Vanish

her for taking us away. “And you?” I ask. “What’d you do?”

She shrugs, twisting her thin shoulder as if to say nothing worth mentioning. I think of getting hit in the head with the ball and wonder if that happened to Mom, too. The thought makes me clench my fork so tightly my knuckles ache. “It was good to see Tamra,” she volunteers.

“Yeah,” I second.

“She looks… good.”

“Yeah.” Pale as an icicle.

“Spending a lot of time with Cassian,” Mom adds, watching me closely to see how this affects me. “She seems happy.”

I merely nod, unable to deny that. Tamra did look happy. But then she had Cassian now. Why wouldn’t she be?

After a moment, Mom adds, “I had a slow day at the clinic.”

“Well, that’s always a good thing,” I murmur, glad Mom didn’t lose her duty at the clinic. As a verda draki — or a former verda draki — her skills are best suited to working with the ill or injured, making the poultices and medicines that have kept our kind in good shape for generations. I don’t see them reassigning her just out of spite. Doing so would be a disservice to the pride.

“Reorganized the meds,” she volunteers, her voice a numbing monotone. “I don’t think anyone’s done that since I left.”

I nod slowly, gathering my nerve to confess: “I was reassigned.” Hopefully my voice sounds as unaffected as hers. I have to tell her. She’d find out eventually. If not from me, then someone else.

I wait for the raised eyebrow, the sharp tone that will demand why they did that. Basically, I wait for the protective, vigilant mother she’s always been.

Instead her voice sounds hollow. “You’re not in the library anymore?”

“No.” I take a bite and chew quickly, dreading the next words. “I’m with the gutting crew.”

She looks up. “The gutting crew?”

“Yeah.” I tear at the verdaberry bread until it’s only crumbs. “They needed some extra hands.”

“And who reassigned you to the gutting crew?” she asks quietly.

I give half a shrug, certain this is when she will lose her cool. “Jabel gave me the assignment.”

Nothing.

Mom’s quiet for a long moment, staring down at her plate before pushing up from the table and taking her dishes into the kitchen. I cringe as she drops them in the sink with a clatter. Still, I wait. Ready for her to say something, do something. March across the street and light into Jabel, her old friend. I can almost imagine the shouting, hear my mom demanding why her daughter was given such a lowly duty reserved for those training to be part of the pride’s hunting crew.

That would be familiar. That would be typical.

Nothing. I strain for a sound and detect the uncorking of a bottle, the faint slosh of wine into a glass.

After a moment, she reemerges, stops at the table with a glass in hand, the deep green liquid dangerously close to the edge. She stares at me over the rim as she pulls a deep swallow of verda wine.

“Everything will be okay,” I say because I don’t know what to say to her. She’s not acting like Mom at all. “I screwed up and they have to punish me. It will all blow over.”

She takes a slow sip, her eyes dull. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.” She disappears back into the kitchen again. When she returns it’s with a full bottle of verda wine tucked between her arm and body. My gaze trails her as she walks down the hallway to her bedroom. The door clicks shut after her. A moment passes and I hear the low drone of the television from her room.

I sit at the table for a moment and glance around. At three empty chairs. I quickly stand, unable to sit there another moment.

Gathering the dishes, I take them to the sink. The silence in the kitchen is thick, Mom’s television a distant hum. As I wash, my stare drifts up to the kitchen window and I bite back a gasp. A bowl slips from my hand, bounces off the edge of the sink, and shatters on the floor. Still, I don’t move, don’t even look to investigate the searing pain at the side of my foot.

My gaze fixes unblinking at the far side of Mom’s withered-dead garden. A shape stands in the gloom. The eyes watching me seem to glow, to cut through the evening mist to my house. To me.

The mist swirls, drifts like smoke from a peat fire around him. It parts to reveal a face — Corbin’s curling smile. He looks smug, pleased with himself as he stands there brazenly.

My skin snaps, lungs contract and swell, vibrating with warmth as my gaze narrows, reading perfectly into that smile.

He thinks I’m his for the taking. Tamra and Cassian have each other, and I’m out of favor with the pride — what else should I do but embrace the one draki who looks at me? Who wants me? Right? Wrong.

Smolder builds in my chest. He probably thinks I’ll fall to my knees before him, grateful for whatever crumb he casts my way, salvation in this new friendless, lightless existence among my own kind.

Glaring at the shrouded figure, I snatch at the cord and the blinds fall into place with a noisy rattle. But still I imagine him there, see him staring back at me, watching, waiting.

It’s strange. I’m back in the home I’ve longed for, in cool mists and air that weeps kisses over my thirsting flesh. But dead desert might as well surround me. Again. And this time there is no Will to revive me. There is nothing.

That night I make sure my window is locked. A precaution I never took before, even when I was in Chaparral, but for some reason I feel the need to do it tonight, with Corbin’s glowing eyes imprinted on my mind.

Chapter 8

Days pass quietly, like pages turning in a book, one after the other. As my life sinks into a routine, the loneliness bears deep, gnawing at me. Dusk settles as I walk home from work. The mist rides thick and the fading sunlight struggles to penetrate the opaque air, breaking through in patches here and there, staving off the night.

I hear him before I spot him. Cassian materializes in the mist before me, his tread soft on the path. We both stop and face each other. He lives on the other side of the township. I can guess the reason he’s this far south. I know where he’s coming from, where he’s been. The same place he’s been spending most of his time.

“Cassian,” I greet, twisting my fingers until they ache, rubbing at the flesh, as though the blood were still there from all the fish I cleaned today.

“Jacinda. How are you?” He asks this like we’re polite acquaintances. And I guess we are in a way. We’ve become that. Since he decided to focus on my sister. Suddenly I loathe the sight of him. I feel used, lied to. He never wanted me. Never really liked me for me.

The mist strokes my face as I glare up at Cassian, something inside me unraveling, like ribbons on a package coming undone.

Cassian stares down at me, his arms behind his back. Like Severin or another elder glowering down at me, and I guess he’s on his way to being one of them.

My skin prickles with resentment. I hate it when he reminds me of them — of his father. It’s a bitter pill after he almost convinced me he was different. I wanted to believe him. The words he told me in Chaparral when he was trying to get me to come home with him echo in my head.

There’s something in you… you’re the only thing real for me there, the only thing remotely interesting.

Lies to get me to trust him. Or he changed his mind. Either way, I don’t interest him anymore. Not as Tamra does.

Finally, when I don’t answer, he says, “You’ve got to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

He dips his head, looks at me through shadowed eyes. “Stop making it so damn hard on yourself. Pining for