“I know what it means.”
Jasper laughed, apparently finding my stern expression funny. “Jet and I have always been able to communicate with each other, right from the moment we woke up.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Jasper said. “Imagine how it felt to wake up, not knowing who you are, where you came from, or what you were doing, and to have a voice in your head. Jet even called me The Voice. He wouldn’t believe I was a real person until we met.”
Jet rolled his eyes.
I shook my head and thought about that first morning. The cold alleyway, the smells of rotting garbage. I shuddered. I hated thinking about that day. “So what is he thinking right now?”
Jasper eyed his brother. “Right now, he’s wondering how long this will take since we never ate breakfast.”
I glanced at Flint. My breath hitched at the sight. “And you?”
Flint shrugged. “I’m strong and fast.”
Mica laughed loudly. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
Meeting Flint’s gaze, my concentration waned. Once again, I wanted to sink into him, like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. I shook myself and then remembered that strange feeling of power I’d sensed in him last night.
“How strong and fast?”
He smiled, affording me a glimpse of perfect, white teeth. “Maybe I’ll show you some time.”
I snapped my gaze away. I needed to be in control of my senses right now. It still hadn’t sunk in, though, what everyone was telling me, that I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t the only one who’d woken up with no memory of who I was or where I came from. That this strange ability I had didn’t make me unique. That there were others like me.
“What about you, Lena?” Jacinda asked. “What can you do?”
Di leaned forward. Her short dark hair fell across her cheek. She tucked it behind one ear. “What’s your gift? I’ve been dying to know.”
I smiled faintly. Had it really only been eight hours ago that I’d left this cabin to walk back to Little Raven? That now seemed like days.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why was I drawn to Little Raven? That’s where the instinct led me, but when I returned this morning, there was nothing there. I couldn’t feel it anymore.”
“We were all drawn to this general area,” Di said. “Although, none of us know why. Once we all found each other, though, the pulling feeling disappeared.”
“So, now that I’m in this area and I found all of you, I have found what I was searching for?”
“As far as we can figure, yes,” Di replied.
That would explain why nobody in town knew me and why the instinct had disappeared.
“Well?” Di said impatiently. “What’s your gift?”
I took a breath. “I see clouds, or at least, I call them clouds.”
“Like in the sky?” Jet asked.
“No, around people. I call them clouds because they’re like a haze that surrounds people’s shoulders. They’re not really opaque, more like a wispy fog. It tells me if they’re good or bad, if I can trust them.”
“Like an aura,” Di said, “And you can see that in all of us?”
“Yes, but with all of you it’s different. Normally, people’s clouds are white, gray or black. The whiter the cloud, the better a person’s soul is, the darker the cloud, the eviler a person is. But you’re all different. You all have colors.” I remembered my reaction when I’d first met them on the county road. I’d been so confused by it.
“We do?” Di said.
“Yeah, nobody else has ever had colors before.”
“What colors are we?” Mica asked.
I switched my vision and again marveled at the rainbow display.
“You all have blue in your clouds, but everyone also has a unique color. You have pink mixed with the blue, Mica, and you have violet.” I turned to Jacinda.
“What about mine?” Di asked.
“Gold and blue.”
“And the guys?” Di asked.
“Jet’s blue is mixed with red, Jasper’s with yellow, and Flint’s with orange.”
“So blue mixed with all the colors of the rainbow,” Di commented.
I flipped my vision back to normal. The colorful clouds disappeared.
“Interesting.” Di tapped her finger to her chin.
“What color are you?” Jasper asked.
His question took me completely by surprise. “My color?”
“Yeah. What color’s your cloud?” Jet asked.
I frowned. “Um, I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” Jet asked.
“Because I’ve never looked at it.”
“You haven’t?” Mica said.
I shook my head, not believing I’d never bothered. “I always assumed it was white. I know I’m a good person, and I never had any reason to think my cloud would be different from anybody else’s.”
“Well, don’t dilly dally!” Mica swished her hand. “Go look!”
I got up and raced to the bathroom mirror. As soon as I switched my vision, what billowed around my shoulders made me smile. A beautiful bright green mixed with blue stared back at me. Any doubt I may have carried over being connected to this group vanished. Di was right. I was one of them.
I returned to the living room, smiling.
“Well?” Mica asked.
“Green and blue.”
“I knew it would be like ours.” Mica grinned.
I sat beside Flint. His arm once again settled over my shoulders. I liked the weight of it. I also liked its possessive feel.
“Okay,” Di said. “Now that you know about us, there’s no need to hide things from you.”
I frowned. “Why did you hide this from me? Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
Jet raised an eyebrow. “Do you not remember your reaction to us?”
“Yeah.” Jasper agreed. “It was pretty obvious you didn’t know what to make of us, and I’ve never seen someone hide her tattoo so fast when we asked about it.”
I ducked my head sheepishly. They were right. After months of hitchhiking and lying about myself to strangers, it had been an instinctual reaction to guard myself against others.
Jacinda put her hand over mine, her honey-brown eyes soft. “What they’re trying to say is that we’ve found it’s easier to wait before we tell a new person. Most of us had similar reactions to yours when we met the group, although, not quite as severe.” She said the last bit in a very soothing voice and patted my hand.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Maybe if I hadn’t thought they were so strange, I would have been more open to trusting them.
“Don’t be,” Jacinda said. “We all felt untrusting initially.”
“You did?”
Jasper smirked. “Jet punched me when I told him it was me in his head. It’s not like me being his twin gave it away or anything.”
Mica laughed. “He seriously freaked out!”
“We did try to tell you sooner,” Di interjected. “Last night, we wanted to tell you when we got to this cabin, but then you bolted for the bathroom and pretended to go to sleep right after that. It was obvious you weren’t ready.”
“Yeah.” Mica piped in. “They tried telling me right after they picked me up, but I almost jumped out of the vehicle.” She tucked a strand of short, brown hair behind her ear. Apparently, she found this funny now because she grinned.
“I didn’t take it well either,” Jacinda said. “I was told ten minutes after I was picked up, and it was a lot to take in. Can you imagine how you would have felt when we picked you up? If the second the door closed, we showed you our tattoos, or told you we had no memory of who we were, and had been waiting and looking for you? How do you think you would have reacted?”
I tried to picture it. I couldn’t. I was already uncomfortable from what I’d seen in their clouds. Having them spill all of that information on me would have probably had me running for the hills. Literally. I shrugged. “Yeah, I
guess it would have made it harder.”
“So we started waiting a few hours, sometimes a day,” Di explained. “Just so the newbies could become used to us and know we’re not crazy.”
I started putting two and two together. “You all arrived here at different times then?”
Di nodded her head. “I got here first, maybe two weeks after I woke up. I kept seeing this place and images of everyone. I knew I needed to find you all and pull us together. After me it was Flint, then Mica followed by Jacinda. After her, it was Jasper, then Jet a few days later. The twins got here about two weeks ago.”
“And now we don’t need to hide anything from you!” Mica stated loudly. “Now we can be ourselves again.”
“That is, until the new girl gets here,” Di warned.
I cocked my head. “The new girl?”
“That’s the other thing,” Di said. “There’s another one of us. She’s coming in a few weeks. She’s the last.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I sank into the couch. There are more of us?
“There’s another girl . . . like me? Who’s out there right now, trying to follow the pull?”
“Yes,” Di replied.
“Who is she? Where is she? What’s her name?”
Di shook her head. “I don’t know her name or who she is, but she looks young and always appears afraid.”
“Where’s she’s coming from?”
“I think Texas, but I’m not sure. She’s been on the road for so long, but she’s always on a form of public transport. She’s done a lot of traveling in the wrong direction.”
I frowned. Poor girl. I knew how she felt. It was awful, traveling alone, with no one to help you. The added stress of not having an identity or any idea of why you were traveling made it harder.
“I hope she gets here safely,” I said.
“She will.” Di leaned back and crossed her arms. “In two to three weeks, she’ll be here. And unlike you, she doesn’t seem impulsive.”
“How do you know I’m impulsive?”
Di rolled her eyes. “My visions of you changed rapidly. Every time you made an impulsive decision, my hold on you would disappear. You’ve been very hard to track.”
“Oh.” That did sound like me.
“You know, you did disappear in the middle of the night,” Mica added.
I remembered my sudden need to find answers, now. I nodded sheepishly. “Yeah. I did.”
Mica sighed. “Don’t make a habit of it. You’re not easy to find.”
“How did you find me this morning?”
“Flint,” Mica said.
Flint shrugged. “I guessed you went back to Little Raven, so I went looking for you.”
“More like freaked out, jumped in the car and drove off before any of us could join you,” Mica retorted. “I’ve never seen you panic like that.”
Flint tensed.
He panicked that I disappeared?
“Anyway,” Di said. “Now, that we know you’re safe and we’ve told you about us, we can get on with things until the new girl arrives.”
“Hmm.” I was still reeling that Flint had panicked about me being missing. A warm feeling coated my insides.
“Do you have questions about anything else?” Di asked.
I shook myself, trying to clear my head. “So if you can see the future, do you know what happens to us?”
Di frowned. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve seen snippets of the eight of us in the future, brief visions here and there. In most of them we’re here, on the ranch, so I know we’re not leaving anytime soon, but I know that will eventually change. I’ve had a few visions of us in some desert, but I’m not sure where, and I’ve seen us in a large city or two, but I wasn’t able to see enough to know what cities they were.”
“Oh.” So we’d leave here eventually and all travel somewhere together? “Do you know anything else about our future?”
Di shook her head. “Not at the moment, but that could change. I can’t control my visions. They come as they want and show me things unreliably.”
“Maybe the new girl will know more.” As scary as everything was, I felt better that I wasn’t alone.
“Yeah, don’t count on it.” Jet lounged back in his chair and ran a hand through his dark curly hair. Some dirt fell off his boots when he propped them on the hassock. “Personally, I think we’re all screwed. There’s nothing normal about any of this, and the fact that we can all do something no other human can, seems like a bad omen to me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked warily.
“Jet,” Di interrupted. “We don’t know anything. No need to get anyone worried.”
“Yeah.” Jacinda clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Sharp blue veins stuck out from the backs of her hands. “Di’s right. No one needs to be worried.”
“But don’t tell me you haven’t wondered?” Jet persisted. “Eight people with no memories, matching tattoos and this messed up desire to flee to the same region in Colorado? Not to mention unusual, even unique, physical abilities? And what about the fake ID’s? Or the money? Or the fancy condos? You’re not gonna tell me that’s not a bad omen. And you’re not gonna tell me it’s all an innocent coincidence. Something’s going on here and if you ask me—it’s not good.”
I swallowed uneasily while Jacinda looked ready to pass out. Di was scowling, but then something Jet said caught my attention.
“Wait. ID’s? Money? Condos?”
“Right, that’s something I wanted to ask you,” Di said. “Didn’t you wake up in a luxury condominium with money and identification?”
“Um, no, I pretty much woke up opposite to that.”
She frowned. “We’ve been wondering how you were homeless. It doesn’t make any sense when we woke up with money.” She shook her head. “If you didn’t wake up in a condominium, where did you wake up?”
“In an alleyway in Rapid City.”
Di’s eyes bulged. “In an alleyway, outside?”
“Yeah.”
Perplexed expressions covered everyone’s faces. “And you didn’t have any cash or personal documents on you?” Di asked.
“No, nothing.”
Di cocked her head. “I wonder why that is, since the rest of us all woke up in similar conditions. Except Flint. His was a little different.”
Before I could ask what was different about Flint’s, Di said, “That’s bizarre that you woke up outside.”
“So, the rest of you woke up in a condo? With money?” I felt strangely left out.
“Yes.” Jacinda nodded. “We all woke up in furnished luxury penthouses or condos, with money, identification and cell phones on the kitchen counters.”
“Of course, none of us knew how we got there or why we had those things,” Di added, “but that’s how we woke up, and even stranger, the properties belonged to us. The legal paperwork was also on the counter. The deeds were in our names.”
“Why did you all have money but I didn’t?” The feeling of being excluded grew.
“I don’t know,” Di said, “but we all had ten thousand in cash, a bank card with five million dollars in our accounts, a driver’s license, a social security card, a birth certificate and the paperwork for the condos we owned. It was all neatly arranged on our kitchen counters in our mysteriously owned homes.”
I thought back to that morning when I’d woken by the dumpster in the alleyway. It would have been much less stressful if I’d had resources like that. “Jeez, that would have made life easier.”
“But at least you were able to make your way here, without money. That’s what matters,” Jacinda said soothingly.
“I have some money.” Granted, it was from people who gave it to me out of pity, insisting I take it, but it was still money. I paused as another thought struck me. “If you all have ID’s then you do know your identity, right? You just don’t remember it?”
Di eyed Flint. “No. I wish it was that easy, but all of our identification is fake. High quality fakes, but still f
akes. Flint and I looked into it and found that the hospitals of our supposed births have no records of us, not to mention our Social Security numbers all belong to dead people.”
My mouth dropped as I finally understood the enormity of what she was saying. “So, you’re saying that something or someone set this all up?”
“It’s the only way to explain it,” Di said. “If we all woke with money, similar ID’s and tattooed symbols, then we’re obviously connected and someone knows about us. I doubt one of us did this. How could we?”
I was too shocked to move.
“See what I mean?” Jet said. “Bad omen.”
I shivered.
Flint’s side warmed beside me. “That’s enough. I think we’ve explained what we need to right now. It’s been a tough morning for Lena. She doesn’t need to worry anymore.”
“No.” I shook off the bad feeling. “I want to know. Can I see the stuff you guys woke up with?”
Flint grunted in disapproval, but Di walked into her bedroom and returned with a large duffel bag. “Here.” She handed it to me.
I unzipped it. My eyes widened when I saw the considerable amount of cash. “How much is in here?”
“Forty-eight thousand, eight hundred and four dollars. Plus or minus a few pennies,” Flint replied. “We combined all of the money each of us had after we found one another.”
“We call it the pile.” Mica grinned. “There’d be more if Jet and Jacinda hadn’t blown so much of theirs.”
Jet held his hands up. “Hey, what’s a brother supposed to do when he wakes up in Vegas?”
“Gambling and designer clothes are not a good way to spend our cash,” Di said sharply.
Jacinda sighed. “I did buy most of my things on my debit card.”
“Also not a good idea,” Di replied. “Bank transactions can be tracked.”
“Anyway, as I was trying to say . . .” Mica said loudly. “We also have almost thirty million in our bank accounts, minus what the Suburban cost and what Jacinda spent. And it grows by the day with all the interest!”
I pulled out a Ziplock bag that held the licenses and social security cards. Opening the bag, I thumbed through them. “Flint Smith.” I studied Flint’s license. The address was some rural route in Wyoming. “Di Johnson.” I flipped to hers. Her address was in Wichita, Kansas. “Jacinda Jones from Phoenix, Arizona.” I kept flipping. “Jasper Brown from Salt Lake City, Utah; Jet Davis from Las Vegas, Nevada; and Mica Wilson from El Paso, Texas.” I frowned.
The Complete Lost Children Series Page 6
