I hadn’t needed anyone to teach me that jealousy was a strange emotion for hybrids, especially when it came to people you cared about. We shared bodies. We weren’t always in control of our own limbs. Some things were muddled and confusing to begin with.
But still . . . It would have been different, perhaps, if we’d grown up somewhere else. Somewhere overseas, where we’d have known other hybrids all our lives, where we’d have learned another set of rules for what was
I laughed wryly.
Funny, how I used to always be the one who comforted Addie, not the other way around. But it didn’t matter. Addie was back, and speaking with me. Addie thought we would figure everything out, that everything would be all right.
If she believed it, then so did I.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The day for the test run arrived.
Ryan and I snuck downstairs just as the sun came up, hurrying to meet the others at the restaurant parking lot. I laughed at Cordelia’s jokes, waved hello to Sabine, smiled when Christoph offered a gruff
I laughed and looked away. Ryan smiled, raising his eyebrows questioningly as we ducked into Sabine’s car. My amusement faded. I still hadn’t told him about Addie and Jackson. The two of us hadn’t had a moment alone since the night of the LOX heist.
But that was an excuse, and I knew it. I didn’t know how to tell Ryan. I was afraid of how he’d react. Afraid to think what would happen to us if he reacted badly.
Ryan’s hands were warmer than ours. I entwined our fingers with his, and he shifted so he could lean his head on our shoulder. I smiled. Pushed thoughts of Addie and Jackson out of my mind for the moment. “Aren’t you a morning person?”
Ryan yawned. His hair tickled our cheek. “Couldn’t sleep last night.”
Jackson squeezed between us and the window, then slammed the door shut. With Cordelia sitting on Ryan’s other side, the four of us barely fit in the backseat. The two-hour drive to Frandmill would be tough to handle for anyone, let alone Addie and me. I swore silently that I wouldn’t say a word.
Ryan stared at the cardboard box at our feet. Inside, the miniature bomb lay carefully packed. Every line of his body spoke fatigue, but his eyes were still intent, calculating. I could almost see the gears turning in his brain, running over every part and connection again and again, making sure there hadn’t been any mistakes.
“Stop it,” I whispered, and pulled him closer against us. His eyes lifted to meet ours, at first questioningly, then crinkling in a smile. He nodded and rested his head against our shoulder again.
“Everybody good to go?” Sabine said, pulling on her seat belt and starting the engine. There were various mumbled noises of assent. “You want the window down, Eva?”
I looked at her, startled and warmed that she’d remembered my aversion to cramped spaces. I nodded.
We pulled out of the parking lot in silence, and in a mist of rain.
By the time we reached the testing field, the rain had reduced to low, gray clouds and a faraway rumbling. The air was cool, but so thick with moisture it seemed to weigh down on our skin. When we left the road behind, our shoes sank a little into the mud beneath the sparse grass. Sabine had taken us far from the main road. I shivered. Addie’s presence next to mine was as still and heavy as the storm clouds.
“If we’re lucky,” Christoph said, staring at the sky, “anyone who does hear the explosion will think it’s just thunder.”
“Nobody will hear,” Sabine said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
Ryan and Jackson lugged the cardboard box between them, walking carefully even though Ryan had assured us the explosives wouldn’t detonate from a little jostling.
The land dipped here, forming an embankment that overlooked a valley. Ryan, Jackson, and Sabine headed for the lowest point. I automatically started to follow them, but Cordelia, as if on a sudden impulse, linked her arm in ours as she turned in the opposite direction, up the hill.
I looked at her in surprise. She gave a breathy little laugh and a shrug, but didn’t release our arm. Maybe with Sabine and Jackson busy, she needed someone to hold on to. I understood the feeling. We walked, together, up the embankment. Christoph went ahead of us, the pale sunlight making a red halo of his hair.
Eventually, I realized he didn’t know how far we were supposed to go. He turned and looked to me, as if Addie or I might have an answer. I glanced down the hill. From this distance, Ryan and the others looked like toys. It had to be more than far enough. Ryan had given us an estimate of how large the explosion would be, and surely, he was right.
Surely.
I stopped. Cordelia, arm still linked through ours, stopped too. We watched as the miniature figures of Ryan and Jackson and Sabine huddled around the box. Watched as they finally straightened and headed toward us—not running, but moving with the stiff urgency of people wishing they could run but held back by fear.
Or in this case, I supposed, pride.
How strange a thing pride seemed compared to a bomb.
They didn’t run, but they reached us while the air was silent. Ryan took our free hand. I squeezed his. Addie felt taut as a violin string. We stood—frozen and silent and waiting—staring at the bowels of the hill.
Then the explosion came.
The noise and flame and fire came. It swelled up. Set us vibrating with its power.
It was over so quickly. A tongue of red and yellow. A boom that echoed through our bodies.
Then again, silence.
“It worked,” Christoph said in a voice that was not quite joy and not quite fear.
Our ears rang. I turned, searching Ryan’s face, and found it wasn’t Ryan at all.
Devon. Devon with cold, black eyes staring down at the smoke.
He said nothing. He looked back toward me, his expression a mask I couldn’t break.
TWENTY-NINE
The drive back to Anchoit was at once more relaxed and more tense. The others
