The Child Thief 2: Deep Shadows

by Bella Forrest

  Ant barked out a laugh, and I jumped forward at the same moment that Jace stumbled backward. He dropped his hands, coughing in embarrassment. My face grew as hot as the most scalding shower I’d ever taken, and I took a moment to mentally flog myself for having been so stupid. I hadn’t even noticed his hands were on my shoulders, caught up in the tension of the moment. What the heck was I thinking?

  A second later, I knew exactly what I thought.

  “No,” I said sharply. “No, there’s no problem here. There’s nothing going on between us, Jace was just… And I don’t think I should have to go home with him. I mean, I live out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s a totally isolated cabin. If anyone gets close to it, I’ll hear them a mile away. Besides, there are these wolves, and they—”

  A hand came down sharply on my shoulder, this time completely intentional and controlled. I turned to stare up at Jace, whose face was unreadable, his eyes hooded.

  “You’re coming with me, Robin,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “They almost got you once. At least if you’re with me I can try to protect you if they come again.”

  “But I—” I tried again.

  The hand on my shoulder pushed down.

  “They’ve already taken one of my friends tonight. I’m not leaving another one at risk. You think I’m going to let you go off into the forest by yourself? You’ve got another thing coming.”

  Well. I knew when I’d been outmaneuvered, and one look at the faces of the others told me that I wasn’t going to find any allies there. We agreed that staying in groups was the best idea, and Jace was who I’d been matched up with. Which was just freaking terrific. Our first mission, which I had hatched and basically spearheaded, had gone utterly wrong. We’d been chased by Ministry super soldiers, found out there were people in our midst that we didn’t know, and had then been forced to run for our lives, leaving half of our team behind. We had no idea whether the soldiers in question knew who we were, or even if our own homes were safe. I was tired, wounded, and terrified. Now I had an entire night of Jace ahead of me.

  I was betting it was going to be just as awkward and embarrassing as I was afraid it would be.

  Alexy nodded at my silence.

  “Right. We leave the ship here, so that it’s at least hidden. I have… well, I have a way of keeping track of it. We really can’t afford to take it anywhere else, at this point. Not without risking discovery. We meet tomorrow to figure out what exactly we’re going to do about all of this. The Roundhouse, at noon. We can’t afford to use OH+, not until we know whether it’s safe or not. The Ministry got to Nelson, which means they might have taken a lot of stuff off her system, including some of our contact information. So we have to watch our backs. Those of us who have jobs will just have to use a sick day to get out of work. There are things we need to discuss, and I don’t think we can afford to wait long.”

  With that, we all turned and headed toward the train station as a group, the words between us gone dead. Now that we had our immediate instructions, I didn’t think any of us had the energy to talk anymore.

  10

  I was in such a daze after we left the forest that I didn’t pay much attention to where we were going—and since my ankle was getting worse with every step, my mind was on that more than anything else. I had already guessed Jace must live close to the city that I called home, courtesy of all the visitations we’d done together… had it only been a couple weeks earlier?

  Still, I was for some reason surprised when we boarded the exact same train as Jackie, Ant, Cloyd, Julia, Alexy, Marco… and then Zion and Allerra as well. Samuel, James, Ida, and Alice, who lived in the other direction from us, had awaited a train that was heading west, and boarded it with barely a goodbye, their eyes wide and alert as they shifted nervously on the platform, staring first one way and then another, as if they were afraid that the Ministry soldiers might appear again at any moment.

  I couldn’t blame them. I felt I’d never be able to relax my shoulder muscles again, and I still hadn’t lost the feeling of bugs crawling all over my skin. I’d been through the most intense situation of my life, including the day my father had thrown me out of the house. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be the same. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to trust again. And that made it rather difficult to be standing in a regular, everyday train station, especially one that was completely open to the sky and the world around us, standing still. Every sound made me jump, every shift in the wind seemed to indicate that someone was coming. I expected a knife in the back at any minute.

  Of course. I was still wearing my suit. We’d briefly discussed the idea of leaving the suits on the ship, but had been shot down by Zion, who had said that they’d be at greater risk of being stolen if we left them lying around, which Montague wouldn’t be happy about.

  So basically, a knife to the back wouldn’t have done anything. But that bit of knowledge from my conscious brain didn’t do anything to relieve the panic rolling through my exhausted body.

  We were also wearing those suits in a regular train station, in the middle of a commonplace town, where people might appear at any moment. It was the middle of the night and there was no one else walking around, but what were we going to do if someone showed up?

  I guessed we’d just have to find a way to tell them that they were construction suits, and that we were nothing more than construction workers on our way home after a long day on a building site.

  As long as no one asked about the bullet marks in the suits.

  When our train finally arrived, minutes later, we swarmed toward the first door we saw. I didn’t have to ask to know that my friends had been feeling the same thing I was, as if we were animals who were trapped but just didn’t realize it yet.

  Once we were on the train, we dropped into seats that faced each other across the narrow aisle. Cloyd, Zion, and Alexy pulled down the moveable armrests to separate themselves from the others, but the rest of us left them up. I leaned up against Jace, instinctively looking for the safety of his solidity. I gave myself a silent lecture for doing it and reminded myself that I was supposed to be keeping him in the friend zone.

  But still… even in the friend zone, he was large, and warm, and solid. Surely it wasn’t the end of the world if he made me feel a little bit safer.

  The flight to get to the warehouse had taken three hours, but that was partially because we’d been avoiding airspace that had led to any of the other airports in the area. The train journey home only took two hours.

  But it was the longest two hours of my life, and the others didn’t help much.

  “Do you think we’re being followed?” Ant whispered at one point.

  I turned to gape at him.

  “Well, I didn’t think of that,” I snapped sarcastically. “And you saying it aloud really makes me feel better.”

  Jackie leaned closer to Ant.

  “I’d been thinking the opposite, actually—that maybe we were safer on the train. At least this way we can see what’s coming for us. We aren’t just sitting out there in the open, waiting for…” She swallowed heavily and didn’t finish the thought.

  Across the aisle, Allerra looked between us with her mouth hanging open.

  “You don’t suppose they’d crash the train, do you?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

  Zion sat up sharply at that point and gave us each a cold look.

  “If you all don’t shut your mouths with that nonsense, I’ll shut them for you,” he said quietly, in a stern but somehow gentle voice. “No one has followed us, and they’re not going to crash a train that they have no way of knowing we’re even on. Kindly stop getting yourselves so worked up about things over which you have no control. None of you are built for that.”

  Alexy snorted.

  “I’m telling you, they never shut up with that sort of thing. It’s like a disease or something.”

  Zion gave her a smile and a glance out of the corner of his eye and then turned to Cloyd and li
fted one eyebrow—making me wonder once again how well those three knew each other and why they always seemed to be speaking in code.

  Zion’s lecture worked, and we were quiet for the rest of the train journey, all lost in our own thoughts. I didn’t know what anyone else was thinking, but my own mind was moving sluggishly around the grocery store and the rooms above it. It was where Nelson had kept her offices, and the research she’d done on the Ministry. Were those rooms still there? Was she?

  Were any of our houses still standing? Or were we about to get home to find that we’d all been discovered and our places had been ransacked?

  All of us got off the train at the same station, though Jace and I seemed to be headed toward the road, while the rest of the crew was going to another train platform. I wasn’t sure there was anything else to be said between us, but I turned to Jackie before we separated and grabbed her arm.

  “You guys be careful,” I said, my heart uncomfortably high in my throat. “I don’t… I don’t want to get to the Roundhouse tomorrow and find out that something happened to you.”

  She gave a quick laugh and brushed the end of my nose with her finger.

  “And the same thing goes for you. Although…” She cast a quick glance at Jace and then gave me a cheeky grin. “I guess that depends on what exactly we mean by ‘happening.’” She gave me a wink and then spun and ran after Ant, leaving me gaping behind her.

  At what point, exactly, had everyone decided to start making jokes about Jace and me? And how could I get them to stop? If I knew anything for sure, it was that nothing was going to happen between us. If the events of the night had confirmed anything for me, it was that I was living dangerously if I let myself care about anyone at all, particularly in this business. Anyone could be taken so quickly, within the blink of an eye—even when I thought I was keeping them safe.

  It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take, not if I could help it. I knew that I was already far too attached to Nelson’s crew. I was going to do whatever it took to keep anyone else from entering that particular circle. My heart couldn’t stand the tension.

  Jace and I walked—or rather, Jace walked while I limped—out of the train station and onto a street I didn’t recognize, given that this was a city I’d never traveled to before. It was a much smaller town than the one I called home, and though I lived outside of town in the woods, I’d still made it into civilization often enough to be accustomed to the traffic and towering buildings of the larger metropolis. My route to work every morning had taken me through block after block of high-rises—those buildings that housed most of the people from the factories. It had made me agoraphobic at first, that feeling that the buildings were rising up over you, leaning over the streets, maybe even about to fall on you. The neighborhood where I’d grown up had been full of wide streets, huge lawns, and houses that tended to be flat and rambling rather than tall and leaning. In the city, space was at a premium, and everything had been built up rather than out.

  But this city was something different.

  Here, almost everything was a single story, and the streets seemed open. I cast my gaze farther down the street and saw that even in the darkness, the place had a retro feeling, like something I would have seen in the movies back when I’d had enough money to go to the theater.

  Jace must have seen me looking and figured out what I was thinking.

  “When I agreed to come down here, I told Nathan that I didn’t want to live in the city. I wanted something that was as close to home as could be managed. So he found me a small town. Guess he thought it would be at least a little less noisy.”

  I glanced at him, surprised at this revelation and the trust he was showing me, and I smiled. “And is it anything like where you came from?”

  He snorted.

  “Nothing like,” he admitted. “But every time I go into one of the larger cities, I’m glad that I have this quiet place to come home to.”

  He turned, then, and gestured down a set of stairs. They descended toward a door that sat underneath a coffee shop, and I stared down them in surprise.

  “You live in a… coffee shop basement?” I asked, confused.

  Jace shrugged.

  “Makes it easy to get coffee whenever I want, at least,” he replied. “Come on.”

  He moved down the first step and then quickened his pace as he descended, heading into the concrete chute that protected the stairs, and toward the deep blue door at the bottom. A light shone from above the door, and he stood in it for a moment, fumbling with a set of keys. Finally, he found the one he wanted and shoved it into the lock. A quick twist, a click, and the door swung open.

  I was moving slowly but had reached the landing by that time and leaned around him to look into the space, wondering what his home might look like. It was a big deal for him to take me right to his house. A big mark of trust, considering that it meant I’d always be able to find him again in the future. If something happened and the Ministry got hold of me, I’d now have more information on him than almost anyone else.

  Which was dangerous… and also sort of sweet. I wondered for a moment if I’d have been willing to do the same, show the same level of trust for him.

  Then I got distracted by my new surroundings. Jace’s lair—and that was really the only word I could think of to describe it—was exactly what I would have expected it to be. Exactly what I would have expected, I thought with a smile, of someone who had literally grown up in a cave.

  We stepped through the door, Jace’s hand on my lower back to push me through, and I stared around me, taking in the deep brown walls, the wood-themed tile on the floors, and the complete lack of light. It was a large studio apartment, just the one open space, and it had been built to be a basement, and nothing more. There was hardly any light, and what there was came from freestanding lamps in all four corners. Those lights responded to a switch on the wall, but turning them on did little to dispel the gloom that hung over the room. I saw a woodburning stove in the center, which was weird, but I assumed it was used to warm the coffee shop above us, as there was a pipe that went upward into the ceiling of the studio.

  I also noted quickly that there was a complete lack of decoration. Or furniture. Only a couch, a bed, and a pile of blankets on the floor. He hadn’t even bothered with chairs. There were a lot of plants, though, which I noted with some confusion. How did he grow them down here? Didn’t they need light to survive? And how did someone who didn’t believe in decorations manage to collect so much vegetation? Then I realized that they were all grouped around the lights and thought that must be it: he’d put them where they would receive artificial light, so that they would survive.

  Jace moved past me, chuckling a bit to himself, and we both took a moment to remove our suits and lean them against the wall. I stepped out onto the floor and was surprised to find that my ankle actually felt better now that it was out of the metal framework. Which was confusing. If anything, I would have thought that the suit would have been giving it better support. But then I remembered how constricting the suit actually was. Perhaps the weight of the suit had been putting some additional stress on the joint? I didn’t want to admit that I might have been overreacting during the chase through the forest, but I supposed it was a possibility. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought. Either way, it felt… freer now, and it definitely wasn’t broken. I sighed in relief.

  Jace noticed the sigh and interpreted it as something else, giving me a shrug.

  “Sorry about all this,” he said quietly. “I know it’s not much to look at. I… well, when I moved here I tried to make it feel like where I came from. Sounds stupid when I say it like that, but I can’t seem to stop doing it. Nathan gave me some money to fix it up, and I… well…” He gestured around, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I could see a blush forming on his cheeks.

  No wonder he’d been running around in clothes that didn’t fit. The boy didn’t even know how to do life. Someone had given him an apartment, and he’d done h
is best to make it look like a cave.

  He walked around, lighting candles that I hadn’t noticed before. A moment later I saw that they were everywhere, in rows along the floor.

  Before long, the room smelled like a combination of warm wood and candle wax. It was a deep, earthy scent, one that immediately made me feel both tired and relaxed. I glanced at the couch but then decided to take the pile of blankets instead. They seemed less bed-like.

  I made my way over to them, trying to stay out of Jace’s way as he walked from candle to candle with a set of matches. By the time I’d reached the blankets and moved them around so that I could lean against the wall, he was at the woodburning stove, arranging the logs inside and bending down to hold a match to them as well.

  When he turned around, his face was flushed and his eyes were glowing. The firelight had changed him. Made him look young… and vulnerable. Though I felt as if I’d known him for a lifetime already, it was a look I’d never seen on his face. He’d always been wary, on edge, ready for whatever came next. Even with his sister, he’d maintained some form of control over his features—partially, I thought now, because he hadn’t known exactly what to expect.

  But here, in his own home, he was letting down his last barrier, truly allowing himself to breathe.

  He grinned and gestured toward the candles and then the stove.

  “It’s probably against every code possible, and I’m not even sure whether the floor is fireproof or not,” he said wryly. “But when I lived… at home, I did my best thinking by the fire. It’s not the same, not even close, but it makes me feel safe somehow. And I don’t know about you, but right now I need to feel safe more than almost anything else in the world.”