Banished

“So there’s… people like me, all over the world?”

“Not exactly. There were only a few original Healer families. I don’t know exactly how many-maybe just us and the one that went to Poland, maybe a few more. But the Banished who went with them… yes, there are people like us out there.”

“Are they all like the Morries?”

“Well, Anna isn’t. Anna’s… I loved her.” She said it with a hitch in her voice and again I wondered why they’d lost touch.

“And she told you all of this?”

“Anna… filled in the gaps for me. I knew some of it from my grandmother. Anna’s pureblood. When she saw me, the day I went in the salon, she knew. She could sense it, that I was Banished. The ones who went to Poland, they kept the history alive better, they learned to recognize one another. Though now…” She shrugged. “Eventually the story gets lost.”

“But how did she know? How could she tell?”

“It’s not hard, Hailey,” Prairie said. “You’ll learn. I learned fast. You’ll see it in people sometimes. Not often, and it’s almost always weak in them. When the Banished left Ireland, they started to drift. Just like what happened in Gypsum, they married outside. The men lost the visions. Very little is left of the bloodline. But Anna showed me. Someone would come in, someone with Banished blood, and she helped me see it, or not see it exactly-it’s a, a sense, I guess you’d say. Usually they don’t even know it themselves. In a man, there might be some premonition, like sometimes things happen and they know in advance. Only, they talk themselves out of it, or chalk it up to coincidence. People can convince themselves very easily, you know, when they want to. It’s human nature.”

“Was Anna a Healer?”

“No. She says no one knows what happened to the Healer line in Poland, whether it died out or whether the Healers emigrated somewhere else.”

For a while neither of us said anything. It was so much to absorb.

“So I guess Anna did her job, then,” I finally said. For some reason I felt bleak. “She found you. A gold star for her. Two pureblood Banished in a city the size of Chicago.”

If Prairie minded my tone she didn’t mention it.

“No, Hailey. Not two. Three.”

“Three-what do you mean?”

“Anna has a son.”

PART THREE: CHICAGO

CHAPTER 17

IT WAS TWILIGHT by the time we reached the outskirts of Chicago, the skyline a sparkling row of towers off in the distance, stretching out impossibly far in both directions. We left the highway on a looping cloverleaf crowded with speeding traffic.

Despite the brief nap in the motel, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I must have drifted off, because when Prairie gently shook my arm to wake me, we were parked behind another motel, this one huge and new and anonymous, backing up to a wide avenue across from a car dealership. I didn’t even ask where we were. I went through the motions of getting Chub, who was fast asleep, as Prairie took care of Rascal. In the room, I collapsed with Chub and didn’t wake up until late the next morning, when the sun was streaming in the windows.

I sat up, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings. The room was almost a copy of the one from the day before, but reversed, the television on the opposite wall. Chub sat on the edge of the bed, swinging his legs, watching TV with the sound turned low. He was already dressed, and his hair was sticking straight up.

Prairie stood at the window, clutching the fabric of the drapes in her hand, staring out into the parking lot, Rascal sitting at her side, staring at nothing. When I said her name, she jumped.

“Good morning, Hailey,” she said. “Are you feeling better today?”

To my surprise, I was. I felt rested and strong, and the events of the past few days had faded in my mind, like a movie I’d watched but would someday forget. Not that I would ever lose the images of the wrecked kitchen, of Gram on the floor, but as I washed up and packed, I felt like it was all in the past, like that phase of my life was over.

I felt the faint stirrings of hope.

It was almost one in the afternoon by the time we walked Rascal and put our things in the car. We went to a diner next to the motel for lunch. My appetite was back, and I ordered a burger and fries and a big glass of milk. Even Prairie ate most of her chicken salad, and the worry lines around her eyes had smoothed.

“So,” I said as I finished the last of my fries, “I guess it worked, huh? The… thing you did. So he wouldn’t be able to find us.”

I didn’t say his name, could barely stand to think it. Rattler. The image of him plunging the knife into the man in the gray jacket flashed through my mind and was gone, leaving only a shadowy outline of the terror of that night.

Prairie nodded thoughtfully and sipped at her coffee. “If he was going to be able to track us…”

She didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what she was thinking. He would have found us by now, if his visions were able to lead him to us. I wondered if Prairie had slept, or if she’d stayed by the window worrying all night, waiting for his old truck to roll up in front of the motel, waiting for him to come crashing through the door the way Bryce’s men had the day before.

I felt guilty because I’d collapsed and slept like a rock, leaving all the guarding and worrying to her. I almost apologized, but I couldn’t quite find the words.

“So he probably stayed in Gypsum,” I said hopefully.

Prairie nodded. “Mmm. With any luck I can finish… what I need to do tonight, and we can move on.”

She was looking not at me, but out the window. I had so many questions. She said we, but did she mean all three of us? And I had no idea what she meant by “move on,” or where we would go next, how we would live.

“What do you have to do tonight?” I asked.

She looked at me directly and chose her words carefully. “I need to destroy Bryce’s research.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I have some ideas. First thing is to get into the lab. And for that I’ll need my key. It’s too dangerous to go back to my house, but I keep spare keys at my neighbor’s.”

“Don’t you have a key with you?”

Prairie pushed her salad around on her plate without looking at me. “This is a special key, Hailey. It’s a prox card for an electronic lock, and I’m pretty sure that by now Bryce has changed the code so I can’t get in. But I have a master key at my friend’s place.”

“Does she know you’re coming?”

“No…” Prairie hesitated and bit her lip. I could tell she was trying to figure out how much to tell me. “I thought it was best that I didn’t call or do anything that might tip someone off. I do have a key to her house, so I can let myself in. The quicker I get in and out, the better.”

I… She said I. Not we. Panic stirred in my gut-panic at being left alone, left to defend Chub against any threat that came along.

“I’m going with you,” I said quickly, my tone harsher than I intended. “We’re going together.”

“I don’t think that-”

“Please. We can wait in the car, it’ll be better this way, we can watch for… for…”

I didn’t finish my sentence, but I figured Prairie knew what I meant. I could watch for the men Bryce had sent