“I'm smart-?mouthing but keeping it light, you know? Goofing. Next thing I know, one guy pulls a switchblade. It's closed, though, and I'm staring at it like an idiot wondering what it is. Cell phone? MP3 player? Then, flick, out comes the blade. I tried to make a break for it, but it was too late. Another guy kicks out my feet and down I go. The guy with the blade is standing over me, and I'm readying a knock-?back spell when Derek comes ripping around the corner. He grabs the guy with the knife, throws him aside, punches a second guy, and the third runs. Second guy gets up—he's fine—runs after his buddy. But the first guy? The one he threw off me?”
“Doesn't get up,” I whispered.
Simon speared a leaf on the tines of his rake. “Derek was right. There was no gun. But you know what?” He lifted his gaze to mine. “If a guy came at Derek with a gun, he'd have kept his cool and handled it smart. But he wasn't the one in danger. I was. With Derek, that's a whole different thing. It's in his nature, my dad says, the—” He started raking hard, tearing through new grass and dirt. “So that's how it happened. I was a smart-?ass and I couldn't back down from a bunch of rednecks and now Derek…”
He trailed off, and I knew Derek wasn't the only one who blamed himself for what had happened.
“Anyway,” he said after a moment, “you didn't bring me out here to talk about that, and if I keep yapping, Derek will track us down. I get the feeling this isn't something you want to discuss with him. ”
“It's not. ”
I told him about Rae. “I didn't know what to say and that only made it worse, but she caught me completely off guard. Now Derek's going to think I let something slip or I was chatting with my girlfriend, telling her my secrets, which I didn't do, I swear—”
“I know. You aren't like that. ” He leaned on his rake. “Rae's right about Brady. I used a knock-?back spell on him. It was careless and stupid, but after what happened with those other guys, I wanted to be quicker on the draw, you know? When I saw Brady was trying to get into it with Derek, I just… reacted. ”
“You wanted to diffuse the situation. ”
“Yeah. And if Rae caught you guys coming in last night, that's Derek's fault. He should have been on the lookout. He's got the ears and the—” he stopped “—the eyes. He can see pretty good in the dark, better than us. Normally, he'd have noticed Rae, but he must have been busy thinking about the escape. ”
Not preoccupied—sick and feverish. But I couldn't say that.
Simon went on. “He's been in a mood, too. Crankier than usual. He broke our shower. Did you hear about that?” He shook his head. “Snapped the handle right off, so I had to tell Talbot it had been loose. But as for Rae, we're going to have to tell him. ”
“Do you think she's one of us? A supernatural?”
“Could be half-?demon. If she is, though, what does that mean, for us, being here? Four out of five kids? Maybe Liz, too, if she's a shaman? That's no coincidence. It can't be. ” He paused, thinking. “We'll worry about that later. For now, I'm more concerned with her knowing about our plan. ”
“She doesn't just know. She wants to sign up. ”
He cursed under his breath.
“She'd be useful,” I said. “She's way more street smart than me. ”
“And me. It's just…” He shrugged. “I'm sure Rae's cool, but I wouldn't have argued about it just being the two of us. ”
He glanced over at me. My heart started pounding double time.
“There's a lot I want to talk to you about. ” He touched the back of my hand, leaning so close I could feel his breath against my hair.
“What's this about Rae?” a voice demanded. We turned to see Derek crossing the lawn.
Simon swore. “Anyone ever tell you your sense of timing really sucks. ”
“That's why I don't play the drums. Now what's up?”
I told him.
Thirty-eight
SIMON DOUBTED RAE HAD supernatural powers. There were fire half-?demons, but by fifteen she should have been doing more than leaving marks that barely qualified as first-?degree burns. He didn't think she was lying. She was just too eager to believe.
I suspected he was right. Given up at birth, displaced by younger siblings, tossed into Lyle House with strangers and forgotten, it would mean so much to Rae to be special. I'd seen it in her face that morning, glowing with excitement.
The person slowest to dismiss the idea was Derek. He didn't say he believed Rae was a half-?demon, but his silence said he was considering the possibility. Last night was still bugging him—and me—our failure to find or dismiss a connection between us, Samuel Lyle, and those supernatural bodies in the cellar. If Rae was a half-?demon and Liz might be a shaman, then the possibility we were here by chance plummeted.
You could argue that a group home for disturbed teens isn't an unusual place to find teenage supernaturals, especially those who don't know what they are. Our symptoms could be massaged to fit known psychiatric disorders, and, since everyone knew it was impossible to contact the dead or to burn people with your bare hands or toss a kid aside and break his neck—the obvious solution would be that we were mentally ill. Hallucinating, obsessed with fire, uncontrollably violent…
But there was nothing paranormal about Tori's mood swings. Peter had apparently been in for some kind of anxiety disorder and that didn't fit the pattern either.
Still, I couldn't shake the feeling I was missing something, that the connection was there and my brain was too distracted by other problems to see it. I suspected Derek felt the same.
Whether Rae was a supernatural or not, we all agreed, she should come with us. To Derek, it wasn't so much a matter of should we let her come as do we dare let her stay. What if she retaliated by telling the nurses? I couldn't see that, but after we were gone, if they came down hard on her, she'd cave before Derek did.
Derek's only condition was that we'd keep the details about our powers and our plans vague, at least for now.
* * *
I told Rae, and then Derek dropped the bomb none of us expected. We had to leave that night.
Since it was Saturday, we'd have all day to prepare, and chores gave us an excuse for poking around the house, gathering supplies. Tonight Miss Van Dop was off and the weekend nurse was much less likely to realize we were up to something. It was better to go now, before anything else went wrong.
Once I got past the initial “OMG, you mean tonight!” panic, I had to agree the sooner we left, the better.
So, while Rae stood guard cleaning the girls bathroom, I packed.
I'd packed for camp many times but, in comparison, this was agonizing. For every item I put in, I had to consider how badly I needed it, how much room and weight it would add, and whether I'd be better off picking it up on the road.
The brush was out, and the comb was in. Deodorant, definitely in. My iPod and lipgloss might not be essential for daily life, but they were tiny enough to keep. Soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste would need to be bought later because I couldn't afford to have anyone notice them missing from the bathroom now.
Next came clothing. It was still cool, especially at night. Layering would be the key. I packed as Aunt Lauren taught me when we'd spent a week in France. I'd wear a sweatshirt, long-?sleeved pullover, and T-?shirt with jeans. In the bag, I'd have two more T-?shirts, another pullover, and three pairs of socks and underwear.
Would that be enough? How long would we be on the run?
I'd been avoiding that question since I'd first offered to go. Simon and Derek seemed to think we'd find their dad pretty quickly. Simon had spells and just needed to travel around Buffalo, casting them.