Swarm (33 page)

Crap, where
was
everyone? It was like being ten again, the day he'd found out the whole class had been invited to Dean Yuen's birthday—everyone except him.

None of the Zeroes had answered their phones all day. Ethan understood the whole together-we're-a-target thing, but seriously, would a single text bring Swarm down on them all?

Surely Nate had a plan by now. Something better than
We'll just show him how awesome the Zeroes are, and he'll totes want to join the club!
It hadn't worked on Ren and Davey. No way was it going to work on a guy who could turn a crowd into a killing machine.

Or maybe the Zeroes were already dead. Maybe Swarm was
picking them off one by one, and Ethan was the only one left alive now.

He shivered and stared at the Dish. He would've heard about that, right? A string of murders would've made the news, or his mom would've told him. She always called him when there was any kind of local crime wave. Supposedly to check that he was okay, though lately it felt like she was also checking to see if he was involved.

Ethan circled around the back of the building, his thumb on his phone, ready to hit 911 at the slightest evidence of Swarm. He quietly let himself in through the back door.

“Hello?” he called into the dark.

Nothing.

He edged along the wall until he found a light switch. In the weak light of the bare bulbs, the Dish's dance floor looked forlorn. No dancers, no light show, nothing but a . . . mattress? And a futon?

Whoever had slept here, they'd left in a hurry. The sheets were tangled and trailing on the floor. It definitely hadn't been Teebo, then. He'd never leave his sweater wadded like . . .

Ethan froze. That was Chizara's sweater. Kelsie's
Disney On Ice
quilt. Here together, on the dance floor, inside Chizara's custom-built Faraday cage. Which meant that this was
Kelsie and Chizara's bed
, and Jess was right.

How could he have wasted all that time thinking Kelsie liked him?

That was hope for you—it made you stupid. Well, from now on Ethan Thomas Cooper was living on the dark side. Wall-to-wall pessimism was way easier than the constant letdowns. Like his dad used to say:
Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed.

Ethan hated when Dad was right.

He went upstairs to check Tee's room: nobody home. Off canoodling with Flicker, probably. Didn't
any
of these lovebirds care that they were all being hunted by a Zero killer?

And where the hell was Nate? He should be fixing all this!

The thought of Swarm made the Dish seem extra empty. What if the guy showed up right now, with a big crowd ready to rip Ethan to pieces?

He headed back down to the dance floor and straight for the back exit. But as he reached for the handle, the door opened on its own.

“Don't kill me!” he cried out.

“Wasn't going to,” Kelsie said. She stared at him like he was a stranger.

He'd never felt more awkward than he did right then, standing between the girl he was crushing on and the love nest she'd shared with someone else.

He peered into the darkness behind her. “It's just you?”

“Yeah.” She looked past him, winced at the sight of the dance floor. “Mind helping me get my mattress upstairs?”

Ethan minded a lot, but there was no way to refuse without
being weird about it. And
technically
, he had no right to be weird at all, because he hadn't even manned up enough to tell Kelsie he liked her in the first place.

“Um, sure.”

He followed her onto the dance floor, where she pulled off the tangled sheets and kicked them into a forlorn pile. Together they tipped the mattress on its side and began dragging it toward the stairs. Kelsie looked sad and small at the other end of the load.

Things with Chizara weren't going great, seemed like—not that Ethan's intuitions about Kelsie had much of a track record. In any case, he didn't want to hear about it.

Which was sucky of him. He knew he should be concerned for Kelsie. He should be supportive and understanding and all that friendship crap. He should
not
be a dick about it.

Maybe if they talked about something more romance-neutral.

“Any idea what Nate's anti-Swarm plan is?”

“Running, I guess,” she said. “And avoiding each other.”

They reached the stairs, and Ethan took the back end, the mattress going
bump, bump, bump
on each step. Just what he wanted to hear, a whole bunch of suggestive mattress thumping.

“That's not a very Glorious strategy,” Ethan said loudly over the sound.

“He's still messed up by what happened at the mall.” Kelsie dragged the mattress up and over the final step. “He's not used to losing.”

Ethan exhaled a long sigh. The Desert Springs Mall seemed like a year ago. Weird how a romantic disaster could replace witnessing a mob killing at the top of Ethan's current trauma list.

They made it to Kelsie's room and tipped the mattress onto the bed frame. Then she started dropping stuff into a bag that was already on the floor. Random things: a shirt, a chipped beer mug.

“You packing?” Ethan asked.

“Again,” Kelsie replied.

“Where're you going?” Ethan regretted the question as soon as he asked it. She was probably running away with Chizara. Or moving in.

“I don't know.”

“Oh.” Things
really
weren't going well.

And then, suddenly, Kelsie was crying. She dropped down to sit at the edge of the bed, a rolled-up T-shirt still in her hand.

Ethan lowered himself to the mattress beside her, feeling awkward. He carefully put an arm around her shoulder, ignoring the unkind glimmer of hope that went through him. He was a
good
friend, not some opportunistic butthead.

“What's wrong, Kels?”

“He was right,” she said through a sob. “He told me couples ruin everything. Me and Zara, we'll just wind up splitting the group!”

“Nate said that? That's stupid. He's just jealous because he had that crush on Flicker and—”

“Not Nate.” Kelsie wiped her face. “Swarm.”

Ethan blinked. “Um . . .”

“He said romance divides a group against itself. Couples slice up connections.”

Ethan pulled his arm back. “Okay. Is this, like, the same Swarm from the mall? The guy who kills Zeroes?”

She nodded. “He came looking for me.”

“And you
spoke
to him? He didn't crowd-smash you into tiny pieces?”

“Ethan—”

“And you guys held a parley to, what, share
romantic insights
?”

“It wasn't like that. He told me how he got like he is, which was sad, actually.” Kelsie looked up at him. “But the main thing is, he told me Ren was right. I'm a baby Swarm. One day I'll level up.”

Ethan stared. “You mean, you're actually going to turn into . . .
him
?”

His head was swimming with what Kelsie was saying, but that last bit made even less sense than the rest.

“Kelsie Laszlo, killing machine? Forget it.”

“But that's why he didn't kill me,” Kelsie said. “He has other plans. For when I'm . . . a Swarm.”

“Like?” Not that Ethan wanted to know the answer.

Kelsie got up and started going through her closet again. “After I level up, he wants us to be Zero-hunting buddies. He wants me to kill the rest of you.”

A short, barked laugh squeezed out of Ethan. “No. Way.”

“That's what
I
said.” She tossed a pile of underwear into the bag. She was talking like a zombie. “But what if there's no way out of leveling up?”

“That's nuts! You're so . . . sweet. And nice and . . .” Ethan sighed. When did he become so lame? “And the first time we met, you saved me from the Craig! Would a baby Swarm do that?”

Kelsie turned to him. “Back then, I had a dad. And then I had the Zeroes. But what do I have now? Nate's totally ghosting us, Thibault's left the Dish, and Zara's giving up on me and her because she wrecked a ship. Face it, Ethan, the Zeroes are kind of busted!”

Ethan swallowed, afraid to ask about the whole wrecked-a-ship thing. He hoped it was a figure of speech. But whatever it meant, he had to admit the team vibe wasn't happening these days. The empty Dish was proof of that.

“Anyway”—she turned back to her closet—“the truth is, I wasn't really planning on saving you from Craig. I just wanted to find out what you knew about my dad. Just like I was using Chizara to make myself feel safe.”

At that moment, a bolt of anger shot through Ethan. Why was Chizara the one to make Kelsie feel safe, and not him?
He
was the one who'd realized that Kelsie had a power, who'd brought her into the group. Who'd waited all this time while she grieved over her dad . . .

Without really meaning to, Ethan opened his mouth, and
the voice spoke. It took all his anger, his frustration about having been silent so long, his desire to be understanding and supportive and
not a dick
, and put it into words.

“We've all been through a lot lately. A broken heart on top of that has got to suck,” the voice said smoothly. “And the sad thing is, it's probably always going to be that way for you.”

Kelsie looked at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

He had her undivided attention at last. And everything the voice had said felt so true that it even sounded like Ethan talking. That hardly ever happened.

He didn't even pause to think about it. “You're only ever going to be happy in a group, Kels. A crowd. A gang. No one person can ever make you feel loved enough.”

“I guess,” she said faintly. “That's how it's always been.”

“You guys keep telling me
my
power sucks because it only works on one person at a time, but at least I can connect to someone,” the voice said. “Maybe
none
of the rest of you will ever have that.”

Okay, now the voice was just being cruel. It had sucked up Ethan's stupid jealousy and spat it back into the world, like toxic verbal tar.

Kelsie had grown still. “Ethan, was that you?”

He tried to shake his head. To explain that it was the voice talking crap. But it was
his
anger that had formed the words, and it felt so
right
to say it after they'd all disappeared on him and Kelsie had run off with Chizara.

“You're all made from the same pieces, just rearranged!” the voice blurted out. “You and Swarm. Nate and Thibault. You're just too full of yourselves to see it!”

Ethan clamped his mouth shut. Crap. The voice was in full omniscient mode now, spilling its own brand of truth to get what it wanted.

What
he
had wanted, down at the bottom of his shitty-friend soul.

“You're right.” Kelsie grabbed a black hoodie from the closet.

“Wait,” he said. “That wasn't me.”

She didn't look at him. She slipped the hoodie over her head and turned toward the door, still silent.

“Kelsie? It was just the—”

“I know,” she said without turning around. “It was the voice. But that doesn't mean it wasn't true. Just leave me alone, Ethan.”

She spun away and slipped from the room, moving like a dancer even when she was hurting. Ethan heard her race down the stairs, and then the back door slammed.

He sat on her bare mattress, breathing hard. His fists were trembling with the effort of fighting the voice.

Kelsie would come back, right? She'd left her bag, so it wasn't like she was leaving the Dish forever.

But
leave me alone
? That was not a Kelsie sentence.

Crap. Was she looking for another conversation with Swarm? There was no telling what that creep would say.

And what if Kelsie listened this time?

Ethan ran downstairs and across to the open main entrance. Outside, the winter wind blew newspaper along the front of the used-car lot and rattled empty beer cans beside a row of dumpsters. But there was no sign of anyone.

“I screwed up,” Ethan breathed, then shouted, “Kelsie? Kelsie!”

He went left, up the street past a boarded-up building. Nothing. He ran back, skirting the Dish all the way to the wide, vacant streets on the other side. No one. Not even a car at this time of night. He tried dialing her number, but all he got was voice mail.

Crap, he hated himself sometimes. Like when he screwed up so royally that only his superpowered friends could help.

“Someone better pick up the damn phone this time!” he muttered.

He started calling Zeroes.

KELSIE SHIVERED IN THE COLD
. She kept her head down and her hood up, trying to disappear in the wide, empty streets of the Heights.