They all welcome me, assessing me with the same avidity I’d endured from Will’s father. As we eat, I’m subjected to a battery of questions.
“She’s fast, too,” Will volunteers, almost grudgingly, like he knows small talk is expected but doesn’t wish to contribute.
“Really.” Mr. Rutledge arches his brows. “Long-distance running requires great stamina. I’ve always been impressed with those capable of such endurance.”
Throughout our dialogue, Xander studies me across the table, quietly intent. Will at my side gives me some comfort. That and the gentle misters spraying cooling vapor over the patio. My skin drinks it in.
When the meal winds down, Will’s aunts rise to fetch dessert from the kitchen. I see my chance and jump up to help. In the kitchen, I break free, excusing myself to use the restroom.
I take the stairs off the main entry. My sneakers race silently over a red runner as I open doors and stick my head inside room after room until I find Will’s.
Even if I didn’t sense his long-imbued presence, I would have known the wood-paneled room belonged to him. It lacks the cold precision of the rest of the house. The bed is made, but otherwise it feels lived in. Books and magazines litter a bedside table. His literature book lies open on the desk, a half-written essay beside it. A framed photo of a woman with Will’s gold-brown hair sits there also, and I know it’s his mother, see him in her smiling face.
Tearing my gaze away, I open his closet and spot the hamper below his hanging clothes. Digging through the garments, I pull out the bloodied shirt with a gasp of relief. Clutching it in my shaking hands, I close the closet door, my pulse a feverish throb at my neck. What am I going to do with it now?
As I carefully peer out into the hall, an idea forms to hide the shirt somewhere outside, maybe in the front bushes where I can collect it later, after I’ve managed to extricate myself. The plan burns through my mind as I hurry down the hall, pleased with myself but still wary. Locating the shirt had almost been too easy.
Gradually, a sound penetrates — thudding footsteps ascending the stairs.
Panic flares hotly in my chest. I dive into the nearest room, closing the door with a soft click behind me. I grip the door latch, ears straining to hear the slightest movement on the other side. I stave off the fiery grip of fear with sharp sips of breath and focus on cooling my lungs. Manifesting now would be the worst possible scenario.
My gaze drills into the door, almost as if I can see through it to the other side. Releasing the latch, I ease back a step, then another. My eyes fasten, unblinking on that door as I strangle the shirt in my hands. As if I might somehow kill it, cease its existence. If I could manifest and burn it to cinders without setting off any smoke alarms I would.
As the moments pass, and no one comes, the tension ebbs from my shoulders. Breathing easier, I turn my attention to the room in which I find myself.
Horror strikes me full force. Cripples me motionless. My gaze flies, taking it all in with dizzying speed.
Draki skin stares back at me…everywhere.
The desk, the lamp shades, the furniture. All are covered in the flesh of my brethren. Bile climbs up my throat.
My knees give out and I stagger, reach to a chair for support then snatch my hand away with a pained hiss. I drop the shirt, gazing in horror at the gleaming black upholstery I touched, onyx flesh, shockingly familiar with its iridescent winks of purple. My father flashes across my mind.
Still, I look around, rotate in a small circle, choke back a sob at the pillows on the sofa covered in the deep bronze of an earth draki — the second-most common type of my kind, marked for its hyper-ability to find gems, edible vegetation, underground water…anything relating to soil. To see their remains here, in this house, in this desert, so far from the earth they love, is devastating.
I look away, too sick to look at the vile evidence of my race’s murder.
My gaze lands on a giant map of North America stretched out on one wall. Black, green, and red flags scatter widely across it, grouped predominantly in mountainous areas ideal for draki existence. My stomach tightens as the significance sinks in. I lower my hands from my face and inch closer, my eyes devouring the sight of all those black flags. So many. I tremble at what they might represent.
Only two red flags jut out from the map, but they’re larger than the others. Isolated, no black or green flags surround them. One is in Canada. The other in Washington.
My eyes feverishly scan the map, honing in on the Cascade Mountains, the small corner where I’d lived my entire life. And there, I see two other flags. One green. One black. I twist my hands until I can’t feel my fingers anymore.
The green flag sits in the general area of my home, and beside it, the single black flag casts its shadow.
A horrible suspicion sinks into me, coiling around me like a serpent.
We’re only a few hundred miles south of our pride…. It should have occurred to me sooner. And maybe it had, maybe it’s been there all along; I just refused to face it. Staring at the map, I can’t avoid it anymore. Clearly, they hunt in our area. I’ve always known that.
My eyes start to sting and I blink rapidly. It’s horrible to believe. A bitter pill going down, sticking in my throat.
Dad understood me. Understood that I needed to fly. Because he felt the same way. He would never have expected me to suppress my draki. I don’t want to believe Will is responsible for taking the only member of my family who loved me for me.
I shake my head hard. He was probably too young to hunt then. In my gut, I believe this. He’s different. Will let me escape. He couldn’t have killed my father.
But his family could have. And they’re just downstairs.
Bending, I snatch the shirt back up, urging myself to go, run, escape this house before it’s too late. Before I can’t leave. But I can’t tear my eyes from that wall. Like a horrible car crash, it’s all I can see.
The sound of a door clicking shut behind me jerks me from my horrified trance.
15
I try to keep it together as I turn to face Xander, pushing the fear down with a desperate swipe, struggling not to think about where he’s found me…about the horror of standing in a room buried in the severed skin of my race.
“What are you doing here?” he demands.
“I was looking for a bathroom.” Blinking my eyes dry, I breathe air thinly through my nose, concentrating on chilling the expanding heat of my windpipe.
“There’s one off the kitchen.” He cocks his head, studies me with glinting-dark eyes. “Why did you come upstairs?” His gaze moves around the room, flicking to the map before coming back to rest on me with piercing intent. “Why are you snooping around in here?”
“I’m not,” I deny, swallowing down my throat’s rising scald.
He motions to Will’s shirt. “What do you have there?”
I clench the wadded fabric. “Nothing. Just a shirt.”
“Will’s? Why do you have it?” His gaze narrows, his lids heavy and suspicious over dark eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who sleeps with her boyfriend’s lock of hair. You didn’t strike me as that pathetic.”
Our eyes lock. I hold silent, as still as stone. He reaches for the shirt, and I jerk back a step. I know my reaction is extreme — especially over an alleged
