He didn’t realize he was shaking until the thumping of the chair legs on the floor made him look down. His grip on the back of the chair was white-knuckled and he couldn’t stop himself. “She was truly all those things?”
Easter laughed, her eyes lighting up. “She is all those things and more, Eligor. You want to know a secret?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more secrets. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that the woman he’d been helping this last year was . . . evil. Because if what Easter had said was true, there was no other word for it. Except he couldn’t shake his certain feeling that she’d genuinely wanted to help the other abnormals in the facility. He’d seen her soul, and it was dark, brilliantly dark, but not evil.
He couldn’t be fooled, not like that. Maybe she’d kept secrets from him, but her intentions had an undeniable purity to them. Slowly the shaking stopped. “Yes, tell me the secret.”
Easter smirked. “You’re going to be traveling with someone . . . Just. Like. Her.”
*_*_*
Carlisle Hospital faded in the rearview mirror as Carlos drove us slowly away, staying well within the speed limit. Behind us, the hospital was lit up like a Christmas tree, and a series of large trucks peeled toward the parking lot only minutes after we left.
“My Rosita, was she in that facility?” He glanced at me, then back to the dark road in front of us, ignoring what was behind.
I shivered, not because I was afraid, but because there was nowhere on my body that didn’t sing as if I’d been stuck inside a medieval torture chamber and had hot spikes driven into me. The boys rubbed at their necks and knees, but my entire body hummed with heat and pain.
“No, she wasn’t there. I met all those who came in after me. There was no Rosita; they always changed our names to something similar, and no one came in that was Hispanic with an R name,” I said.
His second question was no surprise. “Could you find her? I could get you a picture and I could pay. I have money.”
I breathed through another ripple of muscle tremors before I answered.
“Possibly. Cowboy thinks there are other facilities like this one,” I said. “But I have to find my own boy, Carlos. He’s young, not even twelve years old.”
“I’ll send you with a picture,” he said, the pain in his voice audible. “And if you find her . . . please. Just get her out. Please? I helped you.”
He choked up on that last word and I closed my eyes, hating his pain. A father’s pain, a mother’s love, I understood that. I clenched my jaw, fighting off the part of me that wanted to ease his hurt. Caring about other people’s pain was a good way to lose everyone I loved.
My boy had been taken from me once, and I had thought he was dead. For a long time, I’d lived in a fog, believing he’d been killed in a hit meant for me. But I’d found him. I’d found him, and I’d found Killian, a man I’d thought would stand beside me through anything that came our way. He had stood beside me until that last night.
The night he’d let me go.
My eyes snapped open, and I stared at the road in front of us, refusing to relive that memory. The shakes continued and I wondered if it was all from the machine or the distant memories trying to surface. I rubbed at my arms, trying to banish a phantom itch.
“Withdrawal from the drugs they had you on,” Peter said. “You’ve got all the symptoms. Irritability, itching, paranoia.” He grinned. “Maybe you were always like that?”
Dinah piped up. “Irritable and paranoid, yes, but that comes with the territory.”
“They take us when we’re sleeping, so we have to sleep in shifts.” I changed the subject. Not because I thought the Magelore was wrong, but because there was nothing I could do but ride it out.
Cowboy and Peter nodded. Carlos looked at me again. I was in the front passenger seat, my dog’s head in my lap, Dinah clutched in my left hand.
“Left-handed?” Carlos asked.
“Both,” Dinah replied for me. “She’s faster with her left, though.”
Cowboy leaned forward. “Didn’t you have two guns? I thought it was always two in the stories I heard.”
I missed having two guns. Missed having Eleanor there to be the hard line when I needed her. “Yeah, I did. One was destroyed.”
Destroyed saving me.
“You should get another,” Carlos said quietly. It struck me that he was totally unfazed by the fact that my gun had just spoken. He hadn’t reacted earlier, either, to her comment about Cowboy. I twisted in my seat with a grimace as a cold shiver ran through me, followed by a serious hot flash.
“Carlos.” I stared at the side of his face, at the complete lack of nerves he was showing. Something had felt off about him from the very beginning. Too cool around abnormals and the way he’d given us the story about his daughter had rung true but also . . . not. I drew a deep breath, but he didn’t smell like an abnormal.
“Yes?”
I stared at him, my thoughts whipping around faster and faster. “Who are you really?”
“I am Carlos.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he frowned. “I’m not sure who else I could be?”
Peter snort-laughed. “Phoenix, you’re too paranoid. He’s human. I can smell it all over him.”
Except the most powerful abnormals didn’t smell feral or wild like the weaker ones. In fact, they smelled just like a human. Like nothing.
I had Dinah up and pressed against Carlos’s head before another heartbeat passed. “Pull over.”
He did as I said, cool as a summer breeze. “It is not
