by Skye Malone
“Guys, what’s going on?” Chloe asked nervously when we reached the sedan.
Bill didn’t respond. “Sandra? Would you all mind watching the house for a few days?”
Curiosity flickered through the woman’s eyes. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“Wait, where are we going?” Chloe asked.
“Chief Reynolds convinced us there are some people it’d be good for you to see,” her mother answered. “He thinks they can help you.”
“What people?”
Linda hesitated. “We can talk more on the way.”
Chloe didn’t move. “Are they the people you told me about yesterday?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “The ones you talked to about stuff?”
“Yes.”
She looked to me. “I-I don’t want to–”
“Chloe,” her dad interrupted. “It’s for the best.”
She stared at him, as though incredulous of how that could be.
“Who is this?” Noah asked cautiously.
“Um, they’re like–”
“Chloe!” her father barked.
She blinked in shock at his furious glare.
“It’d be better for Chloe if she had her friends around, right?” Baylie interjected. “I mean, she’s been through a lot and–”
“Honey,” Sandra began. “I don’t know if–”
“Yeah,” Noah cut in. “We can come with you. Follow in Baylie’s car.”
Linda made a nervous noise, her expression edging toward fear.
My brow twitched down. She almost seemed scared of Noah.
Like she knew what he was.
“This is not your business, young man,” Bill said firmly. “Or yours, Baylie. I appreciate your concern for my daughter, but as you said, she’s been through a lot.”
He motioned Chloe toward the car.
“Why do I need to see them?” Chloe asked.
Bill’s glare deepened and I felt my blood pressure rise. “We are not going to discuss this here,” he stated.
Chloe’s gaze flicked to Sandra and then away. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I just got here and–”
“This is not a debate!” Bill snapped.
She stopped, a breath escaping her at his tone. I could see her shaking, and more than anything, I wanted to just pull her away from here and leave.
Because protecting her from things didn’t just mean glowing behemoths and Sylphaen.
“This is really the best thing for you, Chloe,” Linda added, her expression begging Chloe to believe her. “Please just get in the car.”
For a heartbeat, Chloe stared at them.
And then, without a word, she turned and climbed into the sedan. I followed, circling the car to the other door and never taking my eyes from her parents as I got in.
Outside, I could hear Bill talking to Sandra, while Noah and Baylie looked to Chloe through the darkened windows. Linda was back to clenching her hands, studying them all and her daughter with an expression like she wished they were already driving away.
Chloe didn’t take her eyes from her lap.
I reached over, brushing her leg with my fingers and then taking her hand when she moved it toward mine.
Bill and Linda got into the car, and Bill’s face darkened at the sight of me holding Chloe’s hand. I met his gaze flatly and, after a heartbeat, he turned his attention to the sedan. No one said a word as the engine started and Bill pulled the vehicle from the tiny parking lot.
I cast a quick glance back. Noah and Baylie were getting into Sandra’s car.
The drive to the house was short, and when he parked the sedan in the garage, Bill spared Chloe a look in the rearview mirror.
“Go inside and pack a bag. We’re leaving immediately.”
She raised her gaze to his reflection. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, the resentment in her voice so tired, she almost sounded as though she didn’t expect a response.
And he didn’t give her one. “I said go.”
He pushed open the door and left the car, with Linda doing the same a moment later.
Chloe let out a breath, and I couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh or cry. “Well, that didn’t last long.”
My brow furrowed. “What?”
“Them. Not being them.”
At that, she opened the door.
“Chloe.”
She paused, turning her head back toward me.
“You don’t have to go,” I said. “We could leave. We don’t need to stay here if it’s just going to be dangerous for you too.”
She gave a tiny shrug of futility. “Where else is there?”
“North. The Atlantic. I don’t know. The point is, we don’t have to be here.”
“And what? You’d stay with me?”
“Yes.”
Chloe looked pained. Grateful, but pained, and she shook her head. “I can’t keep you from your family like that, Zeke. It’s… it’s not fair. Ina and Jirral and… I just can’t.” The futile expression returned. “And I don’t know anybody anywhere else.”
She left the car.
A breath escaped me. Trying to keep my frustration from my face, I climbed out and headed into the house after her.
Bill and Linda were waiting for us.
I tensed, and from the corner of my eye, I could see Chloe do the same. This was ridiculous. They treated their daughter like she was some mad creature they had to control – and, despite their vigilance, could only barely succeed in doing so – and that was when they weren’t behaving like she might fall down dead from the simple act of breathing.
It was absurd. In the past few weeks, she’d survived more than they’d probably experienced in their entire lives. She’d done things, gone through things of which they weren’t even aware – and which they couldn’t ever be told. Because I was beginning to get the gist of this family. They’d just lock her inside the house forever if they knew. Put her in their own version of a box, like the Sylphaen had done. Their coping strategy appeared to go from nonexistent to nuclear without a single stop in between, and I suspected trying to reason with them only accelerated that transition.
I could understand why Chloe kept as much as possible from them. It was her only defense.
Linda headed toward her the moment we came through the door. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you pack.”
Distrust replaced Chloe’s caution. “Huh? Why?”
“We’re in a rush.”
“And why is that?”
Nervous frustration colored Linda’s face. “Come on,” she insisted again. “There are people waiting.”
She started toward the hallway, moving to take her daughter’s arm as she passed.
Chloe retreated. “What people? Those elder people?”
Linda’s lips compressed. She glanced to Bill.
“Yes,” Bill said. “Chief Reynolds is going to call them. Tell them to expect us.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s polite.”
A scoff escaped Chloe. “Why are we going to see them?” she clarified bitingly.
Bill’s face darkened. He glanced between me and Chloe. “We’ll discuss this once we’re there.”
Chloe stared at him for a heartbeat, and then shook her head disgustedly and started for the hall. Linda hurried after her.
I watched Bill, waiting for him to attempt to kick me out now that Chloe was gone.
But he didn’t say a word. Briefly, he regarded me, and then he headed upstairs as well.
My brow drew down.
Only a few minutes passed before they returned, Linda carrying a small suitcase and Bill hefting a larger one. Chloe looked stressed, coming ahead of them down the stairs and making a straight line to me once she reached the ground floor.
Bill and Linda ignored it. With the bags, they continued on past us and around the corner toward the garage again.
“He didn’t try to make you leave?” Chloe whispered to me.
I shook my head.
She gave a preoccupied nod, looking in the direction they’d gone.
“They say anything about why you need to go meet these guys?” I asked.
“No.”
Her brow furrowing, Chloe followed them. They’d already loaded the suitcases into the trunk by the time we reached the garage, and while Linda circled around to the passenger side, Bill motioned for us to get in the back again.
We did so. The garage door rolled upward, and then he pulled the sedan outside.
At the house next door, Baylie sat on the steps, while Noah stood on the grass beside her. They watched the car as it backed down the driveway, their gazes locked on Chloe.
Baylie’s hand twitched on her knee, her thumb and pinky flexing briefly, switching smoothly to a pointing gesture, and then relaxing again.
Chloe hesitated a heartbeat. Covering the motion with a brush of her hand through her hair, she gave a quick nod.
I kept my face from giving any sign of my curiosity. Something had just passed between them, I knew. But her parents didn’t seem to have noticed.
And I wasn’t about to risk changing that.
The car reached the street and, with barely a pause to change directions, Bill sent the sedan racing from the neighborhood. Pressed back into the seat by the acceleration, I shifted uncomfortably. Something felt very wrong about this. About how eager they were to suddenly expose Chloe to these people, when they’d apparently spent years doing the exact opposite. It didn’t make sense.
And it worried me.
I watched the neighborhood flash by, and then the town, and wished Chloe had taken me up on the offer to leave.
Chapter Ten
Noah
I couldn’t believe this day.
In the space of a few hours, I’d found Chloe just standing in Baylie’s living room, had some greliaran lunatic break into the house, gotten in a fight with said lunatic, visited a police station where – thankfully – no one seemed to suspect I’d been a part of what destroyed the den, and then watched Chloe’s parents bundle her off to the house with the full intent of taking her God-knew-where.
And when it came to that last, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
On the banister of the porch steps, my grip tightened. I drew a breath, forcing myself to loosen my hold before I broke something.
I’d wanted to head straight to Chloe’s house the moment we got home, but Baylie had cautioned against it. Stationing herself instead on the porch steps, she’d barely taken her eyes from the house and now seemed to just be waiting for something, though she wouldn’t say what.
And meanwhile, I was going crazy.
I couldn’t figure out what to think. I didn’t know much about Chloe’s parents – barring what I’d heard from her and Baylie anyway – but the way they’d treated her in the parking lot had left me stunned. I’d never seen that look on Chloe’s face before. Speechless. Humiliated. Shaken.
It’d taken a tremendous amount of control not to do something about it.
And that wasn’t the only thing…
I removed my hand from the railing entirely. It’d been a week, maybe a bit more, since I held her in the water when she changed for the first time. It’d been days, and not that many of them, since I had to get her away from the beach. It’d been no time at all.
Yet here she was, going around with this Zeke guy, saying he was somehow here because of her. I didn’t know what that meant, but I’d seen the way he touched her. The way he watched her. It didn’t take a genius to tell there was a whole hell of a lot more than friendship going on there.
And it’d been one damn week.
My brow furrowed as I closed my eyes, concentrating hard on breathing and on not letting the whole neighborhood see me go greliaran. I had to calm down. Think rationally. My own safety and that of the porch banister depended on it. Yes, it’d been one damn week. One damn week in which I’d probably looked like the craziest psycho this side of the nuthouse, in which I’d threatened her, and in which I’d said things that continued to make me feel sick. I’d terrified her. Flat-out terrified her.
I still hadn’t been able to shake the memory of that fear in her eyes.
So yes. One week. But it was also a week in which she’d come back. Sure, she’d brought him with her, and sure, her shock at seeing me made it pretty clear she hadn’t expected I’d be here. But she’d still come back to land. That’d been more than I could’ve hoped for a few days ago. And when it came to the two of them, I’d only seen what he did. The way he watched her and the way he touched her.
But I hadn’t seen much from Chloe. She’d avoided him at the police station, and her body language… well, it was nearly impossible to read. So I could be overreacting. The guy liked her. Great. That had absolutely nothing to do with Chloe unless she felt the same and, at the moment, I had no proof that was the case.
I just had a knot in my stomach and an almost overwhelming desire to go into that house and do something about every single thing that was bothering me right now.
And that wouldn’t exactly be helpful.
Maybe not, anyway.
I opened my eyes, a breath of a scoff escaping me. I’d avoided the cops once today. I didn’t need to push my luck a second time.
The sound of the garage door opening brought my thoughts up short. The Kowalskis green sedan pulled out. Through the darkened windows, I could see Chloe. It looked like that Zeke guy was sitting on the other side of her, since there wasn’t anyone else for that silhouette to be. Her parents were up front, both of them seeming intent upon the road.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Baylie’s hand twitch on her knee. Chloe ducked her head, almost as if nodding, though she could have been simply brushing her hair from her face.
And then they reached the street and her dad took off like he was driving a Formula One race car rather than an aging sedan.
Baylie rose to her feet and started up the steps.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Chloe’s going to text. Tell me where they go.”
“You guys use sign language?”
“Our own, yeah.”
She pushed open the door and headed inside.
My brow rose. Okay.
I followed her into the house. She was gathering her keys and wallet from the table in the hall.
“So if she’s going to text you,” I said, “then we can follow her.”
She didn’t glance away from her things. “Yep.”
“Baylie.”
She looked up. I could see her shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
She turned toward the stairs.
“Baylie.”
She stopped.
“No,” she admitted without turning around. “I’m…” A weak chuckle left her, the noise humorless. “I mean, look at this place.”
She gestured distractedly toward the scars on the hallway walls where that greliaran had run into them. To the den door he’d torn through and the debris beyond.
“This is crazy,” she continued. “It’s crazy and it’s frightening, but you know what? I don’t care. Chloe may be… what she is, but she’s also my best friend and right now, she’s in trouble. I saw her. I know her. She’s scared. And her parents…” Baylie shook her head. “I just have a really bad feeling about this.”
I shifted uncomfortably. She wasn’t the only one.
Baylie looked back at me. “I’m going to help her if I can.”
I hesitated. I didn’t know what they planned, but regardless, I didn’t want Baylie involved if there was a chance she might get hurt.
But I also wasn’t sure there was a way to argue with her right now.
And she had the car.
“I’m ready when you are,” I said.
&n
bsp; She nodded. “I’ll pack a bag in case we’re gone a few days too, and then–”
Her gaze twitched toward the second floor.
“I’ll talk to Mom,” I said.
She gave me a grateful smile and then headed upstairs.
I followed. In the room at the end of the hall, Mom was sitting on her bed, papers and folders spread in front of her and the cordless phone at her side. Her brow furrowed in consternation, she flipped through one of the folders and didn’t look up when I came in.
“Mom?”
She made a frustrated noise as she glanced away from the papers. “I could have sworn the homeowner’s insurance was in here somewhere.”
I hesitated, not sure how to respond. “Listen, Baylie and I are… we’re going to follow Chloe.”
She paused, and then set the folder down, a sympathetic look on her face. “Honey, I understand that you want to help. Chloe is a great girl, and I know how that must have looked today. Her parents have always been strict with her – too strict, probably – but she’s also their daughter, and she’s been through a lot. If they think she needs to go somewhere for help, then you–”
“We’re not trying to interfere if they’re really helping her. We only want to make sure that’s what’s going on and that she’s okay.”
Her brow drew down as her expression hardened. “Noah, it’s not your place to judge what Chloe’s parents think she needs right now. You can’t know what that girl might’ve gone through, being kidnapped like she was.”
I grimaced. “I’m not doing that. It’s just–”
“I mean it. You need to let them–”
“It’s greliaran stuff.”
She blinked, her sternness faltering.
I looked away. We rarely talked about the other side of my life. She’d known about greliarans for years, ever since Maddox had first started showing signs of being one as a little kid, and she understood as best she could, but it was still awkward. She and Dad swore it wasn’t why they’d gotten a divorce – their problems had gone beyond that – and she’d never been anything but supportive regarding what we dealt with.
