Call Forth the Waves (21 page)

“But I don’t want you to go away, too.”

She had two special talents—invisibility and finding the softest part of a person’s heart to press—but I couldn’t let her get to me this time. She wanted us because we were familiar. We weren’t what she needed.

“I’d rather risk me going away than risk you ending up locked in the dark again,” I said.

The wardens didn’t care that Birdie was a child or too scared to show her face. She was leverage, and I wouldn’t let her be that anymore. She deserved to be a regular kid, without having to wonder if a madman was going to throw her off the Center’s rim to see if she could fly.

Fortunately, I knew her weakness as well as she knew mine.

“Don’t think this is a vacation,” I told her. “I’m counting on you to protect Anise for me, and Winnie’s family, too. At the first sign of trouble, you make them disappear. That’s your job. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She wiped her nose, but she stopped crying.

“Keep teaching Dev to walk that wire. You can show him off when I come back.”

“You’ll come back?”

“Try and stop me.”

“Promise?” She held up her pinkie.

“Promise.” I hooked our fingers together.

Dev appeared again, skidding into the hut like he’d run through the walls. The smell of cinnamon was so strong now that it burned my nose and eyes.

“Who’s next?” he asked.

“We are,” Nola said.

Birdie gave us each a hug, and Nola took her by the hand.

“I won’t let anything happen to her,” she said to me.

“You’d better not.”

If anything happened to my little bird, the Celestine had carte blanche, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for what she did with it.

Dev took Nola’s other hand, and then they were gone.

“I’ll watch out for them, too,” Ollie offered. “It’s the least I can do, considering you could have left us all behind.” He took a seat on the ground beside Anise to wait for Dev to come back.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

I picked up my father’s briefcase. Klok stuffed Xerxes into his pack with Bijou. The creeper lights piled inside, refusing to be left behind.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Before we lose anybody else.”

Our next obstacle was transportation.

A girl alone could hitchhike. Dangerous, sure, but not so bad for someone touched who had already survived what I’d been through. No killer in his right mind would hassle me.

A pair of us could have still gotten a ride, but not five, and especially not when one of us was Klok. People on the road took one look at him and either sped up to pass us by or moved to the next lane. We couldn’t use the golems while the Commission was in the area armed with spikes and hummers, and walking was too slow. Eventually, someone would make a phone call, and then we’d be sunk. Getting where we needed to go would take some drastic measures.

“Statistically, attractive girls who reveal various patches of skin are offered more rides, and they acquire them faster than groups including boys,”
Klok rat-tatted.
“Penn and Winnie are not ugly. Perhaps they should alter their attire while the rest of us hide.”

“If I could reach your face, I’d slap you,” Winnie told him.

“I rechecked the data. The statistics are correct. I am being helpful because no one else has ideas,”
he huffed and cited his sources on his screen.

“A couple of crop tops won’t get us a ride if you three pop out of the bushes and scare the first truck that pulls over,” I told him. “And most cars aren’t going to have enough space for us. We’ve got to rethink this. Klok, I need you to put those ears of yours to use and find us something big, like a van. Once you’ve found one, let me know. Winnie and I can take care of the rest.”

He took his assignment seriously, kneeling with his hands to the asphalt and his eyes closed so that nothing could distract him from his task. We didn’t have to wait long before he signaled.

“Suitable transportation is approaching.”

I kicked a fissure into the road that left it a craggy mess. A blue bus came over the slope and stuck in the hole. It was one of those tour buses that take retirees to casinos, and it was completely empty.

Good citizens that we were, we ran to help.

Anise would not have approved of this plan.

“Are you okay?” Birch asked the driver.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It felt like an earthquake,” Winnie said.

“In this part of the country?”

The man shook his head, like the short stop had addled him. He noticed Klok behind Jermay’s shoulder on the passenger side and turned suddenly nervous.

“I’d better call this in and get some help out here.” He reached for the radio; I touched the side of the bus, blocking every signal with static.

“We can help you,” Jermay offered. “It’s just a few rocks blocking your wheels.”

We were too eager and too desperate. The man smelled a trap.

“If it’s money you kids want . . .” he began, but Winnie pulled the door open and stepped up inside so that they were face-to-face before he could finish.

“Actually, all I want is to talk you for a second,” she said.

CHAPTER 20

I hadn’t traveled in a regular vehicle since I was small enough for Evie to carry on her hip. On one of the trips my sisters and I took with our father, we drove around town in a cab. Other than that, we took the train and we walked, because The Show was no good unless we were all on display.

Soft seats. Air conditioning. I could have lived like that happily for the rest of my life. Driving and driving down an endless road with no destination other than “away,” and I could understand how my father had fallen into the trap of thinking that kind of existence would keep him out of range of his problems, and ours. But like everything else about The Show, it had been an illusion.

On the bus, Winnie sat in the front seat, as near as possible to the driver. Her ability was strongest when she was close to the person she needed to control. She hated what we’d asked her to do, and every once in a while, I could hear her trying to reassure the man that nothing bad was going to happen to him. She apologized and tried to explain that we were desperate, leaving out the details of why, but promising that it was just a little longer. Always just a little longer.

In the rearview mirror I could see that the driver was sweating and terrified, wanting nothing more than to turn off or turn around and let us out, but we kept going.

Most of the towns were small. We stopped once for gas in a place that had gone out of its way to re-create a mid-twentieth-century feel. Different municipalities had different ideas of what “safe” looked like, but they all agreed that re-creating the past was the key to protecting our future. The Medusae had never showed interest in us before we ventured out beyond our planet, so to most people, it was logical to go back to a time before such travel was possible.

At the next pump was a woman in a car meant to recall the finbacked classics of that era. More illusion. Her vehicle was sleek and much darker than the pastel colors favored by the land boats people drove in the mid-twentieth century. Inside, it was as modern as anything, with digital displays and a smart engine with a terabyte of memory for data storage.

It didn’t matter. She played the part, chattering away on her cell phone in a flower-print A-line with kitten heels, and everyone around her pretended that it made a difference. The Medusae hadn’t returned, so it must have been working.

They had no idea what was really going on.

The last town we passed hadn’t gone so far in their refacing. Their streets looked exactly as they had twenty-four years ago at the onset of the Great Illusion. There were a few updated cars and repainted buildings, but most everything had ground to a halt with the arrival of the Medusae, and never started up again. Afraid to move or breathe because it might be just enough to tip the scales out of humanity’s favor. Cross your fingers, don’t step on the cracks, and fold the ladders away.

“We’re going to have to stop,” Winnie announced after we’d driven for several more hours.

“Here?” Jermay asked. “Did you not notice those posts we passed a while back? We’re in Death Valley. This is a dry town!”

Dry towns were increasingly common. Dampening posts were installed around the town lines with a lattice of wires above to function like the Faraday cage my father used to contain The Show. They allowed the town to control who had access to tech and when, and they always came with a strictly enforced curfew. As the sky grew darker, they’d tighten the noose, strangling all public electronic output until it was nonexistent or imposing hefty fines for violations. Death Valley was the nickname for the longest consecutive stretch of enforced curfews in the country. It spread constantly, drawing new citizens into its false promises of protection.

“If I push him any further, it’s going to do permanent damage,” Winnie said adamantly. “He’s done, and so am I.”

She instructed our driver to take us somewhere we could get a room, and then to turn around and drive back across the town line, where he could pull over and sleep off the effects of her touch. Once he woke up, we’d be vaporous as a dream, with shifting features and no names. He would never know if he’d actually picked us up or not.

I felt bad for the man. He had a good heart that prevented him from dumping us at the nearest fleabag motel we passed. Winnie’s sob stories and apologies must have gotten through. He drove us to the door of a three-tower hotel that had limos and town cars waiting out front for guest use. The five of us piled out, and he took off. If there had been any cops around, he would have earned himself a speeding ticket.

People looked at us funny, looked at us sideways, and outright stared like it didn’t matter if we could see them or not. We looked exactly like people who had been on the road for hours. We didn’t match the décor, and we didn’t have any luggage except for my father’s briefcase and Klok’s backpack and satchels.

A man wearing an earpiece, a white shirt, and slacks came to meet us in the driveway. Security or a valet. Someone responsible for keeping up appearances and keeping out the riffraff.

“Are you kids lost?” he asked, sizing up Klok to see if he was an adult or not. “This is the Harts and Palms. Maybe your bus was supposed to drop you off at the Palm Tree Family Resort? Is he your chaperone? Are you meeting your parents?”

He pointed to a giant sign bearing the image of a pair of deer sharing umbrella drinks under a palm tree.

“Um . . . yeah, I think that’s the place,” Birch said. “The bus must have made a mistake.”

“Then we’ll get you a ride to where you need to be. One of our cars can take you.”

“Could we speak to someone at the desk?” Winnie asked in the way that only she could. “The driver took off with most of our stuff. We don’t have a phone or the other hotel’s number so we can check in with our folks.”

“Sure thing,” the man said politely, though visibly confused as to why he was agreeing when his intent had been to hustle us off. “We’ll get you fixed up in a snap.”

He held the door open for us, as it was the kind that locked on exit so that only registered guests could come and go. Winnie whispered a few more words that left him certain we were all society women in matching green jackets who’d come as a group to enjoy the casino.

“Enjoy your stay, ladies,” he said. “Good luck at the tables. Number nine’s due for a win!”

No wonder people like Ollie were afraid of Winnie. She could ask for the world, and someone would get it for her.

We stepped into the lobby and into another dimension where all floors were made of marble and inscribed with gold leaf in the shape of leaping deer. The chandelier, which was big enough that Klok had to sidestep it, was gold, too, as were the railings for people to lean on as they walked down the red-carpeted halls. Men and women wearing theatrical bellhop uniforms bustled from place to place, pushing carts filled with bags.

“Look at the size of this place,” Birch said. “Are all hotels like this?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him.

I’d never been to a hotel, either. I’d seen them in movies, but most of those weren’t half as grand as what I was able to feel beneath my fingers. I skimmed them over chairs upholstered with silk, and wood so polished that it shined like metal.

“They’ll never think to look for us here, that’s for sure,” Jermay said.

Even if they did, they’d never get in the front door. People who paid for places like this were the kind of people with powerful friends.

Winnie set her sights on the woman in charge of the check-in desk. A round-faced, bespectacled sugarplum with a suit coordinated perfectly to her fellow desk-dwellers, right down to the buttons that matched the seal on the floor.

Winnie marched up to her, mimicking some of the people milling around the lobby, and folded her hands on the desk the way the guests on either side of her were doing.

“May I help you?” the woman asked.

“We need a room large enough for all of us, preferably on a floor with no public access,” Winnie said.

I didn’t know hotels had floors like that. We’d have multiple layers of locks between us and the outside world.

The woman’s face went blank. She began typing and mumbling to herself, considering rooms and rejecting them for not meeting the criteria.

“Perfect. Room 1201 is still open. It’s a penthouse suite overlooking the—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Winnie said. “It’s closed for renovation and repair.”

“Ah, yes.” The woman laughed and slapped her forehead. “How silly of me. Of course it is. I’ll just note that in the log so as to avoid any future booking errors.”

“We need extra keys,” I said, nudging Winnie. The woman handed them over.

“We were never here, and you never saw us,” Winnie said. “On-site security is down, too.”

I laid my hand against the back of her computer and passed a small electrical burst through it. If I’d done it correctly, all she’d see was snow from every camera that fed into the main system.

“Repair crew is already here.” Winnie nodded to Klok and the guys. I imagined that the woman didn’t see the raggedy android we all knew, but a man with a tool bag and work jumper. “We’ve got orders to stay until the job is done. Which way are the elevators?”

Winnie wasn’t nearly as happy with her success rate as I was. Using her touch against Arcineaux was one thing, but the driver and the desk lady hadn’t hurt us. They weren’t threatening us with anything worse than a chauffeured ride to another hotel. We’d become liars and thieves; that was the price of survival.

We waited silently for the elevator to reach the top floor, sealed in by mirrored walls that reflected our faults back in infinite numbers until we faded away, smaller and smaller, into a distance with no real depth. The counter dinged and the doors opened, revealing a second set made of etched, inlaid glass.

I braced myself for the sound of thumping knives that never came.

“Not the Aerie,” I murmured to myself. “Not the Center.”

Birch squeezed my hand as he brushed past. He must have been having the same thoughts.

Beyond the elevator was another small lobby made of a pinker marble than the kind used for the floors downstairs and furnished with a long table set up with a platter of fruit beneath a mirror. On either side of the table was a set of double doors designed to keep the space perfectly symmetrical.

“There aren’t any numbers,” Birch said. “Which one’s the room?”

“Guys . . . I think
it’s all
the room.” Winnie checked the card in her hand. The number 1201 had been inscribed on a plate beside the closing elevator doors.

Xerxes wiggled out of the satchel Klok never put down, knocking several creeper lights loose with him. Bijou poked his head out but was happy to keep riding piggyback for the time being.

“She did say it was a penthouse,” I said as Xerxes took a running start and smashed into one set of doors. They swung into the next room and slammed against the doorstop at the bottom.

“Wow,” Birch said.

Whatever rabbit hole we’d slipped into by entering the Harts and Palms, we’d just fallen down another level.

“Wow,” I repeated. The room deserved the double take.

It was a two-story palace with a second floor rimmed in clear glass panels. The windows, which made up one entire curved wall, cut through both floors. There was a fridge filled with food and sodas, couches, multiple bedrooms, and even an office, where I deposited my father’s briefcase and computer on the desk.

Klok turned two of the TVs on to different news stations.

“We should listen for indications of Commission activity,”
he said.
“And game shows. I’m good at those.”

Someday, I would figure out how his brain prioritized information. For now, I just rolled with it.

“Pull the curtains,” Winnie said. “And look for the pay box. A place this nice should have at least one per room.”

There were loopholes when it came to functioning in dry towns, and they were all neatly detailed in a bulleted brochure on one of the tables. The laws said that tech couldn’t be
observed
after dark, so hotels like ours outfitted the nicer rooms with layer upon layer of blackout curtains, preventing anyone outside from seeing if screens were on or not. The same laws limited the amount of power consumed in a given area. For most people, this meant that after they’d hit their quota, their power company either cut or significantly dropped their available power. For people who could pay, it meant offsets. Cities kept a certain amount of power and bandwidth in reserve. Guests could purchase parcels via a pay box inside their hotel room that would shield them from detection.

The pay box in our room was bolted to the wall between the sets of double doors and outfitted with a plaque listing all the rules for use. They all basically boiled down to “pay us and do what you want, so long as you don’t tell us what you’ve done.”

It was a basic machine with a single, simple command in place: “Money goes in, power comes out.” I tricked it into thinking we’d paid the fee so that lingering inside the dry zone wouldn’t affect Klok or the golems. If we were lucky, none of them would turn off when we lost daylight.