The Disappearance of Ember Crow (8 page)

“You’re not what your dad tried to make you.”

“I know.” He gave me his dazzling smile. “You showed me that, when we met and shared memories. I think you’re the only person in the world who could have seen my past and still looked at me as if I was …” He stopped, shrugged. “Someone you wanted in your Tribe. Someone you could love.”

“Of
course
I–”

“Ember didn’t agree with you. She thought I was dangerous.”

“She changed her mind about that.”
Sort of
.

“She was right, Ashala. Except all Illegals are dangerous. Not only because we have abilities but because we live in a world where to have an ability is to be feared.”

“So what?”

“So hurt people don’t always make the best decisions. But you’re the one who sees that we are each more than our pain.” He reached out to link his hands in mine. “You’re just not very good at doing it for yourself.”

Ember had said, on more than one occasion, that I changed people, simply by seeing the best of what they could be. But I wasn’t even sure I knew the best of what
I
could be. Whatever it was, I felt a long way away from it right now. “Connor, I don’t know … I can’t …”

“It’s all right.” He leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead, and stepped away. “Come on. You need to see the Tribe.”

The two of us made our way, hand in hand, through the cave system, with Nicky running alongside. We emerged into the cool morning air and made our way through the trees, angling up to the area everyone called the Overhang. It was a big flat area of granite, with another rock projecting over the top. The Tribe used it as a place to eat in autumn and spring when it was too wet to sit among the trees, but the weather wasn’t bad enough to keep us in the caves.

Everyone was there, gathered around a fire with steaming mugs of tea in their hands. Nicky bounded in and was greeted with hugs from the children. He settled with the other Tribe dogs, while I hung back a little. I was suddenly nervous at seeing everyone after I’d run away.

I needn’t have worried. They acted as if I’d never been gone. Georgie and Daniel made space for Connor and me to sit beside them, while Keiko poured tea from the pot bubbling on the fire and handed me a cup. Micah gave me a piece of bread he’d toasted on a stick over the flames, and Penelope passed me the pot of honey and a knife. I slapped honey on the toast, and into the tea to sweeten it, and began to eat.

Conversations rose and fell in a soothing, familiar rhythm. No one appeared to be paying any special attention to me. But my cup of tea was continually refilled, and I’d barely finished one piece of toast when another arrived. And they all found the time to tell me something, filling me in on a thousand small moments that I’d missed. Micah had finished building a fence to enclose our newly expanded food garden. Benny had come up with a new bread recipe, and Jin had succeeded in growing a bumper crop of potatoes. Penelope was excited about a new variety of aloe. She was our only Mender and she tried to use forest plants for treatments as much as she could, to avoid exhausting her ability on minor hurts. Andreas and Jo had finished making clothes for the youngsters who had outgrown theirs. And everyone had been practising their abilities as I’d told them to – Mai had got faster, Stefan could now lift boulders half his size, and Rosa could summon more water than she’d ever been able to before.

They needed me, I realised, in the same way that I’d needed Pack Leader. And I needed them. I’d been going crazy trying to protect everyone, to keep them all in the nest, just as Jaz had said. But that wasn’t how a wolf acted. There was always danger in the world, and wolves knew it. The promise of the Pack was simply to always be there, to defend the Pack or die trying. I called out to them all in my head.
I am your Pack Leader, and I am here
. I could almost hear the echo of it, flowing back to me from them.
We are your Tribe, and we are here
.

Connor was watching me intently. “Do you see?” he whispered.

I nodded, blinking back tears.
Love is the only thing more powerful than hate
. Georgie had told me that once. And she’d been right, it was. It was even more powerful than the monstrous, angry part of me. Because I felt so much bigger than that, here. So much more. How could I have failed to understand that it was through their eyes that I saw the best of what I could be?

I’d been running away from the very thing that would stop me becoming what I feared.

I whispered back, “I’ve been an idiot.”

“Yes. I know.”

I laughed and leaned against him, munching on toast and enjoying being with the Tribe. Eventually breakfast was done and they all began to disperse, drifting off to their various tasks. Georgie and Daniel were the last to go. He was taking her to see the autumn lilies blooming. I didn’t care where they went, as long as Georgie was kept away from her futures for a while. And I knew I could trust Daniel to make sure she was occupied with earthly, everyday, here-and-now things.

As the two of them disappeared into the trees I jumped up, and reached out to pull Connor to his feet. Then I threw myself at him. He laughed, staggering back a step before he steadied himself, and kissed me. Sensation and emotion looped back and forth between us until I wasn’t certain where he ended, and I began.

The kiss left me breathless and wanting more. But I couldn’t lose myself in him for long, not when we were no closer to finding Ember. And I didn’t need to tell him what I was thinking. Sometimes he knew me better than I knew myself. He bent to kiss me again, a lingering promise of more.
Later
.

And he said, “Let’s go search Ember’s laboratory.”

I stood in the entrance to Ember’s laboratory with Nicky at my side, watching as Connor switched on the solar lamps positioned around the cavern. The three of us were deep in the cave system, enclosed by warm air and musty darkness and layers of rock. Connor finished with the lights and I examined the room, trying to figure out if anything had changed. It took a while, because Ember’s lab was big and cluttered. There were long benches, scattered with papers. Shelves, holding bits of machinery and books. And cupboards, that I knew were packed with yet more of her things. Micah had crafted the furniture from bits of fallen wood, and each piece was carved with intricate designs of trees and birds and animals. Ember loved those carvings, just as she loved working down here, in the quiet embrace of the earth. Only she wasn’t here any more. And so far as I could tell, there was nothing to indicate where she’d gone.

“Everything looks the same.” I felt a bit crushed. I didn’t know what I’d expected to find – no, I did. A note. A clue. Anything that would help me find her.

Nicky ran over to one of the cupboards. He turned in a circle and sat, wagging his tail.
Is he trying to tell me something?
Hurrying over, I yanked open the doors.

The only thing inside was herbs.

I looked at Nicky. He had his head held up and his chest puffed out, like he’d done something incredibly clever.

“You know,” Connor said, “it’s possible that’s not the smartest dog in the world.”

“He
is
smart!” I protested. “Maybe he got the wrong cupboard.”

I went to the other one.
More herbs
. Plus a pile of rhondarite collars that we’d taken off the detainees rescued from the centre. Rhondarite blocked an ability for as long as it touched someone’s skin, and I hated the stuff. I’d wanted to destroy those collars, but Em had thought they might come in useful one day.

With a sigh, I closed the cupboard doors. “If there’s some clue, it must be buried among all her stuff.”

Connor cast an appraising glance at our crowded surroundings. “We’d better start searching.”

He strode over to a set of shelves, and began to sort through the contents. I glanced about helplessly, unsure of where to start. Then my gaze fell on the bench where Ember had been sitting the last time I’d seen her here. I wandered across to it, trying to imagine what she’d been thinking and feeling as she worked on her projects. There were two things on the bench – a black box, and a streaker. I’d brought both back from Detention Centre 3. I picked up the streaker, holding the cold, smooth weight of it my hand.
No, not a streaker, anymore. A stunner
. Ember had altered the weapon so that it would knock someone out without permanently harming them. She’d wanted me to be able to defend myself, and she’d known how I felt about killing. She’d finished the stunner two months ago now.
Not that long before she left
. I wondered if she’d known then that she was going. Had the weapon been her idea of a parting gift?

It was a horrible present, and no substitute for her being here. I tossed it back onto the bench, turning my attention to the box instead. This was the machine that Miriam Grey had used to pull memories from my mind when I was trapped in Detention Centre 3. Except it wasn’t only a machine. When it had been inside my head, I’d seen it as a dog, a huge, half-metallic hound that was as much a prisoner as I was. I’d brought the box with me when I fled the centre, and asked Ember to build it a mechanical dog body. She hadn’t been able to do it yet.

Nicky padded over, and pushed his head against my leg.
Maybe he and the box-dog could play together, once I get Ember back …
I patted the top of the box, and whispered, “I won’t leave you like this, boy. I’ll find her. Promise.”

From across the room, Connor spoke. “Ashala. What exactly did Ember say, about angels?”

“What?” I turned to face him, bewildered by the unexpected question.

He was standing by the shelves, holding a piece of paper in his hand. “You were asking me about angels before, remember? Because Ember told you something. What was it?”

“Nothing important.” I walked over, eyeing the paper hopefully. “Is that a note? From Em?”

“No.” He pressed it flat against his chest. “What did she say, Ashala?”

Whatever was on that paper, he obviously wasn’t going to show it to me until I answered.
Time to confess
. “It wasn’t Em. It was grandfather, and he said, ‘beware the angels’.”

“Why didn’t you tell–” He stopped, and shook his head. “Because Georgie says I look like an angel. You thought he was talking about me.”

“I didn’t think he meant I should be afraid
of
you,” I explained hastily. “I figured he meant I should be afraid
for
you, in case I hurt you again …”

“I don’t need you to protect me, Ashala!”

“I know. I’ve been an idiot, I told you that before. I’m sorry.” And I was. But I could still feel, deep inside, that overwhelming, irrational urge to protect him from all harm. I wasn’t over that yet. I wasn’t sure how to get over it.

He stared at me a moment longer. Then he nodded, accepting the apology, and handed me the paper. “Read that.”

I scanned the page. Nine lines, in Ember’s handwriting.
The angel rhyme
. Except … “It’s out of order.” Every schoolkid knew that poem, and it was supposed to run from one to eight:

This version of the poem, though, had the numbers out of order.

I caught my breath. “It’s the same as Georgie’s numbers! Eight, seven, five, four, three, six, two, one. But what does it mean? That Ember’s somewhere with angels?”

“Or that she’ll return here,” Connor said. “This is where the poem is.” I brightened, and he added gently, “Or perhaps not. Georgie’s futures are always difficult to interpret, and I couldn’t work out what those equations she wrote down were about. None of this really makes sense yet.”

That was true enough. Still, the poem was a clue, even if we didn’t know what it meant. I glanced around the lab, which now seemed to be bursting with possibilities. “Let’s see if we can find something else.”

We went on searching. After half an hour, I hadn’t found anything else useful. Plus, Nicky was driving me crazy. He couldn’t leave that cupboard alone. He tried to push me towards it, and when that didn’t work, he sat in front of the thing and barked.

I told him to stop, and he did. But I could feel his big, dark eyes watching me mournfully. “It’s only herbs, Nicky,” I said, as I sorted through yet another pile of papers. “There’s nothing there.”

There was a banging sound. I spun around to find Nicky throwing himself against the cupboard.

It began to topple.

“Nicky!” I dived for him as Connor captured the cupboard in air, stopping it halfway to falling. Grabbing hold of Nicky’s collar, I dragged him out from underneath, pulling him across the room. “Are you hurt?” I knelt down at his side, checking him over. To my relief, he seemed to be okay. “That was a really stupid thing to do!”

“Actually,” Connor breathed, “I don’t think it was stupid at all.”

I glanced up. He was staring at the half-fallen cupboard, looking a little stunned. “Ashala, I think … I think there’s something behind it.”

The cupboard floated sideways, righted itself, and settled on the ground. I gaped at what it had concealed.

A door. A heavy, dull,
impossible
door, set into the cave wall.

Nicky barked, as if to say,
I told you!

I scrambled to my feet. Connor got to the door first and tried the handle. It didn’t open. I arrived right behind him, and ran my fingers over the cold, pitted surface. It felt a bit like metallite, one of the building materials churned out by the recyclers. But metallite was black. Smooth. This was … something else.