Switched (9 page)

“You’re not doing anything wrong.” Silent tears started sliding down my face, and I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat. “You didn’t do anything. This isn’t about you or Maggie, honest. I love you guys, and I would take you with me if I could. But I can’t.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘can’t?’ Is he forcing you?” Matt growled. “I’ll call the police! We’ll come get you!”

“No, he’s not forcing me!” I sighed and wondered if this phone call had been a bad idea. Maybe I just made it worse for him. “Please don’t try and find me. You won’t be able to, and I don’t want you to. I just wanted you to know that I’m safe and that I love you and you never did anything wrong. Okay? I just want you to be happy.”

“Wendy, why are you talking like that?” Matt sounded more afraid than I had ever heard him before, and I couldn’t be certain, but I think he’d started to cry. “You sound like you’re never coming back. You can’t leave forever. You… Whatever is going on, I can take care of it. I’ll do whatever I have to do. Just come back, Wendy.”

“I’m so sorry, Matt, but I can’t.” I wiped at my eyes and shook my head. “I’ll call you again if I can. But if you don’t hear from me, don’t worry. I’m okay.”

“Wendy! Stop talking like that!” Matt shouted. “You need to come back here! Wendy!”

“Goodbye, Matt.” I hung up to the sound of him yelling my name.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this was the only thing I could do. It was the only way that I could keep them safe, and it was the safest thing for me, which is exactly what Matt would want.

If he knew what was going on, he would agree with this completely. It didn’t change the fact that it was absolute torture to say goodbye to him like that. Hearing his pain and frustration so evidently over the phone….

“Hey, Wendy. You did the right thing,” Finn assured me, but I just sniffled.

He reached over and took my hand, squeezing it lightly. Ordinarily, I would’ve been delighted by that, but right now it took everything I had to keep from sobbing or throwing up. I wiped at my tears, but I couldn’t seem to stop crying.

“Come here,” Finn said gently. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him. I rested my head against his shoulder, and he held me tightly to him.

7. Förening

Taking a deep breath, I finally managed to stop crying. Even though Finn had retracted his arms, he was still close to me in the front seat of his car. When I looked at him, he seemed to become aware of this and moved his arm further away.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Who were those people? Why did we have to run away?”

Finn looked at me for a moment, then took a breath. “That is a very long answer, one that is best explained by your mother.”

“My mother?” I had spent so long thinking of Kim as my mother and I didn’t understand what more she would know about this, then I realized he meant my
real
mother. “We’re going to see her? Where is she? Where are we going?”

“Förening,” Finn explained. “It’s where I live – where you’ll live.” He gave a small smile, meant to ease my concerns, and it did, a little. “Unfortunately, it’s about a seven-hour drive.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in Minnesota, along the Mississippi River in a very secluded area,” Finn said.

“So what is this Förening place we’re going to?” I asked, watching him.

“It’s a town, sort of,” Finn said. “They consider it to be more of a compound, but in the way the Kennedy’s have a compound. It’s just a glorified gated community, really.”

“So do people live there too?” I asked, already wondering if I could bring Matt along with me.

“Not in the sense you’re talking about.” He hesitated before he continued and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s entirely Trylle, trackers, and mänsklig. There’s about five thousand that live there in total, and we have gas stations, a small grocery store, and a school. It’s just a very small, quiet community.”

“Holy hell.” My eyes widened. “You mean there’s just a whole town of… trolls? In Minnesota? And nobody ever noticed?”

“We live very quietly,” Finn reiterated. “And there are ways to make people not notice.”

“You sound like you’re in the mafia,” I commented, and Finn smiled crookedly. “Do you guys make people sleep with the fishes or something?”

“Persuasion is a very powerful ability,” he said, and his smile disappeared.

“So you have persuasion?” I asked carefully. Something about it seemed to upset him, and as I expected, he shook his head. “Why not?”

“I’m a tracker. Our abilities are different.” He glanced over at me, and sensing that I would just ask more questions, he went on. “They’re more suited for tracking, obviously. Persuasion isn’t that useful in that arena.”

“What is useful?” I pressed, and he sighed wearily.

“It’s hard to explain. They’re not even real abilities in the sense of the word.” He stared out the windshield and shifted in his seat. “It’s more instinct and intuition. Like the way a bloodhound follows a scent, except it’s not actually something I can smell. It’s just something I know.” He looked over to see if I was getting it, but I just stared at him blankly.

“For example, when you went to visit that woman the other night-” (that woman being someone who I had thought was my mother my entire life) “-I knew you were far away, and I knew something was distressing you.”

“You can tell when I’m upset? Even when you’re not around me?” I asked.

“As long as I’m tracking you, yes,” Finn nodded.

“I thought you said you weren’t psychic,” I muttered.

“No, I said I couldn’t read minds, and I can’t.” Then with an exasperated sigh, he added. “I never have any idea what you’re
thinking.

“I can’t tell everything you’re feeling.” He noticed my discomfort, so he continued “Just distress and fear. I need to be alert to situations when you’re in danger so I can help you. My job is to keep you safe and bring you home.”

“How do you know how to track me? Before you find me, I mean.”

“Your mother has things from when you were a baby. A lock of hair usually,” Finn elaborated. “I get a vibe from that, and your parents usually have a general idea about where you are. Once I’m around you, I start to get a real scent of you, and that’s it.”

I felt an odd warm feeling inside. My mother had things from me. Kim had never treasured anything about me, but someone out there had. She had taken a lock of hair when I was born and kept it safe all these years

“Is that why you stared at me all the time?” I thought of the way his eyes were always on me, and the way I could never make sense of his expression.

“Yes.” There was something about his answer. He wasn’t lying exactly, but he was holding something back. I thought about pressing him further but there were so many other things I wanted to know.

“So… how often do you do this?” I asked.

“You are my eleventh.” He looked at me to gauge my response, so I kept my face as expressionless as possible.

I was a little surprised by his answer. It seemed like an incredibly time consuming process, for one thing. For me, he had lived in the same town as me for over two weeks and somehow enrolled in high school. He seemed fairly young to have done that eleven times. Plus, it was unnerving to think there were that many changelings out there. 

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was fifteen,” Finn answered, further shocking me.

“Fifteen?” I shook my head. “No way. You’re trying to tell me that at fifteen-years-old, your parents sent you out into the world to track and find kids? And these kids, they trusted you and believed you?”

“I am very good at what I do,” Finn replied matter-of-factly.

“Still. That just seems… unreal.” I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Did they all come back with you?”

“Yes, of course,” he said simply.

“Do they always? With everyone, I mean?” I continued.

“No, they don’t. They usually do, but not always.”

“But they always do with you?” I persisted.

“Yes.” Finn looked over at me again. “Why do you find it so hard to believe?”

“I find this all hard to believe.” I tried to think about what was bothering me. “Wait. You were fifteen? That means that you were never… you weren’t a changeling. Is everyone? How does this work?”

“Trackers are never changelings.” He rubbed the back of his neck and pursed his lips. “I think it’s best if your mother explains the changelings to you.”

“How come trackers aren’t ever changelings?” I questioned.

“We need to spend our lives being trained to be a tracker,” Finn said. “And our youth is an asset. It’s much easier to get close to a teenager when you are a teenager than it is when you’re forty.”

“A big part of what you do is building trust,” I remarked, eyeing him up with new suspicions.

“Yes, it is,” Finn admitted.

“So at the dance, when you were being a total dick to me. That was you building trust?” I asked him pointedly. For a split second, he looked pained, but his normal emotionless expression returned.

“No. That was me putting a distance between us.” His eyes were too fixed on the road and his expression hardened. “I shouldn’t have asked you to dance. I was trying to correct the error. I needed you to trust me, but anything more would be misleading.”

Everything that had transpired between us had just been because he was trying to get me to the compound. He had been keeping me safe, getting me to like him, and when he noticed my crush developing, he had tried to put me in my place. It stung painfully, so I just swallowed hard and stared out the window.

“I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you,” Finn said quietly, noticing my distress.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied icily. “You were just doing your job.”

“I know that you’re being facetious, but I was.” He paused. “I still am.”

“Well, you’re very good at it.” I crossed my arms and stared out the window.

I didn’t feel much like talking anymore. There were still a million questions I had about everything, but I’d rather wait and talk to somebody else, anybody else. I thought I would be too anxious and excited to sleep, but after about an hour into the drive, I started nodding off. I fought to stay awake until I realized it would just be quicker if I slept.

When I opened my eyes, the sun shone brightly above us. I had curled up on the seat with my knees pressed against my chest, so my whole body felt sore and ached. Looking around, I sat up and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of my neck.

“I thought you were going to sleep the whole ride,” Finn said.

“How far away are we?” I yawned and slouched low in the seat, resting my knees against the dashboard.

“Not far.”

The scenery had started giving way to tall tree-lined bluffs. The car rolled up and down through the hills and valleys, and it really was stunningly beautiful. Eventually, Finn slowed and we turned, driving steeply to the top of a bluff. The road curved down, winding through the trees, and through them, I could see the Mississippi River cutting through the bluffs.

A large metal gate blocked our path, but when we got to it, a guard nodded at Finn and waved us on. Once we were through, I saw beautiful houses dotted along the bluffs, mostly obscured by the trees.

It was an odd sensation. I felt like there were more homes than what I could actually see. Every one of them appeared luxurious and perfectly poised to make the best of the view.

We pulled up in front of an opulent mansion perched precariously on the edge of the bluff. It was pure white, with long vines growing up beautifully over it. The back, which faced the river, was made entirely of windows, and it seemed to be held up by weak supports. While stunningly gorgeous, the house looked as if it would fall off the edge at any moment.

“What’s this?” I took a break from gaping at the house to look back at Finn. He smiled at me in the way that sent shivers through me.

“This is it. Welcome home, Wendy.”

I had come from money, but it had never been anything like this. This was aristocratic. Finn walked me to the house, and I couldn’t believe that I’d truly come from this. I had never felt so small or ordinary in my entire life.

With a house like this, I had expected a butler to answer the door. Instead, it was just a kid. He looked about my age, with sandy hair cascading across his forehead. He was very attractive, but that made sense, because I couldn’t believe that anything ugly ever came from a house like this. It was too perfect.

He seemed confused and surprised at first, but when he saw Finn, an understanding came to him and he smiled broadly.

“Oh my god. You must be Wendy.” He opened the massive front door so we could come in.

Finn let me go in first, which made me nervous, and I felt embarrassed with the way this kid smiled at me, especially considering I had on my pajamas and a bruise on my cheek. He dressed like any other normal kid I had gone to school with, at least in the private schools, and I found that weird. As if he would run around in a tuxedo first thing in the morning.

“Um, yeah,” I mumbled awkwardly.

“Oh, sorry, I’m Rhys.” He touched his chest, gesturing to himself, and turned back to Finn. “We weren’t expecting you this soon.”

“Things happen,” Finn explained noncommittally.

“I’d really love to stay and talk, but I just came home for lunch, and I’m already running late on getting back to school.” Rhys glanced around and looked apologetically at us. “Elora is down in the drawing room. You can get yourself there, right?”

“I can,” Finn nodded.

“Alright. Sorry to rush out like this.” Rhys smiled sheepishly and picked up his messenger bag lying by the front door. “It was really nice meeting you, Wendy. I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of you.”

Once he hurried out the door, I took a moment to take in my surroundings. The floors were marble, and a giant, crystal chandelier hung above us. From where I stood, I could see the breathtaking view through the windowed back wall of the house. It was all floor to ceiling glass, and all I could see were the tops of trees and the river plummeting below us. It was enough to give me vertigo, and I was on the other side of the house.