Whispers in Autumn (17 page)

A lightbulb blinks on in my brain, causing me to sit up straight and knock my notebook onto the floor. My cheeks heat up as everyone, including the Monitor, stops while I retrieve it.

Now that I have an idea where Lucas might be, the remaining minutes drip past like honey from a spoon. When she finally dismisses us I’m out of my chair before anyone else picks up their things. Deshi intercepts me as I approach the stairs at the end of the hall.

He flashes his usual arrogant smile. “Hey, have you seen Lucas?”

“What? Nope, sure haven’t.”

He blocks my path. I need to get away from him before Lucas slips outside with everyone else.

“Let me walk you home, then, since your boyfriend seems to have vanished.”

Warning bells clang as my mind races to find a reason to tell him no. Frustration builds, worry for Lucas boiling over, but I have no choice but to fall into step beside Deshi. The way he says the word
vanished
snakes the dread tighter around my insides. We pass through an icy blast of wind at the front door and it blows an idea into my panic-addled brain. “You know what, go ahead. I forgot my favorite pen in chemistry.”

My voice doesn’t waver, doesn’t give away either the lie or my emotional state. I don’t wait for his answer, just retrace my steps through the empty halls. My ears strain to pick up any sound that indicates students are still in the building or that Wardens lurk nearby. Nothing strikes me as out of the ordinary
except
the quiet. My sneakers make little noise on my way back to the stairwell. I head down the same flight of stairs I took the night of the Gathering.

The night I met Lucas.

My shoe squeaks a little on the hard stairs and I walk faster. My heart races, climbing into my throat. I worry the correct door won’t be easy to find but it is. It looks as old, dusty, and unused as before.

I turn the knob and push it open, stepping inside with my hands in front of my face to ward off the cobwebs. There aren’t any today. I swore I’d never come within ten feet of Fils again, but after this morning in the Wilds I’m more confused than anything. And worried.

The room is dim, the only light coming through the small, ground-level window sitting at the top of the wall opposite the entrance.

“Lucas?” I call his name softly.

Relief steadies my nerves when he responds from the back of the room. Where he keeps his fish. “Go away, Althea. I don’t want to see you.”

The tremor in his response moves my feet toward his voice anyway. The sight of his face stops me dead in my tracks. Lucas sits on a chair, shoulders sagging and appearance disheveled. His eyes are red and swollen. The realization that water attacks him, too, punches breath out through my belly.

It isn’t until I consciously look around that the rest of the scene registers. Fils lies on the radiator. His bowl remains on the table above it, thick chunks of ice bobbing in the water.

He’s dead. Not only can a fish not live without water, but his little body rests in an unfortunate spot. That the Others pump hot air into this abandoned room doesn’t make sense. The heat, though, has left the tiny golden body dry and crispy.

“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say, and my heart aches as though it’s trying to stretch from me to Lucas, to work for both of us.

“What are you doing down here? Aren’t you supposed to be wandering around
alone
?”

His bitter, angry tone hurts my feelings and defensiveness appears without warning. “I was looking for you. What are you thinking, missing block? The Wardens noticed.”

“I really don’t care right now, Althea.”

I approach him and rest a compassionate hand on his shoulder. He shakes it off. I don’t understand how or why but he cared about that fish, and I know what it’s like to lose things you care about. Longing washes through me at the memory of how it felt to have the Hammonds, then to lose them. How hard it was to leave the forest just this morning.

I want to love something and get to keep it.

“What happened to him? Did he jump out?”

“No, he didn’t
jump out
. Why would he do that? Even if he did he couldn’t get onto the radiator. Someone did this to him.” His voice is dead, cold.

I know he’s not angry with me, seeing as how I had nothing to do with the demise of his fish. He’s mad and I’m the one here, so I forgive him for talking to me like I’m a moron. This time. “Who would kill your fish?”

Lucas shakes his head without looking at me. It had to be a Warden. Any human who found the fish would never have touched it. The sudden feeling of being watched prickles between my shoulder blades. If a Warden knows about the fish, then they’ve been in this room. It’s not the sanctuary Lucas thinks.

“Who do you think—” The words die on my lips when Lucas stands up and kicks the chair, sending it clattering into a pile of junk stacked against the wall.

He steps toward me, stopping inches from my face. “I don’t know who it was, but if I find out, they’ll be sorry. They’ll be so sorry, Althea, do you hear me?”

Lucas’s eyes fill with water again, but he doesn’t notice. I stare over his shoulder, trying to give him some privacy and swallow my own emotions. The water in the fishbowl is frozen solid because Lucas lost control of his temper. Like with me and fire.

I hadn’t thought much of the ice chunks floating in the fishbowl when I first noticed them. The dead, drying fish and Lucas’s swollen face had commanded my attention, but the ice is that elusive piece of proof after all. Water wells up in my own eyes and dribbles down my cheeks. I smile a real smile and don’t try to hide it.

The sight of the water, along with the look of wonder on my face, sends Lucas spinning around to follow my gaze. Guilt deepens the stress lines on his face when he registers what I’ve seen. He stumbles backward, away from me.

“I…I guess maybe they killed him by freezing his water or something…”

He stops. It sounds ridiculous and we both know it. I reach for his hands but he shrinks away, his eyes wild and pleading. My mind lands on a possible way to show him, to convince him he doesn’t have to be afraid of me. I think of the melted cup at the Gathering.

My scorched bedspread.

My handprint in the paint on the wall in the Morgans’ hallway.

This whole room is chilly, now that I think about it. My own heightened feelings keep me warm, but the single windowpane is frosted over. Those recent examples aren’t the only times I’ve melted objects with my hands. For the first time I wonder if I can do it on purpose. I’ve spent so many years wishing the strange accidents would stop, I’ve never even thought to try.

Walking to the bowl of frozen water, I wrap my fingers around it, ignoring the slippery chill it transfers to my skin. I concentrate, doubtful of succeeding. Emotions stir deep inside me—fear, loneliness, despair, guilt—and combine with the overwhelming joy soaring through me now and pulse into heat. I close my eyes, feel it surge through my palms.

My eyelids snap open in response to a gasp from Lucas. The water sloshes around in the bowl shuddering between my hands.

I can’t believe I did it.

Lucas’s eyes are wide, amazed. A huge grin shows off his dimple before he takes two giant steps and grabs me in a bone-crushing hug. His cold breath on my neck sends delightful shivers down my spine, and my smile bursts out so wide my cheeks nearly crack. Nothing but ecstasy filters through my body, pumping like blood. Whatever I am, I’m not alone.

“I wanted it to be true. I wondered if you might be like me, but I couldn’t figure out how to know without asking. I even thought about letting the name Ko slip to gauge your reaction.”

As the last words leave his lips a loud popping sound sobers us both.

The sound is deep enough to shake me to my bones. “What the…”

Lucas’s gaze is on me, but not on my face. Instead he stares at my neck with eyes so wide they look like they might roll out of their sockets. “Althea. Your necklace.”

My hand goes to the lump under my sweater, preparing to wrap around the golden metal. I pull it out, but drop it when the necklace vibrates against my bare skin. The pop sounds again. It’s coming from the locket hanging below my throat. A beam of light pulses forth and we squint in the suddenly bright room as it gathers into a shape. A person stands before us. Not fully formed, shimmering instead of solid, but a person nonetheless.

It’s an Other, I think. At any rate he looks more Other than human, but he’s shorter than most I’ve seen. His features are sharp and his ears a bit larger than normal and slightly pointed on top. He’s too indistinct to check for the star-shaped mark.

Lucas shifts closer to me until our bodies press against each other. The figure speaks, backing us up a few steps.

“
You activated this spell by speaking my name out loud. I am Ko. You do not know me, have never seen my face, but I know you. I have watched over you from the moment of your birth
.” Thick emotion shines in his face, bright and warm. No one has ever looked at me that way.

“
Though my features appear Other, I am not. Not entirely, and not where it matters most—in here.
” He stops and presses a long-fingered hand to his chest. “
I am a Dissident like you, Something Else entirely, and I’ve tried to give you the opportunity to do for your people what I could not do for mine. I cannot give you specifics in case this message is compromised, but know two things. I suspect you have found more like you, which means the time has come to fight the Others. If you do nothing, or are captured, all humanity will perish. There are those who can tell you what you need to know about your past. Be vigilant, be brave, and you will find them
.”

The glowing body disappears and plunges the room back into dim silence. My feet root to the floor and I sway, a little off balance. A second message from Ko has been inside my necklace this whole time. Curious, I speak his name again. Nothing happens.

“What was that?” Awe reverberates in Lucas’s voice.

“I have no idea; it’s never happened before.” I want to talk forever, but we should leave Cell grounds. Someone knows about this room, about the fish. The Wardens infest every hallway. Where Deshi lurks is anyone’s guess. “Want to get out of here?”

Lucas glances toward Fils’s small, tortured body. I take his hand. “I’m sorry about Fils. It isn’t fair. Bring him; we’ll bury him in the park.”

Lucas walks over and pries his fish off the radiator, stowing the body in a pocket. His eyes dart to mine and then away again, his cheeks splotchy and red. “Thanks. He’s been my only friend for so long. I’m going to miss him, that’s all.”

“Well, now you have me.”

His response warms my blood even more than my own internal fire.

“Now I have you.”

CHAPTER 17.

Now that it’s for sure Lucas is a Dissident, too, all I want to do is sit and talk with him. Unfortunately this new, Warden-supervised world limits our ability to do that. We buried Fils in silence, bidding good-bye to Lucas’s friend. He was reluctant to leave the tiny grave, and although I know it’s important to him, curfew is now a short ten-minutes away. Impatience tries to quicken my steps, but I force them to slow. I haven’t had a chance to tell Lucas everything about the night Mrs. Morgan Broke, about how Deshi appeared and basically threatened me.

Or how the Others can burrow inside our minds.

Lucas pushes his face into the brisk wind as it picks up, kicking leaves out of our path. It’s almost like there’s so much to discuss that neither of us knows where to start. But we’re down to eight minutes now, and we’ve got to begin somewhere. Might as well go big.

“What do you think Ko meant about humanity perishing if we don’t fight the Others?”

It’s the most curious thing of all the curious things Ko said. I mean, the Others control the humans’ minds, but they’re not in danger. Right?

He shakes his head, scattering the scent of pine my direction. I resist the urge to reach out and touch him, imagine what it would feel like to run my hands through his blond curls, if the scent would intensify if I did. Now that I have permission to be myself around him, I want to let all the feelings he stirs inside me out into the open. When he glances my way I jerk my gaze free, my face surely pink.

Lucas shrugs, smiling a little. “I don’t know. I’ve never really even felt like a part of the human race. Have you?”

The question stirs old fears, and I revisit the terrifying possibility that I—now we, along with Deshi—are Other. Because no matter what Ko said in his trick message about being a Dissident, he looks Other to me.

“No. But Ko says we’re Dissident, like him, so maybe we’re not part of humanity at all.” Our street pops up too soon, and my watch says we’ve got two minutes before the front doors are to be latched behind us. “Lucas, we’ve got to figure out a better way to do this. We need to talk before our Warden interview.”

This is week four. Three more until it’s our turn.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about how we might be able to discuss our…predicament.”