Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (29 page)

“Nah,” Denton said, waving him on. “I’ll keep my eye out for more jewelry though, in case you mess up again.”

Carl laughed. “You do that, Tin Man. You do that.”

By now, London could hear the slow roll of the quarantine truck’s tires against the pavement. She wanted to peek around Denton’s shoulder and get a look at it, but she didn’t dare. They waited until the lights and noise were far up the road, then the Scrapper turned on her. “You got five seconds to show me what’s in that bag that’s so special, or I fetch my friend Carl back here.”

London ripped off her pack and opened it. She pulled out one book and thrust it into the Tin Man’s hands. It didn’t take him long to figure out what he was holding. She could hear the ruffle of pages in the dark.

“Damn, girl,” Denton whispered. “You really are holding.”

“There’s more where that came from,” she promised. “Plenty more. Just shelter us for a couple of days. We don’t need long. Then we’ll go and I’ll leave directions on where to find the stash.”

“And why should I trust you won’t go after this stash yourself, huh? Or why believe it’s there at all? Why didn’t you get it all when you found it?” he asked.

“I couldn’t fit it all in my pack,” London told him. “Look, I don’t want the books. We just need shelter.”

Denton swore under his breath. “So you are lying then? About Pillar?”

If you only knew,
London thought. “Yes, but not about the sleeping sickness. We don’t have it. I wouldn’t come here if I did. I wouldn’t risk the city and night guard and the trucks.”

Denton clucked his tongue while he debated. “I guess you’re right. You’d be fool to risk a city if you had it. I don’t know what you done or what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’ll give you tonight. That’s all I can promise. In exchange for everything in your pack
and
a personal escort to the hoard. We’ll head out tomorrow after sunrise. You can make your own way after you’ve shown me the stash. Got it?”

London took a deep breath and agreed. There was no way she was going to accompany him back into that godforsaken desert, especially to Mesa Camp, where there were likely still plenty of regiments hunting for them. But she’d have to figure out an escape plan later. For now, she needed the Tin Man as much as everybody else in Mesa City.

“If I find out you’re lying to me, about any of it, I know where Carl lives. One word from me, just one, and you’ll be on the first truck out of here.”

DENTON KEPT ROOMS on an abandoned floor above a market store, using a back fire escape over the loading dock to come and go as he pleased. The market manager had slipped him a key to the store, so the Tin Man could keep his stores of food and drink well stocked in exchange for some black market tech and regular scrap deliveries. It was quiet and virtually abandoned after dark, making it a perfect place for London, Kim, and Tora to hide. She was all the more glad she’d managed to keep her cool on the way here.

“I’m going to head downstairs, grab some supplies. I wasn’t expecting company, and we’ll need to stock up for our little adventure tomorrow,” Denton said as he shoved them past a floral patterned sofa and a green tattered loveseat into a bedroom with two twin beds. “You can make yourselves at home till I get back.” He gave London a wary look and picked up her pack. “I got a good place for this,” he added and ventured out, locking the door behind him.

When he was gone, London turned to Kim and Tora and told them everything that had taken place under the streetlamps and in the alley.

“Great,” Kim muttered. “What are we supposed to do if one of us starts dreaming, if we relax and end up in the Astral?”

London rolled her eyes at Kim. “We haven’t done that in a long time. We’ve had control for a while now. We can keep the Astral at bay for one night. Besides, I doubt he’d notice with us locked away in here.”

“And tomorrow?” Kim asked. “Exactly how are we going to get out from under this Scrapper’s thumb?”

“I’ll think of something,” London insisted. She’d thought on her toes, like she always had, and it had saved their asses for one more night. “What was I supposed to do,
Jet
? Let him throw us to the night guard?”

“Watch it,
Kitty
,” Kim shot back, but there was a ring of humor in it and London relaxed. “What’s with the names, by the way,” he said now. “Who’s named Kit or Jet?”

London shrugged. “I don’t know. Who’s named Kim? It was all I could think of, okay?”

“How come Tora got to pick her own name,” Kim whined, egging her on.

“Don’t you mean
Alice
?” London said, shooting Tora an irritated look.

“Hey,” Tora said crossing her arms. “We can’t all be Kits and Jets. Someone had to put an end to your reign of terror.”

In spite of herself, in spite of everything they’d been through, London laughed.

“So,” Kim mused as he wandered over to the door. “What do you suppose is behind door number one?”

London sighed. “You mean besides our only bargaining chip? Didn’t look like much, but I’m sure there’s another room or two up here. Scrappers always keep a hoard going.”

They sat down for a moment while Kim stood, fiddling his hands nervously in his pockets. London was too tired to worry about him. She prayed the Scrapper came back with something better than Dehydrated Dinner packs.

True to form, Denton returned in style, his arms laden with a few bags of chips, a loaf of bread, some city-issue cheese, a pack of stale donuts, and a gallon of water. London’s mouth was salivating. She didn’t care how fake the cheese was, she’d grown tired of rock hard biscuits long ago, though she’d have given her right thumb for that last half jar of honey Denton didn’t even realize he’d taken.

He dropped the groceries unceremoniously in the middle of the floor between the beds. “Eat up, kids,” he said with a grin. “You’ll need your strength in the morning.”

London and Tora fell on the donuts at once as Denton backed out of the room. “Look Jet, donuts!” London said as she turned to show Kim, but he was suddenly nowhere in sight. Behind them, the door was just closing with a soft click and she could hear the Scrapper’s key turning in the lock.

She looked at Tora, the question hanging silently between them, and Tora only nodded, then placed a finger over her mouth.

No wonder Kim seemed so fidgety. He was waiting. And when the moment was right, he’d tightened his fingers around his charm and disappeared, slipping out the door behind Denton, before the Tin Man even realized he was missing.

London bit down on the soft bread, letting the powdered sugar coat her lips. She and Tora grinned across the floor at one another. It was only a matter of time before the Tin Man got tired and fell asleep, and before Kim unlocked that door so they could all disappear before daybreak.

LONDON STIRRED AT the muffled click and opened her eyes. She’d been dozing off and on for a few hours. Across from her, Tora was on the other bed, rubbing at her eyes. The handle on the door turned, and London tensed. Was it morning? Was it Denton? Their door swung open and…no one.

Then she heard his voice in her ear.

“Take this,” Kim said, and something full of angles was thrust into her arms. Their pack.

London looked down and as his hands left it, the pack suddenly materialized in her lap. She swung it over a shoulder and stood. “I was beginning to think you’d skipped out on us,” London told him with a relieved smile.

Kim’s dark eyes met hers as he materialized. “Never. You can always count on me, London. You know that, right?”

London swallowed against the frog growing in her throat. And then, without warning, she threw her arms around him in a tight bear hug. “Thank you, Kim,” she whispered in his ear. When she let go, both their eyes were wet.

Kim caught Tora grinning at him and shrugged nonchalantly. “What? The city smog is getting to my allergies. You never had allergies, Outroader?”

Tora smacked him on the shoulder. “Come on, Waller. Let’s get you some fresh air.”

They picked their steps carefully through Denton’s living room. The Tin Man was laid out on his floral sofa, fast asleep, his shiny glass bead buttons rising and falling with the steady rise and fall of his chest.

They tip-toed past him, one by one, and slipped onto the fire escape outside. A hush hung over the city as it waited patiently for the sun to rise. Around them, darkness still reigned.

“We’ll just have to be careful for an hour or so,” Kim suggested as they started down the stairs. “I couldn’t wait any longer for fear he’d wake up first.”

London paused, an idea that had been taking shape all evening as she dozed suddenly striking her with the force of full clarity. “No, this is perfect,” she said “Hold on, I just need one more thing.”

She turned and trotted back up the stairs, slipping inside Denton’s door as Kim called to her in a loud whisper below, which she simply ignored.

The Scrapper’s little room was mismatched but tidy. A low table rested in front of the sofa where he slept. To the right was the door to the room they’d been locked in. Behind him was a makeshift kitchen. And to the left was a small hallway. London started down this. It led to another door like theirs, still unlocked from when Kim rescued their pack.

She pushed her way inside and smiled. Denton’s hoard was carefully arranged in piles and boxes all over the room. The man was clearly good at his job, but she wondered if he would have what she was looking for. She stepped past plastic buckets of scrap metal, one just full of old silverware, and various odds and ends. There was a box of what appeared to be pre-Crisis toys, half-melted dolls, tiny rusted cars, and dirty plastic blocks. She fingered a silver bracelet, tarnished near to purple, that sat on top of a pile of jewelry in an old drawer laid out on a chair. All of it was priceless, the relics of who and what they once were. But none of it was what she was looking for.

Just then, she knocked something on the floor near her right foot. Looking down, she saw a plastic cup, packed in its ridges with dirt. Inside, a jumble of old writing utensils poked out. She snatched at an old pen and swirled its tip round and round on her palm, but the ink had dried up long ago. She tried another, same thing. And another—more of the same. At last, her fingers lighted on the perfect solution. Broken so that one end was jaggedly splintered, and the other end soft and flaking away with rot, was a pencil. But the part that mattered, the lead center, poked up from the broken side, pointer to a dark and exotic past. London grabbed it and pulled a book from her pack, flipping open the cover.

She scrawled out her directions as best she could, but the weight of the pencil felt odd in her fingers and she wasn’t very good with maps. Still, he should be able to find it, with his expert Scrapping abilities. Probably, he knew the area surrounding Mesa City pretty well. When she was done, she went back out to the living room and laid the book on the table, letting the pencil rest next to it. She hoped it would be enough.

Then, on second thought, she dropped the whole pack, leaving it leaning against the table leg.
All yours, Tin Man
, she thought.
I’m not gonna need it where I’m going.

Behind his lids, the Scrapper’s eyes were dancing back and forth, seeing pictures no one else could.
Sleeping sickness.

She turned her back on Denton and made for the door once more. It felt good to finally be a woman of her word. No more running, no more excuses. London was ready to start keeping her promises.

“YOU GAVE IT away?” Kim was yelling as they hurried from the old parking lot that surrounded the market.

“Keep your voice down,” London scolded him. “Denton can still come find us.”

“But
why
? Why would you give it away? You said yourself, that pack was our only bargaining chip.”

London spun on Kim and took a deep breath. Beside him, Tora’s face was artfully blank, but London knew she was beginning to pick up on what was going through her mind and the Seer was unsure what to make of it yet.

“Listen,” she said. “I finally get it. Alyna told me to go back. She would never steer me, er—Si’dah, wrong. All this running and hiding, it feels like it was a waste of time, but it hasn’t been. It’s been buying us time. Time for the ‘sleeping sickness’ to spread. Time for the Astral to catch like a wildfire. And everywhere we’ve been, we’ve helped plant those seeds. Don’t you get it? They’re not going to be able to contain it. They’re trying, but after all this time
and
the distraction of chasing us, they’re failing. Or, they will at least.”

Kim blinked, dumbfounded. “So. I still don’t understand what this has to do with you passing all our worldly possessions off to the Tin Man. I’m hungry. I put breakfast in there.”

They were walking again, moving at a brisk pace. London tried hard to remember the way they’d come, the way back to that wide main street dotted with circles of lamp light. She turned a corner and started down another alley. This one looked familiar, but then again, they were all pretty redundant: high walls—some brick, some stone, some glass, dark shadows, and gaping trash bins.

“Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of food.”

“Where? Where are we going, London? You still haven’t told us what the hell you’re doing and it’s going to take time to get anywhere walking. What do we eat along the way?” Kim said, snatching at her arm.

London stopped again, dragging in another big breath against the stitch in her side. She pushed forward, her palm grating against the scratchy brick wall, and turned yet another corner. This time, she saw the familiar street up ahead, the edge of light shining out before them. In the distance, the engine rumbled faintly. The night guard was still on watch. They had just enough time.

“We’re not walking,” London threw over a shoulder. “We’re catching a ride.”

Kim’s arms shot out and yanked her back. “Are you nuts? Tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

Beside him, Tora was silent but her sharp eyes were reading every unspoken word. “The trucks. You want to get picked up by a quarantine truck.”