my line of sight, bends for my jar. His black mustache twitches.

  “Talon,” he says, turning the jar in his violet hand so he can see every side of its twisted shape, “you wouldn’t be hiding these from me, would you?”

  Talon’s mouth is unmoving, but he shoots a thousand glares between me and the Office of the Arcaians.

  Tyrus steps to the dingy light at the room’s center. I push my muscles, try to move, but my invisible prison is secure and feet from the ground. Tyrus turns the jar slowly so that light plays off the tears’ glow.

  “After all we’ve been through,” Tyrus goes on, “and all I’ve taught you, it comes to this.”

  “I guess so.”

  Tyrus drops his arm and faces Talon. “I’m disappointed in you, soldier. This isn’t why we saved you.”

  Talon releases a humorless huff. “Don’t kid yourself. You’ve never done anything for my benefit.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Talon’s brow gives the tiniest nudge upward. “If you say so,” he says, and he plunges forward and knocks the jar away from Tyrus. He dodges a purple spurt of electricity that propels from the Arcaian leader’s hand and does an animalistic back-kick in Tyrus’s direction. His foot lands in Tyrus’s jaw, knocking him backward.

  I’m still suspended in the air, trapped. Helpless. Talon makes for the tears, grabbing the jar from the ground. The hum penetrates my invisible prison and strums against the bones in my spine. Talon grits his teeth the second his skin touches the vial, but he doesn’t let it go.

  The three Arcs who entered with Tyrus prepare to intervene, but Talon wards them off one-handed, the tears clutched firmly in his other hand. I watch in horrified fascination as he moves with agility and focus, arms bending and blocking so fast it’s as if he knows exactly how to match their every move. Occasional streaks of silver-lit lightning untangle from his arms into his enemies.

  Tyrus’s hand strays in my direction, and I’m lowered to the ground. With the flick of his fingers my air supply closes off. I grab desperately at nothing—there’s nothing to grab at. My mouth bobbles open; I probably look like a fish.

  Talon hasn’t noticed. He’s halfway up the stairs when Tyrus calls to him, ignoring his three comrades groaning on the floor.

  “Talon.”

  Talon stiffens and peers back, meeting my eyes which are on the verge of rolling back into my head. I goggle, trying to stay alert though panic bursts across my vision in black streaks, bulleting around my brain.

  “The tears, Talon. Or I kill your little friend.”

  Talon’s gaze goes to the jar in his hand, then to me. He tarries as if on the verge of losing some inward battle, until finally his face falls. He hesitates for the smallest moment and then stomps down and slams the jar into Tyrus’s hand.

  Tyrus cries out, dropping the vial.

  Talon displays his reddened palm, a humorless expression on his face. “Yeah, it burns,” he says.

  All at once my tongue shrinks and I suck oxygen into my lungs in great, coughing gasps. Talon sinks against the wall as Tyrus bends to retrieve the jar. He kicks his cronies, getting them off the floor and shoving them up the stairs.

  I sag to the floor, my nails digging into the tight-knit carpet fibers. My hands make their way to my throat, which feels as though I’ve swallowed broken glass. I don’t believe it. Talon didn’t come to my aid, didn’t even care. He was going to leave me here.

  I think again of the way the soldiers carted Ren out, forced him from my house. Yet here Talon stands, untaken and uninjured. I can’t believe Tyrus didn’t kill us, or use the Xian on us at least. More troubling though is the wilting sensation snaking through me with every cough.

  My tears are gone.

  Their cries hit the base of my head, and my heart glugs heavier than ever, a brick in my chest. The tears drift farther and farther away from me, tugging my attention with every move. That way, my mind points to the upper corner of the room, to the direction we came into town from.

  I can’t take it anymore. I push myself up and make for the stairs, taking them two at a time, punching through the front door until I’m on the porch. A black vehicle gets smaller and smaller in the distant darkness. My tears are moving. Inside it.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Talon asks, jerking me back. His eyes blacken with something close to hatred.

  “They’re gone!” I say, pointing.

  “No, really?”

  I fi
ght his grip. “Let me go! They’re getting away!”

  Talon shoves me into the railing on the porch, hard enough to let me know he’s seething. “Why didn’t you keep them in your pocket like I told you? Next time, do as I say!”

  “You’re the one who wanted to—”

  “Because of you, they have the tears!”

  He paces, livid, and I watch him, forcing my chest to slow.

  “No,” I say, my voice tiptoeing through the angry coals in my chest. “You had them. You could have gotten away. But you saved me instead. And thanks, it’s nice to know you resent me so much. In case you forgot, you’re the reason I’m here in the first place.”

  Talon sulks but says nothing.

  “What are you so upset for? What’s the big deal? They’re just tears.”

  No apology. Again. Just a huge, awkward, toe-tapping pause.

  His gaze rises up to the sky in an annoyed manner. “I would say it’s been nice knowing you, but under the circumstances…” he trails off and heads for the front door. I can tell he’s ready to spit tacks.

  I sink onto the railing and fold my arms. “I think Axrat of the Year’s already been taken by Tyrus, Talon, but keep it up anyway. You’re doing great.”

  One hand on the open screen door, he speaks over his shoulder, not even bothering to face me. “I hope you know how to get home, because I don’t have time to take you there.”

  He continues to ramble on, something about broken promises and the mess I’ve made, but the tears rasp a complaint against my spine, and I rotate.

  “They’ve moved,” I say without thinking. “That way.”

  “What?”

  “The tears,” I say, pointing west into the navy blue sky. “They’re going that way now.”

  Talon shuts the screen door and stares me down. His eyes are deeper in the darkness. “You’re telling me you can sense them?”

  I gaze at the gumball moon, the valley of Waenton, the houses and sparse city lights in the distance. “Why aren’t they driving him crazy? They drove you crazy.”

  “I don’t know. But you’re saying…” He puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me away from the hum, toward him. His eyes trap my gaze. “You’re saying you could lead me to them again?”