Isle of Night (23 page)

I'd never receive the award. Never get a chance at
off-island
. I doubted I even had a chance to live through the night.

If I survived my punishment, I'd take her down. I'd vowed it before, after my nearly naked midnight run. But this time it'd be more than an armful of snow I'd dish out.

“Sadly, when one Acari errs, all suffer.” Guidon Trinity, the redheaded Initiate, was speaking. Her accent was crisp, like a well-bred Northeasterner, and it snapped me to attention. She'd struck me as a Lilac type, though a little classier, and I wondered what Swiss boarding school they'd plucked her from. “You will all go out, dressed as you are. You will be blindfolded, separated into groups, and driven to a point far from here. You will make your way back to the dorm. On your own.”

I looked around. Everyone had donned their coats—perhaps anticipating just this sort of sadistic hazing—but some were missing their gloves or hats.
I
was missing my hat, and my hair was wet. Though the glares pointed in my direction were probably smoldering enough to keep me warm.

“We have rules for a reason,” Trinity continued in that snippy voice. “They civilize us. Sometimes they teach you your place, and other times they simply keep you safe. You
must
follow the rules. And now we will teach you what happens when you don't.”

She strolled around the group, eyeing each of us with disdain. “Rule one: no personal items. Acari Drew broke this rule, and now you all suffer the consequences. Rule two: Never go out after curfew. Rule three: Never stray from the path. Tonight you will be dropped far from here,
after
curfew,
off
the path, and you will see what happens to Acari who disregard rules.”

“Out.” Masha used her whip to herd us to the door. She looked to the Initiates and ordered, “Blindfold them. Acari, you've not eaten, and we won't feed you. Instead, you will be taken in four groups and dropped at different points on the island. Try to make it back alive.”

Dread snaked through me, making me feel sluggish and heavy. Someone grabbed me roughly from behind, and a coarse strip of cloth was tied tightly around my head, covering my eyes. I felt a few shoves from behind, sensed the other girls moving around me, and I stepped forward with them, out the door.

As Ronan predicted, the wind was up, and a bitter chill slammed into me. My hair was long and would take forever to dry, and already my scalp prickled as body heat escaped from the top of my head. Moisture stung at my cheeks.
Snow.
I began to shiver.

Not only was I cold, but I hadn't eaten a real meal since breakfast. Even then I'd had only a yogurt. I drank at lunch, but I'd stayed after class to work with Judge, and hadn't had the time to consume any actual food. Just the thought of it made my belly ache with hunger.

I was a wreck already. How would I make it through the night?

They separated us into groups, shuffling us into what I assumed were those extralarge SUVs. Though I couldn't tell for sure how many of us were in the car, it felt like more than five and less than ten.

We drove. And drove. I hadn't realized the place was that large. Short of circumnavigating the whole island, I had no idea how we were supposed to find our way back again.

We drove into darkness as black as my thoughts. I didn't care about the iPod, but the picture was gone. The only photo I had of my mother, lost forever. It added a poignant twist to my despair.

The car was silent but for the sounds of shifting gears, rustling coats, and the heavy breath of frightened girls. The driver slammed on the brakes, and we were flung forward. There was a sickening thump as we hit some animal on the road.

I shivered. Definitely not a good omen.

The car slowed, bouncing over an uneven road. We stopped.

“Blindfolds off, Acari.” It was Masha who'd spoken. I wondered who else was in the car.

I tugged the strip of fabric free, scrubbing my eyes where it'd itched my skin. I saw that Amanda had driven, with Masha seated next to her in the front. There were six other Acari, and my stomach lurched to see Lilac. But heart-faced Emma was there, too, and it gave me hope.

“Bitch,” someone whispered, climbing past me to get out of the car. It was a black-haired girl I recognized from phenom class.

There were other whispers, too, and one stomp on my foot. The comments were all along the lines of “Thanks, bitch” or “What makes
you
so special?”

The group I'd found myself in was, apparently, both understanding
and
creative.

Girding myself, I was the last out of the car. I looked at Amanda, still in the driver's seat. Her eyes went to my bare head, her expression tight.

“Well,” Masha said, leaning out the window. “What are you waiting for, Acari? Find your way home. And beware of the monsters.”

Monsters?
My thoughts drifted to Master Alcántara, as they often did lately. A reluctant, scared fascination rippled through me, remembering how his eyes had glowed on the night of my run. I wondered what other sorts of monsters might be waiting for us out there.

The wheels spun, crunching gravel, and darkness enveloped the SUV as it drove away. Taillights blinked out as it rounded a corner and disappeared.

It was dark. Really dark. Clouds concealed most of the stars. The barest hint of northern lights flickered low on the horizon.

Despite the darkness, I felt all eyes on me.

The wind whipped around us, and Lilac adjusted her hat. She pinned the other girls with a challenging stare. “Let's go, ladies. Except for you.” She stepped up to me. I stood straight to face her down, but she still towered over me. “Let me break it down for you, Charity. I'm sure there's all kinds of shit waiting out there to eat us. And there's strength in numbers, right? But you got us into this mess. And we're not going to help you out of it.”

“Actually, you got us into it when you tattled on me.”

Lilac stared at me, that euphoric hatred putting a mad smile on her face. “A minor detail.”

The other girls turned to leave. It was surreal to watch them tromp away into the night. As the reality of my situation hit me, I began to tremble, nervous and cold.

I could prove geometry theorems or translate High German, but ultimately I was just a suburban rat from Florida. I could die out here, alone and frozen.

But I'd learned to float in the sea. Surely I could find my way across the snow back home.

Emma came to stand by me. “I'll go with you,” she said, quiet as the wind.

Lilac laughed then, a shrill, heartless sound. “Freaks.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You follow us, and you're dead.”

She spun and jogged to join the others, leaving us in the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I
plopped onto a rock. Wracked with shivers now, I folded into myself, rocking back and forth, rubbing my arms and legs. “I'm
freezing
. What are we going to do?”

“We're going to walk back,” Emma said. She looked at me on the rock. “Don't sit. Move around.”

I took her advice and hopped up, shaking out my arms and legs, desperately trying to generate a little heat. The movement made me light-headed. “Oh, my God, I'm starving, too. I haven't eaten since this morning. I mean, I drank—fortunately—but no food. How can I walk all that way with no energy? How long does it take to pass out from hunger? You'd think I'd know that kind of thing.” My panic had me chattering
and
chatty.

Emma studied the sky, calmly taking it all in. “You think you're hungry, but you're not. That won't be the thing to kill you, anyway.”

“Wow, cool. Thanks.” Chafing my arms, I went to stand near her. My gaze tracked hers, sweeping the cloudy night sky. I tried to approach the problem scientifically. “This place can't be longer than four miles from end to end. I think there are some large rock formations in the center of the island, so we'll need to hike around. Our biggest concern right now is the cold.”

Emma stared at me in that blank way of hers. At first I'd found a sort of appealing serenity in her stillness. But now it was just driving me batty.

“Jeez, Emma. Aren't you freaking out?” I began to jog in place. “Why are you shaking your head?”

“The biggest concern is fear. Not cold. Fear is what kills.” She began to walk away.

“Wait. Where are you going?” I jogged to catch up. It was pitch-black now, and I didn't want to lose her. If fear was what would kill me, I had a decent head start.

“Dealing with first things first,” she replied.

Emma found the road we'd come in on, and we backtracked a few hundred yards. I had no idea what she was doing, but she seemed to have a plan, which was more than I could say for myself.

She halted. A dead rabbit lay at our feet.

Emma squatted, studying it. The top of its body canted at an unnatural angle from the rest of it. Other than that, it was remarkably blood-free, looking ready to up and hippity-hop away, if not for the whole snapped-spine thing.

“That must be what we hit on our way out here,” I said. “Can't be very auspicious to have—”

She plucked the rabbit up by the ears.

“Gah!” I skittered back a few steps. “What are you doing?”

“You're hungry.”

“Not
that
hungry.” I gave her a wary look. “I've seen the survival shows. You're not going to make me consume larvae or urine or anything like that, are you?”

She didn't laugh or even pretend to answer me. Instead, she said, “This'll help the chill, too.”

I didn't want to
begin
to think how Emma might use
roadkill
to keep me warm.

Rather than going back to our original starting point, she headed toward a rock face, barely visible near the side of the road. Dropping the rabbit, she reached behind her and pulled a ginormous knife from her waistband.

“Jeez! Where'd you get that thing?” It looked like a hunting knife. One of those things with a wooden handle and garishly serrated edges, used by guys with names like Cletus or Bobby Ray.

“It was in my drawer.” She patted around the boulder, snapping off small branches from what little shrubbery grew at the base.

“So you just carry it with you?”

She nodded.

“Silly me,” I mumbled. “
Every
girl should run around with a huge buck knife in her pants.”

Emma took one of the branches and began to methodically strip it. “If they gave it, they thought I'd need it.”

Now,
there
was an insight. It was my turn to go silent. Why wasn't I carrying around my throwing stars? Just because I hadn't been taught to use them yet didn't mean they might not come in handy. Maybe I could've speared Lilac in the back as she'd walked off.

Emma finished with that and took a larger branch. Kneeling in the dirt, she laid it on the ground and began to whittle it flat.

If each Acari had her own talent, I was dying to know what Emma's was. “Okay, Pocahontas. What's
your
skill?”

“I don't know. Common sense, I suppose.” Unimpressed by the concept, Emma simply finished her whittling, removed her gloves, and began to dig in the pockets of her parka. “Do you have any lint?”

I was beyond questioning anything this girl did. As far as I was concerned, my life was in her hands. I dug in my pockets, scraping my nails along the fleece seams. “Sure, probably.”

When we'd gathered a quarter-sized wad of the stuff, she unzipped her parka, slid her hand into her tunic pocket, and pulled out a little tube of Vaseline. I recognized it from the basic Dopp kit we'd been issued. She squirted out a gob of it, working it into the lint ball.

“Wow,” I said. “I have
no
idea what you're doing right now.”

“Petroleum jelly.”

I saw it wasn't going to be easy getting information out of her. “Yeah? Vaseline is a petroleum product, and so . . . ?”

“Flammable,” Emma said.

“Ohhh. Cool.” I knelt beside her. She was going to make a
fire
. A fire meant light, heat, hot food, dry hair. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation. Emma wasn't exactly going to be leading any campfire songs, but I sure did like having her on my team.

I watched, mesmerized, as she created a small bow out of a stick, using a thin strip of fabric for the bowstring. She wound the bowstring around a thicker stick, stood that on the flat bit of branch she'd whittled, and, holding the bow, began a sawing motion with her hand. The stick twirled furiously, and Emma blew gentle puffs of air at the base of it, encouraging a spark to light the lint and the pile of shrubbery she'd nestled close for kindling. Next thing I knew, smoke tickled my nostrils, and a humble orange flame flickered to life.