The Replaced

by Kimberly Derting

  “You’re not what I was expecting.” There was no point pretending I trusted her. I reached for one of the polished green grapes and bit into it.

  Food might not exactly be the same anymore, but fruit somehow tasted less cardboard-y than most other things. It might not be powdered-doughnut good or anything, but it was the closest to the taste I remembered from before.

  She crossed her arms, a small frown pushing her brows together. “What were you expecting?”

  I chose another grape, purple this time. I let the juice, sweeter than the green one, roll over my tongue. Shrugging, I answered, “I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be grilled, maybe get the whole good-cop, bad-cop routine, while you guys tried to find out what we’re doing here.” I smiled because saying it out loud made it sound kind of absurd. “Maybe a little waterboarding.”

  She smiled too, and I was bombarded by a sensation of wanting to please her. If she was anything, she was definitely the good cop. “What makes you think I’m not here for information?”

  I pulled off a corner of the cheese, forcing myself to remember she was one of them—part of the camp holding us captive. “Just so you know, I don’t know anything important.” I wasn’t lying, at least not yet. The computers were Jett’s department, and weapons were Willow’s area of expertise. Simon was so damn secretive that even if there was anything to know, he never would have told me anyway.

  I glanced at my watch. 12:52. I wished she’d just get to the point. I wanted to be taken to where Simon and Jett and the others had been moved to already.

  “Why are we being held like this? We didn’t do anything wrong. When can I see my friends?” I met her deep brown eyes and tried to decide if there was anything unusual about them, like Simon’s and Natty’s, and Buzz Cut’s, whose blue was so charged, it practically pulsed. This girl’s cocoa-color eyes were deep and rich, but also very ordinary. Outside, I could hear voices yelling—the sounds of drills being called. I itched to look down at my watch again, but I held firm on the girl, determined not to give her any insight on me.

  She shifted her weight and I purposely avoided looking at her as she uncrossed her arms. “Let me ask you a question, Kyra.” Hearing her say my name shouldn’t have surprised me. I’m sure they all knew who we were by now, but there was something about the way she said it. Her voice was low and she leaned forward expectantly. “Who is it you belong to? Simon or Thom?” She examined me closely, and that feeling of wanting her to like me vanished. Now I just wanted her to stop staring.

  Her choice of wording made my skin itch.

  I might feel a certain amount of loyalty to each of them, for different reasons, but I was my own person. I made my own choices. “I don’t belong to either of them,” I insisted.

  “Ooh, a loner. I like that.” She got to her feet and stared down at me now. “We could use a girl like you around here.”

  When she reached down and pushed a piece of my damp hair from my face, I jerked away from her. “Who are you? Where’s Griffin? I think there’s some confusion—we just came here because we needed a place to hide . . .”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “There’s no confusion. We know why you’re here.”

  Except I was still confused. “So . . . why hold us prisoner like this? I thought the Returned worked together. . . .”

  “There are a lot of things you still don’t understand, although I can’t say I’m totally surprised. Simon does that, keeps things to himself; he was always that way. And Thom’s no better—he’s always been a man of few words. Even when they were here, it was hard to know what either of them was thinking.”

  “So . . . you . . . you knew them?” She had my full attention then. It hadn’t crossed my mind, that she’d been here when they had. That this girl might know things about them, and their pasts, that I didn’t.

  She sighed, giving me a conciliatory look. “You really have no clue, do you?”

  There was a sharp rap on the door, and then Buzz Cut stepped inside. The brown-eyed girl was halfway across the room before the door had even swished closed again.

  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I was riveted by the two of them, by the way they interacted. It was off somehow. Buzz Cut sat tight, just inside the doorway, until she was invited to join the other girl. And when she did, she kept her voice low and her hands at her sides. I couldn’t quite name her demeanor, but she was well-mannered. Quiet.

  Not at all the way she’d been with me, and almost the exact opposite of the way she’d been with Simon.

  When she was finished, Buzz Cut waited stiffly for a response, which was also whispered. It made me wish I had super-hearing on top of the whole seeing-in-the-dark thing, because I was dying to know what they were saying.

  It was okay, though, because I’d figured something out just by watching them, and I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner.

  I waited until Buzz Cut had shut the door, leaving us alone again. “Oh my god,” I accused. “You’re Griffin. You’re the guy we came here to see.” No wonder she knew so much about Simon and Thom. She was the reason we were here. She was the person they thought would help us.

  The girl put her hands together once, twice, three times in a long, slow clap as she appraised me, as if seeing me in a whole new light. “And here I was, starting to think you might be on the slow side. Took you long enough.”

  I ignored the jab, because it wasn’t like she’d given me a lot to work with, what with the whole you-should-eat act, and the You’re safe, trust me thing. How was I supposed to know she was the one in charge of this operation? “What kind of name is Griffin? For a girl, I mean?” I jabbed back.

  Her expression closed off. “My dad wanted a son. I was something of a disappointment.”

  It was a sad answer, if it was an honest one, and it made me wonder how old she was, or where she’d been born. The idea of being a letdown simply because of your gender was foreign to me, completely antiquated. I could hardly fathom it.

  My dad had never made me feel anything but wanted, loved . . . cherished. Suddenly the comment about her name made me feel like I’d sucker-punched her for no good reason. “Sorry,” I said, wishing I could take it back. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  She tried waving it off. “Don’t give it a second thought. I don’t. Water under the bridge, so to speak. Old news.” But the waver in her voice made me think it wasn’t such old news.

  She recovered like a champ, and came back with that same smile she’d been wearing when she’d first walked in, like she was trying for a do-over. “So here’s the thing,” she said. “I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. What can I do to fix that?” I wondered if she knew how transparent she was.

  But I wanted answers, and maybe if I played along, I could get a few before she revealed her true intentions.

  What was it Thom had said? There was always an end game with Griffin.

  I plucked up a slice of apple and leaned back on the bench. I had to tread carefully. Griffin wasn’t stupid. “So if you guys were friends—you and Simon and Thom—then why are we being treated like this? Why ambush us at all?”

  She took her spot on the bench again, facing me, and I tried to gauge her reaction. She was definitely suspicious, and regarded me warily. If we’d been predators, it would have been hard to tell just who was circling who. But I knew she was the one who held all the real power here. She might want me to answer some of her questions, but ultimately, we were in her custody.

  “First,” she started, “I never said we were friends. I said I knew them. Second, you were wrong when you said you’re being held prisoners. You’re not. But look at this from my perspective: You guys just show up here, with absolutely no warning at all, saying you’re being chased by the Daylighters. For all I know, you’ve just led those sons-a-bitches right to our doorstep. You can’t fault me for wantin’ to take some precautions.” She took a grape from my plate and slid it into her mouth. “We can never be too careful. Surely you’
ve learned that much?”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. But I have some questions too.” When she gave an unenthusiastic shrug and turned to inspect her cuticles, I took that as my cue to continue. “Why aren’t you friends?” Her eyes slid up from her nails, so I elaborated. “You said you knew Thom and Simon, but you said you weren’t friends. Why is that?”

  “Actually,” she corrected smugly, “I didn’t say that either. You need to pay better attention. I never said whether we were friends or not.” She put extra emphasis on the “or not,” and I got the sense she got off on playing mind games, twisting everything around until you weren’t sure what your original point even was.

  I decided to play my own game—the waiting game—and I refused to give her the slightest hint that she was getting to me. Instead of checking my nails, I tapped my foot to a song only I could hear, settling on “Womanizer” by Britney Spears, not because I loved the song or anything but because it was the first beat that popped into my head.

  I felt a huge sense of satisfaction, like I’d just won the lottery or something, when Griffin blinked first, saying: “We were once—the three of us. We were close. I thought I could trust them back then, that I could count on them.” She made a sour face. “Turns out you can never count on anyone but yourself. They were as undependable as everyone else I’ve ever trusted.”

  I tried to attach that word to either of them, Simon or Thom—undependable—but I couldn’t make it fit. They were a lot of other things . . . things she’d said. Simon was secretive, plus he was annoying as hell, and Thom was soft-spoken and reserved.

  But undependable? Not in my experience.

  “What happened to change things between you?” I asked.

  “Did you know they used to be the best of friends?” Griffin asked, her brown eyes glittering like she was telling me something off-limits.

  I was stunned, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe I should’ve guessed all along. Only people who really knew each other, and who cared what the other thought, could get under each other’s skin so thoroughly.

  “They once considered themselves brothers. Better than brothers. They used to say their bond was stronger because it hadn’t been forged by the mere circumstance of birth, something as incidental as a shared womb.” It’s true, her nod confirmed. “No, they shared something even more important: experiences. They’d chosen to be family, to stand side by side and have each other’s backs, no matter what.” My curiosity was ripe. The idea of Simon and Thom once being brother-like was almost as impossible as the idea of sharing DNA with aliens.

  Griffin kept going. “They believed those bonds were the hardest to break. Except that wasn’t exactly true. They might not break, but they could certainly be stressed—tested and weathered—and those stresses could cause chinks that ultimately led to fractures.” It was almost as if she were repeating a story, the way she spoke. One she’d repeated again and again, like some twisted fairy tale. She reminded me of an elementary school teacher reading during story time, dropping her voice for effect and using exaggerated facial expressions.

  Griffin was like that: theatrical.

  I asked again, “What happened?”

  When she blinked, her composure faltered and her vision drifted back into focus, and she seemed surprised to find me sitting across from her, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “A girl,” she answered haltingly. “It all came apart over a girl.”

  It took her a moment to recover, but when she did, her eyes brightened. “You should’ve known them before all that. They were different people then. We all were.” She shook her head longingly. “We used to have so much fun together as recruiters.

  “Our job was to go out and find the new Returned and bring them back here,” she explained. “We did that by making them feel safe, special. We were the best at what we did. It wasn’t hard. We each had our own techniques, and we were damn good at it. It wasn’t necessarily intentional, but the girls were always drawn to Thom and Simon. You wouldn’t know it now, but the two of them together were very . . . charming, and those poor girls were scared and vulnerable. They needed someone they could lean on. A shoulder . . . or two.”

  No matter how uncomplicated Griffin tried to make Simon and Thom’s relationship sound, it was almost impossible to imagine. All I’d witnessed were the two of them avoiding, antagonizing, or barely tolerating each other.

  Friends . . . the “best of friends” . . . crazy.

  But Griffin just kept talking. “By the time Simon and Thom had explained what had happened to them—where they’d been taken and how they’d been . . . changed—those girls were willing to follow Simon and Thom anywhere, to become the newest member of the Blackwater Ranch. We had become her new family.” She grinned, her shrug less than coy. “Me, I had different assets. I was in charge of recruiting the boys.”

  I thought of the almost-spell I’d fallen under when I’d first met her, the way I’d wanted her to like me, and I could only imagine how unsuspecting boys might feel around her, wanting to please her, to make her notice them. I felt a little queasy thinking of the three of them using their charms to persuade people to join their camp.

  “And what if someone didn’t want to be part of your family?”

  Griffin’s smile slipped as her eyes narrowed. “The doors were always open. Franco never forced anyone to stay.”

  Franco? I’d never heard that name before, but it wasn’t tough to guess he’d been in charge back then . . . back when Griffin and Simon and Thom had been “recruiters.” I wondered if Griffin had used her assets to scheme her way to the top.

  “If everything was so great here, why did Simon and Thom leave?”

  “Weren’t you even listening?” Griffin scowled. “Their friendship, that bond I mentioned, when push came to shove, it all fell apart over a girl.”

  “What girl? Where is she now?”

  Griffin laughed, but not like I’d said something amusing and she was laughing with me. It was more like I’d said something stupid and she was laughing at me. “I love it. Love. It.” She clapped her hands together. “I can’t believe no one’s told you. All this time, and no one’s clued you in.” She bit her lip, her eyes bright. She couldn’t wait to drop this bomb; it was written all over her face.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, just say it.” I sighed heavily.

  “Willow.” She spat the name quickly, like she didn’t want it in her mouth for too long. Then she sat back and waited for my response.

  My mouth fell open. “Our . . . Willow?” I finally managed, super slowly, because the very idea was so . . . out there. “The one we came here with?” But I already knew it was that Willow. How many Willows were there? “I don’t understand.” I hadn’t even realized Thom knew Willow, at least not before Silent Creek.

  I could tell Griffin was loving this, having the upper hand. “I figured as much . . . that whole secret-keeping thing Simon does.”

  “So, what’d she do, exactly? How did she come between them?”

  “In case you haven’t figured it out for yourself, Willow’s toxic. She’s dangerous and she’s toxic. If it hadn’t been for your Willow, things might never have changed. We had a good thing going before she came along. I can’t believe Simon thought he could bring her back here after all these years.”

  I frowned. “It’s not like we had a lot of options. We needed your help. Besides, I think you have the wrong idea about Willow.”

  Griffin’s jaw tightened and her fists clenched. “And you have a lot to learn about who you can and can’t trust,” she stated, leaving little room for argument.

  “Where is she?” I asked, thinking of the way Willow had been separated from us from the start. “Where’s Willow now?”

  Griffin got up, her brown eyes sending a shiver of warning up my spine. “She’s fine. For now.” Her boots echoed off the tiles as she strode toward the door. “I could be your ally, Kyra—you should remember that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN


  Day Thirty

  Blackwater Ranch

  NOT BEING A PRISONER WAS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE being a prisoner, despite what Griffin said.

  The only positive side of my captivity was that I hadn’t been forced into solitary confinement since Natty and I had been assigned to be not-cellmates. While that part was awesome, we hadn’t had word from Simon, Thom, Willow, or Jett in two whole days, which felt like an eternity when you hardly slept and were basically under house arrest.

  Two new sunrises to endure, both of which felt like they were getting worse. More painful. And two days of letting our imaginations wander. It was a dangerous pastime, especially when the person detaining you was a gun-toting whack job holding a grudge.

  Natty and I had been moved, and our new accommodations were less jail-like and more bunk-like, and now I understood what all the tents here were used for: barracks. Our tent was not what I’d call luxurious, but it was the smell that bothered me most, a combination of dank mold and mildew, which seemed odd considering we were surrounded by nothing but sand.

  We were pretty easy to guard, though, since there was only a single tent flap leading inside, with no windows or vents to circulate the stale air.

  But at least in the two days we’d been here, I’d had a few opportunities to practice my ability.

  “You stand guard,” I whisper-told Natty, in case Buzz Cut, who refused to tell me her real name, was lingering somewhere on the other side of our tent.

  Natty hopped off her bunk and positioned herself in front of the inside of our tent flap. “Maybe this time it’ll work,” she said, her eyes gleaming expectantly, and I wondered if this was how she’d looked back when she’d waited for Little House on the Prairie to come on.

  Half grinning, I turned to the pile of discarded clothes I’d left in a heap on the floor. I tried to tap into that frenzied state of frustration Simon had convinced me was responsible for sparking my newfound skill. But it wasn’t always easy to summon.

  The “getting pissed” approach was tough, mostly because it was hard to find someone to get mad at. I’d already tried Austin, Tyler’s brother and my ex-boyfriend. Austin and I had spent our whole lives falling in love, and when I’d been returned, I’d still loved him. Only that hadn’t been enough for Austin. He’d already moved on. With my best friend.