Seeing Alley and Gabe, and fighting again with Jack, made Riley miss Greenwood a whole lot more. But it also reassured her. The clan didn’t want to expel her at all; they were worried for her. Dozens of people were now focused on keeping Riley safe. She was humbled, and very grateful.
Will had avoided her completely since his meltdown. She still caught him watching her, but he neither approached nor texted her again. He just looked sad. To Riley’s chagrin, she found herself missing him terribly, even though she knew she had no right to.
It’s because I’m stuck in the same house with him. I’ve got to get back to camp!
But Riley had never wished for Greenwood as much as she did on Wednesday night. After a horrible day at school and a long evening of studying for a Biology test, the furnace in the house began malfunctioning. She and Reed were having dinner together when they heard a high-pitched whirring noise. Then the heat began running full blast. It was ninety degrees in a matter of minutes.
Reed called Jack. “Should I unplug something?”
“Not yet! I want to look at it. Open some windows. We’ll leave work in a minute.” Riley and Reed each opened one of the front room windows, and the cool November air came pouring in.
Working together, Jack and Will eventually fixed the problem. Jack can do anything, Riley thought with pride when she went to bed that night. But the house was still far too warm for sleeping. Irritatingly warm.
The fact that the Poxinosa were nearby meant she didn’t feel safe sleeping with her bedroom window open. But modesty in a house full of boys meant she couldn’t sleep half dressed with the bedroom door open, either. At first, Riley tried ignoring the temperature. Sweating and uncomfortable, she kicked the covers off her bed, and then the pillows. When she felt a drop of sweat trickle down from her hair onto her chest, she took off her pajamas, too. “Heat will agitate me…” she grumbled to herself. “No kidding!” She checked the time. 1:15… I’ll be a mess at school tomorrow. She stretched back out in her underwear, finally a little cooler, and closed her eyes.
A dream filled her mind, more clear and coherent than any dream she’d seen before.
She saw… herself.
She was asleep, lying on the couch in their old house in Oklahoma. She was curled up under a worn brown quilt that she’d thrown away a year ago. Her chest was rising and falling gently. Laying there, at night, she was waiting for Jack to come home.
Whoever was watching her as she slept, loved her. Loved her so intensely that, experiencing that emotion as she now did, Riley couldn’t even breathe. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel an emotion that strong. But someone was feeling it. For her.
“She’s perfect,” he whispered.
Will. This is Will’s dream.
“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Will asked someone.
“No,” Jack answered from behind him, “but I may be biased.”
Riley trembled. I’m seeing Will’s dream… that means I’m Unveiled. But how? I need both soil and water… wait. Gabe’s pendant! It must’ve gotten wet when I was sweating.
Will approached the sleeping Riley and silently knelt beside her, wanting — needing — to be as close to her as possible. He sniffed the air she was exhaling as she slept, seeking information about her and somehow finding it. He could tell by her scent that she’d been asleep about an hour, that she was sleeping deeply, and without dreams. He sniffed again to reassure himself that she was well. He smelled salt and sadness in her breath, and it was agonizing to him.
“She cried herself to sleep again.” He closed his eyes and she felt tears begin to form in them. He leaned forward until his face was buried in blond hair and he shook with sobs.
Oh, Will!
“Don’t wake her,” Jack cautioned, although he didn’t sound as if he thought that was likely.
Riley heard Jack walk quietly across the floor until he stood behind Will, and felt him put his hand on Will’s shoulder.
“I can’t take this!” Will heaved.
Why are you trying? Riley wanted to shout at him. She was tempted to change the dream, to shake her sleeping past self awake so she could turn and comfort the man she loved, who was even more in love with her. But she was desperate to see more of Will’s thoughts.
“You know what they’ll do to her,” was Jack’s cryptic response. “You have to stay away from her, and you have to do whatever it takes to keep her from seeking you out.”
“Do you have any idea how hard this is?” Will snarled. “Pushing her away when I know that she wants us to be together as much as I do? If I keep pushing her away, eventually she will give up and... go. I can’t live without her!”
“You have to.” Jack’s calm, sad voice was as heartbreaking as Will’s. “Either you learn to live without her, or she dies.”
DIES?
Will reached out his hand and brushed it gently over Riley’s hair. His hand was glowing white. Bright white... glowing, like a Miyala…
Riley gasped, and another dream appeared. This time she was looking at Jack, who was sitting in a windowless office full of fluorescent lights. Jack was glowing sky blue from head to toe.
The same shade as Riley.
She shook with recognition as Will said, “I hate when it’s a woman! Do they really have no other way to get this information?”
Someone screamed in the background.
Jack frowned. “Calm down. She’ll talk eventually.”
Another scream.
Holy shit, someone’s being tortured!
Will was agitated. He felt claustrophobic in the small, sterile office they’d been made to stay in, and was pacing back and forth, struggling to stay calm through the screams. He thought of Riley, and she felt him try, and fail, to breathe evenly.
Jack glared up at Will. His color flickered from light blue to dark bluish-purple, and Riley saw in Will’s mind that Jack’s color change meant that he was angry. And not with the torture, Riley realized with even more shock. Jack was upset with Will’s reaction to it.
“If you don’t stop carrying on, they’ll make you join in,” he scolded Will under his breath.
How can Jack be so calm?
“But every time this happens I think about—”
“I know!”
So did Riley. Will was imagining that it was her in there screaming. WHY? She felt bile rise in the back of her throat. Every time this happens... who does this?
She knew the answer as soon as she formed the question.
Fire clans do this.
A third scream, and then the woman cried out, “I told you, I don’t know where she is! Please, stop!”
I KNOW THAT VOICE. Oh, no... NO!
Riley lunged out of bed and ripped the pendant from her neck to stop the dream. She stumbled out her bedroom door toward the toilet and vomited up her dinner.
Clarinda!
Riley pushed the bathroom door closed with her foot and lay her face against the cold tile floor to stop the room from spinning.
Clarinda…
There was a knock at the door. “Are you okay?” Will’s voice was low.
“I’m fine.” I am anything but fine!
“Can I get you something?”
“No,” she gasped. Pain and horror and revulsion were swimming around in Riley’s midsection, churning her stomach.
They heard Clarinda! They were there with her! HOW?
The night Clarinda had been kidnapped, Jack called and left a message on her phone. The message said he and Will weren’t coming home because they were babysitting some drunks from work.
Riley swallowed. Jack lied. They weren’t babysitting drunks... they were with the Poxinosa. She’d heard a bunch of rowdy men in the background while Jack was speaking. He and Will had gone out with those men. They’d gone looking for the teleporter, or failing that, for information about the teleporter. Of all the unbelievable irony, they’d been out that night looking for Riley. And because no one had been able to locate her…
...they’d taken Clarinda.
Riley wrapped a towel around herself and walked back across the hall into her room. Shaking badly, she fumbled with the door until it locked, then slid helplessly to the ground.
What should I do?
She wanted to fall apart again over Clarinda’s death. She wanted to shake Jack awake and scream at him over his indifference to the pain of the dying young mother. And she wanted to run straight into Will’s arms and give him all the love that had ever been his.
But none of that could happen.
Jack and Will are either in a fire clan, or they're working with one. Sooner or later, they were going to find out that Riley was their target. And when they did, they’d make her help them… they would force her to help the Poxinosa. Nothing could bring Clarinda back, but now that Riley knew more about the exact dangers the other Greenwoods were facing, she had a chance to protect them from the same fate.
That was what she should do.
Leave her family.
Riley blinked back tears as grief assailed her. I CAN’T DO THIS!
Maybe my turtle can?
Riley picked up Gabe’s pendant and put it in her mouth to wet it. Then she hung it back around her neck. She took a long deep breath, and acting on instinct, pushed her emotions down deep, deep within.
An odd sense of calm washed over her. She slowly climbed up off the floor, went straight to her phone, and typed out a text to Reed.
‘Jack and Will are warriors. One of the fire clans. I saw Will’s dreams. I’m leaving. NOW. Either come with me to GW or go undercover. Your choice.’
Riley heard the chime noise from down the hall as her text reached Reed’s phone. She silenced her own. About a minute later, Reed responded. ‘OMFG.’ Then ‘I’m staying. Going under. You may have misunderstood what you saw. I’ll get to the bottom of this.’
She then sent a message to Gabe. ‘Come get me. IMMEDIATELY. As fast as you can get here. Bring Darren, Katrina and Alley. Text back when you get this, don’t call.’ She then sent, ‘All of you should come Veiled. And don’t use Xander’s car. Pick someone else’s.’
He responded almost immediately. ‘!!! On our way. WTF happened?’
‘In contact w fire warriors. Safe for now but I need to get to the Colonel ASAP.’
As if she was operating on auto-pilot, Riley walked to the drawer where she kept her important papers, removed the entire stack, and dropped it into her backpack. Then she dressed, and gathered three spare changes of clothing. Finally she grabbed her savings. $219. It was all the money she had in the world.
Her phone buzzed again. Reed had been thinking through her escape. ‘Get out into the driveway by yourself, then turn invisible and RUN LIKE HELL into the road.’ He followed that with, ‘I’ll hold them back if I can but the first thing they’ll do if they see you disappear is run right to wherever you were standing. So be in the driveway.’
Yes. That was the only way she would get away from the house without either Jack or Will running into her shell. She couldn’t make herself invisible inside the house without being found. And Riley wasn’t about sneak away. For the Greenwoods’ sake, Jack and Will needed to know that she was Unveiled. They would never attack her, and if they wanted to keep her goodwill — and she was certain, no matter what they were up to, that they did — they wouldn’t attack her friends. There was even a slim chance that, once they knew she was a Greenwood, they’d find a way to dissuade their ‘coworkers’ from further attacks. And that was a chance worth taking.
Finished packing, Riley took a deep breath, made herself look Veiled, and opened her bedroom door.
Here goes.
Will was sitting upright on the couch, glowing a brilliant white. He was watching her with concern, and with a love that she was no longer in any doubt of. Riley met his gaze before turning toward the coat closet. As her feelings for him began to well up, she forced herself to think of Clarinda’s screams. Will hadn’t hurt Clarinda, but he was deliberately keeping company with those who did. No matter how much they loved each other, there was no future for them now.
She moved as quickly as her turtle would allow. Will had to know she’d been packing. He could probably name several of the items in her bag thanks to his keen animal senses. If he believed she was leaving for good, he would stop her before she got outside. She could not let that happen.
“Where are you headed?” Will’s voice was tense.
“Out.” She put on her light jacket, and then pulled her heavy coat on over it.
“At two in the morning, Riley?”
Jack appeared, glowing bright blue, followed closely by Reed who was still Veiled. “Riley, what’s going on?” Jack demanded.
She sucked in her breath, and her shell, as Jack came closer.
His light darkened from sky blue to indigo, like an octopus inking the water. “I’m sick of all the secrets you have lately!” he snapped. “Sit down and let’s talk about what’s bothering you.”
Trembling with mingled pain and fury, Riley shook her head. He’d given her so much grief for not confiding in him. And she’d felt guilty! She had cried herself sick in his arms, blaming herself for Clarinda’s death when he was one of those responsible. Jack had calmly listened as the terrified young mother begged her tormentors to stop. Will at least had the decency to be upset by what was going on. Jack hadn’t even blinked.
Who is he?
Riley walked to the front door and opened it. “I need to get out of the house for awhile,” she exhaled, her shell expanding again.
She walked down the driveway, heading for the cars. She heard commotion behind her, and when she glanced back, Reed was in the doorway, blocking it as he’d said that he would. Jack and Will were behind him, glowing brightly, one on either side.
“When will you be back?” Reed asked her in the perfect tone of voice, sounding both irritated and concerned.
Riley walked another ten feet before turning to face the three people she loved most in the world. She looked at Jack and Will. I’ve lost them! And as the tears finally filled her eyes, she shared a quick glance with Reed, in whose hands her safety and her secrets now lay. She would like to have seen all their faces one more time. But she could not see them anymore; her vision was blurred by her tears.
“Riley?” Reed repeated.
“I won’t be back,” Riley replied as she went from Veiled turtle to glowing human, revealing herself. She stared straight at Jack, and then at Will, who gasped loudly. “It’s me you’ve been looking for. And I refuse to be caught.”
Riley made herself invisible, and then she ran toward the street with all her strength. Behind her, there were shouts and exclamations.
She didn’t look back.
Riley ran past several houses and turned into a nearby cul-de-sac. Only when she was certain that none of the boys could get to her did she stop, kneel, and allow the tears in her eyes to fall.
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