Unforsaken (10 page)

I was wearing only a thin tank top and my underwear. I pulled the covers up under my arms. I’d have to put my clothes on in the bathroom, maybe wait until Kaz wasn’t looking to get out of bed.

I felt my face get warm when I thought of his having spent the night just a few feet away. In a separate bed, but … still. We had taken turns in the bathroom, Kaz going first because he was faster, and when I’d come out after washing my face and brushing my teeth and combing my hair, he’d already been asleep, one arm thrown over his head, the other hand clutching the blankets to his chest. I thought it would take me ages to unwind enough to sleep. Prairie and Chub getting kidnapped, running from the scene, kissing Kaz, waiting in the lobby while he checked us in with the debit card—all of it had left me anxious and unsettled. But I didn’t remember a thing after getting into bed.

“How long have you been up?” I asked, taking a sip of the hot, bitter brew.

“A while,” Kaz said, and hesitated, like he wanted to say something more.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s okay,” he said quickly. “But listen, Hailey, does
Quadrillon
mean anything to you?”

“Quadrillon?” I repeated, confused. “Yeah. It’s some sort of high-tech company. They built an office park out east of Gypsum when I was a little kid, back during the whole high-tech boom, because they got the land really cheap plus tax incentives or something. Quadrillon was supposed to move in first. Only that never happened. They went bust right before construction was finished and it’s been empty ever since. Sometimes kids go out there, break windows and drink or whatever, and the sheriff comes around. I guess eventually it’ll just fall apart and turn into a landfill.”

Kaz nodded, as though I’d confirmed a bad suspicion. “That’s where they took them. Where they took Chub, anyway. I saw it this morning, right when I woke up. The word
Quadrillon
, with a sort of squared-off four-leaf-clover logo. And then I realized it was a sign on a building. I saw Chub going in the door, over and over. He was with two guys in a car with black windows. Only, the building looks brand-new.”

“I don’t know how that’s possible,” I said slowly. “That building was run-down. Unless they could have fixed it up that fast …”

“All they would have had to do is lease it under some bogus name and get the power turned on and they could move
in, fix up the place. They’ve had two months. That’s plenty of time.”

“You’re saying they’re in
Gypsum
.…”

“It makes sense, Hailey. That’s where the other Banished are. If they’ve started up the lab again, they’re where they can get all the … research subjects they need.”

“The Seers,” I said slowly. “Rattler would provide the Seers. It might even have been his idea to set up there.”

The thought infuriated me: Rattler would be feeding the weaker Banished to the General in exchange for cash, all the while building his own new clan of purebloods.

“Speaking of Rattler …,” Kaz said. “What does he look like? Does he have longish brown hair, a scar on his forehead, a little shorter than me?”

“Oh no,” I whispered. “You saw him, too?”

Kaz turned away from me, blew out a long breath. “I woke up because I was having a migraine, Hailey. It happens when they come too fast, when the visions … take over.”

Only now did I notice that his hands shook slightly, that his face was pale and his jaw tight from the pain. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Kaz shook his head. “This is good. This can help us. Now we know where to find them.”

“What was … Rattler doing? Was he at Quadrillon too?”

“I couldn’t tell, but he was … he looked really angry. He was hitting something with his fist. A wall or—I don’t know—a post or something. Over and over.”

“Oh.” I felt the fear deepen inside me. I’d seen Rattler angry before, but now I wondered who the target was—and given
what I had done to him the last time I’d seen him, it could easily be me. As if we didn’t already have enough obstacles ahead of us. “You didn’t see Prairie? She wasn’t with Chub?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t, you know, all that definitive. Hey, cheer up, Hailey,” Kaz said, forcing a smile. “It’s not all bad news. I got us a car.”

“What—how?”

“I went to see a friend from school this morning. A guy from the team. I had him come up here; then we drove to my car and switched. He said we can take it for a few days.”

“Kaz, you went to your neighborhood?”

“Don’t worry, my car was parked on the street. Nobody saw us.”

“But—” They could have, I thought. They could so easily have been watching the car. “What if they’d seen you?”

“But they didn’t. They
didn’t
, Hailey. Look, I know this is hard, and I’m sorry, I’m just so damn sorry to be taking these risks, putting everyone I care about in danger. But I don’t know what else to do.”

Because it had never occurred to him not to try. I felt my fear retreat a little. Kaz wasn’t reckless … only determined. And brave. And committed.

I tried to smile at him. “You must have been up for hours. And I didn’t even hear you get up.”

Kaz looked relieved that I was letting it go. “Nah, you were out. Woke me up with your snoring. I figured I might as well get out for a while.”

I felt my mouth drop open, my face flooding with embarrassment.
I never snored—at least, Prairie had never said anything, or Chub for that matter.

Then Kaz grinned at me, that big slightly crooked grin, and I knew he’d been kidding.

“So your friend didn’t mind?”

“Getting stuck with my clunker?” His grin turned rueful. “He’s a good guy, Hailey. You’d like him. And it’s not like he traded me a BMW or anything. Don’t get too excited, his car isn’t a whole lot better than mine.”

“I wasn’t—I don’t care,” I protested. And I
didn’t
care, not about what kind of car we drove. As nice as it had been to drive with Prairie in the relatively new Camry, it was still a novelty to have a car at all. I had spent most of my first sixteen years riding the bus and walking. “I just, you know, does he know where you’re planning on taking it?”

Kaz raised an eyebrow at that and lowered himself to the other bed. He was close enough that I could smell soap on him, and his hair was still a little damp from the shower. So I’d slept through that, too.

“I told him we were going for a drive in the country.” He picked up one of the pillows and set it next to him, smacked it a few times. “You know, with cows and all.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “You say ‘cows’ like you’ve never seen one before.”

“I’ve seen plenty. After they’ve been made into burgers—”

I laughed. “Seriously? How close have you ever been to one?”

Kaz pretended to think. “Football field? A few hundred
yards? They have some in the Lincoln Park Zoo, I think. Why, have you, like, petted them or something?”

“You don’t really pet cows,” I said, but it wasn’t entirely true.

Walking half a mile through the woods in back of Gram’s house took you to grazing acreage where Bud Eisle kept half a dozen head of black angus. I’d taken Chub there a few times once he was old enough to make the walk. I picked him up so he could put his hand on top of the cows’ velvety noses when they stood at the fence, chewing, showing only the faintest interest. It was before he could talk, but he loved to pet the soft muzzles.

But that wasn’t the kind of thing I could explain to Kaz.

“I can’t believe I’m going back there,” I said. “When I left Gypsum, I thought I’d never go back.”

“It won’t be forever,” Kaz said softly. He reached out for my hand, and I took his—and then suddenly it was the most natural thing in the world for him to tug me gently next to him. He kissed my hair and I let him draw me closer against him, until I could feel his heartbeat through his T-shirt.

This wasn’t like yesterday’s kiss. This was comfort, and a promise—that he would be there for me, with me. Prairie had made me such a promise. It had taken me a while to believe her—had taken a shared experience of danger, the blood bond of violence—but with Kaz, I simply
knew
.

He wouldn’t let me face what waited in Gypsum alone.

Maybe that was why I felt safe enough to say the rest. “You know I was … different there.”

Kaz murmured, “Yes,” tucking my head under his chin
and holding me. I had told him about what it was like to live with Gram—the run-down house, the constant struggle to keep enough food on the table, the stream of drug-buying customers. I’d explained about the Morries—the kids from the Banished families who attended Gypsum High—and the meanness and poverty that defined their life in Trashtown.

What I hadn’t explained was where I fit into the high school: how I’d never had a best friend, or any real friends at all; how I’d been mocked and ridiculed for my clothes, my hair, my rusty bike; how the other kids had whispered about Gram, calling her a witch and worse.

I knew Kaz wouldn’t judge me for these things. But I was afraid that if I returned, I would lose the confidence that had come at a high price. I was afraid that even though I knew I had changed on the outside—the way I looked and dressed—I would stop believing I had changed on the inside.

“I don’t want to go back,” I whispered against his soft shirt.

“I know,” Kaz said. “But you won’t be alone.”

K
AZ HAD TOLD THE TRUTH
: the car was only a slight improvement over his rusted-out Civic. It was a dented brown Bonneville with a creased bumper. The one splurge his friend had made was to upgrade the sound system with a set of good speakers.

The last time I’d made this drive, traveling in the opposite direction, was the first time I had ever left Missouri. Now the hours passed more swiftly. I was well rested, and music filled the car. We didn’t talk much, but occasionally Kaz reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

Whenever my thoughts turned to Chub, I forced myself to take deep breaths and remember only good things: the way he laughed with his mouth wide open, showing all his baby teeth; the sound of his voice when he said my name, the
one word he sometimes pronounced the way he always had, “Hayee.”

I knew that Kaz had to be desperately worried about leaving his mother in Chicago, but he didn’t say anything about it. When he caught me looking at him, he smiled as though nothing was wrong. But after we’d been in the car a few hours, his expression changed.

It was a subtle change at first, a tightening of his jaw, a clenching of his hands on the wheel. I watched him carefully and saw that his skin had gone pale and a faint sheen of sweat stood out on his brow.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Much. It’s just …” He glanced at me, his expression troubled. “I’m getting flashes. Little ones.”

“Visions?”

“Not a full vision, not yet. But … I probably will. When this happens, it’s usually a sign of one coming, a new one. Not the ones I already had, not Quadrillon or Rattler. This one is darker.”

He winced, and I could tell it hurt. “What do you see?”

Kaz shook his head. “Nothing specific. It’s that damn flicker, the way I get just the pieces. It’s water. I think. It’s all wavery and shimmering and there’s—there’s something—someone …”

I said nothing. It could be anything. A sink, an ocean, a pan boiling on a stove.

The only thing I felt sure of was that it wouldn’t be good.

“Are you okay to drive?” I asked. Prairie had begun teaching me to drive, but so far I’d only got as far as lurching from one end of the apartment-complex parking lot to the other.

“Oh yeah, I’ll be fine. Maybe … why don’t we get some lunch?”

We stopped at a Pizza Hut outside Springfield. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced myself to eat; one of the things I’d learned in recent months was that you could never count on your next meal or place to sleep when you were Banished and on the run.

In the car again, Kaz seemed better. The afternoon wore on, clouds lazily drifting in and obscuring the April sun. We drove around Saint Louis, the skyline visible in the distance, the arch beautiful against the darkening sky. I knew that from Saint Louis it was another three and a half or four hours. I passed the time by trying to remember all the good times I’d had with Chub, and then, when that stopped working and my mind pitched and rolled with fears I couldn’t contain, I forced myself to think about math, the subject I’d struggled with the most. I imagined the textbook pages, the numbers and equations running into each other, taunting me.

I was so intent on keeping my mind occupied that when Kaz cleared his throat, I was startled see that he was even paler than before, with one hand pressed to his forehead as though he was trying to keep the pain inside.

“Are you okay?” I demanded.

“I think I’d better pull over. Sometimes … I think I
might be getting a bigger one. Once or twice I’ve …” He swallowed and blinked hard. “Once I passed out, but don’t worry. That won’t happen. Yet. I just need to get someplace where I can shut my eyes and rest.”

A tall Exxon sign lit up the darkening purple sky at the next exit. A Wendy’s and a Long John Silver’s shared a parking lot with the gas station, and the lot was nearly full with travelers stopping for dinner.