Once We Were

TWELVE

I was standing with Nina in the kitchen that night, both of us staring into the refrigerator, when the doorbell rang. Nina hung back as I checked the peephole.

<Peter?> Addie said. <What’s he doing here? >

The man offered us a slight smile when I let him in, his feet not moving from the welcome mat. Summer nights in Anchoit could be windy and cold, but Emalia’s apartment was always warm. Still, Peter didn’t bother shrugging out of his jacket.

“Is Emalia around?” he asked.

“No.” Nina lingered by the shoe rack, a barefoot little girl next to Emalia’s rows of stiletto heels and jewel- toned flats. “We thought she’d be with you.”

It had been a while since Addie and I had seen Peter alone like this, just a man in a room, not a man trying to lead a room. He wore a slightly ill-fitting shirt, his sleeves rolled up and his tie loose. He straightened it as he spoke.

“We have plans, but I was supposed to meet up with her here first. She probably got held up at work.”

I took another step back, hoping Peter would get the hint that he didn’t need to stay standing by the door. He took a few steps off the welcome mat.

“What about you two? What’re you doing for dinner?”

“We’ve got it handled,” I said.

He nodded, his gaze drifting to one of Ryan’s inventions on the dining table. He’d been like this when we stayed with him, too. Absent. Not always, of course. Peter could be very, very present in a room. He could fill it up to the brim, the way he did at meetings, drawing every eye to him, grabbing every ear with his words. But when there weren’t people around to direct and sway, weren’t problems to solve and plans to make, he withdrew into his mind.

We hadn’t even learned his second name until Jackson told us: Warren. Warren and Peter Dagnand, because they had used a fake last name since they escaped from their own institutionalized hell so many years ago.

What Jackson hadn’t told us was how to differentiate between Peter and Warren. Everyone always addressed him as Peter at the meetings, and he’d never corrected Addie or me when we called him Peter. In fact, I couldn’t remember anyone ever saying Warren at all.

Maybe Warren was the quieter, more reserved man in front of me now, while Peter was the leader? There was no way to know for sure, not when I had so few clues to go on.

He and Dr. Lyanne had been born to wealth. I knew that much. He hadn’t been institutionalized until he was fourteen—not because he and Warren had managed to stay undiscovered, but because his family had thrown enough money at the problem to make it go away. Temporarily. But money and status can only do so much. The government reached out its long arm, snatching him from gilded halls and marble floors to a concrete room with bare, steel beds. Sometimes I wondered if his ease in command came from fourteen years of being the older child of a moneyed family. But maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was the experiences that came later that shaped the boy into the man.

“Do you want something to drink or anything?” I said awkwardly. Peter’s expression softened into something like amusement, and I felt ourself flush. Of course he would think it strange for me to play host when he’d been coming to Emalia’s apartment long before I ever arrived.

But he nodded. “Sure. Water’s fine.”

Nina’s interest in Peter’s appearance and our conversation had waned. She didn’t follow the two of us into the kitchen, disappearing instead down the hall.

“Actually, I did want to talk with you and Addie about something.” Peter leaned against the counter and smiled briefly when I handed him the glass of water.

<Please let it be about Nornand> Addie said.

Please let him say he’d found one of the children whose faces streamed through our dreams, whose expressions of deadened fear melted, waxlike, in our nightmares.

An eternity passed as Peter took a sip of water. Then, thankfully, he set the glass down. “Eva, Anchoit isn’t the safest place to be at the moment. Not with the Powatt institution so close by. Security has gotten tighter, and there’s going to be more attention focused on the city than ever. Especially with regard to anything hybrid- related.”

Addie and I had noticed officers in the streets, and police cars on patrol. We’d heard Sabine talk about the damage the curfew was doing to some of the businesses downtown, and the unrest growing from that. Walking through our own neighborhood, we’d heard the complaints.

“It’s time for you guys to find more permanent homes,” Peter said. “Somewhere safer.”

<No> Addie said, so forcibly the word resounded in my mind, echoing through every part of me. <No, Eva.>

More permanent homes meant scattering us across the country. We’d never see the others again. We might not even be allowed to contact one another.

“No,” I said, too loudly.

Peter reached out as if he might touch our shoulder, but I jerked back. His hand dropped. “Eva, you and the others can’t stay here.” He was getting that Peter-in-charge air about him again, and our gut tied into knots.

“What about Sabine? And Jackson and Christoph and—and Cordelia and the others? They’re here.”

He sighed. “It’s been years since they got out, Eva. They’re less recognizable now. And they’re . . . well, they’re older than you are. You’re fourteen.”

“Fifteen,” I said. “How old were you when you escaped?”

His eyes flickered from ours to the countertop. I thought I saw him bite back a smile.

“Sixteen.” His voice was gentle, and for some reason that upset me more than if he’d matched my own irritation. “And you know what I did? I found a home where I kept myself safe for the next few years.”

“Jackson’s barely two years older than we are.” I struggled to keep from shouting. Sound traveled freely from the kitchen to the living room, and down the hall. I didn’t want Nina to hear. “And he was a lot younger when he first got here, wasn’t he? They all were, I bet. I—”

“That was before,” Peter said. “This is now. Eva, I can find you a family to take you in. Someone who’s willing to say you’re a niece or a stepdaughter or something. Someone you can stay with until you’re old enough to be on your own. You can go back to school, go to university—”

“I can go to school here, can’t I?” Our fingers squeezed the handle of the water pitcher. I needed somewhere to direct our frustration. “Isn’t it the same? Either way, we’re pretending!”

“It’s more dangerous here,” Peter said. “If things escalate in the city, so close to the institution, people will start getting paranoid. They’ll start double-checking documentation. Instead of overlooking a discrepancy, a mistake in your papers, they’ll get suspicious. They’ll ask questions. Then one day, you get a knock at your door, and it’s the police come to investigate.” He leaned down. Sought our eyes. “And it’s not just yourself you’re putting in danger, Eva. Emalia—Emalia enjoys having you and Kitty with her, but she has a very important job, you understand? If she were discovered, who would help us free more children? She can’t take that risk, Eva.”

“I don’t have to go to school, then,” I said. School, university—it all seemed so inconsequential now, anyway. What did it matter if I learned calculus, if the government could lock me up at any moment? Why did I need to study history, when our history books lied? “Addie and I can help you guys. We don’t even have to live here with Emalia.”

We could live with Sabine. She’d said we could. We wouldn’t stay with her long-term. Just long enough to get some sort of job. Until we could afford our own place.

Peter sighed. “Eva—”

I cut him off. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I’ve been hiding for almost my entire life, Peter.”

I didn’t want to lose any more people, either. Ryan. Devon. Lissa. Hally. Kitty. Nina. Jackson and Vince and all our new friends. I’d already lost my parents, my little brother. I couldn’t stand being parted from anyone