by Tracey Ward
“Information from who?” Trina demands.
“Whom,” Campbell corrects, being an eternal douche.
I ignore him. “Dr. Evans’ old Intel Expert.”
“Jonnie,” Campbell adds.
He’s on a friggin’ role.
I cast him a quizzical glance, wondering why it matters. “Yeah. Jonnie. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Trina crosses her arms over her chest. “She’s the astral projector, right?”
“Right.”
“She hates us.”
I blink, glancing at Campbell. He looks at Trina doubtfully.
“That hasn’t been our experience,” he tells her carefully.
“It’s been mine. She’s a total jerk. She hates all of us. She wouldn’t come live with us because she can’t stand us. Especially Liam. You can’t trust her.”
“She’s not that bad,” Britta argues quietly.
Trina glares at her. “Are you serious? She used to watch us back when we were kids. She’s the reason Dr. Evans knew how our powers were doing until he finally just showed up and kidnapped everyone, all because Jonnie told him where to find us.” She gestures to Alex and I. “Even them.”
“Wait. What?” Alex demands. “She spied on us?”
“She spied on all of us, but she watched you like a hawk. Dr. Evans was, like, obsessed with you. He left you on the outside longer than anybody to see how you would do, but Jonnie was always watching. She saw pretty much everything you said and did for years.”
Alex’s face is aghast. She doesn’t have words, but she looks at me like she wants to scream. I can feel her energy rising with her temper, the air in the room vibrating like she’s about to Slip or flip her lid.
I nod my head slowly, encouraging her to be calm with me. “There’s a different side to every story. We should hear Jonnie’s side before we get upset.”
“There’s no other side,” Trina snaps. “Jonnie’s a stalker.”
“She’s right,” Jonnie says from behind me.
I spin around, instinctively putting myself between her and Alex. I did it the first time I saw her too, and I won’t stop myself from doing it now. It looks like I don’t trust her and I guess in my gut I don’t. To be fair, I don’t trust many people.
“About which part?” Campbell asks Jonnie.
“All I heard was that I’m a stalker, but that’s pretty accurate.”
“You’re a Spy Master.”
“Don’t dress it up as something it’s not. I informed on all of you to Dr. Evans every day. I’m a traitor.”
“Why?” Alex whispers, obviously hurt. “If you’re so willing to help us now, why did you do that to us back then?”
Jonnie doesn’t answer. She dims and brightens, thoughts passing through her like light through glass, refracting brilliantly. She doesn’t give voice to any of them.
So Campbell does it for her.
“Because when she was a kid, Dr. Evans told her family she was dead,” he explains bitterly, a rare show of genuine emotion for him. “And then he told her that they couldn’t deal with her and didn’t want her. He mentally abused her for years, convincing her that he was the only one who gave a crap about her when he never cared about anybody.”
“Campbell,” Beck hisses. He nods toward Naomi.
She stands placidly in the corner, unaffected by the accusations. Either she’s not listening, she doesn’t understand, or she just doesn’t care.
“Whatever, man. She knows who her dad was,” Campbell mumbles.
“Is that true?” Alex asks Jonnie. “He forced you to do it?”
Jonnie hesitates. “He didn’t force me. And there were days where I tried to lie. I told him nothing new had happened. Those were days I didn’t eat. Sometimes he thought I was lying when I wasn’t and I wouldn’t get to eat anyway. Eventually I started telling him everything, even little, stupid stuff, just to make sure I didn’t go hungry.”
“That’s the definition of coercion,” I tell her carefully. “Campbell is right. He abused you. Horribly.”
Jonnie doesn’t reply. She dims and she dims and she dims until I worry she’s leaving us, but a shadow of her remains. A faint remnant of the person standing somewhere else in the word with a beating heart and a break in her spirit. Someone fighting back to right the wrongs she was made to do. Someone a lot like Liam.
“Liam’s doing good,” she says softly. “The surgery is going well. The doctor said he’s sure he’ll pull through.”
“That’s good news, thanks,” Gwen tells her gently.
“How do you do that?” Alex asks suddenly. “How were you in the ER with them without them knowing?”
We all know what she’s really asking; how was Jonnie watching her all that time without her knowing about it?
To answer her, Jonnie disappears. Almost. If you know she was there before and you’re watching very closely, as all of us are, you can see the faintest outline of her. A shimmer to the air that might make you think you saw something out of the corner of your eye, but when you look for it, nothing. She looks like absolutely nothing.
“There’s a sort of nowhere I can hide in,” Jonnie explains, her voice so hollow and whisper quiet I can barely make it out. “Like being in the dark behind a curtain.”
“Like watching a play from backstage,” Campbell adds with surprising feeling. I just can’t identify which one.
Jonnie lights again but not to full strength. She takes on a hesitant hue, more out of the world than in. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
“Well, none of this answers the real question,” Justin chimes in anxiously. “Where are we going?”
I look at Campbell and Alex. Brody. Beck. Hell, I look at Naomi and Gwen. Trina and Britta. Stewart. I get the same thing from all of them; nothing. We’ve got nothing. We’re screwed.
“Whatever,” I mutter, hoisting my bag onto my shoulder. “We’ll Slip to Disneyland for now for all it matters. What’s important is we get out of here immediately. We can figure out a permanent situation in the morning when we’ve got Liam back and we aren’t on such a loudly ticking clock.”
“What about my L.A. idea?” Alex asks hesitantly. “It’s big. We could blend in. If it’s just for a night, we have enough cash to get some hotel rooms to crash.”
“With what credit card?” Campbell argues.
“I said we’ll pay cash.”
“You ever been to a hotel in America, SB? They all ask for a credit card to put on file in case you go Syd Vicious all up in their room. That’ll flag us immediately. They’ll be at our door before we get our free continental breakfast.”
“Okay, well, where do you think we should go?”
Campbell stuns the room when he points behind me. Right at Jonnie. “To her.”
“No!” Trina shouts.
“Are you serious?” I ask.
He definitely looks like he is. “She’s been hiding from them just as long as we have and she hasn’t been found. We’ve been raided three times between the two groups.”
“Not a ringing endorsement for why I should tell you where I am,” Jonnie warns quietly.
“We’ll die if you don’t,” Alex throws back at her, her voice equally hushed. “We’ll make it out tonight but we’ll be rushing. Unorganized. And once we have Liam back with us, we’ll be weaker instead of stronger. He won’t be able to move. He’ll need constant care. How many places in the world do you think we can hide eleven people and an invalid without being found out? How long will it take them to pounce on us like that? Like wounded animals.”
“Days,” I answer even though I doubt anyone wants me to.
Alex nods, still looking at Jonnie. “It’s a risk. You’ll be sacrificing your own safety and that’s up to you whether you want to do that or not, but if you let us, we’ll protect you. With everything we have. And even though we’d be bringing Campbell and he’s a royal pain, maybe it won’t be so bad to not be alone anymore.”
Jonnie brightens. It�
��s a degree, nothing more, but it’s an important one. One I feel in the energy she’s radiating through the room, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, the table. Campbell. Alex.
“Okay,” Jonnie agrees nervously. “But I’m warning you. If you get any of my horses hurt, I’ll kill you myself.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ALEX
Jonnie lives on eighty acres of no-man’s-land at the edge of Doubtful Sound, a fjord in New Zealand. There’s one rut road leading from the dock on the fjord to her land. It’s private, dead-ending at her front door, assuming you make it past her gate. If you can’t Slip in like we do, you’d need to take a boat, then walk, winding through the high, lush cliffs surrounding you on three sides, the ocean inlet at your back.
As it is, I’m not able to Slip exactly to her house. I’ve never seen it before, I’d never even heard of Doubtful Sound until she told me about it ten minutes ago, so my precision isn’t perfect. Before we left, Campbell helped me narrow it down the best we could. He pulled out a small tablet filled with multiple geography and map apps that he uses for our lessons, and they gave me a few good images to go on. When I felt confident I could at least land us on the dock at the tip of the Sound, the group gathered around me. I Slipped everyone in pairs, Campbell and Brody first. Nick and Naomi last.
That was weird.
When Naomi touched me, I immediately felt like crying and I had no idea why. Tears welled in my eyes, my lip quivered, and my heart shriveled inside my chest like a flower dying on fast-forward. I clung to Nick’s hand tightly, begging him to balance her out. To dull the fear of her, but it didn’t do any good. If anything, his strength made it worse, like an amplifier broadcasting her crazy on high. I slipped as quickly as I could because it was the only way to get it over with, to get away from it. But I made the mistake of looking at her when I did it.
Nick in a Slip is gorgeous. He’s a demi-god glowing golden and brilliant. He’s exciting. Inspiring. Pure power and love. Goodness and truth. Naomi is exactly the opposite. She’s a swirling vortex of shadow, of hate. Of fear and anger that snarls low, menacing. Smoky faces rush over her, pushing through the shadows to glare at me. To growl at me. Animals and monsters that I’ve never seen before, that I would never imagine. The fears of everyone she’s ever come in contact with building a cast of crazy inside her. I see nothing of her. Not a whisper of the pretty girl that just a minute ago sat in a silent room with wide open eyes and a carefully pursed mouth. Is that girl just a shell? A vessel for these nightmares? Or, if you dig very deeply, is there a child inside her screaming? Crying? Fighting to rise to the surface and have her real voice be heard?
I have no idea, but I do know one thing very clearly – I’ll never Slip with Naomi again. Never.
When we land, I stumble away from her, tripping over stones in the unfamiliar dark.
Nick reaches for me, his voice laced with worry. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I answer breathlessly. “A little off balance, that’s all. That was a lot of Slipping. A lot of people.”
“I should have been boosting you.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be okay in a minute. And we had to save your strength for the stones in case we needed them.” I glance at his left pocket where he always keeps them. “How many do you have left? Three?”
“Black, white, and gray,” he confirms.
I nod, feeling comforted by that fact as I look around at the night pressing in against us. At the outline of massive mountains towering over us, the cloud filled sky moonless above us. The cold water of the fjord laps quietly against the rocky shore before rebounding back into the ocean. Into the night where I lose sight of it. There’s a small dock jutting out far into the water. Running right up to it is a rugged, dirt road that I’m assuming leads to Jonnie’s home. It turns a quick corner as it weaves away from the dock, disappearing into lush, dense forest.
“You’re about three miles away from the house,” Jonnie tells us, reading our minds. She’s standing on top of a rock farther up the mountainside, her figure untouched by the breeze blowing around us. “If you want to wait here, I can come get you with my truck. You’ll all need to pack into the back together and it’s a bumpy ride, but it’s easier than hiking. It’ll only take me about twenty minutes to get here from the house.”
“Can’t you just take us?” Trina demands of me.
I scowl at her, feeling instantly and irrationally irritated. “This was as close as I could get. I’m not perfect at this.”
“Yeah. No kidding.”
“Show me your powers.”
She grunts in surprise, her darting around nervously. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Anything. I’d take anything.”
“There’s nothing electrical here.”
I gesture to Campbell. “He has a tablet in his backpack. Blow it up. Short it out.”
“Hey, let’s not go breaking my stuff,” he argues, taking a few steps back from Trina.
“It doesn’t matter. She can’t do it,” I assure him coldly. “She can’t do anything.”
Trina looks at me like I slapped her. Her face tightens, darkens under the thick lines of her makeup. “You’re a bitch.”
“And you’re a waste of abilities.”
“Alex,” Nick says quietly, his tone stern. Surprised. “Take it easy.”
I blink several times. I feel crazy tired all of the sudden. Why am I coming down on Trina so hard? It’s not like her complaining is that bad. I’ve dealt with worse. Hell, I’ve dealt with Campbell. I should be able to handle anything.
My eyes meet everyone’s in turn. They’re all staring at me; some surprised, some annoyed, some sympathetic. The one that hits me the hardest is Gwen. Her stare is empty. Uncaring. It looks a lot like Naomi’s.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, not sure who I’m apologizing to. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m tired, I think. I’ve done a lot of Slipping tonight. It’s getting to me.”
Nick comes to stand in front of me. He puts his palm to the side of my face, sliding his fingers inside my hair. He’s giving me his energy. I feel it like a warm compress against my cold skin. A soft kiss against my hardened heart. I lean into his touch, smiling wanly. Instantly feeling more like me.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
He grins, leaning forward to kiss my forehead briefly but tenderly. “Anything. Anytime.”
“Rain’s coming,” Jonnie warns, looking up at the sky. “If you want me to come get you, I better go now.”
“Yeah, please,” I tell her gratefully. “We’ll wait right here.”
“In the dark,” Trina mutters. “In the woods. I’m sure we won’t get eaten.”
“We’re strapped. We’ll be fine,” Campbell assures her patiently.
“I’m just saying, this is all really dumb.”
“We hear you. Thanks for the input.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Jonnie promises.
She disappears instantly. I jump a little at the abruptness of it.
Campbell smiles. “I love that. It’s amazing.”
“I still don’t get why she’s your favorite ability so far.”
“Then you don’t get me at all, SB.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s just something he says because it sounds interesting and mysterious, and it might keep me up at night trying to figure out what he means by it.
I realize when Jonnie is gone that we have to take her at her word that she’ll be back for us. That she even has a house here because, to be real, it doesn’t look like anyone would. We’re in the middle of nowhere and we’re going on a lot of faith that she hasn’t brought us here for nothing and disappeared forever.
Our group looks exhausted as we wait. Slowly, people set their bags down and collapse on top of them. Britta sits on hers next to Stewart, leaning into him. He doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I think he likes the affection. I doubt he gets much of it lately. I doubt any of them do.
I smile when Marcus steps up to them, offering protein bars from his bag. “We didn’t get breakfast. I thought you guys might be hungry.”
“Thanks,” Stewart says eagerly, taking his bar without hesitation.
Britta is slower to accept hers, but she smiles warmly up at Marcus when she does. “Thank you, Marcus.”
He grins shyly. “You’re welcome, Britta.”
“You guys want us to look away while you make out or do you mind if we watch?” Campbell teases. “I’m pretty starved for entertainment lately.”
Britta blushes. Marcus puts his head down, quickly turning to Trina to offer her a bar too. She shakes her head silently. Gwen and Naomi do too when he extends the offer to them, but Gwen smiles weakly at him in thanks.
That’s about the time I realize Nick is missing.
I spin in a quick circle, searching for him. At first, I don’t see him. I do another spin, more slowly this time, and that’s when I spot his outline against the slowly lightening sky. Dawn is on its way. It’d be an hour off back on the island but we must have crossed a timeline or two Slipping here. The sky on the other side of the mountains is going from black to a deep navy. The mountains are more pronounced against the light, a thick white fog wrapped around each of them at the base like a tufted skirt on a cumbersome ballerina. It’s drooping. Dripping. Crawling across the water toward us. Nick stands on the end of the long dock, staring into the Sound. Watching the morning come.
I walk out to him slowly. His head turns slightly when he hears me coming, or maybe he feels me the way he used to in the dreams. That’s immediately what I think of when I come to a stop next to him at the end of the dock. I think of the dreams and our lake that changed our lives. That brought us together again and again until we couldn’t stand to be apart.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, his eyes fixed on my face. “Beautiful.”
I smile, looking at him sideways as I stuff my cold hands in my jacket pockets. “You sweet talking me, mister?”
“Every chance I get.”
“Careful. A girl might get used to it, and then where will you be?”
