Echoes of Us (17 page)

“Addie’s gone.”

“What’re you saying?” His voice had gone flat. It was so unlike him it was frightening.

My first instinct was to match his coldness. To bind my own emotions. Turn my insides to concrete.

“Back at Hahns,” I said, “they drugged us. I don’t know what with. A cocktail of things. Addie and I . . . we reacted badly. I—I was hallucinating, and . . . when I became lucid again, she was gone.” I took a deep breath. Let it out. “I thought she would come back, at first. I—I thought whatever effect the medications were having, they would wear off. But the days kept passing, and now I—I don’t think—”

I turned to face Jackson. Stared him right in the eye like it was the only thing in the world that could keep me steady. Here, at least, was someone who could understand a fraction of my pain. My loss.

“I don’t think she’s coming back,” I whispered.

M
y words froze the moment. Crystallized us.

It hadn’t seemed real until I said it out loud. Until I admitted it to someone else. And to myself.

I could feel my throat closing again. The rapid thrum of our heart—
my
heart.

It was only my heart now.

I didn’t realize I was crying until the room began to blur. Until Jackson snapped out of his daze. For a moment, he looked nothing but helpless.

That, that of all things, I understood the most.

“You don’t know for sure,” Jackson said quietly, but fiercely. “You can’t know for sure.”

I didn’t tell him how it felt in my head. How it wasn’t the same at all as when Addie went under by herself.

He was Jackson. He had to keep hoping. I couldn’t take that away from him.

Someone opened the door to the kitchen. People drifted out, carrying plates and looking for places to sit. Jackson turned away. Stared at nothing. Was he speaking with Vince?

Vince would know the best things to say to him. Things no one else would know, because no one else knew him so well. No one else had spent a lifetime sharing his body, seeing through shared eyes.

Addie and I had shared a life. Now, like Jaime’s second soul, she was gone.

The thought of it shattered through me.

I escaped upstairs to the room Mrs. Shay had allotted us. Crawled into bed and turned off the light and lay there in the darkness feeling more alone than I ever had in my life.

Was I still hybrid?

Was I still hybrid, with Addie gone like this?

Hunger woke me. Hunger and some wide-jawed nightmare that disintegrated into confused flashes as soon as I woke, but left me trembling.

The room was dark. My bedside clock read a little after midnight. I heard the quiet rasp of Jackson’s breathing. Saw the shadow of his body in the bed next to mine.

I slipped from the room and down the stairs, moving slowly in the darkness. The kitchen light was already lit. I peeked around the doorway. I must not have been as quiet as I thought I’d been, because Ben was looking right back at me. He sat at the wraparound counter, picking at a plate of leftover barbecue chicken.

“You hungry, too?” he said. When I nodded, he motioned toward the fridge. “I can’t eat with all those people running around. All the fuss.”

I managed something that was not quite a smile. “You must not like restaurants.”

“Not really, no,” he said. “I also hate hotels, so this is an all-around pain in the ass.” He stabbed a bite of chicken and waved it at me in a vaguely beckoning manner. I drifted closer, climbing on the stool next to him.

In the flurry of last night, I hadn’t thought to question Jackson about the man who’d driven, with such short notice, all the way up the mountain to pick up a boy he barely knew and a girl he didn’t know at all. Was he hybrid himself? Did he have family who was?

“Go ahead and ask,” he said. I looked at him in surprise, and he shifted in his chair. “It’s a strange change of pace, isn’t it? You get it ingrained into you—
Don’t mention your missing son
.
Don’t tell people what happened to him
. Then, all of a sudden, you’re surrounded by people blathering on about their own lost children, or siblings, or what-have-you, and you’re expected to just . . .
share
.” He snorted. “But I won’t find what I need to know by keeping silent. So ask.”

“You had a son,” I said cautiously.

“I had a son,” he echoed. He took another bite of chicken. Chewed ponderously for a moment. “I’m hoping I
have
a son, but I’m realizing it’s more and more possible that yes, I had a son and don’t anymore.”

“I—I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—What’s his name?”

“William,” he said around a mouthful of chicken. “He’d be eighteen now. I’d describe to you what he looks like, but I haven’t seen him since he was eleven years old, so all I can say is that he has brown eyes and brown hair and a scar on his chin from when he fell while helping me out on the ranch.”

I didn’t tell him how the older children disappeared at Hahns. I wasn’t sure if it was the case elsewhere, and besides, he probably already knew. Perhaps William had escaped years ago. Perhaps he was roaming the shadowy parts of the country, looking for lost family.

Perhaps they’d find each other again, someday.

“From what I’ve overheard”—Ben gestured at me with his fork—“you’re looking for two foreign-looking siblings, about your age, and some doctor lady.”

I nodded. I’d mentioned everyone, but Ryan, Hally, and Dr. Lyanne were the ones I’d best been able to describe.

“I noticed you never mentioned anything about parents. Unless your mother’s the doctor lady.”

I shook my head. He sobered. “Already know where they are? Or just not interested in finding them?”

I hesitated. “I guess . . . I’ve got other things I have to do first. Before I can think about going home.”

Ben shook his head. “Things to do. I should laugh at a girl your age who says that so seriously. But things have been different these past couple months. Those people who blew up the Powatt institution were only kids, too.”

I kept my expression neutral.

“Place I was staying before here,” Ben continued, “there was a little girl, barely older than that Aiden kid, running around by herself. Said she was trying to find her family. Find her brother.” He gave a low laugh. “How many of us do you think will actually find who we’re looking for? What will happen to that girl, if she doesn’t? Who will take her in? Even a pretty little fairy-looking child like her.”

I froze. “What was her name? The girl?”

Ben frowned. “You think you know her brother?”

“I—” I grabbed the counter to steady myself. “Just—what was her name?”

“I wouldn’t normally remember,” Ben said. “But it was easy enough—Kitty.”

I
spent the rest of the night pestering Ben for everything he remembered about Kitty and Nina. He promised me she’d seemed fine. Quiet, mostly, but determined. She’d arrived shortly after he did, riding in with a woman she didn’t seem to know. The woman had left again soon after, but Kitty stayed, asking for news of her brother. Ben got the impression that the man used to live nearby, but perhaps didn’t anymore, prompting Kitty’s search.

He had no idea why she was alone.

After Ben went to bed, I stayed in the kitchen a little longer, just thinking. I grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed Henri’s satphone number again, echoing the
beep
of every digit with
Please, Please, Please
.

Please work.

It didn’t.

You were supposed to fix it, Ryan
, I thought desperately.
Why haven’t you fixed it?

I was back in our room when Jackson woke hours later, rocketing up with a gasp and a shudder. He recovered quickly. Closed his eyes and fell back against his pillow.

It wasn’t until he opened his eyes the second time that he noticed me sitting cross-legged on the other bed.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, just as softly. “You were already asleep when I came up last night.”

“I guess I was tired,” I said, and he nodded. “I was talking to Ben, and he mentioned Kitty.”

Jackson sat up. “He’s seen her? He didn’t say anything to me. Where were—”

“She was at the safe house in Grental Plains,” I said. “And she was alone. But that was weeks ago. He doesn’t know where the others could be—or why she isn’t with them. I called the satphone again, but it’s still not working.”

“It’s still a better lead than I’ve been able to come up with,” Jackson said, just as I said,
“Everything’s in pieces.”

My voice shook, but I had to say it—had to tell someone, and there was no one else. “Sometimes, I wonder . . . if we hadn’t done what we did at Lankster and Powatt. Then, well—things wouldn’t be like they are now
.
We’d all still be in Anchoit. We’d all be together. Peter would still be—”

“Don’t, Eva,” Jackson said softly. “You can’t go back and analyze everything. We couldn’t have known any of it would lead to any of this.” I tried to interrupt, but he continued over me in a rush. “Besides, if we hadn’t done what we did, maybe none of the rest of it would have happened, either. All this change—all this talk about hybrids that was buried before. People are speaking out like they haven’t in decades. That’s good, isn’t it? It might all be a mess right now, but at least when things are messy, it means they aren’t sure. And that means they might change. I—I’m not saying it was
worth it
, or that it all balances out, or anything like that. Just . . .” I felt his agitation as keenly as if it were mine. “It’s happened. There’s no regretting it now.”

I didn’t bring up Addie, and neither did he. Maybe we both knew there was nothing more we could say about it.

It was enough that we both knew. And both understood.

He pushed aside his blankets. “Grental Plains is at least a six- or seven-hour drive. I don’t think I have enough money to get us there on our own. Let’s see if anyone’s headed in that direction soon. There’s that couple two doors down, and I think I heard them say—”

I took a deep breath, and he looked up, halting midramble. He grinned. It was shakier than it had been, before Powatt. Before everything. But that was understandable.

I loved it a little more, for the shakiness. For the crack in it that mirrored the cracks I could feel in every part of me. We were both holding ourselves together.

“We’ll get her back,” he said, and I nodded.

I didn’t ask him which
her
he was talking about.

The couple Jackson had mentioned, Frank and Elizabeth, were in fact headed toward Grental Plains. They planned to leave the next day, which left me an entire twenty-four hours to worry and stress. I knew an extra day wouldn’t make much of a difference, considering it had already been weeks since Ben left Grental Plains. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we couldn’t afford to waste another minute, let alone another day.

I tried to keep myself busy. After the desolation of Hahns, the small bed-and-breakfast was a circus. Mrs. Shay was thankful for someone to help out. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I liked to be with her in the kitchen. Liked to have her smile at me and tell me I made life a little easier.

It wasn’t until noon, when I went into the pantry to get a can of beans and saw the calendar hanging on a hook, that I realized.

Vince was the one who found me standing there, frozen.

“What?” He peered over my shoulder. “Found a goblin hiding in here?” He grinned at me, but I didn’t smile back.

“I’m sixteen,” I said.

His eyes shifted to mine. “What?”

“It was my birthday,” I said numbly. “Two days ago. December fourteenth. I didn’t realize.”

His grin widened. “Happy belated birthday.”

But it wasn’t.

My sixteenth birthday was the first one in my entire life I hadn’t celebrated with Addie.

We left right after lunch the next day, when most of the house’s occupants were still gathered in the kitchen, helping clean up. I waited in the foyer while Frank and Elizabeth packed their meager luggage into the trunk. Mrs. Shay wanted to send us off with extra food, and Vince had gone to help her with it.

The other tenants of the safe house had surprised me with a new set of clothes, culled from their own suitcases. Mrs. Shay gave me a proper pair of shoes—worn, but exactly the right size, and much better protection against the elements and the cold ground. Elizabeth handed me two shirts that were slightly too big, and a pair of pants I cinched with one of Ben’s belts.

Ben found me standing alone. “Find the girl,” he said.

“I will,” I promised, and added, “Good luck. With finding William, I mean.”

He nodded. Mrs. Shay and Vince returned with plastic bags full of leftovers, and what snacks she could spare. She pressed one bag into my hands, then kissed me on the cheek so gently tears sprung into my eyes.

I’d blinked them away by the time I climbed into the backseat next to Vince. Then I had to do it all over again when I shuffled through the bag of individually wrapped sandwiches and found a small white envelope containing a wrinkled ten-dollar bill.

Grental Plains reminded me of Lupside. The suburb we pulled into, after hours on the road, could have fit easily next to my old neighborhood, but for the style of the houses. They were all one-story and spread out, with wide roofs and boxy exteriors.

It was already dark. We navigated by streetlights and a yellow moon.

“Here?” My voice was hushed. “Are you sure? Where is everyone?”

The house we’d pulled up to was barely bigger than mine had been. The driveway was clear of cars.

“They’re probably directing parking elsewhere,” Elizabeth said over her shoulder. “It would be suspicious to have a mess of cars by their house all the time.”

Vince slipped from the van to go ring the doorbell and ask. I watched as he spoke briefly with a man at the door, then came back to the car and told us to park at a shopping center down the road.

Elizabeth insisted I get out here, too, to save me the walk back. From the way she glanced at me, I guessed I still seemed sickly.

The man who owned the house was named Lucas, and he barely looked old enough to be out of college. He rented the house from his uncle, who he assured us lived across the state and would never show up unexpectedly to check on him. I could tell the setup still made Vince nervous. He kept glancing toward the door as Lucas explained that there weren’t any more beds or couches, but plenty of floor space, and pillows, if we had sleeping bags.