This Savage Song (13 page)

Kate got through the rest of the day without hurting anyone, so that was something. She didn't know if it was luck, odds, or Freddie. Even though she'd teased him, there had been a moment on the bleachers where the answer to
Where are you?
had really been
Here
. She wasn't sure why, only that for the first time in ages, sitting in that strange but comfortable silence, she felt like herself. Not the Kate who grinned at the rumors, or the one who held a knife to a girl's throat, or drove a crowbar through a monster's heart.

The Kate she'd been
before
. The version of her that made jokes instead of threats. The one that smiled when she actually meant it.

But this wasn't the right world for that Kate.

She tossed her bag onto the bed, and the vial from Dr. Landry tumbled out.

Maybe it was the pills, smoothing her edges.
Maybe . . . but there was still something about Freddie. Something . . . disarming, infectious, familiar. In an auditorium full of stares, his was the gaze she felt. In a classroom full of students learning lies, he scribbled the truth in the margins. In a school that clung to the illusion of safety, he didn't shy from talk of violence. He didn't belong there, the way
she
didn't belong there, and that shared strangeness made her feel like she knew him.

But she
didn't
.

Not yet.

She sat at her desk, tapped her computer awake, and logged into the Colton Academy website.

“Who are you, Mr. Gallagher?” she wondered aloud, pulling up the student directory and scrolling through profiles until she found the one she was looking for. She clicked on Frederick Gallagher's page. His information was listed on the left-hand side—height, age, address, etc.—but the photo on the right was odd. She'd had half a dozen pictures taken, one for every school, and they always insisted on front and center, eyes forward, big smile. But the boy on-screen wasn't even looking at her.

His face was in profile, eyes cast down, edges blurred, and lips parted as if he'd been caught midbreath as well as midmotion. If it wasn't for the barest edge of a black tally mark where his cuff was riding up, she wouldn't have been sure it was him.

Why hadn't the office retaken the photo?

There was something teasing about the blurred shot, and Kate found herself craving a better picture, wanting the luxury of being able to stare at someone without being stared at. She booted a new browser on the city's updrive, went onto a social networking site the students all seemed to use, and typed in his name.

Two matches came up in the V-City area, but neither one was the Freddie she'd met. Which was odd, but Freddie said he was homeschooled. Maybe he'd never joined the site. She opened a third browser and typed his name into the search engine. It landed half a dozen hits—a mechanic, a banker, a suicide victim, a pharmacist, but no match for
her
Freddie.

Kate sat back in her chair, and tapped a metal nail against her teeth.

These days,
everyone
left a digital mark. All day, every day at Colton, people were snapping photos, recording every mundane moment as if it deserved to be preserved, remembered. So where was he?

Something twinged in her mind. Maybe she was being paranoid, searching for a complicated answer when the simple one—that he was that rare teen who preferred staying off-grid—was probably true.

Probably. But it was like an itch, and now she'd started scratching . . .

The drive wasn't the only place that information was logged, not in North City. She logged into her father's private uplink, clicked on the archive labeled
human
. The screen filled with thousands of thumbnails, each with a name and date. Freddie wasn't like the other kids at Colton, and maybe she wasn't the only one who'd noticed. She typed his name into the search bar, half hoping his face would show up with a tag for some disturbance, even just an anomaly, but—nothing.

Exasperated, she clicked back to the school directory and reconsidered the picture, staring at it for several long minutes as if it might come to life, complete the arc of motion, meet her eyes. When it didn't, Kate scrolled through his profile, scribbled down his address, and got to her feet.

There was still one place she hadn't looked.

“Hello?” she called out as she crossed the penthouse. No answer. She did a quick lap through the open layout. No sign of Sloan or Harker. The door to her father's office was locked, but when she pressed her good ear to the wood, she didn't hear the hum of the soundproofing system that Harker activated when he was inside. She keyed in the code—she'd set up a camera on her second day, caught the motion and order of his fingers—and a second later the door opened under her touch.

The lights came up automatically.

Callum Harker's office was massive, and strangely classic, with a broad, dark desk, a wall of bookshelves, and a bank of windows overlooking the city. She crossed to the shelves and ran her hand over the large black books that ran the wall. Ledgers.

Harker was a careful man; he kept both physical and digital copies of the information on all his citizens. The computer was locked—Kate hadn't been able to crack the access code—but the beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them. The ledgers were alphabetical, and retranscribed every year. When people lost Harker's protection in the course of that year, their names were blacked out. If they
gained
protection, their names were written in at the back of the book.

Kate pulled the
G
ledger from the wall and opened it on the desk, paging through until she found the name:
Gallagher
.

Eleven Gallaghers were listed under Harker's protection in North City, and there was even a Paris Gallagher whose address matched the one on Freddie's profile, but there was no mention of Freddie himself. But she'd
seen
the pendant around his neck. She turned to the back of the ledger, hoping to find his name in the additions.

It wasn't there.

“Where are you?” she whispered, right before someone cleared his throat.

Her head snapped up. Her father was standing in the doorway, wiping his hands on a black square of silk. “What are you doing, Katherine?”

The air stuck in Kate's lungs. She forced it out, hoping the exhale might pass for an exasperated sigh. “Looking for a name,” she said, leaning against the desk, as if she had every right to be there. “There's a girl at my school who's driving me crazy. She had a medal, and I was hoping it was stolen or expired, but alas,” she said, letting the ledger fall shut, “she's still under your protection.”

Harker's dark eyes hung on her. She tried to ignore the dried blood on his cuffs. “Sorry,” she added. “I should have waited for you to get home, but I didn't know when that would be.”

“I didn't think I'd left the room unlocked.”

“You didn't,” said Kate coolly, pushing off the desk and walking out. She was relieved when he didn't follow.

Back in her room, she sank into her chair, Freddie's student profile still up on her screen. It made even less sense now, a blurred photo beside a name that, according to her father's records, didn't exist. Could he be using an alias? But
why
?

The only people who hid were the ones with something to hide.

So what was Frederick Gallagher hiding?

August hated blood—hated the sight, hated the smell, hated the slimy, too-thick feel—which was unfortunate, since he was currently
covered
in it.

It wasn't his, of course.

It was Phillip's. The FTF with the warm smile and the buzz cut, the one who treated August like a friend, and glared at Harris whenever he used the word
monster
.

“Hold him still,” ordered Henry. “I need to tourniquet the wound.”

Phillip's shoulder had been torn from the socket. Visibly. His FTF gear had been shredded, and August could have reached out and traced his fingers over the Corsai's claw marks—teeth marks? It was always hard to tell—if Phillip hadn't been writhing around so much on the steel medical table.

August had been sitting at the counter doing homework, Allegro playing with his laces, when they got the
call. Another attack. But this one wasn't at the Seam. And it wasn't random. It was an ambush. Harker's monsters knew exactly where the FTF would be patrolling, and when. Someone had
told
them. And now four FTFs were dead and Phillip seemed hell-bent on going down in a blaze of obscenities and blood.

“For God's sake, hold him
still
.”

Leo and August pinned Phillip down while Henry moved with careful, decisive motions over the vicious wound. His partner, Harris, stood to the side, blood streaked across his face, looking numb from shock while Emily stitched up a gash on his bicep. She didn't have Henry's surgical grace, but her hands were just as steady.

Henry drew a syringe full of morphine and sank the needle into Phillip's functioning arm. His cursing trailed off and his head lolled to the side, the pain and tension finally going out of him.

“This cannot stand, Henry,” said Leo, a smudge of Phillip's blood along his jaw. “We have suffered enough insult. It is time to—”

“Not now,”
snapped Henry as he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and set to work. August looked down at the wreckage of Phillip's shoulder, the slick red pool spreading across the metal table, and felt ill. Under the glare of the lights, Phillip looked suddenly young, delicate. Humans
were too fragile for this fight, but the Sunai were too few to do it alone, and even if three
could
wage a war on thousands, the Malchai and Corsai weren't foolish enough to get close, opting instead for prey they could catch, and kill. And so the Sunai focused on hunting sinners in order to stem the flow of violence, and the slaying of the monsters fell to the humans, and the humans, invariably, fell to them. It was a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends.

August's gaze traced the claw marks. Messy. Brutal. This was a
monster's
work. The lingering scent of the Corsai—fetid air, stale smoke, and death, always death—still clung to the torn flesh and turned his stomach. Leo was right. August was
nothing
like the thing that did this. He couldn't be.

“August,” said Henry a minute later. “You can let go now.”

He looked down and realized he was still pinning Phillip's limp body to the table. His hands slid off, and he went to wash them in a nearby sink while Henry worked.

Blood ran into the sink, and August looked away, trying to find something—anything—else to focus on, but it was everywhere, on the wall, and the counter, and the floor, a trail leading back through the doors to the steel elevators marked with a
19.

The nineteenth floor of the Flynn compound had been nicknamed the Morgue by some of the more morbid members of the FTF. Even though it was the second highest floor in the building, directly below the Flynns' own apartment, there was no view. The windows had all been bricked up, the furniture removed in favor of sterile space. The nineteenth floor housed two essential things: a private interrogation chamber (the rest being on the sublevels with the cells) and an emergency medical suite.

“Where is he?” asked Henry, looking up from the wreckage of Phillip's shoulder. He was referring to the traitor. The man who'd sold the information to Harker. He was a cousin of someone in the FTF, and after he'd sold them out, he'd tried to escape across the Seam and claim some kind of sanctuary in North City. But Harker didn't keep rats, so he'd thrown him back. A squad had hunted him down and hauled him in, but not before he put two bullets in their captain. Two minutes with Leo, and he'd confessed to everything.

Leo stood before a mirror, wiping the bloodstains from his face. His black eyes went to the scar through his brow and glanced off, the way August's had around the blood, as if disgusted by the sight.

“Cell A,” answered Harris dully, all trace of his boyish humor gone. Taken.

“He's guilty,” added Leo evenly, and they all knew what he meant. A red soul. A reaping.

“All right.” Henry nodded to his wife. “Go get Ilsa.”

The man in Cell A looked rough.

His nose was broken, his hands were bound behind his back, and he was lying on his side, chest hitching in a wounded way. August stood, staring, trying to understand what made men break like this. Not in a physical way—human bodies were brittle—but heart and soul, what made them jump, fall, even when they knew there was no ground beneath.

He felt a gust of air, and then the soft warmth of Ilsa's hand in his as she looked through the Plexiglas insert in the cell door.

“Can you feel it?” she asked, sadly. “His soul is so heavy. Who knows how long the floor will hold. . . .”

Her hand slipped away, and she made her way barefoot into the cell. August shut the door behind her but did not leave. It was a rare thing to see another Sunai reap a life. And Ilsa had a way of making everything beautiful. Even death.

Steps sounded behind him, heavy and even. Leo. “Henry is a fool not to let her out.”

August frowned. “Who? Ilsa?”

Leo lifted his hand, brought it to rest against the door. “Our sister, the angel of death. Do you know what she is? What she can
do
?”

“I have an idea,” said August dryly.

“No, you don't, little brother.” Within the cell, Ilsa sank to her knees beside the traitor. “Henry would keep you in the dark, but I think you deserve to know what she is, what you could be, perhaps, if you let yourself.”

“What are you talking about, Leo?”

“Our sister has two sides,” he said. “They do not meet.”

It sounded like a riddle, but Leo wasn't usually one for talking in circles. “What—”

“Do you know how many stars she has?”

August shook his head.

Leo's fingers splayed. “Two thousand one hundred and sixty-two.”

August started to do the math, then stopped. Six years. Six years since Ilsa had last gone dark. Six years since
something
ended the territory war.

Leo must have seen the understanding register. He traced a circle with his index finger. “Who do you think made the Barren, little brother?”

Beyond the door, the traitor was confessing in a broken whisper. Ilsa took his face in her hands and guided him down to the concrete floor. She lay on her side, stroking his hair.

Somewhere in the city was a place where nothing grew.

“That's not possible,” whispered August. The last time he'd gone dark, he'd taken out a room of people. The idea that Ilsa could level a city block? Leave a scar on the surface of the world? If that was true, no wonder Henry didn't want the truce to break. The FTF thought Flynn had a bomb.

And they were right.

Behind his eyes, August saw the stretch of scorched earth at the center of the city. Did she . . . did she mean to do it? Of course not—he hadn't meant to hurt anyone, either—but things got lost in the darkness. When Sunai went dark, lives ended. There were no rules, no boundaries: the guilty and the innocent, the monstrous and the human—they all perished.

A
culling
, that's what Leo called it.

How many had died that day in the square? How many innocent lives lost among the guilty? It wouldn't come to that again. It couldn't. There had to be another answer.

“Her confinement was part of the truce,” continued Leo. “But memories are short, and it seems our Northern half needs to be reminded.”

The way he spoke of her made August's skin crawl. “She isn't a
tool
, Leo.”

His brother looked at him with those terrifying
black eyes, their surfaces too flat, too smooth. “We are all tools, August.”

Inside the cell, Ilsa began to hum. The sound barely reached him, a muffled song that still sent a tremor through his bones. Unlike August, who relied on his violin, or Leo, who could make his music with almost anything, Ilsa's only instrument was her voice.

August watched, a dull hunger rolling through him as the red light rose to the surface of the man's skin and spread through hers like a flush. He'd just fed, and still it ached, his constant need, a hollowness he feared would cease to exist only when
he
did.

Twin tendrils of smoke rose from the man's hollowed eyes as the last of his life escaped. The corpse went dark.

“One day you'll see,” said Leo calmly. “Our sister's true voice is a beautiful, terrible thing.”

Beyond the Plexi and steel, Ilsa ran her hand along the man's hair like a mother putting a child to sleep.

August felt ill. He backed away, turned, and retraced his steps to the medical wing, where Harris hadn't moved, and Henry was still working on Phillip's shoulder, and Phillip looked halfway to dead. Suddenly, August was unbearably
tired
.

He almost asked if it was true about Ilsa, but he already knew.

Instead he said, “We have to do something.”

Henry looked up from the table, exhausted. “Not you, too.”

“Something to
stop
the truce from breaking,” said August. “Something to stop another war.”

Henry rubbed the back of his arm against his eyes, but said nothing. Harris said nothing. Leo, now standing in the doorway, said nothing.

“Dad—”

“August.” Emily brought a hand to his shoulder, and he realized he was shaking. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady. “It's late,” she said, wiping a smudge of blood from his cheek. “You better go upstairs. After all,” she added, “it's a school night.”

A strangled sound clawed up his throat.

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of this life, with all its farces. He wanted to take up his violin and play and play and play until all the hunger was gone, until he stopped feeling like a monster. He wanted to scream, but then he thought of his sister's voice turning the city to ash, and bit his tongue until pain filled his mouth in lieu of blood.

“Go on,” urged Emily, nudging him toward the elevator.

And he went, following the trail of blood, like bread crumbs, through the door.