Call Forth the Waves
Author: L. J. Hatton
Date: 2016-03-22 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Literature & Fiction; Alien Invasion; Teen & Young Adult; Aliens; Action & Adventure; Fantasy; Science Fiction; Adventure; Paranormal & Urban; Science Fiction & Fantasy
Description: Earth, not so very long from now: the silent, inscrutable alien visitors who bathed the planet in transforming rains have moved on, leaving behind a world much changed. Penn Roma, age sixteen, is blessed—or cursed—with supernatural talents she has always concealed. Her sisters, likewise afflicted, are prisoners of the Commission, the government agency tasked with controlling these strange children. Penn’s determination to save them only gains urgency when she learns of the horrifying plans the twisted Warden Dodge has for the peculiar charges. But Penn herself must remain hidden, navigating a
Publisher: Brilliance Audio

OTHER TITLES BY L. J. HATTON

THE CELESTINE SERIES

Sing Down the Stars

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2016 L. J. Hatton.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Skyscape, New York
www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781503933507

ISBN-10: 1503933504

Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, DogEared Design

CONTENTS

START READING

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Three quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by sea, and yet we expected danger to come from the clouds because that’s where it started last time. No one thought to look down to the puddles under our feet. Just because the rain stopped falling doesn’t mean there were no monsters in the water.

CHAPTER 1

I dreamed I was on The Show’s train.

I don’t know if I actually heard a sound while I slept or if it was pure, fearful imagination and regret, but I felt the uneven glide of wheels along the track and heard the steady rhythm of the rail mechanism as it laid new planks down and picked the old ones up. My father, Magnus Roma, had designed our circus’s train so that it could roll anywhere, even through my mind in the middle of the night.

In the dream, I was a ghost haunting a reflection of the life I’d lived for sixteen years. There were no alien jellyfish slowly altering Earth’s children. My sisters were free, rather than captured by the Wardens’ Commission. Jermay was practicing magic tricks with his father, Zavel, who had been returned to life, and Birdie was still walking the high wire with her adoptive family, the Jeseks. The only thing out of place was the fact that Winnie was no longer mute—

I was.

I was mute and invisible, and when I tried to warn the people I loved that they needed to run, they couldn’t hear me. I watched, screaming silently, as Wardens Nye and Arcineaux laid waste to them all and left the train a smoking heap of slag. There were no survivors—human, metal, or Klok, who was a little bit of both. He died at my feet, glassy eyes frozen open so that I couldn’t get away from them. It was exactly how I’d watched the mechanical re-creation of my mother fall, but my father had built Klok with my eyes, which made it worse. A piece of me died with him.

The train rose up in a monstrous, deformed amalgam of my father’s other creations: a cluster of horns from our unicorns and Scorpius’s tail whipping over the back of the Constrictus’s snakelike body. It had Bijou’s jeweled dragon wings and Xerxes’ gryphon claws and head. A peculiar spark in its eyes glowed red hot with the fury of Magnus Roma’s ghost. My robotic mother rode on its back, several times larger than she had been in life.

My father had created her to protect me, and now she was trying to kill me.

I ran, and the train pursued over water and air and land. There was no escape, so I did the only thing I could: I turned around, stood my ground, and called destruction down to save myself. I unleashed the full power of the Celestine without restraint, until the train and my mother were battered to dust and stopped trying to come back.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, but the words stuck in my throat, held there by a paste of tears and ash while the remains sifted through my fingers. “I’m sorry!”

I screamed so loud and hard the words could have cut themselves free from my throat, but they never made it to my mouth. My hands began to glow, and I felt the impossible heat of a fire that had never before burned me.

Hotter and brighter. Hotter and brighter, until my skin flaked off in twinkling bits.

I was a star swirling to life in the ruins of a universe beyond my control. Uncontainable energy that had been held in check for too long. Skin and bone and muscle and tissue were unable to tether the reality of the Celestine awakened.

I became heaven’s fire. And in the final moment of my mortal existence, I screamed again. Unheard again. One last, horrible second of incineration before I woke up, still screaming, but far from silent.

Doors slammed up and down the halls inside the Hollow, the supposed haven my father had promised would protect us all, and I knew what came next. The monsters. That’s what I’d called the sounds as a child, before I knew the monsters were me. Bad dreams always caused my abilities—my touch—to flare. Groaning metal and creaking and shrieking from power lines. The chiming of chimes and the straining of gears. Every square inch of the Hollow was rushing to my defense, ripping itself apart to do so. The room’s rug caught fire. Pipes burst from the walls, flooding what had once been my nursery and dousing the flames. Next came a sour wind blowing havoc through the room. I never should have slept there, but I was obsessed with the nursery and everything in it, just for the hope that I could force a real memory of it to surface.

In my old life, when the train wasn’t a nightmare, this was where my father would have appeared in my door. But I’d lost him, too. Now silencing the chaos was up to me. I had to get control over myself before the call I hadn’t intended to send out reached the stars and brought them down, the same way I had called to them the night I was born—when I murdered my twin brother.

I threw my hands over my ears to stop the sounds, but all that did was dredge up walls of rock from under the Hollow’s foundation. They blocked me in on all sides, creating a cell that would isolate me from everyone else.

Alone and in the dark, I was able to get a handle on myself. I couldn’t hear the monsters anymore. I laid my palms flat to the cool slate, inhaled the earthy scent of soil with all its microscopic life, and my panic calmed. It would have been easy to leave the walls up, or even to command them to crush me so I couldn’t be a danger to anyone ever again. The wardens wouldn’t chase my friends without me. But that was the kind of stray thought a half-sleeping mind considers. I’d never really do it; I still had three sisters left to save.

My stone prison began to crack, letting fresh air and light through. Anise. She was terrakinetic, someone who could move earth by will alone, and she had a lot more practice at it than I did. She and my other sisters had been on display as part of our circus, but I’d had to hide myself, claiming the identity of my dead brother. I’d been a hunter wearing the pelt of her kill for a disguise so I could walk among the flock of so-called normal humans undetected.

“Are you coming out, or should I get the bear?” Anise asked through the crack in my defenses.

Each of my sisters had a particular skill for creating creatures from the element they wielded, the same way my father made golems out of metal and gears. Anise’s took the form of a Kodiak bear. Like a grizzly, only bigger and more aggressive.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”

The stone cracked wider—that was a “no.”

Not only was Anise in the room, but Jermay was there, looking worried. His unnaturally blue eyes had dulled with sleep. He bent his pinkie at me, using our secret sign language to ask if I was really all right. I didn’t return the gesture, because he was the one person I refused to lie to. Winnie and Birch peeked in from the doorway, staying close but out of range in case I went off again. It’s always a good idea to stay out of the blast radius when you’re dealing with things that can explode in your face.

“I said I was fine,” I snapped, climbing out of the cell. If Birdie was there, she was hiding, making her the only one with any sense.

Once I’d threaded my arms through the gap, Jermay took my hands and pulled. My sister had made me an exit, but not a wide one. I had to work for it.

“This is not fine.” Anise’s short hair had frizzed into a rat’s nest that stood up around her ears; paired with the tattered shirt she’d been sleeping in, she didn’t look very threatening, even if she sounded it.

The room was a wreck of broken furniture and sloshing water. Anise dismantled my hiding spot, bidding the stones return to the ground, but she couldn’t do anything about the rest. Baby clothes that had once sat neatly stacked on shelves were now a muddy mess. The water was quickly soaking a wooden crate of books in the corner so that the pages turned translucent and stuck together. One book floated past, with a yellow duckling peeking out from the warped body of a brown dog.

“I’ll fix it,” I told her.

“Fixing things isn’t enough. You’ve got to stop breaking them in the first place. You’re getting stronger, Chey-chey. You’ve got to get control of yourself.”

This was humiliating. She was scolding me like a child, and the others were all watching.

“What if Jermay had been in here with you?”

Ever since our escape from Warden Nye and his Center in the sky, sleeping had been a problem. We all had our nightmares and our shared fear that the dream would overtake reality to prove we were all still prisoners. At some point in the night, there was an inevitable migration. I’d wake up to find Jermay had snuck in and was now sleeping beside me, or I’d wake up alone and creep down the hall to the room that was his. Winnie and Birch did the same thing, and on the occasions that we passed each other in the halls, no one said anything. No one looked anyone else in the eye. Our fears came with an unacknowledged shame, especially on the night everyone but Klok had ended up on the floor of Anise’s room, just close enough to touch so no one could get lost.

“What if Birdie had curled up to sleep in your chair instead of mine tonight?” Anise asked. “You could have hurt her, or worse!”

Didn’t she understand? It wasn’t me—it was the Hollow. Every inch was a reminder of why our house had never been my home. There wasn’t a single room I could use as a refuge from the guilt I carried for what I’d cost her and everyone else. She’d tried to convince me that my brother’s death wasn’t my fault, but that had been a fleeting comfort. I knew the truth. I’d lived it for sixteen years, and now it was choking the life out of me in retribution.

Absolute truth was so terrifying an idea that I still hadn’t found the nerve to access the memory chip my father left me for my birthday. I knew it had to be important, but I wasn’t ready for my world to twist again. I kept the chip with me always, tucked into a pants pocket when I was awake or a shirt pocket when I slept, but I absolutely could not open it. I hadn’t even told anyone else it existed for fear that whatever secrets it held would be worse than those shared by the walls around me.

“I have to get out of here,” I said. It felt like an admission of weakness, me begging for my big sister to protect me from the unseen things that gathered in the dark to scare me. “How long until Klok has the golems ready to go?”

My father’s metal son was the only one with enough foresight to leave me alone. He’d been in Magnus’s basement workshop for days, putting the final touches on repairs to Xerxes and Bijou so we could use them as transportation to reach whatever secret place Winnie knew. Not safe, she said, but free of the Commission, and that was free enough to let me breathe. Klok had been working nonstop, but I still wished he was faster. I had been ready to leave the day we arrived.

“Any time now,” Anise said. She seemed to notice the edge in her own voice, because she softened it to ask: “Honestly this time—are you okay?”

“Am I ever?”

The rocks were gone and the fire doused, but we were still ankle-deep in rising water. I placed my left hand against an exposed pipe and held the right out toward my floor. The leak stopped and reversed, flowing back into the pipe with everything that had drenched my room. Once the rug was dry, I covered the break in the pipe with my palm and willed the metal to melt into a new seam.

“See?” I said to Anise. “It’s under control.”

“For now.” She scowled at me. “I’m making breakfast, if you want any. Do not leave this house.” Then she let me be. Winnie and Birch left my door, so only Jermay and I remained. I could almost hear Birdie’s ghostly steps running away unseen.

Or it could have been my mind playing another trick on me.

“So what was it this time?” Jermay asked me. “The Center falling out of the sky? Accidentally summoning an army of Medusae golems that dragged you into space?”

Nightmares were so common that we knew each other’s by name.

I shook my head and said, “The train,” so quietly I almost didn’t hear it myself.

“Mine was a man-eating clock tracking me through a poisonous jungle.” He grinned, so I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not. One of his more frustrating traits.

“I left her,” I said.

“Who?”

“Iva. She was shot, and she died, and all I did was step over her body and save myself.”

“You mean the robot?”

“Don’t say it like that. You wouldn’t talk about Klok like that.”

“Klok’s different,” Jermay said.

“Why?”

“He just is.”

Jermay gave me the lopsided grin that used to be my greatest weakness, but he was trying old tricks on a new girl. I wasn’t that Penn anymore, and I wasn’t really Penelope, either. I was something new, hard and sharp because my edges hadn’t worn down yet. No matter what I said or did, I cut him.

“You didn’t know her,” I told him bluntly.

I wondered if I could have saved her. I had rewired Warden Nye’s mechanical hands without a manual or tools, using a few stern words and stubborn looks. That had been years’ worth of damage. Maybe even decades. Iva’s wound was fresh. Her systems were mostly intact. Surely I could have routed the rest around the burnouts. I could have done something—anything. But I left her there, and I didn’t think about trying to fix her until we were out of reach.

I forgot her, and now I knew what it was like to watch my mother die.

“Iva fulfilled her purpose,” Jermay said. “She helped save us. If it’s possible for a machine to feel satisfaction, then she died happy.”

“But she still died.” I started picking up the mess, one infant-sized toy at a time. Jermay sat down on the end of the bed I’d begged Klok to move in here for me. He surveyed the room.

“What d’ya say I snap my fingers and clean this place up my way?”

His way meaning magic. Illusion. Deception.

I’d blink my eyes, and he’d have everything hidden in the closet and under the bed before I opened them again.

“That’s okay. I’ve got it.”

I needed to ground myself in reality. Using my hands felt normal, and I’d nearly forgotten what that word meant. Sleight of hand wouldn’t help me remember.

“I’m sorry I can’t make it better,” he said.

“So am I.”

He flinched as if I meant that I blamed him for not being able to fix things, but I was only returning his apology. I was sorry, too. I wanted to make things better for him, but didn’t know how.

We were both orphans, most likely. I couldn’t say for certain that my father was dead, but he wasn’t there, and every new day withered my hope of finding him a little more. And yet, I still had that scrap of hope—Jermay didn’t. His father’s grave was right outside the door to the Hollow, and he was the one trying to make me feel better, when I should have been showing him the same compassion.

What was wrong with me?

“Anise is right. You are getting stronger,” he said when I sat down beside him on the bed.

“Not strong enough, and I can’t stay cooped up like this. I need air.”

The Show’s train had never stayed in one place longer than a week; we were always on the go. What I hadn’t realized was that we couldn’t afford to stop. The only time I’d ever been still longer than that was inside the Center. It took me a while to figure out the timeline, but between fleeing with Jermay and the others, being unconscious after we lost the train, and the days I spent imprisoned with Birch in the clouds, I lost six weeks. It felt like six lifetimes—one each for me, my sisters, and my missing father. Being inside the Hollow felt like six times more than that. There weren’t even any windows.

“I need to see the sky,” I said.

Something else Anise should have understood. She’d been weakened by having her access to the ground cut off inside the Center. I needed to see the sun and moon and stars, not have them reduced to the tingling agony of a ghost limb I could feel but not see or touch.

Time had lost all meaning in the Hollow. We slept because we were always exhausted and unable to relax enough to rest. No one knew if it was day or night outside. We didn’t even know how long we’d been there.

“You can’t go out,” Jermay told me. “Anise said—”

“I don’t care!”

A small tremor shook the room.

“Sorry,” I said. “But that’s going to keep happening unless I get out of here.”

“They’re looking for you.”

“Nye was looking for me. The rest of them are licking their wounds. We’re under a tree. What are the chances that someone from the Commission will wander through these woods at the exact moment I step outside?”

“About the same chance as you being possible,” Jermay said, more serious. “If you have a flare out in the open, someone could see it.”

“Fine—compromise. I won’t go out, but I’m opening the door before I suffocate. If I don’t, I’m liable to literally blow the roof off of this place, and that would be a lot easier to see from a distance than one girl in a random stretch of trees.”

“I don’t know, Penn . . .”

“I’m going.” I was already getting up to leave.

An alarm sounded.

My room was suddenly awash in lights and noise.

“Wha—” Jermay started to ask, but I shrugged. Unless Anise had wired me with motion sensors in my sleep, the alert had nothing to do with us.

We hurried into the hall. Anise ran past us toward the main room and the entrance we’d used to access the Hollow when we first arrived.

“Did either of you touch the outer door?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Did you touch the door?” she shouted.

I’d never seen Anise lose her temper or composure. She was the one who kept the rest of us grounded. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

“We didn’t touch anything,” Jermay said as Birch and Winnie joined us from the back. Klok stomped up the stairs from my father’s workroom. The trapdoor slammed open against the hall rug.

“Check the sensors,” Anise ordered him. “Code Blackout. Turn everything off in case they’re skimming for energy signatures.”

With entire cities going dark at night out of fear that the Medusae or another otherworldly race might see us, the Commission had developed ways to scan for illegal tech in areas where it was forbidden. All of my father’s work was cutting edge, specifically because it was made for the Commission to buy freedom for our family. Their equipment could pick it up, easy.

Klok nodded and disappeared back into the floor. Two seconds later, the room dimmed to a candlelit glow.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The alert on the outer door. Someone’s coming in.”

I reached for Jermay’s arm at the same time he reached for mine. We twined them together with our pinkies interlocked for luck. Maybe some of the old Penn was still in there, after all.

A tiny invisible mass latched onto my other side so hard that I almost toppled over.

“Birdie!” Anise shouted. “I need to see you, baby.”

“I think I’ve got her,” I said.

Birdie slipped her hand into mine, slowly bleeding into view without a sound. Her eyes were wide and staring, her whole body shaking. She was barefoot and in a pair of red-checkered pajamas she’d rummaged from one of my sisters’ closets.

“Into the basement with Klok,” Anise ordered her.

Birdie sprinted for the trapdoor, disappearing again as she went.

Someone pounded on the outer door.

The tunnel lights went out completely, robbing us of our view, and I backed up with Jermay, farther into the main room. There was only the one exit. We ran into Winnie and Birch so that the four of us formed a line. Standing together had given us an advantage before. Hopefully, there was still safety in numbers.

“What if it’s someone from The Show?” Jermay asked. “It could be . . . couldn’t it?”

The look Anise gave him over her shoulder wasn’t promising.

“Whoever it is, I’ll tell them to leave and forget how they got here,” Winnie offered. She was The Show’s siren in more than appearance, and if she told someone to do something, they did it.

“I doubt they’re alone,” Anise said. “They’re not going to give you the chance to speak to each one of them. All of you get into the workroom.”

“But—”

She wouldn’t let me argue.

“Do it, Penn!” she commanded. “If I don’t know the person on the other side of that door, I’m collapsing the tunnel, and then I’m bringing the rest of this place down behind me. You’ll have to make them a new way out.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

That was how I lost my sisters the first time. They guarded our escape from the train, and in return, they were taken by the Commission.

Anise growled, but she didn’t waste time arguing with me.

“Winnie, Birch, grab whatever’s worth taking downstairs and tell Klok to be ready to run. We can’t wait for perfection anymore.”

“Got it,” Winnie said.

She and Birch descended the workroom stairs as the seal on the main door broke with a creak. A new light appeared at the mouth of the tunnel. Something moving. As it came closer, it behaved strangely like a living thing, but it was definitely on fire. It ran the last several yards on padded feet.

“Samson!” I cried, relieved. There was no mistaking my sister Evie’s flame-dog once he was close enough to have a shape. I’d seen her summon him nightly for The Show for as long as I could remember. “Evie’s made it! She escaped!”

“Penn, wait!” Jermay pulled on my arm, though I could see Evie in the tunnel now. “Look at him.”

I turned my attention back to Samson. The usually playful pup stood with his legs braced, twisting his neck against an unseen leash, being forced to go where he didn’t want to be led.

“Evie?” Anise called. She kept her hands down, but I could feel her power rooting itself into the ground beneath our feet. She was preparing for an attack. Provoked, she could have a rampaging Kodiak between us and the door in a heartbeat. “If that’s you, say something.”

“This is wrong,” Jermay said, shaking his head. “We should—”

He lost his voice as Evie stepped into the main room with a hound’s collar around her throat and manacles on her wrists and ankles.

She’d lost the glow that had always made her seem to shine.

“Run!” she said.

Then the ball of flame in her hand leapt from her fingers.

CHAPTER 2

The sky was falling, but this time, it wasn’t my fault.

Anise threw a hand up, creating a shield of bedrock to intercept Evie’s fireball, and half the room was ripped apart by the force of impact. The shield shattered; both of them went flying in opposite directions. I didn’t know who to help.

In the tunnel another shape appeared, this one tall and bald, in the shadows, turning him into a ghoulish Nosferatu—the man that Winnie’s brother, Greyor, had named as Warden Files. He was the one who’d collared Evie to make her into his personal flamethrower.

He had not picked a good time to show up in my house.

“It would appear we’ve missed Roma,” he said. “But I’ll settle for the consolation prize. Finders keepers works for me. It was good enough for Nye.”

Warden Nye had quietly tried to collect me and my family before the rest of the Commission even knew we existed as assets they could exploit. When his associates figured out what he’d done, they were furious. Nye was forced to make a deal, so he’d relinquished Evie and my other sisters, believing me to be the bigger prize.

I remembered what Greyor had told me about this man and how cruel he was, and I remembered how Files had kept Evie locked in a refrigerated cell at the Center because the cold would be misery for a pyrokinetic. My arms and legs were still thrumming with the aftershocks of my nightmare-induced power surge, my temper was still frayed, and the image of Birdie terrified was still fresh in my mind. Worst of all, Files had hurt the people I cared about.

The monsters were more than happy to come back out to play.

“I’ve got this,” I said and stepped away from Jermay.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Fighting fire with fire.”

When someone like me surrenders to the touch in our blood, our eyes turn black as a warning. I’d seen it happen when Winnie used her voice in full force to kill Warden Arcineaux. This time, I felt the darkness rise from inside me. I let it come.

I held my arms out and up like wings, pictured them dripping with burning feathers, and welcomed the heat in my chest. Being Nye’s prisoner had revealed connections between my abilities and my sisters’ that I never knew existed. I was a firebird rising from the ashes. No, more powerful. I was Celestine ready to take flight. I slammed my hands together in front of me, and off the current flew a fiery raptor, feet out to catch its prey, beak open to devour.

“Get him,” I said. My golem flew straight for Warden Files.

Fear of fire was primal, even and especially to a man who thought he was strong enough to control it. Files ran for the door, but my phoenix got there first and blocked his exit. He backed down the entry tunnel toward the main room, and me.

I pictured my sister Vesper, who could dance on air and starlight, and create a chill wind sharp enough to cut through bread or steel. My father had said her abilities were temperamental and uncontrollable, that there was no use in trying to steer a gale. But wind was nothing but air plus energy, and energy always had direction. I imagined my long, dark hair was Vesper’s performance wig, and I made it fly.

Warden Files sailed off his feet and along the tunnel to the door, bouncing off the floor and walls to land in a heap outside with his men and one very angry flaming bird that was the worst of my temper brought to life. The door slammed shut, held in place by Vesper’s memory.

“Well, that’s new. Remind me never to make you angry,” Jermay said, stunned.

“Nah, I like it when you make me angry,” I told him, and then I ran for Evie.

The first hints of fatigue crept in like spider cracks in a brittle window. Creating a golem took a lot of concentration and energy, but I refused to succumb. Not yet. If I could get my hands on Evie’s collar, I could break it, like I did with Anise’s. One touch was all it would take. I skidded onto the floor beside my captive sister and put my hands on either side of her neck.

“Run,” she said weakly.

“We’ll both run,” I told her. As soon as I got that thing off her, we’d both fly.

Nothing happened. The collar didn’t crackle beneath my fingers like Anise’s had. It didn’t pop open. It didn’t work.

“Open!” I told it. “My father made you. You know my voice. I command you to open!”

That was all it had taken to get Anise’s collar off. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong, but I couldn’t picture the circuits or feel the energy flowing through this one. Everything was jumbled and garbled. Nothing made sense.

“It’s okay,” Evie told me. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She kept repeating those words with tears streaming down her face, her voice caught in a loop caused by a rare moment free of commands.

“It’s okay,” she said again, and pushed my hands away.

“No! Anise! Help me get her up! We can take you with us. We can—”

“Hound!” Warden Files shouted from the tunnel.

My ability to command Evie’s collar wasn’t the only touch that had failed me. The wind was gone; my phoenix had evaporated, allowing the warden to reenter the Hollow.

Files was singed and wounded and too angry to issue real orders, but still Evie shot to her feet with a faltering jerk, heaved off the floor against her will. She shoved me as hard as she could before he had a chance to tell her to do something else. Samson appeared in the gap between us, forcing me backward.

“I can’t stop him,” Evie said. “You have to run. Anise, get her out of here!”

Samson walked me far enough back that Anise could grab me around the waist and hold me. Jermay took one of my arms—the traitors.

“I can help her!” I insisted. Usually, this kind of fit would have brought a dozen disasters to life off the end of my tongue, but I was left with nothing but a tantrum.

“You’ll help her become the reason you’re in chains beside her,” Anise hissed. “Think of the damage he could do with you at his command.”

“Come with us,” I called to Evie. “Fight it!”

She was already shaking her head.

“I can’t.”

Without permission, she couldn’t even walk. She was exhausted, doubled over, tottering on the edge of falling until the warden spoke again.

“Burn it!” he ordered, finally in control of himself. “Burn it all!”

“No!” Evie shrieked, then she was convulsing in pain. The collar wrenched her upright against her own fatigue, bowing her back beyond its natural curve.

Samson howled, but there was no fighting the collar for him, either. I’d worn one, and knew how quickly the vile thing could break someone. It wasn’t some twinge or prick; the collar painted you with shades of anguish. While it was in place, it was all you could see or hear or even smell. The difference was that I’d only been subjected to it by a man who loathed its use. Evie had been imprisoned for weeks by someone who couldn’t have cared less. The agony had left her very little of her own life.

Heat flowed out of her body, mirage rings undulating in every direction. Samson sprinted past me, brushing furniture with his ember-crusted fur and lighting up the rugs with every burning footfall.

It was happening again. My life and my past were smoldering around me, but this time, I should have been able to stop it. I’d taken down the Commission’s entire aerial armada while the Center fell out of the sky. Defeating a single warden with a handful of men should have been simple. I called for rain and rushing water from the Hollow’s pipes. I bade a geyser split the ground and wash the flames away.

Nothing.

I was powerless.

Was this another dream?

“It’s not working,” I said dully, staring at my hands. My whole life had been a fight to keep the Celestine inside her cage, and now, with the door wide open, she refused escape. She was cowering in the corner and clinging to the bars.

In the tunnel, Files held the door open, giving the rising smoke a path to follow. “One way out. Live with me, or die here.”

Anise pulled me toward the hall, stopping in front of the trapdoor that led to the lower level.

“First rule of The Show—anything obvious is an obvious lie.” She stomped out the signal for someone inside to open the trapdoor. Winnie popped her head through, and Files’s triumphant smile faded.

Anise released me, and Jermay’s grip tightened. Winnie grabbed my other arm, and when the two of them together weren’t enough to move me, Birch came to help.

“Stop it, Penn,” Jermay ordered. “Get downstairs. We’re counting on you.”

They were pulling me toward the workroom, but if I left, I might never see Evie again. If stubbornness was the only weapon left to me, then so be it. That was a skill I’d practiced since birth, no special powers required.

“Let go!” I screamed, fighting my friends. Warden Files couldn’t be allowed to win—he couldn’t!

“Klok!” Winnie shouted over my head. “Penn’s being difficult!”

I couldn’t hear him on the stairs, but had no doubt he was on his way. He’d been ordered to protect me by my older sisters. So long as he was functional, Klok would do as he was told.

But why? Why would they all risk themselves for me? Even a Celestine wasn’t worth so many other lives. I wasn’t worth The Show or the scattering of our family.

“Stop!” I shouted.

I felt reality shatter around me.

The room slowed down. It had happened often enough in times of crisis that the phenomenon wasn’t unexpected, but it was definitely unwelcome. No one else could feel or see the world the way I did. It should have been an advantage. Why couldn’t I make it one?

While I continued to thrash against the combined hold of Jermay, Winnie, and Birch, Samson’s fire-trail became a stop-motion track of arcing swirls, graceful in their devastation, nearly beautiful. They were singing, but I couldn’t catch the frequency of the sounds. And if I couldn’t catch the fire, I couldn’t control it.

Klok emerged from the trapdoor stairs wearing one of my father’s work coats over his clothes. Above his collar shined the edge of chest-plate armor he’d made at the Center by absorbing the hummers that should have killed his systems and shut him down for good. It shimmered blue-black, like a beetle’s shell, with streaks of green along the veins.

Anise’s Kodiak was rising into existence by grain and stone until it had to stoop within the confines of the Hollow. It roared in opposition to Samson’s assault and reached out with clawed paws that couldn’t burn. The two golems collided with the force of a ballistic charge, neither advancing, neither giving quarter.

My sisters looked at each other for one forever-second. Evie nodded, still crying, so that ashes stained her face beneath the tears.

“Do it,” her mouth said, but I couldn’t hear her voice.

The sight of her cost me my control over the moment, if I was ever in control at all.

“Get down!” Anise turned her head toward the rest of us, shooing us with her hand. “Go!”

Birch held the workshop door to allow us to pass—me thrashing in Klok’s arms and held a foot off the ground because it was the only way he could get me to move.

The walls were shaking, rumbling floor to ceiling. Anise’s Kodiak let go of Samson and spun. The bear thrust its shoulder into the Hollow’s central support beam and pushed, then fell to dust. Anise flung her arms wide and brought the Hollow down on top of us as she dove for the workshop door. Evie was still mouthing “I love you” as Samson ran to her and an inferno engulfed them both.

I saw her close her eyes and smile.

The ceiling crashed against the hatch above, hard enough to throw us off the stairs and into the basement. Klok took the hit, so all I felt was a thump cushioned by his armored body. He sat me down, and I didn’t get up.

“You killed her,” I said.

No anger. No grief. I was hollowed out. I never thought one of my sisters would be a threat to another. Even Nim with all her sniping annoyance wouldn’t hurt one of us. But Anise had killed Evie, and she’d done it of her own free will without a collar driving her.

“Get up,” Anise snapped at me.

“She’s dead.”

I’d become a broken doll, left and forgotten on the floor, as helpless as Evie when I’d seen her in the Center’s prison.

“Penn, you have to get up. We’ve got to leave,” Jermay said.

“But she’s dead . . .”

“Come on.” Birdie lifted my arms and pulled back, angling her body for leverage until her thick, asymmetric braids almost touched the floor. I was too heavy. “Penn, please. I want to find Mama and Papa.”

She broke my heart, but I couldn’t move.

“We were supposed to help her, but she’s dead.”

Reality tilted. If I couldn’t save anyone, what was the point of standing or walking?

“Winnie, you’re going to have to make her move.” Birch had been quiet since our escape from the Center, speaking only when he was alone with me or Winnie. Now he’d found his voice and used it against me. We weren’t supposed to turn on each other. “Get her on her feet.”

Winnie squatted down so that we were eye level. She was saying things, and in the back of my head, I knew I should have been reacting to them, but there was a fogbank inside my brain that she couldn’t breach. Birdie had stopped pulling, but she still had my hand. It was the one point on my body where I could still feel warmth. Everything else was ice cold because Evie was gone, and she’d taken all my fire with her.

“Can you hear me, Penn?” Winnie asked. To the others, she said: “She’s in shock. I can’t get through.”

“Please get up,” Birdie begged. “Please! We can’t go without you! Klok, do something!”

Klok was too busy packing up the workshop. He’d collected bags’ worth of provisions and gear that Jermay and Birch were securing on each person’s shoulders while Klok activated Xerxes and Bijou. At full size, they took up most of the space, forcing us to the fringes.

I wished they’d grow bigger. Push us into the wall and let the sediment close over me. Imbed my bones beside my sister’s, where I couldn’t be a weapon or a failure.

“Help me get her on his back.” Jermay threw one of my arms over his shoulder so I’d rise with him when he straightened up. Winnie and Birdie were still in sight, so it had to be Birch who took my other side.

“Evie’s dead,” I said again. Why wouldn’t someone acknowledge that we’d lost her? I felt like I was the only one who had noticed.

“We’re going out blind,” Anise told them as I was hoisted onto Xerxes’ shoulders. Something tightened around my waist. I looked down to see Birch had belted me on with vines he’d grown on the spot. Jermay climbed up behind me, and Birdie sat in front, clinging to Xerxes’ neck. “We don’t know how many men that warden brought with him or how close they’ll be.”

“Files,” I said.

“What?”

“His name’s Warden Files, from the Midlands. He has a preference for firstborns from touched families because the fear of fire is primal. That’s why he wanted Evie.” My words were still dull and toneless, repeated from what Greyor had told me at the Center. I couldn’t find the switch to turn my emotions back on.

Anise laid her hand against my leg, looking up at me.

“Penn, I need you to snap out of this. I’m going to open an escape tunnel straight up. If they’re on top of us, we’re going to need you.”

How was I supposed to help anyone? Didn’t she see me fail?

“I needed Evie,” I said.

“We couldn’t save her, all we could do was stop her, so I did. Now is not the time for this conversation.”

She slapped my leg, making it sting, and a new spot of warmth formed in the shape of her palm. She climbed onto Bijou with Winnie, Klok, and Birch, and both golems lifted off.

“Ready?” Anise asked us.

She raised her hands above her head and punched a hole.

CHAPTER 3

Every night, there comes a time called the Magic Hour. Sailors on the ancient seas called it the Time of Knowing, because they believed that the hue foretold what weather they would face on the new day. Travelers called it the Faery Hours, believing it to be a daily convergence between the mortal world and the Court of Seelie. It’s a moment so surreal in its perfection that it can’t possibly be natural, but it is. The sky blossoms into colors our eyes have forgotten to look for; we certainly don’t have names for them. The light no longer burns; it beautifies, and even if they don’t realize they’re doing it, people hold their breath because on some level they don’t want to break the enchantment.

My father used to say that the Magic Hour was the moment hope entered the world. It had to come at night so that it could become dreams of better days while people slept. That was why he chose to open The Show at twilight. Hope was part of the experience, but it wasn’t something he could manufacture.

When we burst out of the ground, we fled from the Hollow into the Magic Hour, and it was the only hope we had.

Anise shifted the rock above our heads so that the shaft she created appeared to have always been there behind our ceiling. Not a single grain of dirt fell to the floor; we didn’t breathe it in as we rose. Evie stayed behind, still dead where Anise had buried her.

Warden Files’s men were swarming the area on foot and in trucks. We caught them by surprise.

“There!” someone shouted when we emerged. “The assets are running!”

Idiots, I thought. We were flying, not running. Jermay’s arm was around my waist. I was hanging tight to Birdie to keep her from slipping off Xerxes’ back, and we were flying.

I expected to see the glimmer of holographic unnoticeables, as that had always been the Commission’s tactic before, but none came. Maybe the Center in the sky was the only platform capable of producing them, or perhaps Warden Files and his fellows really were racing to pick up Nye’s scraps before we were found by someone else, and he didn’t have official support.

Wardens hated to share, and they seemed to spend so much time snatching things from each other’s grasp that they hardly concerned themselves with their actual function.

“We have to get out of these trees!” Anise called. “They’re holding us down!”

Xerxes and Bijou had to maneuver between the branches. It was slow going, and the deeper we dug our path into the woods, the denser the coverage became. We were low enough that if the warden’s men had stood atop their trucks, they could have reached us with a jump. Most of them had stayed behind to see if our escape tunnel would allow them access to the Hollow, but there were sounds of pursuit headed our way.

“Birch!” Anise shouted. “First line of defense!”

“You’ve got it,” he answered.

On either side of our escape route, two-hundred-year-old trees bent over like three-week saplings, filling in the road so no one else could pass. They became braided ribbons of oak, strong as iron and an anomaly for future generations to puzzle over, because there would never be an explanation for their new configuration—not for anyone who’d never seen Birch work his magic.

It really felt like magic.

Younger trees uprooted themselves to serve as sentinels at our back, following behind us like they’d been born not only to run on their roots, but to outrun.

The Commission had underestimated Birch since he was a child, and now they were paying for it. Like me, he was a rare “Level-Five,” a fifth-born twin in a touched family. Being a boy made him a wild card that no one had been prepared for. Birch had learned to use plants as a tool, and he’d taught them to answer his call. Now they were his soldiers.

“Once we’ve got enough space between us and them, get us out of here,” Anise said. “Make sure they can’t see us when you do it. I don’t want them to know where we’re going.”

Birch nodded, and the woodland guardians dipped their branches with him.

“After we’re clear of the trees, we’re still going to need cover,” Jermay said behind me. “That’s you.”

“I know.”

I sat up straighter, making sure Birdie had a firm grip on Xerxes. My worry was unnecessary, considering she had better balance than the rest of us put together. She was so little that her slim brown fingers could grasp him where one row of feathers stacked on top of the next.

“Don’t let go,” I told her. In our former life, I’d been the circus’s ringmaster. Safety was my responsibility when my father wasn’t around.

“You’ll catch me if I fall,” she said, without doubt. “We’re family. I trust you.”

I used to trust my family, too.

I held my hands together in a cage like the one my father had built around our circus grounds, where blue lightning had danced along the lines every night.

“Spark,” I whispered to myself. I blew into my hands, summoning the thick white air Vesper used to create the bodies for her owls. A tiny storm raged inside my fingers, and I held it steady, testing myself.

“Do you think you can do it?” Jermay asked. He was peeking over my shoulder, and his voice was heavy with so much hope, I didn’t dare disappoint him.

“Penn, are you ready?” Anise called to me.

I nodded because I didn’t want to speak to her yet.

Birch swished his arms over his head, and the trees spun into a cyclone of twirling branches. We rode the current up and out, emerging over the treetops into the clear night. Behind us in the distance, something was burning, turning the sky a violent and mournful red I’d only seen once before—the night we lost the train.

“It’s gone,” I said.

The only home I had left was gone, and my past with it. My sister was buried there. Jermay’s father was buried there. The memory of my brother was buried there, with a million other family secrets. It was sacred ground; Files didn’t have to burn it.

“Give us a storm,” Anise prompted.

Another familiar feeling overtook me, searing through my heart. It wove a string between me and the stars above, trilling musical notes that no one else could hear. I’d give her a storm. If Files was so fond of fire, I’d ignite the rain around him and torch the sky with burning hail.

The song in my soul was a funeral march peppered with billowing flares of anger. The stars were lining up, and I knew that this time they wouldn’t ignore me.

I raised my eyes to the sky and whispered, “Fall.”

We flew for hours.

Sunrise looked different above the clouds than it had watching from the train. It was brighter, with bands and rings of light that seemed nearly solid, as though I could reach out and put some in my pocket to carry with us for later. That was the sort of a thing a person called a Celestine should have been able to do. There was darkness approaching; we could all feel it, and having an extra shine in hand could come in useful.

Anything I could do would have been useful, but I’d made no move to use my abilities since I sent the stars down on top of the men who burned the Hollow. I didn’t have to see it happen; they hit their marks, and I wasn’t sorry. Only humans felt remorse. I was a monster, and accepting that brought me a freedom I’d never expected.

The morning air was crisp and clean, without the choke of industrial smoke that came from passing through cities and towns. There was no rumble of machines beyond the sound of Xerxes’ and Bijou’s wings slicing air. We were nearly as high as we’d been inside the Center, and it was cold. Skinny-dipping in the Arctic Circle cold.

With my bare legs stretched across Xerxes’ copper-plated back, it was worse. The cold sunk in past my thin nightshirt and skin until it ran like ice in my blood. I’d never minded the cold before, but since I’d begun showing signs of the gifts my sisters carried, my perceptions had been changing. Now I was as intolerant of low temperature as Evie and her fire spouts.

Or it might have been the shock.

“Turn right,” Winnie instructed. “Be careful of the jet stream; it’s pulling us off course, and it’s only going to get worse the closer we come. The place we’re going doesn’t want to be found.”

She’d been saying things like that for an hour or so, speaking of this great unknown as though it were a sentient beast that could choose to devour us rather than give us shelter.

Xerxes and Bijou peeled off in turn, taking up their new heading. As we shifted away from the sun and the glare faded, I wound up staring straight at Birch on Bijou’s back. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was watching me, and he wasn’t practiced at keeping his feelings off his face. Worry for me was written clearly on his features. He’d grown up without a family, and he didn’t know what it was like to lose someone like Evie. He’d been my ally inside the Center, but now I didn’t know what to do with him.

It was a different kind of cold between us, but still unbearable.

Even Jermay felt cold behind my back. He’d barely spoken since we left the ruins of the Hollow and the grave where his father had been laid to rest.

“I don’t like the way Mulch-Head is looking at us,” he said. “There’s something off about him.”

“Being raised as a lab rat in a cage can have that effect.”

Jermay didn’t know what Birch’s life had been like with the wardens. He’d only seen the boy who thought of Nye as a father and wore the clothes of a Commission underling, not the prisoner who hadn’t been able to escape with his friends and suffered for it. He’d never seen the terror in Birch’s eyes like I had.

“Please tell me you’re not jealous of the guy who helped me save your life,” I said.

“I don’t trust him.”

“But you do trust me, so believe me when I tell you that you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“No promises if he keeps staring like that.”

Xerxes drifted closer to Bijou, and Birch finally glanced away.

“How much farther?” I asked Winnie.

“We’re here,” she said.

An ironic turn, you could call it. When I’d first told Jermay and the others that we’d reached the Hollow, no one had believed me. They couldn’t see it, though it had been right in front of their faces. Now I’d taken the same position, confused by the endless stretch of clouds and sky. Where was Winnie taking us?

“I don’t see anything down there,” Jermay said.

“We aren’t going down.”

Not exactly safe, but no Commission, Winnie had promised. We had agreed to follow her, though we knew it wasn’t possible for such a place to exist on Earth. No one noticed that she’d never mentioned it actually being on Earth.

“Do you see the cloud bank up ahead?” she asked me.

“Of course.” It loomed up white and solid as any wall, too wide to go around. But closer scrutiny brought out details that weren’t quite right for natural clouds. There were strange tinges of blue and pink that shifted, threading in and out of sight, and while the rest of the clouds moved with the currents, these didn’t.

“Can you move it?” Winnie asked.

For years, I’d thought her mute, not realizing that her lack of words was a choice rather than a necessity. Then her voice had been stolen and locked away by evil men like Warden Arcineaux who couldn’t stomach knowing that she had power over them. They had fused a metal plate over her mouth, and even though Klok had removed it, she had scars and fresh wounds that broke open whenever she had to say something.

Winnie held her mouth strangely to cut the pain I knew she had to feel with every word. I tried not to ask too many questions of her; I didn’t want to make it worse.

“Just try and thin the clouds,” she said, waving her hands for a cue, as though we were still circus girls and putting on a show.

I nodded, but the gesture was surer than I felt. Vesper could have done it, and until my abilities had failed me at the Hollow, I would have believed I could, too. But there was the same chance that I would fail again.

I tried not to think of where Vesper might be. She looked so much like me that imagining her in pain was like seeing it on my own face. I brushed aside the gloating words of the warden who had claimed her for a prize. All that mattered was finding the currents, weaving them like patterns in a massive loom. Pull one thread and the others all responded, creating a tear in the middle of the cloud bank big enough to see through.

“What is that?” Anise asked, leaning forward in her perch.

Hazy colors appeared at first, bright and startling against the void of near-white. It looked as though the sun were rising both ahead of and behind us. As we came closer, the colors formed shapes: round balloons, oblong pontoons, glistening cables mixed with ropes to anchor everything to baskets and floating bridges. It was another city in the sky, but as far removed from the Center as The Show’s train had been. As far as a daydream from a nightmare.

Here and there several well-made pieces filled the sky, interspersed with air-filled creations of quilted squares, patched where they’d sprung leaks and covered with gardener’s tarp to protect them from the elements. Some had full articles of clothing sewn into the gaps. A pair of men’s trousers formed a sideways V along the seam of a green-and-gold concoction, while a bright-orange skirt made for a young girl flapped off the edge of a blue one like misplaced fringe. Rattan baskets hung empty from most of the smaller floats, but others had been woven together, shaping organic dwellings that were connected to the city’s central platforms like fungus sprouting off the rim.

Here there were no gyro-rings like those that powered the Center and kept it aloft. This place was solely dependent on air and engines.

“Where are we?” Jermay asked.

“Home,” Winnie said. “Welcome to the Golden Mile.”

CHAPTER 4

For generations, the Golden Mile had been a lightning rod of commerce for the entire nation. It wasn’t actually made of gold, but the name made people want to go there. Someone could ask for directions and feel like they’d been let in on some great secret when they found it. Once upon a time, metallic banners hung from the streetlights, and the roads were painted yellow with black stripes instead of the usual yellow stripes on asphalt, just so people would know they’d arrived. But that was a quarter century ago, before they came.

Often shortened to simply “the Mile,” it was a network of shops, stalls, and stands all centered around Brick Street, where exotic foods and textiles were traded or sold like common sugar and sundresses. It had an online marketplace, of course, where all the shops were linked together in a virtual bazaar, but the real draw was going there in person. Folks said there was nothing in existence that couldn’t be found for a price along the Mile. It was where Nagendra’s family had worked before the disaster on Brick Street, but that’s all he ever said about them. I got the impression that they weren’t among the survivors that day. Maybe that was why he turned on the Commission.

Ideas became the Mile’s hottest commodity, but unlike a bolt of silk or fancy bread made of imported grain, they couldn’t be contained or bartered, and they wouldn’t stay hidden in the pantry. After the year-long Great Illusion, when waves of Medusae turned our skies from blue to shades of violet and pink, people wanted truthful answers to their questions about what had happened to their children—like how those children had been touched when our visitors supposedly never made contact. That demand spread out, drifting from mouth to mouth and whispered from ear to ear. Infecting one mind then another as the most contagious of conditions, fanned by new voices from all over the world as more and more people added to the chorus. Their voices got too loud to ignore.

No longer were people satisfied with empty promises from a Commission that was supposed to find them answers, and no longer were they tolerant of the midnight disappearances of touched children that so many blamed on the wardens who were supposed to protect them. They wanted more than toss-away excuses about the Medusae that never admitted the jellyfish creatures were not of this Earth, or double-talk repeating the same meaningless statistics over and over and over.

It took almost seven years, but that fevered drive for something more and the desire to understand the impossible became a common delirium, leading to the Brick Street uprising.

When the dust settled, all those ideas and demands were buried among the rubble, and Brick Street was a wasteland. The Mile was assumed lost with it. Homes and businesses there were never rebuilt, existing only as the relics of a forgotten time, flattened by the lies told to spin the riots into something more manageable and flattering for the wardens involved. The truth of the day was lost, except to people who had seen it firsthand—like Nagendra, with his drunken recitations of the violence and what it took to quell it. Most people refused to even mention what had happened. They didn’t want their thoughts to stray to places they couldn’t pull back from.

But if Winnie was right . . .

If she was a child of the Mile, then at least some of the people in attendance that day had been prepared for the worst. They might not have expected the chain reaction from so many touched children losing control of themselves at once, but they did have a contingency plan in case of failure. They didn’t relocate in the usual sense, and they didn’t hide themselves in plain sight as Nagendra, or even Warden Nye, had done. They lifted themselves—and their children—above the problem.

My father had been on Brick Street at the flash point. This flying city was a coincidence too great to be coincidental, and I was certain that closer inspection would show his handiwork among the patches in the fleet before us. He’d helped Warden Nye that day; he wouldn’t have refused someone with a child to protect. Maybe someone here had seen or heard from him. The Mile would have been the perfect place for him to seek shelter.

At Winnie’s mark, we made for a platform on the outer edge of the ramshackle pontoon-village. It was empty, and the golems landed with a clatter, causing the structure to shake with their weight.

“You lived here?” I asked, sliding off Xerxes so that my feet disappeared to the ankles inside a rising mist across the platforms. There was no stability like on the Center, and adjusting to the sway of the platform in the wind was a bit like getting sea legs. Thankfully, I already had legs for every element at the ready.

“I was born here,” Winnie said. She had no emotion in her voice. It was a fact, a memory, said from rote rather than the anticipation of coming home.

How had Winnie ended up in a warden’s custody if she’d been born in the clouds—and if this place was safe from the Commission? Had she run away from home and straight into trouble? How would someone run from a place like this? It would have taken a vessel, and how would a kid gain access without being stopped?

“I don’t like this place.” Anise shivered in her long sleeves. Terras were most vulnerable when separated from the earth, which was their greatest strength. I had Vesper’s powers to balance me out, but Anise was nearly helpless.

Birch was no better. His complaint about the Center had been the lack of roots. On the Mile we were thousands of miles above the topsoil, with mountains far below us, and the thinner air wasn’t making things easy. Jermay was holding his chest, trying to breathe in extra oxygen, and Birdie looked positively green. I would have expected her to fare better.

“Collapse them.” Winnie gestured to the golems.

We’d started to follow her off the platform, with Bijou and Xerxes clanging along behind us. Their size was protection, as was their appearance, and I didn’t savor the idea of venturing into unknown territory without our greatest assets. This was no time to field-test Klok’s repairs—we didn’t have a backup plan or an alternate means of escape.

“Is their weight too much?” rat-tatted in blue letters across the screen Klok used to talk. “I have an unconventionally high mass as well. Am I a danger?” He actually wrote “Am I in danger,” but deleted it in favor of a question that focused less on his own fears.

“This isn’t a place that welcomes new things,” Winnie said. “We’re showing them new faces. Don’t give them another reason to mistrust you.”

I hit the switch on Bijou’s neck, which transformed him from a full-sized fire-breathing dragon into a toy-sized trinket that could be carried or worn.

Jermay collapsed Xerxes, who took it as a personal insult and snapped at the nearest fingers. He would have struck skin if he hadn’t shrunk so fast. Once he was small enough, Xerxes climbed into Klok’s satchel, settling into the bottom so that it sagged. His version of a pout.

“I guess this is as good as it gets.” Winnie sighed. Her eyes lingered on Klok with his new armor plating and the rest of us in whatever we’d been sleeping in the night before. “Don’t fall behind,” she said, then added, “This was a really bad idea,” under her breath.

Falling behind was less a matter of moving slowly than a pressing need not to fall. With the clouds rising, it was easy to miss gaps and broken places in the platforms, or to step too close to the joints where they were connected one to another. Those small miscalculations meant stumbling, and that meant the possibility of falling farther than a body could survive. Anise was overthinking, her every stop a hesitant hop that left her tottering on each landing, and Jermay was no better. He tiptoed from one spot to the next, occasionally jumping when the fog allowed him to see a solid place to stand; then he’d pause to gasp for air again.

“You get used to it,” Birdie assured him, steadying his arm. “I used to fall off the practice wire all the time.”

I nodded, marveling at how easily she skipped from space to space without fear of missing a step, even though she was dizzy from the air pressure. She may not have been born one of the Flying Jeseks, but she moved as if she had been. She took up the spot behind Winnie, leading Jermay by the hand.

I tried to step only where they did, but there was no dirt to show their footprints. I stepped through the mist straight off the pier, and would have vanished if Klok hadn’t been guarding my back. One of his telescopic hands dove after me, giving me a lifeline. He set me gently back on the walkway with the others.

“Penn!” Anise screamed when I fell, but I was on solid ground so fast that she was still screaming once I was safe.

“I’m fine.” I swatted at her hands as she checked me over.

“We’ve barely gone twenty feet. How are we supposed to navigate this death trap?”

“Children are taught the safe ways by following cable lines, all tethered together so they can’t fall if they stumble,” Winnie said.

“I could make something to tie us together,” Birch offered.

“No!” I snapped, angry that I’d earned another round of humiliation. “I just need to catch my breath. Tying everyone together could make us all fall. I’ll watch where I’m going.”

“Would you like me to carry you?” Klok displayed. “I can track the solids beneath the gas concealing them.”

“I can deal with it.” I waved my hand through the clouds, opening a channel we could walk through, unobstructed. “Let’s just get where we’re going.”

“Agreed,” Jermay said. “We’re being followed. Look over there.” He jerked his head.

I cut my eyes to the side, following his. Not the best idea with the way the platforms were rocking.

A shadow formed from nothing at the corner of my sight . . . no, not a shadow, a woman dressed in black wearing a shawl that covered her to her feet, where it mixed with the clouds, mingling like smoke among the white and trailing in her wake. She didn’t seem quite solid. The garment billowed with her movements and even when she was still, if the air picked up around her, making her appear more vision than human.

“Her name’s Nafiza, but I’ve never seen her answer to it,” Winnie said.

“She lives here?”

A stupid question, as one couldn’t casually happen upon the Mile.

“You know how every town the train stopped in, there was always some kid with a legend about the bogeyman or that one house everyone avoids because they all swear there’s something wrong with the person inside?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Nafiza’s my bogeyman. She’s crazy. Ignore her.”

We tried, but Nafiza certainly didn’t ignore us. She kept following, changing directions as we did. I wanted to turn aside and ask her what she wanted—and to assure her that we didn’t mean any harm—but as soon as I tried, Klok swept me back into the group with his arm hooked around my shoulders.

Once we were off the docking rim, the Mile transitioned into rows of stacked cubes. Shipping containers. They were piled in different directions and soldered together into a warped city skyline. Some of them had been painted with swirls of white and blue and gray to blend in with the clouds, but most were rusting through, allowing dark browns to show. One of them was bright canary yellow, defying the idea of camouflage altogether. Below these sat an outdoor mall made of stands and storefronts. Grocery stores, clothing stores, offices that had no signs to say who was inside or what they did.

Winnie led us toward the sort of place that sold everything, but nothing in particular. She pulled a cord on a bell near the counter, and a young boy came out of the back. He startled at our faces, all unknown to him. His own face made it clear that he was both surprised and wary, but once he found Winnie among us, he broke into a wide smile.

“I know you!”

He darted out from behind the counter and hugged her around the waist. Winnie smiled, too, laying her hand on top of his head.

“I knew they were wrong when they said you were gone for good!” the boy said.

“You’ve got taller,” Winnie said. Her happiness was genuine. She didn’t even wince at the pain of stretching her mouth. “I should have made you promise to stay little. I can’t toss you in the air anymore.”

“Almost as tall as you, now. See?” He straightened up so his head touched Winnie’s nose. They looked very much alike, with the same sienna skin and dark eyes. His smile matched the one Winnie had before her face was torn, but surprisingly, he didn’t seem to notice that her face was scarred. “Who are your friends?”

She didn’t have time to answer. The curtain behind the boy rustled, drawing her attention away from him and to an older girl who was emerging. She looked like Winnie, too, but taller and thinner. She wore her hair on top of her head in a braided knot that had been wrapped in a swatch of yellow cloth.

Seeing her, Winnie went as silent as she’d been while traveling with The Show.

“Dev? What’s all this racket?” the girl demanded. Her face was pinched and annoyed, and though I would have thought her barely any older than Jermay or myself, there were years in her eyes that didn’t show on her body. Life on the Mile must have been difficult. “I’ve told you not to bother—”

She choked on her words as she, too, got a look at us. She backed up, trying to pull the boy with her, like she wanted to bolt and run.

“Please don’t,” Anise said, hoping to stop her before she raised an alarm and dashed our hopes of finding help. “We’re not here to hurt anyone—please. Winnie said—”

“Winnie?”

The girl repeated Winnie’s name as though it were the sort of word respectable people avoided speaking in company.

“Hello, Nola,” Winnie said over the top of Dev’s head. She made the name as much an improper slur as the girl had made hers, and smiled so wide that one of the sores on her face broke open. “Penn, say exactly what I tell you.”

“What?”

“Just do it—and don’t change the script.”

I nodded as Nola said, “Don’t you dare.”

Winnie ignored her. “We’re travelers,” she said.

“We’re travelers,” I repeated.

Nola scowled; she gave up trying to pull Dev away. He’d grabbed on to the counter so she couldn’t move him.

“In need of assistance.”

“In need of assistance. Winnie, I don’t see—”

She cut me off with a Show gesture meant to remind me I shouldn’t deviate from her words.

“We need shelter and something to eat until we’re able to move on.”

It felt ridiculous, but again, I parroted her words. The longer she spoke and the more I repeated, the deeper Nola’s scowl became and the brighter Dev’s smile. As I filled the air with Winnie’s words, I glanced at the others, wondering if they’d noticed some detail I had missed. Maybe this would make sense if I could find the right angle.

They each shrugged. The only thing to do was keep going until Winnie was finished.

“Please pardon us for intruding upon your hospitality; we’ve no choice but to ask,” we both said.

When we finally stopped, Nola was furious—nearly shaking with it—and hiding what I thought was a bit of fear. She didn’t hide it well, and it certainly didn’t seem like she’d be answering our request for help in the affirmative, regardless of who did the asking.

“If you don’t want to help us, we understand. We can—” Anise started. She never got to finish.

“That’s not exactly an option, now is it?” Nola spat. She’d dug her fingers so deep into her arms, the skin was dented.

“I don’t understand,” Anise said. “If you don’t want us here . . .”

“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Winnie said triumphantly. “She knows what she’s supposed to do, and we have a witness. Right, Dev?”

Dev was beaming. He grabbed Winnie with one hand and Klok with the other, and tugged them toward the door.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”

Watching a boy Dev’s size try to pull Klok anywhere was worth the confusion of the situation, but Klok seemed happy to oblige his game. The rest of us followed them, with Nola stomping along at the rear.

Jermay fell into line from the doorway, where he’d been watching the platforms outside.

“That woman’s still watching us.” He nodded toward Nafiza across the street.

“Just pretend you can’t see her,” Winnie warned us. “We’re better off that way.”

Our caravan of feet traveled through streets made of rope and panel boards. These weren’t empty like the ones where we’d landed. Clusters of people whispered and pointed as we passed, some ushering children ahead of them into buildings woven into walls that made up sections of the city. Nola marched into the lead, arms crossed, bottled-up anger in every stomping step.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Winnie. “Who are these people?”

“My family. We’re going to see my grandfather.”

CHAPTER 5

On the ground and in the past, the Golden Mile had drawn its name from the fact that it was exactly a mile square, crammed full of enough shops and stands to fill an area ten times bigger. They piped pleasant smells into the air to combat the effects of heat and overcrowding. Music was so common that as soon as you stepped out of range of one song, you’d be close enough to hear another.

In the clouds, all of that extra stuffing had unfurled into expanding jutties of clutter. The bracketing walls and brownstones were gone, so there was nothing to stop the sprawl. The artificial perfume had been replaced by the sugared-apple bite of high altitude, and the lyrical scale of twirling air currents added a harp-like soundtrack to our journey, making it easy to think of this city above the clouds as Heaven.

Birdie pulled away, closer to the nearest edge, so she could look over. It was the first time since we’d left the Center that she hadn’t insisted on holding someone’s hand. Every day since our escape, she’d drifted to each of us in shifts from the time she woke up until she fell asleep, still attached, like we were a jungle gym and she couldn’t let go of one bar until she had a grip on the next. This was also the first time she’d stayed completely visible for more than an hour, a habit that had taken its toll on her. The poor kid had lost at least ten pounds from her metabolism having to fuel her touch. “Birdie” was no longer just her name—her appearance had turned more birdlike the thinner she became.

“I wish Nagendra could see this,” she said.

“So do I,” I said.

Nagendra had loved the Mile, often describing it in stained-glass tints of happier days. People were at ease there, he told us. That was why the Commission chose it as the location for the gathering that became the Brick Street riots. They’d hoped the setting would keep everyone calm. Instead, it inspired the poem based on the wardens’ symbolic tricolored cloverleaf pins:

Red for the blood spilling into the streets. White for the bodies and grief no one speaks. Power is golden, but heavy as lead. Remember the brick street; remember the dead.

No one spoke of the dead, but they did remember them. And Nagendra mourned the Mile like a lost loved one.

“He saw it,” Winnie said bitterly. “Why do you think he had nightmares?” She passed us as I waited for Birdie to lose interest in whatever had caught her attention on the other side of the Mile’s rim. “Keep up. It’s easy to get lost here. It’s even easier to fall off.”

“Why is she so angry at us?” Birdie asked me.

“I think she’s in pain.” Both from her mouth and whatever memory seeing her relatives had dredged up.

“Not Winnie, her.” Birdie pointed to the front of our convoy, where Nola was walking so quickly, she had to be hoping we couldn’t keep pace. She hadn’t uncrossed her arms since we’d left her shop.

I directed a puff of air toward my sister and Birch, who were struggling with where to step, and the walkway cleared.

Nola sped up.

“What did we do wrong?” Birdie asked.

“I don’t know, Little Bird,” I said. “Winnie said the folks up here don’t like strangers. They’ve been hiding for a long time.”

“Is she scared of us?”

“Maybe.”

“Should we be scared of them?”

“I hope not.”

Home turned out to be in a neighborhood made from several metal-sided dwellings all grouped together along walkways used for streets. More shipping containers, like the shops, only these were predominantly silver. Fading graffiti capped the entrance to the neighborhood with a gateway dedicated to the Medusae. Smaller works on individual units detailed touched families. Brown hair and brown skin decorated one wall, green-eyed pale blondes another. A flash of red and more brown at the end of the row.

Most of the characters showed elemental powers, but an odd few were spectacular anomalies, crackling with electricity or directing symphonies of birds, controlling the weather and creating disks of light for unknown purposes. Here on the Mile there was nothing hidden about being touched; there was no shame in it and no danger of being exposed by those around us. Why didn’t my father bring us here, where we could have been safe? We could have grown up with family and friends. The Commission would have been nothing more than a ghost story told to scare us when we misbehaved. I could have learned to harness my touch where no one would have been afraid to see me use it.

The only danger here was possibly the woman in black. She was still there, still shadowing us, and she wasn’t alone. Others were gathering. Runners were knocking on doors as we passed, whispering and pointing, gawking at our parade. We must have been quite the spectacle in our pajamas: me and Anise in our father’s long shirts, without pants or shoes. Jermay and Birch with the pants and no shirts. Winnie and Birdie wearing things nearly two decades out of style. Klok and his flashes of glistening body armor at the neck of his shirt and past his coat sleeves, looking like an army of one.

Nola stopped at a fused stack of containers with a blue door.

“Don’t do this,” she said, pausing before she opened it.

“Do what?” Anise asked.

“Ask the ghost. She knows what will happen if I open this door.” Nola glared at Winnie, still refusing to speak her name.

“Talking to people who don’t exist is a bad habit,” Winnie said. “It might give people the wrong idea. They might even decide you’re too dangerous to keep around.”

Maybe it was due to the infrequent nature of her speech, or maybe it was her natural voice, but Winnie had this way of infusing malice into her words that had nothing to do with her touch. Every inflection was a knife, sharp and ready to cut, splitting her words on the syllables with the precision of a chef slicing muscle from bone.

“I will say one thing, and then you are dead to me.” Nola mimicked Winnie’s tone as best she could, but she was an amateur in the presence of a master.

“I’ve died before; that’s no threat.”

“Have you thought about what this will do to him? His health is worse than you remember. You don’t know what life’s been like up here since you left.”

“Would you like to compare scars and see who fared worse?”

Winnie shoved the sleeves of her nightshirt up past her elbows, putting her skin on display. Its usual brown color was mottled through with the evidence of Warden Arcineaux’s experiments. One patch at her wrist looked nearly like cedar bark because there were so many layers of damage, and I knew that these were only the smaller reminders she carried from the Ground Center. There were wider, thicker scars that cut from her collarbone, over her shoulder, and onto her back, and more that I’d barely glimpsed.

Nola wasn’t prepared for any of them. She choked on whatever she’d planned to say. Her face turned sallow, and Winnie fastened her sleeves back in place.

“What happened?” Dev asked, concerned and saddened the way children often are when they’ve seen something horrible. Winnie chose not to answer him.

“Either open the door or I’ll knock, and you can explain to Baba why you didn’t let us in,” she said. She’d lived too long among the wardens to back down when an opponent showed weakness. That was the time to go in for the kill.

Nola pressed the latch release on the door, standing in the opening so we couldn’t pass until she let us.

“Whatever happens is on your head,” she told Winnie.

“Isn’t it always?” Winnie brushed her aside and let herself into the house.

Nola went inside with Dev. Anise followed, taking Birdie with her.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked Birch.

“This is her grandfather’s house,” he said, but Winnie had told us that much.

“You knew about this place?”

“No, just about the blue door. Her parents died right after she was born. Baba raised her and her cousins. Greyor, too, I suppose.”

“Dev and Nola are her cousins?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why does Nola treat her like that? She acts like she hates her.”

“Because Winnie isn’t supposed to be here. She was exiled, and I shouldn’t have told you that. Don’t ask me to share secrets that aren’t mine.”

He slipped through the door before I could press him for more answers.

How could a kid be exiled from anywhere, much less her own home and family? What could she possibly have done?

“I still don’t like him, but he’s got the right idea,” Jermay grumbled. “We should go inside. She’s still there.”

Across the street, the woman in black was still watching us. She stood completely still, allowing her shawl to twirl around her. None of the people who had ventured out of their homes and businesses stood close to her.

“Creepy,” Jermay said.

I agreed but didn’t say it out loud. I was too busy fighting thoughts of torch-bearing mobs chasing us all off the rim, lemming-style. A feeling that only got stronger when Klok beeped a question for me on his screen.

“I could inquire as to their intent. Should I?”

“I think it’s best if we leave them alone for now,” I said.

The last thing we needed was our own Frankenstein’s monster spooking the locals into pulling out their pitchforks.

The inside of Baba’s house looked nothing like its shipping container origins. It was homey, warm, and full of light and life, a welcome change from the cold outside. It reminded me of the living compartments on our train.

The entryway opened into a living room where one wall was nothing but pictures. Some of them didn’t even have frames; they were just taped up in layers like wallpaper, reminding me of the comic-book pages I’d used to paper my room on the train. More photos filled shelves and tables, giving a better idea of just how many people Baba had been responsible for raising.

There was a kitchen to the right, with a window cut into the wall so we could see inside. Two closed doors were set to the back, where extra shipping containers had been soldered together, and a staircase led upward into the stacked containers that formed the upper portions of the house. All around the top of the room ran tiny creeper lights that would fit in the palm of my hand. They scurried up and down the walls, startled into action by the presence of visitors.

Baba had already been summoned from wherever he’d been in the house before we arrived. He was shorter than Dev, even without the stoop that made him lean on a metal crutch, and very frail. He wore a tightly wrapped navy-blue turban and had a beard so thick I couldn’t see his mouth. His eyes likewise disappeared below his brows, but the way he moved, feeling his way forward with his crutch, told me he was blind.

“We have visitors, Baba,” Nola said.

“From the ground?” The old man perked up, hobbling forward until Dev took his arm and led him into the middle of the room. “Did Magnus send someone new? Is there any news?”

“No. They’re not—”

“Magnus was our father’s name,” Anise cut in.

“Was?”

Baba reached for her face; she bent down so that he didn’t have to stretch. He patted her cheeks and nose, ran his hands over her eyelids, felt out the boundaries of her hair.

How strange it must have been to lose a sense so central to his perception. I was being constantly bombarded with new ways to quantify the world around me. Heat signatures. Electromagnetic fields. Vibrations triggered by subatomic particles. All realigning my understanding of space and matter into more than three dimensions. I couldn’t imagine going the other way and losing color or visual texture, the immediate knowledge of size and shape.

“We’re not sure where he is, but it’s possible that he’s dead,” Anise told the old man.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, my dear. Which one are you?”

“Anise.”

“Miss Middle Ground.” He chuckled, like that was meant to be a joke. What it meant to me was that my father had been here and spoken of us.

“We don’t want to upset you or your house,” Anise said. “A friend told us we might find help here.”

My sister glanced at Winnie, who had positioned herself outside the circle surrounding her grandfather. She’d pulled her hair up, instead of letting it hang like usual, and wrapped a scarf over the top to keep it in place, making her look even more like her cousin.

Baba tottered my way and searched out my features the same way he had with my sister. His hands smelled like a lifetime of boiled tea and mint muscle cream.

“We don’t know for sure that he’s dead,” I said. My lack of pants was suddenly all I could think about. I tried to pull the bottom hem of my nightshirt down farther. “We actually hoped . . . er . . . I hoped that you’d heard from him, or that you might know where we could look.”

“You favor your father,” Baba told me. “In feature and in mindset. He never gave up on a lost cause, either. Is the rest of your family well, at least?”

“Two of our sisters are in custody,” Anise said. “The other we lost, recently.”

“I’m sorry. What of your extended family? Were there . . . were there any survivors?” He was fishing for a name, but Winnie tucked herself deeper into the shadows at the room’s edge, near the photographs on the wall.

“This is Jermay and Birch and Klok, and the little one is Birdie,” I said.

Baba moved from person to person. He was cordial with Jermay and Birch, and shocked by Klok’s size and the feel of his armor beneath his coat. Birdie pulled back from his hands and hid behind me.

“Did I shock you, child?” Baba asked. “I’m afraid that our buildings are full of static.”

“She doesn’t like to be touched by strangers,” Anise offered, and he smiled.

“Then she shall remain the mysterious lady in our midst. Much more interesting, I think.” Ironic that the only one Birdie couldn’t really hide from was a man who couldn’t see anyone else.

“Baba!” Dev cut in. “Tell them they can stay. They can, can’t they?”

“Of course. Of course. There are no closed doors for Magnus’s girls here.”

“Winnie, too?” Dev asked eagerly.

“Wi—” Baba startled. He stretched his free hand out, looking for her. Winnie backed up, but Dev wasn’t having it. He pulled her closer.

“Dev, no,” she whispered, but he ignored her. He placed Baba’s hand against her cheek.

Slowly, the old man outlined her face from top to bottom and side to side, rolling her hair between his fingers where her scarf hadn’t contained it. He lingered at the scars on her mouth, trembling when she flinched in pain and cried out.

“You favor your father, too,” he said in a weak voice. He embraced her awkwardly, falling forward off his toes to wrap his arms around her neck. Winnie was so surprised that she didn’t reciprocate at first. He was so fragile looking, she could have shattered him. “I didn’t think I’d live to see this day. Welcome home, child.”

“Baba, you can’t!” Nola had been quiet during her grandfather’s introductions, but his emotional outburst broke her. She snatched his arms away from Winnie’s neck and made sure he couldn’t touch her face again, effectively removing Winnie from sight. “They didn’t use Magnus’s coat to get here; they flew in plain sight, knowing they were being hunted! What if they were followed?”

“We weren’t,” Anise said.

“And we’re supposed to risk the safety of everyone in this outpost on the word of an outsider?”

“Magnus was not an outsider, and neither are his daughters. Winifred certainly isn’t.”

“The warning hasn’t changed, Baba.”

“Worrying about portents and signs has cost us enough already. I’ll not throw a gift in the garbage for fear of what’s inside.”

Still shaking, he looped one arm through Winnie’s.

“Do you remember where the kitchen is, child?” he asked. I guess he’d been blind long enough to forget about the window between the kitchen and the living room.

“Y-yes, Baba.”

“Good. I was just about to start breakfast, and I’d appreciate the extra hands.”

“The others saw them,” Nola argued. “They won’t stand for—”

“Bah!” The old man cut her off, stabbing his crutch into the air dismissively. “This much discord before eating isn’t healthy. Too many words and there won’t be room enough for food!”

“This is not going to end well,” Nola warned us. She resumed her crossed-arm stance and stomped into the kitchen.

“Am I the only one who thinks we should watch to make sure she doesn’t slip any mysterious powders into our food?” Birch asked. “Because I’m thinking that’s where we’re headed, based on the face she just made.”

Birdie slipped one hand into mine and hung onto Jermay with the other, implying that she agreed.

“We don’t have anything to worry about.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “Nola’s part of Winnie’s family, and family helps each other, right?”

“Right,” Birdie said.

We were both good enough at performing under pressure to act like we believed that.

CHAPTER 6

The first neighbor knocked before we reached the kitchen.

It was a small room with narrow sides, and the ceiling was low enough that Klok could touch it without straightening his arm. The walls had been painted an orangish color that was too weak to cover the corrugated alloy underneath. Factor in the four-seat table, the stove, and the counters, and we barely all fit with enough space to breathe. How did Baba expect us to sit down?

Dev squeezed through to open the back door for a pinch-faced woman who seemed permanently perched on her toes. Her blue-black hair curled at the bottom of a loose braid that twitched over her shoulder.

“Good morning,” she said absently. She’d stepped forward automatically when the door opened, but couldn’t find a place to stand, so she stayed outside.

“Good morning, Esther,” Baba said. How he’d known it was her, or made it to the door without jostling the rest of us, I couldn’t say, but he was standing beside Dev and I never saw him move. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“No, no, no. Don’t trouble yourself on my account. There seemed to be some unusual commotion on your side of the street, and I wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Never better.” When Baba smiled, his moustache tilted. He moved his head to match.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a look to make sure nothing’s out of place,” Esther offered. A little too fast. A little too sweet.

Voice modulation was a skill I’d learned early on while working at The Show. To pull off a convincingly detached conversation, your body language had to match your words. Esther relied too heavily on Baba’s blindness. She leaned through the opening with a balanced, ball-bearing sway that allowed her to examine the room in all directions without crossing the threshold, and assumed that he was oblivious.

“What is she doing? She’s going to fall flat on her face,” Jermay whispered.

“She’s counting,” I told him. I’d dropped to my “inside” voice, too. The setting seemed to call for it.

Esther’s lips kept moving, even when she wasn’t speaking. She rounded the room several times by sight, only to look away when her eyes met mine on the last pass.

“Just tell her there’s seven of us, so she’ll stop. This is embarrassing.”

“I’m not sure she can see all seven. I think that’s why she keeps checking her count.”

No one was hiding—we wouldn’t have had room if we’d tried—but while Birdie still had me by the hand, her newly developed nervous tic was in full force, leaving her at times translucent or invisible. Esther might have seen her, or she might have seen a ghost. She might have seen nothing more than my hand clutching thin air. There was no way to know. And there was no way to tell if Birdie had hidden any of the rest of us from sight without constantly checking. Little Bird could obscure anything or anyone she touched. Several someones, if we were all in contact, so it was entirely possible that Esther was watching us blink on and off like Christmas lights.

Not the best first impression.

“Then tell her there’s twenty of us, and let her believe it,” Jermay said.

“Not helpful.”

Birdie had been so skittish since we escaped Nye’s Center. I should have asked Klok to carry her on his back. She would have felt safer with him between her and potential danger.

“It’s been a hectic morning, but that’s the price one pays for a full house,” Baba said. “My guests came a long way to get here, so I thought it prudent to let them refuel before formal introductions. But if you have questions, I’m sure they don’t mind your asking.”

Esther stepped back onto the small metal porch beyond the door, seemingly shocked that he knew we were strangers. She gave the room another sweep, lingering on Klok and Winnie. Especially Winnie, the way someone does when they think they’ve recognized someone but aren’t sure. Esther was old enough that she would have been a grown woman when Winnie was exiled, but her features had to have changed since she was a child.

“You’re certain that everything’s all right?” This time Esther’s voice was more sincere than curious. She was also scared. “Nola?”

“We’re . . .” Nola began, but that was the moment Xerxes decided he’d been left in the satchel in the living room for long enough. He shoved past me with no regard for the fact that human legs had bones in them or that those bones couldn’t bend to accommodate him. The little menace had been decidedly belligerent since our return to the Hollow, and shrinking him had made it worse. All his attitude and anger concentrated into something more potent, and he was looking for a chance to spread his wings.

Which he did.

So close to Esther that if she hadn’t already stepped out, he would have probably drawn blood. The razor edge and tip of one wing sliced clean through the doorframe, then he plopped his deceptively massive self down and started growling.

What can I say? Xerxes has no filter. When he doesn’t like someone, it shows. I think his new power source had left him a bit drunk.

“We’re fine.” Nola tried to scoot Xerxes out of the doorway with her foot, but found him impossible to move.

Mean drunk.

“Have you spoken to Nafiza?” To her credit, Esther didn’t let Xerxes intimidate her. Of course, she had no idea that he could have turned her into human sushi if he’d felt like it. I doubted she even knew what he was. She seemed more the “pretend it’s not there and it can’t hurt you” sort of person.

“Not since yesterday,” Baba said.

“And they arrived . . .”

“A few minutes before you did, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’d offer you a place at the table, but I don’t think there’s one to spare. So if you don’t mind, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“If you need me, give a shout. Someone’s always close by.”

Esther gave Winnie one last fearful look, set her expression back to its original fake pleasantry, and left.

“Well, that couldn’t have gone any worse.” Nola shut the door and leaned against it, rocking back on her heels with her toes in the air. “I told you that the community wouldn’t tolerate this.”

“Bah!” Baba said. “One woman is hardly the whole community, and she didn’t force her way in brandishing her latest petition of merit, or whatever she’s calling them this week. Esther only thinks she speaks for everyone because she never gives anyone else a chance to say anything. She’s harmless.”

“But what if they aren’t?” Nola launched herself off the door without accounting for the lack of space. She was only able to go a few undramatic inches.

“Maybe you’re right about being invisible,” Anise whispered behind me. “She’s talking about us like we aren’t right here.”

“We don’t know them, Baba. We don’t know that they’re friends. We don’t know that they aren’t dangerous.”

“We are,” I said. “I turned a Commission Center to rubble, and I survived. Birch and I took down the armada docked at another Center that was as far off the ground as this place—and we survived. Winnie destroyed the warden who was torturing us, and Klok survived an attempted dissection. Anise leveled our house to stop the man who stole our sister. We’re survivors, we’re very dangerous, and we’re fugitives, but we are in no way a threat to you or anyone else here.”

“One of you is.”

Another loaded glance at Winnie.

That was when the second neighbor knocked. A man this time, tall and broad, with a crooked nose and dark-blond hair that somehow didn’t match the rest of him. Several people who had been across the street were now strolling past the windows on a circuit. By the third and fourth pass, they completely abandoned the idea of subtlety. Two of them stopped and propped their chins on the windowsill so they could see inside.

And I was still barefoot, wearing one of my father’s old shirts without pants. I’d managed to put that fact out of my head until I realized that all the tiny creeper lights from the living room had migrated to the kitchen and turned themselves into my personal spotlight. I angled myself behind Jermay to block the light from shining through the material of my shirt. The lights moved with me, which is exactly the sort of thing nosy snoopers notice.

I’d done a quick-change at The Show for years, never much minding who was backstage with me, but that was a far different scenario than standing half-naked and gawked at in a stranger’s kitchen.

“It’s Ollie,” Nola told her grandfather. “Ollie, please talk some sense into him. He won’t listen to me.”

“Esther’s worried,” Ollie said curtly. He didn’t hide his surprise at how many of us were stuffed inside the room.

“She usually is.” The things Baba couldn’t flick away with a sharp “bah,” he deflected with pleasantry and good humor. “And, as usual, she has no reason to be. If you’d like to come inside and talk, I’m more than happy to have you over after breakfast.”

“What happened to your door?” Ollie demanded, scowling at the gash that Xerxes had left in the metal.

“I think the better question is ‘What’s happened to your manners?’” Baba hobbled to the windows and pulled the shades. “This is a kitchen, not an interrogation room, and my guests are not criminals. All of you are behaving dreadfully.”

“With reason. How did they get up here? Who escorted them? Did anyone speak for them? Considering yesterday’s declaration, the timing of their arrival is more than coincidental.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence, and the declaration is beside the point. They requested asylum; that’s all that matters.”

“We need to take precautions.”

“Good idea. You take the rabble-rousers and find some precautions you’re comfortable with. I will take my coffee with two sugars and cream, and my eggs with spinach. Everyone wins.” Baba tried to shoo him far enough back that he could shut the door.

“Refugees weren’t Esther’s only concern.” Ollie took a better look at us, stopping at Winnie. “Is she who I think she is?”

“Probably, and it’s no business of yours. If you and the rest of them cannot conduct yourselves civilly, then you are welcome to darken someone else’s door. My blood sugar is too low to deal with this sort of interruption before breakfast!”

Baba turned his head toward Xerxes, who was still on the floor. He’d found something stuck under one of the chairs and was making a lot of noise trying to knock it loose. Baba whistled to get his attention, using a sound cue I’d thought unique to our circus. He never asked anyone for an explanation; he seemed to know what Xerxes was already.

“A little help, if you don’t mind?” he asked. Xerxes trilled, happy to have permission for his bad behavior, and jumped back to his feet. He snapped his wings out to their full span and walked briskly toward Ollie, herding him out the door. Once Ollie was outside, Xerxes spun and kicked the door shut with his back foot. He flicked his feet like he’d just buried something unpleasant.

“Good boy.” Baba petted him on the head.

Xerxes puffed up proudly and stationed himself as a doorstop so that no one from outside could let themselves in again.

“Now, who’s hungry?” Baba asked. “I can’t be the only one.”

“He’ll just go around,” Nola said. A second later someone was at the front of the house, knocking on that door. “See? He’ll do that for two minutes, and then he’ll use the key you hid for emergencies. The one you told him how to find. What then? Should we nail the doors shut and glue the windows?”

I thought of reminding her that Bijou was still in the living room and that fire-breathing dragons made great guard dogs, but having him show off and set the house on fire wouldn’t improve anyone’s opinion of us.

“Bah! Let him knock.” The grin on Baba’s face was eerily close to the one that crept across Jermay’s when he was up to no good. It created a disturbing mix of an old man with trickster’s eyes bobbing toward a light switch beside the entrance from the living room. “He can’t very well open the door if the room behind it no longer exists.”

“Winnie, is your grandfather actually insane?” Jermay asked. “Because if he’s about to blow up part of this house, I’d rather take my chances with Esther, Ollie, and the torch-bearing mob.”

“Me, too,” Birch said.

Klok rat-tatted something short that had to be “me, three.”

In my head, I was saying “me, four” while considering the odds of us making it to the Mile’s rim without being caught. So far, Winnie’s assessment of her childhood home was only half-accurate. We didn’t have to worry about Warden Files or the Commission, but at this point, Baba was far more likely to be the bogeyman than Nafiza was.

“Relax,” Winnie told us. She took our silence and blank stares as reason to continue. “He’s just starting a mealtime protocol to make room for the extra bodies at the table. These rooms are modular, like the dining and kitchen compartments on the train. If you need a bigger kitchen, you get it by shrinking the next room over. And since the front door only opens into the living room, all Ollie will see on the other side is a metal wall.”

“Astute as always, Winifred dear.”

“Baba, you can’t!” Nola said. If she’d been a little younger, she would have been jumping up and down.

She seemed as tired of making the complaint as we were of hearing it, and while Baba’s face grew younger as he carried out his plot to thwart the local busybodies, Nola’s aged. She cracked like parched earth broken by the sun and ready to be blown away, exhausted by the constant drain of having to be more mature than her elder.

She took a deep breath and tried to respond more calmly.

“We’ve already had six shorts this month. Two of the rooms upstairs were taken completely off the grid because they kept frying breakers. Do you realize how much power this is going to draw? Because I guarantee you it’s more than the system can handle.”

She looked to us pleadingly, as though we might be able to sway the old man. Maybe she was hoping that Winnie would step in and do exactly that, without her having to ask, but Winnie was high on her grandfather’s acceptance. She nearly tripped over Birch in her rush to be included in his scheming.

“Bah! Those circuits were worn out. The kitchen’s haven’t been used in years. They’re practically brand new.” Baba flipped the switch beside the door. “Winifred, close the circuit, dear.”

The system was set up so that no one could start the sequence by accident, just like on the train. My father didn’t want to accidentally trap someone in a shrinking room because he flipped the wrong switch while looking for a light.

“Don’t. Please,” Nola begged.

Winnie hesitated with her hand poised over the switch on the other side of the room, but only for a moment. Then her face hardened with the same resolve I’d seen the day she commanded Warden Arcineaux to choke the life out of himself.

“That’s the thing about the dead,” she said. “We have a hard time sympathizing with the living.”

She flipped the switch, and the whole house started to shake.

CHAPTER 7

It started with a tremor and tinkling glass. The kitchen light was an industrial octopus of a thing, based on a climber light but fixed in place, with extra arms to hold extra bulbs. The creepers abandoned their posts and fled to higher ground on the kitchen stairs as the different arms of the overhead light clinked against each other and began to flicker.

Dishes rattled from their cabinets. Dev and my sister rushed to catch as many as they could, but plenty fell between the gaps, bouncing or shattering against the floor, depending on what they were made of.

Baba looked completely unrepentant for the mess, barely bothering an “oops” for the trouble.

Beneath our feet, a wave rolled the floor, causing me to stumble into Jermay, him into Birch, and the whole group of us to lose our footing and land on Klok.

Birdie screamed. A sound of primordial terror I was too familiar with. She scrambled into Klok’s lap, wrapped herself around his armored body, and hid her face in his neck, crying, “No, no, no, no, no,” in an endless stream that dissolved quickly into blubbering gibberish. On the ground, this kind of commotion was the hallmark of a Commission raid.

The feeling of destruction was too familiar, dredging up memories of my bedroom being derailed and the night I caused my first earthquake, but the Mile had no ground under it to shake. The Center had shaken like this after Arcineaux sabotaged it; hopefully that didn’t mean the Mile was about to meet a similar end.

Bijou slithered into the kitchen across the ceiling, but it was as unstable as the floor, growing wider as the walls pushed out and thwarting his attempts to make it to the middle of the room. He coasted down to stand beside Xerxes. Both golems snapped into their alert state, ready to expand themselves without permission.

“Don’t even think about it,” I warned.

Bijou sat, but Xerxes chose to keep his own counsel and grew three inches taller, confident that I couldn’t reach him in time to stop him.

“Don’t! You’ll pop the whole house apart at the rivets,” I told him with all the authority I could manage while lying sideways in a heap of tangled limbs.

Xerxes snapped out another couple of inches, then screeched at me and deflated. He lay down with his wings crossed over his head and pretended to sleep.

“Penn?” Jermay called over the noise.

“It’s not me!”

“Could maybe something that is you try to stop it, then? I refuse to be killed by a runaway kitchen!”

“Get off the floor!” Winnie shouted down. She had perched herself on one of the cabinets, with her hands around her mouth for a megaphone.

“I’ll get right on that as soon as I figure out how to stand up!” Jermay shouted back.

Dev climbed onto the table. Nola was anchored with her hands against each side of the kitchen’s stairwell. Baba had found the single corner in the room that wasn’t shaking. They’d all anticipated it. The rest of us were behind the curve and couldn’t move until it was over.

Birdie was still screaming, but now she and Klok were nowhere to be seen. She’d made them both disappear.

Cabinets realigned themselves along the walls; the newly extended floor had wear lines, showing which tiles had been hidden and which had been exposed to dirt, light, and use. Finally, the kitchen table belched itself from a rickety square with four chairs to a long bar with benches on either side.

Belched. Literally, with an angry rumble and a foul-smelling jolt that hinted at unpleasant things decaying out of sight.

“Blech,” Dev said, holding his nose. He hopped down now that the floor had settled. “It smells like something died!”

“Your grandfather’s sanity,” Nola groused. “That was a stupid thing to do!”

“Bah!” Baba said. It was pretty much his answer to everything. “We needed more space. Now we have it. What’s the harm?”

“Ask the invisible child trying not to vomit under the table.”

“You can see her?” I asked.

Birdie had released Klok back into the visible world, and I could hear her heaving and sobbing under the table, but there wasn’t even a ripple to indicate where she was. The creeper lights streamed out of hiding and relocated to the underside of the table, like they could sense her fears. They shined straight through her onto the floor.

“I see a lot of things,” Nola answered. “Whether I want to or not.”

With the expansion routine finished, the kitchen sat ready to entertain. Pots and pans had placed themselves on the stove, and a toaster oven had emerged from the counter. The fridge opened, allowing arms from the light in the ceiling to forage for the necessary ingredients. The table set itself, producing plates and glasses from sliding doors in the top. Everything was automated with the kind of convenience tech that terrified people on the ground who were afraid unnecessary machines and advancement would attract off-world attention.

“You had to go through this every morning?” Birch asked. One of the creeper lights whirled past his head onto the table in a flurry of spidery legs. It rushed from plate to plate, wiping off the collected dust.

“There were ten of us. We needed the space. But I don’t remember it being that bad.” Winnie gave him a hand up off the floor.

The room had completely changed. Not only could we stand, we could move. I walked to the entry we’d used. Previously, it had been a square arch with no door, only a foot from a pass-through window. Both openings were now blocked by a seamless metal plate. The living room was gone, shunted out of the way to accommodate the larger kitchen.

“Where did it all go?” Jermay asked. “There was furniture in there, shelves, stuff on the walls.”

“It’s no different than the golems when they lose mass. It’s gone, but still there,” I said.

My father had tried to explain it once, but it was over my head. Pocket dimensions and quantum displacement involving equations he used entire notebooks to work out by hand.

“It’s magic.”

Calling it that was easier than trying to understand it.

Twenty minutes later, things had calmed. The house was still. The knocking had stopped. Most importantly, Birdie was functional, seated at the table, and eating her breakfast—the first meal she’d sat still for since we reached the Hollow. Before Baba’s house, she’d reverted to her old habit of snatching food and running with it, nibbling hastily in the shadows, wherever she could find a space small enough that no one could follow her or force her out.

She still wasn’t completely visible—the blocked doorway to the living room and one corner of the stove were lightly etched across her skin and clothes where they showed through—but she was with us. All forward motion counts, as my father was fond of saying.

Of course, he only moved forward to avoid the things chasing him.

We’d eaten at tables like this on the train. Me and Jermay sitting together on one side, Anise and Birdie on the other. Everyone else scattered around us wherever they found a space when Mother Jesek signaled that a meal was ready. It felt familiar and homey, and it felt safe. All that was missing were bowls filled eight inches above the rim with food and Smolly slapping Squint’s hands away because he always managed to fill his plate with nothing but potatoes before she could stop him. Nagendra would have been seated near my father at the head of the table, and if the atmosphere was right, he would have blurted a random recitation from a play he’d learned at university because to him it fit the setting and the mood. I could hear his voice, precise, clear, and as enthralling as any of the snakes he considered his children. But now, when I thought of Nagendra, he was wearing the black polo shirt from the dossier photo in Warden Nye’s computer file. He was smiling, proud to have the Commission’s ankh embroidered on his chest. I’d never been afraid of the man who walked with serpents and had so many tattoos that his blood had likely turned to ink, but the younger version of him made me shiver. He was proof of how easily someone could fall for the propaganda, even someone as intelligent as Nagendra.

That thought changed the familiarity of the room and the table into something counterfeit. The people were wrong, merely arranging themselves to look like friends and family. There was no easy, empty chatter about the day to come. We were ragged and beaten strays taken in off the street.

The kitchen suddenly had more in common with the dining room in Nye’s Center than it did the train.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Baba asked politely. I still hadn’t figured out if the man’s blindness was a farce or if he had another means of telling who was where and doing what.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking.”

I scooped some jam onto a piece of toast and shoved it in my mouth, thankful that the gooey sweetness gave me an excuse to chew long enough that no more questions came my way.

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking,” Jermay leaned in close to whisper. “I’m thinking that I haven’t seen or heard a single animal up here, and I’m highly suspicious of things that look like bacon when there aren’t any animals involved. Especially when it won’t stay still long enough for me to stab it.”

He chased a fried strip around his plate with his fork, somehow managing to have it outrun him.

“It’s making a break for it! Shields up!” He propped his toast on the edge of the plate for a wall and smashed the bacon into it, before causing it to fall dramatically back onto his plate. “Phew. Crisis averted. I think it’s safely dead now, but I’d better eat it to make sure.”

He piled a little bit of everything onto his toast as a sandwich and ripped it in half with his teeth. His “you’re welcome” came out sounding like “ew elk’s comb.”

I nearly snorted my own food out of my nose. At least he wasn’t a fake. I could always count on Jermay to do something ridiculous to lift me out of a bad mood.

I held my hands out spokesmodel-style and put on my ringmaster voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Jermay Baán, the Human Goat! Possessing the face of a human boy and an insatiable appetite, there’s nothing this marvel of nature can’t or won’t eat! Let’s give him a round of applause.”

Anise and the others clapped and whistled, laughing while they stomped their feet like an enthusiastic Show crowd.

“Your act needs work, goat-boy.” Winnie threw him a napkin so he could wipe his face. “To really pull it off, you should at least munch on a couple of old cans.”

“Or a stinky shoe!” Birdie suggested with a giggle that started the table on a quest to suggest the most disgusting things Jermay should try to digest.

He didn’t take the joke as well as I’d expected.

“I’m not the one who’s eaten half the food on the table in one go. Save your garbage for the weed. I bet he couldn’t tell the difference between scrambled eggs and fertilizer.”

Where had that come from?

Jermay’s personality turned in an instant, costing him the natural light that usually marked his countenance. His impish grin hardened into a tense line.

This wasn’t even anger. When Jermay was angry, his eyes sparked, giving them an ethereal appearance. Now they were dark and hard as flint, fixated on Birch. Everything about Jermay went cold.

Across the table, Birch wilted. If there’d been any plants in the room, they would have done the same.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. He had multiple plates of food in front of him, mostly empty, with only crumbs for evidence of his appetite. “I didn’t realize I’d taken so much. I forgot to eat again.”

“How does someone forget to eat?” Nola asked.

“He’s still on Commission time,” Jermay said nastily.

At the Center, bells went off during the day to signal shift changes and meals. They’d regulated Birch’s life for as long as he could remember, so much so that, without them, he lost track of time. He didn’t know where to be or what to do. He was learning to run his own life, but with the exception of the few meals we had together in the Hollow, he’d forget that he could fix his own food whenever he wanted it. After a couple of missed meals, he’d be starving and eat anything offered to him.

“You can take the boy out of the Center, but I guess the Center never leaves the boy,” Jermay said.

“Jermay!” Anise snapped. “That is beyond enough. You’re making an idiot out of yourself, and you’re insulting our hosts. What would Magnus say if he could hear you? What would your father say?”

“Zavel’s dead, and Magnus probably is, too, so I’m guessing they wouldn’t have much to say about anything. But if they could talk, I’d think they’d be more concerned with you taking in a warden’s lapdog than my objecting to his being here.”

“He’s not your enemy, Jermay,” I said.

“My father is dead! Can you honestly tell me that the warden who hunted us down and locked us up had nothing to do with that? Who else would have known to raid the Hollow?”

“That’s not my fault!” Birch insisted. He’d stopped eating. He was looking down at his hands in his lap, worrying his napkin like he had at the Center when things made him nervous. It was how he dealt with people he knew could hurt him.

“Nye raised you! I’ve seen what you can do. You could have stopped him, but instead you played the loyal pet, running around free in your Commission silvers like one of them!”

“So what does that make me?” I asked Jermay. “Birch wasn’t Nye’s pet—that’s what he called me. He dressed me up like a doll he could show off in front of the other wardens. I may not have been free to leave the Center, but I wasn’t in a cell, either. Birch couldn’t do any more to stop Warden Nye than I could.”

“Then maybe you should have tried harder.”

I’d heard of words being a slap in the face, but that was the first time I understood the saying. He knocked the air out of me without ever laying a finger on me.

“Wait . . . I didn’t mean that,” he said, sinking in his seat. “I didn’t mean any of it. I don’t . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“In my opinion, you are behaving very much like a young man who has recently lost his father,” Baba said gently.

“And they just lost Evie. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking this out on any of you. Even you.” Jermay looked at Birch, he looked at me, but mostly he looked ashamed.

The cold shadows fled his face, allowing the color to return, but his eyes never regained their sparkle. When I’d found Jermay at the Center, he’d been wounded and isolated for weeks. I’d thought his injuries were the worst of it, but maybe I should have focused more on what I couldn’t see. Even without Zavel’s death, the mental toll had to be enormous.

“I feel like I’m in the wrong body. Nothing’s real,” he said.

I could sympathize with that part, at least. We’d left the Hollow so fast that I still hadn’t processed my own loss. I knew there was a dark moment coming, but my brain hadn’t yet decided if Evie’s death was real or another nightmare I’d wake from, screaming.

No one knew what to do after Jermay’s outburst. We all might have sat there in silence for the rest of the day if something hadn’t started tapping on my arm, breaking the tension.

One of the creeper lights from under the table had rolled out of hiding. It poked me again and flashed its lantern face. Creepers weren’t supposed to be programmed for communication, but I’d had one speak to me before. Its intent dropped straight into my head, masquerading as one of my own thoughts.

“It knows you’re sad,” I said for it, since it didn’t have a voice. “It wants to do a trick to cheer you up, Jermay.”

I drummed my hands on the table. The creeper copied it. I did it again, and another light joined in. They danced around the edge, twirling together and enticing their friends to come play. A pair of climbing lights swung from the fixture in the ceiling, keeping tempo with the whole troupe.

The size of Baba’s lights made them unique. Most creepers were over a foot tall, but these were small enough to crawl onto a person. They broke off into groups and crawled up our arms, tickling with their tiny spiderlike legs until the darkness of the last several minutes was replaced with laughter. When they were done, they rolled back under the table and turned off.

A few dancing lights wouldn’t fix anyone’s hurt feelings or stop their grief, but they could serve as a pleasant distraction. More forward motion to keep us running ahead of our ghosts.

“Is this kind of drama normal where you come from?” Nola asked.

“We were raised in a freak show,” I told her. “Normal’s relative.”

And overrated. And impossible. Normal was an imaginary friend I’d grown out of.

“Do it again!” Dev cheered.

I always loved kids’ reactions. Adults were too busy looking for an angle and trying to unravel the science behind the magic. They were so distracted by searching for gears, and wires, and secret hatches that they missed the performance. Being clever became more important than being entertained. Kids never did that, and a carnie girl never disappointed someone who wanted to be entertained.

Dev was seated beside Birdie, on the same side as Anise. Throughout breakfast, he’d been sneaking bits of food off his plate and flinging them under the table like he was feeding a puppy. And since neither Xerxes nor Bijou were anywhere to be seen in the room, I had a pretty good idea who he was passing treats to. The golems didn’t have to eat, but they’d both been acting strangely since our escape. Nothing they did would have surprised me.

I whistled a cue for Bijou. Sure enough, he galloped out from under the table wearing a crown of yellowish egg that had fallen on his head. The mini-dragon got a running start and threw himself into the air so that he could reach the top of the table. He sat down facing me, the picture of innocence with his clawed hands crossed in front of him and his big eyes blinking over his downturned snout.

“This is gross,” I told him, picking at the eggs.

He shook himself, flinging cold food in every direction.

“And this is worse,” Winnie said. “Eww. Bad dragon.”

Bijou dropped onto his stomach and hid under his wings. Roughly translated, it was an apology.

“What does he do?” Dev asked.

“Up!” I ordered.

Bijou snapped to attention, sitting on his hind legs with his mouth open in anticipation of being lit. I reached out with the last part of Evie I had left—her gift for wielding fire. Invisible coils stretched from my fingers through the room, seeking out the hottest points. They found the stove, stole the flame, and left it shining in my palm. I blew it gently into Bijou’s snout. A fog of rising smoke wafted from his nostrils.

“He breathes fire?” Dev asked.

I don’t care what they look like or where they come from, every kid has the same expression programmed somewhere in their brain, one that only comes out at times of extreme surprise and excitement. It’s the look of total awesomeness overload.

“He couldn’t call himself much of a dragon if he didn’t,” I said.

Dev’s eyes went wider and wider, threatening to fill the top half of his face. He leaned in closer and cracked his mouth open, but stopped breathing.

“Is this safe?” Nola asked.

“Bijou knows what he’s doing,” I assured her. “He’s an artist.”

I took a piece of bread from the platter and held it up.

“Sign your name,” I instructed.

Normally, this would have been done when he was nine feet tall and capable of scoring metal sheeting. The kitchen version involved toast.

A slim fire jet shot from Bijou’s mouth. He twitched his head up and down and side to side, scorching the bread without burning through it or hitting my hands. When he was done, there was a perfect image of a diamond left behind.

Dev exploded into applause, shouting: “Do another one!”

A few minutes later, we had diamond toast and castle toast. Cars and planes and rocket ships. Monster toast and even a fairly good rendition of The Show’s train. Bijou was very proud of himself, which is probably why he got carried away and torched the curtains. The nosy neighbors must have loved seeing flames in the window.

I flicked my wrist and dragged enough water from the sink spout to put out the fire.

“That’s a remarkable gift, young lady,” Baba said.

“Sometimes it’s more terrifying than remarkable,” I replied. My hands were growing hotter than they should have been, like they did in the dreams where I burned up from the inside and exploded. I wrapped them around my glass of cold water, hoping they would cool down.

Heat is energy, I told myself. Energy can be discharged.

In my mind, I pushed the heat away. I pictured it going out of me and into the glass, wave by wave, until my skin returned to normal.

“Um . . . Penn?” Jermay asked.

I opened my eyes, not having realized they were closed in the first place, and found him staring at me. So were Winnie and Birch and everyone else.

The glass of water in my hands was boiling.

I set it down quickly and threw my napkin over it, but I couldn’t hide what they’d already seen. Anise took that as her cue to change the subject.

“This place is amazing,” she said. “How long did it take to build?”

With the curtains burned away, her view was of the window. It was a horizontal pane that had formed with the kitchen expansion and looked out over the Mile. Baba’s house was near the edge of the neighborhood, and the view stretched all the way to the city ledge and the blue skies beyond. From this angle, it looked like the ocean.

“No one built the Mile,” Baba said. “It was more a happy accident. Like Venice.”

“As in Italy?”

He nodded.

“Both cities came to be by virtue of necessity. With Venice, hundreds of refugees set out to sea in whatever vessels they had at their disposal. They stuck together and eventually combined their little boats into something larger and more formidable. Their boats became homes connected by canals for roads, and—” He stopped and grinned. He looked like Dev watching Bijou in action. “Forgive me. I tend to ramble on about the subjects that interest me. Before coming here, I was a guide at a large museum. My tours started near an information plaque about Venice; I’ve got it memorized. My point was that this community was founded as a makeshift refuge. We had the advantage of your father building us the pods that became the foundations of our homes. Oh, and we don’t have to deal with rising tides. That’s definitely a plus.”

“And you’ve been here since the Brick Street riots?” Anise asked.

“Some of us have been here longer, and thank goodness for it. We’d hoped to return once the commotion died down below, but after Brick Street, it wasn’t safe. There was a huge influx of people the week of the riots, almost faster than we could handle. We pooled our resources, and with some modifications, we were able to build the city as you see it. Living up here took some getting used to, but we’ve managed.”

“Baba—” The word felt strange in my mouth, but he’d insisted we call him that.

I’d never had a grandfather. Our family tree stopped and started with my father. He never spoke of his parents or my mother’s or the life they’d lived before The Show. I never knew he had a sister until I met Sister Mary Alban, and he was so secretive that I didn’t know where he was born. Had I not known my mother died shortly after giving birth to me, I could have accepted that Iva the robot was the real Iva Roma.

“Did you know our father well?”

“Very. He was here quite often in the beginning, bringing us news of the ground and helping us with our equipment. In more recent years, he still came regularly with supplies and refugees.”

“Refugees?”

“Mainly children that he and his network had managed to acquire before the shadier wardens could take them into custody, though there’s been a disturbing uptick in the number of adults lately—especially men. They’ve been the subject of experiments on the ground and have some of the most horrific stories to tell.”

I couldn’t help but glance at Winnie and Birch. They’d been subject to their own experiments. They’d survived, but come away with more than the injuries Winnie had shown off to her cousin. I wondered what Baba would think about their horror stories, considering he had a chapter in hers.

“The last group came up over a month ago, but your father wasn’t with them. That was out of character.”

“Who brought them?” I asked.

The network Baba described sounded like the group that worked with Beryl and Sister Mary Alban. They were step one, with Beryl using her ability to change her face as a way to locate and extract touched children who were in trouble. She often impersonated a madam from the red-light district who would pay for runaways; then she’d pass them down the line to Sister Mary Alban, who could give them refuge at the church where she lived until they could be moved again. My father and whoever took his place as the refugees’ escort were the final step, bringing people safely to the Mile, but there had to be someone in between. Magnus wouldn’t risk face-to-face contact with the sister he couldn’t afford to acknowledge, which meant there was at least one other person who knew my father’s real business, maybe more. If the Mile didn’t have answers for me, then maybe those others did.

“That’s difficult to say,” Baba told me. “With the exception of your father, most of the members of the network who come this far have very particular skills to keep them from being recognized or betrayed. Their faces aren’t always their own, or static. Some of them arrive as men but leave as women. One prefers to remain a literal blank, displaying no distinct features at all. They travel in pairs with a teleporter, so there’s no common starting point. Cyril might know more about it, if you can find him.”

“Cyril?”

“You don’t know your father’s partner?”

I shook my head. My father had never mentioned working with anyone outside of our Show family, except for generic interactions with the Commission’s wardens when he handed over designs and new technology. Of course, given Nagendra’s past and what I knew of Greyor, perhaps there were others tied to the Commission that he trusted.

“They made trips together for years,” Baba said. “Cyril did most of the planning, while your father was more about implementation, but Cyril hasn’t been off the ground in a decade. I imagine some of his papers are still in your father’s workroom.”

“Workroom?” I perked up.

“He stayed here when he visited the Mile, and we’ve kept his room closed up the way he left it. Not much choice on that one; no one else could open the lock. I’ve got a feeling you might be the exception to that rule.”

Klok beeped.

“I like puzzles. May I see the lock?”

“Magnus wasn’t much on people fouling up his things by moving them around, but if you can manage to open the lock, I would assume there’s a very good reason you’re equipped to do so.”

Klok made a series of electronic noises that basically added up to “Yay!” He had never fully grasped the idea of typing out his emotions and didn’t know which words to use.

We gathered our dishes, passing plates and cups down the line to stack at the end so they could be put in the sink. No one had mentioned the possibility of new clothes yet, and I was about to ask when Anise yelped. She dropped out of sight across the table.

“Anise!” I jumped up. We’d had too many scares lately; I was conditioned to respond with the worst in mind. “What happened?”

“The bench broke,” she said, confused. “Were we too heavy?”

“It didn’t break,” Birch said. “It’s gone.”

I stood on my toes for a better look at their side of the table. A section of the bench had vanished out from under her.

“Hey!”

Winnie’s head disappeared from sight. Birch gasped and fell beside her.

“What’s going on?” he yipped.

“Cascading failure!” Nola shouted. “Everyone up before the room completely reverts!”

But she was too slow. The bench slid open and let her fall through. Klok hit the floor with a rumble.

My section and Jermay’s zipped together, throwing us into each other so hard and so fast that we knocked skulls before being dumped on the ground. There was no time to recover; the floor was shifting like it was made of tectonic plates, and the wall tiles were shrinking at the same time, closing in on us like a car crusher. One of Anise’s feet slid right into my chin. Winnie and Birch crashed on top of her.

And then things really got out of hand.

CHAPTER 8

“Is it over?” Birdie asked timidly. Her reflexes had saved her from most of the kitchen’s meltdown. She and Dev were in the stairwell, clinging to Xerxes and Bijou. The golems, in turn, had raised their wings as shields against flying debris, keeping the kids out of the line of fire. The rest of us weren’t so lucky.

There was food everywhere. Eggs on the walls. Soggy toast impaled by the ceiling light. The floor was covered in paste made from cooled oatmeal and spilled water. The bench seats had absorbed their extensions, once again becoming four lightweight chairs, and somehow, miraculously, Baba was still seated on his and wearing an expression that said this was the most excitement he’d had in a long time.

Everything had shrunk back to its previous size and shape except for the table, which now extended from one side of the room to the other and had Klok pinned to the wall. Anyone else, it would have killed, but his beetle-black armor kept him safe.

The whole house was dark. I tried to access the wiring with my touch, but it was quiet. I had no way to put power back into a dead system.

“The living room’s back,” Jermay announced. “And by the way—ow!”

“Very convincing,” I said. “What happened?”

“When the units lose power, they revert to their default configuration,” Nola said.

“Someone cut the power?”

“We blew the breakers,” she said. “If we’re lucky, it only affected the house and not the whole grid. And I am not cleaning this up! I’m taking a shower while we still have hot water!”

I would have settled for a water hose and a plastic pool. Not only was I stuck with just my father’s nightshirt to wear, but I smelled like a day-old special from a cheap diner. A mixture of butter and molasses had pooled on my right side, soaked through, and stuck the shirt to my skin, which was worse than the smell.

I patted the pocket to make sure my memory chip was still there.

“Winnie, no offense, but your definition of sanctuary sucks,” Jermay growled. He’d also landed in the sticky mess and couldn’t get his left pant leg to let go of his calf. “Somebody move so I can get off the floor!”

A string of words rat-tatted across Klok’s screen so fast that they became one endless grating wail. I could only pick out a word here and there when the screen froze to buffer.

“Klok! Language!” Anise scolded.

He blanked his screen, replacing his rant with: “I am not apologetic. My response was appropriately impolite. I find syrup in my hair unpleasant, and I believe that compromising the power supply will compound the issue of mistrust with Baba-grandfather’s neighbors. This will not make them accept our presence, and they will say their own appropriately rude things for the inconvenience. There is also a table jabbing me in the chest, and I would prefer it not be there.”

The Klok version of a hissy fit.

I grasped the nearest table leg and thought small thoughts. “Shrink,” I told the mechanism in the table. I tried to remember what the original table had looked like so hopefully it would translate; otherwise, there was a chance it might react like my glass of water. Boiling the table was possibly the only thing that could make our situation worse.

The table wobbled toward the center of the room, allowing Klok to slip out, then vibrated in place for a few seconds before shooting through the wall and into the living room. It hit its maximum length and snapped back into a perfectly deceptive square of cheap metal that matched the chairs.

Baba still hadn’t moved.

“Thank you,” Klok typed, oblivious. He stepped through the hole in the wall and tried to bend the sharper pieces into something less dangerous.

Anise took Birdie by the hand.

“Let’s get you away from this mess before something else decides to punch through a wall. I think Nola had the right idea about the shower, and you’re going to be next in line. Scoot.”

For myself, I needed several breaths of fresh air. I could feel the disruptions in the kitchen churning in my stomach, making me queasy. Broken machinery physically hurt. As soon as I was able to work my way free of the human knot on the floor, I crawled for the door.

“Wait!” Jermay called. “What about the mess?”

“You’re a magician. Make it disappear.” I gave him my most charming grin.

He could consider the cleanup an apology.

A few neighbors were still doing the circuit walk across the street, but Esther, Ollie, and the rest of the brave ones had gone. I stood on the porch in my horrendous, sticky pajamas, and I breathed in until the upper-atmospheric cold burned inside my body. It cleared my head and proved I was alive.

There were no birds at this altitude, no insects, only the eerie stillness of a ghost ship on the ocean floor. Everything was suspended in the currents, being whittled away by time because nothing else could touch or change it. The air tasted of rain that hadn’t yet formed clouds.

I stepped off the porch onto a sad, gasping patch of grass. The people across the street stopped their farce of a jog to watch me spin handfuls of vapor in my palm, separating gas from liquid. The water drew itself into a ball that I burst to wash my hands; the air sat solid, sugar-white in cubes. I tipped my hand, and they poured back into the atmosphere.

Not a natural occurrence, this was the pull of someone like Vesper playing cat’s cradle with her element. Whoever she was, she kept the Mile ensconced in constant fog so that it would blend away into the sky if anyone on the ground looked up, but no one did that much anymore. They were afraid of what they might see. More Medusae. The start of another Great Illusion. Something worse.

None of them realized that “worse” had already happened. The Commission let people like Nye and Arcineaux run experiments on innocents. They locked up children and tortured them with devices like the hound collars, because a gifted child was no longer considered human. They took others like Jermay who had no abilities beyond the natural and made them suffer, too. There was an entire reality that most people overlooked or willfully ignored because doing so made it easier to sleep at night.

They could call themselves normal, and normal people couldn’t possibly be in danger.

I could see how living apart from all of that would appeal to those who called the Mile home.

“Thank you.”

An unfamiliar voice startled me out of my solitude, drawing my attention to a woman all in black, cloaked in a shawl that tucked her into the clouds, leaving her edges blurred and otherworldly. Winnie’s bogeyman didn’t merely look like Death, she moved like it, too. Her eyes had the shape and color of Anise’s, and for a second I thought Iva Roma had returned from the grave a second time. Though why she would have come back carrying a large cardboard box, I didn’t know.

“Why are you thanking me?” I asked. “What did I do?”

“You told her it wasn’t my fault. Thank you.”

She set the box down and turned away.

“Wait.” I put a hand on her arm. She felt awfully solid to be a ghoul. “Your name’s Nafiza, isn’t it? Winnie said—”

“Exactly,” she said. “The red will belong to Winifred’s mother when she’s that age. That’s the whole reason I put it in. I thought she wanted it, but she didn’t, until you told her it wasn’t my fault.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did I get the order wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t understand.”

Her face turned frustrated, with a deepening wince. She was trying to tell me something, but it wasn’t coming through.

“One, two, three, not three, one, two,” she said. “Better?”

“That’s the order?”

“Yes, and you don’t have to thank me for the scarf. Long hair can be cumbersome.”

“Scarf? I . . . I don’t . . . do you mean in the box?”

I flipped the lid open warily. Inside were neatly folded stacks of clothes, each set inside a paper bag. The one on top held a red shirt and a pair of dark pants.

“Yes! The box comes next,” she said happily. “I give you the box. You open the box. You use the clothes. That’s the order.”

Despite Winnie’s insistence that the woman was mentally ill, this didn’t feel like crazy to me. This felt like something else.

I took another look at her face. Her eyes had been brown before, but now they were darkening toward black from corner to corner, the way mine did when the Celestine was in full force, and the way Winnie’s had when she turned on Warden Arcineaux. Nafiza had been touched, and from her apparent age, she wasn’t born that way. She was like my father. Whatever was keeping her from communicating had to be tied to her abilities.

“Is this the red you meant? These clothes belonged to Winnie’s mom?” I asked.

“Not now, of course. When she’s Winifred’s age, yes.”

“She was Winnie’s age years ago,” I said.

“Out of order?”

“I think so.”

She was mixing up timelines. The past was overlapping the present so that she couldn’t get a handle on what happened when. What she meant to say was that the clothes had belonged to Winnie’s mother, but now that Winnie was the same age, she could wear them, too. Why Nafiza had kept things belonging to Winnie’s mother was a different puzzle.

I picked up another sack. This one had a blue flannel shirt and jeans with a pair of boy’s sneakers.

“They used to match, but he changed his eyes,” Nafiza said.

“Jermay?”

“If you insist.”

The blue squares on the shirt were precisely the shade that once sparkled in Jermay’s eyes. Nafiza was right. They’d changed like the rest of him.

The next bag had another pair of jeans and a light purple sweatshirt, the perfect size to fit me. They’d been tied together with a soft flowered scarf. I looped the scarf around my hair to get it out of the way.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I told you that you didn’t have to,” she said.

“Right—long hair is cumbersome.”

It sounded like the future was mixed in with the other timelines, too. Was it even possible for someone to see the future?

“Fair trade,” she said.

“Trade? What is it you want in return?”

I stepped into the jeans and pulled them up under my nightshirt, happy to finally have something on my legs to block the chill. They fit perfectly.

“I gathered those yesterday because you arrive tomorrow and need them,” Nafiza said.

“We got here today.”

“Yesterday, it was tomorrow, but they switched places and made it now. The order is never easy to see.”

Her eyes kept fluctuating between black and brown. I’d never seen anything like it. When they were brown with the usual white on either side of the irises, her voice was an even, normal speaking tone. When they were overlaid with solid black, chronological confusion reigned.

“You said these were a trade. For what?” I asked.

“Repairs.”

“We just broke Baba’s house, so I’m not sure I’m the right person to fix much of anything.”

“Tomorrow you did repairs, but needed these yesterday.” Nafiza paused to reconsider what she’d said. “Yesterday tomorrow, I mean. Tomorrow’s yesterday. There used to be a word for that.”

“Today,” I told her.

“Today is now. Today is now,” she said, shaking her head. She definitely wasn’t crazy. She sounded more like someone with a brain injury. Her mind was fine. She understood me, and she knew what she wanted to say in return, but there was a glitch along the route to her mouth. “Stones can’t fly, so they fall, but not today. Today is now and that is later. You’ll make repairs tomorrow.”

“Okay. Well, thanks for the clothes.” We were well past awkward in this encounter, and I was afraid she’d get more frustrated if she felt like she needed to keep talking. I didn’t know how to end it other than to leave. I put Winnie’s and Jermay’s bags of clothes back in the box and picked it up.

“Charity should be given, not taken,” Nafiza said.

My father used to say that. He believed that we should make our own way, no matter what. Giving things to others was fine, so long as we didn’t take anything. Taking things was a sign of trust, and putting trust in strangers was too risky. It also put you into someone’s debt, and you never knew what kind of favor they might ask in return. I had a greater understanding of that particular fear now than I ever did growing up, but my father’s way of doing things had proved questionable at best.

We needed clothes. Nafiza brought us clothes. I was keeping the clothes, charity or not. That was the order, and it was my decision.

“Thank you,” I said again.

“You say that now,” Nafiza scoffed. “Flying too close to the sun will get you burned.”

“Good to know.”

“It’s a star.” She pointed at the sun, cupped her hands, then moved them apart with a whooshing noise, miming an explosion. “Stars aren’t so special. The universe is full of them.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, not quite sure which statement I was agreeing with.

“It’s a star.” This time, she pointed to the purple sweatshirt in the box. She made another explosion.

Curious, despite the fact that curiosity never does me any favors, I unfolded the shirt. It was emblazoned with a shooting star on the front.

Winnie got her mom’s clothes. Jermay’s matched his eyes. Mine came emblazoned with a shooting star. Nafiza hadn’t found us cast-off clothes; she’d seen us clearly enough to mark us.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “Has it happened yet? If it hasn’t . . . I’m sorry.”

Her eyes stopped flashing and settled on brown.

“Did you see my sister?”

“Yes. I’m sorry you lost them, but they aren’t really hiding.”

Nim and Vesper? I’d thought she meant Evie.

“Do you know where they are? Did you see my father?”

“Yes.”

“Where? When did you see him?”

“Never ask me that!” she screamed. “Never ask me when! Never when! Never when!”

Nafiza pulled her shawl tight around her and ran, leaving me standing stunned beside Baba’s porch.

CHAPTER 9

I pushed my doubts about Nafiza’s motives aside and put on the sweatshirt she gave me. Creepy-accurate clothes were a lot more comfortable than molasses-encrusted ones, and now I wouldn’t be as reluctant to meet others on the Mile.

After changing and combing my artificial waist-length tangle into something that looked more like hair than a hastily tatted fishing net, I swept it up into the scarf. It was a relief not to have all that weight pulling me down, reminding me that the only reason I had long hair was because of Iva. The synthetic hair she’d created was heavy and thick, and I wanted nothing more than to find a way to cut it all off so I could feel cool air on my neck again. But that was a petty concern, and it could wait until I’d found a way to force the lock on my father’s room to open. The others were still changing. I wanted a few minutes alone with Magnus Roma—or at least the things he left behind.

I was too late.

The security panel that controlled the door had been pulled apart, with several of the wires snipped and melted to force the electronic lock to release. There was still no power in the house, so the work had been done by someone with his own power source.

“Klok?” I only had to tap the door to open it.

“No, it’s me.” Birch pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Klok was here, but he went in search of the toolkit he brought with him from the Hollow. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“That’s okay, I just wanted to take a look around.”

“I think he beat you to it.”

All of the drawers were open, with their contents pulled out. The closet had been emptied onto the bed. The only neat area was the desk, which was arranged exactly as my father’s had been on the train, right down to the coffee cup full of pens and the pad of green paper he used for a coaster. In the exact center of the blotter sat an old-fashioned leather briefcase with hard sides and a three-number combination lock.

“Klok made this mess?” I asked.

“I didn’t ask. It was like this when I got here. I was able to fix the tree, so that’s something.”

He pointed to a potted plant in the corner. What should have been three feet of simple flowering bush towered into the room, covered in orange blossoms the size of my hand. At the top, it brushed the ceiling, fanning out where the branches were too tall to fit.

“I got a little carried away, but it was dead when I got here, and I felt sorry for it. Growing things helps me clear my head.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Winnie promised to show me the community garden. If I have something to do, I won’t be in the way.”

“You’re not.” I tried to touch him, but he shrank away. A flurry of shriveled flowers fell from the branches of his tree. “Are you okay?”

“Why ask me that? It’s not like I lost anyone who matters.”

“Yes, you did,” I told him. “And none of us have even acknowledged it, have we?”

Birch lost Warden Nye when the Center fell. Most of us were celebrating a victory, but Nye was the closest thing to a parent Birch had in his life. It may have been Stockholm syndrome at its most insidious, but that didn’t mean that Birch’s loss and pain weren’t real.

Jermay was allowed to grieve for Zavel. Birch got only silence.

“He wasn’t really my father, but I wasn’t his pet, either. I don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. He could have made it off, and I can’t decide if I hope he did.”

“You should have said something. We would have understood.”

“Oh yeah, your magician friend is really understanding.”

“I would have understood.”

I think.

“He’s not worth missing. It’s just this place . . . and now these clothes . . . I can’t help but think of the Center. Why did she have to pick this color?”

Birch’s new clothes were jeans, like most of what Nafiza provided, and a shirt with leaves embroidered on the sleeves and collar in honor of his touch, but both were an unfortunate dove gray. The color the Commission referred to as “silvers.” Standard uniform for interns and new recruits, and what Birch had worn for most of his life.

“I’ve tried really hard to put him out of my head, and most of the time I manage, but now every reflection triggers a memory. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nafiza did it to us all, but I don’t think she did it on purpose. You said Nye protected you. That’s worth something. Maybe he hoped the silvers would help you blend in, so people would leave you alone. Plus, he gave you that letter from your parents.”

At the Center, a yellowed note from his mother and father had been one of Birch’s prized possessions. He must have lost that, too.

“I’m not stupid. I know the warden wrote it so I’d stop asking him questions.”

“Even so, he chose to answer you with pen and paper. What do you think the other wardens would have done? It was a kindness.”

One of many conflicting layers of a man at war with himself. At his core, Warden Nye had a system of values that he protected, but on the surface, he was the model Commission officer. The two sides rarely agreed, and you never knew which one would appear. I’d seen him go from cruel to kind in an instant, show real concern for my well-being, then threaten to kill me and call it mercy.

“You’re allowed to miss your home, Birch.”

“Some home.”

“I think I owe you an apology. I may have oversold the outside world without preparing you for the bad stuff. I should have known escape was only step one. I didn’t think about the hard parts coming later.”

“It’s not even that.” He stole a peek at the ceiling, a habit ingrained from knowing there were always people watching him at the Centers. He’d learned to speak carefully, even in empty rooms. “I think Jermay was right. Just like you were right when you told me I should have done more to fight from the inside.”

“You did what you could.”

“No. No, I didn’t. I did what was safe. I never got it. Not like I do now. I’d seen units prep for raids before, but never from this side. It was all routine and equipment checks. It’s easier that way. I never saw the casualties or the destruction. When the units came in, they’d be celebrating. It warped the reality of what they were doing. I think I could have stopped at least some of it.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” I said.

“A luxury people like Greyor and Jermay’s father don’t have.”

He laid his hand against the tree, allowing it to bloom and replace the fallen flowers.

“I’m glad you like the tree,” he said. “I’d better go find Winnie before she and her cousin get into it again.”

“Birch? Are you sorry you came with me?”

He paused before saying, “I don’t know,” and then he left.

The room was in such disarray that it was difficult to know where to start. I picked at the drawers to see if there were any papers or photos hidden in the spilled clothes. I approached the closet, but that didn’t feel right, either.

My pocket grew warm, and I knew it was the memory chip prompting me to use it. It was time to face whatever my father had left for me. What greater secret could he have hidden on it than the one he’d locked away up here? Maybe he’d given me a map that would lead us to his allies.

I sat down in front of the briefcase, memory chip in hand and confident the combination would match the case my father kept with him on the train: 6-1-5. Six children, minus one, left five. He said the combination came preprogrammed, but to believe that would be to believe that Fate had a sense of irony. Those three numbers were another subconscious reminder of what my parents had lost because of me.

The computer inside was completely drained of power, confirming he hadn’t been to the Mile since long before we lost the train. Pouches sewn into the briefcase’s lid were filled with loose-leaf notes; packets of developed photos had been stuffed into the sides, cushioning the laptop. I lifted it out and gave the battery a jolt, thankful for the conductivity of the house’s walls. Being at cloud level provided an abundance of static electricity; the nearby metal made it flow.

I was both relieved and disappointed to see a password screen pop up. Thirty-three spaces, probably filled with random letters and numbers or an acronym only my father understood.

My father’s recent track record had me prepared for another letdown, and I was afraid to prove that theory right. Once I put that chip into the computer, there was no turning back. I felt it urging me on, while the computer seemed to be warding me off.

“One, two, three, go!” I ordered myself. Whenever something scared me—like a new act or trying a new food Mother Jesek had picked up along the train route—I’d count to three, close my eyes, and go for it. I put my hands on either side of the keyboard and dug in, trying to force the machine to give up its secrets by picturing open locks and doors.

Characters spun in each space, but they all stopped on X. The screen flashed red with the words ACCESS DENIED, accompanied by a counter reading “1 of 5.”

Another try got the same result, this time labeled “2 of 5.” There was a secondary security system in place to prevent hacking. I only had three attempts left before it activated, likely wiping the hard drive. When Jermay opened the door and called my name, I’d never been so happy for an interruption.

“There you are,” he said. “I was beginning to think one of Winnie’s crazy relatives had moved the rooms again and sent you to another dimension. Or flattened you.”

“Nope, still present in all three dimensions.” I slipped the memory chip back into my pocket.

“Is that Magnus’s computer?”

“Yeah, but it’s got more security than the entire Commission. I’m afraid to poke around too much. It could ruin the files.”

“Knowing Magnus, if you press the wrong button, it could come to life as a manticore and eat you.”

“You’re all kinds of depressing today,” I said.

“I know. I’ve got a bad feeling I can’t shake. Something’s creeping up on me.”

“That’s just the clothes talking. Overexposure to Madame Doom.”

The difference in Jermay’s appearance was greater now that I could see him in his new shirt. His eyes had always been noticeable. Complete strangers passing him on Show grounds would stare until he was out of sight to get another peek at them, and most patrons assumed his eyes were made up as part of Zavel’s magic act, since Jermay was his assistant. Now they were just blue. Plain, ordinary blue. There had to be a way to get his spark back.

“I’ve checked around outside,” he said. “The blackout’s restricted to this house. I can’t find any fried wires or broken bulbs, and Klok yelled at me for asking him to help, so I was wondering if you could fix it. All the hot water’s gone.”

“Klok yelled at you?”

“All caps, double bright, and italicized. He says he’s exercising his right to rudeness through inappropriate language. I don’t feel like arguing via subtitle, and I’m pretty sure Anise is looking for ways to disable his display, so will you take a look?”

“I might as well. This thing’s being no help at all.”

I closed the computer on our way out.

Reading the house’s electrical network was similar to taking someone’s pulse. To see how well things were working, I needed to find the right spot and press.

Jermay showed me the breaker box on the kitchen wall, which was already standing open.

“Anything broken in there is not my fault,” he swore. “I only looked at it.”

“And I didn’t even do that!” Baba said, laughing hysterically like this was another of his jokes we didn’t get. He’d positioned himself next to the light switch to turn it on as soon as the power was back.

The others had vacated the house, just in case something went wrong and I accidentally compressed the building to the size of a marble. Nola had returned to her shop. Dev had dragged Anise and Birdie out with promises of a park. I assumed Birch and Winnie were at the community garden, probably making pumpkins of a suitable size for Cinderella. Klok was still there, but he was back in my father’s workroom, tinkering, and he’d taken the golems with him.

“I thought I’d try throwing the breakers,” Jermay said. “But I can’t figure out where they are. The panel’s blank, and there aren’t any toggles.”

“It’s a custom system,” I told him. “You have to be keyed in.”

Or possessed of a touch that made it easy to access and control machinery. A spark jumped from my fingers, connecting me to the circuitry, like a psychic tapping into a schizophrenic mind. The processors were jumbled, the routes backwashing and interrupting each other in a Gordian knot of chaos.

“Just like Magnus,” Baba said.

The more I learned about my own abilities, the less amazing I found my father’s. The stage lights were coming on over his act, allowing me to see the cracks in his makeup and the curve of the mirrors. All of the enchantment in my world was dying, and I hated it.

“Does your house have its own power supply?” I asked Baba.

“It used to. We integrated them all to combine our resources.”

“You shouldn’t have. Each unit is designed to be a closed system. Your integration is off, and it’s burning ten times the power necessary. The extra juice is overloading circuits left and right.”

The Mile was burning itself alive.

“Unfortunately, no one here is quite as in tune with the system as your father, and his absence highlighted how dependent the whole thing was on his maintenance. He never bothered to detail the more delicate areas, preferring to maintain them himself.”

He was good at that. My father had been a lot more controlling than I’d realized. Always secretive. Always playing toward a master scheme that he wasn’t inclined to share with the rest of us. Now that he was gone, we were still on the paths he forged, but there were no road signs, and we didn’t have a map.

“Most of our supply lines have been cut off, leaving us without parts. It’s all we can do to patch the leaks as they rupture,” Baba said.

“You shouldn’t need parts. The Mile’s outfitted with the same self-sustaining advancement routine as our train. It should be capable of repairing itself, assuming you have enough garbage output to supply it with raw materials.”

The Mile should have continued to grow by several inches a month in all directions, providing a slow-building base to accommodate extra people and the resources they would need. The train had used the same routine to lay track as it rolled and build extra cars when we needed them. Up here that routine would make buildings and tools. The Mile could duplicate its own spare parts when the originals wore out. But the system was a mess. It was as if someone read the instructions in Japanese, then filtered them through sign language to someone who only spoke Swedish. Something definitely got lost in translation.

I sent out feelers through the system, clamping off everything specific to Baba’s house until I’d isolated it from the rest of the Mile’s buildings, then I rerouted everything to the smaller internal generator, which was sitting idle and fully charged. Near as I could tell, more than sixty other generators were in the same condition. They’d been wired out of the common power supply.

I gave the whole thing a final tap, and—

“Turn it on,” I told Baba.

Everything whirled back to life, faster and brighter than it had been before the power went out.

“I call shower!” Jermay yelled to no one and charged off for the stairs.

He stopped with his foot on the first step, turned around, and ran back to give me a kiss on the cheek. Half a peck, and in a hurry, but the first spontaneous move he’d made since the Center. This time the heat in my face had nothing to do with my touch and everything to do with his. For a second, I caught a glimpse of what had been missing. I would have bet cash money that his eyes were sparking.

“You’re awesome,” he said. “But if you blush any harder, you’ll set the house on fire, which kind of defeats the purpose of fixing it.”

Just like that, he went from charming to world’s greatest irritation. I shrieked, sending water out of the sink spout to chase him up the stairs.

“Sorry,” I said to Baba once Jermay was gone. I called the puddles off the kitchen floor and back into the sink. “He makes me so mad sometimes.”

“That’s how the best ones always start.” He patted my shoulder as he hobbled past. “I think perhaps a few words to my neighbors about your handiwork are in order. They’ll be much more inclined to civility if they know that you have your father’s way with machines and are willing to help with some necessary adjustments. I’m sure they’ve all converged on poor Nola’s shop by now; I should see how she’s faring.”

“Can I ask you something before you go?”

“Of course.”

“What is it that makes them so afraid of us?” I understood why the Commission and the more mundane people on the ground were afraid, but all of the families on the Mile were touched. How were we any different?

“Bah! Nothing worth mentioning. They’ve taken something Nafiza said yesterday a bit too literally. It happens from time to time. They’ll come around—you’ll see!”

I’d never seen a man try to run with a crutch before, but he hustled out of the kitchen with a rickety hop so fast, I thought he was going to fall into a headfirst roll. The door swung shut behind him, and I was left on my own for the first time in ages.

I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself.

The kitchen was clean, and I didn’t feel right poking around the house without its owners at home. My father’s room was occupied, so I couldn’t get another crack at the computer without answering questions. And since it was Klok doing the occupying, those questions would be detailed and drawn out. Jermay with access to running water meant at least an hour without him to distract me. Even the creeper lights had gone dormant for the brightest part of the afternoon, charging their batteries so they could be used at night if called on.

I was suddenly exhausted by a day that had begun the night before. One that contained grief and joy, fear and confusion, and a blitz attack by a very angry kitchen. There’d been so many highs and lows and so little time to catch our breath, we should have all had the shakes from spiking adrenaline. To make it all fit, time would have to be as modular as Baba’s house, pushing things of less importance out of the way to hold what was happening in the moment.

I’d been pushed too far. My body and my brain were demanding rest. I wouldn’t presume to use any of the rooms without asking, but there was a sofa in the living room. Hopefully no one would feel the need to test out the kitchen repairs while I was in there.

CHAPTER 10

I didn’t miss the room I grew up in. Any happy memories I’d saved from the destruction of our train had been obliterated by Warden Nye’s attempt to re-create my home at his Center. But I did miss the soothing sound of movement, the constant heartbeat of wheels against the tracks, and the lullaby of wind outside my windows.

I thought I’d never sleep without them, especially on the Mile, with its uneasy sway through the clouds. The Center came equipped with a stabilization system that made walking its corridors as smooth as walking the halls of an earthbound house. The Mile pitched and rolled like a midnight trawler lying in wait for fish too smart to surface during daylight. It spoke to me with words I’d never heard before and always seemed to be mocking me.

Exhaustion eventually won out, but the drunken lurch of upper air currents invited itself into my nightmares: me falling with the flaming debris from the Center, tangled in the strangling spindle-legs of a climbing lantern that hoped I might save it, tumbling with the bodies of my dead friends and family because I couldn’t save them. I could never save them, no matter how hard I tried.

Evie slipped into an empty space beside me, her open, washed-out eyes accusing me of another failure. Behind her, everyone else was burning.

How many times had Evie told me that there was nothing the Commission could do to hurt me? I was too strong. I was too special. I was Celestine, and I could break them.

I’d lived my entire life hearing that whispered in the shadows where no one else could overhear, but when it came time to prove it, I’d ended up the one broken.

Evie never lied to me, so the problem was mine. I wasn’t good enough, and because of that, I was losing everything.

The sky turned pinkish-purple, blistered with the encroaching shapes of jellyfish-like creatures that blocked the sun. The legs of the climbing lantern became the unfurled arms of a Medusae wrapped around my body to stop my fall. Most people wake up when they feel themselves falling in a dream, but I didn’t snap out of it until I bounced in its embrace like a bungee jumper who had reached the end of her rope.

I opened my eyes, but I was still falling, cartwheeling end-over-end in a dizzying spiral that wouldn’t stop.

Panic set in before I could wake myself up all the way, keeping me anchored in the nightmare. It taunted me with whispered words: “Stars fall. Stars fall.” A sinister promise that I would meet the end I deserved. I’d rained fire down on those who hurt me. I’d killed my own brother by crushing him beneath the weight of heaven. Now it was my turn. I’d be nothing more than a flare in the dark, streaking across the sky and destined to disappoint anyone who tried to wish upon me as I burned.

My mind had become a very dangerous place to dwell.

My senses broke through, chipping away at the dreamscape and replacing it with reality. I was spinning in place, not getting closer to the ground, and it wasn’t ground, anyway—it was a floor with rugs. Each rotation brought glimpses of walls and furniture. The air was layered with the sweet-sour twang of stale burnt tea and worn metal.

“Not falling,” I told myself. “I am not falling. Not falling.”

I was still in Baba’s house, caught in a flare of Vesper’s aerokinesis and unable to fight my own momentum. I couldn’t put myself inside a stone cell this time; there was no bedrock beneath the house to call up. I had to find another way to calm down.

Slowly, I pulled one arm into my chest, then the other. I drew my legs up and let myself drift without fighting the current. It bounced me across the room to the window looking into the kitchen, where I was able to grab the upper ledge and hold myself still.

I unfolded my legs, but they still wouldn’t touch the ground. I tried maneuvering into the window itself, where I could sit on the counter built into the opening, but I kept bobbing back toward the ceiling. For now, down wasn’t an option.

At least nothing was on fire this time.

“Hello?” I called into the house. “Is anybody home? Jermay? Klok? Anybody?”

A door slammed in the kitchen. Using my hands for leverage, I turned myself around. Xerxes and Bijou were loose in the room, tag-teaming the cabinets to get the doors open and see what was inside. The mess in my father’s workroom was starting to make more sense. Klok hadn’t tossed the place; the troublemakers did it. This was their payback for making them stay small.

“A little help?” I asked.

Bijou blew a puff of leftover smoke from his snout and wriggled into the nearest cupboard. An avalanche of cooking pots tumbled onto the floor; Bijou rolled out on top of them, with a lid on his head, grinning in the particularly disturbing way that only a dragon can pull off.

Not quite what I had in mind.

“Xerxes? Help me.”

That plea never failed.

Xerxes beat his wings, rising up to face me.

“I don’t know how much of Magnus Roma you actually have inside you, but if you’ve got a fifth of his intelligence or a tenth of his ingenuity, I could use some of his ideas,” I said. “I need my father.”

I gave up on trying to keep myself level. It had taken Vesper more than a year to master walking on air, and that was after she’d spent twelve years with her touch. I’d only had it for a few weeks. It was a miracle that this was the first time it had turned on me.

Xerxes pushed me down with one paw; I popped back up. He repeated the experiment, marking his results with a click similar to the one made by my father’s favorite pen when he took notes. He held me down with both paws, but it made no difference. As soon as he let go, I was floating again.

He squawked at me, gryphon-speak for “hang on a sec,” and leapt to the top of the cupboard. He surveyed the room, forming ideas and discarding them. Another of my father’s tics he’d absorbed with eerily human precision.

Xerxes deployed his wings and glided to the light in the ceiling.

A mistake, as it turned out. The light didn’t like being touched.

All of the bulb-tipped octopus arms rattled at him like a nest of angry titanium snakes startled out of sleep. Xerxes hissed back. He grabbed a tentacle in his claws and attempted to drag it closer to me. The light fixture coiled up, pulling its arm right out of his grip. Undeterred, and quickly losing his temper, Xerxes turned around to bite it.

Bijou, still wearing the pot lid for a helmet, rushed to his fellow golem’s aid. But they were outnumbered by several arms, and it didn’t take long for the light to tangle poor Bijou beyond escape. Xerxes tried baiting the lamp, flying evasive maneuvers to tie it in a knot.

My rescue had turned into the clash of the world’s smallest titans. If Klok didn’t straighten them out soon, we were going to have to find a psychiatrist who specialized in artificial life-forms.

“What’s going on down there? It’s louder than the animal cars at feeding time!” Winnie shouted from upstairs; I heard her feet running down the steps. “Penn’s trying to sleep!” she scolded from the staircase.

“No I’m not!”

“Penn?” She looked at the empty couch, then scanned the room.

Winnie hadn’t changed out of her pajamas. The sack holding her new clothes was still on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“Up here!”

“Penn? How . . . never mind. How do I get you down?”

“I don’t know? Pull?”

She took my hands and leaned backward, but even when I managed to get near the floor, I was upside down with my feet floating behind me.

“I feel like I’m staking out one of the balloons for the big top,” she said.

“I can’t help it. The harder I try to land, the worse it gets.”

“Then stop trying! Tread water.”

Spoken like a real carnie girl. Once the obvious doesn’t work, look at the problem from a different angle, and you’re bound to find a trick that will.

I changed my focus. I stopped fighting the current and let it right me on its own. Small movements kept me from spinning out of control, while the air kept me buoyant. Moving my arms up or down allowed me to control how high I went.

“That’s better,” I said, crisscrossing my legs. “Where is everyone? I tried calling for help, but no one came.”

“We didn’t want to disturb you. Baba’s holding a community meeting at the shop to make nice with the neighbors—glad I’m not there. Klok’s locked himself in Magnus’s room. Birch is better off at the garden without me to cause him trouble for a while, and everybody else is off checking out the Mile. I wanted some time to myself.”

“Jermay left, too?”

“Hours ago. What do you think would happen if I tethered you to a chair? Would it hold you down or float with you?”

I thought that Jermay would make jokes about me being tied to a chair as soon as everyone came home. Anise would scold him for inappropriate humor in front of Birdie and Dev, Klok would defend the right of boys to be inappropriate, and the rest of the evening would crumble from there. It would also likely include the madcap misadventures of a pair of glitched-out golems and a pot-lid helmet.

“Think of something else,” I said.

“I can try ordering you down.”

“I already want to come down.”

“Fine. Stay there.” Winnie went to the table in front of the sofa and dumped out the sack, spilling her mother’s red shirt and black pants onto the floor.

“Why didn’t you change clothes?” I asked. She’d cleaned up, but left Nafiza’s gift untouched.

“Because those came from her, and I don’t want anything she has to give. Hold this. We’re going to make a counterweight to keep you grounded.”

She shoved the bag into my hands, then started pulling large books from a shelf and stacking them nearby.

“What did Nafiza do to you?”

“She told everyone here that I was a land mine waiting to go off, and they believed her. Community first and majority rules; that’s what fuels the Mile. I got voted out.”

She dropped two books into my bag; the weight dragged me a couple of inches lower.

“But you were a kid,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. Nafiza’s never wrong as far as they’re concerned. She saw disaster. She saw me. The others decided that if they got rid of me, the vision as a whole would have to change. That’s why they’re all so weird around you, you know. She had another flash yesterday. Nafiza said destruction was due on tomorrow, yesterday, three weeks from last Thursday, or whatever, and then we arrived. Ollie, Esther, and the others think we’re the fulfillment of some stupid prophecy.”

She handed me another book.

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“Not much is considered coincidence around here. Baba and a few others opposed when she got me tossed. They wanted to wait for Magnus, at least, but then Nafiza started rambling about seeing me alongside a warden. Everyone assumed that meant me as a hound, spilling their secrets, and that cost Baba most of his support. I know she can’t help it. I know it’s not fair to hate her for it. The words come out whether she wants them to or not, but I didn’t even understand what was going on. I went to sleep up here and woke up down there. I still don’t know who booted me.”

“They just left you?”

“I think whoever did it was trying to get me to Magnus. The town I woke up in had hosted The Show, but I was too late to catch the train, and I had no way to get back up here. I hid for as long as I could, but three weeks later the Commission caught me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The air bubble popped, plopping me into the chair below. I landed backward, but thankfully upright. Apparently the secret to controlling my touch was to stop trying to control it. Once I stopped thinking about how I couldn’t get down, the air currents that kept me aloft died out.

“I’ll spot you points for sticking the landing, but your technique is atrocious,” Winnie said. “Birdie would be embarrassed for you.”

She smiled through one side of her mouth. It would have looked cruel to someone who didn’t know her, but it was actually a laugh.

“It wasn’t Nafiza’s fault, either. She wanted me to tell you that . . . or she knew I was going to tell you that. Maybe I only said it because she told me I was supposed to. Whatever. It wasn’t her fault. She’s sorry, and she said the clothes she sent you belonged to your mother.”

“You made that up.”

“I swear on my terrible acrobatic skills.” I rolled backward, meaning to do a somersault, but ended up kinking my neck with another lousy landing. “I’m very dedicated to their awfulness.”

While I righted myself, Winnie sat down on the sofa, staring at her mother’s clothes.

“These were really my mother’s?”

I’d never seen that look on my own face, but I’d felt it a million times. It was easy to think of the dead as a dream or an idea that would pass, especially the dead you’d never met. They were stories and pictures, not people. Artifacts made them people. They could be touched and cherished and lost. Clothing gave Winnie’s mother a body to wear it. A breathing chest to make the red cotton rise and fall; arms that would have held her as a child had fit within those sleeves. Her mother’s fingers had worked the buttons.

“Do you think they still smell like her?” she asked. “I’ve seen her face in pictures, but I don’t remember her voice or anything. I don’t know how tall she was or if she snorted when she laughed. It would be nice to know what she smelled like . . . that’s silly, isn’t it?”

“Not to me,” I said. I’d been mourning a robot. Compared to that, wanting to know her mother’s brand of perfume wasn’t much to talk about.

Winnie picked up the shirt and held it to her nose, then stuck her hand in the sleeve to feel the material at the cuff.

“I forgot what it was like to miss my mom,” she said. “When I lived here, I thought about her all the time, but down there I had to worry about other things. I had no one in the Ground Center—except Birch, but he wasn’t family. Then Greyor . . . and now Greyor . . .”

She hid her face behind the shirt so I wouldn’t see her crying, but the material didn’t completely muffle the sound.

How many people could one girl lose without it costing her more than a few tears?

She had no parents, and she never mentioned her other siblings, but for her to be in Nye’s database of twin pairs, she had to have them. I assumed Greyor was her twin, although I’d never seen him exhibit an ability like Birch’s. But Winnie wasn’t even eighteen years old. Her first escape from Warden Arcineaux was at fourteen. How could Greyor have gotten a Commission job that young?

“He was spectacular,” she said. “He used his touch to create the perfect specimen for duty at a Commission Center. It let him sneak around with different faces so no one caught on. After he released me and the rest of the girls, he stayed behind to try to save the boys. He never got the chance.”

“Arcineaux recognized him at the Center in the sky,” I told her.

“I warned him not to keep one face for so long; he should have known better. Do you want to see what he really looked like?”

“Sure.”

Greyor had helped me, too. It was strange to think the face I knew was a fake.

“There’s an electronic frame on the shelf. I’ve been trying to set it to a specific photo to use for a memorial. I already found a candle under the sink, but there are too many photo files. Do you think you could find it?”

I was definitely willing to try. Winnie had done nothing but look out for me from the first word I ever heard her speak. Helping her locate a photo wouldn’t even dent the debt I owed her.

I took the frame from her and concentrated on the memory of Greyor’s face, even if it wasn’t his real one. The most vivid image was the moment he died, leaving me with the dread that the frame might somehow construct that picture out of my thoughts and show Winnie something she really didn’t need to see.

All of the photos saved in the frame started spinning faster than a human hand could swipe through them. When they settled, I was looking at a boy who was maybe twelve, with shaggy black hair that curled around his ears. He had Winnie’s big brown eyes and the same pointed chin, and he was sitting on the back of a girl the same age—Winnie. It looked like he’d knocked her into the dirt and was declaring victory while she pretended to bite him in the leg.

My Greyor looked nothing like this boy. His face had been longer and his eyes lighter. He’d kept his hair sheared neatly per Commission regulation. I would have sworn he was twenty-five, at least. It had been a perfect costume except for the fact that it couldn’t save him.

“That’s it!” Winnie exclaimed. She grabbed the frame from me. “That’s my idiot brother, just before I had to leave. I knew Baba hadn’t tossed it.”

Twelve sounds young, but actually seeing her thin face and gangly limbs made thinking of her running scared a million times worse.

At that age, I was playing with my father’s gadgets and imprisoning myself in Zavel’s magic trunks because I wanted to see what tricks he’d hidden inside. My dinner was regularly ruined by epic tours of the circus midway, with all of its popcorn and sweets. Winnie was being experimented on and locked inside real cages she couldn’t escape. The worst I had to deal with were empty threats of a gruel-and-water diet from Mother Jesek, and Nim pilfering Nagendra’s grass snakes to hide in my bed.

Winnie set the frame back on the shelf, fishing a small emergency candle from her pocket to place in front of the picture. I summoned a flame to light it for her.

“It’s not much, but at least it’s something,” she said. “Everyone should be remembered—including Evie, when you decide how to do it.”

The flame on her candle leapt with the mention of my sister; there was no memory of Evie that didn’t involve fire. It danced for her and sang for her, and now it did the same for Greyor as his soul rose off the smoke toward the ceiling and the world beyond what we could see. It wasn’t as dramatic as seeing stands full of candles lit in the church Sister Mary Alban called home, but this point in time held the same reverence. We were calling a star into being and sending it toward the heavens, one minuscule speck of light among the billions waiting to greet it.

I wondered if anyone would notice the candle when they came home or if they’d understand what it meant. No one had mentioned Greyor, but Winnie had been exiled alone, so if he’d fallen out of favor with his family or community, it had happened after she was gone. I imagined him as a runaway, using the same tenacity that kept his sister alive as a tool to find a way to the ground where he could help her. Maybe Baba had dispatched him, knowing that Greyor could hide in full view of the wardens or anyone else.

Maybe speaking of the dead was bad luck on the Mile like it was at the Hollow.

“Winnie . . .” I began hesitantly. She’d always guarded her secrets, and I didn’t want to upset her again. “When you decided to bring us here, did you know how they were going to treat you?”

“I knew most of them wouldn’t be happy to see me.”

“We won’t stay long. I promise.”

“Stay as long as you want,” she said. “I told you, this is my home. Baba and Dev are my family. They’re all I have left, whether anyone else likes it or not.”

She didn’t mention Nola.

“Are you going to ask them to let you stay?”

“I’m not the same girl they kicked out. If they want me off this hunk of metal again, they’ll have to force me, and they know they can’t. I’m not afraid of them anymore. Thanks for the photo.”

She left the candle burning and disappeared back up the stairs, taking her mother’s clothes with her.

CHAPTER 11

The rest of the day was quiet, mainly because everyone stayed away until it was over. The ultra-bright afternoon transitioned into the Magic Hour. Sunset in the clouds wasn’t the same as seeing it from the ground. The colors were richer and more vibrant, made of crushed gems sparkling over the horizon and hosting a kaleidoscope of distant stars not visible from farther away. They didn’t even wait for nightfall to appear. The moon hung huge, with a thin silver line marking its upper limit beyond the crescent rising.

Baba and Nola returned as we edged closer to supper. The meal had me worried; we’d need to expand the kitchen again. If I’d made any miscalculations, they’d show and they’d show big. I tried to get a feel for how things had gone with their neighbors, but they both arrived much as they’d left: Baba perpetually hopeful and Nola fatalistic.

Birch wandered in a few minutes later, covered in dirt that said he’d made the most of his time in the community garden.

“So, how top-heavy did you make this place?” I asked him, envisioning the Mile awash in ivies, every house transformed into a deep-forest cottage from a child’s tale. Birch’s proclivity for covering every square inch with something green or blooming was hardly ever practical, and could have crashed the flying city with a single heirloom oak.

“I did what I could, but there’s something off with the soil,” he said. “I’m hoping your sister can help me out.”

I tried not to take that personally. Anise was completely terrakinetic. She had more experience than I did and a lot more control, but I was having a hard time remembering a single conversation Birch had started with her. He always spoke to me. Something had changed during our talk in my father’s room; I didn’t like it.

I waited by the door, expecting Jermay to appear any minute. Those minutes piled up, and he never showed.

Birdie, Dev, and Anise returned, announced by too much laughter and too many voices to belong only to the three of them. They entered the neighborhood streets with a mob of other kids Birdie’s age, most of whom split off to houses of their own.

“And where have you been? It’s after dark, and I was worried sick. Get in this house this instant.” I did my best impression of an overdramatic Mother Jesek to camouflage my constant looks down the walkways, searching for Jermay.

“There’s a park!” Birdie was beaming. “It’s kind of run-down, but the equipment works!”

“She’s teaching me to walk on a wire!” Dev said.

“Stand on a wire.” Birdie rolled her eyes. “You can’t walk until you learn to stand up straight without tipping over.”

Dev stuck his tongue out at her and gave her a shove, then tore off up the stairs with Birdie in hot pursuit.

“The other kids let her play?” I asked Anise.

We’d had such a chilly welcome from the adults, I expected it to trickle down to their children.

“They’re used to having new kids show up. There’s even a procedure in the play yard to make sure the new faces aren’t left out. This place is amazing, Penn.”

“For some people.”

Winnie descended the stairs dressed in her mother’s clothes and worrying her torn lip between her teeth. Birch met her at the bottom with a variation on a trick he’d done for me. He laid his hand against the banister, turning the cold metal into a cascading vine that sprouted flowers all the way to the second floor. Beneath her hand, the finial opened up into a perfect bloodred rose.

She threw her arms around his neck and hung there, possibly crying again. I looked away before they could notice me.

“Did you see Jermay while you were out?” I asked Anise.

“No. He was still here when we left. Winnie?”

“He told me he was going for a walk,” she said. A pronounced sparkle in her eyes confirmed my suspicion of tears.

“That was hours ago.” I checked the view out the door again.

“Don’t worry,” Anise said. “Where could he go?”

Over the edge. Figuratively or otherwise.

We were all in varying stages of PTSD from what we’d been through, and while Jermay seemed okay most of the time, he kept hitting these speed-bump moments where he changed into something other than the boy I’d grown up with. Of course, I wasn’t the boy he’d grown up with, either. Maybe this made us even.

“If he’s not back in ten minutes, I’m going to look for him,” I said. I was all for letting people have their space, but this was too much.

“I don’t think you’ll have to go very far,” Anise said.

He was coming up the walk, hands in his pockets, head down and watching his feet.

“Hey,” I said, smiling as he entered the house. I held up my pinkie finger.

“Hey,” he mumbled. He shuffled past without looking up; his hands stayed in his pockets.

“What was that?” Anise asked. “Did you two have a fight?”

“Not unless it was while I was asleep.” Which was possible. Sleepwalking would have dovetailed right into the rest of my problems. “He was fine this morning. He was smiling.”

“Give him some time, Chey-chey,” Anise said.

I wasn’t convinced that time was enough. For Jermay, there had always been a secret hand gesture or a flash of light to get him around obstacles and fool the world into believing his power was more than illusion. There weren’t any magic words to fix what had broken him, and there was no disappearing cabinet or giant top hat that could banish those memories to oblivion.

At supper, the table worked. Everyone’s seat remained stationary, and not a single spoon was displaced by retreating furniture.

Birdie chattered away about everything she’d seen and done at the park to the point that she barely ate a bite. The children on the Mile had invented their own version of dodgeball, specifically for touched kids. No holds barred, all powers allowed so long as you didn’t lose the ball. She was practically bursting with the desire to jump on the table and give us all an instant replay. My little bird was officially back. This was the girl whose feet hardly ever touched the ground because she kept her head in the clouds. The view was better up there.

And Birdie was better off on the Mile. She had the Jeseks at home, but there weren’t kids her age except the ones who came and went for the price of admission. Show life meant practice and routines, not playtime or friends. On the Mile, she’d been included. Being normal amazed her, and I wondered how it felt.

How had it not been years my sister died? It felt like lifetimes. We weren’t even in the same world anymore.

My ghosts stayed buried with the Hollow, but Jermay’s had followed him up.

“Did something happen after I fixed the power box?” I asked him. Everyone else at the table was enjoying Birdie’s reenactment; they weren’t looking at us.

“I couldn’t stand the empty house. It was too much like solitary confinement,” he said. “I thought a walk out in the open would make it better, like I could pretend that I was exploring a stop along the rails. I almost convinced myself a couple of times, but it only made reality worse when I came back to it.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Everywhere. There’s not that much space up here.”

We should have saved Zavel’s hat. Winnie had her mom’s clothes. I had my father’s things up in his workroom. Jermay had no tokens or touchstones. All he had were memories, and when every night came filled with nightmares and flashbacks, happy memories were temporary solace at best. They were too easy to corrupt.

“Jermay, if there’s something you need to say or something you want to talk about—”

“No!” He said it too loud. Everyone looked at us.

Jermay picked up his fork and pushed his food around, but he didn’t eat anything. His hair covered his eyes when he tipped his head down so no one could see his face. But I watched his ears turn red, scalded by the heat of emotion he refused to show. The longer he held it in, the more he converted to anger. Anger became rage, and rage was dangerous. He didn’t look up until Birdie started chattering again.

I offered him my pinkie, and this time, he hooked it with his own and squeezed tight.

“Can I go back out?” Birdie asked. The dishes had been cleared, and Dev was waiting for her by the back door.

“This late?” Anise asked. “Is it safe?”

Our father had always warned us to avoid venturing out at night. He said the sorts of people who lived their lives after dark were the sort doing business that children shouldn’t see. Like the shady Sundown Markets where you could buy, sell, or barter technology that was forbidden by light of day.

We’d lost the train at night, and the stars had covered our escape. To me, this said the people were more important than the hour when it came to being safe.

“Please?” Birdie begged.

“The kids usually end the day with a couple of games,” Nola said. She didn’t treat Birdie or Anise anything like she did Winnie. “They’ll be right outside, in view of the house. She’ll be fine.”

“She’ll be safe with me,” Dev said.

“Okay, but you come back when Dev does,” Anise said to Birdie. “And stay in sight. I don’t care what the rules of the game say.”

“You have to come with us,” Dev told me. “One of my friends wants to see you.”

“Why would he want to see me?”

“He says he knows you,” Birdie added.

The list of people who knew me as a girl was very short. It pretty much consisted of the people in the kitchen, plus a few wardens. Baba said their runners were people who could alter their appearance. Maybe this was Beryl wearing another face. It was possible that Beryl was actually my age, using the stout woman I’d met for another disguise, the way Greyor had aged himself to join the Wardens’ Commission. If it was her, she might know what happened to Sister Mary Alban after our escape from the church.

Supper must have gone faster at the tables with fewer people, as Dev and Birdie were among the last to emerge and join their friends in the street. Without the threat of cars zooming past, there was nothing to keep them from spreading out anywhere they could find space.

Dev and Birdie ran ahead; I hung back, hoping to figure out who had asked for me. I knew him immediately.

“Wren!” I shouted.

Wren was the boy I’d set free from Arcineaux’s Center. He was healthier than when I last saw him, and ten pounds heavier, but it was definitely him.

He sized me up, adjusting my current appearance to what he’d seen before—me with short hair and my father’s red traveling coat fastened over the donation-bin dress Sister Mary Alban had given me as a disguise. I’d had no way to find out what happened to him after my father’s coat transported me from the Ground Center’s fence. Arcineaux and his men had been so close, they could have recaptured him and locked him in another hole, and I never would have known.

“It really is you!” He pounced on me, hugging so tight I would have believed that he’d been touched with superstrength. “I thought you were dead. After everything collapsed, I never saw you again, but then the folks here starting squawking about someone named Magnus and a circus, and I knew they had to mean you. You ran from The Show, yeah? How’d you get away?”

“Never mind that, how’d you get up here?”

“The lady without a face,” he said. “I mean, she had a face, but it kept changing. She brought a whole load of us up here after we busted out. Probably wouldn’t have made it without her. That warden was after us from the start, but she helped us hide—and she told me your name. Penelope.” He drew out the first syllable of my name and laughed at the sound.

“That warden” had to be Arcineaux. My gargoyle had already weathered the mass escape that cost him Winnie and the other girls he’d been keeping prisoner; losing the guys certainly hadn’t done him any favors. Me leveling the Ground Center and freeing the prisoners had disrupted Arcineaux’s experiments and cost him his job.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” Wren said. “A lot of us lab rats didn’t survive. It’s not like we had families to notice we’d gone off somewhere.”

That wasn’t surprising, either. Winnie and I had stumbled into a roaming café set up by the Commission to entice runaways and other people desperate for a meal. We didn’t eat or drink anything once we realized what the place was, but a lot of others did. Whatever was in the food was part of the preliminary stage for the experiments that Wren had survived.

“I’m glad you made it. It’s a lot better up here,” he told me.

“I can’t stay until I find my sisters,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying “until,” but that was how it came out. My mind was more made up than I’d realized.

“Good luck,” Wren said.

He hurried off to join the others and their game, and I went back to Baba’s porch. Anise was kneeling in that patch of withered grass beside the house. Unlike this morning, tiny flowers filled in the gaps where the lawn had died completely—obviously Birch, but without the vibrance or flair of his usual signature. My sister had her hands submerged up to the wrists in dirt.

“Building a sandcastle, or ‘I miss the ground’ therapy?” I asked.

“I’m getting a feel for the soil composition. Try it.”

I bent down and touched the ground.

“Feels like dirt,” I said.

“Go deeper.” She twitched her head, bidding the soil to cover my hands.

“Feels like deeper dirt.”

Cold and clumpy, with grains that stuck beneath my nails.

“What’s the point?” I asked.

“Birch asked me to figure out why the plants he makes here won’t take root. It should be obvious to you, same as it is to me.”

“It’s too shallow?” I guessed.

“That’s a problem with the depth. What’s wrong with the soil?”

Anise pulled her legs under her so she could sit. I held out my hands, and she filled them with a scoop of pale earth from the lawn.

“Still feels like dirt,” I said.

She growled “stop it” and told me to try again.

“Concentrate. Your touch keeps going haywire because Papa never taught you what it was or how to use it. I may not be able to tell you how to make it rain inside or how to shift the wind from east to west, but this I can do. Pretend it’s a toaster with bad wiring and tell me how to fix it.”

I sat down and stared at the soil in my hands.

“It should be darker,” I said. “Black as coffee grounds, not gray like dust.”

“What else?”

If the soil had been a toaster, I would have asked it what was wrong by feeling out the wires for gaps or shorts. I tried doing the same with the little heap that I was holding.

“It’s weak,” I said, interpreting something I could only describe as a hoarse whisper.

“Very good,” Anise said. “They’ve overused what little they have. Their terras have been trying to compensate, but there’s nothing more that they can do. No matter what Birch plants, it’s going to die until the Mile gets new topsoil, and I’m not sure it’s feasible for them to arrange that sizable a shipment of supplies. Someone will notice.”

Without decent soil, the Mile wouldn’t be able to sustain its food supply. None of them would accept that; it would mean going back to the ground, where their children would be in danger. Some of them were wanted for their roles in the Brick Street riots.

“You’ve only told me what’s wrong with the toaster; you haven’t told me how to fix it,” Anise said.

“But you said—”

“I said a terra can’t do anything else. You’re not terrakinetic.”

“What do you expect me to do? Pull fresh dirt out of thin air?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. The air is full of micro-particles kicked up from the earth below. I can feel them, but I can’t separate them. That’s where you come in, but you have to control yourself. Give it a try.”

Anise had always been the grounding force in the family, keeping the rest of us centered. If she thought I could do this, then I had to believe it, too. I closed my eyes, restricting the senses that would get in the way. Using the whisper I’d heard as a baseline, I searched for a stronger presence. It was there, in every breath and every breeze, too light to be captured.

I called it in, felt the wind washing back and forth over my open palms.

“Did it work?” I asked.

“See for yourself,” Anise said.

I opened my eyes and checked my hands, both of which were crusted with a layer of dark-brown dirt.

“Micro-particles.” Anise rolled the fine grains between her fingers. They smudged out like charcoal. “It’ll take a lot more than this to make a difference, but you should be able to spin enough soil to reenergize the gardens. Once we’ve got the pots and planters ready, Birch will be able to fill them—but that’s a problem for tomorrow.”

She got off the ground and rested her back against the door, hands behind her—a pensive stance she’d had since I could remember. The harder she thought, the more she needed contact with something solid.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Away from the ground and all?”

“It’s better in the open air, with nothing to block my view of below. If we don’t stay too long, I’ll be fine.”

I couldn’t tell what game Birdie and the others were playing, and I doubted it had a name. The rules seemed to change depending on who was in motion at the time.

“Almost like home, isn’t it?” Anise asked.

“Almost,” I repeated, suddenly furious at her for bringing that up. Home was where she’d buried Evie.

I took the chance to clean my hands. A fire spout flared in my right hand when I clapped the two together. Another spout appeared in my left, strong enough to devour the first and make itself bigger.

Our conversation was torture. Polite torture, but still unbearable. Among my sisters, Evie became my second mother, and Nim my nemesis and tormentor. Vesper was the one I envied, and Anise was my favorite, as much as it’s possible to choose between blood. She was the one who made me believe things would work out right when I couldn’t see how, but now there was a fresh, flaming gulf between us. Every time I thought of trying to bridge the gap, the bridge went up in smoke.

“I think we should leave Birdie here when we go,” I said. She and Dev were the last two kids called in off the street to go to bed, but that didn’t mean the game was over. Reaching the house turned into a race, and once inside, they only got louder. “She’s too young to keep putting her in danger, and she’s happier here than I’ve seen her since we lost the train. I think Winnie’s grandfather would let her stay.”

“I’m not sure she’ll like that idea.”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

The fire spout balanced on my hand became a hummingbird version of my phoenix golem. It swooped through the neighborhood, twirling around the different levels of Baba’s house when it returned. It stopped and stared me in the eye before I crushed it in my fist.

Papa always said it was water that could put out fire, while water was in turn susceptible to earth. That was what kept the balance between my sisters. He never told me that the balance could falter, or that one could be stronger than the others if there was nothing to keep it in check.

Water could destroy fire.

Earth and rock could destroy fire.

Air could destroy fire.

I could destroy them all.

We were each the greatest weakness of the others.

“You really need to hear me say it, don’t you?” Anise asked.

“Say what?”

She shrugged off the wall and turned to face me.

“Penn, I’m sorry about Evie.”

“I know that.” But it still didn’t make Evie less dead.

“You may know it, but you don’t accept that it was the best option.”

“You think killing her was the best you could do?”

The stars began to shout in my blood, with power pooling in my hands. My phoenix was ready to make another appearance with a flock of its fellows as backup. Heavenly bodies that had been so dim they were invisible to the naked eye roared into view.

Anise reached out and thumped me on the nose. She hadn’t done that since I was twelve, but it still worked. The sting shattered my concentration.

“Let me finish before you take the nuclear option,” she said. “It wasn’t a good choice, but it was the best one. It was Evie’s choice. She chose to die rather than be condemned to life as that psychopath’s attack dog. Do you think it was easy for me?”

“I know it wasn’t . . . I do . . . I just thought . . . I really thought we’d find Papa and Bruno and Squint and Smolly and everyone, and it would all go back to normal.”

“That was never going to happen, Chey-chey.”

Chey-chey . . . child. Only children were naïve enough to have that kind of hope.

“It could have,” I insisted. “We could have come here. Why didn’t Papa bring us here?”

“I guess we’ll have to ask him when we find him.”

“Not ‘if’?”

“I said what I said.”

“You also said Evie’s name.”

“Maybe I’m not ready to believe she’s really gone, either.” She went inside and closed the door behind her.

Now the night was mine.

I’d never been so close to the stars in open air. Even in Nye’s Center, I was closed in most of the time, and when I wasn’t, I’d been too concerned with living through the experience to really feel it. But this was the Celestine’s natural habitat. Layers of air. Rings of light. Endless possibilities above and a finite end below.

One last time, I summoned Flame, the name I’d given my phoenix golem once I understood it was really alive.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said.

I knew the spark perched on my hand wasn’t Evie, but I felt like I was holding her soul balanced on my fingertips. Impossibly light and fragile. Impossibly beautiful.

“I don’t know what happened, but I tried. I swear I did. I’m sorry that I failed. I wish I’d killed him.”

I dismissed Flame and turned my face to the night sky. The stars sang a dirge for my sister. Their ever-present hum built to a symphony of colors that could only be heard, not seen, and the heavens cried. Tiny meteors pelted the atmosphere, breaking up on contact.

“Good-bye,” I whispered, then sank to the metal porch to watch the embers fall. The cold didn’t bother me so much anymore; it matched how I felt inside.

“Sometimes they come back.”

The way Nafiza could pop out of the shadows was flat-out eerie, as was the way she invited herself to sit beside me on the porch before I could tell her not to.

“The dead don’t come back,” I said.

“Sometimes they come back. I like to sit out here and watch them.”

She pointed to the stars. Her voice was strong and clear, folded around the syllables of a regional dialect that was similar to Nagendra’s when he told stories of the past. All of her earlier awkwardness and stilted speech had gone.

“They drift in, barely close enough to see, and so translucent they could be a daydream. After a while, you get to know the difference.”

“And do other people see these daydreams?” I asked.

She laughed, which was strange—Nafiza hardly felt like she belonged in reality. Laughter was too common a sound for her.

“I’m not crazy, Penelope. I can’t control what it is that I see, and I can’t always interpret it, but I try. I just see things slightly out of order.”

“Reality dyslexic?”

“Not the worst description I’ve ever heard. Before I left the ground, I had to stop teaching because I was grading students on work they hadn’t done yet. I had to stop driving when I started making turns that were on another street. I’m far from perfect, but at least I can function now, and I’ve managed to help the community sidestep some potential disasters.”

I still didn’t know why she’d approached me again—or why she had to wait until the neighborhood was deserted to do it. Maybe she just wanted someone to talk to. The words she spoke were more than law on the Mile; they were destiny. Maybe speaking to an outsider was the only way for her to have a conversation without every word being analyzed for meaning.

Or maybe she wanted something from me, but she’d spoken in riddles for so long that she’d forgotten how to ask plainly.

“Did you know we were coming here?” I asked.

“I think what you want to ask me is whether or not you’re the danger destined to accompany Winifred to the Mile.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t know everything, but I do know a Medusae when I see one. He’s back.”

She pointed upward again. Out beyond the horizon’s curve, in the deepest field of stars, there hovered a disturbance. It had no color and no solid edges, but the jellyfish shape was unmistakable. It darted here and there, coming close, then backing off at impossible speeds.

The closest I’d ever come to seeing one was at Nye’s Center, when I’d put my hands into the plasma that the wardens were using to try to breed their own Medusae. Passing a current through the plasma had created a field of baseball-sized blisters shaped exactly like the thing in the sky. The jellyfish I’d created were no more alive than Anise’s Kodiak bear, but the one up there? That was no golem. It was alive, and there had been thousands of them stretching from one side of the planet to the other during the Great Illusion.

A familiar prickle started in my chest: the beginning notes of a song sung by the stars, waiting to see if I’d pick it up and call them to action. The strangest part was that I didn’t think they were singing for me. They were speaking to the Medusae, and I was just close enough to their shared frequency to pick up the feedback. All this time—my whole life—I thought I was the one bringing down the stars, but what if I was wrong? What if it was them, hearing me and responding with deadly force when I felt threatened because they recognized my voice as a part of them?

What did that make me?

“They’re curious things, but they keep their distance,” Nafiza said. “I think he liked your light show.”

“You were touched by one, weren’t you?” I asked.

“I encountered one, yes. I’d pulled to the side of a county road, watching them as they arrived. No one knew what was happening. The radio stopped working. I found a pocket of clear sky and thought it would be safer. A light appeared in the space with me, and then a young woman was there. Then she wasn’t. That became less unusual the more things I saw.”

“Things so terrifying that they require the exile of little girls from their homes?”

“That wasn’t my decision.”

“You could have kept your mouth shut.”

“If you saw a dam about to break above a town that didn’t know disaster was coming, wouldn’t you call out to save them?”

“Not if the only way to warn them was to drown a child in the rising water. That’s what you did to Winnie.”

“I reveal the dangers. Most of the time, the words are out before I know I’m going to speak. I couldn’t repeat half of what I said to you before. It’s really not me speaking. The words just are. I don’t know where they come from.”

“If you’re here to warn me about Winnie, save your breath. She’s on the short list of people I trust. You aren’t.”

And weird pseudo-explanations about something else speaking through her mouth weren’t going to change that.

Another volley of meteors hit the outer shell of the atmosphere and shattered. The Medusae vanished completely and didn’t come back.

“Stardust,” Nafiza said idly. She’d turned in anticipation of the show, and saw the impact.

“What did you say?” Stardust was Warden Nye’s word. I never wanted to hear it or pet again.

“I can barely remember how people looked to me before my sight was changed. Now I see . . . attachments to them. Alterations. Maybe auras would be the right way to say it; I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I see them in two places at once, doing or saying different things in the same instant. With you, it’s a shimmer on your body. Golden dust, like your skin is covered in glittering pollen.”

“Stardust?”

“Stardust,” she echoed. “Yes, I think you could have been happy here.”

She said it like I’d asked her opinion. Her face clouded with an odd, faraway stare. I knew what came next. Her eyes would darken, and she would ramble about might-have-beens and never-weres, yesterday’s tomorrows that might not happen because they already had. Every hope and every failure present in every second of the day. What a nightmare her mind must be.

“You’ve got a good heart, Penelope Roma. Make sure you guard it. The heart, once destroyed, becomes a snare.” Her voice became monotone and took on an unnatural, even cadence that was more robotic than Iva had ever sounded. “A false heart always betrays. You can’t blame it. Its loyalty is to another.”

It could have been a trick of the night, but something swirled in her eyes before they cleared.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet.” She pushed up off the ground without her hands and hesitantly added: “You should know that death isn’t the end; it’s only death, if that makes any sense.”

Not really.

She turned to go, a ripple of black voiding the distant stars behind her.

“Nafiza? Can you really see my father? My other sisters, or anyone from The Show? Can you tell me what I should do?”

“Stars don’t need to ask shadows to light their way. They already have what they need.”

“But what if the light goes out?”

She went so still that she disappeared into the void.

“I’m sorry for the loss you’ll suffer. It might feel like you’re in a tomb, but light always finds its way in through the cracks.”

“Evie died before we got here,” I said, hoping to anchor her in the present. “We’re in the now, not the then.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, then merged with the night like the Medusae who’d been above us.

I blamed my inability to sleep on the nap I’d taken that afternoon, but the truth was that I was getting that feeling again. A slow-encroaching stranglehold that said something unavoidable was headed my way. My own personal early warning system of impending doom.

Anise was asleep, curled protectively around Birdie on the bed in our father’s workroom. Birdie faded in and out of view with each breath. Winnie was on her other side, knees drawn into the fetal position, and shaking. Even with the house’s capacity for rearranging itself, there wasn’t nearly enough furniture to go around, so the girls had been given the bed, while the guys took spots on the floor. No one had told us we had to all squeeze into one room, but it was like that night at the Hollow when we’d all crept into Anise’s room because it was the only way we felt safe. This way, anyone who woke up could take solace in the sound of the others’ breathing.

Birch had started off with a sleeping bag, but in his sleep, tendrils sprouted on the floor and walls, braiding themselves into a cocoon that hid him completely. Looping, overlapping, covered in spikes on the outside, and still growing to make sure enemies kept their distance. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that was how he’d slept at the Center, tucked deep into a protective jungle of his own creation.

It was amazing how much sleep could reveal about a person’s thoughts and fears.

Klok slept sitting up in the corner with his feet crossed and his shoes off. It was the bare feet that made me pause. Removing shoes to sleep was a human thing. A comfort thing. Klok had been part of my life for years, but I still didn’t know what to make of him. I didn’t know if he was more man or machine. All I knew was that my father had made him to replace the son I’d killed. I’d been jealous of him and felt sorry for him, and I’d very rarely seen him sleep. I wasn’t even sure if he had to or if he chose to. I took one of the extra blankets Baba had provided and draped it over him, unsure if he could feel the cold.

Everything seemed fine, so why did I feel like the Mile was about to drop out from under us?

I took a reading on the house; nothing mechanical was out of place.

Bijou was chasing dust bunnies under the bed, while Xerxes chewed on an arm from the kitchen light that he’d taken as a spoil of war.

“I can’t sleep either,” Jermay said as I approached his pallet. He was lying awake on a pile of blankets. “What’s your excuse?”

“I am my father’s daughter. He used to pace all night.”

As a child, I’d thought my father’s insomnia was caused by the piles of thoughts in his head. He always seemed to have so many ideas spilling out that they banked on top of one another. A new invention would create itself while he was drawing up the plans for the one it would replace. I never imagined something so common as worry was what really tormented him.

“For me, it’s the sounds,” Jermay said. He sat up and moved over so I could take the space beside him. “Their engines sound the same as the ones at the . . . you know.”

At the Center. The unspoken words that could do worse than summon the dead. They summoned memories.

“I thought the cells were soundproof,” I said.

“We weren’t in the cells at first. There was a holding area, and I heard . . . I heard awful things. I thought I’d die there.”

“Where was it?” I asked, wondering if he’d been inside the Ground Center with Wren when my father’s traveling coat took me there. If he’d been there and I left him . . .

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“They never let me see a window,” he said. “I heard them talking about you, and I heard the screams, but I didn’t know if they were yours.”

“No one was screaming at the Center, Jermay. Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

“Maybe—they kept us moving, and we were all pretty out of it. Drugged, I think. Then they separated us. I was in pain, and then I was in the dark, with the clock. But every once in a while, the ticking would stop and I’d hear the warden’s voice like a PA system making announcements or something. I can’t even remember what he said, but his voice was almost nice, and for a split second on either side of his words, I’d hear the engines.”

“The prison level sat right on top of them,” I said. When Greyor took me into the maze of cells to find my sisters, we’d taken an elevator down and down and down to the lowest habitable levels.

“This whole place sounds exactly like it. I can’t stay here. I keep expecting to hear that voice or the clock or—we should leave. You and me.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m serious. We can take Xerxes and leave Bijou for the others.”

The missing spark in his eyes made a brief appearance, flashing in the dark like an icy flint that couldn’t catch fire.

“You’re exhausted. You need to sleep, and then—”

“I can’t! Not with them here. Not with him! I don’t trust him. Look at him. He’s a wreck.” He stared at Birch’s cocoon.

“No worse than me or you.”

“Exactly. I was in that cell for a month, and I can’t close my eyes for two seconds without seeing apparitions of the warden or hearing his voice. You see the difference in Winnie after being held prisoner. Birdie almost faded away for good. Anise and Klok nearly died in there! What do you think a life lived in that nightmare does to someone?”

“All he wanted was a way out of Commission custody.”

“Then why didn’t they need a collar to keep him there?”

“I wasn’t wearing one, either. Does that mean you don’t trust me?”

“Stop twisting things! You don’t understand what it was like!”

“I was there!”

“You were playing dress-up in a dollhouse! That voice . . . it’s . . . it’s in my blood. It’s in my bones. It crawls up under my skin and makes me think the words it says are my own thoughts. I don’t trust him. Especially not after what the shadow-woman said to me while I was out.”

“Nafiza spoke to you? What did she say?”

“She ambushed me. Random gibberish mostly, but I understood enough to know she was trying to warn me. Betrayal. Lies. These are not good words, Penn.”

He was serious.

This wasn’t my Jermay, quick with a trick and quick with a joke. This was some scared, wild thing wearing his face.

“We need to leave. We need to go now. Go by yourself if you don’t want it to look like we ran away together. Just get away from here and him before something bad happens.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. We’re miles off the ground, and no one knows we’re here. No one knows this place is here. I know it’s hard to accept, but we’re safe. I’ve got my father’s notes and his computer. They might tell us where to go. Nafiza scares everyone; she doesn’t mean anything by it. I don’t want to run anymore. Go to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll talk to Anise and decide what to do.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, you’re probably right. My head’s just a mess, you know?”

I thought I did. One conversation with Nafiza was enough to turn reality on its head, and that wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish with people who had grown up inside a circus. We were used to knowing all the tricks and double-checking the safeties before attempting them; being in the dark felt wrong and uncomfortable.

I settled in beside Jermay, laying my head against his shoulder so I could hear the steady beat of his heart beneath his collarbone. His arms closed around me to let me know it was okay to stay put.

This is now, I told myself. This is real. Whatever had happened before didn’t matter anymore, because we could keep running from it, the same way my father had. Jermay and I were as constant as a heartbeat and just as infallible. No prophecy could change that.

CHAPTER 12

I heard a crash, and then a scream.

I shot off the floor, disoriented enough to wonder why I was sleeping on a pallet instead of in a bed. Sleep had rearranged my perception of the room, but I’d weathered enough catastrophes in the last few weeks for those kinds of details not to matter. Things were crashing. People were screaming. We were in danger, and I didn’t know where anyone was.

Thoughts of Evie were still fresh in my mind, the final imprint of a dream I’d already forgotten. Fire lit along my nerves, blazing down my arms until it manifested on my hands. There was no real tactical advantage to setting myself on fire, but the sight could startle someone long enough for an escape or a preemptive strike.

One of many things I wished I didn’t know, but that was the world I’d been forced into.

Flame was ready to fly, but my phoenix needed directions from me. I had none to give; the room was empty. It wasn’t even the room I was expecting. This wasn’t the Hollow. This wasn’t my nursery. I was in my father’s room inside the house belonging to Winnie’s Baba. I was on the Golden Mile.

“Whoa!” Jermay said. He moved toward me from the door with his hands up as though he thought I was attacking him. “Penn, what are you doing?”

“I heard shouting. It wasn’t a dream this time. I really heard it.”

It came again, shrill and loud enough to pass through the closed windows from outside. All of the voices were children. There were children shrieking, and Jermay was just standing there, acting like I was the one not making sense. The fire in my hands turned from orange to hotter blue.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “Back it down and look out the window.”

Birdie was running up and down the street at full speed, holding a younger girl by the hand. Dev was right behind them, dragging a little boy along.

“They’re playing,” I said in amazement. Another dozen or so had paired off into teams for a mock melee. One of them got tackled, and I heard the shrieks again.

“Yeah,” Jermay said. “That’s all it was. Kids playing. I think it’s safe to put the fire out now.”

My hand was still burning, and I hadn’t noticed. I quashed the flames, willing them to recede and take the heat in my blood with them, and unlike yesterday’s uncooperative air bubble that had me nearly walking on the ceiling, they listened.

Outside, Birdie and her new friends were on the move, skipping from one newly sprouted patch of lawn to the next. Birch had been busy. The grass still needed new soil to thrive, but things had definitely improved. This whole section of the Mile was set up with narrow streets made of suspension bridges surrounded by netting to prevent anyone from falling off while playing chase. Each house was two or three levels high, with plants growing from pots and troughs on ledges bolted to the sides. Most of the planters held only sticks where their greens had died. The ones Birch had handled were overflowing with flowered bushes.

“They’ve been running like that for over an hour,” Jermay said. Nothing remained of the nervous insomniac who had begged me to flee the Mile. This Jermay was smiling his perfect lopsided smile. Only his hair was disheveled, like he’d worn it for The Show, as untamed as the secret enchantments that sparked in his eyes. “I forgot that running was supposed to be fun.”

“Me, too.”

Our recent games of chase had been us running from heavily armed Commission wardens. We ran and ran, and they still caught up. When we got tagged, people died.

The little girl with Birdie climbed up on her back, freeing Birdie’s hands. She scaled the side of one of the other dwellings with ease, spotting hand- and footholds that no one else would have noticed, and ran across the suspension cables that tethered one house to the next.

“Hey! No fair!” Dev complained. “We called No Touch!”

“That’s not my touch,” Birdie shouted back. “This is!”

Starting with the crown of her head, she blotted herself out of view. The little girl on her back was left looking like she was flying.

“Powers on!” Dev called. The rest of the kids cheered, turning the street into a crossroad of fire hitting water, and wind blowing people over like bowling pins.

Dev jumped back into a cloud of rust-colored smoke and sparklers that enveloped his body. He blinked out of sight, only to pop back into view directly behind Birdie and her friend.

“Gotcha!” he announced, and accomplished the impossible—he caught Birdie off guard, causing her to show herself.

Startled at his sudden appearance, she tipped backward. She wasn’t used to the extra weight of another girl on her back. Dev’s hand shot out to catch hers as she leaned almost parallel to the ground off the edge of the house, with the smaller girl dangling. Dev pulled Birdie up; the two of them locked eyes and cracked up laughing.

“You’re it!” Dev shouted. He smoked himself off the roof and down to his companion.

Birdie scrunched up her nose, annoyed, before turning herself and her friend completely invisible so they could chase down the boys without being seen.

“You should see him do the teleportation thing up close,” Jermay said. “That smoke smells like burnt cinnamon.”

Teleportation wasn’t one of the four elemental powers common to touched children—any more than Birdie’s invisibility or whatever it was that Nola could do, assuming her claims of “sight” indicated that she was touched, too. I knew nothing about Birdie’s past, and neither did she, so it was possible that she was a Level-Five separated from her twin brother. But from what I’d read in Nye’s files at the Center, most fifth girls had no powers, and the majority of them died at birth. Winnie’s family was even more peculiar. If she and Dev and Nola were all fifth-born, where were their siblings? Even with the ten people Winnie said used to pack into Baba’s kitchen, where were the others? No other family had come forward on the Mile, and Dev was markedly younger than Nola. Winnie was younger than Nola. No way were Nola and Dev twins.

Was that why Arcineaux had been so upset about losing Winnie? Was that why he’d fixated on her when he found out that Nye had squirreled her away? I’d thought it was his pride, but what if her genetics were different enough to change the rules of progression? Not exactly questions I could ask her in friendly conversation.

“So, now that you’re not likely to kill anyone for giving you a wake-up call, do you think you can come downstairs? Winnie’s grandfather is accusing us of trying to starve him because we waited on breakfast for you. I swear that old man eats more than Squint and Bruno combined.”

I wasn’t hungry, but I did have a lot to do between helping Anise with the topsoil harvest and the possibility of the repair work Nafiza had foretold. For that, I’d need fuel.

I accepted Jermay’s hand up and stuffed my hideous morning hair into the scarf that Nafiza had given me, but when we tried to leave, Bijou blocked the door.

He stood in the opening, tall as he could manage, with his wings out to their full, shrunken span, showing off the jewels on the underside.

“Move!” Jermay said.

Bijou rattled his wings.

“His eyes are red,” I noted.

Golem eyes were usually made of backlit pieces of gold-flecked glass. During the assault on our train, they had turned a menacing, glowing red to signal the start of a guardian routine my father had buried in their programming.

That stranglehold feeling was coming back.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Bijou dropped his wings. He pointed his snout at the stairs down the hall. That was where Xerxes had positioned himself as sentinel. Body stretched low in the way of a cat ready to pounce. Feathers standing up off his neck. Something downstairs had him royally ticked off.

“Do you hear that?” Jermay cocked his head toward the door.

I slid around Bijou, careful of the sharp points on his wings, and moved closer to the stairs. There were people in the kitchen, and they were shouting.

“Something tells me they’re not playing tag,” I said. These voices were adult and angry.

We crept down the stairs until we could see better. Ollie and Esther were back, with more neighbors. Nafiza was sitting in a chair with her face in her hands, overwhelmed by the commotion, while Baba and Anise tried to mediate.

Winnie, Birch, and Klok were there, too, standing at the edge of the room, with Klok as a barrier between the angry crowd and the other two.

“Tell them nothing’s changed!” Ollie demanded. “She’s still a threat to everyone here!”

“Nafiza, do you think my granddaughter is dangerous?” Baba asked.

“I never saw Winifred as a danger.” Nafiza wrapped her arms around herself, hands twisted in the fabric of her shawl. “She was such a darling girl. She still is, mostly.”

“You said—” Esther broke in, but Nafiza’s mind was clear enough that she wouldn’t let herself be run over.

“Winifred is present at the end of the Mile. The two are linked, and she will accompany destruction, but she’s not dangerous. Why can’t you understand the difference?”

“That’s not what you said,” Esther insisted.

“I did! You ruined the order!”

Klok’s voice screen beeped furiously. I couldn’t read it, but I took solace in the assumption that he was being inappropriate.

“You can’t change the order.” Nafiza rocked back and forth, pulling at her shawl on the sides of her head, mumbling to herself. “Now it’s out of order. She has to be there because she was there. If she was there, then she has to be there. You can’t remove her! You can’t change the order!”

Her unique way of seeing the world didn’t translate easily, especially to people who refused to listen.

“I see you,” she said to Winnie. “I see you.”

“Do you see what she’s causing?” Ollie asked the others. “That girl brings trouble. She has to leave.”

“We have never turned away someone in need,” Baba argued. “Winifred knew this; that’s why she directed her friends here.”

“Those rules aren’t meant to allow exiles to force their way back in.”

“Force is hardly accurate.”

“With what she can do? How else do you explain her presence here?” Ollie asked.

“She is a child of the Mile and has every right to be here!”

It looked like a second war was about to break out in the kitchen, only this time, the participants could bleed.

“I asked for asylum, not Winnie,” I said from my spot on the stairs. “I mean, she told me how, but I’m the one who spoke. She’s very particular about what she says and who she says it to.”

“And who are you to interfere in our affairs?”

Ollie was obviously used to being listened to. He used his size and booming voice to their full advantage, but I knew an act when I saw one, and I wasn’t afraid of him.

I stood straight and faced him, with Jermay beside me, hooked to my finger, and Xerxes a step behind me as backup. Anise and Birch were there if I needed them, and I had Klok, who was my own army of one. Ollie was outnumbered and didn’t even know it.

“I’m Penelope Roma.” I used my ringmaster voice and delighted in the confusion on his face. That voice was based on my father’s, and far more masculine and authoritative than I appeared. “Magnus is my father—and Anise’s. That’s who I am.”

“She’s telling the truth.” Nola spoke up for the first time. “I was nervous when I realized it was Winnie”—she stumbled over the name—“in the shop, but she never used her touch. I would have seen. She hasn’t used it since she’s been here. I . . . I don’t think she’s dangerous, either. I vote she stays.”

She gave Winnie a timid glance but otherwise stayed still.

“That might mean more if her touch couldn’t make you say anything that serves her purpose. Keeping her here is too great a risk to take for one person,” Esther said. “We all agree.”

“I don’t,” Birch said.

“Neither do I.” Anise.

“Nor I.” Baba.

Beep! Klok.

I loved my friends. Esther didn’t know what to say when they challenged her, mainly because no one came to her defense. Crowds are fickle; their loyalties can change.

I brushed past her into the crowd that had closed in on Nafiza’s seat. A bunch of idiots harassing a woman and a girl while their own children played outside, oblivious to what their parents were up to.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked Nafiza. Stress had left her eyes halfway between brown and black, so there was no way to tell if her mind was clear or if she was on the verge of losing track of the past, present, and future.

“Stardust.” She pointed to the shooting star on my chest.

I wanted to cringe at the name, but I forced myself to smile. The secret to crowd control was authority, and the secret to authority was confidence. Letting my smile crack would have been weakness, and then I would have lost them.

“It’s yesterday’s tomorrow. I need to fix something in return for the clothes you gave us. Can you tell me where?”

“The power core, in the middle of the Mile,” she said calmly.

“Then I think it’s time to go.”

Ignoring Ollie’s rage and the others’ willingness to follow him gave me the advantage of surprise. No one stopped me when I moved toward the kitchen door and held it open for Nafiza, because no one knew what to do with me.

“I know for a fact that Baba told all of you that we intended to help get this place back to its best. While I repair the power problems, Birch and Anise can show the rest of you how to deal with your growth problem, so your produce yield will increase,” I told Esther. “You’re going to have to be specific with what you want planted and where.”

Esther looked from Ollie to me and back again. She ducked her head and hurried out, watching the ground as she went. The others, followers all, went with her.

“I’m not sure eating words was what Baba had in mind for breakfast,” Jermay whispered, grinning.

Ollie had remained behind, refusing to be dismissed by a girl he had no intention of listening to.

“We’ll finish this discussion later,” he said—to Baba, not me, which was enough to bandage his ego. He decided it was time to go.

I flicked my wrist, and Flame appeared in the door, blocking his exit. Primal-fear triggers have their uses.

“Winnie is my friend,” I told him.

“I’m sure she is,” he said to me, then turned to Winnie. “I don’t have anything against you, personally, but—”

But that was not an apology, and I was still cranky.

“I try very hard to keep my temper in check—bad things happen when I don’t—but you aren’t making it easy. Winnie isn’t just my friend, she’s family. She saved my life more than once, and of the people who arrived with me, she is not the one you need to worry about. The Commission has turned the world upside down looking for me—and for good reason. Nafiza is right. Winnie does accompany destruction. She came with me.”

“We’re only protecting ourselves and our families.” He was far less boisterous without the angry mob.

“So am I,” I said. “Now, I’m going to repair what you’ve managed to break, and I suggest you keep in mind that anything my father built, I can take apart just by looking at it wrong. Ask the boys Beryl brought in, if you need clarification on that.”

I whistled, and Flame shrunk to his hummingbird form, flew into the kitchen, and lit on my hand.

“I don’t like bullies. Don’t threaten my friends. Winnie would have helped this place thrive, and she could have helped protect it. Banishing her was a grave error on your part. Listen very carefully when I say that trying it again would be a fatal mistake.”

Xerxes and Bijou took the cue I gave them and trumpeted out a roar of agreement for good measure. After that, there really wasn’t anything Ollie could say. He attempted an intimidating glare, but I’d faced down Nye, Arcineaux, and a table full of their cronies. One guy with an overdeveloped sense of self was a shadow puppet by comparison. He stalked out the door and slammed it behind him.

Baba, Nola, my sister, and my friends were stunned, and since I didn’t have to pretend anymore, so was I. I hadn’t thought of what to do if Ollie decided to call my bluff.

“You are my favorite person on or off this planet.” Winnie squeezed me so tight, I thought she might leave bruises.

“What about me?” Birch asked, with an exaggerated pout.

“Booted to second place.” She kicked at him.

“Do I have a shot at third?” Nola asked. “You might have to spot me some points for coming into the game late.”

“You start at fifth, behind Baba and Dev.” Winnie let me go and held her hand out to her cousin. “Where you go from there is up to you.”

“I’ll take it, and I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.” Nola grabbed Winnie’s hand and pulled her into another embrace.

“I think we’d best get ourselves to the town square, if we’re all done with the hugging,” Anise said. “We’ve got a shot at changing a few minds, depending on what we’re able to do over there. I know every one of you is capable of performing under pressure. So, everybody hit your marks, take your bows, and make this the best show of your lives.” She tactfully sidestepped the threats I’d issued, which none of us wanted to follow through on.

CHAPTER 13

Whenever things got particularly tense, I turned the moment into a Show performance and imagined myself announcing it. Repairing the Mile’s power core was one of those situations.

Welcome to The Show, dear patrons. If you will direct your attention to the center ring, you’ll be amazed by a feat never before attempted by mortal girl! Watch as our ringmaster takes the stage to balance enough worry to crush a full-grown elephant, all on her skinny shoulders! Marvel as she navigates the dangerous waters of an unknown society and its technology, all while juggling the locals’ mistrust and trepidation! And since this is The Show, dear friends, she’ll do it all from miles above the Earth, with no safety net! Let’s hope she doesn’t blow it! (’Cause chances are, she’s gonna blow it.)

Cue the thunderous applause, and ignore the fact that someone was always hoping the trick would fail so they could watch the fall.

That was Ollie’s role for the day. He stayed with the group assembled to watch me falter. They’d already seen evidence of Birch’s ability; I was the one unproven in their eyes. The heir of Magnus Roma, laying claim to skills I couldn’t possibly possess. All I needed was another ill-timed power outage.

Winnie, Jermay, and Nola stood nearby, fingers crossed. Birdie and her friends were there, too, but they were there with the expectation of success, waiting to cheer at the finish. Birch and Anise were left to deal with Esther, while Klok had stayed behind with Baba at the house, probably planning our getaway and type-mumbling insults about the neighbors.

I’d performed in front of live crowds my whole life, and never had the jitters so bad. Between the unpleasantry from the kitchen and the nagging feeling left over from the night before, things couldn’t go smoothly—but they did. The repairs were simple. They couldn’t have been done with physical hands or tools, but it didn’t take me much longer to untangle the problems with the Mile’s power core than it had to fix Baba’s house. I restored everything to the settings my father had chosen as optimum, closed it up, and waited for the system to reboot.

Talking to machines was surpassing second nature and moving into first.

“That’s it?” asked a woman in the crowd. “Nothing’s changed.”

She didn’t understand that you couldn’t rush the payoff. Setup was the most important part of a routine, and it took time to execute. Thankfully, not enough time to reignite the mob.

Someone yipped, hopping sideways into the person beside them. It happened again and again, much like the way my tours reacted to the Constrictus when he raised sections of his metal snake body and lifted people off the ground without warning.

“Look at the sidewalk!” Wren shouted.

Everyone obediently checked their feet.

A cement-like polymer bubbled up through the cracks, filling them and washing over the top to restore the original finish. Even the shoeprints and debris dissolved. Without the fog that had plagued our arrival, the walkways looked amazing.

“Hey!”

“Over there!”

“It worked!”

Yes, it did.

Broken buildings recycled pieces no longer attached to them, and repaired themselves. New fronts superimposed over old stores and houses, while several buildings shook from the stress of internal repairs. The conglomeration of storage units that functioned as a town hall branched out with new wings, and another floor built itself above the rest. If the protocols had never been interrupted, all of that work would have been done in real time, as things were needed. No one would have noticed it happening. The few years of exposure to the Mile’s harsh winds and other environmental oddities had left things with enough decay that the restoration was spectacular. Birch’s new plants would make it better, adding color and beauty to an otherwise drab metal vista.

“I guess you really do take after your dad,” Ollie said grudgingly. It was tempting to tell him that I got my temper from my sisters and introduce him to the worst parts of Nim and Vesper. Waterspouts and hurricanes. The flood and the gale.

The Mile made a better advocate for us than we did ourselves. The same people who had filled Baba’s kitchen to demand we take Winnie and leave were now rejoicing for what we’d done.

Off the square was a market made of stalls and tables that folded up and reopened into a new configuration, now with awnings attached to their poles. New, higher fences popped up, along with trash cans and benches there’d been no room to accommodate before.

“Do you think it fixed the park, too?” Birdie asked.

“The only way to know is to check,” I told her.

She ran off on tiptoe with Dev and Wren. Dev caught them by their shoulders and whisked them all out of sight in a cloud of sparking, cinnamon-scented smoke that made the Mile smell like our old midway.

I should have known it was too good to last.

The haze behind Dev’s teleportation hadn’t had time to lift before a new cloud appeared to darken my day. Nafiza whirled into the square like a woman possessed, desperate for someone to listen to her.

“The order’s changing. The heart is false. It changed the order.”

She was screeching, tearing at the edges of her shawl and stopping short to avoid obstacles that weren’t actually in her path.

“The order’s changing. It’s all collapsing,” she said in manic English before switching to a language I didn’t recognize.

That was one skill I definitely didn’t inherit from my father. He spoke enough bits and pieces of different languages to be conversational on every continent. What he couldn’t put into words, he conveyed with his hands. I could only mimic sounds and voices. No doubt I could have repeated Nafiza’s ranting back to her, but I would’ve had no understanding of the words.

She scrambled from person to person within the gathered crowd, staring into eyes and faces until she found me.

“The heart is false,” she announced.

Whatever that meant, it was of the utmost importance.

“The heart of what?” Jermay asked.

She tried to answer, but the words were fighting her. Either they wouldn’t come out or something in the way her touch worked was preventing her from saying what she wanted to and trying to force her to say things she didn’t.

“You know.” The words shot out of her mouth like she’d been choking on them.

“We know what?” Winnie asked. “Is it a person we know? Tell us who.”

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “But you know. I see the heart. The heart is false. The heart betrays. That’s the order, but it changes the order. You’re not supposed to let the order change.”

She doubled over, grabbing her stomach as she sank to the ground on her hands and knees like she was about to be sick. Instead of throwing up, she shouted words in the soulless monotone she’d used on Baba’s porch, but she’d transitioned back to English.

The crowd began to whisper. A familiar, fearful hiss threading its way through the gaps, carrying doubt and the darkest of rumors. Whispers were small. No one noticed when they settled into ears or chewed away at better judgment. No one saw the details shift as they passed from mouth to mouth, growing grander and more sinister, adding volume to give them more power.

Nafiza pounded her fists against the cement, but none of her gathered neighbors came to help.

“They’re afraid of her,” Winnie said. “She had a fit like this before I was exiled. It only happens when something big is coming.”

“I can’t see the order,” Nafiza said purposefully. “You’re there, and there, and there, and there. There’s too much overlap.” She stopped beating the cement and sat up on her knees to take a deep breath, staring at me and pointing to all the places I supposedly occupied.

“It’s feedback,” Nola said. “I can see it. Whatever changed has left too many variables for her to process. Possible events are piling on top of each other. She can’t filter them.”

It’s a fact of human nature that fear will only hold people back for so long. Eventually, if a crowd is large enough to believe they’re stronger than the thing or person they distrust, they’ll surge. The only way to head off the debacle brewing around us was to get Nafiza on her feet and coherent enough to reassure her neighbors that both she and her foresight had calmed down.

“What changed the order?” I asked, kneeling beside Nafiza. “Can you tell us that?”

“Lies!” She slapped herself on the head. “I can’t make it come out straight. Too many lies. A heart that lies . . . no . . . that’s not right. Help me! Catch the stones as they fall. Fall up! Fall up! Too late.”

“Give her a shock,” Jermay suggested. “Maybe it’ll help.”

As more people joined the ring that had formed around us, those nearest came closer.

“If they keep boxing her in like this, she’s going to freak out,” Nola said.

“You mean we haven’t hit freaky yet?” Jermay asked.

“Not even close.”

“This is bad.” Winnie surveyed the crowd.

Ollie had turned away from us. He was speaking and making grand gestures with his arms—gloating. The crowd loved it, and that love turned into frenzy. I suddenly missed Klok and every inch of his larger-than-life self that was dedicated to protecting me from harm.

Machines were so much easier than people. They didn’t argue when you told them there was a glitch in their system making them act offensively, and if all else failed, you could cut the power and rebuild. Some humans were determined to be difficult, even if they had to create the difficulty themselves.

“We should get her back to the house,” I said. “Your grandfather seems to calm her down.” Plus, Baba’s neighbors liked him too much to do more than annoy him with their ideas and complaints.

“I don’t think we can get through,” Winnie said.

In their rush to keep an eye on Nafiza’s breakdown, the crowd had closed ranks, making it impossible to pass through unless they let us.

“You repaired it, but you can’t fix it,” Nafiza said. “Thank you for try-failing.”

She patted my hand. Her way of saying we did our best, I guess.

“Baba can’t talk them all down,” Winnie said. “They’d rather listen to the person shouting than the one speaking sensibly.”

“What changed?” I asked Nafiza desperately. “Tell us what changed and we’ll put it back.”

She faltered, shaking off her trance into startled lucidity.

“I don’t know—NO—sorry. There are seven of you here, one still working on the power core, three at the house. Which one? Which one are you?”

I took her hand.

“Me. This is here. This is now. I’m the real me. When did the order shift?”

I knew better than to say that . . .

“Never ask me that! Never when! When is then and now and always forever.”

Nafiza went back to hitting herself and chanting in that foreign language.

“I can tell you when things changed—the moment you arrived with her,” Ollie said, nodding at Winnie. “False heart, lies, and betrayer. Another warning of impending danger. I’d say that’s a pretty clear description of someone destined to usher disaster to our doorsteps.”

A man of original thought, he wasn’t. He had one argument and made it ad nauseam, hoping to wear down his detractors.

His plan backfired.

“I’ve had years to bring the wardens here if I wanted to, you idiot,” Winnie said. “This was my home! The place I was born and the only life I knew. You never even gave me a chance to defend myself. I was too young to defend myself!”

“We’re the ones who can’t defend ourselves against you! Two words out of that cursed mouth, and you could have us all jumping off the rim.”

“Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that? I protected you! No matter what they did to me, I never said a word about any of you. Do you want to see proof? Is that it? I can show you!”

She held up her arms so her sleeves fell from her wrists and showed her scars.

“You gave me these—and these.”

She moved on to the neck of her shirt.

“Your names are inscribed across my back and down my legs. They’re burned into my veins. I thought of every one of you every time they hurt me, because you’re the reason they were able to. I never did anything to any of you, and I held my tongue for years! Are you proud of what you turned me into? Would you like to see the rest?”

She reached for the hem of her shirt, like she was going to rip it over her head for a visual aid. Her eyes were darkening toward black.

“Whoa.” I pushed her hands down. “One touch overload at a time. Take a breath before you do something you’ll regret.”

“Anything I say to him, I won’t regret!”

“Have any of you bothered to notice that she still isn’t using her touch to defend herself or her friends?” Nola asked. “Even with all of you ganging up on her, she hasn’t forced any of you to do anything. I don’t know how she’s managed. I couldn’t.”

“I would have made them all cluck like chickens,” Jermay said.

“I’m not sure humor’s the way to go here,” I told him.

From the time I could walk and memorize lines well enough to speak them back on cue, I had led tours through The Show’s Caravan of Wonder, introducing people to ghoulish absurdities and monstrous machines. I knew what fear looked like because it was my job to cultivate the crowd’s mood with slight changes in my voice and manner. Emotion is contagious in crowds. People in the back relied on those up front to be their eyes and to cue their responses to things they couldn’t see on their own—that was how mobs started. One person panicked, and everyone else assumed there was a good reason.

Lit match to paper.

Ollie’s tells were subtler, but still present. He tightened his jaw and set his feet boxing-width apart, ready to absorb a blow. He narrowed his eyes to tighten his focus on his perceived adversary. Conscious decision or not, he was daring Winnie to try to make him move. He wanted her to prove him right. It would have solidified his control. He thought.

He had no idea what he was dealing with.

When Winnie faced Warden Arcineaux, she’d been calm and coolly calculating. She’d had little choice in the matter, considering the experiments he’d done on her physically prevented her from defending herself, but she’d found a loophole and those restrictions no longer applied. These people, they unhinged her. She was on the verge of giving Ollie what he wanted.

“Back up,” I ordered, but Ollie had serious issues when it came to taking orders from teenage girls. We were going to have to do this a different way. “I gave you a chance,” I reminded him.

I summoned Flame. Ollie flinched, as did the crowd. Thank you, primal fear.

“You claim you’re here to help us, and then threaten us?” he complained.

“We came here because we were being chased. We helped because you needed it. My golem isn’t a threat; he’s a guard dog. Stay back and he’ll leave you alone.”

“I say you sneeze and let the bird accidentally fry him,” Jermay said.

“That gets my vote,” Winnie added. She was no longer tearing at her clothes to show off her scars, and the Level-Five shading had left her eyes, but we were still miles from calm.

“No,” Nola said. “Baba wouldn’t want that. Let them have their fit. There’s nothing they can do to you or any of us.”

“We can do plenty.” A woman separated from the crowd and stood between Flame and Ollie.

“There are more of us—”

“—than there are of you.”

Two others joined her, one on either side. I could feel them pulling at my phoenix, almost like they were trying to pluck his feathers. They were pyrokinetic, like Evie, and trying to wrest control of my golem away from me, but I doubted any of them were capable of doing it. I’d never seen an elemental outside my family create a golem. They were tied to us.

“Can you do this?” I stomped my foot, copying a trick I’d seen my sister Nim use when she was looking for the water source she needed to do her act. The force went through the ground and into the pipes below, snaked its way to the nearest spigot, and gushed out as my shining sailfish. The fish shot across the quad, knocking the trio of pyros to the ground. It rose and floated in midair, backed by a surge of water, waiting to be set loose.

Now we had two golems standing sentry.

“Don’t push me,” I said.

The commotion had caught Anise’s attention. She and Birch arrived at a run.

The strangled feeling that had kept me awake late into the night returned, dragging a reality-shattering wave behind it. We were at the brink of something worse than a community squabble, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“It’s collapsing!” Nafiza shouted. She ducked, protecting her head from nonexistent debris. Whatever I was feeling, she felt it, too. “Falling stars still fly. You have to catch the stones.” She dove for something, landing at the edge of the walkway before staring at her hands as if it had slipped through her fingers. “Too late.”

She split my focus, which was already compromised from maintaining both golems. The air around me began to vibrate, shaking loose a fall of micro-particles that sifted into the shape of a lynx.

Three golems. I hadn’t called for the last one; it appeared on its own.

I was coming apart. Each elemental representation tore out of me, leaving me weaker while it was outside my body. I’d never had an air golem manifest, but if one decided to, I was sure it would put me on my face.

Don’t fall, I begged the stars. Don’t fall. Stay where you are.

The chances that I caused the disaster Nafiza saw in tandem with Winnie were increasing.

Flame and the sailfish were easy enough to handle. I drew them together, forcing them to cancel each other out and disappear into harmless steam. The lynx was the problem; it was growing. Normally the size of a large dog, it had already passed horse on its way to a bulk that could rival Anise’s Kodiak. Spurred on by rage and nerves, it grew bigger and bigger until its own size did it in. I couldn’t hold it together, so it burst into piles of freshly sifted dirt.

“Time to go.” Nafiza turned her face to the sky, tracking something I couldn’t see because there was nothing there. She was out of step. Whatever she saw hadn’t happened yet. “I see you. Now I go home. That’s the order. Thank you.”

She smiled at Winnie and walked away.

“Please tell me she didn’t just say what I think she did,” Winnie said.

If this was how she’d seen Winnie, then this was the moment of destruction. We were standing in it, and my uneasy feeling was making a lot more sense.

“Nothing’s happening,” Esther said. “Why isn’t anything happening?”

Anticipation was a fear unto itself, one worse than fire. The people on the Mile had dreaded this day for so long, they’d all built up expectations of how it would go. They were waiting for that sum of their fears to grow wings and fly. A great and terrible beast that would blot out the sun and crush their bones beneath its feet.

Trouble was rarely that obvious, and on the occasions when it was, there were reasons it could be so bold.

“Does anyone else hear that?” Birch asked.

A grating whistle filled the air, followed by a metal canister launched high along the trajectory that Nafiza’s gaze had followed seconds before. When the canister reached a point above the square, it stopped and hung suspended, rotating slowly.

“Are those fireworks?” Esther asked, squinting for a better look.

No one shot fireworks in broad daylight, especially not a city in hiding.

“That’s military grade,” Anise said. “Commercial casing, but no markings. Even from this distance, we should be able to see ID numbers stenciled on to say who built it.”

Civilian fireworks were watered-down dynamite. Their range wouldn’t allow them to go high enough to crest the Mile. That canister had come from too shallow an angle to originate on the ground. Whoever set that thing off did it from close by.

Another whistle announced a second canister, and then a third, each rising from different sides. They formed a loose triangle, spinning to align their faces. A thin blue laser shot out from one, linking it to another.

“No,” Birch whispered. “No, no, no. Not here.”

“Do you recognize it?” I asked.

“It’s Commission tech. I’ve never seen one out of its crating, but I think it’s a scanner.”

“Impossible,” Esther argued. “We’ve got sensor buoys surrounding the rim in every direction. They’d pick up a vessel.”

“They didn’t pick us up,” Anise pointed out.

“That’s because the golems are too small,” Winnie said. “Their power drive has a different signature from a propulsion-and-lift system. The buoys have to make allowances for the occasional weather balloon or other high-flying oddity, so they screen by size and composition. Those canisters could have slipped through easily. The launch point could be outside the buoys.”

“Penn? Can you extend the sensor range from here?” my sister asked.

“Not without an access point. Where do the buoys transmit to? I can use the signal.”

That was how I took out the Commission armada at Nye’s Center.

Another laser connected the second unit to the third. Once the triangle was complete, all three beams met at a point in the middle. A spray of blue pulses blanketed the square and everyone in it.

“They’re spiking us!” Birch shouted. “Nobody move!”

CHAPTER 14

Birch had made a classic mistake. You never shout out trouble in front of a crowd unless you want an immediate reaction. They’ll either revolt or retreat, and the people on the square weren’t angry enough to revolt, so they took the other option. They ran in every direction at once, and into the new fixtures the Mile had built that they weren’t used to, and into each other. A spontaneous slapstick routine at the worst possible moment.

At least some of them remembered to call for their kids before they took cover.

“You led them right to us,” Esther said before she charged into the fray with the rest of them. Ollie had already gone.

“We’ve got to get Birdie and Dev back here,” Winnie said.

“Don’t move.” Birch grabbed her to stop her from running off. He didn’t get physical with people very often, but he was holding tight enough that the material of her shirt pulled at her shoulder. “Those things can pick up vibrations.”

“The Mile has evac procedures in place, but we need to be at the house,” she argued.

Birch yelled, “Stop!” but he couldn’t crack the decibels to be heard over the crowd. He waved his arms and even tried putting himself in the middle of the walk, but people went around him, branching off toward the Mile’s different neighborhoods. “Stop moving!”

“We’ve been painted by a Commission disco ball,” Jermay said. “I think it’s a little late for a game of freeze tag to save the day. They’re here. What’s plan B?”

“Shut it down,” Anise said. “If they’re spiking us, they’re still searching, and that means they only have a general location. That light show’s meant to cause a panic so they can pinpoint an exact location. Go dark before they lock on to the tech and follow it in.”

I stumble-ran across the square and pried the plate off the power cells with my bare hands. I had no intention of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy or watching the Mile crumble through my fingers. I’d seen enough destruction.

“Off!” I shouted at each system as the threads of my connection reached them. I’d cut everything but the engines keeping us aloft. “Off! Stop!”

The systems responded with surprise, a level of awareness that surprised me. Machines were supposed to respond to commands, not question them.

“We’re in danger. Those beacons are a threat.” I talked to the systems like I would a creeper light, being as precise and simple as possible. Emotion was an electrical impulse in the brain; surely it would translate into circuits. I told them to hide away so no one could find them.

Generators all over the Mile groaned in protest at being made to halt, but they followed orders. A thousand micro-plugs pulled from their sockets. We were left with the sound of wind and running feet beneath the spike’s flashing blue lights. I tried to minimize the impact of the engines in the surrounding space, checking for ways to dampen or mask their presence.

Even at their lowest settings, they were power hogs audible without equipment. I could cut off a few of them and rely on redundancy to keep us in the air, but if I picked the wrong ones or killed too many, it would mean an instant death spiral. The Mile was too massive. It would destabilize and fall fast, and it wouldn’t recover.

“There has to be a way to do this,” I told myself. I tried mapping another route through the circuitry, searching for a configuration that would put us in the clear.

My mental ringmaster announced my new trick: escape the labyrinth. A real nail-biter of an act, set to a clock that’s ready to chime my doom.

“You’re going to have to walk me through it,” I added. The central processor for the Mile was complex as any brain. Neurosurgery without a map was never a good idea.

Everything started off well. The last firewall crashed down on cue. The security measures around the engines materialized in my head. I tapped five turbines, turning them off, but on the sixth, the energy flow hiccupped. It looped backward over what should have been a one-way trail and flowed into my right hand. An echo of my own voice ordered “Stop” so loud and hard I felt it like a punch to the chest. A brutal grip pinched my shoulder. My arm fell numb and useless at my side. I held it with my left hand to reassure myself it was still there. It felt like it had been erased.

“What happened?” Jermay asked. He put his arm around my waist to make sure I didn’t tip over.

“I don’t know. I can’t move my arm.” But right then, it didn’t matter. Other things were more important. “Was it enough?”

The blue lights from the spike twirled faster. What had been snowy dots on our skin and the ground blurred into stripes.

“Don’t go green,” Birch mumbled. “Don’t go green. Don’t go g—”

Repeating himself was a new nervous tic.

The blue lights switched off, stalling just long enough to torment us with the possibility of success. I held my breath, afraid that if I let it go, my wish for safety might escape. Mine was still a child’s hope, and I was too old to believe.

The sky flashed green beneath an expanding canopy of colored light that sought out the edges of the Mile and marked them. The high-pitched metallic whine of spinning canisters dropped in tone to a steady, foreboding horn blast.

“It wasn’t enough.” Birch was still watching the sky.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

“Get back to the house!” That was Winnie.

None of us needed the nudge. We were already moving.

“I’ll get Birdie,” Anise said. “Be ready to go when I get there.”

Running was definitely not a game for me. The movement of my arms and legs was too closely tied to survival; my mind surrendered all of its emotional space to tactical analysis. I was already mapping out where my friends and family were in relation to my position, checking right and left from the corner of each eye to make sure no one hostile was getting close, completely tangled in strings of adrenaline and endorphins offered up by my body to help me push through the fatigue and pain that always came with a quick getaway.

This was not fun at all. With a lame arm, every stride felt off-balance. It made Jermay hold back, when he could have outrun us all. He was too concerned with me to worry about himself.

“What’s the matter with your arm?” Birch asked. By this point, we’d all mastered the art of conversation while fleeing.

“I got a shock when I opened the power module,” I said.

“Do you want me to sling it?”

“No time!”

Birch meant well, but sometimes he acted like we were still on the Center. Danger was background noise he’d learned to tune out years ago. It was something he could avoid by only going certain places or saying certain things. A “stay out of the water, and the crocodiles can’t eat you” philosophy. He wasn’t prepared for the water to jump the banks and wash us straight into the crocs’ mouths.

Winnie hit her grandfather’s door first, and we plunged into a sparkling cloud of cinnamon-scented smoke on the other side. Anise had already found Birdie, and Dev had teleported them home via a shortcut through time and space.

“The module’s charging,” Nola told the kids. “Three minutes and we’re gone, so if you want it and you can carry it, get it down here in two. That’s all you’re taking with you.”

“Easy for me,” Wren said with a shrug. “I don’t got nothin’ that’s mine except my skin.”

He went to help Dev, while Winnie and Nola went in search of their grandfather.

The feeling in my arm was returning one protesting nerve at a time, causing my hand to jerk at random intervals. I tried holding it still with my other hand, but the spasms were too strong. I wished my father was there to tell me what was happening. Surely he’d had a machine or two backwash on him. He’d know how to fix it.

“Klok!” Anise yelled up the stairs, then toward the kitchen.

He ambled in from outside.

“Has something affected the visible spectrum in relation to the curvature of the Earth?” rat-tatted across his screen. “I have run a diagnostic. My eyes are functioning properly, yet the sky appears green.”

“It is green,” I said.

“That is disconcerting. Green is unnatural. Are you the cause? I was unaware that you possessed this skill. You should attempt to correct the angle of curvature.”

“No!”

Klok didn’t display emotion in the words he spoke, mostly because they were typed across a screen. He didn’t have real body language to clue a person in on the tone of what he was saying, so it was easy to take things personally when he was stating what he believed to be facts. I heard him blaming me for the green skies, and I heard the words disconcerting and unnatural.

“This is not my fault!” I snapped at him. “The Commission spiked us.”

“Apologies. I made an assumption based on known variables. Your powers are in flux, and you have demonstrated accidental destructive capability in the past. Your arm is weird. Do you realize that it’s twitching? This would imply nerve damage. Was that an inappropriate observation as well?”

I’d never heard him babble before.

“Klok, are you actually nervous?”

“Evacuation will improve my mood. Statistically, a spike precedes increased Commission presence in 98% of occurrences, with an error margin of 2%. I do not wish to return to a Commission-run facility.”

He was scared of being taken apart, even with his armor.

“No one’s going to the Commission,” Anise told him. “Round up the golems. I don’t care what mood Xerxes is in, get him to cooperate, even if you have to solder his feet together.”

“That would significantly impede his ability to function,” Klok said. Sarcasm was just not part of his programming.

The first, sluggish tones of a last-century air-raid siren sounded. Distant, then closer as the machine warmed up, the tone slipped in under the windows and through the doors. It shook the walls as Winnie and Nola reappeared, each supporting Baba by an arm.

“They’ve crossed the buoys,” Baba said. “They’ll be here any minute. Girls, kids, get into the pod. It should be preset for the beta site.”

“The pod that brought you here?” Anise asked. “It’s still functional?”

“Most of them are. Your father was always prepared for the worst. He made it possible for us to rebuild at a beta site if we were ever found.”

“We can take you with us,” Nola offered. “There’s room.”

“It’s safer if we split,” Anise said tactfully. “Our golems got us here. They won’t fail us now.”

She knew the Mile was collateral damage, not the main target. That was us. Once we were airborne, the Commission would likely shift their focus, giving the people on the Mile a better chance.

“Penn, if that arm’s a problem, tell me now. We’re going to need you out there.”

“Flame!” I called out in response. I never got a heads-up before my touch failed, and I never felt any different. I wasn’t sure if my phoenix would answer until the spark went off inside me like I’d flicked a lighter. The only available heat source in the room was the barely there candle Winnie had lit for her brother. It surrendered the last of Greyor’s memory, splitting the peak into wings, stretching out into tail feathers. Flame appeared pure and perfect, now bolstered by Greyor’s soul as well as Evie’s.

“Good,” Anise said.

“What about you?” Nola asked Winnie. A new sadness settled in her eyes when she realized whose photo the candle had been burning for. She kept quiet, wisely choosing not to burden her grandfather with the loss before their escape. She went to the shelf and retrieved the frame.

Winnie stood between us, the picture of indecision. Her family was offering to take her back and welcome her into the new life they’d all be facing. Her second family was poised to run away to draw danger away from the first.

Birch stepped over and took her hand.

“She’s coming with us.”

“Or you could go with them,” I said to him. Maybe that was his answer. Become one of the unseen and uncounted. Get away from me and the constant reminders of the Center that came with me.

“I can?” The suggestion stunned him.

He’d only made a handful of decisions in his life, and he’d never considered that he could pick his own path based on his own desires.

“What do you want to do?” he asked Winnie. “I’ll go with you.”

It would have made for a nearly romantic gesture if not for the intrusion of a Commission cargo hauler sailing past the house. Deceptively fast for their size and cumbersome shape, these transport ships were built to ferry supplies and equipment. They could also move several hundred people—personnel or captives—and now I saw there were three of them. The Commission either intended to land shock troops on the Mile, or fill a detention center with its citizens.

“Whatever we’re doing, let’s do it now,” Jermay said.

I spun toward the stairs.

“You all get in place. Give me one minute.”

“Penn!”

“One minute!”

All I could think was this time I wouldn’t let them take my father’s work. They’d burned the train and demolished the Hollow, blotting nearly every trace of Magnus Roma off the planet. The only thing left was what he’d kept hidden here on the Mile, and it was going with me, no matter how I got off this mile-wide tin can. I took the stairs two at a time, ignoring Anise’s shouts for me to stay with the group.

We had not been through all of this for nothing. We had not been brought to the Mile by coincidence. Nafiza had seen us for a reason, and I believed that reason was within reach. I snatched the briefcase off the desk, hanging tight with my left hand. My right one had mostly thawed out, but I didn’t trust it not to fail me again.

The workroom looked completely different with its walls painted acid green by the light shining through the window. Everything was off-color and too dark. The shadows didn’t fall where they should have. They’d been perverted by the fear that beam represented.

Outside, I could see people still running for shelter. The house across the street opened up. Its roof slid back. The sides popped out, like a square blossoming flower, allowing a small winged vessel to rise from the middle, identical to the one that had hung below our big top’s balloon. I blinked and it was gone, along with a half-dozen others from along the street.

The Commission knew the Mile existed now. I wondered if the community knew they’d have to keep running. All of their children were assets that could be rounded up, collared, and exploited. I’d seen how the wardens fought for control of people with different abilities. They’d go to war over Dev, who could take them anywhere in the world without concern for the security that might keep them out. And Nola, who seemed mundane enough but quietly existed as a divining rod, able to see a person’s touch inside them. Wren might get away unless they realized where he came from; then he’d be back in a cell somewhere, unheard and unmissed.

More pods shook loose from their plots like animals waking from hibernations. They rose, dropping the outer trappings of the lives they were leaving behind. Laundry on lines, snapping and blowing in the wind, but still attached to the pods on one side. Discarded toys falling through gaps in lawns that no longer existed. Walkways and chunks of sidewalk raining down on the world below.

Here was the destruction of the Mile at the hands of those who lived there. Every house torn down to its foundation left the structure compromised and crumbling. There were too many gaps, too close together. The reverberations from a hundred propulsion systems cracked the solid space between them, so it fell away, leaving chasms that stragglers had to fight to escape.

We were at the climax of a cheap sci-fi film. Desolation and invasion backlit by a halo of glowing green.

With the pods removed, I could see all the way to the outer rim through the window of my father’s room. The first of three vessels tried to dock, but the rim proved too brittle. The clamps broke away, leaving the ship to drift until it could make another pass.

The second transport fared better, managing a connection strong enough that its crew could disembark. A three-line column of troops filed out. The Commission wasn’t supposed to have troops. They were a civilian organization with the right to request military support only in extreme or emergency situations. This was the second time I’d seen them land an army with the firepower to support it.

Shining unnoticeables appeared in advance of the third ship trying to dock. Only two holograms, and neither a familiar face. They guided the ship to a spot on the rim that was sturdy enough to use.

My blood ran cold and crackled with energy at the same time. My first instinct was to obliterate everything within two hundred yards of the rim. Anything and anyone allying with the Commission was the enemy . . .

Then I remembered Greyor in his uniform, playing the part as well as he could. Doing things he didn’t want to do in hope that he would rise to a position where he could make a difference. There could be more like him among the men advancing, and if I scorched the sky, more than a few Commission ships would suffer for it. Without knowing how fast the pods were or how they were shielded, I couldn’t risk them being hit by deflected meteors or stray currents.

“Penn, what are you doing?” Jermay appeared in the doorway. “Your minute’s up. This is no time for daydreaming. Get downstairs.”

“They’ve docked,” I said, glancing back at the window. “There are at least a hundred of them out . . . no way . . . it can’t be.”

I couldn’t have seen what I thought I saw. I refused to even consider it. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. He was an apparition. The next evolution in my body betraying me. This time, it was my brain or my eyes instead of my arm. I was seeing things that couldn’t possibly be real. I wouldn’t say his name. I wouldn’t think it.

“Whatever it is, let it go or deal with it later.” Jermay was in the room now, pulling me toward the door by my weaker arm, but I did my best impression of Xerxes and refused to be moved.

We weren’t going to get a later. Not if he was here.

“But he can’t be here, Jermay. He can’t!”

Frustrated, Jermay leaned toward the window.

His eyes told him the truth I couldn’t, because I refused to speak of the dead and draw danger closer. On the last transport, behind the troops and flanked by the unnoticeables, a man walked down the plank. Badly scarred, with a stony, cruel face.

Warden Arcineaux was here.

CHAPTER 15

The dead don’t come back.

It hadn’t been a full day since I said those words to Nafiza while sitting on Baba’s porch, and yet I was staring at Warden Arcineaux in the very scarred flesh. I’d stabbed this man in the stomach after he murdered Winnie’s brother. Winnie had forbidden him to take another breath for the rest of his life, to protect me. He’d fallen thousands of feet at terminal velocity, trapped inside the Center he’d longed so badly to control.

Three fatal wounds. One living poison. Arsenic.

Why wouldn’t he stay dead?

I’d seen my mother return from the grave, but that Iva Roma had been a duplicate created by my father to be a mole inside Warden Nye’s unit. My father was the only one capable of crafting something so refined; he wouldn’t have wasted that talent on reconstructing something as foul as my gargoyle. He wouldn’t have had the time or inclination to do so since my escape from the Center, and he wouldn’t have known to carve scars into synthetic flesh to make an android’s wounds match the ones inflicted on the man.

“We watched him die, Jermay. He can’t be here.”

The universe had never been my friend, but I didn’t expect it to be so cruel as to flaunt Evie’s death by resurrecting someone as evil as Arcineaux.

“How can you tell from this far away?” Jermay asked. “I see a generic warden in a generic uniform. Assume he’s got a really ugly twin, and let’s go!”

Oh no. Not generic at all. I knew the way Arsenic carried himself. I knew the way he walked. A stiff-legged lockstep concealing a surprisingly agile runner. He was a man who barely grazed the shoulders of his subordinates, yet had a bigger presence than any of them. I knew the patch on his sleeve and the way he wore his cap so that it chopped his face in half, only showing his nose, mouth, and chin.

I was so certain that my entire body locked down, unable to leave the window. It wasn’t like losing control of my arm—I knew I could move, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. My nervous system had flashed back to the evening Nye had collared me to make me understand what life for someone touched was like under the command of other wardens. He’d only used the device for minutes, but if Arcineaux caught me, it would be permanent. Arcineaux would find a way to imbed the wires in my skin and use me for a remote-controlled toy.

“It’s him,” I said. “I’m sure.”

“Okay, fireman’s carry it is,” Jermay said. Still using my right arm for leverage, he tipped me over his shoulder and carried me out of the room. “We’re not playing chicken with death because you want to stare out the window long enough for the guys over there to make their way over here.”

“Put me down!” I screeched and smacked him in the back with my father’s briefcase. My ability to move was restored as soon as Jermay touched me. Not the first time he’d been the antidote to my worst fears.

“Once we’re downstairs and you’re safely on Xerxes’ back, at which point you’re free to stone me with hail and rockslides.”

I’d been waiting for the old Jermay to come back, bad jokes and all, and I’d gotten my wish. That didn’t mean he got a free pass.

I hit him again.

“I can walk on my own!” We’d reached the stairs, where every step meant me smashing my nose between his shoulders.

“All complaints about transportation must be submitted in writing to a shift supervisor between the hours of—stop kicking me when I’m saving your life.”

I kicked him in the chest as hard as I could. He hopped off the last step and dumped me on the floor.

“Ground floor, everyone off the lift. Thank you for your patronage and don’t forget to tip the attendant.”

I stuck my foot out, bringing him crashing down beside me.

“What?” I asked innocently. “You said to trip the attendant.”

“If you two are done flirting, you might notice that we’re in the middle of a crisis here,” Winnie said.

The boys had returned from upstairs, with Wren helping Dev carry his things in a bursting backpack. Klok had fetched the golems and was waiting for the opportune moment to restore their full size. We were also about ten children heavier than we’d been before I headed for my father’s room. Ten children, Ollie, and a woman I had to assume was his wife, since they were holding hands.

“Our unit was one of the first hit,” he said, regret and rage waging war across his face. He needed our help and was afraid his previous actions had already earned him and his family a rejection. “They’ve disabled our module. We don’t have any way off.”

“What about the seats we don’t need?” Jermay asked.

There were more of them than there were of us, but the kids were small enough to sit on laps, and they couldn’t weigh much. If there was room for all of us and Klok, then ten children and their parents shouldn’t be much of a squeeze.

“We’ve got the room, but the pod’s a no-go,” Nola said.

“Show me where it is,” I said. I could get it started.

“It’s the launch mechanism,” Baba explained. “I’m afraid that some of my older repairs to the house blocked the opening. It would take us too long to clear it.”

No, no, no, no.

This was spiraling out of control. I couldn’t straighten my thoughts out. I couldn’t find my center.

“Where’s Anise?” I asked. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and neither was Birdie.

“That’s the other problem,” Birch said. “Birdie took off and hid as soon as she saw the transport ships. Anise is trying to track her down.”

“How do you find someone you can’t see?” Wren asked.

“She was here, and then she wasn’t,” Dev said.

“Yeah. She knocked me sideways running down the stairs, and I never saw her.”

Okay, plan . . . we needed a new plan.

Planning was my father’s department and Anise’s, not mine. I started to pace the small area left to me in the entryway of the living room, holding my head in my hands. This was impossible.

No! Nothing was impossible. Nothing. That had been the mantra of The Show, and something I’d heard since I was a toddler. I believed it like I believed there was oxygen in my lungs.

There was a way to do this, but I couldn’t see it, and the longer it took to figure out, the closer Arsenic and his men came to the house.

What did we have? There was Birch, but even he couldn’t grow us a beanstalk tall enough to climb down. Anise’s touch was useless in the air, and Winnie couldn’t order a hundred people at once. We had a couple of golems who couldn’t carry half of us; Nola, who could see our efforts but not join them; and Dev, who—

“Dev!” I shouted and stopped pacing. “How far can you teleport?”

“It’s not a matter of distance. It’s trajectory. I can go as far as I need to, so long as I know where I’m going.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes! I can do it!” he said, thrilled by the prospect of saving the day. If his range was truly limitless, he could escort his family and Ollie’s to the ground, exactly like the teleporters who brought refugees to the Mile. “I can’t take everyone at once, but I can do it.”

“No!” Nola said. “He’s never gone that far. He might not make it, or he might not be able to get back. He’d be jumping blind. What if there are trees or rocks? We don’t know what’s down there. He could materialize inside a mountain.”

“Klok, do you know what the terrain is like below us?”

“I can provide detailed analysis,” Klok beeped.

“Then I can make it,” Dev said. “I’ve been practicing—I go all the way from one side of this place to the other and back. We just have to start in the kitchen, where there’s more room.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Winnie said nervously. “He’s too young. He—”

“The warden in charge of this raid is Arsenic.” I hadn’t wanted to tell her, but if anything could get her on board, it was hearing his name.

She backed up. Birch’s legs gave out, forcing him onto the floor.

“No,” Winnie said. “He’s dead. We stopped him.”

“I don’t know how he’s here, but it’s him. I saw him. He’s headed this way with a transport of armed men and a pair of unnoticeables, and you more than any of us know what will happen if he sees you.”

“We can’t let him get his hands on Dev,” Birch said. “A teleporter would extend his reach exponentially.”

“He knows Anise’s face, too. I’ve got to find her before he does. Get as many people to the ground as you can.”

I jerked the front door open into what was left of the neighborhood. Most of the pods had already taken flight, leaving the Mile in pretty much the same shape as the original after Brick Street. It was a wasteland.

“Anise! Birdie!” I screamed.

The few units still standing were in total chaos, with the inhabitants arguing over what to take and what to leave. All the planning in the world couldn’t account for human sentiment or a child’s attachment to her possessions. The little girl Birdie had carried through their game of tag was playing keep-away from her parents. Her arms were full of as much as she could hold while running. Bits and pieces of her treasures fell to the left and right, causing her to stop, which finally allowed her father to grab her off the ground. She bawled as he knocked most of her things from her hands and rushed inside. The sound of marching feet rounded the corner.

Overhead, a dark and quickly moving cloud came into view. Swarming hummers, each dispatched to bring down the pods.

Windstorms swirled to life in their path. The hummers hit full on and fell sparking like flies in a bug light. Swaths of fire seared across the remaining building tops from one street to the next. Aeros and pyros of the Mile were fighting back to protect their families and friends. Hydros had the place awash in a monsoon. Normally, the Commission would have responded with indentured hounds, but I’d yet to see any.

I closed my eyes and thought of storms. Rain and lightning and most of all, clouds thick enough to impair visibility. I called them up through the cracks and breakaway holes, returning fog to the Mile. Anything to snarl troop movements and slow Arcineaux’s advance.

“Anise!” I screamed into the blowing rain, but this time the soldiers were too close.

“We’ve got a live one,” a soldier broadcast through a speaker on his helmet. “Pursue and secure.”

“Pursue and secure,” multiple voices answered back, muted by the weather.

Four men broke away and charged toward Baba’s unit. Two fell through gaps in the walkway hidden by my fog. I ducked back into the house and slammed the door, channeling Evie long enough to fuse the lock into the metal plate, but even that wouldn’t hold them long. There were still windows and other ways in.

“Get into the kitchen!” I ordered. Reconfiguring the house would mean the soldiers had to go around. There were enough spaces to make it difficult.

“Birdie!” Nola gasped, looking at the blank spot in the kitchen where there should have been a table large enough to hold us all.

Birdie had never left the house. Anise was out there on her own, and Birdie had never left the house.

“Birdie?” I put out my dripping hand. The water hit a transparent shoulder and ran down. She eased into view like I’d washed her invisibility away.

“Anise went out, and I was too scared to stop her!” She sniffed.

She was still scared and still not moving. Arguing with Birdie never worked. The only thing that worked was Bruno, and we didn’t have time for the “wait it out” approach.

“We’re ready to fly, Little Bird,” I said. “I need someone with experience to get these clowns in the air while I tell Anise you’re safe. Can I count on you?”

Birdie’s kryptonite.

When Birdie joined The Show, Bruno and Mother Jesek had gradually rebuilt her shattered confidence by giving her more and more responsibility, helping her prove to herself that she was both worthy and capable of it. She’d never intentionally let someone down, because that would let her parents down, and that was never going to happen. She crawled out and burrowed into Klok’s side, taking refuge in the biggest, strongest shadow available.

“Hold them off as long as you can,” I told Winnie and the others. “If you can’t wait, then go without us. We’ll manage.”

That sounded so much like the last words Anise had said to me before she was captured by Warden Nye that it gave me chills.

“Jermay, get ready to switch Bijou over to full power on my mark.”

Klok clamped down on my fingers before I could press the button on Xerxes’ neck that would make him grow.

“Their maximum size exceeds the dimensions of this room,” he reminded me.

“Exactly,” I said.

Xerxes and Bijou would rip the house to shreds, the essence of shock and awe. I wanted Arcineaux’s men to see exactly what their boss had put them up against—full size and fuming.

I picked up Xerxes and sat him on the table, which had become visible as soon as Birdie let go of it.

“All right, big guy, it’s showtime,” I told him.

He screeched and popped his wings.

“No games,” I told Xerxes, while Winnie and Nola cleared the kitchen and herded everyone out into the storm. “Protection protocol. You’ve got to guard this area until Dev gets everyone to safety.”

I knew he understood. I could feel it. A burning red shield dropped over his eyes like running blood.

Bijou pawed at the side of the stove, asking for a light. Jermay turned the knob to ignite the closest burner for him. The dragon sucked in flames and blew them back out, priming his bellows. Fuming napalm smoke curled from his nostrils and wafted between his teeth. He held his mouth open just enough for the glow to escape, casting flickers onto his scales in shades of red and orange—a new trick he’d taught himself. My playful toast artist had been replaced with a smoldering beast of the depths.

The creeper lights from the living room had twigged to the fact that something bad was coming. They formed ant-lines on the floor and scuttled out between my feet.

“Ready?” Jermay called. His hand hovered over Bijou’s neck.

“Make them regret this,” I whispered to Xerxes, with my forehead pressed against his.

There was no cold, metallic feeling to his skin or feathers, only the searing heat of vengeance.

I held my hand up and started the count: “One!”

“Two!” Jermay said.

“Cue!”

CHAPTER 16

Xerxes was off his leash.

He and Bijou burst out of Baba’s house, leaving nothing behind but metal ribbons, twisted and sharp. A modern-art masterpiece sculpted by defiance and righteous anger, soon to be lost forever.

Xerxes shrieked, drowning out the sounds of the Commission’s spike and the Mile’s air-raid siren all at once. He launched himself into the air, only to land with crushing force and do it again.

Bijou was showing off, encircling the Mile with a ring of fire. Acrid brimstone and the bite of rocket fuel. The raging heat of a too-close sun. All attention would be on them, not whatever orders Arcineaux issued.

“Good boys,” I called up. “Protect Dev and watch out for hummers!”

Bijou answered with a fresh plume of superheated plasma. Anyone who came close enough to be a threat was going to end up a toasted marshmallow.

I found Anise near the town square.

There weren’t any houses this deep into the Mile. A few of the storefronts had blown out, but the streets were still intact. The shiny new sidewalks and benches that had never been sat upon waited for people who would never come.

My sister had joined the elementals defending a pair of incapacitated escape modules and the families trapped inside them.

This was the origin of the flashovers I’d seen; it was the source of the windstorms set forth to knock out the hummers. Pyros had their choice of flames from the burning rubble across the Mile. They fashioned tongues of fire into a curtain to hold back the enemy. Their sister aeros wove threads of wind into a barrier behind them to shield the pods from the heat, but it was a temporary solution.

For now, there was a stalemate, with the Commission infantry holding their position. They’d call for backup. The Mile would continue to degrade. Someone would move eventually. The only chance Anise and the rest had was to make sure that they were the ones in control when the time came. I needed to be in there with them.

The soldiers hadn’t seen me yet. One girl wasn’t much of a concern for an entire unit.

“One, two, three, go!” I prompted myself, took a running start, and jumped through fire and air to join those on the other side.

Some of the uniforms must have seen me and assumed the walls were less dangerous than they appeared. They tried to follow me but fell shrieking, wearing burning coats their fellows rushed to douse. For Greyor’s sake, I took pity and reclaimed the flames for the wall. I couldn’t fix any injuries they suffered, but I didn’t have to let them burn.

Anise was the only terrakinetic in the fight. She’d climbed on top of one of the escape pods to try to open the door, but the hummers had rewired the locks, sticking them in place so the people inside would stay contained for capture.

“Anise!” I called.

“Find Birdie!” she shouted back desperately. “She disappeared and I got cut off searching. Go back through. You have to find her! Get her out of here!”

“She’s with Winnie! She never left the house!”

“You’ve got her?”

“We’ve got her!”

I scaled the pod to help with the door. She’d been trying to feel out the metal inside it—because natural ores responded to a terra the same way stones did—but the pod bodies were mainly synthetic polymer. She couldn’t latch on to anything bigger than a bolt.

“Get away from the hatch!” I told the people inside, shouting through the windshield with exaggerated gestures so they’d understand me in spite of the glass.

They nodded and huddled against the far wall, with the adults using their bodies to protect their kids.

The hummers had made such a mess of the circuitry that I couldn’t simply tell the door to open. I had to find a way to pop it loose. I forced as much air as possible into a ball and pressed it hard against the hatch. The polymers were designed to withstand pressure, but only when evenly spread across the entire surface. Concentrating my effort into one small area caused it to bow in. I raised the air mass and slammed it down on the weak point again and again until the hatch cracked. A chunk dropped into the pod, allowing the people inside to escape.

One of the Mile’s aeros stepped up to open the second pod using the same method.

“They’re waiting for us at the house,” I said to Anise.

“We’re not going anywhere until we clear the walkways.”

Through the fiery curtain and swirls of wind, I could see more uniforms filling in the gaps between the ones already in place. We were surrounded, and there weren’t enough of us to spear our way through.

“Drive them back!” one of the women with us shouted.

Our protective walls blew into a firestorm. No longer stationary, the flames raged in every direction, pushed forward by feeding winds. Flares whipped out, licking at the soldiers’ hands and faces, warning them to turn and run.

“Spread out!” the woman called. These were practiced maneuvers. “Break!”

The pyros ran to the opposite side from where they’d gathered, switching places with the aeros. Their abilities crossed in the middle, pulled tight together like a drawstring. Whirlwinds intersected with fire spouts, pulling the heat into their core and slingshotting it back out as pillars of flame that spun in place to guard our retreat. The weather had no effect on them.

Everyone scattered.

Anise and I cut across the square and headed north. We passed the spot where Ollie had worked the crowd into a frenzy.

“Anise!”

“I see it!”

She’d been unable to join the fight because the Mile was disconnected from her power base, but the micro-particle drift created when my lynx fell apart was still there.

Anise’s Kodiak roared into being, all dusty brown fur and claws. It ripped one of the benches off its base and hurled it at the men pursuing us.

We ran on. The bear sailed forward on slime trails of mud, dripping in the rain and caught in the Mile’s tilt as the damage took its toll.

“Look out!” Anise pulled me toward her. Compromised buildings gave up the fight and toppled. Her bear jammed its shoulder into the side of a unit left top-heavy by the evacuation. It would have crushed me.

The sidewalk buckled beneath the bear’s weight and the downward force of the falling house. A crack opened, widening into a gap where one of the pods had lifted off. The bear, the house, and ten feet of artificial lawn dropped out of sight through the underbelly of the Mile.

Anise grabbed the bulk of the bear’s body by force of concentration and a lifetime of self-imposed control I could only dream of mastering. The grains poured back onto the sidewalk as individual cubs. Still helpful, but less heavy. They head-butted debris out of our way and bowled over the unfortunate infantry we happened to run into.

Up ahead, Arcineaux’s men had converged on Baba’s house. I could see Bijou perched atop the wreckage, lobbing fireballs like spit wads at clusters of hummers. Xerxes was on the ground, shielding our people with his legs and wings. Ollie and one of his older children remained, along with Nola. Dev had teleported the rest.

“What’s Birdie doing?” Anise asked.

I had no idea, but she wasn’t hiding. She was using the feathers on Xerxes’ flank to clamber onto his back, putting her out in the open.

“Get down!” Anise shouted. “Birdie! Get back there!”

Birdie’s head popped up, showing the determination on her face. She shook her head and used the joint of Xerxes’ wing as leverage to swing up its edge. It made a perfect balance beam to get her to the roof.

She hooked her fingers between the plates of Bijou’s armored scales; then they both disappeared. Bijou was now free to strike without warning.

Arcineaux’s men stopped firing the bundles of hummers; they no longer knew where to aim. Some turned around, expecting an assault from behind. Some watched the sides. They fell over each other in the confusion, and were completely unprepared when Bijou rained fire down on them from overhead.

Anise and I took the chance to slip by them.

“How much longer?” I asked the others.

“Two more trips should do it,” Nola said. “But Dev’s slowing down, and they’re not running out of men or supplies anytime soon.”

“There aren’t many targets left,” Anise said. “You have to know this was the last thing we wanted when we came here.”

“This was always going to happen. Nafiza tried to warn us, but we didn’t want to hear what she was really saying. It’s not your fault.”

That wasn’t how it felt. It felt like doom stalked us, waiting for the worst moments to pop out and yell, “Surprise!” Every time I was sure we’d hit bottom, the floor fell to pieces and dragged us deeper. It was easy to say that Nafiza had seen this day coming, but did that mean it was inevitable? Was it the Mile that drew Arcineaux’s ghost up here, or was it us?

“Daddy!” Ollie’s daughter screamed.

He pushed her behind his back, away from the sudden intrusion of a transparent form in our midst—one of Arcineaux’s unnoticeables.

Intentionally easy to overlook, unnoticeables were holograms with a twist. Given the right conditions and enough power, they could physically interact with the world into which they’d been projected, but their hallmark feature was how difficult it was to get a clear look at one. They didn’t want to be seen. Even with several of us surrounding one, it was difficult not to give in to the urge to look away, which meant they were capable of influencing thoughts. They were truly scary inventions, and something else my father would have to answer for when I found him. I’d always held Magnus Roma on a pedestal of best intentions, believing him to be a man who improved lives by simply existing, but he’d had a hand in every foul device the Commission used against us. My father had lit the match that set the world on fire.

This unnoticeable was female and wearing Commission silvers, but it was impossible to hone in on much more than that. Her signal was pretty weak, leaving her transparent.

“Assets located,” she said. “Lock signal and follow. These are the last on scan.”

She kept her hands behind her back in the at-ease stance common among lower-level personnel. From her perspective, we would appear to be translucent, too, and it was easier to do her job if she didn’t think of us as real people.

“Turning toward your position,” said a voice through her radio. Arcineaux’s voice.

“That’s him,” Winnie said. She and Birch and Jermay moved closer together. “You were right. He’s here.”

“You realize what that man will do?” Nola asked the unnoticeable. “What he’s already done?”

“Consequences arise from resistance.” She kept her focus in the distance so she didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. “I know it can’t be easy to leave your homes, but this evacuation is necessary.”

“See if that makes it easier to sleep after you witness what Arsenic does to the people he takes prisoner,” Winnie said.

“Prisoners? We’re relocating assets to a more secure location. This is a rescue mission. That’s why the National Guard released infantry to help.”

“If Arsenic told you that, he lied,” I said. “He does that a lot.”

I saw Arcineaux swaggering toward us on the opposite side of the street with the other unnoticeable, a dozen men to add to the number around the house, and a cluster of “evacuees.” They were all collared or handcuffed, depending on whether they were gifted or mundane.

“I suppose hound collars are standard procedure for relocation?” Anise asked the unnoticeable.

“It’s for the safety of everyone on board the transport. Those who cooperate don’t have to be restrained . . . that’s what we were told.”

She was trying to convince herself and clearly finding it difficult.

Arcineaux’s face looked worse up close. He’d been burned—badly. Patches of blistered skin were just frosting over with white scar tissue. Deep cuts on his face and neck still had suture lines from recently removed stitches. How was this man alive?

“Get this bunch with the rest and disengage.” He passed his prisoners off. All but about twenty of the infantry formed ranks and hustled off toward the transports. “Why has this unit not been processed as ordered?”

“There’s a problem, sir,” one of his men said.

“Then solve it. This is the last group. Process the assets, remove the mundanes. Those two are mine.”

He pointed to me and Winnie and ordered the remaining uniforms to cross the street. Bijou blew out another blazing fire jet as soon as they stepped off their side.

“That would be the problem, sir,” Arcineaux’s man said. “It’s that dragon-thing. We can’t see it.”

Arcineaux prowled back and forth on his side of the street, seething. He picked up a chunk of broken cement and hurled it toward us; Bijou turned it to ash. He tried again on a different trajectory. Bijou hit that one, too.

“I’m going to draw him off,” I said.

“No!”

That was pretty much everyone’s opinion.

Anise said, “Absolutely not.” She tried to pin me in with her grizzly cubs.

“He’s hunting Level-Fives, and Dev will be back here any second,” I said. “If Arsenic sees what Dev can do, it won’t matter where he took Baba or the others. They’ll never be safe. I can keep him busy until Dev’s last run, and then you come and find me. Bijou! Cover fire!”

The invisible dragon trumpeted loud and long. The sound came from everywhere, bouncing off the buildings and sidewalks and making Arcineaux’s men quake where they stood. The sound stopped, and in its place came bursts of fiery breath.

Anise turned her grizzlies loose to cause as much trouble as possible, while I zipped down the sidewalk.

“Hey! Gargoyle! Catch me if you can!”

“Pursue and secure!” Arcineaux spluttered. “Pursue and secure!”

I knew from experience that he was fast on his feet, so it surprised me that he let his subordinates take the lead. The female unnoticeable traveled along beside me, locked on to my biometric signature.

“I don’t understand,” she said. It was easy for her to speak while keeping pace with me; only her image had to move. “This was supposed to be rescue and relocation.”

“Only if you consider being locked in a cell and used as a guinea pig to be relocation,” I told her.

Arcineaux and his men were getting closer. I needed to thin them out. Thankfully, we were far enough from Baba’s house that taking pieces off the Mile wouldn’t threaten that section of it. I stopped and conjured thoughts of Nim at her worst.

Churning tides and darkened seas. Maelstroms shattering ships upon the rocks.

“Water,” I said. “Flood. Rise. Rage.”

A deluge washed out of abandoned dwellings in schools of fish and running herds of water horses. Snatching hands rose from the ground to grab runners by the ankles and pull them down. I raised my hands in a “stop” motion and the water pooled, swelling into a wall that was taller than me.

The horrified unnoticeable asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Keep this between me and the warden,” I told her.

I dropped my hands, and the water dropped with them. When it settled, Arcineaux stood alone. His backup had been washed down the byways and side streets.

“Best two out of three?” I taunted and took off again.

I thickened the fog and made it deeper. I’d need it to pull off what I had in mind. I’d made him mad enough to follow me without thinking. I could lead him anywhere, and I knew exactly where I wanted to put him. I could run Arcineaux off the edge and borrow Vesper’s touch to keep myself aloft.

It wouldn’t be murder, I told myself. He was supposed to be dead. I was just putting him back in the ground.

Actually, I didn’t care that it was murder. I reminded myself that I was a monster. One more splash of blood didn’t really matter in the long run. My hands were stained already.

“How are you doing this?” the unnoticeable asked. “How can you control more than one element? How are you making them? That’s not possible.”

“Change careers,” I told her. “Now. You’re not cut out for the Commission.”

I saw my opening ten yards away, where the walkways were Swiss cheese.

“I can slow down!” I yelled over my shoulder to make sure that Arcineaux stayed with me. “I forgot how short you are!”

Bait offered and taken.

Arcineaux growled, put his head down like an angry bull, and charged.

I sprinted for the largest gap I could feel in the metal below the cement. All I had to do was stop halfway across and keep my feet in the fog, where he couldn’t see that nothing was below them. It was so simple it couldn’t fail.

And then I fell.

CHAPTER 17

“Vesper!” I screamed, but she didn’t answer me. The only wind I felt was what surrounded my body as I plummeted when my powers cut out again. Arcineaux and the unnoticeable peered down through the hole, but there was nothing either of them could do.

Calm, I told myself. Be calm. But calm wasn’t easy to come by. Wind wasn’t calm.

“Vesper!”

A sharp burst of air shoved me upward. Just as quickly, I was falling again.

I let myself feel the air, stretched my arms to see if I could skid to a stop on wind resistance.

Another puff tossed me up. This was some kind of short circuit, and it was making me motion sick.

The sudden intrusion of burnt cinnamon made it worse as the air around me turned rust red, and Dev appeared out of the cloud, falling with me.

“Gotcha,” he said.

He wrapped his arms around me, and we dematerialized. It felt exactly like traveling with Zavel’s rabbit holes or my father’s coat—minus the broken bones. We returned into being on Xerxes’ back, where Dev collapsed between Jermay and Birch, sound asleep.

“He only had one jump left in him,” Nola said. We’d acquired her as a passenger; Birdie was still on Bijou with Winnie, Anise, and Klok. “We decided not to wait.”

“Thanks for that,” I said weakly. My stomach was still spinning, and I was very happy that I hadn’t made it to breakfast that morning. “How did he find me in the middle of the sky?”

“I don’t know what you told that unnoticeable woman, but you made an impression,” Anise said. “She came back to the house.”

I hope the woman didn’t pay for that later.

“Guys, we’ve got incoming!” Winnie shouted. She pointed up to where Arcineaux was still watching. There was no way he’d missed seeing Dev in action. “Hummers!”

Someone on the Mile had fired another volley of the pests. A swarm of metal hornets was headed straight for us.

Of all the times to have a hiccup in my abilities . . .

I closed my eyes to block out the fear and doubt that showed on every face except Klok’s. Agitated ions churned in the clouds around us. I nudged them together to force a reaction that would grant me the spark I needed to short out the hummers. Aiming was out of the question, as was temperance; I just pointed the flow of electricity upward and let it fly.

Hummers buzzed and fizzled, streaking harmlessly past us on their way to the ground. The electric charge kept going. It hit the conductive metal lining the base of the Mile, overloading one of the few engines I’d left running. Losing that engine caused the others to roll, overheating them in sequence and sending each one into shutdown. Explosions went off from one side to the other, shaking the Mile loose from the spike’s green halo. It began to disintegrate on its way down.

A rush of heat roared over us, followed closely by a disruptive wave of turbulence from the energy released. Xerxes peeled off, but Bijou was forced into a barrel roll. Anise grabbed for Birdie out of habit; it cost her the grip she had on our dragon, and she tumbled down into a free fall. A stone that definitely couldn’t fly, she was what Nafiza had seen in her vision, and ours were the hands that couldn’t catch her.

“Dev!” Nola called. “Dev, wake up!”

I tried shaking him, but the poor kid was so deep asleep, his body had pulled rank on his mind. It didn’t matter what he wanted to do at this point; sleep was his only option. There weren’t many options open to Anise, either.

All falling bodies are subject to basic physics, even if those bodies are touched. Gravity pulls objects in motion toward the ground, but terrakinetics have one advantage: they can make the ground fall up to meet them.

“Dive!” I ordered Xerxes.

He pinned his wings close to his body and plunged beak-first after her. Catching up wasn’t the problem. We were dodging debris, and she kept drifting to the side. There was no way for the golems to steer in a nosedive without increasing their wind resistance and having her pull away again.

Rock and stone and sand and all manner of earthy ore answered Anise’s call to rise. I added my own voice to hers, breaking the clumps into smaller, softer pieces to minimize the damage to her body on impact. I pressed the air around her, slowing her descent, but the force at her velocity was too much for me to stop her completely without shattering her bones between solid walls of wind. She kept her head, tucking herself into a ball the way Bruno had taught us to take a fall, and didn’t let her body tense.

She and the upsurging pillar met in the middle of the sky with the power of a volcanic eruption. Bits of silt and dust and grit and grime blasted into the air, showering us all with a layer of cinder-colored clay. From the ground—once we’d reached the ground—she appeared to have disappeared into a freakishly large termite mound.

“Move!” I squawked to spur the mound into dispersing as I leapt from Xerxes’ back, spitting gravel to clear my mouth and throat.

Anise could control the ground; she couldn’t breathe it. She needed oxygen, and fast.

I was also acutely aware of the fact that we were directly below the still-crumbling Mile, and it wouldn’t take long for any surviving Commission officials to regroup and start looking for people on the ground. That first transport ship had never docked. It could land as soon as it had orders, and I didn’t want to think about Arcineaux surviving another crash.

I gave my grief and rage free rein. They grew legs and paws, a tufted head and a tail. My lynx clawed its way out of the mound, fully formed and growing as fast as the sense of helplessness that made me wonder if I’d lost a second sister in less than a week. I needed Anise. Without her, I’d have nothing to ground me. There’d be no center to pull the rest of the Roma family together.

It seemed the harder I tried to put us back together, the more determined the universe was to keep us apart.

One swipe. Two swipes. My golem tore through layers of excavated sediment in seconds.

The mound trembled, quaking, so that pebbles bounced down the sides. Birdie squealed and hid behind one of Bijou’s wings.

“Easy with the earthquake!” Winnie said. “You might save Anise, but don’t forget the rest of us!”

“It’s not me!” I said.

Temblors cracked the ground below my feet, throwing me forward into the mound; they were too strong to stand against, and I couldn’t get up.

Anise was fighting for her life from inside the mound. And if she was fighting, the impact hadn’t killed her.

“She’s alive!” I cheered.

Everyone attacked the pile, dragging handfuls of dirt off the base while my lynx and I augmented Anise’s efforts to free herself. Something powerful roared up and out. The bulk of the mound stood up, rolling us off its sides.

Anise’s Kodiak, twenty feet tall, stood in the middle of what had been Anise’s tomb. It shook itself violently, losing inches as it cast off tons of detritus in each direction. It had shrunk to around eight feet when Klok beeped suddenly and flung himself at the remaining heap, his hands moving too quickly to see as he dug.

“Look! An arm!” Birch shouted. “He’s got her.”

One arm, so crusted over and filthy that it was identical to the color of the ground. Bent at the elbow and groping in the open air.

Klok grabbed Anise’s hand and she locked onto his, allowing him to drag her free. Her bear bowed in half and disintegrated.

I ran to her side, absently dismissing my lynx and telling the accumulated earth to scatter itself back to where it came from. There would be some odd mixtures for geology types to puzzle over if they took samples, but those anomalies wouldn’t be as easy to notice as a tower where one had never been before.

“Anise?” I touched her face lightly. She wasn’t moving, and she wasn’t speaking, so I didn’t know if I should hug her or not.

Klok knelt and cradled her head in his hands.

Detailed charts and lists scrolled across his voice screen. Heart rate, blood-oxygen, and body temp. There were equations involving the time she’d been underground and comparative analysis of her weight versus how much pressure had been directly on her body.

All set to the cacophonous sound of Birdie wailing beside Baba and Dev’s unconscious body. It wasn’t her fault that Anise fell, but she wouldn’t believe it.

“Birdie, so help me, if you blink out, I’ll have Birch tie you to Bijou so we can keep track of you!” Winnie warned her, and Birdie tried to stifle her crying down to a sniffle.

“Is Anise breathing?” I asked Klok. I didn’t have enough experience with mixing or separating air to allow me to focus pure oxygen around her face. I wanted to inflate her lungs to make sure they were working, but I was afraid my unsteady hands would overdo it and I’d blow them out.

The scrolling stopped, replaced by an all-caps, bright-blue “YES!” I wasn’t sure if the emphasis was triumph or annoyance at my question.

“Is she okay?” Birdie asked. She peeked out of her hiding spot but stayed mostly hidden behind the golem’s wings.

Klok held up one hand and crossed his fingers.

CHAPTER 18

“What can we do?” Nola asked.

This had felt so much like an “us” problem that I forgot about “them,” even though Nola, Ollie, and his wife had been right there with us, digging Anise out. Now Nola and Winnie were looking on, and Baba was brushing Dev’s forehead where he was laid out at Bijou’s feet beside Birdie and Wren. Ollie and his horde had their hands full with crying and scared little ones who wanted to return to the home still falling as cinder and ash. This was not a group that lent itself easily to being hidden.

“I . . . I might be able to help,” Birch offered. He shifted his focus to Winnie, then to me. “I’ve had some experience with triage, and there are plants that could help with her pain and potential fever. I’m sure Klok’s databases have more information than the books Nye gave me on the Center. I might be able to sprout a few things, if the descriptions are clear enough. I can’t promise it’ll work, but I can try.”

Jermay stepped in to block Birch’s path when he tried to get closer to Anise.

“You’ve done enough,” he growled.

“What?” Birch asked, honestly confused.

“Don’t you get it?” Jermay asked us. “Everything that woman said was true. Winnie and a warden at the end of the Mile, the stones falling up. It all happened, and if that all happened, then the rest of what she said has to be true, too. There’s no way they found us without help! You’re the false heart. You’re the one loyal to someone else,” he accused, staring Birch down.

“It wasn’t me!”

“Liar!” Jermay poked Birch in the chest. “Betrayer.” He shoved him.

“I’m not!”

“Stop it!” Birdie screamed, covering her ears. “Jermay, stop! He didn’t do anything!”

“This is what happens every time Nafiza opens her mouth,” Winnie said. “She gets in your head. You pick apart what she says and play with it until it fits. Both of you back away before I have to make you behave.”

The threat didn’t do much.

“How did you signal them?” Jermay demanded.

“I didn’t. I swear.” Birch was walking backward as fast as he could, but Jermay refused to let up.

Jermay shoved again, hard enough to land Birch on his back.

Birch flinched at most human contact under the best of conditions. Being knocked off his feet activated his panic responses. The fresh-turned soil Anise had used came alive a second time, releasing wiggly vines into view. They wrapped around Jermay’s ankles and pulled, leveling the field and leaving them both kicking-mad on the ground. But Jermay had always been a scrapper. He’d learned to hold his own against local boys in towns where they thought carnie kids made for a canned hunt; those fights had taught him the dangers of staying down.

He snapped the vines with his hands and was back on his feet in no time. Birch couldn’t outrun him. Jermay caught him from behind, pinning his arms.

“That was a coward move,” he said. “You’re all kinds of loser, aren’t you?”

Birdie was screaming again. Ollie’s kids were crying as their parents tried to keep them clear of the fight. I’d heard enough. I pushed the sharpest, most frigid wind at them to stop the fight, stinging their bare skin with frostbite.

Klok stepped in while they were off-balance, lifting Jermay off Birch’s body and holding him back.

“We should not be fighting,” he scolded. “We should be locating assistance for Anise. Her wounds are severe, and I cannot properly assess them if I am required to act as a restraint.”

The letters on his screen were large and flashing, toggling between a bold font and one in italics. He was too flustered to speak normally.

“This isn’t the time to work out your issues, Jermay,” I said. “I’m sorry, but keep this up and you’ll be the one responsible for getting us caught. Okay? Can you control yourself, or do I need to take Winnie up on her offer to put you in time-out?”

She wouldn’t really have done it. Winnie didn’t like using her touch when she didn’t have to, and I didn’t blame her. Forcing people to say and do things would have made her into exactly what Ollie accused her of being. Unlike the wardens, free will was precious to her specifically because she could override it.

“I’m telling you, this is his fault!” Jermay said. “Ask him where he went after breakfast that first morning on the Mile!”

“To the garden!” Birch insisted.

“He was covered in dirt when he came home,” I said. “I saw him myself.”

“Well, I didn’t. I walked the entire Mile when I left the house. The garden. The park. All of it! I didn’t see him once. He wasn’t there. Maybe it’s not his fault any more than Winnie’s scars are hers. Maybe they did something to him, but the result is the same. He was off signaling the little Commission voices in his head, like a good brainwashed drone!”

“Birch?” Winnie asked.

“I didn’t do anything! I was exactly where I said I was. I went to the garden, and the soil was nearly dead, so I checked the neighborhoods to see if it was the same. That’s all. I swear!”

“Prove it,” Jermay challenged. “Winnie can ask you again and make you tell the truth.”

“I won’t do that,” Winnie said. “I trust him.”

“I agree,” I said. “We can’t start questioning each other.”

“If he didn’t lead them to the Mile, then how’d they know where we were?” Jermay asked. “The timing of that raid was too perfect.”

That logic I couldn’t argue with. I’d had the same thoughts myself. The raid came at the moment of peak energy expenditure: during the repair routine. Those vessels had to be in position, waiting for it, but I wasn’t ready to turn on Birch just because he was convenient. There were too many variables that he didn’t fit. He couldn’t have signaled anyone about the repairs beforehand because he didn’t know I’d be making them.

“Do you think he brought them to the Hollow, too?” I asked.

“That was Evie.”

“Dangerous ground, Jermay Baán. She didn’t have a choice. Birch did, and he didn’t choose to bring the Commission down on our heads. It would have been a lot easier while we were underground and alone.”

“Then what’s your explanation?” Jermay asked me.

“Maybe they’re tracking us.” We’d all been prisoners inside the Center, and Winnie had the scars to prove she’d been a test subject. I’d seen Arcineaux give her orders, even without the restriction bands usually required to keep a Level-Five in check. It was possible he’d found a way to implant devices or protocols that weren’t visible on the outside. “It’s like a cell phone. When you’re in a tunnel, the signal goes down, so they couldn’t see us inside the Hollow. Once we left, the signal came back.”

“Klok, can you pick up any signals?” Jermay held up his hands to be scanned. He wasn’t letting this go.

“I register no outgoing signals that would be consistent with homing technology,” Klok rat-tatted across his screen.

“Any other theories?” Jermay asked. “Or do we go with Occam’s razor and assume I’m right?”

“Actually, you could both be right.” Nola stepped in. “It’s possible that someone tipped off the Commission, even if it wasn’t one of you.”

“Community first,” Winnie said bitterly.

Nola nodded. Both of them glanced at Ollie, who was busy helping his wife with their brood.

“The rule of the Mile. It’s not inconceivable that someone turned you in, thinking they were saving the rest of us,” Nola said. “None of us would go looking for the Commission on a regular basis, but they’re not hard to get to if you’ve got information to pass along.”

It didn’t have to be Ollie or Esther. They had hundreds of neighbors who’d kept their opinions of us to themselves. Any of them could have dropped the Commission a line.

“It definitely wouldn’t be the first time,” Winnie said. “Can we at least call a cease-fire until we figure out what happened?”

“I swear it wasn’t me,” Birch said.

“And I still don’t trust him, but I’ll steer clear,” Jermay promised.

“Good,” Klok beeped. “I would rather direct my attention to Anise without distraction. You are being immature and can choose to grow up.”

I think that was the first time I’d ever heard him attempt an insult.

Klok sunk back to his knees and put his hands back under Anise’s head.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Injured,” he said simply.

His voice screen flashed, deleting the word and replacing it with charted information about her injuries and vital signs. Multiple broken bones and swelling that had messed up her blood pressure and heart rate. Technical terms I didn’t understand. He’d even managed a blood sample that showed she needed more oxygen.

“You saved her life,” he beeped.

“She saved herself.”

“The increase in air pressure directly surrounding her body decelerated her enough to prevent fatal injury. Even with the softened point of impact, she would have died. You saved her life.”

“Thanks, Klok,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

“I can bind up some of the breaks,” Birch said. “But she’ll need a real doctor as soon as possible.”

“Great idea. We just take her to a hospital and explain that she fell off a flying city while evading capture by a zombie warden. That’ll end well,” Jermay said.

“At least I’m trying to help.”

“Boys!” Baba raised his voice uncharacteristically.

Jermay and Birch shut their mouths and huffed away.

Klok beeped but kept his head down so his screen was out of sight, no doubt covering another insulting grumble.

“Our best course would be to allow those of us equipped for medical intervention to do what they can while the rest of us seek suitable shelter until morning,” Baba said.

“What good will that do?” Jermay asked. He’d taken most of the edge out of his voice, leaving behind the disbelief that a few hours would improve our lot.

I took my first real look at where we’d landed. There wasn’t much to be seen.

Hills in the distance, fifty to a hundred miles away and partially obscured by a foggy haze in shades of brown and yellow that suggested pollution. Closer than the hills, but still within the cloud, were outlines of buildings in all sizes and shapes—definitely a city. Between them and us was a well-maintained road with little traffic in any of its lanes, and a long stretch of empty. Likely a precautionary measure for the Mile. They’d parked it over nothing so there would be no one to discover it. At least any debris from the Mile that didn’t break up wouldn’t hit anything important.

There would be medical facilities and support in any decent-sized city, but Jermay was right; there was no way to explain Anise’s injuries without the authorities getting involved.

“Dev should be recovered by tomorrow,” Baba said. “Most of our neighbors took flight before the warden docked. They’ll go to the beta site if they follow protocol. Stragglers like us have an assigned safe house in case the pods weren’t an option.”

“Is there any way to check if anyone made it?” Winnie asked.

“No. For security purposes, we don’t know more than the location of our assigned house. That way if one is lost, the others can’t be compromised.”

“And you’re sure these houses exist?” I asked.

“I’ve been to one of them, years ago, and I’ve no reason to believe it’s not there. The houses are often used by the ground network when hiding refugees before bringing them to the Mile. Your sister is welcome to come with us, as are you all.”

“And you expect Dev to move all these people after the trouble he had today?” I asked.

“Ground-to-ground moves are easier for him, and he’s tested himself with passengers. It’s also smoother than what you experienced in the air. Keep your sister still until we’re able to go. Find something to stabilize her back and neck.”

“I can help with that,” Birch offered. “Stand clear.”

We backed away from Anise’s body, which rose slightly to make room for the mat of reeds and bamboo braiding itself together underneath her. Thick vines wrapped around her feet, immobilizing them. Others lashed around her middle, at her wrists, and over her forehead.

“We can move her to get her out of sight. Even if she tries to shift, the vines should keep her in place,” Birch said.

“We’ll need a shelter,” Ollie said. He hadn’t interacted with the group except to help us extricate Anise, which was fine by me. I didn’t want to deal with his overbearing bluster on top of everything else. “Can you make more than a stretcher?” he asked Birch. It wasn’t so much a request as it was an order. He was trying to put himself in charge again.

“I can build us a hut pretty quick, but it wouldn’t be safe,” Birch said. “It’s too noticeable out here.”

Whatever we built needed to match the terrain flawlessly. We’d been on the ground for several minutes already, which meant we were several minutes closer to the inevitable search parties that would be dispatched in the area.

“Kudzu,” Ollie’s wife said.

She approached from behind her husband, leaving her younger children in the care of the older ones. Near as I could tell, they had sets of multiples. Three preteens and alternating twins and triplets whose ages descended from there. Ollie’s wife was as tall as he was and reed thin, with knotted black hair—a dancer in a basketball player’s body. She spoke quietly and quickly, moving her eyes from one of us to the next, searching for someone to acknowledge what she’d said. She hadn’t even told us her name, and neither had Ollie.

“I mean, you could use kudzu as camouflage,” she said, then launched into an explanation to qualify her suggestion. “It’s a weed. It grows like a blanket in all directions, and it grows just about everywhere, so it wouldn’t be out of place. Build up a shelter, and cover it in kudzu. It’s a nightmare to try to clear; they won’t even bother.”

“Will it work?” I asked Birch.

“It’s worth a shot.”

I’d seen Birch do some impressive things before—make trees grow or shrink on command, or fill a room with deadly blooms and thorns as thick as my arm because something scared him. He’d even done the insta-hut trick before to hide me from Warden Nye’s security at the Center. And I’d always believed that the Commission’s biggest mistake with him was underestimating the extent of his power. They didn’t see any significant tactical use in someone who could grow potatoes on command, so they—and Arsenic, especially—treated Birch like a joke. Anyone who saw him recontouring the surface of the Earth with the ease of a maestro’s baton directing a symphony wouldn’t have been laughing.

Birch had an unparalleled sense of spatial acuity. He could tell what would fit where by sight alone. He knew how deep a trench to have me open so that, when he added walls and a roof, the whole structure was the same height as the gentle slopes surrounding it.

Bright-green kudzu vines bubbled out of the ground and spread like drops of food coloring in a bowl of water. Darker here, lighter there, changing depth and dimension, all dotted through with conical purple flowers.

“They smell like grape soda!” Birdie squealed. Watching Birch work had calmed her down with the promise of a safe place to hide, and she delighted in pulling the flowers off to crush them in her fingers.

Ollie and his wife (whose name turned out to be Clementine) moved their kids inside. We put Anise’s stretcher in the very back beside a second one that held Dev, and left them under the watchful eyes of Nola and a once-again-shrunken pair of golems, while Birdie and Wren helped Baba navigate the unfamiliar space.

Klok opened his bag, releasing the mini–creeper lights he’d saved from Baba’s house. They skittered through our hovel, playing chase with the kids, who were still young enough not to question how machines made solely for light could want to play.

I lifted our freshly grown door and joined Birch and Winnie outside. He was still adjusting the top layer, trying to balance the levels of color so that no spots stood out enough to make someone curious. What he’d accomplished was nothing short of Photoshopped reality.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

Birch frowned.

“Perfection doesn’t exist in nature. Perfection gets noticed.”

He switched the configuration of the clump of kudzu crowning our shelter. It looked like it had been there for years.

He would have kept fussing for the rest of the day and through the night if Winnie and I hadn’t pulled him back inside with reminders that Anise needed all the help he and Klok could give her. Letting him stay out in the open would have defeated the purpose of the shelter he’d made for us.

“How is it?” Ollie was waiting right inside the door.

“You can’t see anything from outside,” I told him. “You can’t hear anything, either.”

The shrill laughter of his children filled the hut from end to end. To them, we were on an adventure and playing games.

“I wouldn’t get too close to the walls,” Birch said. “We’re close to the road, and if any large trucks come through, the sides could be compromised.” He’d shored them up with mats like the ones Anise and Dev were sleeping on, but it was best not to take chances. “Other than that, we should be good until tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Jermay said. “As long as no one comes after us with a bottle of weed killer, we’re golden.”

He’d been sitting alone on one side of the hut, pulling flowers off the wall like Birdie. A pile of them sat at his feet, dismembered and bleeding deep purple when he crushed them under his heel.

Thankfully, Birch didn’t take the bait.

“What are we going to do about them?” Winnie asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think Jermay’s jealous?”

“I’ve told him not to be. Birch doesn’t spend more than twenty seconds looking at anyone other than you.”

He’d been attached to me at the Center, but that was desperation. He’d known Winnie for years before we ever met. They’d bonded in the Ground Center where they’d been confined, and that kind of bond didn’t break easily.

“Not that kind of jealous,” Winnie said quietly. “It’s hard for Jermay to see all of us with abilities while he has none. We’re not in The Show anymore. He can’t pretend it’s all smoke and mirrors. Out here, we’re different.”

I’d never thought about it that way. I’d always been the Celestine, and Jermay had always been the boy with magic in his eyes. Now that magic was dying off the further we strayed into the dark realities of life.

“We may feel powerless,” Winnie said. “But he actually is.”

“Gee, thanks, Winnie. It’s nice to know you think I’m useless.”

She hadn’t been quiet enough. And Jermay’s reaction proved her right. How could I have missed something so painfully obvious about him when I’d known him forever? I could finish his sentences, but I had no idea what was going on inside his head.

“I didn’t say you were useless,” Winnie protested. “And I didn’t mean—”

“I need some air.”

Jermay stomped toward the curtain door, blowing past Ollie, who decided not to try to stand in his way—or mine.

“Jermay! Stop,” I said. “Use your head. They’re going to be looking for you.”

“I guess that makes me stupid on top of powerless. I’ll just go mingle with the rest of the mundanes where I belong. No one will give me a second look.”

The kudzu curtain dropped behind him.

What I should have said was that he was one of the most resourceful people I’d ever known. That he never failed to have my back or stand beside me if I needed him. His power wasn’t something given to him by an off-world entity; it was deeper than that. He was relentless when it came to his family and friends. His power was tenacity, and I loved him for it.

But I kept my mouth shut and let him leave. “Protect the group” was our rule, too. I couldn’t compromise everyone for a single person, even when that person was Jermay and he’d left the hut with my bleeding, beating heart in his hands.

Birdie crawled into my lap and laid her head on my shoulder while she cried. Her tears made her look even younger than she was. She’d taken in so much grief and loss that it finally spilled over. She couldn’t be the brave little girl she knew everyone wanted her to be.

I was getting closer to that point myself. How was I supposed to comfort her or make it better when all I wanted was for someone to tell me everything would be okay so I could pretend to believe them?

CHAPTER 19

A few hours after we took shelter, rain moved in, pattering on the top of our hut. I couldn’t say for certain that I wasn’t the cause, calling the water down with my mood. I’d run out of tears, so the clouds lent me theirs.

Carefully, I lifted the corner of our curtain to watch the rainfall. If this wasn’t me, it was fortuitous. Wet ground would make the area mushy and marshy and much more difficult to search. It muffled the sound of each piece of the Mile that fell. I summoned a low-rolling fog to match the gray clouds above. A few inches was all it took.

Jermay was still gone, and Dev was still asleep. Anise drifted in and out, plagued by the fever her injuries had caused. Baba said we needed to get her temperature down, and he seemed to think I’d be able to make it happen. Pyrokinetics didn’t just add heat; they could remove it, he said. I could pull the heat out of my sister’s body and let it drift harmlessly into the air around us, but I didn’t know how.

All these things people kept expecting me to do, but no one had prepared me for them. I couldn’t be everything to everyone, and I was tired of the expectation.

Birch did what he could, poring through Klok’s databases and summoning every healing herb he could find, but there was only so much we could manage without real medical help.

Things had gone so wrong. One sister dead, another almost there. Two sisters missing. I was no closer to finding my father, and starting to believe all I’d find was his grave. This was not the way it was supposed to go.

If I was as powerful as everyone said I was, then how had I failed so miserably at everything?

“Penn?” Winnie approached cautiously. “You’d better get in here.”

My first thought, of course, was that Anise was gone. She’d met Evie on the other side and left me spiraling without a way to ever ground myself again. But if that had been the case, Birdie would have been in tears again. Instead, I could see her in the middle of the hut, facing off with Ollie. Her hands were wrapped securely around something that he had the other side of. The two of them were playing tug-of-war, but it was hardly a friendly game.

“Let go!” she ordered.

“I’m not going to keep it,” he said in the most reasonable tone I’d ever heard him use.

“It’s not yours!”

“I just want to check the local news, assuming I can get a signal in here with this weather.”

He had my father’s computer. He’d taken it out of the briefcase, and Birdie had caught him.

“Honey, I promise I’m not going to break it or steal it. If there’s been any official movement nearby, someone will have seen it and put it online.”

“Don’t call me honey!”

Very few people could get away with using endearments for Birdie. She pulled back hard on the computer, but Ollie was way too big for her to move. Unfortunately for Ollie, Birdie wasn’t the type to give up. She couldn’t save Anise, so she’d decided to save the computer—and she had backup.

“You heard her. Let go!”

Wren wrapped his arms around Birdie’s middle and pulled with her.

I tapped my toe against the ground, a signal for my lynx to make an appearance. It sprang up between them, grabbed the computer in its mouth and yanked it free of both their hands, then brought it to me. Birdie blew a raspberry in Ollie’s direction and retreated to our makeshift hospital to help Birch and Klok.

“You shouldn’t go snooping in bags that don’t belong to you,” I told Ollie. I wanted to be mad at him. I even tried. He deserved it after all the trouble he’d put us through, but without the crowd behind him, he was nothing more than a guy in a hut trying to keep his family safe, the same as the rest of us.

“It wasn’t locked,” he said. “I was trying to help.”

“It wasn’t a bad idea, but this thing is password protected. You could have burned the hard drive.”

I didn’t like him; he didn’t like me. Civility was the best we could hope for.

“You can’t make it work?” he asked.

“I may be able to do the things my father could do, but I can’t do them as well. He encrypted it, and unfortunately, for all the things Nafiza saw, a thirty-three character alpha-numeric sequence wasn’t one of them.”

I opened the computer and turned it on, so he could see the lock screen.

“He’s your father. You don’t know what he would have chosen?”

“He liked puzzles. Riddles. Secrets.”

Things he never shared with anybody, and I doubted if the Magnus Roma I knew was the same man who had locked that computer beyond use. I didn’t know much about him at all.

“I am sorry,” Ollie said. He let the words hang, so they could be an apology for this moment or for previous things.

I sat down with my back to the wall and the computer in my lap. There were no clues to my father’s password. None of those helpful questions you’re allowed to install in case you forget your log-in. Just the counter and thirty-three dash lines, each a reminder that when it counted, I knew nothing.

I tried fitting famous riddles and tongue twisters into the spaces, but there were too many letters. I tried pi, but couldn’t remember more than seven digits. Klok would’ve known the rest, but it would’ve been a waste of a try. Pi was too simple and too well known.

One more time, I put my hands on either side of the computer and focused every thought on my father. Current ran from my right hand first, then my left. It outlined the pathways between different keys and the processor, pinging letters and numbers into place as if I was shooting for the jackpot in a slot machine. S appeared in three slots, then R in one and L, forming lines of gibberish with numbers where there should have been spaces between words. A Y slipped into the last available slot. I took a breath and pushed “Enter,” picturing the sequence as a key I could fit into a lock.

The screen flashed failure-red, filling every blank with an X. The counter now read “3 of 5.” Only two tries left.

I slammed the computer shut and threw it, nearly hitting Jermay in the shin as he returned to us.

“I don’t think that’ll help with the password.” He picked the computer up with one hand. “Can I come in?”

“Do you know the code?” I stayed sitting and made him come to me.

“Jermay’s a jackass?”

He winced when he saw Clementine scowl because her children were in earshot. Somehow I doubted that was the worst word they’d ever heard, considering their father’s temperament.

“That’s only half of it,” I said.

“He’s very, very sorry and will never let the crazy leak out of his head again?” he guessed.

“Close enough. Get in here.”

He was dripping from the rain, soaked through so that the flannel shirt Nafiza had given him had turned nearly black and his jeans stuck tight to his skin. He squeaked when he walked.

He started to hug me but thought better of it when he saw the puddles forming under his feet. Xerxes ambled over, sized him up, and chomped down on his shoe.

“Hey! I said I was sorry!”

Xerxes squawked an answer that would have translated into something far worse for Clementine’s kids to hear.

“Where have you been?” Winnie slapped Jermay on the arm.

“I walked to the city—and it’s a big one. It’s also crawling with Commission. The third transport set down at a private landing strip an hour or so after we ended up here. It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

“Are they looking for survivors?” Ollie asked.

“I couldn’t tell. Too many people with too many versions of what’s happening. I think the official cover story is that a high-altitude equipment platform crashed and burned.”

“What about Arsenic?” Birch asked.

“I didn’t see any warden, and nobody mentioned one,” Jermay said. “But I can tell you this much, people are scared, and they don’t buy the excuses they’ve heard. They’ve never seen a Commission transport file out armed troops in broad daylight. It’s mostly exaggeration, but people over there are thinking they’re about to institute martial law. It’s bad. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

No snipes and no snark. It looked like the cease-fire was holding between the two of them.

“I brought this back for Anise.” Jermay handed me a bottle filled with red liquid.

“Cough syrup?”

“It’s got fever medicine in it,” he said. “I got the cough kind because I thought she might cough and hurt herself worse. It’s also supposed to make you sleep. Maybe it’ll help.”

I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight. The water and the chill soaked through my ugly purple sweatshirt, but I didn’t care. We didn’t have any money, and he didn’t have anything to sell, so he’d either begged for the medicine or stolen it—two things he loathed, mainly because they both fit the worst ideas people had about our life traveling with the circus.

“Thank you.”

“I tried to get us some food, but all I could manage were granola bars. I couldn’t risk moving anything big.”

Stolen it was, then. Doing magic had given him light fingers, and he’d had a lifetime of practice with sleight of hand. All he had to worry about was his conscience.

“Here you go, Little Bird.” He handed Birdie a pair of wrapped snacks. “I found you one with raisins.”

“Thanks.” She sat cross-legged on the floor, nibbling the bar. “I’m still mad at you, though.”

We sat in a huddle for the rest of the day and into the night, holding our breath at every sound louder than the wind swirling past. The creeper lights put on a show. Cars came. Trucks and people, but no one found the hovel. Slowly, each of us succumbed to sleep, and when I woke up, I was still holding hands with Jermay and Winnie, one on each side, with Birch behind her. The kids were in a puppy-style pile, and Klok sat vigil with my sister, ready to fight the Reaper if he came calling while the rest of us were sleeping.

No dreams had come for me. I liked to think that there was purpose in the nightmares, that they showed me clues or things I’d seen while awake, but overlooked. That night, they were silent.

Dev woke hours later, startled because he didn’t realize time had passed and he thought we were still in the air. He gasped and flailed, tipping himself off his stretcher onto the ground.

“We need to get as many of us to the safe house as possible,” his grandfather told him. “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Dev said certainly. To prove it, he took his grandfather’s hand and disappeared.

When he returned, we’d find out if there was actually anywhere to go.

I was faced with the same surety I always had. I was the target; they were collateral damage. If I wasn’t with them, then no one would chase them. They could go back to their lives in peace and rebuild. There were kids. I couldn’t put kids in danger to make it easier on myself. I couldn’t risk compromising the safe house or the network that used it.

Dev came back for Clementine and her two youngest. I approached Nola.

“I’m not going with you,” I said.

“I kind of figured you’d say that.”

“It’s safer if I’m not with you, and—”

“You don’t have to explain. I’ll make sure your sister is taken care of.”

She glanced back at Anise the way people do when they’re talking about someone in the same room. My sister’s olive skin was paler than I’d ever seen it, and she was freakishly still, even for someone who personified the quiet contemplation of the mountains. Now, Anise seemed etched out of them, Pygmalion’s creation waiting to be imbued with life.

When he wasn’t quoting Shakespeare, Nagendra told us Greek myths. I’d never realized so many of them had sunk in.

“I’m not going either,” Jermay said. “I stick with Penn.”

Klok beeped his agreement.

“We all do,” Winnie said.

“No!” Dev grabbed at her like he was going to drag her into the safe house whether she wanted to go or not. “I want you to come with me.”

“Not yet, but someday,” Winnie promised.

“Baba won’t like it.”

“I’ll tell you a secret about Baba, kid. He says a lot of things that he doesn’t mean. He’d do the same thing I’m doing, even if he claims otherwise. I found you once. I can do it again.”

“Don’t leave until I get back.”

“And give you a chance to bring Baba back here to strong-arm me with his superpowered sad face? I don’t think so.” She gave him a quick squeeze around the shoulders. “You’ve got a job to do. Mine’s different. Go on. Get out of here and make me proud.”

Dev’s eyes filled up with tears, but he wasn’t the type to cry in front of people. He straightened his back, lifted his head, and left us in a cloud of burnt cinnamon.

Birdie watched her first real friend go up in smoke.

“I need to ask you a favor,” I told Nola. “When he gets back, I want you to take Birdie with you.”

Who better to watch over her than someone who could actually see her when she vanished?

“No!” Birdie protested. “Don’t send me away. I’m sorry Anise got hurt, but I can help.”

“Listen to me, Little Bird. You haven’t done anything wrong; this isn’t a punishment. I promised to find Bruno and Mother for you, and I will. But until I do, they’d rather have you safe than on the run. Nola will take care of you, and when Anise is better, she will, too. You’ll have Dev, and Wren, and Ollie’s kids for friends. You can have family and a home, and right now that’s more than I can promise you.”

“But I don’t want you to go away, too.”

She had two special talents—invisibility and finding the softest part of a person’s heart to press—but I couldn’t let her get to me this time. She wanted us because we were familiar. We weren’t what she needed.

“I’d rather risk me going away than risk you ending up locked in the dark again,” I said.

The wardens didn’t care that Birdie was a child or too scared to show her face. She was leverage, and I wouldn’t let her be that anymore. She deserved to be a regular kid, without having to wonder if a madman was going to throw her off the Center’s rim to see if she could fly.

Fortunately, I knew her weakness as well as she knew mine.

“Don’t think this is a vacation,” I told her. “I’m counting on you to protect Anise for me, and Winnie’s family, too. At the first sign of trouble, you make them disappear. That’s your job. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She wiped her nose, but she stopped crying.

“Keep teaching Dev to walk that wire. You can show him off when I come back.”

“You’ll come back?”

“Try and stop me.”

“Promise?” She held up her pinkie.

“Promise.” I hooked our fingers together.

Dev appeared again, skidding into the hut like he’d run through the walls. The smell of cinnamon was so strong now that it burned my nose and eyes.

“Who’s next?” he asked.

“We are,” Nola said.

Birdie gave us each a hug, and Nola took her by the hand.

“I won’t let anything happen to her,” she said to me.

“You’d better not.”

If anything happened to my little bird, the Celestine had carte blanche, and I wasn’t going to be responsible for what she did with it.

Dev took Nola’s other hand, and then they were gone.

“I’ll watch out for them, too,” Ollie offered. “It’s the least I can do, considering you could have left us all behind.” He took a seat on the ground beside Anise to wait for Dev to come back.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

I picked up my father’s briefcase. Klok stuffed Xerxes into his pack with Bijou. The creeper lights piled inside, refusing to be left behind.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Before we lose anybody else.”

Our next obstacle was transportation.

A girl alone could hitchhike. Dangerous, sure, but not so bad for someone touched who had already survived what I’d been through. No killer in his right mind would hassle me.

A pair of us could have still gotten a ride, but not five, and especially not when one of us was Klok. People on the road took one look at him and either sped up to pass us by or moved to the next lane. We couldn’t use the golems while the Commission was in the area armed with spikes and hummers, and walking was too slow. Eventually, someone would make a phone call, and then we’d be sunk. Getting where we needed to go would take some drastic measures.

“Statistically, attractive girls who reveal various patches of skin are offered more rides, and they acquire them faster than groups including boys,” Klok rat-tatted. “Penn and Winnie are not ugly. Perhaps they should alter their attire while the rest of us hide.”

“If I could reach your face, I’d slap you,” Winnie told him.

“I rechecked the data. The statistics are correct. I am being helpful because no one else has ideas,” he huffed and cited his sources on his screen.

“A couple of crop tops won’t get us a ride if you three pop out of the bushes and scare the first truck that pulls over,” I told him. “And most cars aren’t going to have enough space for us. We’ve got to rethink this. Klok, I need you to put those ears of yours to use and find us something big, like a van. Once you’ve found one, let me know. Winnie and I can take care of the rest.”

He took his assignment seriously, kneeling with his hands to the asphalt and his eyes closed so that nothing could distract him from his task. We didn’t have to wait long before he signaled.

“Suitable transportation is approaching.”

I kicked a fissure into the road that left it a craggy mess. A blue bus came over the slope and stuck in the hole. It was one of those tour buses that take retirees to casinos, and it was completely empty.

Good citizens that we were, we ran to help.

Anise would not have approved of this plan.

“Are you okay?” Birch asked the driver.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It felt like an earthquake,” Winnie said.

“In this part of the country?”

The man shook his head, like the short stop had addled him. He noticed Klok behind Jermay’s shoulder on the passenger side and turned suddenly nervous.

“I’d better call this in and get some help out here.” He reached for the radio; I touched the side of the bus, blocking every signal with static.

“We can help you,” Jermay offered. “It’s just a few rocks blocking your wheels.”

We were too eager and too desperate. The man smelled a trap.

“If it’s money you kids want . . .” he began, but Winnie pulled the door open and stepped up inside so that they were face-to-face before he could finish.

“Actually, all I want is to talk you for a second,” she said.

CHAPTER 20

I hadn’t traveled in a regular vehicle since I was small enough for Evie to carry on her hip. On one of the trips my sisters and I took with our father, we drove around town in a cab. Other than that, we took the train and we walked, because The Show was no good unless we were all on display.

Soft seats. Air conditioning. I could have lived like that happily for the rest of my life. Driving and driving down an endless road with no destination other than “away,” and I could understand how my father had fallen into the trap of thinking that kind of existence would keep him out of range of his problems, and ours. But like everything else about The Show, it had been an illusion.

On the bus, Winnie sat in the front seat, as near as possible to the driver. Her ability was strongest when she was close to the person she needed to control. She hated what we’d asked her to do, and every once in a while, I could hear her trying to reassure the man that nothing bad was going to happen to him. She apologized and tried to explain that we were desperate, leaving out the details of why, but promising that it was just a little longer. Always just a little longer.

In the rearview mirror I could see that the driver was sweating and terrified, wanting nothing more than to turn off or turn around and let us out, but we kept going.

Most of the towns were small. We stopped once for gas in a place that had gone out of its way to re-create a mid-twentieth-century feel. Different municipalities had different ideas of what “safe” looked like, but they all agreed that re-creating the past was the key to protecting our future. The Medusae had never showed interest in us before we ventured out beyond our planet, so to most people, it was logical to go back to a time before such travel was possible.

At the next pump was a woman in a car meant to recall the finbacked classics of that era. More illusion. Her vehicle was sleek and much darker than the pastel colors favored by the land boats people drove in the mid-twentieth century. Inside, it was as modern as anything, with digital displays and a smart engine with a terabyte of memory for data storage.

It didn’t matter. She played the part, chattering away on her cell phone in a flower-print A-line with kitten heels, and everyone around her pretended that it made a difference. The Medusae hadn’t returned, so it must have been working.

They had no idea what was really going on.

The last town we passed hadn’t gone so far in their refacing. Their streets looked exactly as they had twenty-four years ago at the onset of the Great Illusion. There were a few updated cars and repainted buildings, but most everything had ground to a halt with the arrival of the Medusae, and never started up again. Afraid to move or breathe because it might be just enough to tip the scales out of humanity’s favor. Cross your fingers, don’t step on the cracks, and fold the ladders away.

“We’re going to have to stop,” Winnie announced after we’d driven for several more hours.

“Here?” Jermay asked. “Did you not notice those posts we passed a while back? We’re in Death Valley. This is a dry town!”

Dry towns were increasingly common. Dampening posts were installed around the town lines with a lattice of wires above to function like the Faraday cage my father used to contain The Show. They allowed the town to control who had access to tech and when, and they always came with a strictly enforced curfew. As the sky grew darker, they’d tighten the noose, strangling all public electronic output until it was nonexistent or imposing hefty fines for violations. Death Valley was the nickname for the longest consecutive stretch of enforced curfews in the country. It spread constantly, drawing new citizens into its false promises of protection.

“If I push him any further, it’s going to do permanent damage,” Winnie said adamantly. “He’s done, and so am I.”

She instructed our driver to take us somewhere we could get a room, and then to turn around and drive back across the town line, where he could pull over and sleep off the effects of her touch. Once he woke up, we’d be vaporous as a dream, with shifting features and no names. He would never know if he’d actually picked us up or not.

I felt bad for the man. He had a good heart that prevented him from dumping us at the nearest fleabag motel we passed. Winnie’s sob stories and apologies must have gotten through. He drove us to the door of a three-tower hotel that had limos and town cars waiting out front for guest use. The five of us piled out, and he took off. If there had been any cops around, he would have earned himself a speeding ticket.

People looked at us funny, looked at us sideways, and outright stared like it didn’t matter if we could see them or not. We looked exactly like people who had been on the road for hours. We didn’t match the décor, and we didn’t have any luggage except for my father’s briefcase and Klok’s backpack and satchels.

A man wearing an earpiece, a white shirt, and slacks came to meet us in the driveway. Security or a valet. Someone responsible for keeping up appearances and keeping out the riffraff.

“Are you kids lost?” he asked, sizing up Klok to see if he was an adult or not. “This is the Harts and Palms. Maybe your bus was supposed to drop you off at the Palm Tree Family Resort? Is he your chaperone? Are you meeting your parents?”

He pointed to a giant sign bearing the image of a pair of deer sharing umbrella drinks under a palm tree.

“Um . . . yeah, I think that’s the place,” Birch said. “The bus must have made a mistake.”

“Then we’ll get you a ride to where you need to be. One of our cars can take you.”

“Could we speak to someone at the desk?” Winnie asked in the way that only she could. “The driver took off with most of our stuff. We don’t have a phone or the other hotel’s number so we can check in with our folks.”

“Sure thing,” the man said politely, though visibly confused as to why he was agreeing when his intent had been to hustle us off. “We’ll get you fixed up in a snap.”

He held the door open for us, as it was the kind that locked on exit so that only registered guests could come and go. Winnie whispered a few more words that left him certain we were all society women in matching green jackets who’d come as a group to enjoy the casino.

“Enjoy your stay, ladies,” he said. “Good luck at the tables. Number nine’s due for a win!”

No wonder people like Ollie were afraid of Winnie. She could ask for the world, and someone would get it for her.

We stepped into the lobby and into another dimension where all floors were made of marble and inscribed with gold leaf in the shape of leaping deer. The chandelier, which was big enough that Klok had to sidestep it, was gold, too, as were the railings for people to lean on as they walked down the red-carpeted halls. Men and women wearing theatrical bellhop uniforms bustled from place to place, pushing carts filled with bags.

“Look at the size of this place,” Birch said. “Are all hotels like this?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him.

I’d never been to a hotel, either. I’d seen them in movies, but most of those weren’t half as grand as what I was able to feel beneath my fingers. I skimmed them over chairs upholstered with silk, and wood so polished that it shined like metal.

“They’ll never think to look for us here, that’s for sure,” Jermay said.

Even if they did, they’d never get in the front door. People who paid for places like this were the kind of people with powerful friends.

Winnie set her sights on the woman in charge of the check-in desk. A round-faced, bespectacled sugarplum with a suit coordinated perfectly to her fellow desk-dwellers, right down to the buttons that matched the seal on the floor.

Winnie marched up to her, mimicking some of the people milling around the lobby, and folded her hands on the desk the way the guests on either side of her were doing.

“May I help you?” the woman asked.

“We need a room large enough for all of us, preferably on a floor with no public access,” Winnie said.

I didn’t know hotels had floors like that. We’d have multiple layers of locks between us and the outside world.

The woman’s face went blank. She began typing and mumbling to herself, considering rooms and rejecting them for not meeting the criteria.

“Perfect. Room 1201 is still open. It’s a penthouse suite overlooking the—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Winnie said. “It’s closed for renovation and repair.”

“Ah, yes.” The woman laughed and slapped her forehead. “How silly of me. Of course it is. I’ll just note that in the log so as to avoid any future booking errors.”

“We need extra keys,” I said, nudging Winnie. The woman handed them over.

“We were never here, and you never saw us,” Winnie said. “On-site security is down, too.”

I laid my hand against the back of her computer and passed a small electrical burst through it. If I’d done it correctly, all she’d see was snow from every camera that fed into the main system.

“Repair crew is already here.” Winnie nodded to Klok and the guys. I imagined that the woman didn’t see the raggedy android we all knew, but a man with a tool bag and work jumper. “We’ve got orders to stay until the job is done. Which way are the elevators?”

Winnie wasn’t nearly as happy with her success rate as I was. Using her touch against Arcineaux was one thing, but the driver and the desk lady hadn’t hurt us. They weren’t threatening us with anything worse than a chauffeured ride to another hotel. We’d become liars and thieves; that was the price of survival.

We waited silently for the elevator to reach the top floor, sealed in by mirrored walls that reflected our faults back in infinite numbers until we faded away, smaller and smaller, into a distance with no real depth. The counter dinged and the doors opened, revealing a second set made of etched, inlaid glass.

I braced myself for the sound of thumping knives that never came.

“Not the Aerie,” I murmured to myself. “Not the Center.”

Birch squeezed my hand as he brushed past. He must have been having the same thoughts.

Beyond the elevator was another small lobby made of a pinker marble than the kind used for the floors downstairs and furnished with a long table set up with a platter of fruit beneath a mirror. On either side of the table was a set of double doors designed to keep the space perfectly symmetrical.

“There aren’t any numbers,” Birch said. “Which one’s the room?”

“Guys . . . I think it’s all the room.” Winnie checked the card in her hand. The number 1201 had been inscribed on a plate beside the closing elevator doors.

Xerxes wiggled out of the satchel Klok never put down, knocking several creeper lights loose with him. Bijou poked his head out but was happy to keep riding piggyback for the time being.

“She did say it was a penthouse,” I said as Xerxes took a running start and smashed into one set of doors. They swung into the next room and slammed against the doorstop at the bottom.

“Wow,” Birch said.

Whatever rabbit hole we’d slipped into by entering the Harts and Palms, we’d just fallen down another level.

“Wow,” I repeated. The room deserved the double take.

It was a two-story palace with a second floor rimmed in clear glass panels. The windows, which made up one entire curved wall, cut through both floors. There was a fridge filled with food and sodas, couches, multiple bedrooms, and even an office, where I deposited my father’s briefcase and computer on the desk.

Klok turned two of the TVs on to different news stations.

“We should listen for indications of Commission activity,” he said. “And game shows. I’m good at those.”

Someday, I would figure out how his brain prioritized information. For now, I just rolled with it.

“Pull the curtains,” Winnie said. “And look for the pay box. A place this nice should have at least one per room.”

There were loopholes when it came to functioning in dry towns, and they were all neatly detailed in a bulleted brochure on one of the tables. The laws said that tech couldn’t be observed after dark, so hotels like ours outfitted the nicer rooms with layer upon layer of blackout curtains, preventing anyone outside from seeing if screens were on or not. The same laws limited the amount of power consumed in a given area. For most people, this meant that after they’d hit their quota, their power company either cut or significantly dropped their available power. For people who could pay, it meant offsets. Cities kept a certain amount of power and bandwidth in reserve. Guests could purchase parcels via a pay box inside their hotel room that would shield them from detection.

The pay box in our room was bolted to the wall between the sets of double doors and outfitted with a plaque listing all the rules for use. They all basically boiled down to “pay us and do what you want, so long as you don’t tell us what you’ve done.”

It was a basic machine with a single, simple command in place: “Money goes in, power comes out.” I tricked it into thinking we’d paid the fee so that lingering inside the dry zone wouldn’t affect Klok or the golems. If we were lucky, none of them would turn off when we lost daylight.

I set one of the alarm clocks in the room for five minutes before sunset. When it went off, Winnie was facedown in one of the bedrooms, sleeping off the marathon use of her touch. “Do not disturb” was implied by her threat to take Jermay’s previous suggestion and make the first person to wake her up cluck like a chicken for the remainder of our time at the Harts and Palms.

Birch was keeping busy inspecting the greenery while I paced from room to room to orient myself to the layout in case I had to find an exit fast. We crossed paths in the entryway. Unlike the Mile’s trees and flowers, the plants inside our penthouse were resplendent and well cared for. He didn’t need to nurse any of them back to health, so he was upgrading them.

“I got the idea from the offset box,” he said. “If we really add things to the room, or fix it up, then we’re not stealing it.”

Not a bad idea. Once I was able to settle my nervous feet and hands, I’d see if there were any actual repairs I could do that might make our presence less of a lie.

I made sure all of the curtains on the panoramic windows were securely fastened by the time the last minute ticked down. The pay box displayed a green light on its face, and a minute past curfew, Klok had not turned into an oversized paperweight. He and Jermay were still busy scrolling through news programs to track Commission movements.

Official activity was never mentioned overtly, unless it was a parade, but there were code words to indicate increased presence in an area. If what Jermay had seen before we caught that bus was accurate, someone should have been talking.

Xerxes and Bijou were still functional, too. They and the creeper lights had come up with a game that involved the golems leaping from the upper balcony toward the crossbeams, where they had to grab one of the lights without the benefit of their wings. Bijou overshot his turn and had to loop the beam with his tail, ending up hanging like an oddly shaped monkey. Xerxes swooped down on his chosen light, then crashed beak-first into the empty couch below because he didn’t open his wings fast enough.

I started to scold them for the noise when I was stopped by one of those unexpected points of clarity between me and a set of machines that shouldn’t have been able to communicate. They were trying to help sell our cover story by making destruction . . . er . . . construction sounds. They even tried to demonstrate the concept by copying the thwack, thwack, thwack of a busy hammer.

All of the creeper lights on the crossbeams danced and shined their faces in different directions to create a strobe effect they equated with applause. They weren’t coming down anytime soon, if ever.

What had started off as one of the worst days of my life was actually getting better.

I let myself into the office where I’d put my father’s briefcase. I left the computer on the desk, still displaying its hateful lock screen, but dumped the case out on the floor so I could sort the contents into piles. Maybe I’d find the password jotted down in the margin of a notebook.

I made a pile for pictures and different stacks for different inventions. Things I couldn’t place went into a single heap that I tried to sort out as I went. I kept at it until Jermay knocked and poked his head in the door.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I found this in the welcome folder.”

He threw a laminated booklet at me—an advertisement for a magic act in one of the lobby’s showrooms. The man on the cover was decades younger than Zavel and didn’t wear the antiquated top hat that had been his trademark, but he had the same stance and the same intensity in his expression. Jermay flopped dramatically onto the room’s leather sofa.

“Next time, I vote for a ground-level room with no entertainment brochures lying around.”

“I thought you were helping Klok scan the news.”

“I was. They’ve changed the official story. Now they’re calling the debris from the Mile a freak meteor shower and blaming a comet no one’s ever seen or heard of.”

“That’s worse than calling it an equipment platform,” I said.

“Yeah, but this time people are buying it. I’ve lost all faith in humanity.”

“Is that why you stopped watching?”

“Nope. Someone’s pollinating in there. I had to leave.”

He’d switched from calling Birch fertilizer-related names to “someone”—this was progress.

“It’s a nervous habit,” I said.

“The wallpaper had flowers painted on it. He made them pop out and sprout over the windows. Someone’s going to notice that, and if they spread beyond our side of the wall, he’ll blow our cover. The smell’s enough to gag a florist.”

Jermay threw his arm over his face, his not-so-subtle way of playing for attention.

“He’s very nervous,” I said.

“How long are you going to keep making excuses for him?”

“Long enough to wear you down. Concede defeat and come help me.”

He stood up with the same exaggerated movements and joined me on the floor.

“What is all of this?”

“Stuff my father had in his briefcase. Notes and scribbles, mostly.”

Hallmarks of a cluttered mind. He’d be seized by a whirlwind of ideas and jot them down on whatever was close. Paper, napkins, clothes, and walls, even skin. They were a puzzle of unknown size and shape with an unspecified number of pieces, none of which included thirty-three letters or numbers that would open the computer.

“I recognize some of this,” I said, tapping a pile. “He was working on upgrades for the caravan exhibits. This one’s the Constrictus.”

Security specs. Attack commands. He worked on his most secret projects where they couldn’t be seen or found, even by family.

“This one is all details about Nye’s hands.”

Unfinished and drawn freehand, but the final blueprints would have allowed Nye to maintain them without my father or me.

Jermay dug through the piles, settling on some photos.

“Hey! Nagendra with no ink. He actually had hair!”

He picked up one of the snapshots I’d discarded. Half an hour earlier, I’d obsessed over it myself. Young Nagendra and my father along with two other men, all standing in an open field with a large building in the background. Some kind of estate or maybe a university.

“Who’s this with them?” Jermay asked.

“I don’t know. There’s all this stuff, but most of it’s not labeled. This folder is filled with ideas for fixing the traveling coat that took me to Nye’s Center.” Something it might be worth seeing if Klok could duplicate. A reliable transportation device would be handy. “This one’s nothing but names, but they aren’t random. Do you see?”

I pointed to one of the names.

“Winnie?” Jermay asked.

“It took me a while to crack the pattern, but these are refugees, all grouped by age and the location they were taken from. There are seventeen in her group.”

All girls who were inside Arcineaux’s Center when she escaped. All part of the hundreds my father protected while my sisters and I stayed in the Commission’s crosshairs.

“Could this be Magnus’s partner?” Jermay held up another snapshot. This one showed my father and a man I assumed was Baba because of his size and the turban. A chubby red-faced man with a grin was off to the side, nearly out of frame. “The same guy’s in a lot of these shots. So’s this building. Maybe he’s a professor.”

“Even if it is Cyril, he could have retired years ago. We don’t even have a last name.”

“But someone there might recognize him. Have you had any luck with the computer? Surely there’s something in there.”

“I’ve only got two shots left at the password,” I said.

“That’s okay. You’ll figure it out.”

There was absolutely nothing wrong with what Jermay said or the way he said it. I knew he wasn’t making fun of me, but those last four words triggered something. I wiped my eye in an attempt to stifle the tears trying to collect there. They rushed to fill the other one. I couldn’t head them off.

It all hit. Everything. The full force of losing Evie and seeing Anise’s body broken on a dirty reed mat because we couldn’t get her the help she needed. Birdie’s frown when I sent her away. All the fear . . .

So much fear. So much anger and helplessness and pain.

I couldn’t see the light anymore, not even through the stars. Someone had stuck me inside a jar and put out my flame. I was choking on the smoky stench of dark emotion left behind without that fire.

“Hey,” Jermay said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I can’t help it. What am I supposed to do? To find Vesper and Nim, I need to first find two wardens, and I don’t have their names, much less a location. I’ve got even less on the guy who might be able to tell me how to find my father. My only hope at this point is that stupid computer, and I can’t even open the home screen without first outsmarting a man who designed and built an entire flying city . . . I can’t do it. I can’t.”

I wasn’t as strong as people thought I was. Putting my family back together had gotten too complicated, and a good bit of that complication was thanks to my father. He hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me the truth, so how was I supposed to trust myself?

“Is that really what you see?” Jermay asked me.

“What else is there?”

“You’ve got tunnel vision. All you see is you against the problem, but if you’d widen your focus, you might notice that you’re not out here on your own. You say you can’t save two people—so what? We just saved more than twenty, and before that, we evacuated hundreds, maybe even thousands. You say you can’t figure out Magnus’s computer? Big deal—Klok is a computer, and since he was actually made by your dad, I’d bet he’s got the advantage over some mass-produced hunk of plastic. And there’s nothing so special about that flying city, either. Magnus may have made it fly, but you brought it down. You made sure that the Commission couldn’t salvage it. You don’t have to do anything other than let us help you.”

I wiped my eyes again, and this time they stayed dry. He always knew what to say to make things seem better, even if they hadn’t changed a bit.

“Thanks,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

Winnie was wrong. Jermay may not have been touched, but he wasn’t powerless. His strength was in bolstering others. He saw the weak points and reinforced them. He made others stronger, which made him the most powerful of us all.

“It was nothing,” he said. “I just figured the tears were a bad idea, considering your track record. The hotel might sympathize and flood, floor by floor.”

“That one you’re going to pay for.”

“Now, Penn . . .”

He jumped up and backed away, searching the room for something to defend himself with.

“Begging gets you nowhere with me,” I said.

“What about bribery?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, deciding which way to go. He faked right, ran left, and vaulted over the desk to the other side.

“Depends,” I told him. “What are you offering?”

“Umm . . .” He considered the items on the desktop and held one out. “This pen. If you flip it upside down, the palm trees inside lose their coconuts. A very good bribe, in my opinion.”

A moment like this was everything I’d ever wanted. Penelope and Jermay. No need to hide who or what we were. No one watching us, and no chance that the walls would fall in, revealing enemies on the other side. All of our problems were still lurking in the deep shadows of later trouble, but for this one moment, we were able to lock them out.

I was as carefree as the kids I’d seen playing games on the Mile.

“After careful consideration, I reject your offer,” I told Jermay.

There was a round flower bowl set out on the desk. I flicked my fingers at him, and the bowl spit a tiny stream of water in his face.

It was unusual for anyone to really surprise Jermay. His reflexes were too fast, but the wide-open eyes and slack mouth told me I’d struck a rare vein of gold.

“You did not just do that!” he yipped, wiping his face with his sleeve.

I flicked him again and he growled. He ducked under the desk and crawled through to my side.

I pointed behind him.

“You may have got off a couple of shots, but I’m not falling for that,” he said.

“Suit yourself. It’ll get you, either way.”

Warily, Jermay turned around to face my sailfish, shimmering blue to match the dye from the water that had filled the flower bowl.

“You wouldn’t . . .”

“You might want to start running.”

“Are you seri—”

I sent the sailfish streaking after him, and he ran around the room. Jumping furniture, tossing couch pillows, ducking, and doubling back. He could have run out the open door any time he wanted, but he kept circling the room. I was laughing so hard I nearly fell back to the floor.

“This stopped being funny four laps ago!” he squeaked. My sailfish had backed him into a corner, with the tip of its bill pointing at his throat. He closed his eyes and turned his head away like there was a real chance I’d run him through.

“Do you give up?” I asked.

“I give! I give! Unconditional surrender!”

“Accepted.” I kissed him on the cheek and send the water back to where it had begun.

He cracked one eye open to see if anything else was coming, then did a pratfall faint.

“That was pathetic,” I said.

“Dead with relief,” he mumbled through one side of his mouth. “Can’t talk while dead.”

“Oh dear. Dead sounds serious. I’ll see if Klok can use his palm spark for a defibrillator.”

He caught my ankle with his hand when I tried to walk away.

“No time. Need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

“Only if I get to smother you first!”

I yanked a pillow off the nearest couch and pounced on him, with my knees on either side of his stomach and the pillow over his face.

Jermay wrapped his arms around me and sat up, leaving me in his lap. He knocked the pillow aside so I was staring into his eyes. Electric-blue and live-wire sparking.

“This is why I love you. You know that, right?” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said.

He’d kissed me before, but this was different. We weren’t about to be killed or captured. There was no threat that if we didn’t do it now, we’d never get the chance. This was a choice, and we made it together. Penelope and Jermay, the way I’d always imagined.

This was real. Not a dream. Definitely not a nightmare.

I twitched my hand toward the door and blew it shut. Anybody ruining this moment was going to end up a fried clucking chicken.

CHAPTER 21

The clock flashed 2:19 in the morning.

2:20.

2:27.

The numbers were so bright and so blue I couldn’t miss them, even from across the room. I closed my eyes, but I knew they were still there, stealing my sleep one perfectly calibrated minute at a time.

I peeked out the window; it was pitch-black outside. One in twenty buildings had lights on, including the Harts and Palms. Most others had fallen prey to the curfew.

Everyone in the penthouse was asleep except for me, the golems patrolling the upper floor, and the mini–creeper lights rolling through the rafters in an apparent game of chase. When they had no one to entertain, they entertained themselves, and I had the strangest feeling that we weren’t going to get them to come back down. They liked it there.

Even Klok had conked out on the sofa downstairs, bathed in the light of the nearest TV, with a quiz-show theme song for a lullaby. I was the only one who hadn’t been relieved of her insomnia.

I was afraid of what might happen if I slept. Too many what-if scenarios involving night terrors and the potential demolition of a multistory hotel because I couldn’t keep the monsters where they belonged. I needed to safely burn off some steam and unwind. Maybe then I could convince myself we really were safe this time.

The master bathroom was the logical choice. I could lock the door, and marble didn’t burn. Better yet, I could practice water control and not have to worry about making a mess.

The bathroom was bigger than the bedroom. More gold—even the faucets and the toilet, which felt like overkill to me. The tub was bigger than most wading pools. Klok could have lain out flat in the bottom, and there would’ve still been room past his head and feet. It was over two feet deep and situated on a pedestal in the exact center of the room.

I sat in the tub in my pajamas, legs crossed lotus-style and eyes closed, attempting to balance all of my weight on my tailbone. The water level rose slowly, and I went with it. Water and air worked together to create buoyancy that allowed me to float.

Stardust, drifting through the endless void of space—maybe the word wouldn’t bother me so much if I owned it. Like the Mile, I became a trail of glittering gold left behind by a comet no one even remembered the name for. Cast-off ice, precious metals fused into frozen glass.

When I opened my eyes, I was several feet off the ground. All the water from the tub was still below me, but out of the boundaries of the tub itself. The faucet poured up, deepening and widening the pool I held together by force of will alone.

I laughed. This was fun! My touch had never been fun.

Expanding my repertoire had always been a matter of self-defense or protecting the people around me. I learned in the moment, when sink or swim were my only options. I’d never had the chance to play with it before.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for a sight you’ve never dreamed of. Behold the dancing waters of the Harts and Palms hotel!

Maybe they’d give me my own brochure and a fancy new name. After all, I loved performing, and I had references. Fugitive references, but they’d give me glowing recommendations.

I lowered my feet into the water collected below me, amazed that it felt no different to my skin than air. I raised my hands, creating currents set to the soundtrack of The Show in my head. A tinny carnival sound that used to soak into our atmosphere so that people walked out humming it.

My sailfish made an appearance, breaking the surface with its dorsal fin to swim in time to the music. It bobbed up and down in a carousel rhythm, an observation the water decided to run with. The pool became a disk. Water bubbled up and burst, producing horses and sea creatures, marvels and beasts. They settled into tracks along the grooves with me as the floating fulcrum of a merry-go-round unlike any other, and no one else was awake to see it.

The figures twirled faster and tighter, closing in on me. A prancing horse slammed its hooves into my chest, throwing me into a sea serpent that trampled me under, submerging my head below the beating hooves of kirin and unicorns.

“Stop!” I tried to say, but inhaled stinging, burning water.

The carousel kept spinning, and the music in my head turned hectic. Too fast, too pitched. Out of control.

A lion charged toward me, jaws gaping and ready to snap.

“Stop!”

The carousel was now a stampede of furious feet and paws running in an endless circle and battering the air from my lungs. It knocked me end over end, refusing to allow me time to catch my breath. I pulled my arms and legs in tight to guard myself against the beating, and the creatures changed again. Their legs spiraled out into clinging tentacles dragging me down, down, down into water that deepened as I sank. The spinning disk became a column with me drowning at its center.

I opened my eyes and saw myself in the mirror, being strangled by a swarming bloom of jellyfish.

“Nim!” I screamed into the water. Bubbles bursting without sound. “Nim!”

Short for Nimue, not nemesis, despite my telling her otherwise. She was the sour sister. The one who took delight in causing trouble. A turbulent sea nymph trapped on land, but she was also a fierce defender of those she loved. If I could connect to Anise through the constant of the earth, then Nim should have been there in the water.

“NIM!” The last of my air escaped as the last word I would ever speak. My body twitched, demanding that I breathe in whether there was air or not. My lungs were empty and they hated the feeling. My blood screamed for oxygen.

I heard a laugh. Biting and choppy as the ocean in a storm, the way Nim sounded when she’d pulled a prank.

“Water is life,” said a voice I would have sworn was hers. “It’s not death.”

The currents calmed, and the tentacles unraveled, but I was still trapped in the middle.

“Water is life,” she said again.

A hallucination before dying?

Where was the replay of my life? All the moments I’d forgotten to remember, brought back so I could say good-bye?

“You’re all wet!” A familiar taunt from my sister, and a warning that she was about to drench someone with a wave they couldn’t escape. “You’re all wet from H to O!”

O.

Oxygen. There was oxygen in water. Was Nim trying to help me from whatever hole she’d been thrown into?

I put my arms straight out into a T with my feet pointed down to lock my position in the column, gave myself a three count, and breathed in at the point I was ready to black out.

Water filled my mouth, cold and rushing into the void. It vaporized against my tongue. Oxygen flowed down. Hydrogen drifted up and out through my nose. I was breathing underwater!

My heartbeat slowed. I kept my eyes on myself in the mirror, marveling as I saw myself gulp water and breathe out bubbles.

The column flattened out. Without warning, it sloshed down and took me with it. I landed on my back in the tub with a splash. Water flooded over the sides, but I was free.

I scrambled out, reached for one of the hotel robes on the hook, and hastily bade the water lift off the floor and return to the tub and shower and sinks—anything with a drain.

Unwinding was the opposite of the result I got after the weirdest trip to the bathroom in history. I didn’t think anything could have struck me as weird anymore, but breathing underwater? Seriously? I wasn’t even sure Nim could do that; her act had always been on dry land.

I needed something to distract me from the feeling of drowning I couldn’t shake. Something serious. Fun was hazardous to my health.

I returned to the suite’s office and retrieved my father’s computer, along with my memory chip, and carried them both upstairs to where Xerxes and Bijou were the only ones around to ask me what I was doing.

“I don’t suppose you know the password?” I asked Xerxes. More than one of the people I’d encountered since I lost my father had spoken to his masterpiece like it was his proxy, including Warden Nye and my father’s own sister. Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

He padded over and climbed onto the table. He considered the computer, then me, then leaned over and nipped my ear.

“What was that for?” I grabbed my ear and held out my hand so he could see the blood on my fingers.

He made one of his many dismissive noises and jumped down.

“Crazy golem,” I grumbled. Tugging my ear used to be a prompt from my father to center myself before going into the arena. It was a gentle reminder that he was watching from the sidelines, never hard enough to make me bleed.

I had red on my hand and on my robe. It was probably dripping onto the chair, which was evidence of our presence in the room that we didn’t want to leave behind. Thankfully, ridiculously posh hotel suites came stocked with tissues, same as the regular kind. I pinched one around my earlobe until the bleeding stopped.

“See what you did?” I shook the tissue at Xerxes. “Mortally wounded. Your fault. Bad gryphon!”

He rattled his wings at me.

He already had my attention, so what—

“Is this a clue?” I asked.

Xerxes sat down.

This would have been so much easier if my father had given him a voice screen like Klok’s. What good was a machine capable of higher reasoning if he couldn’t tell me what he knew?

And what kind of a clue was blood?

“Thirty-three spaces and blood,” I said. “Thirty-three spaces . . . not enough for chromosomes.”

There were forty-six chromosomes in human blood, and they didn’t have names. They had numbers.

But if the clue was my blood, then maybe the answer was staring me in the face. Every time I entered a password, the screen flashed bloodred and filled with Xs. My sisters and I were all girls, so did it mean X chromosomes? Was the answer in the riddle itself? That definitely sounded like something my father would do.

I pressed the X key until all of the spaces were filled, and hit “Enter.”

The screen flashed red, and I lost another number off the counter. I was down to my last chance.

“What?” I demanded. “What else could blood mean if not me or my sisters?”

Wait . . .

Maybe I was overthinking this.

Nieva, Nimue, Anise. I counted off the letters in their names. Vesper, Penn.

Too short. I deleted Penn and retyped it as Penelope.

Still four letters off. I took a deep breath and added the name no one was supposed to speak, much less know: Nico.

A vertical line split the screen down the middle, opening like a set of doors. I was in!

I slid my memory chip into the slot with a promise to melt the stupid thing sight unseen if it was password locked, too.

The chip’s drive opened, revealing a single video file.

I hit “Play,” and my father appeared in extreme close-up, washed out in the light of his camera as he turned on the device. He took a seat in what had been his office on the train, folded his hands, crossed his legs, and began to speak.

“Hello, Penn . . . Penelope. I swore never to burden you with this if I was able to conceal it, so it’s a given that I’m not there with you as you watch this.”

The same words he’d written in the birthday card he left for me at the Hollow. My reaction to hearing them spoken was the same as it had been to reading them—I started to cry, but made myself stop.

“Don’t mourn The Show, Penn. It was always an illusion on the verge of collapse; only the people were real. And if any of those people are with you now, I must ask them a favor: Leave me alone with my daughter. I suspect that having an audience hear what I have to share may be too much to bear after the trials which no doubt predicated taking refuge here,” my father said.

He had truly expected us to be safe at the Hollow. All of us. He paused, giving anyone who might have been in the room with me a chance to go. I wished there was someone near enough to wake up and watch the rest. If he was that concerned with secrecy, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone.

My father leaned in close and began again.

“I guess I didn’t need to give you the speech I prepared, did I? If you’re watching this, then you’ve already read the words I just spoke, so let me go off-script and start this with one of the several apologies I owe you—I’m sorry that it’s from a screen and speakers you’ve first heard me use your given name in conversation, my darling girl. I owed you better than that.

“I’ve robbed you of your rightful self, and I should have acknowledged that, if only to you. I hoped he’d lose interest, or find another, easier pursuit . . . in short, I was a fool. He might have let your sisters be, but never you.”

This was a version of my father I’d never seen and didn’t like. He was nervous and unsure. Haggard, he wrung his hands and constantly checked the space around and behind him to see if anyone was listening.

“I’ve failed you, and I’ve lied to you—don’t disagree. My life has been lies upon half-truths wrapped inside innuendo and misdirection for so long, I forgot the truth. Worse, they were worthless lies, because they served no purpose in the grander scheme. I lost focus and chose not to believe the devil would collect on the bargain I struck when you were an infant.”

How was this broken and contrite man the same one who raised me never to bend my back, but rather face the worst with my head up and proud? I took my eyes off the screen long enough to search out Xerxes for his input on what was happening, but he’d returned to his patrol route and had no time for me.

“I’m a thief, you see,” my father continued. “And what I stole was time with you and your sisters. I tried to pay that debt with fanciful machines that never did quite what was required so that I could convince myself I hadn’t sold out completely.”

Someone knocked on the office door behind him, and his face turned stricken. He looked over his shoulder, then leaned closer to the camera, whispering his next words.

“Despite that effort, he’s called in the marker I owe. I can’t bear to pay it, and to that end, I’ve tried to reason with him or buy more time, but I’m afraid I’ve run out of currency.”

Tears were streaming down his face, and mine, and I let them come, hoping they’d wash away the confusion.

The knocking came again, faster and more insistent.

“One moment,” my father called behind him.

He stood and started to pace, too close to the camera at first to allow me to see his face, but he circled around the back of his chair and held on to the winged sides as though he needed the support.

“And now I must confess my greatest lie, darling Penn. One I fear you will not find yourself able to forgive, for I have yet to forgive myself for telling it.”

“Where are you?” I asked. “Tell me that. I don’t care about anything else.”

I slid out of my chair to my knees in front of the computer, almost touching it with my nose, not daring to breathe lest the sound make me miss something critical.

“Your brother did not die the night you were born. He did not die at all.”

My heart stopped, lodged in my throat so I couldn’t swallow.

Not dead? How could he not be dead? I’d seen the scars on the Hollow’s table, blackened by fire. Someone had repaired the roof and walls, but the evidence of my crime was there.

Excuses found their way into my thoughts, wondering if this was some sort of message he was sending between the words for me to decipher. Or perhaps, worst of all, he’d simply lost his mind.

“Yes, the stars sang down when you were born, and yes, your brother bore the brunt. He was wounded—terribly, horribly . . . fatally. At least I thought so. I took him from the room to stop your mother doing herself injury in her attempts to help him. But I felt his heart beating in my hand.”

My father sat heavy in his chair again, facing me with his hands out, imploring.

“Understand that what I did . . . grief and desperation do not always lend themselves to rational thought . . .”

Once again, a furious knocking interrupted him.

“A moment, please!” he shouted over his shoulder, then turned back to me. “I had given imitation breath to lungs made of iron and artificial beats to hearts that pumped by piston. How much harder could it be to simply repair life that already existed? He was my son. How could I not try?”

Surely he wasn’t saying what I thought he was. The thought was too terrible.

“I patched his flesh with metal and wire. By the time I’d calmed myself enough to realize what I had done, the way I’d desecrated his little body, it was too late. No one could live like that . . . and yet, he did. He cried. He kicked his legs, pumped his tiny arms, and, impossibly, opened his eyes. I watched dumbstruck as the patches I’d created integrated into his body with seamless precision. He went still, as if in concentration, and when he finally moved again, his wounds were gone and he looked the image of a perfect, healthy newborn. But he was so much more . . .”

My father’s face changed, talking about the son he’d brought back from the brink. A light came into his eyes, and a smile fought its way onto his lips against the tide of his dark mood. I wondered if, all the times Penelope had disappeared inside Penn, he’d actually been imagining me as the boy he nearly lost and obviously wanted to keep.

“He is as special as you are, and you have no idea how special that is. It took me years to learn that truth, myself.”

This time, there was no knocking. Whoever was outside the door shook it and found it locked. They beat against the wood, trying to crash it in.

My father stood and pushed his desk across the door before stacking the chair on top of it. When he returned to the camera, he went down on his knees as well, speaking quickly now.

“They never imagined, and so I hid you both. Squint and Smolly raised your brother apart for years, and the bigger he grew, the more wondrous the changes he made to himself. Things beyond my skill and wildest dreams. When he was older, they brought him home, and he became the boy you knew. To be honest, I’m not sure what he knows of that night. I’ve never been able to bring myself to ask him, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Klok remembers every second from the beginning.”

My world froze into the still-frame image of a family photograph with a new face filling in the twin-shaped hole beside me.

Klok is my brother . . .

Every petty thought I’d harbored, every jealousy, every time I’d thought myself his superior because I thought him less than human . . . He’s my brother. Not a surrogate or a grieving father’s changeling built to replace the one he’d lost. The similarity of our features wasn’t a mad genius’s plot to stall his mourning.

His name wasn’t Klok. He wasn’t a machine. He wasn’t even dead. He was my brother.

The self-consuming snake I thought my life to be spit out its tail. I hadn’t killed Nico.

On the screen the desk lurched behind my father, moved by the force of something more than hands beating against the wood on the other side of the door.

“If he or the Commission knew the truth of you and your brother’s existence, they would be after you both.”

The desk pitched forward hard enough to topple the chair.

“I know it’s not fair to say so much, then leave you again when I’m not near to answer the questions you’ve every right to ask, but I have exhausted all other choices and taken a few more chances than I had a right to.” My father’s tone turned desperate. “I leave you with my love—and another apology. You are impossibility incarnate, unaware of how truly formidable your birthright has made you. All you have to do is open your eyes, and you will see beyond the camouflage The Show afforded you. You are your father’s daughter, Penelope, and there has never been so proud a father. Never think you were a regretted choice.”

He leaned forward and switched off the camera. The image disappeared, leaving me alone. Again.

CHAPTER 22

I no longer recognized my own life.

My future had all but ended; my present was in flux. My past should have been a constant, but it wasn’t what it had been two months ago.

The brother I thought I’d murdered had been within reach since we were children. Not only that, but he’d saved himself from death by rewiring his own body within minutes of birth. Level-Five indeed.

It was obvious now that my father had not slipped quietly away, but left on the run, with someone in pursuit, and all without our knowledge. The Commission was a body made up of many wardens, but it sounded like my father feared only one man. Nye or someone else? I knew my father and Warden Nye had made a deal before I was born, but there could have been others. Magnus was a circus man; he could juggle if he had to. He’d definitely had enough practice keeping his lies in the air.

I’d always believed my father was protecting me. Maybe family didn’t mean what I thought it did.

The tears on my cheeks evaporated from a sudden, searing heat. It scorched down my neck and into my hands, making them glow. I could see through my skin, between whirling molecules of flesh that bumped against each other without ever getting anywhere. My bones were mere shadows, my blood flowing magma threatening to erupt.

The carpet smoked under my knees.

“No!” I said, patting it out with the edge of my robe. “Don’t do that. Not here.”

I needed something to focus my anger on, and I knew just where to put it.

I stomped over to the glass wall that encased the second floor and seized Xerxes around the middle. He made a startled chirping sound when I lifted him up and stuffed him under my arm. I carried him back to the table and plopped him down.

“Do you hate me?” I asked. “And don’t give me that blank bird-stare. I know you’re in there. I don’t know how, but I know you are, Papa. Do you hate me?” Xerxes twitched his head, pensive and confused by my rant.

It was like I could see scars showing through my skin. Slashes from hurt feelings. Bruises from a broken spirit. All the secret hurts and wounds I’d swallowed like swords because I thought it was my penance. My body and my life had developed around them; only they weren’t as visible as Klok’s or Winnie’s. I was the only one who knew they existed.

“How could you do it?” I asked. “How could you let me believe I was a born killer? All the times I put on my brother’s identity and walked out into that arena, withering with every step I took in his shoes? How could you?”

I wanted to scream, but knew bad things would happen if I let the worst of my temper take over.

“Did you lie to him, too? Or was that special torment only for me? Did you even tell him he had a family while he was growing up?”

At least I’d had my sisters and Jermay. Klok was ten when Squint and Smolly brought him home to join the circus. Before that, they’d lived in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t had much of anyone.

“What about Mom?” I asked. “Did she know? Or did you really let her die from the grief of losing a son who was still alive?”

A better question was one I couldn’t ask. Would he have let me die, too?

The way my father had described the night Klok and I were born, it sounded like he’d lost his mind. Maybe he’d never found it again.

Beep.

I whipped my head toward the sound; I already knew what it was. Klok had come up the stairs. He was standing at the rail, well within earshot.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” I said lamely.

“You are yelling,” he rat-tatted. “Yelling is ineffective for maintaining a clandestine existence. Also, our mother was aware of my survival. Would you like me to bring you a fire extinguisher?”

I ignored that last bit.

“Our mother? So you did know?” I asked.

“My memory is augmented. ‘Eidetic’ is accurate. I remember.”

“How much?”

“Everything that I remember. I can show you a timeline, if you would like specifics.”

I’d resented Klok for six years because his presence in The Show reminded me of the crime I committed the day I was born. I thought he’d usurped my brother’s place in a family I didn’t realize he belonged to. Most of the time, his idiosyncrasies grated on my nerves, but now, knowing who he was, I couldn’t see him as anything other than wonderfully odd. I threw my arms around his neck.

“I’m so sorry Kl—Nico. That’s your real name, isn’t it?”

He pushed me back.

“My name is Klok. Your apology is unnecessary. Hugging is nice, but it puts you at a proximity that increases the difficulty of reading my screen.”

“I hurt you,” I told him. “That happened, didn’t it?”

Maybe none of the story was true. Maybe our mother hadn’t died of grief at all. Surely I hadn’t killed her instead of Klok?

“You were injured as well. Father inflicted far more damage. I remember pain, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid. It might have increased your pain. Brothers are supposed to protect sisters. Our father maintained that it was better you not be informed.”

Hearing him refer to Magnus as his father was the worst. Klok had never been acknowledged as a son. I was certain my older sisters knew who he was, but they’d never been allowed to call him brother. All they could do was attempt to temper my sour attitude toward him, a tactic that usually backfired.

“He was wrong,” I told Klok. Our father owed him more than a job as a stagehand, and he owed me, too. Both Klok and I had deserved to know our twin.

“I concur. Also, the golem is getting away. If you wish to yell at him further, you should catch him.”

“That’s okay, Klok. I think I’ve gotten all I need out of Xerxes for now.” I still had questions, but I wasn’t ready to ask them. I was experiencing answer overload.

“Brothers are also supposed to threaten boys. Where is Jermay? I have several threats saved for use in case you discovered that we were siblings. How did you arrive at the conclusion that we were twins?”

“Papa told me,” I said. “He left me a video for my birthday. Our birthday. I got it to play a few minutes ago.”

“You have unlocked the computer,” Klok said.

“It wasn’t easy,” I told him. “It turned out that you were the missing piece.”

A week passed in near perfection.

No one bothered us, and it had been days since anyone in the hotel made mention of seeing Commission personnel in the area. There was a lounge one floor down from our room where we could get all the food we wanted for free, and on the bottom floor, I was able to get us clothes that didn’t remind us of nearly falling to our deaths. Getting them required coaxing the boutique’s credit system into thinking I’d charged everything to a room, but I promised myself that I’d donate the clothes at some point and try to send the money when I had it.

We never had to leave the hotel.

I never wanted to leave the hotel. What I wanted was to find a way to bring my sisters and Birdie and everyone else to me so we could all live there together and pretend the world had shrunk to the three towers of the Harts and Palms.

The elevator dinged, and Winnie stepped out with the morning breakfast run. I’d meant to ask her if Klok’s identity had been one of the secrets she’d kept while she was mute, but I still wasn’t ready to hear her answer. So long as I didn’t know, I could choose to trust that she wouldn’t betray me that way. I didn’t ask Jermay for the same reason. I might have gone to Anise, because she wouldn’t have lied to me if I’d asked her outright, but she wasn’t around.

There was also a part of me that was still too paranoid to share Klok’s true identity. I could trust the others with my own life, but Klok’s wasn’t mine to risk.

“We have a situation,” Winnie said.

“What?” I asked.

“Someone booked this room months ago. They showed up today to check in and were told that it’s unavailable. You can hear them shouting all the way from the lounge. They’re furious. I saw the concierge checking the registry. When he sees a weeklong work order, he’s going to want an update on the status in here. Once the first cracks appear in the story . . .”

“It all unravels,” I finished for her. Winnie could maintain her control on the concierge’s mind so long as no one challenged what she told him to believe.

“I can stall them, but we need to get out of here, soon. The concierge has override keys. He can get in here if he wants to.”

I knew it couldn’t last forever, but a few more days would have been nice.

“Can’t we move to another hotel?” Jermay asked.

“That won’t get us any closer to where we need to be,” I said. Stalling only kept us playing the normalcy game. As normal as we got, anyway. “We’ll have to find a new place on the road.”

“I swept the lounge and the lobby,” Winnie said. “There’s still no chatter about Commission sightings nearby.”

“There’s nothing new on TV, either,” Birch said. “They’re not looking for us here.”

“Then I guess this is it. We’ll wait for the lounge to close tonight and move on once there’s no one to see or question us,” I said.

“Okay. I can keep the concierge from noticing us for that long. Just keep us off the grid. The last thing we need is another spike.”

Klok used our last day to scan through the rest of our father’s files, while Jermay decided to waste his time in the hotel’s arcade. He tried to convince me to help him sneak in to the casino, using the weak excuse of playing for enough money to cover our stay, but I told him no. I knew what would happen. He’d get cocky, use some cheesy magic trick to game the house, and get us caught and arrested before we had a chance to sneak away.

“How’s it coming?” I asked Klok.

“The bulk of the files are technical drawings and markups,” he rat-tatted. “There are several mentions of Cyril in the margins, along with works listed via a code for which I do not possess the key. There are many pictures saved to the hard drive. I believe this one is significant.”

He pulled up an image of our father and a much younger version of Winnie’s grandfather from before he needed the crutch. They stood next to a couple of strangers in front of the castle-like building we’d seen in other photos.

“That’s definitely Baba,” Winnie said. “And Magnus, but who are the others?”

“There is a high probability that this one is Cyril Bledsoe,” he said of the red-faced man Jermay had noticed in the photos from the briefcase.

“How’d you get his last name?” I asked.

“I conducted an image search. This building is named the Bledsoe House and was the second attributed to famed architect Ferdinand Klein in 1902. There is a substantial amount of information on it in multiple databases worldwide, as it is favored by students of art and design. The original owners are deceased. Their descendants currently reside in it, including Cyril Bledsoe and his daughter, Maggie, who is a child and also deceased ten years ago.”

“Back up,” Birch said. “Is any of the information useful? Did you get an address?”

“Yes. I used the address to determine the quickest route from here to there. It isn’t close, but if we can catch another ride, we will be closer.”

And the closer we got to Cyril, the closer we got to our father.

We packed up, cleaned up, and left once the lounge was closed for the night. It was too late to get a car, but an after-hours airport shuttle was dropping off a family of guests as we exited the hotel. We climbed on as soon as they were clear.

“You kids headed for the airport this late?” the driver asked. “Alone?”

“Not really,” Winnie said.

She convinced him to take us another square forward on the hopscotch board we’d have to cross to reach the Bledsoe House.

We were still in Death Valley, and this time the best we could do for a place to crash was a couple of connecting rooms at what passed for the only hotel around. Birdie wouldn’t have wanted to see this one, and I wouldn’t be doing any spontaneous water ballet in the bathroom. The place was gross.

“Two more hours and we would have been out of Death Valley,” Jermay groused. “Two. We could have pushed it.”

“No we couldn’t,” Winnie said. “He was too old. If I’d pushed him any harder, it could have caused an aneurysm.”

“Then we should find another driver.”

He pulled the chain on a ceiling light made from antlers. The light bulb hadn’t been used in so long that it gave off the smell of charred dust and cast dead-bug shadows on the ceiling. Fading watercolor prints hung in cracked frames above a pair of small beds that were covered with rodeo-themed comforters. The head and footboards were wagon wheels.

The whole room was western, sort of. Somewhere an aging cowboy had a yard sale, and all of his stuff ended up here. The lamps were set atop dingy boots. A resin bull with a broken horn carried the table on its back, and the two chairs were covered in cracked saddle leather.

“Tomorrow,” I promised. I was not staying in that room more than one night. “We’re all wiped out. Cyril doesn’t know we’re coming, so he can’t run off.”

“But two hours,” Jermay whined, drawing out the words. “I want to be back in civilization.”

“It’s only a temporary break, anyway,” I reminded him.

There was one oasis of technological bliss between us and Cyril’s house. One of several unincorporated areas within the dry zone where people fought to stay off the grid.

“Can the next place at least be clean?” Birch asked. “The taps here are shaped like revolvers, and I don’t like showers that spray on more dirt than they wash off.”

Apparently the lights weren’t the only thing that hadn’t been used in a while. The faucets ran brown for the first few minutes until the pipes cleared of sediment.

I knew Jermay was really upset when he missed the setup for a dirt joke at Birch’s expense.

“If no one’s going to listen to me, I’m going to my room! Oh wait . . . I’m already there! If I get eaten by bedbugs, it’s on your head!” he complained, then jumped onto the bed nearest the wall and turned his back to us.

Sometimes Jermay’s humor was charming. When he pouted, it mostly made me want to shoot him with one of the faucet revolvers.

“I guess that’s our cue to mosey on next door and give y’all some space,” Winnie said. The fake twang clinched it. We were all losing our minds. “I’ll be sure to set the alarm for two hours so we can mark the occasion.”

Jermay frisbeed a horseshoe-shaped pillow at her.

There wasn’t nearly as much space in our new rooms as there had been at the Harts and Palms, but at least the bull table was big enough to fit the computer. While the others went to bed, Klok sat vigil with me.

“Do you get insomnia like Magnus, too?” I asked Klok. “Or is this you protecting your sister from boys?”

“We are alike,” he said, without clarifying if he meant him and our father or him and me.

I tried to work, but it was incredibly difficult to keep my mind on the screen when the person across from me didn’t move enough to register a blink. Klok was just being Klok, but I felt like I was being judged.

“I didn’t mean to take your place, you know,” I said. “That part . . . it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t know. I mean—”

How do you apologize for stealing someone’s life?

“Brothers are supposed to protect their sisters. I protect you.”

He kept repeating that line like it was his personal mantra. I wished I could hear his voice.

“You’re not a robot, Klok. You get to decide what you do and don’t want to do, no matter what our father claimed. Are you sure you want me to call you that? Wouldn’t you rather hear—”

Beep.

“Never speak that name. That name is dangerous! That name is gone! I’m Klok. Everything like clockwork. Perfect!”

I wondered if it was Squint or Smolly who taught him that.

I also wondered what people thought when they saw him out and about with his “parents” while he was growing up. Klok would have outgrown both of them by the time he was six or seven, and he probably outweighed them by the time he was five. Keeping him in line must have been a chore, even for someone with a temper the size of Smolly’s. Legend said she’d chased down lion cubs, but they were a lot smaller than Klok, and they couldn’t talk back or argue with a computer’s knack for knowing more than anyone else in the room.

“I grew up thinking our father built you,” I said. “Do you mind me asking how different you really are?”

He showed me a display filled with medical charts and tests. X-rays. Notations.

“I don’t know what most of that means. You’re still human, aren’t you?”

“We are alike.”

I took that as a yes. It also explained why he’d never had a say in how he lived. I didn’t get one, either. We played the parts assigned to us.

“We have located Cyril Bledsoe. What are you searching for?” Klok asked.

“Anything. Contact numbers. Inside intel.”

A reset button that would shunt me back to before my sixteenth birthday so I could stop this mess before it started . . .

“Magnus had a file with the names of refugees; he could have had a list of allies, or more importantly, different wardens and where they’re based. If we know that, we can try to figure out where Nim and Vesper are being held.”

Nim had been taken by a woman, and Vesper a man. I needed more to go on.

“Did you find any notes about that when you were scanning through?” I asked.

He’d stopped listening to me. Klok’s attention was firmly on the thin curtain that we’d pulled closed when we first entered the room.

“What?” I asked.

“I hear something out of place,” he rat-tatted. “There’s too much sound. This late, people are sleeping. Death Valley is silent while people are sleeping.”

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up. I wrenched around in my seat to check the cut-rate version of a pay box beside the door. The green light was flickering on and off, meaning some of our electronic signals were making it into the open. The curfew scanners could see us.

Klok beeped again.

“I hear . . .”

The end of his declaration turned into a long whine. He leapt across the table and pulled me down as the window blew in, shattered by a swarm of hummers that converged on the computer, smashing the screen with their bodies.

Jermay was on his feet. He grabbed one of the pillows off his bed and swatted at the hummers, but two dozen had imbedded themselves in the screen, with half their bodies poking out on either side. They’d destroyed the keyboard, too.

“What’s going on?” Winnie tripped through our connecting door, half asleep and barefoot.

“They found us,” I said.

“This fast?”

“The pay box shorted,” I told her. “We weren’t shielded.”

“Look out!” Jermay shouted.

The hummers, having neutralized their first target, were disengaging from the computer in search of other contraband signals in the room. Or, in our case, Klok and the golems. Jermay grabbed the computer and ran it into the bathroom. He threw it in the tub and turned on the water.

“Fry it,” he said. “Kill them before they get back in the air.”

I smashed one of the cheap exposed bulbs around the bathroom mirror and used my body to bridge the gap between the socket and the shower. Current crackled white and yellow down my arm, arcing toward the hummers’ ultra-conductive bodies.

We ran out of the bathroom and left them sparking.

Jermay propped the door shut with a chair, just to make sure nothing could escape.

As bad as the room had been before, it was an absolute wreck of ripped and broken furniture now. A handful of straggling hummers had chased Xerxes and Bijou around the room until Klok managed to trap them in an ice bucket, which he handed to me for disposal.

“Sisters protect brothers, too,” he wrote across his screen once they’d been added to the pile in the bathroom. “Shh. It’s a secret.”

“Where did those things come from?” Winnie asked. “If they’d been dispatched by one of the wardens tracking us, there’d be uniforms all over the place, and we’d be on lockdown.”

“It was a regulator unit,” Birch said. He carefully approached the broken window for a peek outside. “No vehicles or personnel. It’s completely automated to destroy prohibited tech as a penalty for breaking curfew.”

“If the walking Commission wiki says it, it must be true,” Jermay said. He pulled the curtain all the way back, allowing us to see the deserted parking lot.

“Don’t act like this was my fault,” Birch snapped back. “It wasn’t my room they came to.”

“Do you think that makes you look more innocent?”

“Stop it!” Winnie said, and this time she didn’t give them a choice. They were stuck in place, silently scowling.

“How long are you going to leave them that way?” I asked.

“I’d say until they could act their ages, but we don’t have that kind of time. They can move once we’re ready to go.”

“Is it really safe to leave?”

Klok cocked his head, listening to the city through the opening.

“I believe Birch’s conclusions to be correct. There are no additional sounds to indicate human personnel or vehicular incursion. Death Valley is silent at this time of night.”

That was a close one.

The local authorities had no idea who we were or what they’d destroyed. Thanks to the hummers, no one would ever be able to recover the drives.

“Then we’re in the clear,” Winnie said.

“Unless any of those things were equipped with cameras. They send photos in bursts. If they hit the official wire, we’re sunk,” I said.

“I agree,” Klok said. “I suggest we leave before the authorities come to collect their devices.”

“Boys, fetch the bags,” Winnie instructed. “We’re out of here.”

CHAPTER 23

“Can I say something?” Jermay asked.

“If it’s ‘two hours,’ I’ll kill you,” I told him.

“And I’ll help hide the body,” Winnie said.

“Fine, but you do realize we’d be in another suite by now? And we’d still have the computer.”

“The computer is unnecessary,” Klok beeped. “I can remember the information without it.”

“There were two hundred gigs of files on that computer,” I said.

“My memory is augmented,” he reminded me. “I remember.”

We limped into the next town after walking sixteen miles. We couldn’t fly. Even if I could have overridden the dampening nets to allow the golems full power, I couldn’t physically remove the nets without crashing the curfew system. With them in place, we’d have to fly low, so someone might have seen us.

“We should stop,” Klok said.

“We’re too close to the last motel,” I told him. “Twenty miles is the minimum.”

“You are displaying signs of extreme fatigue. As are Jermay, Winnie, and Birch. As am I. Physiological markers indicate that progress will remain minimal, but I cannot trust my readings due to interference. I should also warn you that Xerxes is getting wiggly in my backpack. I think he’s going to act out if we don’t let him run.”

Spoiled-rotten gryphon.

Zero arguments and another mile down the road, we had ourselves another room. It wasn’t the Harts and Palms, but it was a suite with a secure door and a charming lack of western decor. There was absolutely nothing gross, crawling, or gurgling in the bathrooms. I wasn’t even sure Winnie had to convince the man at the desk to give us the key. I think he took pity on us based on how we looked.

Klok face-planted on the biggest bed after flashing me with “My idea to stop. I get first pick because I am not a robot.”

He’d never looked more artificial than lying down with his armor plating on display, and he’d never sounded more human.

“So how long do we stay here?” I asked. We’d made it to Jermay’s oasis in the dry zone, so we didn’t have to worry about tripping any tech alarms. That was an advantage worth exploiting.

“Let’s start with a day and see what happens,” Winnie said. “I saw a train schedule in the lobby. Tomorrow we can see which lines are running and if any of them are cross-country. That could cut days off our travel time.”

“Don’t say anything else,” Jermay told us. “I think we should switch to a need-to-know policy.”

He flicked his gaze through the doorway to one of the side rooms where Birch had disappeared on entry. We couldn’t see him, but it was a safe bet that he’d tucked himself away with some unfortunate piece of greenery that was about to hit a renaissance.

“You’re not starting that again.” Silent communication had given Winnie an expressive face, but sometimes a plain old eye roll was all the moment called for.

“Maybe it’s not a bad idea,” I said.

“You did not just say that!” She glanced toward the other room and lowered her voice. “You know Birch isn’t capable of betrayal.”

“Not intentionally, but he’s naïve and too trusting, and his perception of the real world was stunted by his time with the wardens. I think he’s capable of slipping with the best of intentions.”

He couldn’t read people, and he only had two reactions to strangers: total trust, or none at all.

“You have to admit there are a lot of coincidences building up,” Jermay said. “What are the chances that we picked a motel room with a pay box that just happened to short out while we were there?”

“It was a cheap piece of junk in a no-tell motel. Even the lights didn’t work right! You can’t expect Birch to keep defending himself!” Winnie protested.

“I’m not accusing him,” I said. “But this way, everyone will know for sure, even Jermay. Then we can consider it settled and move on.”

“It’s already settled for me,” Winnie said. “But if that’s what you want, I’ll hop back down to the desk and see if I can manage a second brain-seize without killing the guy at check-in just so you don’t have to share a door with us.”

“Winnie, wait. We don’t have to decide anything now. We can—”

“You decided the second you didn’t tell him no.” She glared at Jermay. “Birch is not the one acting out of line around here.”

“Winnie . . .” Jermay began.

“Save it. I’ve heard the ‘community first’ speech before. The problem is, you can lose so many people in the name of the group that the group ceases to be. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got experience with exile.”

“Everyone just stop!” I shouted. “This is the seventeen miles talking. It’s exhaustion; it isn’t us. We don’t leave people behind.”

“Tell that to Birdie,” Jermay said.

“That was not the same thing, and you know it. You said it yourself, Jermay, we’re stronger together.”

My declaration ended with the sound of applause. A slow, purposeful clapping, and this time, it definitely wasn’t my imagination helping me through a difficult situation.

“Very well said. Not the most eloquent of speeches, but you get top marks for earnestness.”

The sound of that voice sent frost through my veins. I reached for Jermay’s hand; he reached for mine. Winnie stood beside my other shoulder in solidarity once again. We turned together to face a danger greater than our own discord.

The outside door to our room was open, and Warden Nye was leaning against the jamb.

“This isn’t real,” I told myself—out loud, so I could hear it. “It can’t be real. Not both of them.”

I’d finally figured out what my nightmares were trying to tell me: they were the reality. Escaping the Center was the dream. I was still a prisoner. Nye had never taken the collar off, and my mind had broken under the pressure. That’s why I couldn’t escape him or Arcineaux. I couldn’t outrun myself.

Klok had been dissected. My sisters taken. Jermay, Winnie, and Birdie lost. None of this was real. It was my mind trying to cope.

And yet I could tell the others all saw what I was seeing. They heard what I was hearing. It had to be real.

“What are you guys doing in here?” Birch wandered in from the other room, oblivious. “I heard shouting, and then it sounded like clap—”

He saw the warden, too. He reversed his steps but stopped, torn between retreat and abandoning us to Nye. Birch turned pale, then green as the bright emerald of his eyes leached into his skin, turning it sickly sallow. Now he knew the answer to whether his foster father had survived, and he knew how he felt about it.

“You’re all looking well.”

That voice. That infuriating, uncrackable calm befitting a sociopath.

“That’s what happens when someone gets out of prison,” I said. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

He wasn’t wearing his uniform from the Center. Instead, he was dressed as he had been the first time I saw him on The Show grounds: regular clothes with barely a hint as to what he did for a living. Most people wouldn’t even notice the ankh on his shirt pocket, and if they did, they would have no reason to find it sinister. Wardens were helpers—public servants. All the official reports said so.

“Succinct as always,” Nye said. “One of the things I like best about you—no need for politics.”

Without moving my mouth, I called for Klok low in my throat. His hearing was far superior to that of a regular human; it didn’t take much to alert him. He flew out of the bedroom, planting himself between Nye and us.

“Leave!” he beeped. “Leave now!” Along with a few choice sounds he chose not to translate into readable text.

“Down, boy,” Nye said. “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

Klok didn’t accept that claim. He responded with a transcript of the orders Nye had given the white-coated technicians in charge of dissecting him.

“Argument must have been your father’s signature,” Nye said to me, unimpressed. “Iva was forever contradicting me. It’s a pity the two of them never met.”

They had, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Leave!” Klok beeped louder, in a higher pitch. He didn’t appreciate being talked about as if he didn’t understand.

The golems slunk through the room, stealthy quiet, with Xerxes stretched low to the floor. Bijou slithered across the ceiling, miming the motion he used to breathe fire, though he’d not been lit. Nye was only intimidated by Bijou when the dragon was full-sized, but he saw Xerxes the way I did, with that undefinable spark of Magnus Roma hidden inside him. I’d seen the man taunt Xerxes in my father’s place.

“Don’t you start with me, either,” he told Xerxes. “We both know you’re a doorstop with feathers when you’re out in public.”

Xerxes triggered his wings; Bijou hissed.

“I’m positively quaking.” Nye pegged both golems with an icy stare.

I’d found the best way to deal with ice was to melt it.

Klok put his hand behind his back and slid the panel over his palm to expose the blue spark inside. I stole it from his hand and passed it to Bijou. He fed it back to me as I stoked the tiny blue fleck into my phoenix.

“You’ve learned a new trick. Impressive,” Nye said. I thought he might start clapping again. “Do you have any others you’d like to share before you set off the fire-control responses? These shoes aren’t waterproof.”

“Just one.”

Our disappearing act.

Flame beat his wings, surging enough heat toward the warden to curl the wallpaper behind him.

“Quick! Through the next room!” I said.

“You could.” Nye raised his voice into a mocking lilt as he patted out a small fire on his sleeve. “But then we’d have to finish this conversation at your next stop. Would you like to tell me where you’re going, or should I wait and follow the bread crumbs? Either way works for me.”

It was entirely possible that he was lying, but as Jermay had said, too many coincidences had piled up too quickly. Nye wasn’t at this hotel and in this doorway by accident. Something had drawn him here, and if he had a way to find us, then we needed to know.

“I told you!” Jermay whirled on Birch. “I told you it was him!”

Birch started to panic, knowing there was no explanation that would calm Jermay down with the warden standing so close. Thorny vines bled down the walls. Strange plants sprouted out of the carpet, probably new species he’d found in Klok’s databases while he was searching out painkillers—and if they were, they’d be deadly.

“Close, but not quite,” the warden said. He helped himself to a seat in our armchair. “You’ve got a mole, but it’s not my prodigal son.”

“I’m not your son,” Birch snapped.

“Semantics.”

“Superior genes.”

Warden Nye smiled again. Out of place. Quizzically proud.

The chair beneath him turned to grass and collapsed.

“I’ve learned a few tricks, too,” Birch said.

“That you have, and bravo, but you’ve got the same flaw as poor Penelope. You pull your punches when you shouldn’t, and you overlook the obvious when it’s right in front of you. I thought you circus types were trained better than that.”

He twitched his head at Xerxes, then cut his eyes back to me, gloating while he brushed himself off.

“Xerxes?” I asked.

“Just so. I was surprised you didn’t find anything when you were working on the old boy. Did you really think I didn’t know what you were doing?”

He’d let me work on Xerxes at the Center, knowing I planned to use him to escape?

“Turnabout, as they say, is fair play. I may not have your father’s golden touch, but I do know how to install spyware. Unfortunately, I may have been lax in securing it. I wasn’t expecting it to ever be in use outside my facility.”

“That’s how you’ve been tracking us?” Jermay asked. “Xerxes?”

“Me and a few others—call it a scavenger hunt. Penelope put on quite the show when you made your daring escape. That sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed. You’re all on several acquisition lists . . . even you,” he told Jermay. “But the Celestine is the grand prize.”

“Is it possible?” I asked Klok, choosing to ignore Nye’s attempt to unsettle us. Having the Commission on our tails was nothing new.

“I checked for implanted tracking devices, not errant code. It’s possible.”

“Check him again.”

Klok knelt in front of Xerxes and cupped his hands around the gryphon’s throat. A distinct blue light shined out of his palms, signaling a scan. Xerxes fidgeted but couldn’t twist himself free.

“Someone has rewritten the golem’s base code, affecting his behavior. I thought the issue was technological. This is why I couldn’t repair it. I’m sorry.” He gave me a sad face. “I have disabled the code. The golem will no longer broadcast his location.”

I wanted to throw something, preferably at Nye. Preferably something that would knock him through the nearest window so I could see for myself if he was immune to the fall. It was his fault we had nowhere to hide. I must have been right about the Hollow blocking the signals while were underground. They were blocked again by the Harts and Palms with its Death Valley countermeasures. But on the Mile, Xerxes had been able to broadcast clearly, without interruption. Just like he was here.

“You’re the first one here, so you win the scavenger hunt, is that it?” I asked.

“Hardly. If I’d intended to bring you in, I wouldn’t be here alone. I came to give you a chance. This is the first time I’ve managed to make it to you before one of the others. And now that the trace has been disabled, the ones watching it will close in quickly, hoping to claim victory. I’d leave now, if I were you, and I wouldn’t exit at street level.”

The biggest problem with Warden Nye was his rationality. He kept a tight lid on his emotions most of the time, and he could make nearly anything sound plausible by exploiting the calm in his voice. He never gave opinions—opinion implied passion and belief. He stated facts, even if they were fabricated.

We all knew that it wasn’t in character for the man to help, but we also knew how vehemently wardens could oppose one another. He could be here to spite a rival, and was most likely planning to take us into custody himself, no matter what he said.

“How do we know?” Birch asked. “How do we know you didn’t get sacked for losing the Center? Anyone can iron a Commission patch onto a shirt. Maybe they took your command along with your uniform, and you want to make them suffer by stealing Penn away.”

“That uniform is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, along with the command and everything else that fell with the Center. Or, to put it officially, that uniform never existed because there was no facility for it to exist within. I’ve been reassigned for the time being; my current position comes with a more casual dress code.”

He must have been placed in a public ground facility where the military look would cause too many questions. Polos and slacks made wardens look like grocery-store greeters or country-club dads waiting for a tee time.

“Arcineaux’s not on the bottom of the ocean,” Winnie broke in. “We saw him walking on dry land a week ago. Explain that, since I know for a fact I killed him.”

A subtle threat lay buried in her words. She wasn’t afraid to admit what she’d done, because she could do it again if she had to, and she wanted Nye to know that.

“That’s too long a story for the amount of time you have remaining to decide. Perhaps you should put it to a vote.”

Whether or not he was serious about others in the Commission coming to find us, our position had been compromised; leaving was the only option we had. Warden Nye made no move to follow us. He settled himself in to wait for whoever showed up after we were gone.

“Go on,” I instructed the others. “Fast as you can without drawing attention. Find a door with roof access, and we’ll leave that way.”

They hustled to other rooms in the suite to grab their things before heading out the main door. I went last, guarding the others just in case.

“Don’t think this is a favor,” I warned Nye. I refused to put myself into his debt, because we both knew I’d cave and pay him back if he called in the marker. Just like my father.

“Althea Dodge.” He timed the words so that I heard them at the exact moment I would have crossed the threshold. This was his favorite game, and like an idiot, I was playing by his rules. I turned around.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” I asked.

“The favor you don’t owe me. Let’s just say it’s a name your sister Nimue should be used to hearing. Look her up. She’s not hard to find.”

I knew this trick. He’d toss out a tempting piece of bait, hoping to pull me into a confrontation or debate so I wouldn’t leave and he’d have the advantage in the next round. He wanted to make me angry, because experience told him that emotion left me flustered and sloppy. He thought I’d be easier to break.

I’d been running through one fire after another since the Center fell. Constant pressure had compacted and hardened the facets of my personality. I may have looked like the same weak teenager he’d manipulated before, but I was gemstone underneath, and I could show him what I was made of.

He’d already seen Flame, so maybe a bigger gesture was necessary.

Thanks to Nye, I knew how the mechanisms in his hands worked. I’d seen my father’s calculations. I knew how little it would take to overload them to the point that they would lock. I wouldn’t leave him helpless, but I could certainly give him a scare.

I sensed power lying dormant in the hotel’s walls. Wires and conduits, junctions and circuits all hidden away. Vibrating strings of a harp waiting to be played. I plucked one, and my body caught the tone.

Everything was a matter of harmony. Highs had to match the lows so that they flowed together. Conflicting currents could be coaxed and woven into cooperative patterns. I strummed another string and another in as little time as it took to think about getting it done.

Ebb and flow. Rise and fall. Energy never stopped moving so long as it had a clear path to travel. It drifted from the walls toward my fingers, where it dissipated like the fizzled smoke of a dud firework. The connection suddenly severed.

“No!” I spat, more tantrum than indignation.

“That’s happening a lot, is it?” Nye asked, prodding my temper in a more direct way now that he believed himself immune to it. “I’m assuming dear Magnus didn’t prepare you for that, either. Would you like to know what’s causing it?”

I shrieked. I growled. I made the kind of scene little girls make when they don’t get their way, determined to force my touch to reignite.

“You’re better than that,” Nye tsked. “And you’re running out of time. Perhaps you should pack up your toys and go home, since you’re in no condition to play with the big kids.”

“I don’t have a home!” I wailed. He’d succeeded in kindling my fury, but it wasn’t an advantage for either of us. I tried to rip the electricity off the lines to throw it at him all at once.

Those vibrating strings inside the walls began to thrum, all of them in conflict. All of them off pitch. The paint blackened where sparks spit from every socket plate at once. Light bulbs flickered, then exploded. The television came on and spun from one channel to the next in a whining blur.

I couldn’t stop it.

Sparks caught the couch and carpets. They raced up the draperies and across the tops of the windows. I was back in the Hollow, back in the train, unable to stop the burning.

Nye reached out and thumped me on the nose, exactly like Anise would have. It was an automatic, familiar, and very personal gesture that filled me with more dread than a dozen fully loaded Commission transports would have. Studying my act was one thing, but that was a secret off-switch for my temper that even my other sisters didn’t know.

The fires hiccupped, then raged back to life, bolstered by a sudden need to protect myself from being overexposed.

“Penn, what’s taking so—” Jermay choked on the question. He and Winnie had come back to find me.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “I can’t pull it back!”

I couldn’t keep the monsters in their box. They fooled me, hiding in my own anger and using it to escape.

“Go!” Nye shoved me toward the door. The room’s sprinklers activated. “All of you, go!”

I was off-balance and stumbling, too horrified by what I’d done to stand straight. I ran toward the door and bounced myself off the frame. Winnie and Jermay pulled me the rest of the way, so that we bounded for the stairs together, only stalling long enough to pull the fire alarm beside the roof-access door.

Up we went and over the adjacent buildings. The flames tunneled into other units, visible through open windows. People spilled into the streets. Sirens started in the distance, soon to streak past on trucks with whirling lights.

“What were you thinking?” Jermay asked once we’d gone a block or two. “I mean, it’s definitely a distraction, but . . . what were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t! I was trying to short out Nye’s hands, and, well . . . BOOM!”

I’d set a building on fire. I’d committed a crime. I could have killed a hundred people who had nothing to do with me.

When we met up with Klok and Birch, Klok picked me up in a rib-bruising hug, shaking me slightly so that my legs swung.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “I promise.”

He put me down and smacked me in the forehead with his palm.

“For being reckless with no exit strategy,” he typed.

“Okay. It happened, and we can’t do anything about it,” Winnie said. “All we can do is go from here. Where to?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s got Wi-Fi,” I said.

I needed to run a search for Althea Dodge, and I needed to do it somewhere Nye had no authority.

CHAPTER 24

We couldn’t stay in another hotel. The Commission would be watching all of them for the next fifty miles, and so would Nye. There were no unlocked churches with confession closets for us to use as cover, and no helpful ferrymen masquerading as madams to direct us to safety. We did, however, have Birch, and he found us a rooftop garden above the public library where someone had begun building a greenhouse. The roof door also had a very cheap lock that was easy to break.

I was able to get inside and use one of the public computer terminals to look up the name Althea Dodge. She was one of the female wardens who had come to dinner at Nye’s Center. A potato-faced woman with shrewd, heavy eyes, she had to be the one I’d later heard divvying up my sisters among her peers. There were only two women there that night, and I knew what the other one looked and sounded like because she was the one who’d wanted to see me perform a trick.

Dodge had an exemplary public record by Commission reckoning, though she had barely any contact with the public at all. And she’d just gotten herself a promotion. No details provided, meaning it was the sort of post that couldn’t be mentioned online.

She had Nim, and I needed to know where that post was to find her. Warden Nye knew me well enough to be certain that pointing me toward Dodge would keep me on her trail, even if he would be right behind me, step for step. Unless I chose to continue on the path that led to Cyril Bledsoe.

How could I prioritize my father versus my sister? Which mission had the greater chance of success? Who needed me more?

If I followed Nye’s bread crumbs and they led me into a trap, I wouldn’t be able to help anyone. And if I put off finding Cyril, I risked losing my best shot at speaking to him, which meant I’d lose my best opportunity to find out what had really happened to my father. It killed me, but I put Nim aside and swore to myself it wasn’t because she’d never missed a chance to be awful to me.

I turned off the computer in the library and fixed the lock back in place when I left.

My friends and I had to get out of the city and as far away as possible. A car was too obvious—and subject to roadblocks passing themselves off as normal police procedures. The airports would be under surveillance, but there was a chance that some of the trains had been overlooked. We had to risk another use of Winnie’s touch in public.

I couldn’t have been happier. The fire of the previous night seemed years away. I was getting better at compartmentalizing, and that didn’t scare me nearly as much as it should have.

Our train was called the Diamond Zephyr, a fortuitous nod to Vesper’s touch that gave me hope for a smooth ride, even after I’d seen the placards brazenly declaring it “The Titanic of the Rails” due to the opulence inside. Basically a hotel on wheels, the Zephyr was not a commuter train, nor was it the kind of low-lying bullet that a fugitive might use as a hideout. It was an ostentatious spectacle, suitable only for hiding in plain sight—the Orient Express of the modern age made to look like the original one, with a few extra bells and whistles for set dressing. And though you could board or disembark anywhere along the dedicated line, it ran from coast to coast as a period re-creation. A handful of people lived there full time, immersed in the era, watching the mundanes through fringed, curtained windows. East to west, then west to east and back again.

I couldn’t wait to get on board.

I ran past upholstered walls and paneled doors, five years old again and racing away from the engine so that I was moving double speed. Uncatchable. Unstoppable. Free in a way that was impossible to understand from the outside. I’m sure the people I passed thought I was crazy. A wildling child set loose among the gentle folk, with her hair streaming and a high giggle because she knew things they’d never understand and wouldn’t want to. Many passengers didn’t dress the part, so I didn’t stand out that way, but I wasn’t like them, either. For them, the Zephyr was a museum piece, something they were afraid to touch or break. They didn’t let it get into their blood, and for that, I pitied them.

I stood on the platform at the back, which was the only one not sealed in by silk-covered rubber to prevent people from falling as they moved from car to car. Here there were brass rails and mahogany siding, gas lights and a green-striped canopy where passengers could wave good-bye to loved ones. It was deserted once the station passed out of sight; no one wanted to ruin their costumes by letting the wind rip the feathers off their hats. But I stayed and let the moving air hit my face. Eyes closed and arms crossed, embraced by the sights and sounds of home. I was Juliet, and this was my balcony. My life had become a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions; it seemed only fitting that I got my own monologue.

’Tis but my name that is my enemy. Roma!

What is Roma? Not hand nor foot.

Not arm, nor face, nor any other part.

Not pyre, not ground, neither water nor wind nor stars.

I was more than the sum of my parts and the genetic code within them. That I could accept. It was the denying of my father and the refusing of my name that tripped me up. I would forever be a Roma, sworn and true, even if I was the last one standing.

Eventually, even I had to leave the platform. Jermay, Winnie, Klok, and Birch were waiting for me in our car. I’d volunteered to fetch our dinner so I could have some time alone with the train. Call it closure, if you need a technical term, but it helped. I could breathe again.

I entered the dining car. Two men opened the double-wide doors and held them until I’d crossed inside. They latched them back, with one man standing at attention on the right side of the doors and his twin on the left. Their faces were different in shape and complexion, but they dressed alike and stood alike. Queen’s Guard in purple rather than red.

Ladies in corseted dresses with fine hats and gloves gaggled at a corner table, drinking tea and exchanging cards that bore the images of other passengers. They were no doubt participants in one of the Zephyr’s famous Sherlock Society outings, where groups competed with each other to solve puzzles between stops and a murder mystery before the final destination.

Their rivals had possession of a booth beside the window, which they were using as a backlight to examine yellowed papers for invisible ink. Others in period dress milled around the room in scattered clumps or pairs, along with those in plain clothes, waiting patiently—or not—for plates to carry back to their berths and cars.

“Please order at the bar, miss,” said a polite man with a thick, black moustache and a starched white waiter’s coat bearing eight buttons in two rows. He must have thought my observation of the room was due to confusion about how the archaic system worked.

“Thanks,” I said.

He tipped his head and made his way to the doors with a stack of covered trays. The doormen jumped into action to help him out. That job must have gotten very old, very fast with the amount of foot traffic in and out of the car.

I floated toward the bar in a cloud of bliss, certain that the next four days would be the best in recent memory. And then it all came to a brutal, screeching halt. A familiar strangling sensation took hold of me at the first sight of a man in a black polo shirt and a tan baseball cap.

Warden Nye. Again.

If this was the Titanic of the Rails, I’d just discovered our iceberg.

He sat in an elegant seat at the bar, sipping from a crystal tumbler and obviously waiting. His back was to me, but he’d seen me in the mirror tilted above the back of the bar.

I thought of running, turning around and returning to our car, but what good would it do? He was here for me, and there would be no ridding myself of him until I found out why. At least the public setting would ensure he kept up Commission manners.

“Did you look her up?” he asked. He didn’t bother to face me. We were talking like a couple of movie spies, out of synch with the surrounding décor.

“How?” I asked through gritted teeth.

He shrugged. “I assumed the robot came with his own hotspot. Iva got excellent reception.”

“How did you know we’d be on this train?”

And more importantly, did he know it was taking us closer to Cyril? Did Nye have his own version of Nafiza, capable of plotting our course before we knew it?

“Basic human nature, Penelope. You had the choice of a plane ticket or train fare, and it’s more difficult to get on a plane with your metal menaces and a giant whose internal organs would set off the security scanners in an airport. People seek safety in the familiar. For you, that’s a very specific breed of train. I’d offer you a drink, but they’re out of everything except diet soda.”

He swirled his glass to make the ice clink, much as he had before the Center made its final descent, only his humor was much improved.

“Is this some kind of game to you?” I asked. “Cat and mouse or hide-and-seek?”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing new,” he said.

The man behind the bar quirked an eyebrow at that. He was listening to us, gauging the conversation between a grown man and a teenage girl to see if there was anything interesting or troublesome to be heard while he polished glasses and plated meals.

Nye picked up his drink and headed for the last booth in the car, and I knew he wanted me to follow. I did, but I sat facing the bar in hope that I could signal for help if I needed it. The bartender was still watching, and the doormen were close.

“This place could make a person feel underdressed,” he said. “I generally try to blend, but this is the best hat I own now, considering my dress attire was tragically lost.”

“If you’re looking for sympathy, you should try your tailor, because I’d happily burn every stitch of clothing with a Commission ankh on it.”

“I bet you would,” he said, and sipped his drink through a smirk. “It wouldn’t help your sisters much.”

“Althea Dodge is one of the wardens who was at the Center,” I said. “I looked her up. Is that what you wanted to hear me say?”

“What I want you to do is listen.” He folded his hands on the table between us. “Do you know why I came to collect you and your sisters?”

Obvious questions couldn’t be trusted when they were asked by someone like him. He was a snake with too many layers of unshed skin waiting to be revealed.

“You said my father owed you. You came to claim the debt.”

“I said we’d made a deal and that part of that deal was protecting your family, which I did on more than one occasion throughout your life. It’s what I attempted to do at the train.”

“You tried to kill us in order to save us?”

Saying crazy things in rational tones didn’t make them any more plausible.

“Some of us take questionable paths to nobler ends,” he said. A similar sentiment to Greyor’s reasoning for serving a Commission officer. “Usually, it’s a matter of balance and counterweight. Your father’s untimely removal of himself from the picture triggered a series of events that I couldn’t stop. The scales tipped.”

“You showed up with an armored convoy and blew our train off the tracks.”

“No, your dwarf friend had a delusion of grandeur, imagined himself a hero, and he blew it up,” he said, speaking of how Squint had sabotaged the train to ensure that the Commission couldn’t take it intact. “I derailed it because I knew the precautions Magnus had taken in his absence. I never would have gotten near you without assistance. There are certain expectations to be met when one rises to my position, especially when that rise is made against opposition at the higher levels. If those expectations aren’t met, questions arise, and if the answers aren’t satisfactory, you’re left with complications.”

Was he actually trying to claim that sacking the train had been in our best interests? That he was saving us from some worse fate by hunting us down and taking us prisoner?

“You and your sisters would have been safe with me. We could have had this conversation as a group at the Center, but now that chance is gone and the scales have tipped again. Another drastic move is necessary.”

“You hung me off a balcony and threatened to let go.”

He shrugged.

“Threats don’t hurt anyone. I wanted to see what pushing you could accomplish, since your father found the idea so distasteful. The more I pushed, the more you found yourself able to do, and the more you impressed me. Magnus did you a disservice by holding you back.”

“Is he dead?” I finally asked the question that terrified me more than anything. It was no worse to ask than it was to keep imagining and filling in the details with every horrible notion that waltzed through my brain uninvited.

“I don’t know. He certainly hasn’t contacted me since that night, but a lack of contact proves only that he’s in no condition to break his silence.”

“You’re lying. He wouldn’t call you.”

“We’ve been through this—I don’t lie.”

“If a liar claims he tells no lies . . .”

“Touché. That is one of the oldest riddles in the world, but in this instance—”

He reached into his pocket. I had a sudden thought. What if all of the passengers were Commission plants? He could be signaling someone. The bartender, or maybe the ladies hunkered down over their cards. I, of all people, should have known better than to take a costume at face value.

“I’m here alone,” Nye said, as if he’d read my mind. “It’s a question I’d ask, myself.”

He took out a cell phone. Little more than a clear slip of glass contoured to fit in his hand. Far too advanced to be a commercial model. When he turned it to face me, the glass was opaque, and I was looking at my father.

“Be my guest,” Nye said.

I pressed the play symbol on his face.

“Stardust,” my father said.

That was it.

“Where’s the rest of the message?” I asked.

“That’s all he said. A call to arms, triggering the response you saw at the train.”

One word—that word. One frame. It could have been a fake, but I knew better. It felt real.

“Magnus believed himself to be in control of something he couldn’t contain. He ran out of time before ever preparing you for what was coming. When faced with opposition from your sisters and the train itself, I had to react in the way expected of me. I minimized the damage as much as I could. What happened should not have happened.”

No.

He’d already robbed me of the narrative I’d believed to be my life. He didn’t get to do this, too. He didn’t get to rewrite what happened and his part in it as some massive misunderstanding. He set in motion the events that cost me my family. He made the first move that ended with Zavel’s death and Evie’s. There was no undoing that.

“You and my father were not friends,” I said. Why would my father have left me that recording lamenting his deal with a devil and then turn around and contact Nye by choice? “I don’t care how many messages you claim he sent you, I’ll never believe you were.”

“Allies don’t have to be friends. They only need to share a common goal.”

“What goal?” I asked.

He turned his head toward the window.

“I think this is my stop.”

Outside, the streaked lines of green and brown and blue slowed to become trees and buildings against the sky. We passed into a terminal with passengers waiting in a queue to board.

“A performer such as yourself has to appreciate the timing,” he said with a grin. “I’ve given you my olive branch. Now it’s your turn to trust me.”

He laid a black business card on the table. On one side was a familiar splitting double helix in the shape of an ankh. On the other was a printed address.

“If you ride this line to the end of your fare, you’ll be a ten-minute cab ride from this building. Ask for me at the desk, and don’t mind Gladys, she doesn’t like anyone.”

“A Commission building?” I asked. I couldn’t walk into a Commission building.

“That is who I work for,” he said. “Your last stop coincides with the final day of our recruitment week, when those chosen for our scholarship and intern programs come in for a tour of the facility. The place will be overrun with eager young people just like you. No one will give you a second glance unless you run a brush through that rat’s nest Iva bonded to your scalp and make yourself presentable. If you show up, we’ll finish the conversation. If you don’t, I can’t help you, and you’ll be of no help whatsoever to dear Nimue.”

He signaled the doormen, who opened the double doors to let him leave.

A few seconds later, he was sauntering past the window like any of the other passengers who had exited the train. Smiling at people who jostled by, helping an elderly man off the curb. He caught my eye like he knew I’d be watching and tipped his cap before disappearing into the swarm.

The business card sat on the table next to the phone he’d left behind, waiting to bite me and inject me with its venom. If I picked it up, the fever would start. I’d obsess over what Nye did or didn’t know and what he was willing to tell me.

I wasn’t naïve enough to take his offer as a gift. He’d want something in return, but was there anything too precious to trade if it meant my sister’s freedom? It had to be destiny that the key to finding Nim lay in the same direction as Cyril and my father.

I picked up the phone and swiped across. It was still set to the message my father had left. I hit play.

“Stardust,” he said again.

The phone rang in my hand.

“Tell Birch I didn’t write that letter,” Nye’s voice said, and then the line went dead.

The others weren’t going to like this.

“You did what?” Jermay asked.

“I saw Nye in the dining car. He said—”

“You talked to him?” Birch asked. “You actually talked to him?”

Yep. No one was happy with Penn or her bad decisions.

When I returned to our car, everyone asked where I’d been for so long. When I explained the run-in with Nye, Xerxes bit the phone in half and Bijou ate the business card. If he’d been able to light himself, he would have barbecued it first.

“The car had plenty of people in it, and he was alone,” I said. “It was perfectly safe.”

It didn’t help that I knew I’d be agreeing with them if I wasn’t the one trying to make the arguments.

“Safe and that man don’t belong in the same universe, much less on the same train!” Jermay said. “That’s it. We get off at the next stop.”

“Unless he’s got the next stop staked out for collection,” Birch pointed out.

“Right.” Jermay nodded. “We don’t wait. We can get off a moving train.”

I hadn’t considered the possibility that Nye would be waiting to ambush us at the next terminal, so that was a valid concern, but hearing Jermay and Birch backing each other up was throwing me off.

“We have to ride out the line,” I said. “It’s the only way to reach Cyril.”

“Penn, he knows where we’re going,” Birch said. “We won’t make it to Cyril’s house. We have to find another way.”

There was no other way! I had no other leads. Without Nye’s bait, I wouldn’t even have the name Althea Dodge.

“Winnie, what do you think?” I asked. “Was Nye protecting you from Arsenic, or was that a lie?”

“He’s the one who moved me to another cell. That’s all I know.”

Beep! Beep! B-beep! Beep!

Klok made furious noises, typing across his screen as fast as he could.

“I know more! I know he tried to cut me! He tried to take me apart with a saw!”

“But he didn’t know you could feel pain, Klok—he still doesn’t. He thinks you’re like Iva.”

“We are not alike!” He turned away so the others couldn’t see his screen. “Brothers protect sisters. Sisters should protect brothers!”

I’d hurt his feelings.

“I’d never let anything happen to you,” I said. “But this is for Nim and Vesper. It’s for our—It’s for Magnus.”

Klok snapped the shutters over his screen, refusing to talk to me.

“Penn, think about it,” Jermay said. “This guy knows you. He’s studied you. He knows you want your sisters back, so he just happens to pop up with the name of one of the wardens you’re looking for. It’s a carrot, and you’re biting.”

“I know that!”

“But you’re still thinking about going?” Winnie asked.

“No. I’ve decided to go.”

Nye liked theatrics, but this was out there even for him. If he was trying to score points with his bosses, he wouldn’t have helped us. He wouldn’t risk me saying no just to prove he could get me to turn myself in. He knew I could let the truth about his mechanical hands slip in front of the wrong people, and then he’d be out of a job, maybe even in a cell for the deception. And given how the rest of his fellow wardens felt about him, that cell would be a pit deep in Death Valley where his enhancements would be useless.

Klok tugged on my sleeve and handed me a piece of paper, determined not to speak to me by his regular means.

“PLEASE DON’T GO” was written in bold block letters.

“Sisters protect sisters,” I told him. “Don’t you understand? They’re all I’ve got left.”

He took his paper back and wrote: “I thought you had me.”

CHAPTER 25

Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause while our heroine readies herself for the performance of a lifetime! Possibly the last performance in her lifetime. Our human chameleon will put her assimilation skills to the test in an attempt to blend in with the most dangerous of beasts: the mundane Commission pledge!

The announcer in my head had been narrating my moves since I left Klok and the others with orders to leave the train for parts unknown so that I couldn’t find them if things went wrong. I didn’t want to have to turn on my friends the way Evie was forced to reveal the location of the Hollow. They had to avoid Cyril’s house at all costs, since it was the only address I’d know. Then I’d get myself to the public library that evening if I was able. The Commission couldn’t risk a raid downtown, and if I didn’t show, the others were to run and not look back. Maybe they’d be able to find Winnie’s family and join back up with Birdie and Anise.

Jermay and Birch refused to speak to me, but Klok had tried a last-ditch effort to make me see his side of things. He slid a piece of train stationery under the door before I went to bed our final night on board. On it was a crude drawing of me with my arms, legs, and head detached from the trunk of my body. A very detailed bone saw took up half the page. I guess he thought Nye would slice me apart if given the chance, but I knew better. Whatever he wanted from me, he needed me alive to get it.

Now I stood on the sidewalk beneath a bronze ankh, studying people on their way in and out of the Commission building. Winnie had spent our last hours aboard the Zephyr helping me pull off “normal,” and for the first time in my life, I looked like a regular sixteen-year-old girl. No costumes and no cast-offs. Just braided hair, a plain T-shirt, some jeans, and a secondhand backpack to give the impression that I’d actually carried books to a school at some point in my life. All I had to do was pick up a few normal mannerisms, and I’d be fine.

Despite the fact that I had to learn to be normal around people.

I walked into the lobby and didn’t die on the spot. No cages slammed down to trap me inside, and no alarms went off. It was already going better than I’d expected.

“Welcome Visitors,” read a sign on the inside, which was when it actually hit me that I’d walked into a Commission facility on my own. No collar. No one to blame but myself and my singular focus.

The room was packed with people, most of them my age. The upcoming anniversary of the Great Illusion probably had something to do with it, but seeing so many so eager to take up the Commission mantle made my stomach drop. I didn’t know propaganda was that effective. Did any of them really know what they were vying for, or were they all like Nagendra and full of naïve hope that they might one day save the world?

Tables had been set up in a horseshoe, each with a pair of balloons tied to the corners, framing a helpful-looking individual in a black polo shirt. A giant balloon helix stood in the center, anchored to the ceiling with fishing line.

I approached the table marked “Information,” which was something I definitely needed more of, and got in line.

What was I doing? What if they had a machine that did what Nola could do, and they could screen for touched people? I glanced back at the entrance with its metal detectors that could have been something else entirely.

Worse, what if they’d raided the safe house and grabbed Nola?

If they had Nola, then they had Dev, Wren, and Birdie, too, and this time getting Birdie caught was my fault because I was the one who sent her away.

And what was I thinking, taking Nye at his word? He was the one who had threatened to throw Birdie off the Center—was that an act, too? He’d told me Warden Dodge’s name—so what? That didn’t mean he had any intention of helping me get to Nim. What if this really was all a trick? What if getting me to turn myself in was the only way he could keep me?

“Enough!” I scolded myself. I refused to cause my own defeat. I could do this. This was nothing but another part to play.

“Scholarship or intern?”

“Huh?” I glanced over my shoulder at the guy speaking.

“Scholarship or intern position? What are you here for?” he asked.

“Oh. I’m not really . . . I’m . . . um . . . meeting someone?” That wasn’t supposed to be a question. I was supposed to blend in, and blending-in people knew why they were in a place.

“You’re lucky,” the guy said. He hadn’t noticed my nerves. “Personal recommendations are like getting the golden ticket. Could you imagine working here?”

“No,” I said, and I stepped up to the desk, thankful it was my turn.

“How can I help you this morning?” asked Information Woman. She was dressed all in green, which stood out from her more sedate surroundings.

“I need to find Warden Nye’s office,” I whispered.

“What’s that, hon?” she asked. “You’re going to have to speak up a bit.”

“Warden—” I cleared my throat to keep any of my stage voices from overrunning my regular one. “Warden Nye’s office, please.”

“Oh! You must be his niece! I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever show up. The rest of our candidates have been here all week, but I guess your uncle made special arrangements.”

Niece? Uncle?

“Your uncle’s got you a name badge, and he said to send you right on back when you got here so he can talk to you before the presentation.”

She held out a lanyard containing an ID card with the name Ellie on it—along with a picture of me that Nye must have taken through the security cameras while I was on the Center. It wasn’t one I’d ever posed for, and my hair was long, rather than the boyish cut I’d worn for most of my life.

“Such a tragedy what happened at his last post, isn’t it?” The woman dropped her voice. “I suppose you know the details of how he lost it.”

Sure I did, but I was betting she didn’t. She was fishing, and I wasn’t so new at this game that I’d be conned into giving her a nibble. Nye had to have a cover story for how he’d ended up with such a sudden assignment to the office building; the last thing either of us needed was me poking holes in it because some busybody wanted to gossip about her new boss.

“I guess that’s the price you pay for trying to push the envelope; sometimes it blows up in your face,” she continued once she accepted that I wasn’t going to answer her. “And if he hadn’t lost his last position, we wouldn’t have been able to snag him for this one. It worked out so well for you, having him here to speak up on your behalf.”

This had to be the disagreeable Gladys that Nye had warned me about. I tried pulling the lanyard away, but she wouldn’t let go. “I’m sure a warden’s recommendation on your college applications will make some heads turn. Even if he is your uncle and likely to be biased.”

“You have no idea.” I jerked back hard enough to free the lanyard, but I ended up colliding with the guy behind me. “Sorry,” I grumbled. “Which way was his office, again?”

She hadn’t told me, but I hoped a nudge would make her cooperate and stop trying to make me feel guilty for nepotism that didn’t actually apply to me.

“Right down that hall,” Gladys said. “You’d best hurry. The tours will start shortly, and everyone’s supposed to attend.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Good luck, honey. Not that you’ll need it . . .”

I hurried down a long industrial hall in a part of the building that looked like someone had painted everything with primer and then gave up before it came time to add color. Even the carpet was in shades of camel and putty. The only break in the monotony came from evenly spaced portraits of the Commission hierarchy. Local wardens on one wall, international representatives on the other. All of them smiling dead picture-day smiles, and staring blankly with cold, empty eyes. I passed Nye’s portrait first. Althea Dodge’s potato face was near the end, puffy-cheeked and balded by the way her cap sat on her head.

I looked away. Even her portrait creeped me out.

A lone door waited at the end of the hallway. I paused with my hand against it, steeling myself for what lay behind. When I was a child, it was exactly this sort of building where I’d seen death for the first time. There’d been no halls or doors to prevent me from watching the fallen’s eyes go dark. Now the Commission kept things like that hidden away so the new recruits wouldn’t get scared off before they’d been indoctrinated.

I expected whatever lay on the other side of the door to shake my resolve. I thought I’d open it and see such horrors that I couldn’t reconcile ignoring them, even for the chance at saving my sister. But the only thing on the other side of the door was an office.

Cubicles. Rolling chairs. The smell of stale coffee and day-old pastries. Men and women laughing beside the water cooler while others took phone calls and typed memos on virtual keyboards. A level above the divider cubes was a ring of private offices with glass doors accessible by stairs.

This was the Commission?

“Are you supposed to be here?” asked a shockingly sweet-voiced woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. “The bullpen’s off-limits without clearance. Let me guess—you’re a scholarship applicant, and you turned left instead of right coming out of the bathroom. I did the same thing when I was in your shoes.”

None of the skin-crawling “little brother/little sister” nonsense favored by silvers at the Center, just polite, helpful conversation. She assured me that working off the scholarship was a breeze. Five years went by in a snap, and it was shorter than that if I worked summers while in school. Besides, I’d probably love it so much I’d want to stay forever, because that’s what happened to her.

No wonder they could fool so many people into service. They paid for school, and with the exception of Gladys, these people were cordial and unthreatening. Her Casual-Friday shirt and flats were a far cry from the hyper-regimented pseudo-military I was used to.

“The trick is to check the portraits.” She hadn’t noticed that she was talking my ears off and that I’d stopped listening. “They all face toward the public area, so if they’re looking at you, you’re headed into restricted space.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said. “I’m actually looking for Warden Nye’s office. He’s . . . er . . . my uncle.” I held up my badge by the lanyard as though “warden’s niece” was stamped across my face to legitimize the claim.

“Oh! That’s different! We love seeing family around here! Up the stairs and to the right. His is the one with windows so new that they haven’t scraped the bar-code stickers off of them yet. We’re in the middle of renovations, and the suits always get first dibs. Don’t tell him I said that.”

She winked and went on her way without ever giving me a name.

I passed a mailroom runner with a cart and a couple of other random friendly office drones on my way to the stairs, bringing the day’s Commission interactions to four too many. Five, if you included the front-desk grouch. No one recognized me, which let the air out of my assumption that my face or my father’s would be featured on a “Ten Most Wanted” poster that everyone had been forced to memorize. People here hardly saw me, much less questioned my identity.

Maybe Warden Nye really had a teenaged niece whose identity he’d stolen for the day, and they were used to hearing him mention her.

At least I hoped the charade wouldn’t last for more than a day. I’d proven I was willing to do anything to save Nim, even walk into Commission central. What else could he expect of me?

Nye was working at his desk; when I knocked, he waved me in without stopping.

“What’s this?” I slapped the lanyard down on top of the papers he was signing. The end of his name scrolled across the plastic in beads of ink.

“An identification badge,” he said, and moved it aside so he could fix his name. Every signature was identical, without a deviant slash or dot. That kind of precision wasn’t possible with human hands. “All prospects are required to be vetted before entry.”

“I’m talking about the name on it! Ellie! Your niece, Ellie!”

“I’m new here, and no one’s familiar with my family. Being my niece reduces the chance of questions. Ellie is a diminutive of Penelope, which I thought you’d appreciate, but if you’d like to see what happens when your full name is entered into the system, by all means go to the front desk and ask Gladys for a reprint.”

“Oh.”

“To put it mildly,” he said.

She’d type in my name, the alarms would sound, the armed guards would come, and then I’d have to do something drastic that would only convince the next generation of people like him that people like me were too dangerous to be allowed to live out in the open.

“Even without your shockingly large file, I’d steer clear of Gladys. She thinks you’re here to take the nonexistent slot belonging to her son.” That sounded about right. Everyone in the Commission found a reason to hate me, eventually. “There’s something off-putting about that boy. He’s not setting foot in this building so long as I can help it, which will hopefully not be very long.”

“I share the feeling. I shouldn’t be here,” I said.

“But you are, and that tells me enough. You’re serious about getting what you want, and so am I.”

“And what is that exactly?” I asked nervously.

I should have hidden Xerxes in my backpack or worn Bijou as a necklace so I wouldn’t have been alone in enemy territory. But I couldn’t risk it. Klok had insisted on debugging both golems in case Nye had done more to their programming than slip in a few lines of tracking code.

Nye put down his pen and pointed to a chair. I took a seat, and he stayed in his. With the desk between us, there was less of a chance that the Celestine would come out and cause trouble.

“Many years ago—more than you’ve been alive, in fact—I was one of those eagerly idealistic individuals filling the foyer and the bullpen out there. The group I joined had a purpose. We were going to save humanity, if given the chance, and if our services were never required, then that was even better.”

“Are you trying to recruit me?” I asked. “Because that’s not going to end well.”

“You haven’t seen what I’m offering as a signing bonus. It might change your mind,” he said, smirking again. “I joined the Commission during the Great Illusion, while the Medusae were still in the sky and we were still unsure as to their intent. We were a hastily assembled group of science geeks, all tripping over ourselves to collect as many samples as possible to figure out a way to repel what we thought was going to be an invasion.”

“But it wasn’t, and they left, and get on with it because everyone knows this and I don’t want to spend the next twenty-four years in this room while you recount the incursion that never was and Gladys plots ways for her weirdo son to take my place in a program I have no intention of joining.”

This was the kind of speech a person would write down and practice, filled with long, rambling pauses to help them gather their nerve, and if what Nye wanted to ask me was enough to make him nervous, then I was skipping second thoughts and going straight to full 180 turn.

“When the first gifted girls were born, a schism formed within the Commission. We collected the first ones for study because the sitting wardens of the day thought they were a threat, maybe even contagious. Our initial findings convinced our superiors that those girls were irrevocably tied to the Medusae in a way that would allow them to be used as weapons against us if we didn’t weaponize them first. Once we discovered people like your father who had been wildly altered as adults, a decision was made to expand the parameters of our mission. That decision was the catalyst for the rift. The last two and a half decades have only convinced them that they were right to fear anyone displaying evidence of a touch.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Says the girl who just burned down a hotel without a match.”

I felt myself wither. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d called myself a monster lately, and if I felt that way about myself, then I couldn’t expect anyone else to feel differently.

“Were there any—”

I couldn’t finish the question.

“Casualties at the hotel?” Nye asked.

I nodded.

“Two went to the ER with smoke inhalation, and one to the ICU from the combination of a panic attack and a bad heart. No fatalities.”

“Did they figure out what caused it?”

“It was an electrical fire in a building from the turn of the last century. No one looked beyond the burn pattern on the faceplates. They’ve blamed a power surge. I’d say it’s a fair assessment of what happened.”

Warden Nye didn’t say it, but I had a feeling that he’d had a hand in convincing the proper authorities that they didn’t need to investigate any further. I no longer needed proof that the man had protected me; the evidence was there between the lines, and I felt a disturbing twinge of gratitude.

“If you’re wanting me to do something like that . . . I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t think I could on purpose. So if that’s what you want, I’ll find another way to get to my sisters.”

“There are plenty of my fellow wardens who wouldn’t give you the choice,” Nye said.

“They’re not you,” I said confidently, but I still looked for any hint that he might have a hound’s collar stashed within reach.

“No, they aren’t. I’m on the other side of the rift. We know the creatures—whatever they are and whatever their intent—return on a regular basis. Some take this as evidence that the Medusae are keeping tabs on their handiwork and that we’ll wake up one day to a full-scale attack with the touched fighting for our enemies.”

“Only because we’d be fighting against the people who kept us chained and put locks on our gifts.”

“One of the larger reasons I don’t favor the preferred methods of—”

“Capture? Kidnapping? Forced labor?”

“Mandated relocation and service,” Nye said. “Euphemisms make things neater.”

“But they don’t make them better.”

He ignored my final jab and continued.

“In my command, we’ve been tracking the genetic shifts in the population,” he said. “Like the repeat visits from off-world, most of those findings have been classified, but I’ll make an exception considering your unique perspective on the subject. Humanity is changing, far faster than a normal evolutionary jump. We can’t predict it. We can’t slow it down. We definitely can’t stop or reverse it. That has a great many people on both sides of the issue scared. The Centers were supposedly built to alleviate those fears, which was why I needed to be in a position to control one of them, and then you came along and destroyed it.”

“Arcineaux did that.”

“True, but you did eliminate Arcineaux’s home base, and you recently proved yourself capable of bringing down an aerial installation, too.”

So he did know about the Mile.

“What do you expect me to do? Apologize and hope that makes the other wardens not afraid of people like me?”

“No. I want to know if you could do it again.”

CHAPTER 26

Warden Nye’s timing for bringing me to the Commission building had been deliberate. As usual, he was running a long game and already planning moves far into the future, while I was distracted by the immediate danger of being inside enemy territory. Testing my resolve and my nerves had nothing to do with it; he wanted me there for the recruitment presentation.

“You’ve been playing a role since before you knew the difference between fantasy and reality,” he said. “I’ve seen you change your voice and your posture by degrees without prompting, and I know that you were able to fool several members of my staff while at the Center before I found out that you were there. You can do this.”

He offered me a silver jacket with the name Ellie stitched on the front.

“No way,” I said. “Forget it.”

“It’s a jacket, not a bag of thirty silver coins for betraying your friends,” he said. “All prospects wear silvers. How is this any different from the clothes Birch gave you?”

Simple. Birch had been protecting me from Nye and his peers, not asking me to stand beside them in rank.

“Think of it as an act-two wardrobe change,” the warden said.

I didn’t like the sound of that. If he had this story planned out to its end, we’d still have three more acts to go.

Relenting, I slipped the jacket over my arms. It was so new that it still had its metallic shine. Birch’s silvers had turned gray with use and age. The ones that Nye gave me were a promise of service, given with the intent of showing them off proudly for all to see.

I, Penelope Roma, Celestine child of Magnus and Iva, do solemnly swear to uphold the ideals of the Commission for Planetary Security. To defend the human race if called upon to do so. To faithfully fulfill my promise . . .

. . . to betray my family and everything I stand for in the name of maybe saving some of them.

If my father had seen me in that office, he would have disowned me. The father who raised me, anyway. I realized with another pang that I didn’t know how the real Magnus Roma would react. And that feeling came undergirded with a niggling voice I recognized as my better sense. I’d tried to tune her out since the moment I sat down with Nye on the Diamond Zephyr, but she kept breaking through to warn me that he was keeping me in line and in his pocket with chains of words and locks made of promises that I couldn’t make him keep. He’d told me as much while I was on the Center—his methods of control were passive when he didn’t have to put on airs for his fellow wardens.

“Pay attention,” Nye instructed me as he straightened my jacket to Commission regulations. I stood there and let him mold me into the lie he wanted me to inhabit. “Ellie comes from a Commission family, so act like it. Stand up straight and make eye contact if a superior addresses you. The tour guide won’t show off any of the sensitive areas, but that doesn’t mean the information she has to share won’t be important. You can’t afford to get distracted by anything—or anyone—that you see during the presentation.”

“You mean Nim.”

I was going to walk into a slideshow, and my sister was going to be in one of the pictures; he thought giving me advance notice would stop me from turning the building into a pile of demolished cinder block.

“I mean anything or anyone.” Warden Nye handed me my lanyard from his desk. “Althea Dodge is not a good person, Penelope. She doesn’t do good things, and she has no remorse for that.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“I’ve never claimed to be a good man, and I regret that more often than I’d like to admit.” He answered without hesitation or flinching.

“Is she as bad as Arcineaux?”

“To the final bone in her body. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that my dearly departed adversary was the sort of man who could rationalize the suffering of those he deemed less than human.”

I nodded, and Nye started giving me details I’d never asked for, as though I was the only one he could speak to honestly and this was a poison he wanted to get out of his system.

“Arcineaux was tasked with picking up where your father left off. Since Iva was declared a failure, our superiors turned from the idea of robotic soldiers to that of engineered ones. They didn’t care how he got results so long as the results appeared and fell in their favor. So he chose to . . . how shall I put this?”

“Experiment on?” I suggested.

“He chose to work with the sort of people society had already relegated to the fringes, where they wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared.”

Most of his trials had been unmitigated disasters, according to Nye—Wren wasn’t kidding when he said he’d been one of the lucky ones. Winnie and Birch could count themselves among that number, too. The Commission had turned Arsenic loose with a uniform, immunity, and no one to answer to.

“A few years ago, Arcineaux’s tests yielded a male anomaly. Not a healer, per se, but he could regrow tissue. Sometimes flawlessly, other times with complications. Brain tissue, spinal tissue—and you really don’t want me going into the specifics of how that knowledge was gained.”

I could imagine. Winnie and Birch hadn’t marked up their own skin.

“Arcineaux became the first test subject for the next phase, even though he didn’t volunteer in the usual sense. The dead don’t get to vote.”

“You mean they restarted his heart?”

“And gave the boy control over his movements. Bringing him to the Mile was a field test, I imagine.”

That was why he had so many scars. This mystery boy closed the wounds Arcineaux had suffered when the Center fell, but not perfectly. Then he restarted the man’s heart to see if he’d come back to life. The worst part was that the boy had succeeded.

“The goal is to raise an army from the bodies of the touched, one that can’t be subverted by ties to the Medusae if we ever go to war,” Nye said.

It was the science of madmen given full autonomy, and Warden Dodge was on board one hundred percent.

“Giving that woman her own Center is only going to make her bolder,” Nye told me.

It didn’t matter if it was true or not; I needed the excuses he was giving me to hate Warden Dodge enough to destroy her facility at all costs. There would be personnel at the Center, along with the eager young recruits who still didn’t know the truth about the Commission, and I couldn’t guarantee they’d all make it out alive.

Weighing possible deaths as numbers on a balance sheet was supposed to make these kinds of decisions easier, but it didn’t. Turning them into tally marks made me think of myself as a different kind of monster—one who should have felt at home in silver skin and security lanyards.

I joined the group I was willing to sacrifice in the room where I’d started, cringing at the looks we got from families and kids who were there on school trips for a different kind of tour. They’d be getting the basic jaunt around the grounds, full of statues and plaques, with a chirpy guide who wanted them to leave believing that everything was awesome because the Commission existed. I was an exhibit in my silver jacket, something for parents to point at and encourage their children to strive for.

“Where do you keep the dead aliens?” a teenage boy jokingly asked as we were ushered off into the section of the building with the lowest level of security clearance.

I heard a child’s voice ask, “Why are the aliens dead?” before the doors shut between us, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling. Children always asked the right questions, even when they weren’t at The Show. There was still hope in that.

Away from the entrance areas, all pretense of following the public statutes concerning tech dissolved. While the outside world had stagnated, here all those years’ worth of progress had been celebrated and cultivated, putting the Commission that far ahead of the curve. The walls and floors turned lab-room white, and the rugs disappeared completely. Screens made of lasers and motion sensors replaced conventional computers, allowing users to put their hands inside and work with 3-D models in real time.

“Isn’t this amazing?” asked the guy who’d been behind me in line. The stitching on his jacket named him Lawrence.

“That’s one word for it,” I said.

“I could just die,” a girl announced enthusiastically. Callie, according to her silvers. “Couldn’t you just die?”

“I hope not.”

I wasn’t sure how that translated into an insult, but that’s how she took it.

Our guide walked us to the mouth of a hallway and stopped.

“And now, maybe you’d all like a peek at where you’ll be working if you’re chosen for the program.”

She clicked a remote in her hand. The lights switched off, making way for a holographic relay that overlaid the blank walls, floor, and ceiling with dynamic images of another building’s inside structure. Not exactly the slideshow I’d been expecting.

“Your assignment is part of an experimental class of facilities that we’ve dubbed Centers,” our guide said.

Naming things was not the Commission’s greatest strength.

“What’s inside is state of the art and completely classified, so I’ll have to ask that you all put your phones away until we’re finished here.”

The Commission wasn’t supposed to have the power to classify anything. That was the military’s job.

“This new facility wasn’t supposed to be operational for another six months, but due to the recent loss of our prototype, we’ve moved up its dedication.”

She made no mention of that prototype being the kind of airborne battle platform that would have been at home in a space opera, or that its purpose was to re-create the conditions of the Great Illusion so the Commission could breed their own Medusae for study and experimentation . . . unless she meant the Ground Center was the prototype. Either way, the new recruits weren’t getting the whole story—probably because they were smart enough to run back out the door if they knew what was really going on before they were so deeply entrenched in the lies that they could no longer find the exits.

Our guide clicked her remote, and we were surrounded by fish and sea grass, viewing the new Center from the outside. Warden Dodge’s insistence on taking possession of Nim made perfect sense; her Center was underwater.

“Its unique location leaves it naturally protected, and it’s undetectable from the surface, so there won’t be any need to convince the local population that they aren’t in danger due to its proximity.”

But they were in danger, according to Warden Nye. Experiments were no good without test subjects, and all cities came with their own overlooked populations of homeless and runaways.

The hologram painting the hallway around us changed again, bringing us closer to the Center so we could see the details. Divers worked on the outer shell with acetylene torches; others cleared coral and underwater plants to make room for expansion. Shadowy figures at the corner of my eye ferried crates and boxes. Each of these wore the same black suits as those who had attacked the train and the Mile, with shining rings around their wrists and ankles. A collar encircled each of their throats. Hydrokinetic hounds being used as forced labor.

“How are they breathing?” asked a guy on the other side of the group. I couldn’t see his name, but he was poking at the nearest hydro with his finger.

“This is where we get into the material covered by the nondisclosure agreement you signed,” the guide said. “Should you be selected for placement in the Center, you will be working with individuals afflicted by a condition we call hydrokinesis.”

The group broke into whispers as everyone here discovered that they were being courted by an organization that had deceived them. It had always been official policy that the touched were myths spawned by the Great Illusion, and any rumors of resulting elemental powers were mass hysteria.

“Calm down, calm down.” The guide patted the air with her hands. “I know it’s a shock, but hydrokinesis and its associated afflictions have been kept quiet for the sake of public safety.”

A hand went up.

“Are they dangerous?” its owner asked.

“Absolutely not. This isn’t a comic book. We don’t have superheroes and villains facing off in the streets. The hydros assigned to the Center are contained with the implements you see on their wrists and ankles. These implements allow them to function within the confines of a closed society where their misfortune can be used for mutual benefit. It’s not a contagious condition, and there’s hardly any difference in their cognitive abilities from yours. You’ll find many of them are quite bright, and thankful for the opportunities afforded by our relocation programs.”

The recruits bought every last word. Not one other hand went up to question what they were seeing with their own eyes, so I put up mine.

“Yes?” the guide asked.

“Do those collars mean that they’re hounds?” I asked.

She actually laughed. A condescending “you poor thing” kind of sound.

“Despite the existence of people with seemingly extraordinary abilities, hounds are an urban myth. It’s not a word we use.”

Warden Files must not have gotten that memo.

“So they can leave if they want to?” I asked.

The guide shifted uncomfortably. These were not questions she was trained to field, and she definitely lacked the finesse to improvise.

“We’ve determined that the safest course of action is for them to stay where they’re best engaged.”

I put my hand up again, but she ignored me. She clicked her remote and brought us back inside the Sea Center.

“If we move away from the outer hull, you’ll see a glimpse or two of the research facilities being built. The unique properties of an underwater environment afford us opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else on the planet. You’ll be offered the chance to complete dive certification, which we highly recommend, but it isn’t a requirement for the program.”

The hologram turned, taking us into a wide-open space with a balcony and a curved viewing window overlooking several smaller facilities out beyond the main building. There were no gyros involved, but the layout wasn’t much different from the facility Nye had run. We were looking out through the equivalent of the Aerie, which had been the apex of the Aerial Center and the spot where Nye threatened to drop me over the edge.

“This is the control deck,” our guide said, “probably everyone’s favorite. It’s where all the fun stuff happens. It’s also where we’ll be meeting the Center’s supervisor: Warden Althea Dodge.”

The girls around me started twittering about how Warden Dodge was such an amazing woman. She’d been their inspiration, the reason they wanted to join the Commission.

“Warden Dodge is a very busy woman these days, but she’s provided us with this prerecorded welcome to tide you over until we actually make the trip to the Center.”

The guide clicked her remote once again, and Warden Dodge appeared in the middle of our group.

“Congratulations, all of you, on reaching the top stage of the program. You’ve beat out some of the best students in the nation to get here, and that wasn’t easy. Don’t feel bad if you think you’re falling behind the people standing with you today. Final determinations haven’t been made, and they won’t be until your last evaluations, which will take place here at the Center in two days.”

An alarming cheer went up with that announcement, but it was muffled by the rushing blood in my ears and the dangerous intonation of heavenly fire in my chest. While my fellow silvers were focused on Potato-Face, my attention had drifted, trying to pick out points of interest in the room around her.

There’s a tonal phenomenon that happens in crowds that controls how a person picks up voices. People rarely notice what’s being said by those in whom they have no interest. But if someone in that same crowd calls your name, you’ll hear it perfectly. You’re actually hearing everything, but your ears are filtering sounds without your conscious mind being aware. Apparently eyes do the same thing, because mine zeroed in on a figure outside that giant viewing window. It was so small in relation to everything else that I shouldn’t have noticed it, but my brain latched on and refused to let go until I paid attention.

“Nim,” I breathed out.

Her hairpins and shimmering clothes were gone, but I knew my sister when I saw her. She was there. Really, really there. I could have touched her image if I wanted to draw more attention to myself than I already had.

“We’ll be waiting to welcome you abor—brrt—brrt.” Warden Dodge’s message became garbled. Her image splintered into collections of disembodied pixels. “Ab—brrt—brrt.”

The hologram whirled around, bringing Nim into the foreground. Her face was drawn and pale, with dark circles under her downcast eyes.

Our tour guide clicked her remote furiously, but the image wouldn’t change.

“She looks so sad,” Callie said, with the detached pity of someone remarking on a documentary about a tragedy half a world away. “Look at her eyes.”

“You’d be sad if you were like that, too,” said a boy with Peter on his jacket.

“What’s that on her neck?” Lawrence asked. He traced the curve of Nim’s collar with his fingertips. “Look at that burst of light. It looks like a static charge, but she’s underwater. It can’t be static.”

“It’s electricity,” I said softly. “The collar’s electric.”

“Shut it down,” our guide ordered into her headset. “Someone shut off the projectors.”

“A shock collar in the water?” one of the others said. “Isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

“Maybe the freak’s part eel.”

I didn’t see who said that, but their voice cost me my last thread of self-control.

Nim and everything around her disappeared. The holographic hallway embarked on a tour unlike anything our harried guide was authorized to give. We plowed through walls into areas a bunch of freshman silvers were never meant to see. Holding cells where the hydros were locked in while they weren’t at work, all languishing beneath heat lamps. Labs displaying data from human experiments, dozens upon dozens of faces marked “expired.” The prison level, which had replaced the sound of clocks with that of constant dripping that made me wonder if the cells were actually being filled with water. An assembly line setting up Medusae-farming tanks like the ones that had filled Nye’s Center.

“What’s going on?”

“Is this real?”

“It’s a test, right?”

Now there were more than enough questions to go around.

“Shut it down!” our tour guide pleaded, but no one could switch it off. “Everyone out! Now! There’s something wrong with the equipment.”

I tried to move with the rest of the group, but none of us went anywhere. The heat had settled in my feet instead of my hands, and like that boiling glass of water at Baba’s table, the energy had tried to disperse. The Commission’s floor was made to conduct heat in winter to warm the building, but I’d released so much that it had melted the bottoms of all our shoes. We were stuck.

The other silvers panicked, linking hands to pull each other out of their shoes, but the floor was too hot to run across barefoot or in socks. The lower holographic projectors were so close to the heat that they melted, dropping their glass lenses to the floor, finally granting our guide’s request to kill the video.

Sprinklers activated from recesses in the ceiling, engulfing us all in clouds of steam.

“Melted shoes. That’s a new one,” Warden Nye said.

I was back in his office, dismissed from the tour along with everyone else. The first few who’d gotten their shoes off were in the medical office having their skin treated for contact burns.

“Back at the hotel, you said you knew why things like this keep happening to me.”

“I already told you: you’re stardust, and stars aren’t meant to walk the earth in mortal flesh. You give off a radiation signature—nontoxic, from what I can tell, but the amount of power released is increasing with every episode you have. You’ll keep getting stronger until you’ve consumed yourself and only the Celestine is left in all her glory. Your father knew this was where you were headed, but even he couldn’t predict what you’d become.”

“You mean it’s going to kill me?”

“The butterfly kills the caterpillar, but it doesn’t really die,” he said. “I still don’t know how I’m going to spin twenty pairs of melted shoes and the unauthorized behind-the-scenes action down there.”

“A major malfunction in the radiant heat pads below the carpet started a chain reaction that overloaded all of the projection equipment, scrambling the images and warping the audio,” I said. “I’m the only one who got a really good look at the place. The others didn’t know what they were looking at.”

“That’s actually not bad. Maybe I should offer you a job in public relations once you’ve dismantled the Sea Center.”

“They’re still sending the finalists?”

“In thirty-six hours, which is when you need to be back here to join them.”

Pulling off this façade among people who had never met me was one thing, but he wanted me to get into the personal space of a woman who had been to his Center while I was the main attraction.

“Warden Dodge and I ate at the same table.”

“Trust me. That woman isn’t known for her powers of perception,” he said. “She wasn’t interested in anything she couldn’t keep.”

I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t, even if I needed him to help me pull this off.

“She won’t have much face time with the prospects, anyway,” he said. “She’ll glance, she’ll smile, and she’ll forget. Go with the silvers. Disrupt the Center, and free your sister. We all get what we want.”

Disrupt.

Destroy.

A subtle difference, but in subtlety lay the magic that had kept the man alive since the day he met my father on Brick Street.

“They were building tanks,” I said. “Similar to the ones you had, but bigger.”

“I know. Althea’s aren’t for show. They’re not the aesthetically pleasing aquariums I hoped would be too shallow to allow new specimens to grow. Apparently she and Arcineaux decided that redundancy held the key to success. They wanted their own crop for study in case something happened to mine; I guess they didn’t trust me to share.”

“Will it work?”

“If it does, I can promise you one thing. She won’t have to bring the rain.”

“Bring the rain” was the unofficial Commission statement. When the Medusae arrived, it rained. When they left, it happened again, with both phenomena being caused by atmospheric agitation. That rain carried genetic fragments that found a home in the water supply and eventually made their way into the children who would grow up touched.

Nye’s Center had been designed to re-create the conditions that caused the rain, in hopes that the Commission would be able to create their own gifted people—ones they could control. But Dodge was already in the second largest ocean on the planet, with more than thirty percent of the total volume of Earth’s water outside her windows. If she released genetically reengineered Medusae into that environment . . .

Suddenly, this wasn’t about saving my sister or my family, and it wasn’t a matter of protecting the rest of the touched or finding a way to stomach choosing the many over the few. Warden Dodge was a threat to everyone, everywhere, and I was the only one who could stop her.

CHAPTER 27

I seriously considered skipping the meeting I’d arranged with Jermay and the others. I could have gone off on my own and let them think things went badly, but at least one of them would have done something stupid to try to find me or rescue me.

“He wants to you to go alone into a high-security, isolated, underwater Commission Center? Alone.”

Jermay had managed to work alone into every sentence he’d spoken since we reached our hotel. Each time he asked, I answered in the affirmative. I even answered in other languages, as yes and no were about the only things I could say in another language.

“Yeah,” I said. I was down to half-grunted sounds.

“Alone?”

I sighed. “Yes, Jermay. Yes, alone. Yes, by myself, because he can only add one name to the list.”

Klok tapped my shoulder and handed me a sketch I dubbed “Penn’s Dismemberment: Version 2.0.” This one was even more detailed than the one he’d given me on the train, which made me think he’d spent the day working on it.

I’d never thought of Klok as the artistic type, but he got more across with that one image than if he’d used the time to write down all the reasons I shouldn’t go along with Nye’s plan.

“He’s not going to kill me,” I said. “You didn’t hear him, guys. The Commission is coming apart at the seams. They’re going to take a lot of people down with them unless the rogue wardens are taken out of the picture. So far the only thing that’s worked is to destroy their home base, and I’ve got to do it before Warden Dodge gets those tanks in place.”

If I waited, then even destroying the Center became a risk. The tanks would shatter, like the ones in the air, and they’d empty their contents directly into the ocean itself. Another concentrated dose of alien genetic material that could alter humanity or our planet beyond reckoning.

“Winnie, tell her she can’t go,” Jermay said.

“She won’t do that.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Winnie said. “I don’t feel like helping you run a suicide mission.”

“I’m not going to die!”

“Dying is the best-case scenario here,” she said.

“I saw her,” I said. “I saw Nim. She’s nothing to them but construction equipment, and the people in that room barely batted an eye.”

And if Warden Dodge was on board with expanding the resuscitation program to touched subjects, there was a very real chance she’d start with the resources she had on hand. No one was turning my sister into a hydro-zombie.

“Ellie Hammond.”

I’d been repeating the name Warden Nye gave me for so long in my head that I almost missed it when our handler called it out loud.

“That’s me,” I said. I was back in my silvers, waiting to board the transport vessel that would take me to Nim.

That’s how I had to think of it. I was on my way to see Nim. If I thought about everything in my way, I’d throw up, which would probably get me booted off the transport in the name of public health.

I’d had to sneak out of the hotel while the others were asleep. I’d lied and told them I had another day before I was due back so they couldn’t find a way to stop me. Even so, Xerxes was waiting for me by the door.

“You understand why I’m doing this, don’t you?” I asked him. He’d been completely different since Klok removed the toxic code from his programming. More like the golem who reminded me of my father than the metal-feathered menace who acted like a spoiled tabby.

He flew up to perch on the back of a chair so we were roughly at eye level, leaned in, and tugged my ear.

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “And I’ll bring her home.”

I kissed him on the forehead and slipped out.

Now I was standing with the rest of the silvers as a man with a clipboard checked us off one by one and told us to take a seat.

“Lawrence Hillard.”

“Right here,” he said, and chose the seat next to me.

Callie and Peter were already on board, and we were nearing the end of the list. It would only be a few more minutes before the transport would be rolling, then diving. I had no idea how long it would take to reach the Sea Center, but even the shallowest parts of the ocean floor were unthinkably deep and isolated.

All these people thought they were stepping into their future, and I was about to sink it.

“What’s the matter?” Lawrence asked. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

“Something like that,” I said.

I was going over my cover story in my head. Nye had given me a dossier to memorize so I’d be able to fake my way through an interview if I wasn’t able to finish the job before they started the final evaluations.

My name is Ellie Hammond, and I’m sixteen. I’m a student at P.S. 97.

It was probably a bad sign that I didn’t know the P.S. stood for “public school” until Nye told me. He chose the name to make it generic enough to be a school in any city I was familiar with. I was more concerned that they were going to ask me questions about subjects I’d never learned. My Show family had been my teachers, and while Nagendra had made sure I could quote Hamlet, act and scene, by the time I was seven, and Squint was a whiz with math who had taught me basic algebra, I doubted I was actually scholarship material. It would have been a shame for the Pythagorean theorem to ruin my cover story. Maybe they’d ask me to bake a cake, and I could wow them with Mother Jesek’s secret recipes.

It also would have been easier for me to concentrate on remembering the things I needed to know if Lawrence wasn’t looking right at me every time I turned my head.

“What?” I finally said. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Is it that obvious?” he asked.

Why would I have asked him if it wasn’t?

“Sorry, but you look so familiar to me. I know I’ve seen you somewhere before. Like on TV or something.”

Great. I was trying to pull off the normal-nobody effect, and I had to get a seat next to a guy who remembered me from The Show. That was exactly what I needed just before a sabotage mission.

“I was in commercials as a kid,” I lied.

Little lie. I was on Show posters, and they were sort of non-moving commercials.

“Oh! That’s what it is!” Lawrence said happily.

If I hadn’t given him an excuse, he would have obsessed over it until he came up with The Show and me as its ringmaster—or, worse, the online video of me making the creeper lights dance in the charity café where Winnie and I had met the undercover unnoticeables C. B. and Rye.

The man with the clipboard called out the last name on his list and slapped the side of the transport to signal the driver.

“That’s twenty! Seal her up!”

“Wait! Hold the truck! I’m coming!” someone shouted from the dock.

“Who’s that?” Lawrence asked.

I nearly fell out of my seat at the sight of a girl pulling on a dull-gray shirt like a jacket as she ran toward us. What was Winnie doing here? Was she crazy?

“We’ve already got everyone on the list, miss,” the man with the clipboard said.

“Got a phone call,” Winnie huffed, overselling the idea that she was out of breath. “Said to show up. I know my name’s on there if you’ll look.”

The man ran his finger down the side of the list as he scanned it again. He never asked her name.

“Well, what do you know? I must have skipped right over you, honey. Sorry about that.”

“That’s okay,” Winnie said.

“Find yourself a seat.”

Winnie hopped up on my other side and buckled herself in.

“Not open to discussion,” she whispered. Her mouth had healed to the point of looking like severely chapped skin. It didn’t bleed when she spoke anymore. “You’re going for Nim. I’m going for Greyor. It’s what he’d do.”

“How—” I started, staring at her silvers, which were nothing but the faded gray shirt Nafiza had given Birch, and not nearly convincing enough to pass for real ones. “Just how?”

“You have your secrets. I have mine.”

The loading hatch closed on a hydraulic hinge, slowly plunging us into darkness.

“They won’t make us ride like this the whole way, will they?” Callie asked.

I hoped not. I was liable to start glowing from the pressure, and someone was bound to notice.

The seal hissed shut, pressurizing our cabin, and the outer skin of the transport retracted. We were left sitting inside an amphibious truck that functioned as the opposite of a glass-bottom boat. The floor was the only part that remained opaque.

“Cool!” Callie exclaimed.

Most of the others shared her enthusiasm, like we were kids on a midway ride. The transport drove down the dock ramp and out into the water. The wheels lifted into the floor with a blunt thump.

“Okay, guys, this is it,” the driver said over the intercom. “Everybody hold your breath.”

I guess he thought that was funny.

A soft yellow-green light came on as we lost the sun overhead. So different from the spike. No one ran for cover; instead they turned their hands over, bathing them in glow-stick tones.

Our driver called out schools of fish, some that had been tagged and named, others that he apparently just found interesting and wanted to share. We spent fifteen minutes in a vertical descent. It got cold, and despite the light, it got dark. The sea life thinned along with the plant life as we moved onto what I could only think of as a road. Colored flags cropped up in pairs, moving from green to red.

“That’s the warning to watch our step, folks. Hang on. The ride’s about to get bumpy.”

The wheels came down for our landing on the ocean floor. We drove between the flags and right off a cliff, allowing our weight to drag us down to a pad site that was lit up twenty feet below us. Ironically, at this depth, among enduring sights were blooms of jellyfish. Silent and graceful, with frilled heads and curtains of stringy tentacles and arms. They surrounded our transport, bumping against the sides as soft as balloons. In practice, space wasn’t all that different from the ocean.

A pair of hydros kicked past on their way to do who knows what in service of the Center.

“How do they breathe?” Peter asked. “Gills?”

“The water molecules split into hydrogen and oxygen when they draw it in,” I said.

Even Winnie looked at me like I was crazy for that one.

“Or gills,” I amended. “They could have gills.”

Why not? Hydros were subhuman, after all. Mutations. Freaks. Gills fit the idea.

Bitterness gave me focus, causing everyone in the truck to fade from notice. I zeroed in on the Sea Center, taking note of its construction and comparing it to what I knew of the facility Nye had run. A narrow glassed-in hallway would be a weak point I could exploit. The smaller, bulbous dome we passed on our way in had to be where the generators were housed; I could stop them cold and let everyone see how funny the idea of gills was without fresh air pumping through the vents. We drifted by the control room’s bowed window that would be so easy to crack. The ocean would pour in and remind the Commission that they could only remain in its domain as long as it felt like sharing space.

Poetic justice, even. I’d bring the rain to them, and it would wash them away.

“Whoa! Look at that!” A recruit’s voice stopped my destructive musing short.

Everyone was looking out the same side of the truck, pointing and angling for a better view. Thin funnels danced through the water like tornados on an open prairie, picking up stones and crustaceans from the ocean floor until the waterspouts darkened with debris. They disrupted the nearest jellyfish, spinning them off in new directions.

“What is that?” one of the girls asked. “There’s no wind underwater.”

“Cold water meeting warm,” another answered. “Same principle, different medium. If the Center’s geothermal, we could be near the heat source.”

“Do you think one of them will reach the surface?”

“We could be looking at the genesis of a free-standing maelstrom.” The guy who said that looked like a pencil with glasses.

The rest chattered on, hypothesizing about every possible cause for the impossibility outside our truck except for the one that was actually responsible—me. Underwater tornadoes were the form my temper took this time, perfectly illustrating the churn of emotion in my chest. Rage colliding with regret. Fear bending beneath frustration. Determination trying to minimize them all. The Celestine was pawing at her cage, ready to be set free, and once she was finished, no one would even remember a few dancing waterspouts.

“Get a grip,” Winnie warned me in a low voice. “It’s not an order yet, but it will be if I have to make it one.”

I nodded slightly and pulled back, meaning to make the funnels dissipate; instead they blew apart, firing fragmented stone and seashell like a dirty bomb. My own underwater comets streaked toward the Center as smaller bits slammed into the truck, imbedding in the glass but not cracking it.

Everyone except for me and Winnie screamed and jumped away from the walls.

“I’m going to pretend you did that on purpose and that you aren’t already losing control before we set foot inside the building,” Winnie said as our driver called back through the intercom system to make sure everyone was okay.

“Looks like we’re experiencing some unexpected turbulence,” he said. “Everyone get back in your seats and buckle in. I’m going to cut the scenic route short and get us inside ASAP, just in case there’s more on the way.”

He had no idea.

CHAPTER 28

Warden Dodge was waiting to greet us when the transport navigated the final underwater road into the Center’s docking lagoon. We drove up from below the facility, along a ramp into a room with a giant pool in the middle that allowed people and vehicles access to the surrounding ocean without the need for airlocks.

“Welcome to the Center,” she said to each of us. “Welcome. Congratulations. Welcome to the Center.”

She clasped my hand with a weak dead-fish handshake and looked straight through me. There was no concern for the damage done to the truck or the Center by my water funnels, and there were no inquiries about whether or not anyone was shaken up or injured. Warden Dodge was clearly distracted, and I doubted having a truckload of teenagers sent down was her idea. Once I saw what lay beyond the lagoon, I could understand why. The Sea Center was barely functional. Her technicians were rushing through the work required to shave six months off the dedication date, and it showed.

Winnie swatted my arm and pointed up to a sign that had been bolted to the wall outside the lagoon room: “BRING THE.” The other half of the sign was missing.

“Bring the rain,” she mumbled.

Our handlers sent us to the rooms we’d been assigned, claiming that we needed to get used to the pressure of being so deep underwater—which meant that the pressurization systems weren’t fully functional yet. Not all of the rooms had doors, and of the ones that did, some weren’t hung correctly. The porthole window in the room that was mine, and by extension Winnie’s, had uneven seams. A small, empty aquarium had been pushed into a corner; all of its decorations and apparatuses were still in their packaging inside the tank. They were really overselling the underwater theme.

“I’m not sure we’ll have to sabotage anything,” Winnie said. “I think this place might destroy itself.”

“No kidding.” I knew just enough about engineering from watching my father and Squint to know that imperfections were magnified by high pressure. Given enough time, the Pacific would punch through the glass on its own.

I was actually more concerned for the safety of everyone on board if we didn’t trigger an evacuation and put the place out of its misery.

We waited for thirty minutes or so, until we were sure that the other silvers had settled, then we left the room in search of the holding area where the warden was keeping Nim. We headed away from the lagoon because it didn’t make sense to keep hydrokinetic prisoners near their easiest route of escape.

At least with no door, there was no chance of someone hearing us open or close it.

“This place is a ghost town,” Winnie said.

At Nye’s Center, the only time the halls were empty was during meals or after the workday was done, and even then I’d had to evade the odd workman or security patrol. Here, there was no one.

“If we don’t find a computer terminal to tell us where we’re going, we’re sunk,” I said.

“Don’t say that around here. You’ll jinx us.”

We passed the labs that had been part of the holographic tour. One door was open, but there was no one inside. There wasn’t much in the way of equipment, either, just boxes of paper file folders. This place wasn’t going to be ready in a matter of days. It wouldn’t even make it by the original six-month mark.

“In the presentation they gave us, there was a command module at the end of this hall,” I said. “It’s that huge glass window we passed outside, and according to the guide, it’s the busiest part of the installation.” With construction running behind, the warden could have ordered that everything be localized to conserve energy and resources until they could be properly allocated.

And that gave me an idea. With only a few sections of the Center in use, I could follow the energy flow to the areas with the highest draw on the grid.

The floor had been wired for heat to combat the deep-sea chill. There was an uptick in use at the end of the hall, enough to be consistent with the command area. Another peak came from beneath the guest rooms, but neither of those came close to the consumption in a tiny square that felt like it was focused on the room we’d both just agreed was empty.

“There’s something in that empty lab,” I said. “Its energy usage is off the charts.”

We turned around and headed back to the room with the open door.

“What am I missing?” Winnie asked. “Because all I see is a standard lab room that no one’s using.”

So did I, but when the hologram went haywire, there were people in this room. There were X-rays on the light boxes, and something about the furniture looked different. The glimpse had been so quick that I couldn’t remember any more.

I tried for another read on the radiant heat in the floors.

“It’s that wall,” I said. “It shouldn’t be there.”

The dimensions of the room felt off-kilter. All of the doorways along the hall were the same distance apart, so the rooms should have been the same size, but this room was too short. Four feet were missing. There was a thermogenic swell behind the back wall, and there was something about the floor. A skip in the rhythm of the heaters.

I slid my foot across the tile, searching for the disturbance, and . . . click. The back cabinets split and slid inside each other like nesting dolls, leaving space for a concealed entryway between them.

“What is that?”

The lack of locks in this place was seriously starting to annoy me. Neither Winnie nor I heard Lawrence until he spoke.

“Go back to your room,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you. Tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to find someone in charge and ask them why there’s a secret passage in one of the labs. How did you know that was there?”

“I can make this a lot simpler,” Winnie offered.

Letting her handle him was the safest option, but I’d always been pretty skilled at reading people. Lawrence had been genuinely worried when he saw the sparks surrounding Nim’s collar. He was one of the good ones, I was sure.

“One of the hydrokinetics you saw in that hologram was my sister. She’s being held here against her will. I’m not a scholarship candidate. I’m not a warden’s niece. I’m here to save her, and I think she’s in here.”

“Or we can always go with option B: throw all hope of success out the window and run around shouting our plan to anyone in earshot. If you add some sparklers to the routine, you might even manage to alert Warden Dodge and get us blown out a torpedo tube,” Winnie said.

“I don’t think torpedoes are standard equipment for this type of installation.”

“No, but quantifiable personality disorders are standard for wardens, and I’d rather not get on this one’s bad side before we have to.”

“Are you serious?” Lawrence asked.

“You saw the wall open,” I said.

He stepped forward into the area beyond the dummy wall, where another section of the lab had been exposed. Unlike the open room behind us, this one was set up and functional.

“I’ve seen this before,” Lawrence said, reaching for one of the X-ray films without touching it. “It was in the hologram, too.”

I nodded and scanned the images. None of them were Nim, but rather a boy who was Dev’s age or younger. There was no name, and I couldn’t help but wonder if these were taken from the boy who repaired Arcineaux. The Sea Center would be a perfect place to hide him.

“Are you like your sister?” Lawrence asked.

“I’m human. We both are. I just happen to be really good at finding secret doors. You can come with us, or you can stay here, but please don’t tell the warden. Look closer at those X-rays. How old do you think that boy is? Because that’s what they do. They take children and they test them. They hurt them. The Commission has already taken most of my family from me. I need my sister back.”

He struggled with what to do or say next, but it was really hard to argue that a secret door inside an already secret base had been installed for something good.

“Ladies first,” he said.

The entrance led to a corridor where there should have been more workrooms. I was willing to bet that if anyone tried the handles in the main hall, they’d find the doors fused shut.

“It’s sweltering in here,” Lawrence said, pulling at the neck of his shirt.

The farther we walked, the worse it got, until we reached the end of the corridor and it opened up into a blisteringly hot windowless cell. Eight black-suited hydrokinetics languished in the heat, laid out and wilting with cracked skin and lips.

Warden Files used cold to keep his pyros in check. Dodge did the opposite. She’d created an arid desert to torture water nymphs.

“Nim?” I called.

One of the bodies in the back propped itself up off the ground, blinking in the light to see if I was a mirage. I hardly recognized her as my sister. “P-Penn? How—?”

“Penn?” Lawrence asked. “I thought your name was Ellie.”

The other hydros lifted their heads, curious but too weak to move much more.

“We came to get you,” I said.

“I-I don’t understand. How are you here? What are you wearing?”

“It’ll make a lot more sense once I get that collar off.”

I slid onto the floor beside my sister. It was so hot I felt my knees burning through my jeans.

“No, don’t stay here,” Nim mumbled. “You need to leave.”

I took her collar in my hands and begged my touch not to fail me as it had with Evie.

The connection sparked. I whispered “open,” and her torture ended. Nim fell back to the floor.

“We need to get her into the water,” I said as I disengaged the restriction cuffs around her hands and feet.

One of the other hydros dragged herself closer to me and laid her hand against my leg, begging me to set her free, too. The others were trying to move but had no leverage.

I beckoned Winnie and Lawrence into a huddle.

“I can deal with the collars and the restrictors, but there’s no way the three of us can get them all to the lagoon. It’ll take too long. We’ve got to get them moved before the handlers come back for us. We’re going to need help.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Winnie said, but Lawrence pulled her back.

“We’ve got twenty pairs of hands and nothing better to do with them,” he said. “The others need to see this. They won’t believe it, otherwise.”

He jogged back down the corridor before either of us could argue.

Things were either about to get a lot better or a lot worse.

CHAPTER 29

All of the silver-clad Commission prospects crowded into the hydros’ holding cell, already wiping their brows to get rid of the sweat after a matter of seconds. Nim had been a prisoner in that oven for months, and there was no telling how long the others had been there.

“Somebody designed this place,” Peter said. He started to run his hand over the tiled wall but pulled back when it stung his skin. “It wasn’t thrown together overnight. It took effort, and it took planning.”

And a twisted talent put to the task of fostering misery.

“They had to fit the components to the existing structure.”

“We should report this,” Callie said. She’d taken out her phone and was snapping pictures of everything.

“To who?” Winnie asked. “The people who already know it goes on but lie about it to people like you?”

While they argued, pairs of prospects walked the hydros out of the cell, counting on the Center’s deserted hallways to get back to the lagoon unseen.

“We can debate our next steps once they’re in the water,” I said. Winnie helped me raise Nim onto her feet. Lawrence and Peter slung her arms over their shoulders and carried her out. We hadn’t made it all the way down the corridor when shouting voices hammered through the façade doors. I ducked under Nim and Peter’s arms and rushed toward the lab room’s entrance.

As it turned out, Warden Dodge did have security personnel; they were just slow. A lone guard had been making his rounds when he saw the hydros being escorted to the lagoon.

“Stop!” he shouted.

The first pairs of silvers squeaked and double-timed it down the hall toward the lagoon.

“Stop! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

The security man reached for his radio. Winnie ran to intercept him.

“You don’t want to do that,” she told him, and he let go of the button.

“They’ll flood it,” he told her, but he didn’t try to make another radio call. Winnie wouldn’t let him. “They always flood it. Can’t repair it fast enough because they flood it again.”

It sounded like some of the hydros had been fighting back. Maybe the collars didn’t work as well in water. Wouldn’t that be a shame?

Three more of the hydros had made it to the lagoon by now.

“I told you they’d flood it,” the security man said, still in the dreamy voice of someone under Winnie’s control.

Bubbling water rose from the lagoon door and washed down the hall, toe-deep. Another hydro went into the lagoon, and the water rose higher. The ones still in the hall slipped free to put their hands in it and splash their faces, including Nim.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. “I know those collars can mess with your head.”

“How did you do this?” she asked.

“A lot of things have changed,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it once we’re out of here.”

The water was ankle-deep and still rising.

“We’d better go,” Winnie said. “The hydros can waterlog this place to the ceiling. They don’t need us, but we need to be back inside the truck where there’s enough air to go around.”

“I’ll see you on the surface,” I told Nim. She was the only hydro left who hadn’t reached the lagoon, but even a little exposure to water had made her stronger. It was at mid-calf now, and it hit a flood sensor on the wall, triggering an alert that howled with red flashing lights up and down the hall.

“Penn, wait,” Nim said. “There’s another detainment area for regular prisoners. Squint’s in there. I’ve seen him. If you hurry, you can make it down and back. Prisoners aren’t included in the evac procedure. They’ll let him drown.”

“I’ll find him,” I promised. “Now go help them take this place apart.”

I got a glimpse of the old Nim as she splashed off, with her long-absent dolphin golems flipping happily out of the water as it rose.

I navigated the hall behind my sailfish, allowing it to split the water ahead of me; otherwise I would have moved too slowly.

I should have thought of the detainment area. I’d seen it in the hologram, too. I’d heard the constant dripping meant to torment the people inside. None of that added up to Squint, but the Commission always kept prisoners, and it was standard practice to abandon them in crisis. I could only hope that having part of my Show family taken to Nye’s Center and part taken here didn’t mean that some of them had perished in Arcineaux’s facility when I brought it down.

An intercom crackled overhead, grainy from the interference of the water.

“We have assets out of containment,” announced Warden Dodge. “Remain calm. We have assets out of containment. Recapture protocols are in place.”

The law of averages should have guaranteed that at least one warden was a capable leader, but Dodge was no better suited for her rank than Arsenic. She wasn’t just unobservant; she was an idiot. How did she expect to catch multiple hydrokinetics in open water while her facility filled up around her?

“As a precaution, we are requesting that all personnel report to their preassigned evacuation points. Thank you.”

She had all the urgency of someone reading morning announcements at an elementary school.

Following the energy within the walls and floors, I was led down a sloping hall, but this section was no secret. The door displayed its penitentiary function proudly. The water was too heavy to pull against now; I had to melt the hinges and let the rising current swirl the door inside and out of the way.

The first room was for the person guarding the prisoners. It was empty but equipped for a crew of eight, with emergency air tanks and skin suits lined neatly along the wall.

Another door down and I was in the actual holding area, and able to hear the voices of people screaming for help.

“I’m here!” I shouted. “Squint! I’m here!”

“Penn? Is that you?”

“Where are you?”

“Third door!”

I peeked in through the barred window. The tide had already lifted him off his feet and left him treading water.

“What are you doing here, girl?”

“Saving you, I think.”

“Excuse me, but could we do twenty questions and the happy reunion scenes after you open the doors?”

“Nagendra!”

“Yes, and it’s lovely to see you, Penn, but if you don’t mind . . .” He had his face in the window of another cell, with his long, skinny fingers helping him pull up on the door.

Unknown voices came from other cells, but I had no reason to believe they were any guiltier of real crimes than Nagendra or Squint. I couldn’t leave them to drown, either.

I felt out the tumblers in the first cell and forced the lock. The door swung in, pried open by the water, and the occupant was churned out. He tried to run and swim at the same time, but managed to make it to the outer room. The remaining cells held both men and women, none of whom stuck around long enough for thanks or introductions.

Nagendra bent down to let Squint climb onto his back. The water was shoulder high on me and up to his chest. Squint would have been in over his head.

“I feel like I should ask about the jacket, but I’m afraid I won’t like the answer,” Nagendra said.

“Made a deal with someone devilish. Needed something flame retardant for insurance,” I said. Details of Warden Nye’s involvement in their rescue would have to keep until later.

“Good enough. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait, have any of you seen a child in here? A boy a little older than Birdie?”

If the resurrection boy was here, I needed to get him away from the Commission, too.

“There was a boy,” Squint said. “But I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“Who is he?” Nagendra asked.

“I’ll explain later,” I promised. “Jermay and the others aren’t going to believe I found you!”

“Jermay?” Nagendra asked as we trudged toward the exit. It was getting easier to swim than to try to keep contact on my toes.

“He survived the fall from the balloon; Winnie and Birdie, too. And Klok. We all made it.”

“But Penn, we saw—” Nagendra started, but I cut him off, raising my hand in a backstage signal for silence.

I felt the water change, a violent shift in its configuration that I didn’t understand until I heard breaking glass. The command deck was collapsing, its great window shattered, and with nothing to hold back the water, the ocean flooded in on top of us.

“Hold on to something!” I shouted just before my head went under.

Nagendra’s ridiculously long legs wrapped around the room’s support column. He held on to me and Squint until the surge ended. The chaos actually calmed me down. When things ran smoothly, I felt like I had to be prepared for the next disaster to come and knock me off my feet. Once everything had gone wrong, circumstances could only improve. Our situation couldn’t possibly get worse.

We were lucky. Some of the fleeing prisoners had taken the guards’ air tanks, but there were three left. One for each of us. Each small enough to hold in one hand, with a strap to tie the mask tight around our heads.

We swam up and out of the detention level through flooded halls lit by greenish emergency beacons. Equipment floated past, still in its packing boxes. A stash of ghostly lab coats fluttered down below, and my stomach dropped at the sight of pink streaks in the water. They looked suspiciously like the pink sand that had filled the Medusae tanks in Nye’s Center before it had turned to plasma gel when water was added. There was no time to deal with it; that particular genie was already out of its bottle.

I guided Nagendra back to the lagoon so we could begin our ascent to the surface. I knew the transport would be gone; there was no reason for it to wait for me when the door couldn’t be opened underwater. But I hadn’t expected it to leave without one of the prospects it had delivered to the Center in the first place.

Lawrence was drifting in a lazy circle with his face turned toward the ocean floor.

I ripped the air tank off my head and wrapped it around his. Nagendra tried to wave me off, insisting that I needed the oxygen myself, but I didn’t. I could breathe without it.

The problem was, Lawrence couldn’t breathe at all, and I couldn’t do CPR in the water. This wasn’t fair! There was supposed to be balance in the world! Death didn’t get to spit something like Arcineaux back and keep taking the good ones! I couldn’t save Evie, but I’d save Lawrence if it killed me. And honestly, given the idea that popped into my head, it might.

Trying to shock someone in the water was insane, but without the possibility of chest compressions, a jolt was the only thing I could do. I signaled Squint and Nagendra to move back and tried to isolate a sphere of water tightly contained to the space around Lawrence’s body, pushing in a barrier of air so that the shock wouldn’t travel. I layered my hands over his chest and used the last fizzling generator from the Center to force a pulse through him.

If the Commission could restart someone, then so could I.

I gave Lawrence another shock and shook him. I jostled the mask over his face.

When he didn’t come around, I told myself I’d give it one more try, and when that didn’t work, I gave it two. He breathed in. He had to take the mask off to spit the water from his lungs, but once they were clear, he was okay. He was disoriented, but he was alive and he was swimming.

Lawrence put his hand to my face, over my mouth, like he was asking where my mask was. I pointed at the lagoon to tell him other things were more pressing.

We had to go down, then up, around the edge of the Center, a near impossible distance for anyone without hydrokinesis or a dive suit. The cold had claws and fingers to scratch at skin and poke at eyes. The only light was from the Center itself, growing dimmer as its final generator died in the water. The flash of each explosion opened a brief window to see where we were going.

Flash. Watch for rocks.

Flash. We’re at the runway with its colored flags.

Flash. Strange things lurking in the coral beds.

“Go up,” I told them, gesturing toward the surface each time. We had to go up.

Something was wrong. We had to swim slowly to avoid the bends on our ascent, but I was slowing down too much. My arms and legs were too heavy to move through the water. Up and down got mixed around.

I breathed in, and it didn’t become oxygen. I choked on the scalding sting of liquid going into my lungs.

A twinge. A pinch. My body burned for lack of air.

I was glowing again, incinerating from the inside out, luminous enough to cast my light into the depths and allow me to see something, someone, swimming my way. Fire in the water.

“Evie?”

The word wouldn’t come out, and my eyes were playing tricks. They went dark as everything else lightened.

I was dying, and Evie was already dead. Maybe she got impatient waiting and came to help me along.

“Hang on, Chey-chey,” her voice said. “Hang on.”

I floated away.

CHAPTER 30

I woke gasping, with my arms thrashing in the air because I thought I was still under water.

“Hey! She’s awake!”

Winnie’s announcement drew a crowd to my bedside in a room I didn’t recognize, but I was fairly certain it was another hotel. An exceptionally nice hotel. Someone had convinced her to work her magic again. Klok was seated beside my bed, functioning as my medical monitor. When I tried to sit up, he shoved me back so he could check my vital signs.

“Can you talk?” Jermay asked. He hooked my pinkie finger.

Klok slapped our hands to separate them; we were messing up his numbers.

“I saw Evie,” I said, weak and shaky. “And a mermaid. Wait . . . did I just say I saw a mermaid?”

“Oxygen deprivation. You saw Nim and her dolphins, so it’s not too far off. She’s still out, by the way. Between the collars and the underwater demolition, all of the hydros crashed hard.”

Hang on, Chey-chey. I’d forgotten how much my sisters sounded alike.

“My touch cut out again. I didn’t have enough air to get to the surface.”

“We kind of figured that part out.”

“I am so sorry,” Winnie said. “We were all in the transport, and the driver wanted to leave without you, but Lawrence and Peter and Callie and I, we told him that he needed to wait as long as we could keep the door open without water getting in. But the guy freaked out and he was going to leave, so Lawrence went outside, thinking the driver wouldn’t leave while he was standing there, but he shut the door and took off and there wasn’t anything we could do. I tried to tell him to turn around, but the intercom was one-way. The driver’s compartment was completely isolated and he couldn’t hear me.”

She hugged me so hard that she pulled me up off the bed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I got away and someone else got left behind. Just like with Birch.”

“That wasn’t your fault, either,” Birch said. It was a touchy subject that neither one of them liked discussing; I hadn’t realized how guilty she felt for escaping Arcineaux’s Center. That was a lot of weight to drag around.

Klok beeped at us, but there was nothing on his voice screen. He pointed at his wrist, to a watch that wasn’t there.

“He’s instituted a strict four-second hug policy until you’re recovered,” Jermay explained. “He’s also started threatening me in strange and frightening ways on a daily basis. Any idea what that’s about?”

I shrugged and tried very hard not to laugh at Klok’s attempts to be more brother-like without actually telling anyone that he was my brother. I wasn’t sure how long he wanted to keep the others in the dark, but I was sure he had his reasons for not telling. Anonymity had been his security blanket for a long time; things like that were hard to give up.

“Is Lawrence okay?” I asked.

“He was in the hospital yesterday, but he’s back home now,” Winnie said.

Right. Because that’s where the normal people went when bad things happened. They went to their houses and their parents and their fluffy dogs. They didn’t have to scam their way into hotels or grow their own medicine because hospitals were too public, too exposed, and too dangerous. They didn’t have to pretend to be high-school students or live inside the identity of their maybe-not-so-dead twin or wonder if the brassy gryphon watching over them was really their father in a form he chose because it could protect them better. Those of us who were less mundane were the only ones who had to deal with gripey cyborg brothers beeping in our ear.

“No one’s hugging anyone, Klok, so knock it off,” I said. “You’re giving me a headache.”

He kept beeping.

“That is not a hugging beep,” Klok explained. “That is a Squint-is-hungry beep. He has a remote, so I can be aware in any room. Also you should know that you are healthier than you look because you look like you nearly drowned and then slept for two days. Ha ha. Ha ha.”

Teaching Klok to tell a joke. That was my next feat of derring-do. I wanted to hear him say it out loud with a voice box and not a keyboard. If I was truly my father’s daughter, then I could figure it out. One lousy knock-knock joke was all that I asked.

The beep came again, and Klok left to answer Squint’s summons. My vitals must have been stable enough that he could afford to focus on the only real father he’d ever known.

“Squint’s been eating since you broke him out,” Birch said. “I’ve never seen someone put away so much food.”

There’d been no mention of Smolly, but if she’d been killed or captured, Klok would have given it away. He was too happy to be mourning his surrogate mother.

Someone knocked on my doorframe and stood there hidden by a huge vase of pink and purple carnations. “Flowers for the lovely lady,” Nagendra said. If his stage-ready voice hadn’t given him away, his stork-stilt legs would have.

“Seriously?” Jermay said to Birch. “I’m right here.”

“Forget you,” Winnie said. “I’m right here.”

“I am not responsible for those,” Birch said. He wisely held back from adding that any flowers he created would have been twice as big and three times as fancy.

“Should we believe him?” Jermay asked Winnie slyly.

“I say we beat it out of him.” She snatched the pillow from a chair.

Birch jumped up and ran, while the other two chased him down in the next room.

“These came to the door.” Nagendra set the flowers on the table beside the bed. “Should I be worried that someone knows you by name and knows where you are?”

He plucked the card from the holder, displaying “Penelope” on the envelope. “1004” was written neatly in the bottom corner; I assumed that was our room number.

“You opened it,” I said. The flap had been torn.

“I wanted to see if it was signed. What I found was worse.”

I pulled the card out, and a shower of gold glitter came with it.

“Stardust,” I murmured.

“I know what that word meant to your father, Penn. What does it mean to you?” Nagendra sat on the edge of my bed, a nightmare of a man to most people, but he couldn’t intimidate me even when he tried. “Why, the first time I saw you after the train, were you wearing Commission silvers? And why are you getting flowers with one of these?” He plucked the card from my hands and held it up between his fingers, turning it slowly from the front to the back. It was another of Warden Nye’s black business cards. The ankh on one side, and on the other a name: Errol Bakke.

“Who is he?” Nagendra asked.

I’d never heard the name before, but I knew he was the warden who had Vesper. I’d kept my word and destroyed the Sea Center; now Nye was keeping his and giving me the next bread crumb. This way, I’d be close in case he needed another favor.

But I wasn’t telling Nagendra that. I’d been out on my own for over a month, and I wasn’t about to start jumping at orders again.

“I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll fill you in on my time with the Commission if you fill me in on yours.”

He scowled, pulling the chains on his face tight with a clinking sound as they moved through their loops.

“Didn’t think so,” I said. “I did what I had to do to survive. That’s the only explanation you get for now.”

“Fine, we’ll change the subject. Winnie and Klok explained what happened to you after the train was sacked,” Nagendra said. “I’m familiar with the warden who tracked you down.”

“Because you were assigned to Brick Street with him?” I countered.

Nye had never named Nagendra as the partner who had been beside him when the riots broke out, but it was the only way the pieces of Nagendra’s history fit. He’d been Commission, he’d been on Brick Street, and he’d run as fast and as far from that life as possible once the dust cleared. Nye’s reminders were of blinding pain; Nagendra’s were the memories that continued to haunt him.

“Did he tell you that?”

“I’ve seen your file,” I told him. “Warden Nye kept tabs on you the same way he did me and my sisters, but he didn’t tell me anything. I found out on my own.”

A wall of mistrust had gone up between me and Nagendra, and I wanted it gone. He had never been a father figure in the traditional sense, but he was a mentor and a protector, and he was someone that I could have literally told anything to without fear of judgment. He had way too many skeletons clogging his closet to blame anyone else for their mistakes, and he’d always been brutally—some might say inappropriately—honest, without a filter in place to protect feelings. When he first sat down, I’d been so certain that all I had to do was ask and listen while he unraveled the tangled threads of my family’s legacy. He’d know all the things my father hid from me. He’d know about Klok, and my mother, and what side of the line Nye actually fell on. He’d know about Sister Mary Alban and Cyril Bledsoe and the people who helped them save touched children from the Commission.

Nagendra had some of the subtlest movements of any man I’d ever seen. His expressions could be broken down into individual muscle twitches, each with its own meaning, and what the muscles around his eyes had to say wasn’t good. I saw grief for the loss of his beloved snakes and fear for what would happen to him now that The Show and its protection were gone. I could also tell that he was holding something back, and that scared me most of all.

“What is it?” I asked. “If it’s the flowers, forget them. I don’t take any of Nye’s gestures seriously. Just leave them with the golems; Bijou likes to eat these cards, and Xerxes will make confetti out of the carnations.”

“Actually, I’m more concerned about the boy than the flowers. How long has he been with you?”

“Birch? A couple of months. He escaped from Nye’s Center with us, but you don’t have to worry about him, either.”

“Not him. The other one.”

“You mean the boy I asked about in the detainment area?”

His expression was puzzling now, like there was something simple I was missing. Maybe he’d somehow gotten news of the boy who brought Arcineaux back from my nightmares.

“I know he’s dangerous,” I told him, “but—”

“No,” Nagendra said. “Just listen for a minute. Winnie told me about the Centers and the Mile. She told me about the Hollow—how you found a grave.”

“We found Zavel’s top hat on the stones,” I said. He was obviously trying to lead me somewhere, but I couldn’t read the signs. “Jermay was devastated.”

“Penn, did Jermay tell you he made it to the Hollow before he was caught?”

“He was taken on the road with Winnie and Klok.”

He’d slipped through the rabbit hole that we’d hoped would take us both away from Nye and his men, but he and the others hadn’t made it far enough away.

Nagendra shook his head. “Jermay was taken at the Hollow with us. Rabbit holes are fickle unless you really know what you’re doing. Klok’s mass made his fall short. Winnie was carrying a passenger, which screwed up the calibration. Jermay was the only one whose device worked correctly. It took him to the road near the woods, but he got lost looking for the house. We’d sent most everyone on, but Zavel, Bruno, and I were waiting for stragglers; we found him.”

“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay would have told me.”

He would have said it wasn’t safe to go back to the Hollow because it had already been raided.

“It wasn’t a full incursion, but there was a fight. Jermay fought, mainly to protect his father, and he fought hard. Zavel left his hat behind as a memorial, then he went with Bruno. I’m sorry, honey.” He reached out and patted my hand where it rested on the comforter.

Nagendra had never once in my entire life called me “honey,” even when I was a little girl. He’d called me plenty of other things, most of which strangers would be horrified to hear, but he didn’t use common endearments. He said they rang false.

“What are you saying?” I asked. “It wasn’t a grave?”

“It was.”

“But if Zavel left alive—”

“Penn, honey, we didn’t bury Zavel. We buried Jermay.”

I pulled my hand out from under Nagendra’s.

“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay was in Nye’s prison. I rescued him.”

Whoever they had buried had to be a pretender. Someone like Beryl or Greyor who could change his face at will. The Commission had sent someone to infiltrate the Hollow using the form of the one person who wouldn’t be expected to display any special ability beyond a few magic tricks.

“Zavel knew his own son,” Nagendra argued. “Whoever Warden Nye put into that cell, it wasn’t Jermay Baán. Nye’s tricky, and he’s smart. He could have—”

“No!” I snapped. “You’re wrong.”

Zavel knew his son, but I did, too. I grew up with him. I’d memorized his face and his movements. I knew the back of his hands like the back of my own, and I knew that the boy who’d been held at the Center was my Jermay because my Jermay was still alive. My Jermay had been grieving the loss of his father and fighting the desire to blame Birch for all of Nye’s crimes, because Birch was the only one he could reach. My Jermay was running down the hall of our hotel, celebrating because we’d reclaimed part of our family and he was finally secure enough to relax and act like a kid.

That was what my voice told me, but then I heard Winnie’s voice, so loud and so persuasive in my memory, reminding me that Nafiza’s words were never wrong. That even if she couldn’t interpret what she saw, she couldn’t stop it, and it always came to pass. Winnie was present at the end of the Mile, just like Nafiza had seen. Anise fell, because stones couldn’t fly. And there was a false heart, ready to betray. She’d spoken those words to me and repeated them to Jermay.

Why us if there wasn’t a reason?

Why hadn’t Klok told the others the truth of who he was? We could trust each other with our lives, so what made him hesitate?

“Everything okay?” Jermay asked, poking his head in the door as he ran by.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just a little off.”

“It’ll pass,” he said, and flashed me a lopsided smile before answering Winnie’s call to arms from the next room.

It was almost exactly the smile I remembered greeting me from the wings or the stage when we’d cross between acts.

Almost.

Not quite.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

L. J. Hatton is a Texan, born and raised. She sometimes refers to the towns she’s lived in by the movies filmed in them, and if she wasn’t working as a professional pretender, she’d likely be holed up in a lab somewhere doing genetics research.