He hunched his shoulders and pressed his lips together in a classic I’m-going-to-barf posture. “Can you leave?”
“I can but I’m not going to.”
“Renee—”
“What’s wrong with you? I thought your Changeling half didn’t get sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“No?”
Noah stared at me over the wastebasket, as if he could will me to stop interrogating him and leave. Technically, he probably could use his telekinetic powers to do exactly that. He didn’t, though. “You can’t tell Aaron about this,” he said. “We don’t want him to worry.”
I swallowed against a nervous flutter in my stomach. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me and Dahlia, and Dad. Teresa knows, too.”
Teresa and Kinsey were in on something that Aaron wasn’t—not good. Not good at all. “Knows what?”
“The Changelings weren’t made to hold more than one host for any period of time. Ace has been holding on to Noah and Dahlia for months.”
Images of Double Trouble over the last month or so came flashing back. No matter which one was in charge, they seemed tired. Run-down. Understandable, with the stress of the election campaigns, then the L.A. earthquake and our relocation. And they’d probably been happy to blame those things for their fatigue, so their loved ones didn’t worry.
“Holding on to Dahlia is making you sick?”
“I think it’s more than that.” He grimaced. “I think it’s killing us.”
Fourteen
I spent the next twenty minutes or so sitting in the waiting room, pondering what Noah had told me. It physically hurt them both to allow Dahlia control. Both of their powers were haphazard and unfocused. They were exhausted almost constantly, and now Noah was having trouble keeping food down. Dahlia, he said, was becoming less and less present in his mind, backing off to keep him from hurting too much. Dr. Kinsey didn’t know how to help them.
“Ace can’t hold on to them both,” Noah had said. “Simon can’t separate us because Dahlia’s body died while she was absorbed. Nothing we’ve tried has worked. I can’t let Dahlia go without killing her, and Ace can’t let go of Noah without killing him.”
“You said part of the host lives on inside the Changeling,” I’d said.
“Sure, but it’s a presence and knowledge. One of us would still, for the way we imagine life, be gone. Dead.”
“But you can’t keep living as both.”
“Not for much longer.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
I had resented Dahlia’s presence the first few months after she’d joined us, and I’d used her as a convenient outlet for my frustration. Lately we’d become friendly, though, and I liked Noah because he was Aaron’s brother and Aaron made Ethan happy. We were a cluster-fuck of a family most days, sure, but we were still family. I was tired of losing people, but fuck if I knew how to fix this.
Thatcher came out through the swinging double doors at almost the exact same time that Denny and Kate Lowry entered from the corridor. The twins had come to us via their uncle just before the earthquake crisis, and he’d agreed that it would be safer for them to move to New York with us. Said uncle was a police detective in Los Angeles (now relocated to Las Vegas), and he still hadn’t manned up and claimed those kids as family, so I was all for getting them away from his idiot ass.
The twins didn’t look sick, and they weren’t limping, which meant: “Gage sent us to hang out with our visitors,” Kate said. “He said you needed to go to a meeting.”
Right, the debriefing. It looked like Thatcher was going, too, and our problem children (wounded or not) couldn’t be left alone.
“Second room on the left,” Thatcher said.
“Cool.”
The pair went through the door Thatcher had exited from, and I felt a slight pang of regret that I wouldn’t be there when they met Bethany for the first time. She’d probably terrify Denny into permanent celibacy.
My brain was still stuck on Double Trouble reruns, but when we left the infirmary and hit the corridor I had enough sense to ask Thatcher, “How’s Landon doing?”
“He’s alive,” Thatcher replied. “Somewhat out of it from the medication, but that’s to be expected.”
“The medication is a blessing, trust me.”
The look he shot me was a mix of sympathy and gratitude. “You know, Renee, it’s been a long time since I’ve been this angry at one person.”
“Sledgehammer?”
“The big one who threw Landon? Yes.”
“I’d like to promise you’ll get first dibs on hurting him back.”
“I know. Thank you.”
We were the last to arrive in the conference room. All of the Alpha leaders were there, plus Dr. Kinsey, as requested. As soon as we were seated, Thatcher and I began another tag-team retelling of our adventures that began at a New Jersey truck stop and ended on the side of the Pennsylvania turnpike. Ethan, who’d promised to take a nap once the meeting was over, interjected occasionally.
“They were targeting the kids,” Teresa said. “The clones who were there knew who Renee, Ethan, and I were, but they went after Landon first.”
“To kill them before they could help us?” Sebastian asked.
“Possibly, or to send a message so they don’t. They could have killed us all before we got out of the Sport, but they didn’t.”
“The clones have always been very deliberate in their machinations,” Ethan added. “Everything they’ve done against us has been with intent.”
“Landon and Bethany were raised to hate their parents,” Thatcher said. “They were intentionally told half- truths and full-out lies in order to make them despise the people left on Manhattan.”
“Do you think the Overseer or Uncle character will find a way to turn the other kids, if they exist, against us?” Ethan asked.
“I would put money on it.”
“If they exist,” Teresa said.
Thatcher’s gaze shifted down the table to her. “Again, I’d put money on it. Isn’t that why you brought them back here without first alerting the authorities? To assist you in tracking down both the other kids and this Uncle?”
“Yes, it is, you’re right. Which means for now, the only people who know who Landon and Bethany really are? The people in this room.”
A chorus of agreements went around the table.
“I have spoken with Mai Lynn Chang again,” Marco said, piping up for the first time. “She is attempting to question her fellow residents about children. However, she says it is a difficult conversation to have casually. She will update us if she learns anything useful.”
“Thank you, Marco,” Teresa said.
While the group was assembled, Teresa assigned Lacey’s team to follow up on an incident of vandalism, which the police suspected was done by Metas, in Annapolis, Maryland. She gave the usual warning to keep their
