I look at him. His eyes are red, even more bloodshot than they were when he dropped me off. His hair is tousled and he has a slumped look as though he may collapse in exhaustion at any moment. He last slept in Florida, two days ago. I’m not sure how he is even still standing.
“Nobody did.”
“You were in school for an hour and a half. Your first Legacy developed, you were nearly in a fight, and you left your bag in a classroom. That’s not exactly blending in.”
“It was nothing. Certainly not a big enough deal to move to Idaho, or Kansas, or wherever the hell our next place is going to be.”
Henri narrows his eyes, pondering what he just witnessed and trying to decide whether it’s enough to justify leaving.
“Now is not the time to be careless,” he says.
“There are arguments in every single school every single day. I promise you, they aren’t going to track us because some bully messed with the new kid.”
“The new kid’s hands don’t light up in every school.”
I sigh. “Henri, you look like you’re about to die. Take a nap. We can decide after you’ve had some sleep.”
“We have a lot to talk about.”
“I’ve never seen you this tired before. Sleep a few hours. We’ll talk after.”
He nods. “A nap would probably do me some good.”
Henri goes into his bedroom and closes the door. I walk outside, pace around the yard for a bit. The sun is behind the trees with a cool wind blowing. The gloves are still on my hands. I take them off and tuck them into my back pocket. My hands are the same as before. Truth be told, only half of me is thrilled that my first Legacy has finally arrived after so many years of impatiently waiting. The other half of me is crushed. Our constant moving has worn me down, and now it’ll be impossible to blend in or to stay in one place for any period of time. It’ll be impossible to make friends or feel like I fit in. I’m sick of the fake names and the lies. I’m sick of always looking over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed.
I reach down and feel the three scars on my right ankle. Three circles that represent the three dead. We are bound to each other by more than mere race. As I feel the scars I try to imagine who they were, whether they were boys or girls, where they were living, how old they were when they died. I try to remember the other kids on the ship with me and give each of them numbers. I think about what it would be like to meet them, hang out with them. What it might have been like if we were still on Lorien. What it might be like if the fate of our entire race wasn’t dependent on the survival of so few of us. What it might be like if we weren’t all facing death at the hands of our enemies.
It’s terrifying to know that I’m next. But we’ve stayed ahead of them by moving, running. Even though I’m sick of the running I know it’s the only reason we’re still alive. If we stop, they will find us. And now that I’m next in line, they have undoubtedly stepped up the search. Surely they must know we are growing stronger, coming into our Legacies.
And then there is the other ankle and the scar to be found there, formed when the Loric charm was cast in those precious moments before leaving Lorien. It’s the brand that binds us all together.
CHAPTER SIX
I WALK INSIDE AND LIE ON THE BARE MATTRESS in my room. The morning has worn me out and I let my eyes close. When I reopen them the sun is lifted over the tops of the trees. I walk out of the room. Henri is at the kitchen table with his laptop open and I know he’s been scanning the news, as he always does, searching for information or stories that might tell us where the others are.
“Did you sleep?” I ask.
“Not much. We have internet now and I haven’t checked the news since Florida. It was gnawing at me.”
“Anything to report?” I ask.
He shrugs. “A fourteen-year-old in Africa fell from a fourth-story window and walked away without a scratch. There is a fifteen-year-old in Bangladesh claiming to be the Messiah.”
I laugh. “I know the fifteen-year-old isn’t us. Any chance of the other?”
“Nah. Surviving a four-story drop is no great feat, and besides, if it was one of us they wouldn’t have been that careless in the first place,” he says, and winks.
I smile and sit across from him. He closes his computer and places his hands on the table. His watch reads 11:36. We’ve been in Ohio for slightly over half a day and already this much has happened. I hold my palms up. They’ve dimmed since the last time I looked.
“Do you know what you have?” he asks.
“Lights in my hands.”
He chuckles. “It’s called Lumen. You’ll be able to control the light in time.”
“I sure hope so, because our cover is blown if they don’t turn off soon. I still don’t see what the point is, though.”
“There’s more to Lumen than mere lights. I promise you.”
“What’s the rest?”
He walks into his bedroom and returns with a lighter in his hand.
“Do you remember much of your grandparents?” he asks. Our grandparents are the ones who raise us. We see little of our parents until we reach the age of twenty-five, when we have children of our own. The life expectancy for the Loric is around two hundred years, much longer than that of humans, and when children are born, between the parents’ ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, the elders are the ones who raise them while the parents continue honing their Legacies.
“A little. Why?”
“Because your grandfather had the same gift.”
“I don’t remember his hands ever glowing,” I say.
Henri shrugs. “He might never have had reason to use it.”
“Wonderful,” I say. “Sounds like a great gift to have, one I’ll never use.”
He shakes his head. “Give me your hand.”
I give him the right one and he flicks the lighter on, then moves it to touch the tip of my finger with the flame. I jerk my hand away.
“What are you doing?”
“Trust me,” he says.
I give my hand back to him. He takes hold of it and flicks the lighter on again. He looks into my eyes. Then he smiles. I look down and see that he is holding the flame over the tip of my middle finger. I don’t feel a thing. Instinct causes me to jerk my hand free anyway. I rub my finger. It feels no different than it did before.
“Did you feel that?” he asks.
“No.”
“Give it back,” he says. “And tell me when you do feel something.”
He starts at my fingertip again, then moves the flame very slowly up the back of my hand. There is a slight tickle where the flame touches the skin, nothing more. Only when the fire reaches my wrist do I begin to sense the burn. I pull my arm free.
“Ouch.”
“Lumen,” he says. “You’re going to become resistant to fire and heat. Your hands come naturally, but we’ll have to train the rest of your body.”
A smile spreads across my face. “Resistant to fire and heat,” I say. “So I’ll never be burned again?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Not such a bad Legacy after all, huh?”
