She tried to stop her tapping foot and settle her racing heart, but she couldn’t control it. She wanted to get to Liv now.
“Where do you want to start?”
“I guess we should look for Maori.” Alex’s voice echoed all the way down the center aisle of shelves. The reverberation mocked her: Maori, Maori, Maori?
Chase tugged her forward. She didn’t want to look at Sephi’s framed trade document, but she did anyway. There were similar pages on the shelf beside it. Sephi’s age was listed as fourteen in 1862, but on some of the other documents, the ages of the gifted were as young as three or four years. Alex shuddered.
She heard a flapping behind them, and she and Chase both spun around, but there was nothing but air to greet them.
Alex turned back to find a black-cloaked figure hovering inches from her nose. “Whoa!” she cried out and would have stumbled backward if it hadn’t been for Chase holding on to her. Alex composed herself, her eyes drifting upward … and upward. Towering above them was a giant man with a height to rival the redwoods. He held up his arms that were lanky and bony like tree branches. His large palms faced them in defense.
“I am sorry,” he croaked. “I did not mean to frighten you.” His sharp syllables stuck to his tongue.
Chase found his voice before Alex could. “Are you Maori?”
The man raised a bushy brow and bobbed his head of wiry curls.
“Yes.” In a snakelike way, he drew out the s.
Alex gulped. “We came to see you a few months ago. You weren’t here.”
She stopped speaking as the man’s expression of confusion grew deeper. “And you were able to enter?” He released a thunder boom of a laugh. “I’m sorry. It’s interesting that the store would allow customers without my permission.”
Why is that funny? Chase thought to Alex before taking a small step forward. “We aren’t sure whether we’re customers or not, to be honest. We have questions.”
“You don’t think questions come at a price?” He brushed past them and began to walk down the dark aisle. “Come.”
We don’t have time for this! Alex wanted to scream. The hunters could be coming for Liv right now!
She stepped on Chase’s heels through the abyss of lost treasures, shields, masks, papers, vases, and scrolls until Maori stopped outside of a tall, thin door. He fumbled with a key and whispered, “I cannot concentrate with all that noise. It is distracting.”
Alex glanced back over her shoulder at the quiet store, but no one was there. Chase’s lips were set in a tight line, but Alex locked her mind and blocked out his entry. She didn’t want to know what he thought about all this; she didn’t want the colors to spoil their chances to figure out why Rae wanted them to go here.
They stepped inside a simple room with only a desk, a chair, and a light. “Since we are away from all that racket,” Maori said, “I can hear properly now. You are customers because you have questions. Your payment shall be in the form of answers. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” Alex replied. “So—”
“I go first. Tell me a secret.”
Really?
“Um,” Alex lifted her palms, “I’m not Sephi Anovark. I’m the last of the Havilah family.”
Maori pursed his large lips. “This I had heard, but coming from you, it is better. So what is your first question?”
“It’s kind of strange.”
“Good questions usually are.”
“Okay.” Alex’s knees trembled. “Do you have an exit here? A way to get to the outside world?”
He tilted his head. “I mean, you are free to leave whenever you would like.”
Chase took Alex’s hand and rubbed her fingers with his thumb, trying to calm her. “She means a travel system.”
“No.” He clutched his chest. “I only carry items of extreme value.”
Damn it! They were wasting time! Alex wondered how quickly they could escape. She heard a click, and her gaze darted across the room to the knob. Did he lock them in?
“My question! What are they filling into your head at that dead city of yours?”
“Knowledge? I guess?” She didn’t want to play this game anymore. “We have to go to classes every day.”
“And they tell you stories there too?”
Not if they can help it.
“Your hesitancy is my answer. Pity. That city doesn’t change. You may take a turn now.”
We’re stuck, Chase thought to her. You may as well ask some good ones.
“Okay,” Alex said. “What is the significance of hourglasses? Do they mean something special to the afterworld?”
“Right.” His r rumbled. “You are a Havilah. The word Havilah, itself, means a stretch of sand. Havilahs considered themselves to be one with the earth and the dirt and the land. Now the hourglass, I cannot offer a definitive answer, but you are the last Havilah, yes? So there’s your significance. If the sand has run out, your time is up. You’re dead.” He exaggerated wiping his hands against one another. “Done.”
Alex sighed. “But I’ve been dead. Why would the hourglasses be appearing everywhere? Like in my pocket?”
Maori shook his finger at her. “You might see hourglasses if your mind is attempting to decipher your past. It is telling you to look back home with your family.”
Alex glared at Chase. That was precisely what she’d been telling him.
Maori drummed his long fingernails on the desk. “My turn! What is going on in there?” He made a circular motion around Alex’s head.
“I don’t understand,” she replied.
“Do not lie. There is enough energy up there to power a small city.”
“I’m anxious. We have somewhere we need to go.”
He stood and reached high to lower a device from the ceiling that hadn’t been there moments before. With a long pipe attached to two handles, it looked like a periscope. “May I, bitte?”
Alex shrugged.
He grabbed the handles, pressed his forehead against the pipe, and slowly rotated around Alex. “Do you have a memory stone on your person?”
“No.”
“Have you ever? You are a Havilah, after all. That family simply adores rocks.”
She clasped her hands, tapping one finger against the rest. “I never met anyone from my family.”
He muttered under his breath in a language Alex didn’t know. “My machine tells a different story, but the energy doesn’t come from jewelry or from somewhere on your body. It is coming from your head. This interests me.”
Alex, Chase pulled on her hand. I don’t like where this is going. He’s looking for something he can use.
Maori retracted from the periscope and glared at Chase. “My boy, you do not have to stay. You aren’t contributing to the purchase anyway.”
Chase’s mouth tightened.
“Actually, I have one more question,” Alex said. “It’s about the gifted transactions. Can I show you?”
“Oh. All right.” Maori released the device and watched as it flew to the rafters. He opened the door. “But out here I cannot hear those marvelous voices coming from your head.”
Creepy.
Alex exited the office, and in thinking about Sephi’s document, she projected herself down the aisle. She blinked and found that she was brushing shoulders with the glass protecting the weathered contract.
“The Frank family,” Alex said. “What do they have to do with the exchanges?”
“You know them, eh? My question first.” Maori rolled up his sleeves. “Is that clown still hanging out in those woods or has he finally checked himself into the mental ward?”
“He’s still in the woods.”
“I have lost a bet then.” Maori clucked his tongue. “Okay, the Franks. They are the bridge between the gifted and the spirited. No exchange was complete without their judgment. Selfish fools. They cannot leave their town or the gifted would surely find them and kill them.”
He was right. Liv never left town. She never went on vacation or visited relatives or traveled.
“Why would they do that?”
“It was an agreement to keep them out of the holding centers and to keep the family together.” He knocked on the glass. “See.”
Currency offered for Lorraine Havilah from the council of Parrish, Maryland to Astor, Oregon. Sale completed.
It was signed by Abigail Frank.
The lettering burned Alex’s eyes. “That’s a Havilah being sold. This was … was this Astor Havilah’s daughter?”
It said she was sold to Astor, Oregon. Her father must have gotten her back after creating the town Jonas visited. Alex’s heart lifted finding a positive piece to the story.
“Do you know Rae?”
An invisible wind whipped through the aisle, rustling Alex’s hair, cradling her in her own shock.
“What did you say?” Chase asked.
“Rae. She wanders into town sometimes.”
“She was with us the last time we were here,” said Alex.
“Ahhhhh. That’s how you gained entry.”
Alex couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “She knows you?”
He cocked his head, casting a shadow over them. “That’s her contract.” He snapped his fingers and the light brightened below the document next to Alex.
“She’s Lorraine Havilah?”
“Why, yes.”
No wonder Rae attached herself to Alex. She was a Havilah, like her. The document said that Rae was three when she was sold. Her spirit projection couldn’t be older than three, so how did she die without her father getting her back? It was written there in black and white that she was sold to Astor, Oregon. If the sale was completed, she should have been alive.
When Alex asked Maori, he shrugged a high, bony shoulder. “We should probably be thankful she didn’t live much longer than three, knowing who her brother turned out to be.” He shook his head. “The last thing we need in this afterworld would be another Syrus Raive.”
Alex looked down at her feet. Indeed.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alex and Chase doubled back through the aisles of illuminated treasures. Alex might as well be an item for sale. She should snatch a firefly light and dangle it above her head with a price tag.
“I guess we were wrong about the exit,” Chase said. “Rae might have meant something else by sketching this store. I’m sure there’s a telephone in this town somewhere. We could travel that way.”
On the other side of the glass, not one piece of the sidewalk was visible under the feet of the crowd gathered outside.
Why is the Patrol here? Chase thought to her.
Where?
He flicked his chin in the direction of the sidewalk. Follow me.
They fell into the masses and zigzagged around singers, artists, dancers, and observers. Alex kept her head down and a hood covered her head to conceal her. Halfway down the road, the crowd parted.
Chase scooted sideways, pulling Alex along, to avoid whatever was coming. They stumbled into an easel, and Chase muttered an apology to the girl sitting on a stool. The girl set down her paintbrush, adjusted her earbuds, and slid her easel closer to the building.
Alex and Chase were trapped between the shops behind them and the crowd moving as one, shuffling further away from the street, which was now filled with the sound of stomping feet.
Dozens of voices harmonized in a chant: “Equality now. Equality now.”
“Those aren’t spirits,” Chase warned.
Alex stood on tiptoe and saw white squares rising and falling in the air. On one of them, thick red letters spelled out Soul = Soul. Her hands began to shake. “Are they from Moribund?”
“Moribunders wouldn’t be picketing in their own town. This is as close as the gifted can legally get to Eidolon.”
“It’s the gifted?”
The white signs reached them, and Alex swayed side to side to find a hole in the crowd. She wanted to see them. Would they look like Duvall? Eccentric and whimsical. Would like act like Liv? Angry and confused.
“Protesting,” Chase replied. “Yes.”
She crouched down to see through the legs of the people in front of her. The marchers ranged from tiny toddler feet to giant combat boots.
“Oh no,” Chase muttered.
Alex stood up. “What?”
Chase zipped his lips. Above the heads of the crowd, the white signs continued to bob up and down but these signs had photos on them … of Alex’s face. The caption: CHANGE IS NOW.
Alex spun around to face the store, cupping her hands around her eyes and looking into the window. The door displayed a sign saying, At the Festival. Visit us by the bandstand. There could be a phone inside though.
“Alex, we need to try to project.”
“But we can’t see where we’re going.”
“We need to try. We have to get out of here now.” Chase grabbed her hand. “Focus on that lamppost down the road. We can do this gradually.”
Alex wasn’t sure this was the best idea. What if they separated? She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and hoped for a better solution. She stepped closer to the painting girl, who wasn’t bothered by the chaos surrounding her. Alex tapped the girl on the shoulder.
She removed an earbud.
Alex inched toward the easel, which held art supplies and a cell phone. “Can we borrow your phone?”
“Oh my God!” a voice shouted beside them. “It’s her!”
Alex wished she knew how to alter her appearance. She retreated into Chase’s mind to see muddy colors. These people weren’t going to ask for her autograph. They were afraid of her.
“Why is she here?” A woman wrapped her arms around the shoulders of her children and began to back away from Alex.
The rest of the crowd did the same. They gave Alex a clear view of the street and the protesters … and Jack’s gang across the way.
Jack stepped into the road, bringing the march to a halt. Carr followed him, linking his arm through Jack’s. Hecker did the same. And several others. They stood as a fence, dividing the march, blocking the gifted from their mission.
The crowd on the sidewalk didn’t make a sound, waiting to see what would happen next.
The gifted stopped. They looked like normal people: kids wearing sports shirts, fathers with children sitting on their shoulders, teenagers with perfect hair and makeup. Someone whistled, and Alex flinched, expecting the worst.
Instead, the gifted continued forward. They resumed their chants and marched, walking right through Jack’s barricade. They stepped through Jack like he was invisible, and Alex felt the urge to run out into the street and march with them.
She took a step closer to the street. Bad idea. Jack met her gaze before shouting. “It’s Alex Ash. Look! Over there! Sephi Anovark!”
A violent wave of wind barreled through the street, jostling everyone gifted, spirited, or neither. For a second, no one moved. There was no telling where it came from, but then a sharp jolt shook the ground under her feet; someone had struck. Both sides retaliated. Bolts of energy rocketed from everywhere. People screamed and ran. Chase grabbed Alex and pulled her back, but not before she saw the Patrol flood the street. They seized the gifted and pinned their arms behind their backs.
“No!” They didn’t do anything!
Chase cursed and reached for the phone on the easel, but the girl snatched it up. Both sides of the street converged like oil and water, mixing together in a tide of scalding madness.
Alex reacted. She screamed. She let it out louder than she ever had at the medical center. From her nonexistent gut to the depths of her soul, she opened her mouth and allowed it all to be free. It launched out of her like a separate entity, causing the town to tremble. The spirited fell to the ground while the unaffected living gawked at her in confusion.
Chase snatched the phone from the girl’s grip an
d punched in a number. “Get in.”
Alex didn’t stop screaming until she felt the shock of the radiofrequency waves.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Liv’s grandmother said this was a calling, that it was in her bones. Liv wasn’t so sure, but she belonged here more than she belonged with the giggling, flirty lemmings at her school. She didn’t like people, especially the ones her age who called her a freak and made fun of her weight. She couldn’t fit into trendy clothes, and her hair didn’t flip in a peppy way. If it did, she’d cut it off.
She emerged from the back room, tapping on her phone. “Damn prank call.”
“For such an outspoken child, you’ve been rather lost in your thoughts recently.”
Liv plopped down on the window seat and rested her chin on her hand. She couldn’t tell her grandmother that she hated life. She was surrounded by dead people, so a comment like that would sound ungrateful. “I like the woods,” she said, looking out the window. “No matter the scary stories.”
“Don’t be thinking that since you can’t see all the things that go bump in the night that they aren’t there. Those woods aren’t safe for you. There are more horrors out there than you can imagine.”
Liv wanted to die. Was that crazy? Yes. She couldn’t say it out loud or she might end up in that asylum like Alex did. She didn’t belong in this world; she belonged with Alex and the Lasalles. They’d always been larger than life like they were too crazy, too free, for this world. When she tagged along, it felt like watching a television show or reading a story. And when they were gone, all she wanted was more. To see them. To watch them. She never stopped thinking about them.
She couldn’t measure up to their personalities, but they were the only people on this earth who made her feel like she mattered. How many times had they braved the edges of the Parrish woods to find a better hiding place for buried treasure? Even when Kaleb and Gabe were older, they would play along with the younger ones because there were ways to make the games thrilling. Upping the stakes. Teasing the spirits in the Parrish woods. She shuddered to think what might have happened to them if the Jester didn’t patrol the trees.
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