“I will do that,” he said, his voice sounding rusty from lack of use.
“It’s really important,” I said. “You have to make sure that-”
“No more,” Bryce rasped. “No more healing, no more zombies.” He pointed to himself. “I was wrong. I deserved to die. The things I have seen them do, since they brought me here-evil things. I never understood… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
His hand lifted weakly off the floor and he pressed his fingers to my face. They were barely warm, but I didn’t pull away.
“How can I believe you?” I asked.
“Before, I wanted… money… power. Since I came here, I have wanted only to die. I never sleep, the pain keeps me awake, and I think of those young men… every one of them. They never leave me.”
I didn’t know what to say. His regret seemed genuine, the tears sparkling in his eyes real. I wanted to believe. But after everything he had done…
“Hailey, you have to go
He led me to the diagram and showed me that the garage was located directly above us, one floor below ground level.
“Look here,” Kaz said, pointing to a box with an X in the far corner of the square labeled “HVAC.” “This vent goes straight into the garage.”
He pointed to the corner of the room, where a large square grate had been installed in the ceiling.
“You want me to crawl up there?” I asked skeptically. “That’s got to be fifteen feet off the ground.”
Kaz pointed to the ladders.
At first the task seemed hopeless, even with the ladder we dragged over. My fingertips barely touched the grate. I could reach one of the clips holding the grate in place, but even if we moved the ladder so I could loosen each of them, I’d still have no way to get up there.
“I need your help,” I said. “A boost…”
I climbed down to the floor, and Kaz hoisted me onto his shoulders. I blushed when he grabbed my ankles to keep me steady, but he didn’t seem to mind. He climbed the ladder slowly, my hands wrapped tightly under his chin, until he was standing on the top step.
Now that I could reach all the clips, I worked at them frantically. Looking down was scary, and several times Kaz wavered and I almost lost my balance.
But Healers aren’t like ordinary people. We’re stronger, faster, hardier, and more coordinated, and when the last of the clips clattered to the floor, I reached up for one of the braces holding the ceiling in place. I gripped it tightly and swung myself up, sliding my feet into the opening and scooting into the tight space. I blinked away cobwebs and saw that beyond the opening was a large hollow vent.
“Go,” I said to Kaz. “You have to hurry.”
“Wait, Hailey.”
I turned, my hair falling in my face, and saw him framed in the opening, his gray eyes flickering with uncertainty.
“Just… be careful,” he finally said, and held up his hand. I reached back down, and our fingers touched for a second. I closed my eyes and let the energy travel between us, the attraction of the Banished, the strength of our blood and our history.
And then I pushed forward as though all our lives depended on it.
38
SOON, SOON.
Hailey had come to see him and that was good and Kaz came and that was good too. He showed Hailey the book with the worm. He wanted to show Hailey the book with the spider but Hailey and Kaz had to go, Hailey had to fix the Monster Man and Kaz had to help.
Chub was ready, but he was scared. He had a mind-picture of where he had to go, and he had to go soon, and he hadn’t had a chance to tell Hailey. He had to go, the mind-picture showed him where. That way and then turn and turn and turn. Big room, box piles, all the boxes and the cans. The door at the end. The door at the end was open and that was where he had to go.
Chub was scared, but he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble. He was scared and he wished he could have told Hailey where he had to go. But the mind-picture didn’t come until after she left. He wasn’t going to tell anyone else. Something was wrong with the lady with the brown glasses. She wasn’t coming. Someone else would come.
Soon, soon. Chub stood right next to the door, hide hide hide because when the person came he was going to run fast. The mind-picture showed him where to go and he would be fast, and the person would not be fast enough to catch him.
Chub waited, ready to run.
39
THE SUN WAS SINKING into the horizon when I pulled out onto the road, the car bucking and lurching in my uncertain hands. The brakes on Dr. Grace’s car were far more sensitive than the ones on Prairie’s Camry, and the steering wheel spun too easily, making the car swerve and dip as I barreled down the road away from the office park.
The garage had been nearly empty when I popped the grate only a dozen yards from where I’d climbed into the ceiling. I’d counted fewer than two dozen cars, and it had been easy to find the Audi. I didn’t see anyone as I drove it out of the complex, but I knew the garage was monitored, and I didn’t know how much of a lead I could count on.
I half expected to see headlights in my rearview mirror, but I had an advantage: sixteen years in Gypsum, sixteen years of exploring every road and field and farm. So I knew exactly which roads intersected others, which dirt tracks overgrown with weeds led to leaning barns and which to shortcuts to neighboring land.
I took a looping, haphazard route, and when I finally wound back to State Road 9, there was no one behind me, no telltale dust cloud-nothing at all except the purple evening sky, the first fireflies of the night dancing in the air.
When I passed the house I had lived in until a few months earlier, I saw that all the windows had been broken. Plywood was nailed over a few of them, but the front door had been ripped from the hinges and a sodden pile of torn-out carpet lay in the yard.
Everyone in town knew that Gram had dealt drugs, and not long ago three people had died here. No wonder someone had trashed the place. Before I could think of a single thing to miss about the old house, it was in my rearview mirror, and the thickening evening obscured the woods as I drove the last mile to the edge of Trashtown. I eased the car to the side of the road and watched the lights winking on in the rows of shacks lining both sides of Morrin Street.
The Morries all lived here, the scrawny mean-eyed boys with dirt under their nails, the pale mumbling girls with long stringy hair obscuring their faces. There were fifteen, maybe twenty, Morrie kids in my old high school; more in the younger grades, sullen brothers and sisters whose past was entwined with mine and Prairie’s, even Anna’s and Kaz’s. Their futures were bleak; their weak Banished blood condemned them to meanness and shiftlessness and addiction, hardscrabble lives lived out here in Trashtown. Few would escape, the way Prairie had. Or even the way I had, by accident.
The Morries had always hated me, though maybe not as much as they hated Gram, even while their fathers
