“Apparently, it wasn’t impossible. We visited Elaine Eckhart, who is a Fighter. And Clive DeVant, a Cloak.” I glance at Cap, who wears that same calm expression from before. I keep waiting for an explosion of anger, more harsh words about my insubordination. But it doesn’t come. I guess technically, I didn’t disobey orders. We just didn’t ask for permission. “Link awakened them both.”
Sticks’ eyes go buggy.
One corner of Non’s mouth pulls up a little.
And the muscle in Luka’s jaw tick, tick, ticks into the silence.
“You should have seen it,” Link says. “Tess was in and out in under two minutes. Got them both off their medication like it was nothing but gravy.”
Cap’s nostrils flare.
Here it comes.
“You mean to tell me that you tampered with the physical without your Keeper?”
I lift my chin, feeling justified. If Luka was trying to keep me from dreaming last night, then it’s obvious he never would have gone along with the plan. Never.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” Cap growls.
“She wasn’t in any danger,” Link assures. “I’m telling you, Cap, she’s unstoppable.”
“No, she’s not!” Luka smacks the table with his hands, then stands so abruptly that his chair topples backward. “She is not unstoppable.”
“Luka,” Cap says.
“You know it and I know it, Cap. But this guy here.” Luka jabs an accusing finger toward Link. “He doesn’t know it. Because he’s never been in danger before.”
Link’s expression clouds over.
“He’s just a Linker. He’s not a Fighter. He has no idea what he’s talking about!”
Luka’s outburst sets a tremble in my hands. I sit on them to hide the shaking. “We need to continue this rescue mission right away.” I might as well come out with all of it, now that so much is already out in the open. “The other night, Link and I ran into the man from my mother’s bedroom. He must have followed me through the doorway. Link and I saw him outside the Dragon Den.”
Cap’s lips pull into a thin, straight line.
“With Anna’s cloak flickering in and out the way it is, it’s only a matter of time before he finds us.”
“Isn’t Shady Wood located in Oregon?” Sticks asks. “Even if we can break them out, where will they go when they escape?”
“I have a friend named Leela. She helped Luka and me when we needed to get out of Thornsdale. I can visit her tonight. I think she would help again.”
The air inside the small room crackles with tension, most of which radiates from Luka, who has yet to right his fallen chair and sit back down. It stirs up a desperation that will not remain inside. “Cap, you said it yourself. I’ve been given an extraordinary gift. Only I can decide how I will use it. Well, I’ve decided. This is how I’m going to use it—to awaken and free as many people as I can. I started this, and I will finish it. But I’d really like to have you on my side when I do.”
Everyone turns to look at the man in charge.
I wait with bated breath. His answer determines the fate of this mission. If he’s on board, then everyone else will be too. But if he’s not …
“Cap.” Luka squishes the name between his teeth. “You know how dangerous this is.”
He looks at Luka.
He looks at me. “You’ve decided?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then. I’m in.”
Luka kicks over an empty chair, then stalks out of the room and slams the door behind him. It rattles the walls. It rattles my soul.
*
I have the courage to battle white-eyed demons, to break my grandmother out of the highest security asylum in the country. Yet when it comes to finding Luka after his display of outrage, I’m paralyzed with fear.
The only way I know how to fight it? Convert my fear to anger. Anger at this ever-widening chasm between the two of us. Anger that he continues to treat me like a helpless child. Anger that out of everyone here, his support matters the most, yet he refuses to give it. Anger that he tried stopping me from dreaming last night. I gather it into a hot, dense ball and fling open his bedroom door without knocking.
He sits up in bed, his hair sticking straight up, as though he’s pushed his hands through it a few too many times.
“I have the chance to get my grandmother out of Shady Wood. You of all people should know how important that is.” He saw the atrocity of that place right alongside me. The images have to be just as seared into his memory as they are into mine. “I can’t let her stay there. Not when I have a way to get her out.” We have a plan, and if he would have stuck around instead of storming off, he could have heard it with his own ears.
Luka works that same muscle in his jaw. It pulses like an angry heartbeat.
“Please, I need you to believe that I can do this.”
“Just because you can jump to California does not mean you can do this.”
“What was all that crap about believing in me, then? About seeing my strength? You said it with your mouth, but you don’t act like it. Sometimes it’s like you want me to fail.”
Luka shakes his head.
“You tried to stop me from dreaming last night.”
“To protect you.”
I run my fingers back through my hair and laugh—a fed-up, slightly hysterical sound. “You didn’t see Link last night. He knows what he’s doing. And he believes that we can do this.” If only Luka could believe the same.
“Link doesn’t know what it’s like to be in danger. Link can’t see the things I see.”
“Nobody does, Luka. Because you won’t tell anyone.”
“You want me to tell you what I see?”
“Yes!”
He stands from the bed. “Fine. Every night in my dreams, you’re killed. Is that what you want to hear? You die, and I can’t save you. You’re leading a freaking army, Tess. An army. And every time you die. Over and over and over again, you die. If that’s what you want to know, then okay, there it is. That’s what I get to live every night when I close my eyes. So excuse me if I don’t have the same confidence as your friend, Link.”
“Luka … they’re just dreams.”
“You and I both know they’re never just dreams.”
I hold out my hands and shrug, at a complete loss, because where does this leave us? “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to stop being reckless. I want you to think before you jump into things. And I want you to stop leaving me out of your plans.”
“I leave you out of them because you won’t let me do what I need to do.” Last night was proof. Claire’s words come—little Tess’s babysitter. And my anger swells. “If I could figure out a way to release you, don’t you think I would? But I don’t know how, and I can’t wait in the shadows of safety while people die all for the sake of making your burden easier to bear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This overwhelming obsession you have with my safety. I know you didn’t ask for it, but I didn’t ask to be a powerful Fighter, either.” Looks like we were both given burdens we’re not too thrilled to carry.
“You think that’s what this is about—your safety?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Luka takes a step toward me, his eyes narrowing. “If this was only about your safety, then why would I kiss you?”
“I don’t know. You were confused. You were relieved.” And it’s been a long time. “You heard what Non said in class. The relationship between Keepers and their anima has nothing to do with romantic feelings.”
“Last I checked, Non’s not a Keeper.” He takes another step closer.
“Claire said you felt like my babysitter.”
“Claire doesn’t know anything.” He takes one final step, closing any smidgen of distance between us. “If you want to know what it’s like being your Keeper, you should ask your Keeper.”
But I can’t. He’s standing so close
I can barely think.
Luka tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
My heart takes off. Beat, beat, beat—faster than the wings of a hummingbird.
“It’s like fire and oxygen.” He traces my jaw with the pad of his thumb. “I touch you and everything ignites. You walk into the room and every single one of my senses comes to life.” He takes my wrist and places my hand against his chest. His muscles are hard and warm beneath my palm. “You push me away, and it’s torture. You hurt, and I’m in agony. You smile, and it’s like I’ve won the world. Don’t even get me started on your laugh.”
I can’t breathe. My lungs have officially stopped working.
“Anima, Tess. Breath of life.” Luka curls his fingers around the back of my neck. “It’s not your safety I care about. It’s your being.” He crushes me against him, his lips melding with mine, and I think my hummingbird of a heart might lift me off the ground altogether. His free hand moves to my back, where he grabs a fistful of my shirt. He smells like wintergreen and he tastes like butterscotch. His grip is firm and his lips? An impossible combination of hard and soft. By the time he’s through, my entire body hums. The world spins. And tears sting my eyes. Because his words? That kiss? They are too good. Impossibly, euphorically good.
Luka cups the sides of my face with his hands, presses his forehead against mine. “Please Tess, I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”
And just like that, I come crashing down to earth. “You’re asking the impossible.”
“No, I’m not.”
I take his hands from my face and hold them together in front of my heart. “You’re my Keeper. Nothing will happen to me.”
“Gabe was powerful.”
“So?”
“So, he lost his sister anyway. And now he can hardly bear to live.”
“You’re just going to have to trust that what happened to her won’t happen to me. I have to do this.”
He pulls away. Shakes his head. He looks two seconds away from spitting at the floor. “Then you’re going to have to do it without me. I cannot watch you march to your death.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Underway
Leela sits on top of her comforter—one leg tucked beneath her, the other bent in front of her—painting her toenails with a bottle of bubblegum pink OPI nail polish, but the strangest thing happens. As soon as she brings the brush to her nail, the color comes out black. Muttering under her breath, she twists on the cap, gives it a nice shake, and tries again. More black.
“That’s weird.”
Leela looks up at the sound of my voice, her face brightening. She clambers off the bed and hugs me. “You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here! Did you see this nail polish? It must be a defective bottle.”
“Or you could be dreaming.”
She squints at her toe.
“Think about it, Leela. How else could I be here? I haven’t been in Thornsdale since you picked me and Luka up from that motel. We’re on the run, remember?”
She rubs her fingers over the spot on her arm I pinched the first time I visited her dream, when she thought she was at a football game with my brother.
“How’s my family?”
Leela scuffs her toes against the floor. They smear the carpet with streaks of black.
It was hard enough to ask the question in the first place—I’m so afraid to hear the answer—but now that it’s out, I’m not letting it pass by without a response. “Leela, I have to know.”
“They aren’t doing well.”
Emotion knots inside my throat.
“Your dad was moved to the California State Penitentiary.”
“What?”
“The judge refused to release him while he awaits trial.”
Every last drop of warmth drains from my face. “How can they do that? It was just a break-in. He didn’t murder anyone.” He didn’t even commit the crime. And now he’s in a state penitentiary? My dad?
“I’m so sorry, Tess.”
“What about my mom and Pete?”
“All I know is that they put your house up for sale. Pete hasn’t been at school much.”
I sink onto the edge of Leela’s bed.
“Luka’s parents moved, too. It finally came out on the local news a couple weeks ago—that Luka aided and abetted in your escape, that he used to be a patient at the Edward Brooks Facility.”
I shake my head. It doesn’t make sense. Why wait so long to out Luka? The only logical explanation I can think of is that they always knew of his role in my escape and were attempting to lure him back to Thornsdale with a false sense of safety, and when it became obvious that wasn’t working, they switched tactics. Or maybe his father simply ran out of influence.
“As soon as it all came to light, Luka’s parents packed up and moved away. Nobody knows where.” Leela eases down beside me. “Are you really in Detroit? Is it as dangerous as everyone says it is?”
Looking back, I never should have told Leela where we were headed. We’re lucky that didn’t come back to bite us. “I can’t say.”
“Are you and Luka still together?”
I nod, trying to push the news of my father aside. I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll start coming unstitched, and now is not the time. So I shove it inside a box in my brain marked later and focus my attention on Leela. “I came tonight because we need your help.”
She crosses her legs and grabs onto her shins.
I absolutely hate dragging her into this more than I already have, but she’s our only viable option. The police are no doubt still trailing my mom and Pete. There’s no way they could get within a hundred mile radius of Shady Wood. “What I’m about to ask you to do is really dangerous, and I want you to know straight off the top that you can say no. You really can, Leela. If you have any misgivings at all, there won’t be any hard feelings. I promise.”
“You sure are making a hard sell.”
I smile sheepishly. Maybe Luka’s concerns got to me more than I thought.
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous, Tess. What’s happening right now to you and your family? It’s not right. I want to help in any way that I can.”
This should come as a huge sigh of relief, because Leela is in and she is a huge piece to our rescue mission puzzle, but all her willingness does is exacerbate the pit in my stomach. Luka doesn’t want to watch me march to my death. Am I asking Leela to march to hers? “It involves Shady Wood.”
“The place your dad’s been accused of breaking into?”
“The one and only.”
“Okay.”
“We’re going to break out two patients who are there, but shouldn’t be there.” I’m not actually sure any of the patients should be there, but since we have to start somewhere, my grandma and Clive will be that starting point.
“Who is we—you and Luka?”
“And some others. I can’t go into the details of how it’s going to work, I just need you to trust me that we can get them as far as outside the gate. What we can’t do is drive them away, which is where you would come in.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night.” It’s incredibly fast notice, I know this. But Cap agreed that now that we’ve started, the quicker we can finish, the better. Two nights of no medicine for my grandma and Clive should be plenty. Any more would arouse suspicion, any less and they’d still be too groggy. “Do you think you can get there?”
Leela nods.
I give her the address. She picks up a pink gel pen to write it down, but I remind her that this is a dream. If she doesn’t remember when she wakes up, she’ll have to Google it. “You’ll need to arrive by midnight.”
“Where am I taking them?”
“The closest Greyhound station. There will be two tickets waiting for them.” Thanks to Link’s hacking abilities, all they will need to do is step up to the automated ticket booth, punch in a code, and their tickets will spit right into their hands. “If they aren’t outside the gates by one
, then leave. We failed. I’ll find you as soon as I can to explain what happened.”
“Got it.”
“Tomorrow morning, a man named Dr. Carlyle is going to call you. He’s going to ask if you remember what you’re supposed to do. He knows the plan, so if any of these details are vague, you can ask him.”
She nods again. “Dr. Carlyle. I won’t forget.”
“Leela?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
She gives me her thousand-watt smile and wraps me in a hug once more. “I miss you,” she whispers.
I squeeze her back, because I miss her too. More than she could possibly know. And then I close my eyes and I think about Link. When I open them again, I’m no longer being hugged by Leela inside her bedroom. I’m standing in front of Link in an understated dream space, at least for him. Probably because he had to use all his mental energy on linking Cap and Sticks, who are already here. When I admitted to Cap that someone from the other side was standing guard inside Clive’s room and that I had to fight him off before switching out his medication for IV fluid, he was adamant about him and Sticks coming tonight, as well as a Guardian, in case there are more this time. I didn’t argue.
“Is she in?” Link asks.
“She’s in.”
“All right then, on to phase two.” He grabs my hand, since there’s not much of anything for me to anchor myself to but him.
I close my eyes. The room shifts, widens. And just like that, there’s Non.
“I thought you were getting Luka,” Cap says.
“He didn’t want to come.” Even as I say it, I know he didn’t mean it. I know he regrets the words he spoke in anger. He’s not more than a blink away, a breath. As though he’s willing me to find him. But he made his wishes clear. And besides, we have a Guardian. Seeing as Link and I did this on our own the night before, and we’re just popping over for a very quick medicinal switch, I think we are more than covered.
The Awakening Page 23
