“He’s got an ex-girlfriend?” I ask. Garrett chuckles, with an eye roll.
“Yeah, he’s had a few.”
“No, I mean...” I stop talking because I meant exactly what I said. This is Sean. He’s not girl crazy.
Luckily, the elevator door opens to the courtyard and I don’t have to pry my foot out of my mouth. Sean turns to see the girl as Garrett drifts back to his brother’s side. Now I’m fascinated and want a good look at this little girl too.
On the elevator ride down, she tied back her ringlets of hair behind her ears. She’s got a roundish face, kind of like Mrs. Reese, and she’s dressed in capris and a swing shirt that billows as she bends over to heft something off the floor of the elevator. Larson shoots over to the doors, in case this pretty little girl is trying to haul up a land canon or something.
“Oh...oh!” Larson says as he looks at whatever is beyond the door frame. He blocks the way as he slouches and moves something around, checking whatever Teagan brought. I crane my head to see what’s so surprising and if it’s a threat. Mrs. Reese moves a little closer to the Addo.
“Ok, come on in,” Larson says and Teagan finally hauls in the thing that’s been holding her up.
It’s not a threat.
It’s a baby carrier.
I glance at Sean. His smile flattens out a little as Teagan hefts the carrier into the crook of her arm and weaves her way toward him. Sean walks forward, meeting her at the edge of the ring with Garrett right beside him. When Teagan reaches the Reese brothers, she sets the carrier at Garrett’s feet, looking up at him with a wide smile.
“Hi,” she says, and before Garrett can answer, she throws herself at him instead of Sean, looping her arms around his neck and crushing her lips against his mouth. The shock slaps me in the face. My first impulse should be to yank her off, because she could be trying to kill Garrett. Instead, I’m frozen as I review all the ways I might kill her for putting her mouth on him. By the time I snap out of it, he’s already peeled her off.
She stumbles backward, covering her mouth, embarrassed. Her eyes shift up to the balconies, taking in all the faces staring down at her, before she looks back at Garrett.
“Sean,” she breathes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t...”
“I’m Garrett,” Garrett says. Her eyes widen and her gaze flits to Sean, who is watching awkwardly at his brother’s side.
“I’m Sean,” he says. Teagan blushes a beautiful glow and takes a step to the side, in front of the correct brother. She laughs, both hands covering her mouth.
I get a sudden glimpse of how Teagan confused them. Sean’s hair has grown out to Garrett’s usual length and even though Sean’s a little bow-legged, it’s almost impossible to see that when he’s standing still. It’s only that knowing them like I do now, their differences make it impossible for me to mix them up. Or maybe it’s just that with Sean, I’m drawn to protect him, and with Garrett, I’m just drawn.
Sean, his hands tucked in his pockets, looks down at the baby carrier at his brother’s feet. “So, how have you been?”
“I had a baby,” Teagan beams as she glances down, into the carrier. “A little girl.”
“I see that. How old is she?”
“I had her a month ago. Well, more than that. This week—today—she’s six weeks old.”
“Six weeks ago,” he repeats. His skin seems to go a shade lighter as he stares down into the carrier. “Uh, what’s her name?”
“I haven’t named her yet.”
His eyebrows lift. “No? How come?”
“I thought her father should help me pick her name. I thought he deserved that, since he never even knew I was pregnant.”
“He didn’t?”
“No,” she says softly. Still, in the motionless and silent courtyard, she might as well be yelling. “I didn’t tell him. I’m so sorry that I didn’t.”
“Uh,” Sean’s cheeks are whiter than milk and his body is completely rigid as he clears his throat and asks, “Teagan...um...who is the father?”
She smiles up at him. “What name do you think our daughter should have, Sean?”
***
The voices explode.
We’re supposed to accept a Simple Addo who hasn’t even taken care of his responsibilities?
Are you serious, Addo? You want a man like this lead us?
Is she Alo? Is she Contego?
If she has had the sign of the Ianua, they couldn’t have had a child unless he was one of us!
Maybe he is a miracle!
They must be bound immediately! But if she’s Contego or Alo and he’s Simple...how could it happen?
Dai, standing across the room from us, curls his hands into fists. Teagan came from his Cura.
Sean looks like he might fall over; Garrett is gaping. I glance sideways at Mrs. Reese, frozen and staring at the baby carrier on the floor in front of her boys. Her bottom lip drags open, as if she wants to call out to them and can’t. The Addo stands and claps his hands to silence the room again. The baby whimpers in the carrier.
“Sean,” Addo says. “Would you like to explain?”
“Uh,” Sean, usually so assured, runs a hand through his hair as his eyes dart from Teagan, to the baby carrier, and back to the Addo. “I...uh...we were…it might be my child, sir.”
“Oh, lovely,” the Addo sighs as he smoothes his palms together. The baby cries and Teagan lifts it out of the carrier. She pushes the pink-blanketed baby at Sean and he takes it, settling the pink blob in his arms more comfortably than most guys would. Probably because he’s had so much practice with his four younger siblings. Whatever it is, the baby quiets down immediately with a soft coo.
Sean looks down at the baby and when he lifts his head, his face is frozen in shock. Garrett leans over and peers down at the baby in Sean’s arms and I watch the shock spread across his face too. Whatever they are seeing, it means something big to both of them.
“Addo,” Sean says, the depth and calm in his voice finally returning. “I don’t know what our next steps are, but this child is definitely mine.”
That’s all it takes for everybody to start shouting again, until a door across the courtyard is kicked open with a bang. Freddie Marcourt comes in sideways, his face distorted, not just from all the cuts and bruises he received from the pipe-beating during the Fury riot, but because Brandon Reese is lying unconscious and bloody, in Freddie’s arms.
CHAPTER 5
Mrs. Reese gasps, but she stands her post as we are supposed to, in the ring closest to the Addo, until Freddie crosses the room to her. All the Contego close in tightly, backs to the Addo and watchful, as Mrs. Reese begins to inspect her son. Sounds of her anguish and grief escape the huddle. My stomach turns into a hot boulder that rolls up into my throat.
“Garrett!” Mrs. Reese calls out.
Addo shouts to the balconies, “This Totus is adjourned! Let us take care of this injured boy, and we’ll finish in a bit!”
And like that, the Addo is gone. Mr. Middleditch is beside him and then the Addo seems to slide between the trees and in the throng, he vanishes. The panic whisks through me that the Addo is still vulnerable, but then a door slams off to one side and Mr. Middleditch has his hand on the knob. It’s a pretty safe bet that the door has a zillion locks and a few different booby traps ready to snap if anyone follows the Addo inside. He’s safe.
Garrett and I hurry, with Sean between us, back to Mrs. Reese. Freddie leads us to a door off the side of the courtyard. It is Mrs. Reese and Iris’s suite. The questions drop behind us from the balconies: Who is that? Is that her son? Is he one of the Ianua? Where was he? Has there been a breach?
Zane’s father is the last one I see, before the door is closed behind us, his hands in the air as he tries to settle the gossip. Then I turn and see Iris, the smile dissolving from her beautiful little face as she watches Freddie lay her brother down, like a broken dish, on the couch. Zaneen pulls Iris into her arms and carries her out of the room, through a door that bra
nches into an adjoining suite.
Brandon groans, which actually draws tiny sounds of relief from all of us. He’s alive. But as I look at him, all I see are the bruises on his face, the cuts all over his arms, the way his knee is lumped at the wrong angle, and dried blood that leaked from different holes onto his shirt and pants. All the breath I have escapes me and my field explodes.
My father is beside me. Somehow, he manages to hold up my physical body, so it doesn’t hit the floor, as I separate and stand apart from my own bones. The misty film of him glances over his shoulder at the film of me.
What are you doing? he asks. C’mon, you got to stay strong here, honey. They’re going to need you.
Me? I ask, as I watch Garrett drop to his knees beside his brother. What can I do? I can’t do anything!
You’ll see. Trust me. Now hang in there...
I slide back into myself and my field bursts, my father gone. But the questions in the room pop up all around me.
“Where did you find him, Freddie?” Mrs. Reese asks.
“He showed up at the Veritas entrance. I told both the boys about the secret door. I had to, because they uprooted it on perimeter watch and they were driving me nuts with their questions,” Freddie admits. That part isn’t surprising. Mark and Brandon have a remarkable gift for finding things they weren’t supposed to know anything about. The boys had managed to root out Nok’s tunnels beneath the Celare; Veritas tunnels that trained Seals and the FBI and the most adept spies would never even know existed—the boys had won the most impossible lottery in the world when they caught Nok exiting one.
“Mark wasn’t with him?” Sean asks.
“No, it was only Brandon.” Freddie’s eyes drop to the floor. “I saw him staggering in on the cameras. He was all alone. He hit the doorbell and collapsed.”
“When did he get here?” Garrett asks. Freddie rubs his nose and looks away.
“About forty-five minutes ago. We had to secure the entry before we could bring him in and then check him out to be sure there was nothing on him.”
“He’s a little kid!” Sean erupts. “You just left him out there? Even when you saw what kind of shape he’s in?”
Mrs. Reese bites her bottom lip. It takes a moment before her shaky words emerge.
“There is a protocol,” she says and Freddie looks at the floor when she pats him on the shoulder. “And I’m glad that you followed it, Freddie, even when it was my son.”
I am dizzy and breathless, thinking of Brandon stumbling to the hotel all alone and thinking of what could’ve happened to make him look like this. Maybe The Fury caught him and beat him. Or maybe it’s all because I collapsed the hotel on him and Mark.
The Addo steps into the room, from who knows where. He comes in quietly and moves close to the couch, looking over Garrett’s shoulder at Brandon.
We all watch as Garrett’s strong hands move in a meticulous, gentle current over the top of his brother’s body. I am desperate with how much I want Garrett’s healing to work. On the third pass of his hands, Garrett hovers longer over some of the cuts. His hands flinch at other places, like at Brandon’s left elbow, his wrist, his right kneecap.
Once he reaches Brandon’s feet, Garrett closes his eyes and says, “I need as much as I can get, Addo.”
“You got it,” Addo says and closes his eyes. Addo puts his hand on Garrett’s shoulder and begins to hum. It’s the same kind of hum I remember from my mom’s Memory ceremony, when my eyes closed involuntarily and I was able to connect with my mom again, even though she’d died. Mrs. Reese immediately joins the hum, placing her hand on the Addo’s shoulder, and Freddie’s hum starts next, deep and soft, placing his hand on Mrs. Reese’s shoulder.
The hum sends a throbbing panic right through the center of my chest. Brandon must be dying. He sure looks it, all crooked and cut and covered in blood. But he can’t be too broken for Garrett to heal. He just can’t.
The air isn’t coming fast enough. My eyes are starting to bulge as I turn my gaze wildly on Sean. His face is pinched with concern for his brother, and I see how desperate he is for something to happen, but I don’t know what. The humming closes in on me and I can only suck in thin ribbons of air. My head starts to spin.
“Don’t fight it, Nalena,” Sean whispers. “Please. They need you.”
I reach out, clawing for him when I can’t pull another breath, but instead of reaching Sean, my palm lands hard on Freddie’s shoulder. Freddie doesn’t even flinch when my forehead hits his back. And instead of passing out from lack of oxygen, the hum explodes inside my throat too. My eyes slam shut. I crash down into the family’s stream of healing energy with the ease of a junkyard car released from a magnet.
But once I’m there, I’m there. I feel everyone surging together like generators, our energies building and pressing forward, toward Garrett. I can’t hold back. I leak out of myself, not all of me, but some, just like when my field deploys and I leave my body, except that I’m not completely leaving. It’s a very specific kind of strength that goes, not like the muscles and bones kind, but more like the stuff that makes me feel springy, almost like when I finish a long run or made my mom laugh. It’s kind of like when I finally figured out how to move my Cavises. But it is exactly the kind of strength I feel when Garrett grins at me, pulls me close, and presses his lips to mine. That’s it. This strength is the same as feeling whole.
Garrett suddenly lifts his head and his eyes are on me.
“Yes,” he says. “Whole. Gather that and aim it right at me, Nali.”
His gaze brings a charge with it and my body responds. As his eyes move over me, my body fills with longing and pride. I am light and buoyant and laughter bubbles in my heart and stomach. I return the uncontrollable waterfall of happiness that he gives to me. The depth of his voice hits the chord inside me that lights up every inch of me. I tingle, as if his hands are moving over my naked skin as I drop into his gaze. His smile sends me a final, crazy zap of static that nearly throws my head back. I inhale as deeply as I can, pulling in as much as I can of Garrett, and I feel what happens. My body distills his gaze, his scent, his touch, and his tone into one perfect, white-hot blaze that could light the Earth, send rockets to Pluto, cure cancer.
My spirit suddenly wells up, too big to stay inside me, and the perfect energy pushes at the edges of me for a release. It wants to return to Garrett. The wild surge of it pulses down my arms and into my fingertips. It’s like trying to hold onto an uncontrollable garden hose or holding my breath too long. Trying to keep it bottled up inside me is painfully impossible.
But now I understand exactly what Garrett wants me to do. I aim, not really with my hands, but with my mind, firing the energy out of me and toward Garrett. My body exhales in such a huge burst that once it’s all gone, I feel a split-second of total relief and total emptiness.
Garrett braces himself as the energy rushes at him, but then he tips his head back and inhales. It’s a long, deep breath that fills his lungs, but it also opens up his entire body, making room for the energy that comes blasting into him.
It is only another second before I see the indigo flicker in his chest. Garrett’s signature healing color brightens inside him like a light bulb, dialed up from a dimmer switch. The glow spreads and fills up his frame, until it’s all the way to the ends of his hands and feet. Then he moves his hands in steady, methodical circles and swishes over the top of his brother, as if he’s playing an instrument. He pauses at several of the gashes, but when he reaches the twisted knee, Garrett lingers, concentrating the flow of indigo that pours from him.
Brandon’s torso suddenly heaves upward, off the couch, and a horrible moan breaks out of him, as if he’s been cracked open. Mrs. Reese’s face mirrors his agony, although she is still humming with her eyes closed. I watch as a burst of white energy gushes from her and marbles itself into Garrett’s indigo. Still, Brandon lets out another moan.
Garrett continues to work, but with one hand, he reaches up and skims his
middle fingertip down the center of Brandon’s forehead, right between his brother’s eyes. The tension in Brandon’s body immediately collapses and Garrett’s hands return to his brother’s knee.
“It’s okay now, buddy, you’re going to be perfect,” Garrett murmurs soft assurances as the indigo swells again over Brandon’s knee. The color intensifies, but it doesn’t make any difference, since Brandon is unconscious.
***
Once Garrett is finished, Mrs. Reese asks the Addo to take us to Freddie’s suite, so that she can take care of Brandon. She gives Sean a thin-lipped frown and tells him that she wants to speak with him later.
That’s enough to shut all of us up, as we file out through the same adjoining door that Zaneen had exited through earlier with Iris. When we’re all inside Freddie’s suite, he closes the door to Mrs. Reese’s room.
Freddie’s apartment looks just like all the others, except that one corner reminds me of the media room at my high school. There are a bunch of TVs, things on tripods, mirrors and all sorts of equipment and wires with a bench right in the middle of it, as if Freddie sits here, staring at the sprawling pile of technology all day.
Iris is sitting on the floor with her worn teddy bear, Mr. Boodles, sagging from her arm and a newer, white bear is parked right next to her. Zaneen is on the other side of the new bear.
“Is Brandon gonna be okay?” Iris looks up, wide-eyed, and Sean swoops down, scooping her, and all her bears, up in his arms.
“He’s going to be fine, sweet pea,” Sean says. “Garrett took care of him.”
“Did you do it good?” Iris asks and Garrett nods.
“The goodest,” he tells her with a grin. He tugs the ear of the white bear in her arms. “Who’s this?”
“Addo gave her to me.” Iris wipes her nose with the palm of her free hand. “Me and Addo named her Willow. Isn’t that a pretty name, Nali? Addo said Willow’s a pretty name.”
Jamb (The Cornerstone Series) Page 6
