I wasn’t sure if I should take it as a sign of things to come—the kiss I’d been anticipating right before he’d tossed me into the pool. Or if he’d just been swept up in the moment over his newfound skill and gotten carried away.
Either way, my lips were buzzing long after the kiss ended.
When we broke the surface again, Tyler kept his hand closed protectively around my wrist. My heart was still crashing wildly as I waited for Tyler to give the all clear, although it could just as easily have been the underwater kiss that caused the banging.
“It’s okay,” he exhaled, his grip loosening. “They’re gone.”
“They? How many of them were there?” I asked, opening my eyes at last. Before we’d emerged from the water, Tyler had signaled for me to shut them, and as I saw the shards of light flaring back at us from the ripples, I knew why—the glow from my eyes.
At that moment, they’d become a liability, so I’d put my sight in Tyler’s hands, letting him guide me to the edge of the pool. I wouldn’t admit it, but I’d preferred it that way. My skin tightened everywhere his fingers skimmed my body as he’d eased me onto the rocks. It had been hard to breathe, almost impossible, when I’d slid across him wearing almost nothing.
I watched now as he pulled himself out of the water and crouched on the bank. I’d seen Tyler without his shirt before. A few times. But with his bare chest glistening beneath the moonlight . . . well that was a whole ’nother story. One I wanted to burn into my memory.
He glanced back at me, confusion clear in his eyes. “Two, maybe? You didn’t hear them?”
I tried to remember if there’d been anything, but I shook my head.
“You’re kidding? It was so clear. They were so . . .” He reached down to help me out. “We have to get back and warn your dad.”
I let him haul me up and shivered as the cold night air blasted me. Water dripped in rivulets down my bare skin, puddling at my feet. “Why? Who were they?”
His green eyes were feverish as he shot nervous glances past me, in the direction of the woods beyond the steaming water of the hot spring. He yanked his jeans from the tangle of our clothes pile and then passed me my shirt. “I don’t know. But there was something . . . strange about them.”
“Strange, how?”
“Strange, like—” He frowned. “I’m not sure how to explain—this is gonna sound crazy—but they were talking in static. Like they were talking over some sort of radio frequency.”
I’d just started toweling off with my shirt when his words hit me. “How do you know you weren’t hearing a radio?” I thought of the way Tyler’s voice had sounded that night in the desert. Would I have called it static-y?
“I told you it was crazy. I just knew.” He threw my jeans at me and then wriggled into his, not an easy task when you were still dripping wet. “We need to get out of here in case they come back.”
“Wait,” I prodded, wanting him to explain. “Like how exactly? Obviously it freaked you out enough that you thought you needed to risk drowning us. Tell me what you heard.” I crossed my arms defiantly, refusing to get dressed until he answered my question.
He glared back at me, but I could tell from the set of his jaw he’d already given in. “God, you’re stubborn. Has anyone ever told you that?” I bit back a grin because I desperately wished he could remember the first time he’d told me that—that I was stubborn—back when he’d begged me to admit I had feelings for him. My heart had been pounding for a completely different reason then. “I can’t explain exactly,” he exhaled, clearly annoyed. “But it was like I sensed them before I ever heard them. Like I . . .” He shifted, and his hand kneaded the back of his neck. “Like I felt their footsteps coming. Then I heard this strange vibrating sound, or, I don’t know, maybe I felt that too. But it was like they were speaking in code or something. Like they were communicating in sound waves.” He pursed his lips, looking at me like he was saying, I told you it was crazy.
And it was, but it wasn’t the most far-fetched thing I’d heard, not by a long shot. Especially considering that Tyler and I were no longer human and had just held our breath for who knew how long.
“Do you know what they said?”
He shook his head. “Something about the Returned maybe? But that was when I pulled you under the water.”
My stomach plunged, even as I found my voice. “What about the Returned?”
“Kyra, we don’t have time—”
I caught hold of his arm. “Just guess.”
He looked at me, his eyes drilling into me when he said the words that turned my skin to ice and made my heart stop: “I know how it sounds, but I might’ve heard: ‘The Returned must die.’”
A sour taste filled the back of my throat and the ground tilted beneath me. I shook my head.
The Returned must die.
No way was that a coincidence.
Tyler froze beneath my fingertips. “What is it?” I started to ask, but he was already dragging me backward. My chest tingled in anticipation. “Are they back? Do you hear them again?”
“No,” he answered distractedly. Then vaguely added, “I don’t know.”
When I finally heard something, it was faint—the snapping of a branch maybe. It was far away.
I might have see-in-the-dark super-vision, but we’d just learned that Tyler’s hearing was vastly superior to mine.
The underbrush shuddered then, the bushes shaking more violently. Someone was in there. Chills raced along my spine. I wanted to run but my feet were rooted in place.
Nancy exploded out at us, bursting from the foliage with leaves and twigs all matted in her fur. I nearly had a heart attack. Branches snagged and pulled at her, but didn’t slow her at all as she barreled forward, looking every bit an animal on the run.
Every nerve fiber in my body was on high alert. She shouldn’t be here. She should be back at camp . . . with my dad.
She came skittering to a stop at the edge of the warm spring, her nails clattering against the rocky embankment. Then she turned toward us, and her body went utterly and totally still.
It was me, I realized. Me, she’d fixated on as she lowered her front haunches, her teeth bared.
I felt it in my gut, the wrongness of the situation. The not-Nancyness of her behavior.
She was confused, I tried to reason, she had to be. This was Nancy and I was me.
But seeing her hackles rise, and hearing her breath as it shifted from a heavy pant to a deep and guttural growl, caused the skin at the back of my neck to prickle.
What if I was wrong?
“It’s okay, girl,” I whispered, but my voice wavered. Nancy just showed even more of her teeth and her growl deepened.
“What’s wrong with her?” I wanted to know.
Tyler’s voice was unshakable. “Get dressed. We need to go.” His hand on my shoulder steered me back a step and then another. “Easy now,” he guided. “Slow.” After I’d shimmied into my jeans, he pressed my shoes into my hands and without missing a beat, I slipped them on, not bothering to tie them.
We’d barely managed to get three steps from Nancy before a beam of light flickered out from the trees at our backs. It was bobbing crazily and my first thought was: they’d come back. Nancy had led them right to us, and we had nowhere to run.
But it was my dad’s voice I heard. He was breathless and yelling for us from between the brush.
“Go,” Tyler mumbled absently. And then, with more conviction, “Go.”
Then I could make out my dad shouting the same thing Tyler had just said, “Go!”
“Go? Dad, what—?” I shoved away from Tyler to reach my dad now. To get a glimpse of him.
And when I did, when I finally spotted him, he was running, or rather staggering. Moving as hard and fast as he could manage.
His shaggy hair was damp, and his plain white undershirt clung to his belly.
“Get to the truck, Kyra! Run.” His last word came out on a wheeze, but his panic-stricken express
ion melted into relief once he spotted me and my glow-in-the-dark eyes. He paused only for a second as he clutched his chest, his fist curled around his trademark flannel. He gasped for air like an asthmatic, but then forced himself to keep going, his long strides tearing at the brush.
Tyler sprang into action. “Let’s go.” His voice rumbled against my ear as he tugged me toward our camp.
Panic gripped my throat, Darth Vader–style.
We should’ve been unfindable. My dad had taken extreme measures to ensure no one, not even Simon and the others, would know where we were.
But what if it was them? What if they’d somehow tracked us down and were here . . . now, Agent Truman and the rest of his creepy Daylight Division? They’d like nothing more than to pin Tyler and me down, like dried-out butterflies in their collection.
Oddities to be marveled at.
Without thinking, I started to reach for Nancy’s collar as I passed her, but she snarled at me and I recoiled, torn somewhere between fear and rejection.
So we left her. My dad would have to deal with her.
When we reached camp, my dad wasn’t far behind. To say I was impressed by his stamina would have been an understatement. Still, he was more than a little winded when he appeared in the small clearing, his breath coming in hard, heaving gasps. He waved the flashlight around at our tent and all our stuff, which was scattered around the dead remains of what had once been a campfire. “Leave . . . it. All . . . of it,” he wheezed. He fumbled in the pocket of his jeans and, probably because I’d never passed my driver’s test, he tossed the keys to Tyler. “You . . . drive.”
Oblivious to the fact that it was me who’d set Nancy on edge, my dad half dragged the unwilling dog and shoved her in the backseat of the truck before climbing in after her. She was still growling, but it was lower now, coming out in breathy woofs. But the awareness that she didn’t want to be anywhere near me crawled over my skin like a million fireflies . . . unpleasant and unwanted.
I took shotgun as Tyler fired up the ancient pickup truck. If my dad had somehow lost whoever he’d been running from in the woods, there’d be no fooling them now—the engine was big and old, and crazy loud. It rumbled as Tyler slammed the truck into gear, the transmission grinding before it caught, and then we were bouncing over backwoods gravel roads that were riddled with potholes, hills, and ruts.
“All right, we need to sort out what just happened back there,” I managed, finally able to breathe normally as my dad gave up his stakeout and swung around to face us.
For the first hour or so after we’d slammed out of the campsite, my dad refused to say a word, keeping a silent vigil through the grimy back window, which was fine because somewhere along the way, during that hour, Tyler had reached over and taken hold of my hand. It hadn’t stopped him from focusing on driving though, as he alternated his attention between the road we were flying down and the rearview mirror.
I thought for sure he’d have to let go of my hand eventually whenever we’d hit a particularly treacherous pothole or when he had to make a perilously sharp turn, especially since my dad’s ancient truck clearly didn’t have power steering. But he never once did.
And every now and then, his thumb would stroke my palm, or his fingers would tighten, just enough to let me know he still knew I was there, and even though we were running for our lives, I’d momentarily forget to be terrified.
“I think we lost them.” My dad shot one last look over his shoulder, a just-to-be-sure look, before settling forward in his seat. If he noticed that Tyler didn’t have both hands on the wheel, he didn’t mention it.
“Who?” I asked, my own gaze dropping to Nancy beside him. She hadn’t stopped making those warning sounds from the back of her throat . . . not growls exactly, but low mistrustful whines. “And why is she doing that?”
My dad rubbed Nancy’s head and she quieted down a bit. “Your eyes. Pretty sure it’s your eyes. Spooked her.” He leaned over my shoulder and pointed to the glove box. “In there. Sunglasses. See if those don’t help some.”
My eyes? I mean, weird since she’d seen them before, over the past few nights, but I supposed it was possible; we were all a little spooked right now.
My hand felt cold when I let go of Tyler’s to dig through the cluttered contents of my dad’s glove box. I moved aside stacks of worn receipts and crumpled paperwork—an old tire warranty, several outdated registrations, fast-food receipts, and some maps. Beneath them my fingers brushed something more substantial and at first I thought it must be the sunglasses. But when I lifted the mound of mostly garbage out of the way, a hard jolt shook me from the inside out.
A gun.
My dad had never been that guy: a gun guy. He’d always been opposed to guns. Opposed to violence of any kind, and now he was what? Packing heat?
My gaze slid sideways to Tyler, to see if he’d noticed what I had. He raised his eyebrows, letting me know he hadn’t missed it.
I flinched again as my dad’s hand closed over my shoulder. Yet his touch was familiar, comforting, and my tension eased somewhat. “You okay, kiddo?”
“Dad, what’s the gun for?”
“Things have changed, Kyr.”
If I’d have been standing at that moment my knees would’ve buckled because of the way he said my name. It was the way he used to say it, like I was still the old me. But that wasn’t what this was about, and I couldn’t let my emotions sway the fact that my dad had let this . . . this whole situation change him. “Yeah . . . but a gun? Is that really necessary?” I was sure I was being unreasonable. Weren’t Agent Truman and his guys armed? Didn’t it make sense for us to have weapons too?
But wasn’t that just it? What was it my dad always taught me? Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Did that even apply when we were talking life and death?
He squeezed my shoulder again, so much like before, the way he used to do just before a big game or whenever I needed cheering up. “I gotta make sure I can protect you. Keep you kids safe.”
I crossed my arms, not feeling cheered at all by his response. I didn’t feel safer knowing my dad had altered his entire belief system . . . all because of me.
“So what do we do now? We lost pretty much everything back there.” My gaze slid to the glove box, and the gun inside. “Where do we go from here?”
My dad tapped Tyler enthusiastically on the shoulder. “Pull off up ahead there,” he directed. “First thing we need to do is regroup.”
We’d crossed into Wyoming now, which wasn’t so strange. For days we’d been zigzagging across state lines as my dad tried to steer clear of the Daylighters, and considering my current obsession, it shouldn’t have surprised me that the next exit was exit 17. We were on a highway that could barely be called a highway and there was a roadside diner with a flashing neon sign that had a pig wearing a cowboy hat. The pig promised the World’s Best Pie.
I had no idea what one had to do with the other.
Unlike the narrow road we’d been on, the parking lot was wide and vast, and way more congested than the time of night warranted. When we pulled in, I had to ask, “You sure this is a good idea? There’re a lot of people here. What if the Daylighters catch up with us?” Just to make my point, I turned to scan the road behind us, but no one was there.
My dad scowled at the mention of the Daylighters, but he was already buttoning the flannel shirt he’d been clutching when he’d come sprinting out from between the trees, which was probably a good thing because there were still sweat marks beneath the underarms of his T-shirt. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “Trust me, they won’t find us here.”
Sliding me a sideways glance, Tyler pulled into the crowded lot without saying a word. He managed to wedge the battered pickup between two enormous semis, making my dad’s truck look miniature-sized, like some sort of windup toy.
I still wanted to talk to Tyler, but not here. Not with my dad listening.
“Wait here,” my dad told Nancy as he ruffled her head
, but she refused to be appeased by a little affection. “Don’t be like that,” he promised. “I’ll bring you some leftovers.” As if that was the reason she growled when I reached for my door.
Whatever had really spooked her, she’d definitely transferred her fears onto me. In her mind, I’d become the boogeyman.
Transference—I’d learned the term in psychology, but now the word itself held so many more meanings to me.
Transference could literally mean moving something from one place to another, like the way I’d been taken, literally plucked from the road that night on Chuckanut Drive. Or the way my memories had been moved from my old body to this new one.
My dad reached back in the truck and came out with the pair of sunglasses I hadn’t been able to find. He offered them to me. “It’s still dark. We don’t need anyone noticing us.”
“Me,” I corrected, hardly able to hide my annoyance at being singled out, even though no one else’s eyes were glowing. “You don’t want anyone noticing me, you mean.”
“Kyra . . .” My dad sighed.
“Whatever.” I took the sunglasses and slipped them on. “It’s fine. I get it.”
I hoped the tint actually disguised my eyes rather than just making me look like some dork who thought it was cool to wear sunglasses at night.
Coffee. That’s why we’d risked pulling over. My dad needed coffee.
The World’s Best Pie was just a bonus.
“So how long do you think we have? Until they find us again?” Despite my strange choice in eyewear, I hadn’t drawn a single glance. Maybe because I wasn’t the only one with questionable fashion sense. I’d spotted at least half a dozen oil stains, several pairs of suspenders that were definitely not of the hipster variety, and more than a few (not-even-trying-to-hide-them) butt cracks. There was even one guy sporting a “Free Mustache Rides” T-shirt and an idiot’s grin. As if he really believed he had a shot at someone taking him up on his offer.