Return (Awakened Fate Book 3)

by Skye Malone

I didn’t take my eyes from the window. Richard and my cousins were climbing into their maroon SUV. Starting the engine fast, Richard cast a look around the neighborhood and then took off down the road.

  “What was wrong with that boy?” Ed continued. “Did you hear him?”

  I glanced to Mom warily as she hung up the phone, wondering how she wanted to handle that.

  “Richard’s boys have always had problems,” she answered neutrally.

  Ed’s eyebrows rose and fell. “I’ll say.”

  “That was Chief Reynolds,” Mom continued. “He’s sending an officer over.”

  Ed nodded. “You sure you’re okay, honey?” he asked Baylie.

  “Yeah,” she said, trying for a smile. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

  “You kids just head back to what you were doing,” he continued. “We’ll keep an eye out here and let you know if the cops need to talk to you, okay?”

  Baylie glanced to me and I could read the hesitation in her eyes. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Okay.”

  Letting me go, she started back to the den, her gaze still twitching toward the front window.

  I looked to Mom, questioning.

  She gave a tiny nod.

  Taking a breath, I followed Baylie.

  She was waiting for me.

  I paused at the door, suddenly wishing I could have stayed out in the living room to help Mom.

  Though she probably would’ve just had questions too.

  Cautiously, I took the two steps down into the den and then pulled the door shut behind me.

  “What the hell?” Baylie whispered, her quiet voice breaking. “What the hell, Noah? They’re here? They followed us back here? For Chloe? What in the–”

  She cut off when I looked away. A breath left her.

  “What is going on?” she demanded.

  “They’re crazy.”

  A scoff escaped her, the sound harsh. “No kidding.”

  I grimaced as she waited. I couldn’t figure it out either. They were insane. Certifiably, utterly, and completely insane. And coming to Kansas looking for a dehaian? That was a whole new level of madness. No one in their right mind would–

  My breathing stopped. No one would. Not unless they knew something I didn’t. Not unless they’d seen her, or heard something about her…

  She’d lived like a landwalker before she became dehaian. She’d survived when everyone else had sworn her heritage would kill her.

  Maybe she could come back.

  And maybe… maybe I could explain…

  I turned to Baylie. “Look, my family is nuts, okay? They… they’re fixated on Chloe. But if what they’re saying is true,” I released a shaky breath, “she might be on her way back here.”

  Baylie stared at me.

  I glanced toward Chloe’s house, focusing briefly on suppressing the burning, furious energy inside me that let other greliarans tell where I was. “You stay here,” I continued. “Watch for her. I’m going to keep an eye on my cousins, just in case… you know.”

  Without another word, I headed for the hall.

  “But why are they fixated on her, Noah?” Baylie cried, struggling to keep her voice down as she followed me. “You said she wasn’t like you, but what’s this about then? Why do they want to hurt her so much?”

  I paused by the den doorway. I didn’t have time for this. I needed to get out there. Make sure they didn’t find her first. “They just do.”

  Baylie made an angry noise.

  “Please,” I insisted. “It’s important. Just keep an eye out for her. I’ll explain, or, you know, maybe she will once she’s safe. But Baylie, these guys…” I exhaled. “They’re dangerous. You know that. And the cops… they’ll just tell my relatives to stay away or something else useless. There’s nothing to arrest them for yet. Not where Chloe’s concerned. So please just watch the neighborhood, watch her house, and if there’s anywhere else you can think of that she’d go, watch that too. We have to help her.”

  Baylie stared at me for a heartbeat. “O-okay. I will, but… Sandra and Dad aren’t going to let you just stay out there. And what about the cops? What do I tell them?”

  I could feel the seconds ticking away. “Tell them… tell them I needed some air.” I scowled. That’d only work for a bit. “Or that I’m exploring the area. I’ll try to stop back in when I can, just to keep them from getting too weird on you, but otherwise, I’m exploring, eh?”

  Despite her worry, she looked skeptical. “Exploring.” She drew a breath. “Fine. But the minute Chloe’s safe, you’re telling me what’s going on, understand? I’m done with this secrecy crap.”

  I nodded.

  “And Noah?” she called when I started down the hall.

  I glanced back.

  “Be careful?”

  I hesitated. “Yeah.”

  I headed for the front door. Reidsburg wasn’t huge by any stretch of the imagination, and their SUV wouldn’t be too hard to find.

  And with any luck, Chloe wouldn’t be either. For me, at least.

  I drew a breath, trying to calm the hope that choked me at the thought of actually seeing her again.

  Chapter Five

  Zeke

  Several hours later found us walking back toward the gas station. We’d finally located a fast food place across town and the handful of change in Chloe’s pocket had been enough for us to split a small meal. We hadn’t spoken much – just watched the town through the windows – and the same was proving true for our trip back to the station. Biting her lip and jumping every time a car drove by, Chloe appeared utterly distracted.

  And nervous as hell.

  I slipped a hand around her side, grateful for the freedom to finally hold her and hoping to help her calm down at the same time. She flinched at the slight contact, and then a blush colored her cheeks as her startled expression faded to chagrin.

  “Sorry.”

  I made a dismissive noise.

  Her head leaned on my shoulder briefly as she put an arm around me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I watched her from the corner of my eye, uncertain if I should press her.

  “They’re crazy,” she said, almost as if answering something inside herself. “They’ve always been crazy.”

  I hesitated. “Okay.”

  “I mean, my whole life, it was ‘ocean water is diseased’, ‘rapists live on the beach’, all kinds of stuff like that. Even if they were trying to keep me from going in the water, that’s still an insane way to do it.”

  She paused, her brow furrowing. Looking up at me, she continued in a smaller voice. “You don’t think they thought I was dead or something, right?”

  I weighed responses and settled for the most neutral. And honest. “I don’t know.”

  “But Noah… he couldn’t have just…” She shook her head, anger filtering across her face, and she sped up, moving away from me. “They had to know I was fine. That I’d changed and left with you and all that. He had to have told them that, at least, so she must’ve just…”

  Chloe trailed off.

  “Maybe they were worried you wouldn’t come back,” I offered quietly.

  She stopped, looking back at me, and I couldn't hope to read her expression. “I…”

  Her brow furrowed. She turned away again.

  Tires rumbled behind us. A breath left her, the sound almost panicked. I glanced over my shoulder.

  A green sedan with darkened windows raced around the turn.

  “That them?” I asked.

  I looked back. Her face was answer enough. Not taking her eyes from the car, she came up beside me.

  The sedan veered to the side of the highway and then skidded to a stop in a cloud of gravel dust. A woman climbed out before the man at the wheel had even succeeded in shutting off the engine. Leaving the door open, she hurried across the gravel toward us, her red-rimmed eyes locked on Chloe wit
h a look somewhere close to stifled terror. Behind her, the man got out too, moving awkwardly as if to keep from jostling the white sling holding one of his arms. As brown-haired and brown-eyed as his wife, he seemed only scarcely less worried, and he never took his gaze from his daughter while he closed the door.

  I tried to keep my face expressionless, but it was difficult. I’d said perhaps they were afraid Chloe wouldn’t come home.

  It looked more like they were afraid their daughter would fall dead where she stood.

  “Chloe,” the man called as he headed for us. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah,” she answered, her voice choked. “Thanks for coming.”

  “H-how did you make it this far?” her mom asked, clenching her hands together as though to stop them from shaking. “And who did that to your neck? Are you–”

  The woman swallowed hard, her gaze darting from Chloe to me as she seemed to reconsider whatever she’d been about to say.

  Chloe hesitated. “I’m fine.”

  I glanced to her when she left the response at that.

  Her mother’s brow twitched down, the desire to press for more written all over her.

  “Who’s your friend?” her dad asked.

  Chloe drew a breath. “This is Zeke.”

  I tensed at the sudden alarm in their eyes.

  “The boy who…” Her dad looked between us. “But he…”

  “Is dehaian, yeah,” Chloe filled in. “Like me.”

  Their faces were a picture, though of confusion, shock or horror, it was hard to decide. In the time it took her to speak the words, they raced through the expressions, coming at last to a rabid sort of denial that varied only in its intensity.

  “Chloe, you are not–” her mother began.

  “Linda,” the man interrupted.

  With a choked noise, she turned to him.

  “Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere,” he suggested, his eyes on me.

  Linda nodded. She stepped forward even as her husband did the same, like they were closing ranks around their daughter with the full intent of forcing us apart.

  Chloe stiffened. “Zeke’s coming too.”

  They stopped. I saw the arguments forming.

  Chloe moved closer to my side, almost putting me between herself and them. Without looking away from them, I reached down, taking her hand.

  I could feel her shaking.

  Her dad blinked and his gaze ran over me afresh, with a heavy dose of protectiveness and threat in there this time.

  Linda just twitched as though restraining herself from snagging Chloe’s arm and yanking her away from me. Breathing hard, she seemed to flounder for a moment, and then she made an aborted motion to the sedan.

  Sticking to my side, Chloe headed for the car. At the rear passenger door, she climbed in and then scooted to the other seat, leaving me to follow.

  I got in and shut the door, feeling her parents’ eyes on us the whole time.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  She gave a tight nod, watching them walk toward the car.

  They sank into their seats and didn’t say a word while they closed the doors and then put on their seat belts. Her dad turned on the engine and gave the road a brief glance before pulling back onto the empty highway. In short order, he’d spun the car around, sending us eastward once more.

  And no one spoke. The tension in the air was so thick, even breathing felt like it would trigger some kind of explosion. On the edge of the passenger seat, Chloe’s mom perched and cast strange, truncated looks back to me for no reason I could determine. Behind the wheel, her dad seemed focused on the road, though I occasionally caught him glancing to his daughter in the rearview mirror.

  And Chloe never quite looked at them. She never quite looked at anything. Her gaze darted across the middle distance like a fighter expecting an attack and trying to watch every direction at once.

  Corwin fell behind us. Fields swept by and so did time. A sign flashed past, notifying us we were entering Kansas, though otherwise, nothing in the landscape changed.

  I wondered if anyone planned on making a sound for the entire trip back to their home.

  The sun crept toward the horizon and gradually painted the sky with brilliant colors of pink, purple and gold. Shadows stretched from the tall crops lining the highway, growing darker while the twilight deepened.

  In the distance, a town came into view, like another island of trees in the midst of a flatland sea. Bigger than Corwin, but still small by far compared to Santa Lucina, it seemed mostly made up of houses, with scarcely a building taller than two stories to be seen.

  I glanced to Chloe, curious if we were finally there.

  Her expression answered me. It was definitely Reidsburg. She was watching the town roll toward us with a look somewhere between desperation and that of a convict staring at their prison cell.

  Minutes crawled by. As the sun sank over the horizon completely, drowning us in shadows, the sedan passed the first buildings at the edge of the town. More roads followed, each of them seeming identical to me. Houses upon houses, with the odd smattering of businesses and bars, restaurants and rundown motels between them. A monolithic high school interrupted the endless neighborhoods at one point, its old brick construction towering over the homes facing it from the other side of the street, and every few blocks seemed to reveal another church.

  At a road like any other, Chloe’s dad turned the sedan. He continued on for a few moments, and then he thumbed a button on a small box clipped to a visor above his head.

  On a two-story, pale brown house with white shutters and a covered porch, the garage door began to roll upward. A yellowed light bulb came on when the door finished opening, illuminating the random assortment of tools, cleaning supplies and metal shelves inside. Flicking the turn signal briefly, he guided the sedan from the road into the driveway and then pulled into the garage. He tapped the tiny box again, leaving the door to roll down behind us, and then turned off the engine. Wordlessly, Linda pushed open her door and left the car.

  I looked to Chloe while her father got out as well.

  She didn’t move.

  “Hey,” I said quietly.

  She swallowed hard and gave a quick nod. Not looking at me, she shoved open the door and then climbed from the car.

  I eyed her curiously, uncertain what that had been about.

  Still waiting for the tension to break and something to finally explode, I trailed Chloe and her family into their house.

  Chapter Six

  Chloe

  The steps from the garage clunked under my feet. I followed Dad through the door and past the laundry room into the kitchen.

  And I wondered if I had made a mistake.

  They weren’t speaking to me, but I knew that would change. The moment we were alone, everything would pick up where it left off – though, really, silence was almost as bad as yelling in its own special, drawn-out-torment sort of way.

  I should have kept running with Zeke. Maybe gone to Canada or something. Surely it was nice this time of year.

  The smell of the house surrounded me, all cinnamon and clove and alien after my weeks away. With his good arm – the one that wasn’t in that horrible white sling – Dad reached over to flip on the light switch. As the fixture overhead flickered to life, he continued through the kitchen toward the living room.

  I paused. On the breakfast table below the back window, I could see abandoned dishes. Beside the refrigerator, a gallon of milk still sat on the green laminate counter. A striped dish towel lay in a rumpled heap on the tile floor as well, the whole mess so unlike my parents that it was startling.

  They’d left in a rush. They’d been worried.

  My throat tightened. I hurried through the room, leaving Zeke to follow me.

  By the fireplace, Mom was murmuring something heated to Dad.

  She cut off the moment I appeared at the doorway.

  Da
d put a hand to hers as though trying to calm her. “Would you ask your friend to wait in the kitchen, Chloe?”

  I could hear the careful choice of words. Cautiously, I glanced to Zeke.

  He nodded. Taking my hand and giving it a brief squeeze, he eyed my parents for a heartbeat and then headed for the breakfast table.

  My feet sank into the brown shag carpet as I walked into the living room. Mom and Dad took a seat on the overstuffed couch beneath their pictures of the Gobi Desert and Death Valley, leaving the armchair across from them to me.

  It felt familiar. So many of our arguments had started this way.

  Though they usually ended with slammed doors and more silence.

  I glanced over, grateful that I could see Zeke through the archway connecting us to the kitchen.

  “What happened, Chloe?” Dad asked.

  Blinking, I looked back at him.

  His gaze twitched to my neck.

  I shook my head. “Nothing. A guy… we handled it. It’s fine.”

  They stared at me.

  “Someone tried to kill you,” Mom demanded. “And you ‘handled it’?”

  I paused. I did not want to get into this. Desperately.

  “Yeah.”

  She exhaled, looking away as though she couldn’t believe anything about me or what I’d just said.

  “And will this guy be looking for you?” Dad asked.

  I swallowed. “I don’t think so. Not… not here.”

  He paused. “By the ocean then.”

  I gave a tiny shrug.

  “How did you make it to Nebraska?”

  I tried not to fidget on the chair, feeling like I was in an interrogation. My gaze flicked to Zeke. “We stole the guy’s truck.”

  Mom made an incredulous noise, the sound so familiar I could feel my blood start boiling. My nails dug into my palms with the effort of not letting anger get the better of me.

  “It ran out of gas, so we called you,” I finished.

  Dad’s mouth thinned. “So this wasn’t a dehaian?”

  “No.”

  He glanced to Mom, who was staring at the brown chenille of the couch and shaking her head.

  I looked between them. “What?”