Hunted (20 page)

CHAPTER 28

Mom stands in my doorway, the shadows wrapping around her. “You can’t just hide—you have to shield yourself from Daniel completely.” Her voice catches.

“I know.” I sit up, making space for her.

The bed sags as she sits beside me. Her shoulders sag, too. “I don’t know how to help you with this. I never needed to hide my talents—and you’re far more powerful than I ever was.”

I rub the back of my neck. “I’ve been thinking about that. Daniel said he heard me twice when I didn’t intend him to: when I sent to you, and when I sent to the kids in the fire. Both times, I was sending as hard as I could.”

“Because I’ve been shut off from you.” Mom pushes my hair away from my forehead. “It must have been so hard—”

You don’t know how hard.
I squeeze my eyes shut, clamp down on the thought. “I know it was really bad for you when Dad died. . . .”

“But it must have been horrible to suddenly be cut off from me like that—to lose your connection to both your 265

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Dad and me.” Mom’s voice wobbles. She puts her arm around me.

I lean into her softness, but my mind is racing, trying to figure out how to do this. “I think I have to focus on connecting to one person at a time, and reduce my volume and intensity. But there must be something else I’m missing.” Mom pulls back. “I wish I could help you more, honey.

I feel so useless. But you are smart and talented and brave, and I believe in you.” She stands. “Don’t stay up too late trying to figure this thing out. You’ll need energy tomorrow, trying to shield.”

“I know.” I try to smile, but I can feel it slipping, fear close beneath.

Mom hesitates in the doorway. “If there’s any way I can help . . .”

I want to ask her to open up to me so she can tell me when my shields are working, but I know she can’t control it. Know that my asking would cause her pain. The words stick in my throat. “You help, Mom. More than you know.” She shakes her head and smiles a lopsided smile, then leaves.

I sit up straighter. I have to make this work.

My head aches from all the mind-noise, the constant fight to shut it out.

I pull the curtains together tighter, then turn the light off. The dimness eases the pain.

I lie back against my pillow, stretch my legs out, knocking clothes to the floor.

How did Daniel hide himself completely? Even today?

It can’t be water—it rained on us all. Dad could do it.

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Daniel can do it. What connects them? I chew on my lower lip.

What is it about Alex that makes his mind-voice so quiet? Why doesn’t he overwhelm me? It’s not just that he’s calm and happy. There’s something more. Something that connects him up with Dad and Daniel. I just can’t see it.

Something they all eat? Something they think? Something they visualize? I slap the bed. No.

Okay. Back to what I do know. Being immersed in water shields me from people’s mind-voices, quiets them.

Water is an element—something you can actually see and touch. Something natural. What if there’s something else that Daniel’s discovered that he can carry or wear or eat that shields him?

I Google “water” and “properties” on my cell phone. I read and read until I stumble over “nonmagnetic.” Magnetic. Our brain activity, our thoughts, create electromag-netic energy. I remember learning that in some science class. What if water, being nonmagnetic, helps block or even repel some of that energy?

I search “nonmagnetic substances.” They include water, copper, and aluminum. I sit up. That must be why the basement ceiling where Daniel and Ilene meet is covered in aluminum! And Dad’s watch—the one Daniel wears—is copper. Dad loved its reddish brown richness, its warmth. He used to say it made him feel good.

And Alex. The bracelets he wears, that look so good against his skin—they’re copper! I touch the one he gave me.

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But if copper helps shield thoughts, why isn’t the bracelet I’m wearing enough?

I close my eyes. Alex wears a lot of bracelets. I’m only wearing one—a thin one. Dad’s watch—Daniel’s now—is thick and wide. Maybe I need more copper.

I leap up, run to my doorway. “Mom—do you have any copper jewelry? Or anything made of copper?” Mom turns to look at me, puzzled. “I have a necklace your dad gave me. And your dad’s favorite ring—aside from his wedding band—was a copper ring he designed.” Did Dad know what copper could do? If he did, why didn’t he tell me? “Could I borrow them?” I ask.

Mom’s face tightens.

“I promise I’ll give them back. It’s important.” Mom slowly opens her purse, then a small velvet pouch, and pours some jewelry into her hand. “I was keeping his ring for Daniel, for if we ever—” Her voice breaks off.

“He’s got Dad’s watch,” I say.

“He does?” Mom looks startled. “Well then, I guess your dad’s ring should be yours. He used to wear it on his pinky finger, so it just might fit. . . .” She holds it out to me.

I slip it on. It fits perfectly over my thumb, like it was meant to be there. The pain in my head lessens.

Mom’s still holding out the jewelry. The necklace Dad gave her—I remember it now. It has coils of copper twisted into interconnected spirals. Like us, Dad said. I lift it up around my neck. It’s heavier than it looks.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Mom says.

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I turn, and she fastens the clasp around my neck.

The pain recedes to a dull, nagging throb. The mind-voices are quieter, now; even the light seems less harsh. My shoulders drop. I hadn’t even realized I was hunching them.

Mom turns me around, holding my shoulders as she looks at me, smiling, her eyes glistening. I can see the love in her eyes, even if I can’t feel it, mind-to-mind. For a moment, everything feels right. And then I remember Daniel and his plan.

“How’s your practice going?” Mom asks.

“I’m figuring it out. Got some more thinking to do though.”

“Don’t stay up too late,” Mom says, brushing back my hair.

“No,” I say. But I will if I have to.

Back on my bed, I stare at the ceiling again. The copper helps, but not enough. There must be something I’m still missing.

I go back to my cell phone, to the page on nonmagnetic properties. And then it hits me: if there are substances that are nonmagnetic, of course there are things that are magnetic.

And what if Daniel knows that, too? What if he used it against me? I’ve been having more trouble than usual shutting out people’s mind-voices, and I’ve been in a lot more pain since we came to this new school. Ever since I found Daniel—or he found me.

I grab my backpack and dump everything out. I sort through my things—textbooks, binders, pens and pencils, a calculator, favorite books, a browned, half-eaten apple in a 269

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Baggie, my family photo—nothing I don’t recognize. I put everything back except the apple, which I toss in the garbage. I feel guilty. How could I have suspected Daniel would do something so horrible?

I heft my backpack up to toss it to the floor, and my hands hit a hard lump in the side pocket. Even though I tell myself I’m being paranoid, I reach into the pocket and touch something cold. I pull it out.

A gray slab of metal almost the size of my hand, its surface rough and dimpled, sits in my palm. My breath catches. I’m pretty sure I know what it is, but I go back to the web page to check. Yep, cobalt. One of the most highly magnetic metals that exists. And I certainly didn’t put it there.

Sadness pushes at my chest. Daniel had to know that it would cause me pain if he weakened my barriers, that it would let the mind-voices crash in. He had to know it’d make it harder for me to blend in, and more likely that I’d be fingered as a Para. Yet he did it anyway.

I dump the cobalt down the garbage chute. In seconds, the mind-voices become a whisper, the pain almost a memory.

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CHAPTER 29

I snap awake, then lie there, not sure what woke me.

Little pinpricks of sun pierce through the curtains. The pain isn’t so bad as it’s been lately, but it’s still a relief to put my dark glasses on.

I stayed up into the early morning practicing shielding and trying to figure out how to deal with Daniel. I have some ideas, but I’m not sure how much further ahead I am.

Except that knowledge is power—and I know now what Daniel was doing. I know how he made things harder for me—and that means I’m less vulnerable now. Unless he has something else he can use against me that I don’t know about—which he probably does. I stagger to the bathroom and take a hot shower, where the water raining on my face wakes me up.

The sound of water against the tub is like a song. I let the water beat against my back, my neck. It’s not so effective as deep water for shutting out the cacophony of people’s thoughts, but it helps.

I’m drying myself off when I notice the silence. It’s always quiet wherever we are; Mom makes sure of that—but 271

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this is a held-in silence. There’s no breakfast smell, either—

no coffee or hot cereal or toast.

I dress hurriedly, then stumble out to the main room.

Mom’s hunched over in her chair, her head against her hands, the newspaper spread out in front of her like an obit-uary notice.

“What is it?” I ask, hoarsely.

Mom looks up, her face bleak. “If the troopers didn’t know we were here, they do now.”

I pull out a chair, wood dragging against the thin carpet, and sit. Fear moves off Mom in waves, turning my stomach—and then it is gone, so fast I wonder if I imagined it. I clench my hands together. “What does it say?” Mom picks up the paper, the sheets crackling in her hands. She clears her throat.

“Twenty-two students and one teacher at Normal Heights High School were saved from certain death yesterday when a mysterious voice told them what to do. ‘I heard the voice of an angel,’ Mariah Garcia, age 17, said,

‘telling me to get close to the floor, to stay calm, and that someone would save us.’ Mariah, who is suffering from smoke inhalation, would likely have died if she hadn’t heard the voice telling her to lie facedown on the floor. ‘We were all too scared to think,’ Mariah admits.” My mouth is as dry as dust.

Mom keeps reading, her voice flat.

“Mariah wasn’t the only one who heard a voice speak to her. All twenty-two students heard the voice advising them to keep calm. And this reporter has it on good au-272

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thority that two of the students who helped rescue the others heard a voice telling them what to do.” The newspaper trembles in Mom’s hands. She steadies it.

“This incident suggests that the voice was that of a powerful telepath—an unregistered Paranormal. ‘There’s nothing Normal about them,’ Mr. Jarred Temple, principal of Normal Heights High School, says. ‘And if I have one of them hiding at my school, I’m going to root them out with the help of our resident ParaTrooper. Paras are a perversion of human nature.”

Not everyone would agree with Mr. Temple. Some see Paranormals as a higher evolved human being. Others see them as a freak of nature. Whatever people’s opinion, the fact is that it’s illegal to be an unregistered Para. No one knows just how many Paranormals live unregistered in the city, though it’s thought that the number is low since the in-ception of Government Paras. But whether it was mass hallucination, the voice of an angel or God, or an unregistered Paranormal student, it looks like Normal Heights High School has its very own hero. On the eve of Para Cleansing Day, this gives us all something to think about.” Mom sets the paper down as carefully as if it’s going to explode. “I know I promised you one more day, but—”

“We can use this! I can say I heard the voice, too. Then I’m not a suspect.”

“I want you to get your stuff together.”

“Mom.” I lean toward her. “We have to stop the Authority. The whole country will be worse off if we don’t.

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And it’s different this time. We have people on our side.

Please, just give me today.”

“It’s not a risk I want to take. You know Normals get zealous this time of year. It will be even harder to leave tomorrow.”

“No one would expect two Paranormals to travel on Para Cleansing Day.”

Mom crosses her arms. “That’s because it’s crazy!”

“It’s the right thing to do, and you know it!” I shout.

There’s a long silence. Mom bites her lip. “All right, Cait. We’ll stay. Just today.”

Somehow, I’ve got to pull off a miracle.

e

Out on the street, people’s thoughts stab into my head like shards of glass. Fear and excitement coil and thread through people, vibrating into me. Normals are hyper-alert, trying to spot anyone who’s not in synch with them. I touch Mom’s copper necklace, the bracelet I wear, and the voices retreat into static.

Already the streets are strung with red-and-black lights, signifying the blood and deaths that occurred during the Para Cleansing. Para massacre. Cantaloupes are piled high in barrels, ready for people to smash onto the streets the way Para skulls were smashed. It makes me sick that people can celebrate the murder of others, can enjoy reen-acting it. Hotdog vendors are setting up along the sides of the road. Tomorrow there will be even more vendors—

French fry, pretzel, ice cream, cotton candy, and souvenir vendors, all wanting to make a buck off Paras’ deaths.

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I reach out to Alex, then Rachel, visualizing my thoughts touching only theirs.
“Did you read this morning’s paper?”

“That stupid reporter!”
Alex thinks at me.
“Didn’t she
know what she was doing, putting the troopers on you like
that?”

“I’m not letting it stop me. I’ve got to take Daniel
down.”
Today.

I feel Alex smile, like a warm hand on my heart.

“Good . . . but be careful. I want you safe. You’re half my
heart. . . .”

“And you’re mine.”

“I hate to interrupt”
—Rachel hesitates—
“but are you
sure that’s a good idea?”
Her thoughts shudder.

“Rachel, what is it? Did something happen?”

“Some troopers came to our apartment last night. They
kept questioning me about the fire, about how I knew.”
My stomach clenches.
“What did you tell them?”

“That I smelled it. I used your excuse of the connecting vents. They didn’t believe me; they kept threatening to
take me and my family in. So I told them that I heard a
voice, but that I didn’t know who it was. I’m so sorry,
Caitlin.”

“No—you had to. Thank you for not giving up my
name.”

“I would never!”

But how long can she last if she and her family are taken to government lockup? I have to end this—fast.

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