Falls the Shadow (15 page)

“It's . . . sad.”

“That, too, I guess,” Jaxon agrees.

“Is anybody going to help me with these bags?” Seth calls. “Or did you two just bring me along so I could be your personal slave?”

“We're coming,” Jaxon shouts back. He's frowning. Probably because those are the first words Seth has said to either of us since we left the graveyard. The thirty minutes Jaxon insisted we give him have passed, and Seth isn't exactly back to his joking self. Far from it, actually. And I know it's my fault—that I'm the wedge driving its way between them. But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it. It's not like I'm doing it on purpose.

We go around to the trunk of the car, where Seth is standing over a pile of backpacks and a suitcase that's almost as big as me. He's got a gun in one hand, and in the bag slung over his shoulder I can see the barrels of three more sticking out.

“You weren't kidding about all the guns you packed, were you?” I ask. I'm just trying to make conversation. As long as we're together, I figure I should probably try to smooth out some of this tension.

But he doesn't answer me.

“Just out of curiosity,” I say, still keeping my voice as friendly as possible, “did you pack anything
besides
guns?”

He finally stops messing with the bags and looks up at me. “If you're asking if I packed all your girly necessities, then no,” he says. “Jaxon told me I had twenty minutes, and to worry about essentials only. So we're roughing it. No nail polish or hairspray or frilly little hair bows or anything like that. Sorry.” The smile he gives me is razored with annoyance.

“For the record,” I shoot back, “I haven't painted my nails in almost eight years.” The first Violet and I used to do
that sort of girly stuff together before she got sick—I guess I kind of grew out of it after she died. I'm not sure why I feel like Seth needs to know that, or why I have this weird, sudden urge to convince him that I'm not as bad as he seems to think I am. To do more than simply get rid of the tension.

Since when do I care what anybody thinks about me? Especially Seth Lancaster?

I'm glad when Jaxon steps between us and rescues me. “Probably not a good idea to hang out in the middle of the street like this,” he says. “How about those bags?”

Seth shrugs the bag of guns from his shoulder and tosses it to him. “Here,” he says. “You can carry those; they'll make you look tough. Less like a girly man.”

“Thanks,” Jaxon says, picking up the bag and rolling his eyes.

“Just looking out for you,” Seth says, cracking a grin that's a little closer to genuine.

Jaxon grabs the huge suitcase and heads toward the nearest building. I grab two of the backpacks and sling them over either shoulder, then follow him into what we quickly decide used to be a mini department store. The space is huge and open, with broken mirrors lining the walls and graffiti-covered elevators in every corner. Tons of racks and shelves have been left behind, and a few of them still have faded, dust-covered clothes left on them.

We move through the ghostly silence. Jaxon is tense, and without meaning to, I find myself mimicking his stiff, cautious movements. Seth, on the other hand, seems to be slowly returning to his loud, careless self; we've barely
made it out of sight of the road before he's grabbing a sequined cocktail dress off one of the racks and holding it up to Jaxon.

“This one is definitely your color,” he says.

“Are you kidding me?” Jaxon says. “That cut is all wrong for me. It would make me look dumpy.”

“You say that about everything I pick out. Sometimes I think you just have self-esteem issues.”

I can't help but join in. “You could pair it with this hat,” I suggest, swiping the most ridiculous-looking fedora I've ever seen from a nearby shelf. It's bright red—even through the layers of dust—and has a huge white feather tucked into its band. Even Seth laughs at the sight of it. “It would draw people's attention away from how dumpy you look.”

“There's an idea,” Jaxon says, holstering his gun and taking the hat from me. He wipes away the dust, turns it over in his hands a couple times, then plops it down on top of my head. It's too big on me, and the front of it slips down over my eyes until all I can see is a blob of red with Jaxon's shadow behind it. “It's better on you, though,” he says. “Somehow you manage to make it look good.”

“I don't know,” I say, “I don't think red's really my color.”

He tips the hat back so he can meet my eyes. “I'm going to have to disagree with you there,” he says.

And I almost slip.

I almost let myself get caught up in the warmth of his voice and in that spicy scent that clings to him. I almost,
almost
let my thoughts drift with the hazy summer air and into a daydream of us—one that doesn't take place here.
One that's somewhere less complicated. Someplace where he never lied to me. Where I'm not an origin, Samantha isn't dead, and his mother isn't trying to hunt down me and my sister. We go to school. Wave to all our friends. He takes my hand, and nobody thinks twice about it. There are no cameras, nobody's shouting or whispering things like “freak” as I walk by.

But deep down, I know that place doesn't exist. I know that he's spent his whole life surrounded by CCA members. How many awful things has he been told about clones, about origins like me, I wonder? And some part of him must believe those things. That's why he took me to his mother in the first place, isn't it? Because he thinks families like mine are a danger to society. Because we've been born and bred to be enemies.

When I think about that, the possibility of us lasting past anything more than this strange infatuation seems so far-fetched that it's almost laughable. Like a cruel joke the universe is playing on me. And standing so close to him is doing nothing but dragging out the terrible punch line.

So for once I'm thankful when Seth's big mouth interrupts, calling to us from the back door. “When you two are done making out,” he says, “there's something back here that I think you might be interested in.”

But Jaxon doesn't move; not until I clear my throat and slide past him. I can feel his eyes watching me go, and I force myself not to look back at him.

You can't trust him
, I remind myself fiercely.
Don't be stupid. You have more important things to worry about, anyway.

I take the hat from my head and let it fall behind me as I walk to Seth's side.

“Check it out,” he says, pointing down the narrow street that runs along this side of the department store. It's lined with more run-down buildings, mostly; but at the end of the street is a sign that's actually still readable, even though the
H
is almost completely gone:
HOTEL
.

*  *  *

Inside, the hotel isn't much better looking than it is on the outside. Most of the furnishings are missing; though after a few minutes of searching, we do manage to find a room with two lumpy beds and pillows—which seem like extravagant extras when you consider the moldy ceiling and the piles of tiny bones and dry feces left by who knows what kind of animals. The walls are cracked, their paint, peeling. But at least there's no writing on them, no graffiti or anything that would suggest this place might be frequented by other people.

“Home sweet home,” Seth says, fluffing one of the pillows and sending a cloud of dust into the air.

“I'm going to go see if I can find some better blankets and stuff,” Jaxon says. He hasn't really said much—or even looked at me—since I hurried away from him in the department store, and I can't help but feel like he's making up this excuse to get away from me; the blankets in here aren't
that
dirty or holey. And I don't think he's going to find better-looking ones anywhere else.

“Good luck,” Seth says.

“Try not to kill each other while I'm gone,” Jaxon says.
He sounds relatively cheerful, but I don't miss the way his eyes jump right over me when he takes one last look around the room. He disappears into the hallway before I have a chance to say anything else.

With a sigh, I get up and move to the table on the far side of the room, where Seth neatly stashed most of the weapons he brought. I pick up gun after gun, studying them, asking him every question I can think of about them. It gets Jaxon out of my mind at least, and, besides, it seems like a good idea to know all I can about these weapons.

You know. Just in case.

For everything I ask, though, Seth only has a curt, one-word answer.

When I run out of questions, I give up and start sifting through the other supplies he brought. The suitcase that Jaxon carried in is crammed full with clothes on one side and vacuum-packed nutrition pills and other equally non-exciting foods on the other. As unappetizing as the food looks, though, my stomach still spasms with hunger at the sight of it; I can't even remember the last time I ate.

I take one of the pills, unwrap it, and bite it in half. It has a chalky texture and bland vanilla flavor, but I force myself to swallow the other half too. These pills aren't manufactured for their flavor, I know; I wasn't expecting them to be any better. They're lingering products of a struggling postwar economy: cheaply made, mass-produced, and genetically enhanced so they pack in almost an entire day's worth of nutrition.

I'm lucky because I haven't had to eat much of this
sort of food, but some of Haven's poorer families exist almost entirely on it. I know that because I've read plenty of the e-mails and petitions lobbying my father to do something about nutrition standards, poverty levels, and everything else that's wrong with the city. I used to help him sort through almost all of his mail, actually; we spent a lot of late nights at the computer together, and there was a time when I saw myself growing up to be just like him—working in politics, trying to make some sort of difference in the world like I always believed he was doing.

Then Violet died.

Her replacement came, and suddenly that's all people seemed to write about anymore: cloning and Huxley and
what-sort-of-moral-standards-are-you-setting-Mayor-Benson?
That, and insults. Threats. And then one night my father told me he would take care of the e-mails himself. He locked the door to the home office, and it was still locked when he left for town hall the next morning. I spent at least an hour trying to break the door's security codes while Violet kept watch for Mother, but it was useless. I never managed to get back in.

A few minutes after eating the nutrition pill, my stomach is still growling, still unsatisfied, but my head has already started to clear. I'm about to close the suitcase when something sticking out of one of the interior pockets catches my eye. It's the hilt of a pocketknife, but it's much more ornate than any of the other weapons here. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands, studying the intricate carvings along the handle.

“Do you make a habit of going through other people's things?” Seth asks, suddenly right behind me. For someone with such a big mouth, he moves incredibly quietly.

“I was hungry,” I say, holding up the empty wrapper. “Thought everything in here was public domain.”

“That isn't.” He holds out his hand so I can deposit the knife in it. “I don't know how it got in there.”

“It's yours?”

He looks reluctant to talk about it at first. But just as I start to turn away and go find something else to distract myself with, he quietly says, “It was a birthday gift. From my—from President Cross.” As he talks, he flips the knife open and closed with precise flicks of his wrist, his eyes focused intently on the blade. “First time anybody bothered to celebrate the day I was born. We had a party and everything—just me, her, and Jaxon, but it was nice, you know? So I keep this close. Reminds me that there are at least two people who know I'm alive.”

“What are you talking about? Half the school worships you. Everyone knows you.”

He laughs humorlessly. “The same way everyone knew Samantha Voss. And I'm guessing that, as of today, her death is already old news.” I make a disgusted face, but he just shakes his head. “Come on, Cate,” he says. “You're in Theater too; you know how it goes: ‘Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage' and all that crap.”

“I never liked that play.”

“Whatever. Point is, if I was gone this time
tomorrow, there are two people who would miss me. And one of them, for reasons I'm still not sure I understand, has become rather infatuated with you.”

I have a sudden, sick feeling that I know exactly where he's going with this. Why he's telling me all these things.

“But you already knew that, didn't you?” he says. “Because it's come in handy.”

“You're kidding me, right?”

“I'm not, actually,” he says. “I actually don't think there's anything funny about you taking advantage of my best friend. It's probably the only thing in the world that I see zero humor in.” He takes a step closer to me. “So. I don't know how you did it, what sort of crap you pulled or what lies you told to get him here, but—”

“I didn't tell him
anything
,” I say, my temper flaring. “He offered to go with me.”

“And you've tried really hard to convince him to leave you alone, have you?”

At first all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. And then the only words I can manage, over and over again, are “You've got it all wrong.”

“I don't think so, Benson. You aren't fooling me.”

My cheeks are flushed red hot at this point, the heat so intense that it burns away any hope of this turning into a rational conversation. But I don't want to fight him either. I've spent my whole life avoiding him and the rest of his crowd, ignoring all the stupid things they said about me and my family; why should things be any different now? He's just as obnoxious out here as he was back at school.