He nodded. “I do.” My heart fluttered.
“Cool. Now, Arden Moss—”
“I do,” I answered. I’d wanted this for a long time so there was nothing to think about.
Imani grinned. “I now pronounce you bae and bae.” She dropped our hands and went back to her beloved gummy bears.
Fletcher looked at me and shook his head laughing which made me feel queasy. Did he think this was all a joke? Because I didn’t.
“Now that this is official,” he said, “I guess I’m supposed to plan a date.” Good. He had been serious too. “How about Friday night?”
It was Friday. “You mean tonight? Uh, I had something planned that I absolutely can’t get out of.” There was nothing I wanted to do more than go on a date with Fletcher, but there was something I had been putting off for weeks. Something I had to do that I couldn’t hold off on any longer. I had to go explain to Hollis why I had to break the promise I had made to him. I owed him at least that much.
When I stepped into the lair, it was the noisiest I had ever heard it. Creatures chased each other up and down the hallways. Music blared from different rooms. The normally white walls were covered with colorful murals. The grieving time for Mr. Mason seemed to be over.
In the control room I found Hollis sitting alone scribbling something in a notebook.
“Hollis?”
He didn’t turn around or stop what he was doing.
I stepped closer to him. “Listen, I’m sorry it took me so long to come talk to you. I wanted to say—”
“Just stop.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“What?”
He banged his fist on the table top and stood so abruptly that the chair toppled over. I stumbled back toward the door. “I said stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
“But I made you a promise. I didn’t want to go back on it, but I had to. I’m sorry, but your father left me no choice. He was the cause of the massacre that killed your mother and he was going to get us all killed. You’re not alone. Both of my birth parents are dead too and a lot of the kids here.” I was rambling. I knew I was, but I just couldn’t stop.
Hollis held his hands up. “Please, Arden. If I killed your father, would there be anything I could say to you that would make it better?”
I didn’t even want to imagine that, but I guessed no. There wouldn’t be anything he could do or say that would help.
His shoulders dropped. “I know about my father, all right. I know you didn’t have much of a choice. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
I understood that and I would never bring it up again unless he wanted to talk about it.
Hollis’s phone rang and he dug it out from his pocket. He listened for a moment, his eyebrows going up and down. “What? Who is it?” He listened a little bit longer and then hung up.
“What’s going on?”
He stared at me blankly, blinking rapidly. “That was Cadence. She and Wes are cleaning out my father’s office. She said they heard a voice screaming from behind the wall in there. Wes found some kind of door in the wall but they can’t open it.”
My eyes traveled over Hollis’s rippling muscles. “I’m sure you can get it open. Let’s go see what’s happening.”
Hollis faltered for a moment, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what his father had been up to. Who did he have imprisoned within the walls of his office?
I followed him down to the ground level. Cadence and Wes stood beside the decorative curtain that had been pulled back. Sure enough, a woman shouted, “Help! Let me out!”
Hollis rushed over to the wall and dug his fingers into the crease. He grunted and pulled for a second and then the door popped open. The three of them hung back as if they didn’t want to see, but I rushed over.
My stomach dropped to the floor when I saw who it was. Mrs. Melcher.
She didn’t look like her usual self. Her chocolate-colored hair was longer than it was the last time I’d seen her and matted in knots. Her gray eyes were wide and blood-shot as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. They moved back and forth crazily. She wore something that looked like a long, black night gown which was wrinkled and disheveled and there was nothing on her feet.
She sat on the ground in front of a small table. Open books were strewn everywhere.
I knelt in front of her. “Mrs. Melcher?”
Her eyes stopped moving back and forth and she finally focused on me. “Arden? What are you doing here?” She looked around me to see the others. “What are you all doing here? No one’s supposed to know I’m here.”
I looked over my shoulder at the other three who only watched Mrs. Melcher wide-eyed. Nobody knew what to say, so I spoke to her.
“Mrs. Melcher, you’ve been missing for like six months now. Everyone’s worried. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
She shook her head and clutched a book to her chest as if it were a baby. “I wasn’t missing. I was working.”
“What are you talking about?” Hollis demanded.
Wes pushed past me to get closer to Mrs. Melcher. He sniffed her. “She’s an Artemis.”
“What? What’s that?” I asked.
“She’s a descendant of the goddess of hunting.” He looked at Ms. Melcher with disgust. “And she’s a Giver so what the hell are you doing in our lair?”
She ignored Wes and kept her eyes on me. “I’m hunting down the Legends. I read their stories,” Ms. Melcher explained, “then I locate them and Mr. Mason takes care of them. Where is Mr. Mason? He always checks on me every day and brings me food but he hasn’t been around.”
I noticed several empty plastic jugs sitting in a corner. Another one was filled a quarter of the way with water. Thank goodness we had had found her when we did.
I looked to Hollis for further explanation. He sighed and closed his eyes like he had a head ache. “The Legends are not like us. They’re not even like the creatures in the sixth tunnel. They can’t be put away for their own good and for the good of others. They’re evil and they need to be destroyed. That’s one thing my father did—he kept the Legends at bay. They were afraid of him. They wouldn’t dare act out, so they stayed hidden. Now that he’s dead, they’re going to bring out their claws and wreak all sorts of havoc. I bet you didn’t know that about him, did you?”
No, I hadn’t and the looks on Wes and Cadence’s faces told me that they hadn’t either.
“Wait,” Mrs. Melcher said as she stumbled out of the room. “Mr. Mason is dead? Oh no. This is bad. This is very, very bad. We need him.”
Hollis walked over to his father’s desk, pressing his palms against it. “Well, it’s a little too late for that.”
Ms. Melcher’s gaze traveled over the four of us. “Who killed him?”
I didn’t have to look around to know that all eyes were on me. Ms. Melcher handed me a heavy book. “Then you, my dear, it is now your job to get rid of the Legends. Don’t worry. Mr. Mason killed a good bulk of them. There’s only six left. Of course, they happen to be the six most dangerous ones. Oh, and you only have a few months to do it before they become indestructible. We’d better get to work.”
I looked at the others. Wes and Hollis stared at Ms. Melcher. Cadence shrugged. “Good luck?”
I looked down at the book and shuddered. At least I’d been happy for a little while. I had Fletcher and Imani. My Wendigo was gone. Things seemed to be going back to normal, or at least semi-normal, but life just couldn’t give Arden Moss a break.
The end of Book Two
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Dust and Roses: Book Two of the Dust Trilogy Page 20
