The eyes of the man I was choking were fixed on my wrist, watching my PSS swirl and writhe. He didn’t look angry, or afraid. If anything, his look was one of awe and admiration as he let go of the minus meter, releasing it to Marcus.
But I didn’t let go of him. Didn’t want to. I could sense something inside of him, and my hand wanted it. And Marcus wanted it too. I could feel him, pressed against my back, hoping, anticipating. I hadn’t used my hand like that since the night I’d pulled the cube out of the Dr. Fineman. In fact, I hadn’t used my ghost hand at all, except for little things like picking locks, because I could feel the ability lurking there, waiting for the chance to reach into someone.
Marcus had wanted me to experiment. He’d wanted me to pull something out of Nose, who had apparently volunteered out of the misguided notion that it would make up for tying me up in Mike Palmer’s garage. And Marcus didn’t seem to understand that I was terrified of what my hand could do, of the things it brought forth, of the way I could feel, even now, something inside this man calling to me, begging my hand to sink into him. But I would not do that again.
Slowly, I retracted my PSS, slipping it from around his neck and letting it coalesce back into my glove.
“Oh, you two are perfect for each other,” Shotgun said, rubbing his neck and smirking at us. Then he made some sort of weird little salute and said, “Long live The Hold.”
“It’s not like that,” Marcus snapped, pushing me to the side and right out of his arms.
“Does she know it’s not like that?” Shotgun nodded at me, raising his eyebrows.
What the fuck were they talking about? Not like what? And what the hell was The Hold?
“We came here to do business. That’s all,” Marcus said, shoving the minus meter into his pocket and holding out his hand to Shotgun. “I paid you. We shake hands like business men. And then this transaction is over.”
Shotgun stared down at Marcus’s hand like it was an insult. Like it had just slapped him. Maybe in Indiana they didn’t shake on business deals.
Marcus kept his hand out, waiting.
Finally, Shotgun reached for it, but at the last second he changed the position of his grip, forcing Marcus into an arm-wrestle hold very much like the insignia on his coveralls.
They stood for a moment locked in place, their faces close, their arms bulging as Marcus tried to pull away and Shotgun held him there. It was such a ridiculous display of testosterone, I didn’t know whether to laugh or try to break it up, so instead I just stood there watching.
“I knew your mother,” Shotgun said, staring intently at Marcus.
It was the last thing on earth I’d expected him to say, and Marcus looked as surprised as I was. He seemed torn between bolting, which he obviously couldn’t do, and punching Shotgun in the face with his free hand, which was now balled into a fist.
“My mother is dead,” Marcus practically spat, “thanks to The Hold.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shotgun insisted.
“Neither do you, Fleshman,” Marcus said.
I’d never heard the term spoken aloud before, but I’d read about it and I knew what it meant. Fleshman. Fleshy. Slang for someone without PSS. I had never thought of it as particularly insulting, but Marcus might as well have punched Shotgun in the face the way he dropped Marcus’s hand and staggered back, eyeing him like a wounded animal.
“The Hold could use you,” Shotgun said. “Both of you. That’s all I was saying.”
“We’re not interested in being used,” Marcus said, turning and walking out of the gun club, leaving me there alone and gawking at Shotgun.
“That there is a very bitter young man,” Shotgun said softly, staring after him.
“Wait. You knew his mother? How? When?” I couldn’t resist asking.
Shotgun’s face hardened. “That’s none of your business,” he said. “Now go on.”
As I walked out, Shotgun’s two henchmen were coming in, but they moved aside and let me pass.
I ran to catch up with Marcus, who was already halfway back to the van. “What the hell was that about?” I demanded, my shorter legs racing to keep up with him. “And thanks for leaving me back there with that guy in a room full of guns.”
“Shit,” he stopped, turning to me. “I’m sorry. He just—I didn’t—I was going to hurt him, or at least try to, and that wasn’t going to help anything.”
I’d never seen Marcus like this. His whole body was shaking, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
I took his hands in mine, trying to hold him together. “Do you think he really knew your mother? And why was he trying to arm wrestle you?”
“It’s a long story,” Marcus said, looking toward the van. “One I promise to tell you when we get to Indy. We got what we came for. That’s the important thing.”
“Okay,” I nodded. Marcus had a dark past and a lot of secrets. I knew that. I also knew that whatever had just happened was not a topic for casual conversation in front of the others. Knowing Marcus, really knowing him, was not for the faint of heart. I’d learned that the hard way. I’d also learned not to push him before he was ready. If we needed to be settled in and alone before he could tell me what this all meant, I could give him that.
“Thank you,” he said, twining his fingers in mine as we resumed our walk to the van. “Thanks for trusting me.”
When we got there, he opened the passenger side door for me and I climbed in.
“What took you guys so long?” Nose asked from the back.
“We got a minus meter,” I said, glancing back and catching a glimpse of Passion’s right hand heavily wrapped in gauze and medical tape. Had she hurt it that badly? She was sitting in the middle seat next to Yale, his face sullen but resigned. He and Marcus would work out their differences. They always did.
Marcus slid into the driver’s seat, shut his door, and handed me the minus meter. “Put this in the glove box for now,” he said. Then he started the van, slammed it into drive, and pulled a wide U-turn in the dirt, peeling out a little at the end just for emphasis.
I put the minus meter away, glad to see the Warren Gun Club receding in a cloud of dust behind us. But I also couldn’t help noticing, as we whizzed past the sign, the painted insignia of a circle with two clasped hands inside it showing faintly under the club’s name.
4
HOME SWEET HOME
“Olivia, take these,” Marcus said, and I opened my eyes to find him shoving a cardboard tray of drinks at me. The van was pulled up to a Wendy’s drive-through, bags of warm, amazing-smelling fast food coming through the window like it was Christmas morning at fat camp.
Only half-awake, I passed things to the hungry mob in the back and heard the sound of wrappers being torn open and food being devoured. Finally, there were just two bags and a couple of drinks left in the front.
“Who ordered a vanilla Frosty?” I asked, gripping the abomination in my hand.
“That’s mine,” Marcus said. “Can you hold it for me while I find a place to park?”
“Vanilla?” I said, appalled. “You do realize that the entire point of a Frosty is the chocolate, right?”
“I like vanilla,” he said, driving away from the window and circling for an empty spot in the lot.
“I’m sorry then,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s over between us.”
“Damn it,” Nose moaned from the back. “I said no pickles. Anyone want these?”
“This is not a Coke. Who has my Coke?” Passion asked.
Marcus pulled into a parking space, turned off the van, and turned on the radio. As we all sat there munching down our fast food and joking with one another, it felt like we were just a bunch of normal friends hanging out. Or that might have been the fat and sugar hitting my blood stream. Either way, it felt really good.
Marcus inhaled his food, including the sacrilegious vanilla Frosty, and then we drove through the northern suburbs as the sun set over Indy. It was Saturd
ay night so the traffic wasn’t bad, and the further out we got, the bigger the houses became, the neighborhoods sporting fancier, more pretentious walls around them. Finally, we pulled up to a gated community with golden letters blazed across its defensive brick facade declaring it Hunterwood Estates.
“This is us,” Marcus said, grabbing a remote from the glove box of the van and pointing it at the gates. They swung open slowly and closed automatically behind us after we’d driven through.
Along the winding little road, huge houses stood far apart, with whole fields of well-maintained grass between them. There were no fences around the yards, and beyond the houses was a beautiful backdrop of native trees and plants with a bike path running along the edge of a small river. Marcus turned down one street, then another, navigating us through Hunterwood Estates to a huge house on the edge of the community, its back yard fading gently into the woods, the river, and the trail. He pulled into the driveway and turned off the van. “Home sweet home,” Marcus said, grinning at me, probably because my eyes were bugging out of my head.
It was beautiful. A dream home. The kind of place you’d see featured in some magazine rich people read.
“Holy shit!” Nose said. “It’s a McMansion.”
“How many big screens does it have?” Jason asked, sounding unimpressed.
“Seven,” Marcus answered.
“It has seven TVs?” I asked in disbelief. My mom had a thing against television. She thought it was a tool of mass psychological manipulation. And my dad had always argued that TV stifled creativity. We’d only had one small TV in our house, in the living room, and as a kid I hadn’t been allowed to watch it much. Of course, that hadn’t stopped me from watching tons of TV at Emma’s house or on the Internet. But as much as I liked television, I couldn’t fathom the need for seven big screen TVs in one house.
Marcus had the gate remote in his hand again, and he was punching in a code. A security panel on the side of the three-car garage blinked green, and the middle door slowly rose, revealing an empty slot for the van between a shiny red convertible and a black BMW. As Marcus pulled in, I couldn’t help noticing the place was decked out with security cameras at every corner too. This place wasn’t a McMansion; it was a McFortress.
“Is that a Porsche Boxster?” Yale asked, leaning forward and peering out the window at the convertible.
“Yep,” Marcus said casually, a gleam in his eye. Oh yes, Yale would forgive him about the guns, probably immediately after he got his first turn behind the wheel of the Porsche. Marcus had planned this, just like he meticulously planned everything.
Marcus turned the van off, and everyone piled out as the garage door closed, sealing us into our new domicile. The guys admired the cars, and then we each grabbed our bag of personal stuff and headed into the house.
The interior door of the garage led straight into a beautiful, completely decked-out kitchen.
“It’s fully stocked,” Marcus said, opening the gleaming steal fridge to reveal that it was indeed full of food. Nose and Jason started rifling through the cupboards, which were also full, and each came away with a large bag of chips to scarf down, even though they’d eaten a full meal barely half an hour before.
“Nose, Yale, and Jason,” Marcus said, “you have your own bathroom, stocked fridge, and food downstairs. Probably best if you’re not upstairs during the day. At night though, we’ll be doing security shifts, so stay rested. I’m taking the master bedroom upstairs, mainly because it’s connected to the security suite where all the camera feeds are. Passion and Olivia, there are two more bedrooms upstairs, but I’d like you to share the one on the north side of the house.”
If Marcus noticed my surprise over that information, he didn’t show it. He was still talking and giving orders. “We’ll be setting up a security station in the other bedroom for whoever is on night watch,” he explained. “It has the best upstairs vantage points for that sort of thing. Other than that, same rules as Piss Camp. No one goes out alone. Travel in pairs whenever you’re outside the safety of the house. We keep our profile as low as possible, especially our PSS. Everyone understand?”
And everyone did. We all knew that despite the façade of a fancy house, the dangers were still the same. The CAMFers were after us, and you could never be sure who was working with them or for them. I’d learned that the hard way in Greenfield when the local Fire Chief, a man I’d known most of my life, had burned down my house with me in it. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“Let’s go check out the new digs,” Nose said through a mouthful of Doritos, leading Yale and Jason down the stairs to their new man cave.
“I’ve gotta use the restroom,” Passion said.
“I think it’s around the corner,” Marcus said, pointing.
As soon as I heard the door close behind her, I turned to him.
“So, Passion and I are rooming together?” I asked, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice.
“Since you’re pretending to be cousins,” he said, “I thought it made sense.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me?”
“You and Passion have to be convincing,” he said, shrugging. “And that’s not going to happen if you won’t even talk to each other. You have to come up with some family background and agree on what you’re going to tell people. People ask a lot of questions when you’re the new kid at school. You’re both going to need answers to those questions, and those answers are going to have to match up.”
“That’s why I think it’s stupid to send her in with me,” I argued. “You did this on your own in Greenfield. Why can’t I do it on my own here? Sending two people just makes it two times more likely we’re going to get caught.”
“We’ve talked about this,” he said, pacing in frustration. “I don’t want you going alone. Having someone with you gives you more credibility. It keeps you from being perceived as a loner, and that might help you convince Samantha to come with you. And if something goes wrong, if the CAMFers try to take you guys, it’s much harder to grab two people.”
“But I am a loner,” I protested. “That’s why I don’t want anyone coming with me, or forcing me to be best friends with anyone.”
“And that’s exactly why you need to,” Marcus said firmly. “No offense, but you’re not exactly a social butterfly, and neither is Passion. Together the two of you might equal one normally outgoing girl. And that could be a problem because you’re going to be in a completely new environment with very limited time, and you’re going to have to make someone like you enough to believe something kind of hard to believe, and then convince them to come with you.”
“You know when someone says, ‘no offense,’” I pointed out to him, “the thing they say directly after that is always offensive.” Passion and I might equal one normal girl? Great. My boyfriend thought of me as a social freak.
“What do you want me to do? Lie?” he asked, his voice growing heated too. “I’m worried about you, okay? I don’t want you going at all. But we’ve looked at it from all angles, and this is the best scenario for getting Samantha out. If I could go in, I would, but the CAMFers know me too well, and we saw with you how hard it is for a guy to convince a girl. But if you can’t work this out with Passion, if you can’t prove to me by the end of the weekend that you’re ready, I’ll send her alone.”
“Send her alone?” I blurted. It had never occurred to me that Marcus might nix me out of the equation. I was the one he’d been kissing and sharing a tent with for weeks, and he knew how much this meant to me, but he’d still just threatened to cut me out of the whole thing. “Are you crazy? She doesn’t have PSS, or a power. She’d get eaten alive.”
“She doesn’t need any of that,” Marcus said, his voice rising. “All she needs to do is make friends with someone the way she’s been trying to make friends with you for two weeks. And if this Samantha has half a heart, that shouldn’t be too hard.”
“If she has half a heart?” I repeated, feeling my chest cl
ench with pain. “Is that how you see me? As a heartless bitch because I’m not best friends with Passion?”
And that was the moment Passion, who’d undoubtedly heard every word we’d said, opened the bathroom door and came out, looking anywhere but at us.
Great. Rooming with her wasn’t going to be awkward at all now.
Marcus looked at her, then back at me. “I’ll show you the rest of the house,” he said.
Passion and I nodded, avoiding each other’s gaze, and followed Marcus out of the kitchen into a vaulted living room filled with brown leather furniture and an entire wall covered in TV. I got a glimpse of several of the downstairs rooms, one containing a formal dining table and another sporting a baby grand piano. Then we traipsed up the stairs and past the amazing master bedroom. I only got a peek (but oh, that bed) before we were ushered down the hallway, which was also a balcony overlooking the great room, right to a bedroom door at the end of the hall.
Marcus put his hand on the doorknob, opened it, and moved aside, letting Passion and me enter.
We both stepped in and stopped, surveying the room before us.
It was large, easily twice the size of the room I’d had back in Greenfield, and that hadn’t been small. But it wasn’t the size that had me in awe; it was the way the room was decorated. It had been done up in black, deep blue and pink, three colors I never would have thought to put together, but they looked amazing. The walls had been painted in giant squares of the three colors, with half the room decorated predominantly in blue and black squares with pink as the dividing accent. The other half of the room was painted in mostly pink squares of varying shades, accented with the blue and black. The effect was a room divided into darkness and light, softness and power, strength and vulnerability: half-Olivia and half-Passion. Just the colors and the way they were rendered would have made it perfect.
But that wasn’t all. The same attention to style and color had been given to the furnishings. Both sides of the room had a four-poster canopy bed, but where the pink one’s canopy and curtains were soft, voluminous and sheer, the black one’s were thick, rich and velvety. The arm chair on the black side was modern, curved and clean, where the one on the pink side was overstuffed and swallow-you-soft looking. Every detail of the room was mirrored like that, from the desks to the lamps to the rugs on the pale hardwood floor.