Finally, I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
Hollis garnered prolonged stares from some passengers. He did look strange. He was bigger than the average teenage boy and the trench coat in mid-March was plain weird. Hollis didn’t seem to notice the stares. I imagined he was used to them.
We found an empty row and sat together, Hollis taking up most of the seat, but he let me have the window. He leaned in close to me. “Our best bet is to catch her walking from her house to her violin lessons or from her violin lessons to the smoothie shop. That’s when she’s alone.”
I gulped. Catch her, as if she were prey and I was the predator. I guessed it was like that. With one hand I squeezed my fingers on the other hand until they hurt. “How do I—how do I do it?”
He shrugged. “However you want. You’ve done it before.”
My stomach churned at the thought. I couldn’t do her like Bailey—slashing my claws across her throat and chest until she was a bloody pulp. I could never do that to anyone again.
“Make it as quick and painless as possible. I can help you corner her, but you have to be the one to finish her.”
Finish her? Why did he have to say it like that? “Do you know where your Gemini is?”
He ran his fingers through his hair watching a family of three settle onto the row in front of us. “No. Unfortunately I haven’t come across mine yet. Most of us haven’t and most of us never will. My father doesn’t seem to understand that.”
The train lurched forward. This was happening. We were in motion, moving toward Rose. “Does it make you nervous?” I asked. “The fact that your Gemini can sneak up on you at any time and kill you.” For all I knew, Rose could be in Everson Woods at that very moment looking for me.
Hollis scrunched his face. “Nah. I don’t think there’s a Giver I can’t take, no pun intended. The fact that I haven’t been getting sick or weaker is a good thing though. That could mean fate wants me to live. You know they . . . the Givers, expect us to fail, right? They think they can take us out. They think fate will choose them over us because they’re so good and we’re evil, which isn’t true.”
He was right. That was exactly what the Givers thought.
My phone rang, sounding a hundred times louder than usual. Imani. She had been acting different around me since the day she’d come to my house so I needed to take her call to make sure we were still good. “Hi, Imani.”
A lot of background noise came from her end. “Hey, where are you?”
How could I explain this? There was no way to. I hated to lie to my friend again, but I had no choice. “I’m on a train with a friend. We’re headed to this little antique shop right outside of town.”
Was that believable? That was so not believable. What teenager spent their Saturdays going to antique shops? Why did I say that?
“An antique shop? Okay. That’s . . . different. Well, I was just seeing if you wanted to hang out later this afternoon, but I guess not.”
She wasn’t at home. I could tell by all the other voices I heard. “Where are you?”
“Hold on.” She lowered her voice and it sounded as if she were moving away from the noise. “Don’t judge me, all right? Lacey asked if I wanted to go to the spa with her, Trista, and Marley to get facials, massages, manis and pedis. It sounded amazing so I didn’t want to turn it down, especially when Trista’s paying.”
Poor Imani. She was having to spend the day with the queen bee and her hive. I couldn’t think of anything worse than that, except for what I was about to do. “I’m sorry. I’m sure the spa will be fun though, so try to enjoy it.”
“Um, it’s actually not that bad hanging out with them. At least not as bad as I thought. Lacey’s okay when she’s in chill mode.”
That comment pierced through me. Imani could not become friends with Lacey. Lacey was not going to steal my only girl friend away from me. I needed her more than Lacey did. Lacey could be friends with anyone she wanted. “Let’s do something tomorrow,” I said quickly. “Anything you want.”
“Okay. How about we check out a movie? I haven’t been to one since I moved here. There’s a lot of things I want to see.”
I felt a sense of relief that she had taken me up on my offer. “You got it. The movies, your choice.”
Someone shouted her name in the background. “I got to go. They’re ready for us. Talk to you later, okay?”
“Later.”
I’d kind of forgotten that Hollis was right there listening to everything. He stared straight ahead, but of course he had heard the entire conversation. “You like your life? Your Human life?” he asked.
I hadn’t been prepared for that question. My life wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, but it wasn’t complete torture either. It could be a lot worse. “I guess I do.”
“You would never live in the lair?”
There was no beating around the bush. I’d rather die than be stuck underground with them. It was a hard thing to say to someone though—that I’d rather die than live their life. “No. I like my freedom. I want to go to college and have friends, Human friends, date whoever I want, have a career, get married. I can’t do those things in the lair.”
Hollis thought that over, then nodded. “There’s no worries in the lair, though. We’re taken care of. We have everything we need. You don’t have to worry about getting your heart broken or friends betraying you. We don’t do that to each other.”
I turned back to the window. A row of identical-looking houses rushed by. “The friends I have now don’t betray me,” I said quietly, although I was slightly hurt that Imani was hanging out with someone whom she knew had been horrible to me. Was that betrayal? I wouldn’t hang out with someone she hated.
The Taker life was all Hollis and the others knew, so they had no idea what they were missing out on. Me, on the other hand, I stood by what I’d said. I’d rather die than live in that lair.
Hollis shifted uncomfortably. “This is stupid,” he muttered.
“What’s stupid?”
He gestured around the train. “This. The way Humans travel. It takes for freaking ever. When I need to go somewhere, I wait until night fall and fly. I get wherever I need to go within minutes.”
“Well we can’t all be lucky enough to have wings.”
The rest of the trip was silent until there were fifteen minutes left of our ride. Hollis turned to me again. “How do you know this girl is your Gemini?”
“Fletcher told me.”
Hollis frowned. “How could he tell you? No one can identify your Gemini but you. It’s an inner feeling.”
“Rose told him. You know when they were—hanging out.” The truth of the matter was I had no idea what Fletcher had been doing with Rose. It was confusing. He’d kissed and embraced her, but he claimed to do that all for me. He’d said he needed to get close to her so he’d know whether or not she was coming after me. “She said she’s been close to me before and she got the feeling.”
Hollis faced forward again. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but didn’t. I was glad because I needed time to gather my thoughts.
When we got off at the Crescent City station, the sun was higher in the sky and the air was much warmer.
Hollis checked his phone. He had this whole trip mapped out already. “There’s a bookstore within walking distance where we can wait. There are tables right in front of the window. We can sit there and wait for her to pass. She goes to her violin lessons at two.”
My legs weakened again. “Okay.” But I had no idea how I was going to do this. Bailey had been one thing; she deserved what she got, she’d pushed me to kill her. Rose didn’t deserve this.
The bookstore was busy, filled with parents corralling their little ones who ran back and forth between the kid’s reading section and the Lego Blocks station. Hollis and I milled around reading the backs of books until a table in front of the window became free.
Hollis flipped through a sports magazine he’d grabbed from a shelf, not r
eally paying attention to what was on the pages. “What are you thinking?”
My stomach rumbled loud enough for the both of us to hear. I should have eaten breakfast, but I was too preoccupied. “I’m thinking about Rose. About how she doesn’t deserve this.” Rose had done nothing to me. Sure, my parents really belonged to her. She seemed like the perfect girl. But then there was Fletcher. He had kissed her and she’d kissed him back. That annoyed me, but none of that was really her fault.
Hollis flipped another page. “Do you deserve this? Do you deserve to become a Wendigo? To be thrown into the sixth tunnel? Do you think you deserve to die?”
My answer to all those questions was no. “What was it like for you the first time you killed someone?”
He tossed the magazine on the table. “I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never needed to.” Hollis frowned, obviously offended by my question.
I had just assumed he had killed because of what he was. “Oh.”
“Why do you think I had?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You still think those things about us, that we’re vicious animals who kill for no reason. We’re not.”
He had a point. I shouldn’t have assumed. Hollis might have eaten dead bodies, but they were already dead. That was the way he fed himself when he was away from the lair. “It’s just that day when you guys wanted me to kill Lacey. You acted like it was nothing. You said Humans were expendable. I guess that made me feel like you guys had killed before.”
He let go of the frown and his face softened. “I can understand that I guess, but most of us haven’t. But it’s different for you. You’re a Banshee and that’s what you do. Carry death.”
That’s what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t something I wanted to commit to.
“Anyway,” he said, eyeing a little boy rolling on the carpet. “You have it easy compared to Rose. The only way to kill a Death Fairy is to grind her bones into dust.”
I already knew that. I didn’t need him saying it out loud.
A woman stooped to collect the rolling child from the floor and Hollis focused on me again. “You have any idea how hard it would be for an Angel to do that?”
How could he be so calm about all this? “This doesn’t seem like complete insanity to you?” I leaned in closer to whisper even though the volume in the bookstore had suddenly risen. “Sitting around waiting to kill a girl who hasn’t done anything to anyone?”
Hollis stared at me blankly and I had my answer. This was completely normal to him. Why had I expected anything different? His life and world had been nothing like mine.
“Hollis, while we’re here, I’m a little concerned about Violet, you know, Cuddle Bug. She can do more than just move clouds.”
He smirked. “Like what? She can make them turn into cotton candy?”
“No, stupid. She can control the weather.”
Hollis waved my concern away. “We have plenty of things to worry about but Cuddle Bug isn’t one of them.”
“I think you guys have underestimated her. You shouldn’t do that to people.”
Hollis’ chair scraped against the floor as he stood up. “Like clockwork. Show time.”
I followed his gaze to the window. Rose in all her jarring beauty crossed the street looking like sunshine. That was the closest I’d been to her. I hadn’t realized how much she looked like Mom. Rose looked perky and healthy, not like a girl who should be sick and wasting away.
Hollis was out of the door so fast, I had to hustle to keep up with him. Everything was happening so quickly I didn’t even have time to gather my thoughts.
Rose walked briskly with a blue hobo bag slung over her shoulder, wearing a flower-print sundress and brown leather gladiator sandals. She wore headphones as she hummed to herself. A violin case dangled from one hand. Her phone in the other.
My insides twisted. Surely she would notice us following her, especially Hollis, who stuck out like a sore thumb, but she seemed to be lost in her thoughts.
Hollis slowed down, putting his arm in front of me. “We’ll talk to her after her violin lessons when she won’t be in so much of a hurry.”
“Talk to her? What do you mean talk to her?” No part of my imagining this plan included talking to Rose. That was just going to make everything harder.
The distance between us and Rose grew wider but Hollis didn’t take his eyes off her. “You’re going to have to strike up a conversation with her. Catch her off guard. We have to get her somewhere secluded. I was thinking that wooded area in the park.”
Everything was getting worse by the moment. Now I had to talk to her? How was I supposed to do that and then turn around and kill the girl after luring her into some trees?
We stopped on a corner as Rose disappeared into a small Victorian house. We had an hour to kill, but I had a feeling that hour would fly by.
Hollis sat on the curb hugging his trench coat close to him. He looked like a crazy person. “You know what? She walks through the park to get to the smoothie shop. We should wait and catch her there.”
Catch her. Like she was a rodent or something. I couldn’t do it. I was bailing out. Hollis was just going to have to be angry. “Let’s go back to the train station. I can’t do this. I won’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Hollis stood and brushed himself off. “You want to go home and wait around for her to kill you first? You want to wait around for the Wendigo to take over you? As long as she’s alive, you’ll never be strong enough to ward it off. You need her strength.”
“I . . . uh. This just doesn’t feel right. There has to be another way.”
Hollis put his hands on my shoulders and stared me in the eye. “There is no other way. Arden, think real hard about this. This girl might look innocent. She might be an Angel, but that doesn’t mean anything. If she had the opportunity to kill you, she would do it in a heartbeat. As a matter of fact, she might try when you get close enough to her. If you can sense her, she can sense you.”
I wasn’t worried about that. I remembered how I’d handled Bailey. I doubted this girl had ever killed anyone before. I had one up on her.
“Let’s go,” Hollis ordered.
I swallowed hard and followed him reluctantly for the two blocks it took to get to the park. I tried to ignore the picnicking families and the children scurrying across the playground. The park was supposed to be a happy place—lush green grass, a variety of swing sets, colorful merry-go-rounds. It wasn’t a place for premeditated murder.
Hollis and I stood in the cluster of trees he had mentioned before. Hidden in the shade of the tiny jungle, I felt like a crocodile waiting for some innocent clueless animal to walk by so that I could snatch it up in my jaws. We stood silently for a long time. The sounds of animals moving along the ground kept me on edge. I silently hoped that Rose would change her mind about the smoothie place and go home instead, but she came by much quicker than I expected. She followed the trail, moving closer to the trees, just like Hollis said she would.
“Don’t punk out now, Moss. It’s creature eat creature.” He urged me forward and I emerged.
Pulling my phone from the pocket of my dress, I stepped onto the sidewalk, blocking Rose’s path. “Hey. I’m sorry to bother you, but my GPS isn’t working. Can you point me in the direction of the bookstore?” My hands shook and I couldn’t make them stop. I waited for her to recognize me since she’d told Fletcher she’d seen me before.
Rose started talking, giving me directions. Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched and squeaky, kind of like a cartoon character I couldn’t place. I heard her, but I wasn’t listening. She showed no signs of recognizing me at all.
Aside from us, the area was empty. Everyone else was at the playground or the picnic area.
Rose still chattered on. Before I could chicken out, I grabbed her by the collar of her sundress and dragged her into the cluster of trees. She screamed, piercing my ear drums. Hollis stepped forward, grabbing her arms and holding them behind her back so I could let go of her.
&nb
sp; Even terrified, she was beautiful, even more so up close. She had the same button nose my sisters had.
Rose screamed once more. Hollis laid his huge hand on her throat. “You do that again and I’ll snap your neck.”
She shook her head, blond waves falling into her face. “I-I have like twelve dollars. Take it out of my bag.”
I scowled at her. Why was she acting like she didn’t know why I was there? “I don’t want your money.”
“Then what do you want?” She looked around for help, but no one was there but the three of us.
“Don’t play dumb. You know you’re my Gemini.” That alone should have told her why I was there.
Her face switched from fear to confusion. “No, I’m not. I don’t feel anything. I mean, I feel fear right now, but that’s because you freaks are attacking me.” She was feisty, like Mom and Paige. I came to the realization of what I had known all along. I couldn’t do it. Gemini Curse or not, there was no way I was going to be able to kill this girl. I was going to be banished to the sixth tunnel.
I backed away from her as Hollis loosened his grip on Rose’s arm and throat. “Arden, is she your Gemini? You have to be sure. What do you feel?”
I shook my head. “I don’t feel anything. Anything at all.” But that wasn’t entirely true. I felt a slight twinge of jealousy because Rose really belonged to my family and I didn’t. I looked Rose in the eyes. Was she playing with me? Was she trying to get me to lower my guard so she could attack me? That would have been a smart move. “Why’d you tell Fletcher that I was your Gemini then?”
At the mention of Fletcher’s name, Hollis let her go and she rubbed her arms. I felt bad about the red marks that had formed. “Fletcher? I never told Fletcher that. Why would I? I’ve never seen you before in my life.” She wasn’t afraid anymore.
I didn’t understand. Why would Fletcher lie to me about something so important? I’d almost killed an innocent girl for no reason. I was going to kill him instead.
“How do you know Fletcher?” she asked, giving me the side-eye.
“How do you know Fletcher?” I asked back.
Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy Page 8
