Lo makes a turn down a curving road and pulls up to an ominous-looking security building. The security guard is the size of a Hummer. I can’t help but notice the weapon clipped to his belt and I frown. This is one of the richest communities in San Diego—it’s not like they are going to be the target of low-life scum from other less affluent areas. Or maybe I don’t know anything about crime. Maybe people pay for protection in communities like these so that they don’t have to worry about anyone breaking and entering. At the thought, I hunch down in my seat and try not to make eye contact with the guard.
The security guard takes Lo’s pass and inserts it into some kind of metal scanning device before handing back to him. I notice the second guard checking the underside of the Jeep and then peering through my window to stare at my face. He nods grimly to his partner. I get the feeling that even in the middle of the day, we’ve narrowly avoided being strip-searched.
The gates open on well-oiled hinges and we drive through on a long, unmarked, perfectly paved road that is lined with precisely spaced green pine trees. Everything is like a well-executed movie reel, with all the trees the exact same height and the road like oily black glass.
“Once we get past security, I can just get out,” I tell Lo, trying not to feel like Alice entering Wonderland.
“No way I’m letting you go doing bad things in here. You’ll get arrested in seconds. See up there?” He points to a camera positioned on top of a streetlight. “The security here is like Fort Knox, the gate guards are only the tip of the iceberg. That’s just one that you can see but there are many others that you can’t.”
Okay, I’ll have to rethink my plan.
“What’s the address?” I tell it to him from memory, and he shoots me an odd expression, his fingers tightening on the wheel.
“What?”
“That’s Principal Cano’s address.”
It’s my turn to stare at him as he makes a right-hand turn down another wide, unmarked street. “Cara mentioned that you’ve been there,” I say tightly.
“Nothing to do with Cara,” he says with a shrug. “Cano lives next to my mother. I only see Cara there once in a blue moon.” Well, that’s a surprise. I didn’t realize that his mother and Cano were actual neighbors. Lo grins. “How do you think I got into Dover midyear? It wasn’t because of my stellar academic record. So you think your mom is at Cano’s house? Isn’t that a little weird?” Lo pulls to the side of the street and turns off the engine. “What’s going on, Riss?”
Even thinking about it makes it seem far-fetched. Um, we found a creature that’s some sort of weird human and alien hybrid and tracked its scent back here. I think it may have been working with a vigilante alien hybrid school principal who is holding my mother hostage in his house. Oh, and I’m an alien, too, and so’s my entire family.
Probably not.
“You know, if you wanted to see where my mother lived, you could have just asked me,” Lo says.
Spluttering, I want to punch him so hard that my teeth hurt. “I don’t care about your mother, you ass. I care about mine.”
“And you think Cano’s got her in his house.” Lo falls silent, watching me. “In the middle of the day. In the ’burbs. You do know how crazy that sounds, right?”
“Trust me, I know how it sounds. I think she and Cano know each other. Maybe there are clues to where she is. Will you just check with me while he’s still at school?” I glance at my watch. It’s nearly one o’clock, which means we have a couple hours before Cano comes home.
Lo puts the car in Drive and takes a few more turns on some more glassy roads before he pulls up to a large stone archway over a narrower driveway. He drives straight up for a few more minutes and then pulls the Jeep just in front of a detached four-car garage. “My mother’s house,” he tells me, getting out. I follow. “It’s the easiest way to get next door without being picked up by the community security.”
“What about your mother?”
“I think she’s out of the country.”
Lo takes my hand and leads me nearly half a mile through some bushes where we can see a clear view of Cano’s driveway. My stomach sinks. There’s a car with some kind of maid service sign painted on the side parked in the driveway. My watch says a quarter past one.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be gone soon,” Lo says. “They come the same time every week.” He sits on a rock and chews on a twig, studying me. “So for argument’s sake, what are you going to do if she’s there?”
I answer honestly. “Take her with me.”
“And what if she’s not?”
“Then at least I’ll know that my best friend betrayed me,” I whisper, lowering myself to a rock to Lo’s right. We have time to kill, after all, and my legs are already starting to ache. I draw my knees up to my chest and prop my elbows on them.
“Who? Jenna?”
I shake my head. “Speio.” For an instant, a shadow clouds Lo’s face at the mention of Speio’s name but it disappears as quickly as it comes. “My best friend, my brother and a lot more by the sound of things.”
“What do you mean?”
I can’t quite hide the blush that rushes to my cheeks. I hadn’t realized that I’d said the last part out loud. “He says...he’s in love with me. Can you imagine, of all things?”
Lo smiles, a slow sexy smile that makes my toenails rattle. My blush heats up and I lean forward so that my hair falls into my face. “I can imagine lots of things like that and more. In fact, I can’t imagine why half the male population of Dover isn’t in love with you.”
“Stop, you’re being silly.”
“Am I?”
I take the bait just as he knows I would. “Why would they be?”
“Because there’s just something about you. You’re strong but you’re fragile, too. You could probably whip my butt if you tried, and then you’d care if you hurt me. You’re an amazing surfer and athlete. You have a kind heart, you’re interesting and you’re beautiful.” Lo sticks his foot out so that the heel of his touches my toe. His feet are still bare but all I hear are his last words. The sound of it is like music, making my heart race and my blood thicken in my veins. “But it’s like I can’t quite figure you out, like there’s this shell around you. And sometimes I see glimpses of what’s inside, and it’s...magical.”
“You don’t speak like any seventeen-year-old I know,” I say for lack of anything else, still staring at the ground, embarrassed but flattered. “You sound like a poet.”
“It’s true. And I’m eighteen.” His teeth shine white in his face. “Got held back because I skipped classes for surfing way too much. Teachers didn’t like it, and they got immune to my boyish charm.”
I laugh out loud at his mock-resigned look. “I turn seventeen on Friday.”
“I know,” he says. At my look, he clarifies. “Jenna. Are you having a party?”
“No. The school dance is that night. Plus, we don’t do parties out here. We do social gatherings that people turn up to, should they be so inclined. Last year I had a bonfire gathering on the beach with fireworks. It was amazing. Then we all went skinny-dipping at midnight.”
Lo’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Skinny-dipping? Wow, what I wouldn’t give to have moved here one year earlier.” His blatant flirting is charming. So to pass the time, I do the one thing I have zero experience in doing. I flirt back.
“That could be in your future if you play your cards, right, Mr. Seavon,” I say in a low, what-I-think-is-sexy voice. I try to bat my eyelashes, but probably only manage to look like I have epilepsy. Lo bursts out laughing, which he quickly stifles at the injured look on my face. But I can’t keep my face straight, either, and I start giggling so hard that I’m snorting.
“You’re cool, Nerissa Marin.”
“You’re pretty cool yourself.”
“Go to the dance with me?” Lo asks, so softly that I barely hear him. “I know it’s your birthday but it might be fun.” The question takes me by surprise. I hadn’t planned on going to the dance, not with the challenge so near, and trying to find my mother, and everything weird that is going on with Speio. School dances seem trivial. Even school is no longer a necessity.
But now that Lo has voiced the question, all of a sudden, I do want to go. I want a piece of normal in this tornado of crazy. I want to experience a school dance with a boy whom I actually like being around, and one who likes being around me. I want to have a real date before things take a turn for the worse...because there’s a very real possibility that I could die. Ehmora is strong, and she’s the queen of her court. She’s been ruling for more years than I’ve lived and I can’t underestimate her. As confident as I am in my own abilities, I can still lose.
And for that reason, the simple question from this boy sitting on a rock while in the middle of a stakeout in front of our school principal’s house is like a lifeline.
One moment of ordinary in a sea of chaos.
So I take it, I take it and I run with it, because it’s the only thing I have anchoring me to the teenage version of me...the one that has been suffocating to death under the stress of Aquarathi politics.
Without my teenage self, I know I will lose.
“You have exceptional timing,” I say with a smile. “I definitely won’t forget being asked to my first dance while spying on Principal Cano.”
“Come on, I’m sure you’ve been asked dozens of times,” Lo says.
“Contrary to what you may think, boys my age have a hard time approaching me for some reason. So you’re the first,” I say. “Must have to do with your advanced years.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny, but I prefer to think of it as maturity. And the boys at school are all idiots, well, with the exception of Sawyer, who seems to have it all worked out despite his clueless moments.”
“Sawyer’s a keeper,” I agree. “And so is Jenna. They’re a great couple.”
Silence falls between us. I tie my hair into a ponytail using the spare elastic on my wrist and stand to stretch my legs. I’m as tense as a coiled spring, basically running on adrenaline. Spinning my arms in a slow windmill, I breathe in and out slowly.
“You okay?” Lo asks.
“Fine. Just tired.” I glance down at his feet. “Don’t you own any shoes?”
A smile as he stands to said bare feet. “I don’t like them. Or clothes, either, for that matter. If I had my way, I’d be running around nude all day.”
I bite my tongue so hard that my eyes water, but I’ll bite harder if it will make the image of Lo with no clothes on disappear from my brain. I windmill my arms even faster, thinking of the grossest thing I can imagine...which is Cara and Speio making out. Until Lo’s face merges into Speio’s and Cara becomes me. Now I’m making out with Lo and he has no clothes on. Gah!
“What’s wrong?” Lo asks innocently. “You look strange.”
“I’m fine. Just a cramp in my shoulder,” I lie.
“Need a hand?”
“No, thanks!” I say hastily, and put a few steps of distance between him and my suddenly overheated brain and body. I’m sure he’s good with massage—he’s good at everything—but the last thing I need is Lo, clothed or unclothed, touching me while we’re waiting to break in to someone’s house. I clear my throat. “Anyway, Lo, thanks for doing this with me,” I say. “I know it’s out of the blue and totally weird, and you probably think I’m some kind of paranoid freak already.”
The teasing moments gone, Lo glances at Cano’s house, which we can see the tip of in the distance. “I just want to help.”
“Well, thanks. Look,” I say, pointing to the driveway as one of the garage doors opens up and the soft tenor of voices waft out. Lo and I peer through the bushes, our faces nearly touching. My entire body freezes as he blows a feathery kiss against my ear. “Stop,” I tell him breathlessly, wanting him to do more than just blow kisses at me. Lo grins with a knowing expression, but then his smile fades as he jerks his head to the sound of a car starting. We both duck as the blue car zips past.
“It’s now or never, Spy Kid.”
“You are such a child,” I say, sprinting past him to the garage door that has started to close and ducking underneath it. Lo rolls by just before the door clicks shut on its smooth automatic hinges. The three-car garage is wide and spacious, and unlike Lo’s mother’s garage, it’s attached to the house.
Everything inside is silent.
“What if he has alarms?” I whisper.
“Why bother with all the mob security outside?” Lo says. “You take downstairs, I’ll take upstairs, you know, just in case you throw up all over the bed at the thought of the magic that happens there.”
“Ugh. I’m going to throw up right now.”
We separate in the large open living room. The space is masculine with dark furniture. It has no personal touches whatsoever as if the person living here is a ghost. I’ve never thought of Cano as someone without any personality, but as I think about his plain gray prison-cut suits, I see that his colorless house fits him perfectly. There are some gorgeous black-and-white landscapes on the wall, but other than those, the room is bland.
The kitchen is more or less the same. Pristine with dark cabinetry, looking like a kitchen out of a food magazine. The entire first floor is clear but there’s one door I haven’t gone into and it’s at the far end of the house. My breath catching, I push open the heavy door to see steps leading downward into darkness. There’s a light switch on the side so I turn it on before heading downstairs. The fluorescent lighting is bright, making the white walls seem almost neon. Basements are uncommon in California, but Cano obviously has the money to build some kind of reinforced dungeon beneath his house.
I stop at the bottom of the narrow staircase, my jaw dropping to the floor, and scream as a hand grabs my shoulder.
“It’s just me,” Lo says quickly. “Upstairs is clear.”
“Don’t do that again,” I tell him, my pulse racing. I didn’t even hear him behind me. “Are you seeing this? What is this place?”
We both look at the spotless white space in front of us, lined with metal tables and all kinds of shiny, expensive-looking equipment. At the far end of the room are what look like animal-size wire cages. A swirl of black wires line one of the other walls like a huge black coiling snake. The room is empty but it feels ominous. My eyes are drawn back to the electric cables.
What would Cano need mainline electricity for?
Torture? Experiments? I take a deep breath and engage all of my senses. It’s useless—if there was ever anything alien, hybrid or human in this room, it’s gone now. There is no trace of anything—not one spot of blood, hair or fluid. Stepping backward, I nearly crash into a desk on the back wall. A thin computer tablet is lying faceup on its surface. I glide my finger over the black screen, and it turns on to show a bunch of files that look like video logs.
I press Play.
My brain swings into slow motion, every second elongating impossibly. Pain pulls at my cells, nearly dragging them from my body at the images on the screen. My mother...with her arm around Cano, and another dark-haired woman in profile who I can only assume is Ehmora, talking about genetic permutations. My mother...smiling coldly with something like triumph written all over her face, chattering about DNA and coding, in the very lab we are standing in right now. My mother...alive and well.
A traitor.
“It’s some kind of lab,” I hear Lo saying from behind me on the other side of the room, but his words fall into a black hole as I stare at the video record. My heart is collapsing into nothing. “Looks like Cano has some unresolved mad scientist issues,” Lo says.
At Lo’s words, I remember that Cano used to be a
molecular biologist, and my heart beats so fast that it feels like it’s going to jump out of my skin. Jamming my finger onto the pause button, I back away slowly. Every hair on my body is raised in warning as Lo inspects one of the shiny knives on the counter closest to him. “Let’s go. Don’t touch anything.”
“What about your mother?”
“I was wrong.”
“How do you know?” Lo says as we shut the basement door.
I don’t speak until we are back outside. Surprisingly, my eyes are dry. The only thing I feel is a wide net of nothingness spreading inside of me, numbing everything it touches. The betrayal is dull, as if I’d expected it somehow...as if I’ve always known. My father knew. He’d tried to protect me.
“Riss?”
“Because my mother died thirteen years ago.”
20
BROKEN BONES AND DREAMS
The sky is blue and melting. Floating in the middle of the ocean, I feel nothing but the waves rocking me in their wide, emotionless arms. Even though I feel as heavy as a stone, I’m weightless. Countless fins spin around me in a wide circle, attracted by whatever bitter feelings are being leached from my body. I sink lower, pulling them closer until I’m surrounded by the silver glitter of scales. It’s oddly beautiful in a mesmerizing sort of way. A huge gray nurse shark swims past, its mouth open and full of razor-sharp teeth, so close that I can touch it.
I do, and watch as the swirl of bluish-green iridescence from the ragged cut in my human palm diffuses into the water like ink. The peaceful dance explodes into something feral. The fish swarm into a frenzy as the bigger fish rip apart the smaller fish, and I’m surrounded by a floating array of bones and flesh—a graveyard of the strong defeating the weak.
It makes me feel less broken. I feel my skin snapping as webbed fins span between my fingers and along the sides of my face. The sharks eye me, never coming too close but never straying too far, either. I’m worse than they are. They want me but they fear me.
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