Ghost Heart

by Ripley Patton

  “A CAMFer compound in Oregon,” I said, and Marcus’s head snapped my direction. Was that a memory being jarred? No, he was just fixated on Danielle and Oregon was where he’d last seen her. Olivia was counting on him to know exactly where the compound was. Unfortunately, he didn’t even know he’d been there. And Oregon was a big state. Once we got there, I might be able to hone in on Olivia’s position, but only if she touched the tags again and kept touching them. So, all my information, all my great news about Olivia yelling in my head might be completely useless. Marcus’s memory was the key we didn’t have. “She thought we would know where it was,” I explained to Mrs. James.

  “We’ll find it,” Mrs. James said, sounding sure of herself.

  “But how long will that take?” Dr. Black asked, a desperate catch in her voice.

  “Not long,” Mrs. James assured her. “Alex and I have many contacts in the Pacific Northwest. The Hold’s headquarters was there years ago, and we still have friends and connections in the area. When we get the information we need, we’ll hunt these CAMFers down like the dogs they are and take our children back.”

  Whoa. And I’d thought Mr. James was the ruthless one in the family.

  “I’m going,” Marcus said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “So am I,” I added. “The closer I am to Olivia, the more likely I’ll be able to pinpoint her location.”

  “And, of course I’m going,” Dr. Black said.

  “Of course.” Mrs. James nodded.

  “And Mr. James will be okay with that?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I will,” Mr. James said, slipping into the room but staying near the open door, obviously wary of Marcus’s reaction. “I thought it might come to this. It’s obvious it’s our best option, once both David and Samantha are recovered enough to travel.”

  “Then it seems we finally agree on something,” Mrs. James said, smiling wryly at him.

  “It seems we do.” He smiled thinly back. Then he turned to Olivia’s mother. “I promised I’d find your daughter and return her to you, and I have every intention of doing so.”

  “Good,” she said, her eyes boring into him.

  “Shall we go downstairs and iron out the details?” he asked, gesturing the ladies toward the door. “Or perhaps you’d like to get out of those costumes first.”

  “No,” Mrs. James said, patting Marcus’s arm and rising from her chair. “I believe we are appropriately attired for the task at hand. Come, Sophie. Let’s give this rescue plan a woman’s touch. And David,” she turned back to her nephew, “get some rest. You have a long hard journey ahead of you. We all do.” Her eyes fell on me, the cold, calculating look in them sending a chill through my bones.

  16

  MARCUS

  “No.” I grabbed my aunt’s arm gently, holding her back. “I’m done resting. If you’re going to make plans, I want in on it. And I want answers.”

  She looked at my uncle, a glance passing between them. Samantha claimed they’d been fighting, that my aunt had cheated on my uncle and left him for some other guy who’d been trying to take over The Hold. But that one look made me doubt everything she’d said. Separated, broken couples did not exchange collusive glances like that. Maybe my aunt had slept with some guy. Maybe it had been the only way she and my uncle could maintain their hooks in The Hold. But they weren’t truly at odds, that much I was sure of. As for my aunt suddenly showing up to take my side and champion a rescue? Yeah, they weren’t fooling me. Still, if it got me to Oregon and closer to Danielle, I’d play along with them. For now.

  “Fair enough.” My aunt sat back down in the chair next to my bed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Chloe,” my uncle said, feigning concern and stepping further into the room. “They’ve warned us not to overload him.”

  “I’m not a fucking computer,” I snapped. “I think I can handle it.”

  “It could make things worse,” he said.

  “Like how?” I laughed bitterly. “I’m not going to forget more. I’ve already got Swiss cheese for brains. Besides, as you pointed out earlier, I’m not your captive. And I’m not a minor. Legally, I get to decide my own course of treatment and recovery. Don’t I?”

  “Technically, yes,” my uncle answered, his lips pressed together in displeasure.

  “Technically?” I echoed, glancing around the room. Passion. My aunt. The woman who’d come with her who was apparently a doctor. Were any of them allies? Passion had at least told me the truth about my memory loss, but at the moment she seemed to have about as much power as I did. Still, I could use the presence of my aunt and this doctor to my advantage. My uncle always liked to look like the good guy. He’d proven that earlier with his whole revised history of my parents’ deaths. Now we’d see how committed he was to maintaining that image.

  “So which is it? Am I your prisoner, your patient, or your nephew?” I pressed him.

  He gave a sidelong glance at Dr. Black. “You are my nephew and my patient,” he answered. “And yes, you have the right to dictate your own treatment.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then I want to go to Oregon on this rescue mission. And if I’m going to do that, I need to know who this Olivia and Grant are. How did they get taken by the CAMFers and what is their connection to me and Danielle?”

  There was a long pause. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to answer. The expression on Passion’s face looked pained, like my question had somehow hurt her.

  “Olivia is my daughter,” Dr. Black finally said. “She ran away from our home in Illinois three weeks ago. We’d had a bad fight and, at the time, I thought she was just being stubborn and would come back when she’d cooled off. But she didn’t come back. It wasn’t until I’d come to Indy to seek your uncle’s help in finding her that I discovered she’d been running for her life from CAMFers. They burned down our house and made it look like an accident. I even blamed her for the fire—” Dr. Black stopped, blinking back tears and putting a hand to her mouth. “I—it was my fault—I didn’t listen to her—wasn’t there for her. And now they have her.” She stopped, overcome with emotion.

  I felt bad for her. I knew what it meant to lose someone. But her runaway daughter really wasn’t my problem.

  “So when did this Grant guy enter the picture?” I asked.

  “Grant and Olivia and me,” Passion said, taking up the story, “we’re all from Greenfield. We went to high school together. When Olivia left town, I went with her, and we went to Indy. Grant was already there attending college at the University of Indiana.”

  “So, that’s why you went to Indy? To stay with him?”

  “No, not exactly,” Passion said, glancing worriedly at my uncle.

  We were getting close to something she thought he didn’t want me to know. Good.

  “So how’d he become involved?” I pushed.

  “It was just weird chance that he came to the Eidolon with Eva,” Passion answered. “He didn’t know we’d be there, and we didn’t know he would be.”

  “And the Eidolon? What the hell is that?”

  “Something Samantha came up with,” my uncle answered before Passion could. “A yearly rite of passage for teenagers from The Hold and a chance for their non-Marked friends to support them. Unfortunately, the CAMFers showed up at this one and Samantha was shot.”

  “Wait, this was the thing Samantha got shot at? The thing that was supposed to save The Hold?”

  “Yes,” my uncle said, grinding out the word. “They killed most of the attendees and took the rest. We don’t know how many others they have besides Olivia and Grant.”

  “And you were there?” I turned to Passion, a completely new respect for her rising in me. “You survived that?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, looking strangely unhappy about it.

  “What about this connection you have with Olivia? You can feel what’s happening to her? How is that even possible?” I knew I was pushing my luck. I could see I was upsetting everyone
, Passion most of all, but I had to know. I had to understand all of this if I was going to help Danielle.

  “Olivia was wearing a pair of dog tags,” Passion said. “They’re special. They block minus meters and connect the two of us when one of us is touching them.”

  “Magical dog tags?” I asked, incredulous. “Where did you get those?”

  “I—we—” Passion looked around the room as if she were searching for the answer in the air.

  “They’re a PSS artifact of unknown origin,” my uncle said. He was lying and that meant I’d just reached the end of the information train. They were all clamming up, their faces closed and guarded. Still, the more I was with them the more I’d learn. They all had different lies. It was always that way. One person guarded one thing; another person, something different. Together, they would protect it all, but separately I could break it apart lie by lie, piece by piece. I just had to be patient. And vigilant. I already knew about Passion’s PSS blood. Reiny had let that slip easily enough. Obviously, this Grant and Olivia had PSS too. That was pretty incredible in and of itself. Three people from the same small town having PSS? What were the chances? But that mystery would have to wait for later. I’d never been to Illinois before and I had business in Oregon first. If the CAMFers were holding Olivia and Grant in this compound, then that was probably where they were holding Danielle as well. Help rescue them and I’d get to her.

  It was ironic my uncle seemed much more concerned about rescuing two complete strangers than his own niece. Ironic, but not surprising.

  “Well, I know Oregon,” I pointed out, shoving the blankets off my legs and swinging them over the side of the bed. I had to make myself an asset. My uncle liked people and things he could use. It was why I hated him. It was also his weak spot. “I can probably pinpoint various places a compound might be located if we can get satellite images.” I stood up, trying to hide how wobbly my legs were. I hadn’t used them much in a while. I’d have to remedy that. “There’s a lot of wilderness, but we should be able to narrow it down, especially if you have access to heat signature technology.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” my aunt said, exchanging another look with my uncle. “We have people who can find it. And when they do, we’ll have to plan our approach carefully. The hostages’ safety is paramount, and the CAMFers have considerable power and influence in Oregon.”

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to step on any toes,” I said. “We could just invite the CAMFers to another Eidolon and hope they come.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” Passion snapped, glaring at me, her pale hands balled into fists at her sides. “Don’t ever joke about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I still don’t see how we’re going to rescue anyone if our main concern is not upsetting the CAMFers.”

  “Politics always comes into play,” my uncle said. “So does wisdom. As your aunt pointed out, we have contacts in Oregon who can get a message to the CAMFers and arrange a hostage exchange there. They consider the state their turf, so they’ll feel more confident and cocky, which will play to our advantage.”

  “Yeah, and then what? We negotiate with CAMFers?” What could my uncle possibly offer them they didn’t already have? Because, as far as I knew, CAMFers wanted everyone on the planet with PSS dead and gone. Then again, if what Passion said about her connection with Olivia was true, they hadn’t killed her yet. That meant Danielle might still be alive, too. I clung to that hope. It was my lifeline. Without it, I knew I’d spiral back down into the murky pool of darkness my mind kept returning to. If my uncle thought he could negotiate with CAMFers, he probably knew something I didn’t. Who was I kidding? He obviously knew tons of shit I didn’t—like what he’d been doing a week ago.

  “We negotiate,” Uncle Alex confirmed. “And we use force once we have what we want from them. That part of the plan will have to play out somewhat spontaneously.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Do you at least have an idea where this negotiation might occur?”

  My uncle’s eyes flicked away from me, then came back again. “Warm Springs,” he said.

  “Warm Springs?” I echoed in disbelief.

  Everyone stood staring at me. Passion and Dr. Black looked confused. My aunt and uncle had their poker faces on.

  “You’re not serious?” I asked, laughing. “You think the Indian reservation that booted you out on your ass after you extorted one of their most sacred beliefs and two of their most legendary shamans is the best place in Oregon to negotiate with CAMFers? You think the tribes of Warm Springs will welcome you with open arms like the prodigal son? You betrayed your own people. They’re not going to let you step inside the casino to play slots. They hate you there. They hated you when I was a kid. By now, you’re probably the Wendigo they threaten their children with around the campfires at night.”

  “I think you’re overestimating my infamy a little,” my uncle said, giving me a fake smile. “The reservation is neutral ground. They can’t rightfully turn away tribe members. They won’t break tradition. And we do have something to soften our return, I think. Something they’re interested in that will open the doors less reluctantly.”

  “And what might that be?” I asked.

  “You,” he said.

  And there we had it—the reason my uncle had come to my rescue and invested so much quality time and resources into me. He thought I was his key to Warm Springs. The only problem was he was dead wrong. True, I’d lived there with my mom as a toddler and infant, though I didn’t remember much of it. Even after my family had defected to The Hold, my mother had frequented the reservation, taking Danielle and me with her when she’d visited my grandparents. She’d wanted us to know our heritage, but she’d also been fighting The Hold’s influence over her people, trying to play both sides. The last time I’d been to the reservation was for my grandparents’ funeral when I’d been six. And our reception had been mixed. I remembered that much. Even at that tender age, I’d recognized the anger and betrayal mixed with the grief on the faces of everyone who’d looked at us. Later, when my mother wasn’t watching, children had thrown stones at Danielle and me and called us names in a language I barely knew.

  Despite all that, when Danielle and I had been in foster care, I’d thought about escaping to Warm Springs almost daily. It became my fantasy, my dream of rescue and belonging, maybe because it represented the opposite of everything my uncle stood for. But I’d never gotten up the guts to go back.

  I’d tried once, on the day I’d turned sixteen. I’d stolen a car to celebrate and driven the two hours on US-26 from Portland straight into the red and gold high desert of central Oregon. I’d stopped at the brown sign welcoming me to The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Mount Jefferson majestic and white against the skyline behind it, and I couldn’t make myself go any further. I’d swung a U-turn in the middle of the road and driven back to a home where the father thought I was a threat to his manhood and the mother was determined to use me to prove it. The day after my birthday, I was arrested for the car theft. The three days in juvie had been a nice respite from them.

  “David, are you okay?” my aunt asked, touching my arm again.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, stepping away from her. “But this isn’t going to work. I’m not your ‘in’ for Warm Springs. I haven’t been there since I was six. They don’t know me from Adam.”

  “Our sources say otherwise,” my uncle argued. “I have a contact within the tribe. He can arrange for us to stay at the resort at Kah-Nee-Tah on reservation land. It’s a public place, so we shouldn’t have any trouble there. I’ve got a cover story all lined up with me as a CEO rewarding my best sales team with a weekend casino vacation. That allows us to bring a contingent of men, disguised as my employees. And your presence will help. I’ve been told this is true, and I’ve been given evidence to support it.”

  “What evidence?” I still didn’t buy it. What could he possibly have that would prove I had influence over the tribes of War
m Springs? None. Because I didn’t.

  “This,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He held it out to me and I just looked at him. “Take it,” he said.

  I didn’t want to. Didn’t want to find out how far he’d gone to use me this time. But I was also curious.

  I took the paper and unfolded it, first one flap, then the second, finally revealing an 8.5” by 11” printed sheet with a picture covering the entire thing.

  I stared down at it.

  It was a picture of a mural, painted floor to ceiling on a huge wall of the interior of a building. To either side of the painting there were tall windows, bright sun shining in and making the colors of the mural glow. Flanking the mural wall were desert plants in pots, and a few people sitting in comfortable chairs to one side, like it was the lobby of some hotel or museum.

  “What is this?” I asked, the paper in my hand shaking.

  “Whoa,” Passion said. She’d sidled up to take a peek. “That’s you.” She looked from the picture to me, awe in her eyes. “That’s totally you.”

  I wish I could have denied it, or shared her enthusiasm, but I couldn’t. The mural was, in fact, a giant painting of a guy with a PSS chest who looked an awful lot like me. He was perhaps a tad bit younger than I was, his features slightly more tribal and chiseled. He was naked from the waist up, the cavity of his PSS chest exposed and glowing for all to see, the blue heart unrealistically large, filling the cavity of his icicle ribs like it was trying to break out of them. The landscape in the background was the desert at night, red sand against the deepest blue starry sky. And tucked behind him, almost hidden in shadows, was a small, slender, hooded figure, a child or a maybe a young woman. I couldn’t be sure which, but it looked like he was protecting her.

  The picture disturbed me. Deeply. Why would the tribes of Warm Springs have commissioned a mural of me? And it had to be me. I was the only one on the planet with a PSS chest. I was pretty sure of that. Who had painted this?