I feel my knees buckle as my vision swims in and out again. Warm hands catch me around my waist and hold me up as I am dragged to a chair and set down.
“I’ll get a cold washcloth,” I hear Mel say.
I can feel Rye taking my hand in his as he crouches beside me.
“Sunday, get in her head and pull her out of there. We are not having a repeat of last time,” Rye shouts.
I feel Sunday take my other hand, but as his fingers brush mine, the vision goes away and I can see normally again. The burning in my chest stops and I take a deep, shaky breath and then I sit up straight.
“I’m okay,” I say. “But we need to get to the town hall. Now.”
“You want to go to the council meeting?” Aziza asks with a raised eyebrow.
I shake my head. Dammit. A meeting is going to make this even harder.
“No,” I say. “I want to get into the tunnels beneath the town hall.”
“Why? What did you see?” Rye asks me.
“The next Soul Gem is there. And so are the Boundless.”
CHAPTER TWENTY: ANOTHER SOUL GEM
We reach the town hall with no real plan in mind except getting inside. In that sense, the council meeting will work in our favor… it means the building won’t be locked up. But in another sense, it will work against us as the place will be busy. Whisper has an open-book policy with its council members, and the whole town is always invited to council meetings and allowed to have their say. The place is going to be crawling with people.
“Shit,” I whisper, ducking behind Rye as we slip into the meeting room.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“My dad and Raven are here,” I say. “If my dad sees me here, he’s going to want to drag me to every one of these things. I’ve always refused to come and Raven only comes to keep him happy.”
Or at least that’s what she always says. Maybe she has known all along that one of the Soul Gems is beneath this place and that’s why she’s here. In my vision, I saw the Boundless were here, but they all wore long hooded cloaks that kept their faces concealed from me. It could have been Raven. It most likely was her.
Right now though, we have bigger problems than Raven. Like how we are supposed to get through the door we need to get through to enter the tunnels. The door is on the other side of the room and the room behind it is off-limits to members of the public. Sneaking through it in front of a crowd this size is going to be almost impossible.
“We need to hide somewhere until everyone leaves and sneak back in,” Ya-Ya whispers.
She gets an angry shush from someone in the crowd. She glares at him until she looks away, but the man was right. We’re making too much noise and starting to attract attention.
“Just sit down for now,” Rye hisses.
We take seats at the back of the room and I switch off as the mayor drones on about budget cuts and sensible spending. The meeting starts off civil enough, with people making their points logically and calmly and listening to each other. It’s not long though before people are shouting over each other.
I am on high alert, but looking around at the crowd, no one seems shocked or like this behavior is out of place. Either War has them all on tenterhooks, enjoying the arguing, or this is normal for these kinds of meetings.
The arguing begins to settle down as the mayor bangs what looks like a judge’s gavel on the desk loudly. A few people still mutter, but the room as a whole settles back down and I relax a little. This must be normal for these things, as I don’t think War’s influence would be as easy to subdue. The mayor starts to talk again and then a woman in the row in front of us jumps to her feet.
“Mayor, I don’t think we were finished discussing the last point. I am sick to death of being silenced and having you cut us off at these meetings when you think you’re done,” she shouts.
The mayor looks shocked, as do a few people in the crowd. Every eye in the room is on the woman who is working herself up into quite a frenzy.
“You talk about budget cuts, but you don’t tell us what this achieves. Where are we expected to find the extra money we need to keep Whisper safe? Do you really think the sheriff and two deputies are enough for the whole town? It’s like we’re inviting crime.”
“Mrs. Hammond, I’m sorry your husband had to be let go, but—” the mayor starts.
“Don’t you dare interrupt me again,” Mrs. Hammond shouts. “The people in this town deserve to feel safe in their own homes, at school, at work. And we demand you reinstate the deputies you’ve let go. And before you start in about budget cuts, I don’t give a fuck about that. It’s your job to find the money, not ours.”
The crowd is growing increasingly restless now, and someone else jumps to their feet and starts in on the mayor. Another man jumps up and begins to defend the mayor, pointing out that Whisper is a safe town (if only he knew) and that extra deputies are just a waste of funds that could be used to fix the cracked roads.
Before I really know what’s happening, it seems the whole room is on their feet. Everyone is shouting and screaming and making their points, but no one is listening to anyone
