The Marked

by Inara Scott

  I was staying on the sidelines while Cam was out there living with the reality of Watchers and guns and people no jail could hold.

  “I probably sound like an idiot,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come tonight. I should have waited until I was in a better place.”

  “That’s not what we’re about,” I said. “If we waited until I made sense, we’d never talk at all.”

  He smiled and leaned an elbow against the steering wheel. “Thanks.”

  I should have told Cam then about my conversation with Jack. I didn’t want to lie, or hide things from him. But I knew I couldn’t. Cam was absolutely certain the Irin had been plotting against the president. Which meant one of two things: either Jack was lying, or someone was lying to Cam.

  CAM ACTUALLY had brought a few loads of clothes with him, so eventually we had to drive to the Laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we shared a milk shake nearby at Bev’s. He slowly started to relax, and we walked around holding hands, laughing as we remembered the first time we’d met at Bev’s, when he was trying to persuade me to go to Delcroix and I was trying to hide my talent.

  He dropped me off in front of our house. Grandma met me at the door. “Took that long to do a few loads of laundry?”

  I didn’t even flinch. “Yep.”

  She chuckled and went back to the TV. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a soda. My head was spinning with thoughts of Cam and the conversation I’d had with Jack.

  If Cam didn’t know they were setting up the Irin, who did? He’d been outside the building while Mr. Judan and the other Watchers were taking their shots. It could have been any of them.

  Without even realizing it, I’d accepted that Jack was telling the truth. Now I just had to figure out what to do next.

  Esther had told me and Hennie what she was planning, so it shouldn’t have been a big surprise, but I was still shocked to see her on Monday morning, holding court to a small circle of boys by the basement lockers. Her hair fell in long, loose waves down her back. Her eyes were surrounded by the thickest, darkest lashes you’d ever seen, and her lips were a perfect shade of red. She wore a pair of tight jeans and a low scoop-neck top. It was Esther, but Esther like I’d never seen her before.

  I thought I’d gotten used to Esther’s talent. I’d watched her change personas, subtly altering her face and body. But this was different. This transformation went beyond the shape of her eyebrows or the tone of her voice. This change went through to her core.

  “Esther?” I asked in disbelief.

  She turned to look at me, placing one hand on her hip. “What’s up?”

  “I guess I should ask you that question.” I gestured from her head to her feet. “I see you went through with it.”

  She laughed a low, throaty laugh. “I don’t know what you mean.” She regarded the boys around her. “Do you notice anything different about me?”

  They nodded vigorously and she laughed again.

  I shifted my backpack on my shoulder. I was wearing my standard baggy jeans and hoodie, and felt drastically under-dressed by comparison. “I didn’t see you at breakfast,” I said. “Hennie and I got here early so we could all eat together. You were supposed to meet us.”

  I didn’t mention that Hennie had also run out of the cafeteria the minute she saw Yashir coming. They had texted over break, but she’d hung out with Rashid, the boy her parents picked out for her, three times, and she was feeling painfully guilty about it.

  Esther swept a silky strand of hair behind her. “Guess I slept late. I need my beauty rest, you know.”

  “Apparently.” I hadn’t planned on telling Esther the whole story, of course, but I had wanted to tell her how incredible it had felt to be with Cam this weekend, and how I’d fallen in love with him all over again. The first time, it was because of his looks and the force of his personality. On Sunday, I realized I was in love with his soul.

  But right now, Esther clearly wasn’t interested in Cam’s soul.

  A bell rang, and Esther linked arms with one of the guys. “I guess we better go to class.” She started walking away, and then, almost as an afterthought, trotted a few steps back toward me. She whispered in my ear, “I’ll be looking for Trevor. Let me know if you see him, will you?”

  I watched her go with dismay. For the first time, it occurred to me that it could be Trevor, not Esther, who needed the protection.

  The visitors started arriving early Tuesday morning, and more trickled in throughout the day. They came in ones and twos, wearing suits and carrying briefcases, talking animatedly to Mr. Judan, or each other, as they entered. There were lots of handshakes and greetings, as their belongings were whisked away by students and taken to the Bly, where they were staying. A collection of stony-faced men and women who I assumed were Watchers lurked silently in the background, wires crawling out of their ears. They had their hands on their hips or casually crossed over their chests. It wasn’t hard to imagine weapons concealed under their jackets.

  After breakfast, Principal Solom’s voice came over the loudspeakers to announce that the strangers were there for a meeting of an international nonprofit organization. Alisha, one of the sophomores in the Program, told me they were actually the members of the Governing Council, probably there to discuss what had happened in D.C.

  Barrett grabbed me in the hall on the way to my focus class. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  The Bly stood a few hundred yards behind the Main Hall. It looked like something you’d see in a postcard, with its gleaming white paint and wraparound porch, and hundreds of red and pink roses growing up the sides. A tall figure with a shock of white hair met us on the porch.

  Barrett bobbed his head and gestured toward me. “Dad, this is Dancia Lewis.”

  The white-haired man held out his hand for me to shake. “Dancia, I’m Ronald Alterir.” Hawklike eyes studied me from a long face. The resemblance to Barrett was striking—though, unlike his son, the older man had the bearing of someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “All good, of course,” Barrett said, flashing a smile.

  “Thank you, Mr. Alterir,” I said, stepping back nervously after he released my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Please, call me Ronald.” A small circle of cushioned chairs sat on one end of the porch. “I have a few minutes before our first meeting. Why don’t we sit down?”

  “We don’t want to bother you,” Barrett said. “I know you’re busy.”

  Mr. Alterir—I couldn’t think of him as Ronald, no matter what he said—sighed. “I don’t mind. It’s a welcome distraction. These meetings are always tense after we’ve had an incident with the Irin.”

  We each took a chair. Barrett and I sat side by side, while Mr. Alterir positioned himself opposite us. I arranged my knees carefully in front of me, my toes twitching with the effort to keep still. I tried to remember everything Barrett had told me about his dad. I’d heard from Cam and a few others that Mr. Alterir and Mr. Judan didn’t get along, but I didn’t know why. I figured it had to do with the Watchers.

  “Another emergency resolution?” Barrett asked.

  “Probably.” Mr. Alterir crossed one leg over the other. “Normally, I wouldn’t speak so frankly to a student in your position, Dancia. But there’s nothing normal about you, is there?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment, so I just shrugged.

  “She’s special,” Barrett said, stretching his legs out in front of him. His old sandals seemed particularly decrepit in comparison with his father’s expensive loafers. “That’s for sure.”

  “I’m sorry you had to experience that incident with the group from Seattle,” said Mr. Alterir. “It’s always troubling when our students are threatened.”

  “I guess you can’t control the Irin,” I said.

  “No, but we can try to minimize the threat they pose. That’s what we hope to accomplish on the Council. At least, tha
t’s what I hope to accomplish.”

  I didn’t know how to take that, either, but I couldn’t help wondering if it had something to do with Mr. Judan. “So, you’re here to talk about what happened in D.C.?”

  “Yes, we usually meet if there’s been an incident with the Irin that we find particularly troublesome.”

  “Are you worried about the president?” I said. “Do you think they were trying to kill him?”

  Mr. Alterir spread out his hands. “The documents they discovered in the warehouse were fairly conclusive.”

  I thought of what Jack had said and picked my words carefully. Even though I had a feeling Mr. Alterir would understand, I didn’t want to start out my first visit with him by saying I had been talking to one of the Irin. “But it seems a little odd, doesn’t it? I mean, going after the president doesn’t seem like a particularly effective strategy if what they really want is to attack the Governing Council.”

  “The same thing occurred to me,” Mr. Alterir said, eyeing me thoughtfully. I squirmed a little under his gaze, sitting up straighter in my chair and arranging my hood behind me. “An attack on the president is out of character for our friend Gregori. He likes to consider himself sophisticated and cunning, but he does not like to attract the attention of the conventional police. A high-profile assassination is not his way.”

  I leaned forward. “How do you know all those things about him?”

  “We are a small community,” Mr. Alterir said. “Particularly those with strong talents. You will come to appreciate this as you move higher in our ranks. Gregori and I went to the same school. I knew him well.”

  My eyes widened. Gregori had always seemed like such a mysterious, shadowy figure that I had almost convinced myself he wasn’t real. “And now you fight with the Governing Council about him?” I asked.

  Mr. Alterir stood up and walked to the side of the porch. He touched a petal of one of the roses. “Gregori was always unstable, even when I knew him. But I never thought he had the potential to become so dangerous.”

  “You don’t think he’s as bad as they say?” I asked.

  He snapped off the bloom, holding it up to his nose to smell the heady fragrance. “I have no doubt that Gregori has always had a certain ruthlessness about him. I believe if he wants something, he will do anything in his power to get it.”

  I noticed he didn’t exactly answer the question. I tried a different tack. “If you agree with them about Gregori, what do you end up fighting about?”

  He handed me the rose and smiled, as if he saw I was trying to pin him down and he found it amusing. “Every time the Irin strike us, we have a meeting to discuss our response. Lately, that response has been to increase the number of Watchers and their power to act without Council oversight.”

  I gingerly held the prickly stem between my fingers. Mr. Anderson would be pissed if he knew we’d picked one of his flowers. “You don’t agree with that?”

  He leaned against the porch and shrugged. “I can’t help but notice that someone gains more power every time we do this. And that makes me wonder: is it a coincidence or something more? A good question to ask, don’t you think?”

  THOSE SOFTLY spoken words rattled around in my head all day. The only one I could think of who benefited from the Watchers’ getting stronger was Mr. Judan. After all, he was the head of the Watcher program—if they got more powerful, so did he. But what could Mr. Alterir be suggesting? That Mr. Judan had something to do with the Irin?

  Two days later, the Governing Council members finished their meeting and left with their Watcher bodyguards in tow. Barrett told me they voted to create some new group of Watchers to guard the president, with special powers to act in an emergency situation. He didn’t seem happy about it, and neither did his dad.

  Jack called me again a week after that. I didn’t pick up. He left a long message telling me about a new band he’d seen at a club the night before. I had to fight the urge to call him right back. The truth was, I missed him. I pictured him in the classes we’d had together. I thought about him when I was studying. Once, I even found myself comparing the way it felt when he kissed me with the way it felt when I kissed Cam. This made no sense, because I knew Jack and I weren’t meant to be together. But a nagging voice in my head kept reminding me that somewhere in the middle of our kiss, when we’d lost track of time and I’d forgotten all my doubts, something had felt right.

  Thinking about any of this was absurd, given the fact that Jack had joined the Irin.

  From what I could tell, he was hovering around the fringes of the Seattle cell, but not participating yet. He’d hinted at spending time in D.C., but I couldn’t believe he’d somehow gotten involved with that cell.

  Though I didn’t want to accept it, I knew what I had to do. The Irin were our enemy. There wasn’t a lot of black and white in my world, but even Jack had said things were going to get worse from here on out. They had guns, and they were angry. Jack might have been on the fringes of their group, but he was still part of it.

  It was time to cut off all contact with Jack.

  No matter what.

  Mr. Judan and Mr. Fritz took a small group of us out for a training exercise the first week in May. Barrett gave me a worried look before we left. He said they didn’t usually take sophomores, let alone freshmen, on these sorts of trips. This year they were starting early, and Barrett thought it was a bad idea. He said we needed more training before they let us get into “unscripted fights.”

  Despite my repeated requests for more details, Barrett wouldn’t explain what kind of unscripted fight he was referring to. Naturally, this terrified me. My last unscripted fight had ended in a near-death experience. Though I liked to think I was more in control of my talent now, I didn’t know what would happen if I were pushed. Mr. Fritz and Mr. Judan also seemed determined to leave us in the dark. My only consolation was that Cam was coming. Unfortunately, Anna was, too.

  There were eight of us; we were loaded into a van on Thursday just after lunch. There were two sophomores, three juniors, and me. I wasn’t surprised to see Alisha. If they were picking students based on fighting ability, she’d have been at the top of the list. The other sophomore, Xavier, hadn’t been at the party, so I didn’t know as much about him. I’d heard that he had some kind of super-tracking ability. As in, a person could walk across a concrete floor without leaving a single mark, but Xavier would know exactly where each of the footsteps had landed. He also happened to be gorgeous, with dark skin, high cheekbones, and an athletic build, though Esther said he was more into music than sports.

  Esther had considered Xavier as a possible boyfriend target before her transformation. Since then she’d focused mainly on juniors and seniors, and thanks to her new look and attitude she was burning through them at a furious rate. It seemed like she was hanging out with someone new every weekend. Trevor had started looking at her with a sad, puzzled stare; it seemed like she was deliberately flaunting her conquests in front of him. It was all rather disturbing, so I tried to look the other way and pretend it wasn’t happening. As hard as it was to admit, I actually found myself feeling a little sorry for him.

  I assumed Trevor would be coming along on the training exercise, so I was surprised to see Molly line up for the van. Leaving aside her tendency to try to make herself disappear whenever there was a conflict, I liked Molly. I wasn’t sure why she was being sent on a training exercise, as she wasn’t much of a fighter. She was the only junior at Anna’s house who hadn’t joined the brawl. Maybe she was coming with us to get extra practice.

  Mr. Fritz drove while Mr. Judan scratched notes onto a pad in his lap. I sat next to Cam. He was trying to keep the mood light, but it was a challenge, even for him. Eventually, he stopped making conversation, and we sat in silence.

  From the highway, we turned onto a gravel road and headed into the woods. The van driver had to stop twice to unlock sets of metal gates. I guess they were serious about keeping people from stumbling in on our activities
. After the second gate, we drove a few more miles, then parked at the end of a driveway, beside a small wooden cabin.

  We filed out of the van into sunshine and a warm breeze. We’d had weeks of rain and then a miraculous burst of blue skies and seventy-degree weather, which left everything growing twice as fast as usual. The rhododendrons were blooming all over the woods, light pink and purple, interwoven with yellow Oregon grape and some flowering vines.

  We stood in a loose group outside the van as we waited for Mr. Judan to emerge. He finally did, with his usual blinding smile. Mr. Fritz went inside the cabin; I had a moment of panic as he walked away. After talking to Mr. Alterir, I didn’t know what to think about Mr. Judan. He’d always freaked me out, but now I got nervous every time he looked at me.

  “My dear students,” Mr. Judan said, “I want to thank you for accepting the challenge to come out here today and play our little game.

  “There is, of course, much we can learn in a classroom. But there is also much we cannot. We brought you here because you are each at a crossroads. Some of you asked to be here so you could demonstrate how your skills have grown this year.”

  Molly’s face turned pink, and she pressed her arms against her sides.

  “Others of you have been asking for a challenge, and we are excited to present you with one.”

  Xavier and Alisha smiled a little when he said that.

  I waited for him to say something that might explain why I was there, but he simply continued, “We felt all of you needed this experience to move to the next level in your training. Now, I am dividing you into two teams. Anna will be captain of the red team.” Anna stepped forward, no hint of a smile on her perfect mouth. “Anna, your team includes Dancia and Xavier. Cameron, you are captain of the blue team. Molly and Alisha will be on your team. Anna and Cameron, we have asked you to be captains because we have faith in your ability to guide your teammates through a safe and productive experience. Remember that you are here to learn, not simply to win.”