Arclight (19 page)

I have to fight to keep my panic off my face, knowing it will raise questions. If it was just Tobin, I think he’d understand—
maybe
—if I remember to call the Fade only “the Fade” or “it.” But Anne-Marie would tell her mom at the very least, and the others would tell everyone else. I’ve tried too hard to convince them I don’t hear the voices of the Fade; I’m not giving them reason to doubt me now.

When I get to my room, I close the door and turn the lights on as high as they’ll go.

“Stay out of my head,” I growl into the empty space, conjuring feelings of repugnance and aversion to create a shield inside my mind.

The Fade breaks through anyway.

Converse, he says. Speak
.

The Fade’s phrasing is awkward and overly precise, as though he’s learning the language as he goes.

“No! No conversation!” I grit my teeth and shove back with the memory of using Tobin’s door to hit it in the face.

I scan the room to reassure myself that the Fade’s not actually there, but nothing shimmers in the light.

Pleas for my attention come in an urgent ramble, broken by reminders that he’s seeking his mate. Anger and frustration hijack my own emotions, pumping through my bloodstream like a drug that clouds my judgment and strips me of control.

My mood shifts weren’t mine at all—they were
him
.

An abrupt need to move overwhelms my desire to fight, and I’m struck by the terror of my feet moving against my will.

“Stop!” I cry, but my legs ignore me. They make a hasty turn toward my sink, until I’m forced to face my mirror, but it’s not my reflection there. It’s a Fade.

Mine. Cherish
, the Fade we caught clarifies—
Find. Locate. Release
.

“If she was here, she’d be in the White Room with you,” I insist. I try to twist away from the mirror, but my body won’t move. I’m paralyzed.

Missing
.

“I don’t know where to look. Let me go!”

Recollect. Remember
.

With those last orders, I’m back to running through the Dark while staring at the female Fade in my mirror.

“I don’t remember the Dark!” I sob.

Recall. Locate. Understand
.

“I’ll try . . .
if
you let me go.”

The Fade releases me, but I doubt he’ll let me make it to the door, so I focus on the image of his mate and hope I can find an answer that will satisfy him until I can get help.

And I really hope the Fade didn’t hear that.

Cherish looks as human as I do . . . mostly, in the same way the Fade in the White Room was surprisingly not a monstrosity. She has that same chalk tone to her skin, and almond-shaped eyes that are metallic in the middle, but vibrant on the edges. The black marks on her face form patterns like on a butterfly’s wing, with intricate swirls around her eyes and feathered wisps down her cheek. Three short stripes wrap from under her chin at the jawline, pointed toward her mouth.

She’s terrified.

What kind of Fade trick is this?

The rhythm of the thoughts I’m processing changes, like picking up a new voice in a room full of people. It’s not the Fade downstairs; this is Cherish.

“She’s here,” I say out loud, shocked to admit the Fade is right. As soon as I acknowledge her, her presence turns more vibrant, louder, but confused. She doesn’t know where she is; it’s like she’s buried alive. The feeling of suffocation and absolute darkness makes me grab my throat.

I want to go home
, she says. Her voice is so strange, and so familiar, bouncing around inside my head like it belongs there.
Find me
.

Understand
.

A forceful order from both Fade.

I reach out to touch the mirror, and the image shatters under my fingers, splitting her face into jagged pieces. A rush of pure, hot light spills from between the cracks.

That’s when the nightmare breaks, even though I’m wide-awake.

This is real, and I’m left with one unshakable certainty: They’re here and they’re watching.

H
OW
long does it take to open a door?

Outside Tobin’s apartment, I pace and pace and get nowhere. I raise my hand to knock a second time, and the door opens so quickly it nearly knocks me off my feet. Someone must have fixed the hinges for him, because the door swings easily, without a sound.

“They’re watching.” I can’t wait for Tobin to ask me what I want; if I stop, they’ll find me. I duck under his arm and go inside.

“Who?”

“The Fade—I can feel them. They’re watching.”

“What do you mean, ‘they’?”

“I can’t keep him out of my head.” I tell myself to stop crying. Tears are not helpful.

“You were fine ten minutes ago.”

None of this makes sense to him. There’s no way it could.

“He keeps coming back. He’s in there with my own thoughts, going through them. And it’s not just the one in the White Room. The one he called Cherish, she’s there, too.”

The door clicks shut behind me as Tobin engages the secondary lock.

“You’re going to pass out if you don’t calm down. Stop bouncing.” He leads me to a chair, then sits on the footstool so he’s facing me. He reaches out and takes my hands between his in a gesture of . . . I’m not sure. Maybe comfort, maybe restraint. “Marina, tell me what happened. We’ll figure out a way to deal with it.”

Every instinct that’s survived the endless blank of my past tells me that if I want to live, I need to move. Staying still is to invite death.

“Marina?”

Why does he keep saying my name?

“I heard him again,” I say. “It started as soon as I left the hospital, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. I tried to ignore him. . . . I don’t know how you did it, but I can’t. The Fade made my legs go where he wanted them to.”

“It’s trying to make you go outside? Like the people before?”

“No . . .
maybe
. He kept asking me about the other one. I heard her, Tobin. His mate’s here.” I want to tear the Fade, and the humming buzz that comes with it, from my mind, but there’s nothing to latch on to, no way to hurt them.

“Use the emergency call in my dad’s room.” Tobin hurries off the stool, toward the hall that leads through his apartment. “You have to tell Honoria—”

“I can’t!” I chase after him. “I’ll have to tell her I can hear them, and if Honoria decides I’m too dangerous to keep around . . . I can’t tell her the Fade took control. She’ll lock me up. I don’t want to go in a cage. Please . . .”

He turns and disappears into the kitchen, and at first I think he’s decided to ignore my pleas. I brace myself for the wail of an activated alarm, but Tobin returns almost instantly with the lantern I’d used to burn him before. He lights it, and closes my hands around the base.

“Keep your eyes on it,” he says, holding his hands over mine. “If they’re seeing your thoughts, then make them see something they don’t like.”

“Like fire,” I say, relieved, and sink into the nearest chair. His furniture’s been replaced with ugly, standard metal pieces, but right now I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

I put my hand over the flame’s peak, where it shines yellow above the white core. Back and forth, I pass my fingers through it, a measured danger to stop a real one.

The light and heat break the connection; even the threat’s too much for the Fade.

Another flame appears on the side table. Three more on the floor. One in Tobin’s hand. He lights candles as he finds them in drawers and cupboards. They fill teacups and sit in saucers, until the whole room’s lit with mismatched torches. Let the Fade search my mind; all they’ll find is fire. I breathe deep and let the soothing scent of soot and wax erase the static buzz from my thoughts.

Finally, Tobin stops scavenging for matches. He sits crosslegged on the floor with two flashlights aimed at the ceiling.

“We should save the batteries in case these burn out,” I say, and reach to turn them off.

It’s a mistake.

My other hand strays too close to the lantern and its flame bites my fingers. My own yelp shatters my concentration, and I feel the Fade again, waiting just below the surface of my conscious mind. He picks at my defenses, trying to find a way past them.

“Talk to me,” I beg Tobin. I need real human words. “Drown him out.”

“Come on.” Instead of distracting me with conversation, Tobin drags me off the chair. He leaves the candles burning, but grabs the lantern. “Bring the flashlights. If we’re farther from the White Room, then maybe it can’t get through to you.”

At the linen closet, he moves aside so I can flip the latch and push the door into its pocket, clearing our way.

“Remember the ledge,” he says, about the same time I smack into it with my toe. The throbbing ache’s a blessing, bludgeoning the Fade’s influence by giving me a new focal point. I flex my toe inside my shoe. If being in my head means the Fade feels my pain, then I’ll make it worse.

Tobin crowds in behind me, navigating the tunnels quickly while I let the Arclight’s natural sounds fill my ears until there’s no room for the Fade’s voice. The flashlights and lantern chase the shadows out of sight.

“Just pretend this was how we planned it,” he says. “This has nothing to do with the Fade; we’re going to the Well to watch the stars fall.”

I call up images of sitting under the night sky with him, where the Fade doesn’t know how to find us. I tell myself I have my eyes closed by choice, only because I want to remember the stars, and that’s not the same as being scared at all.

A sudden whooshing makes me stop, even with Tobin chauffeuring me along.

“What’s that?”

“Water pipes.” He knocks on something overhead. A loud clang echoes down the corridor in both directions. “Someone turned on a faucet or flushed a toilet.”

“You’re sure?”

It happens again and he nudges my hand against a pipe that vibrates as water rushes through it. “The cold ones are water pipes. The hot ones are for steam. The tiny ones are gas.”

It’s a perfectly logical answer, but logic doesn’t necessarily mix well with irrational fear.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I say. I’d rather tell Honoria the truth. The Fade scares me more than she does. I turn, intending to take the hospital route at the junction.

“We’re almost there,” Tobin says.

In my head it becomes “we’re almost safe.”

The farther we stray from the main compound, and the closer we get to the promise of a flame-filled night, the less I feel the Fade’s intrusion. I shine the flashlight up to the ceiling and along each wall, following tangles of crisscrossing pipes. Tobin keeps talking, giving me directions, all the way to the Well door, even though I know the way.

Outside, the night’s clear, without the clouds that obscured our view before. A brown blanket covers the ground, the same color as the sand in Tobin’s water globe. Off to the side stands a cactuslike thing made out of twisted junk painted green. He’s even put a hat on it and piled workbooks at the bottom. A rolled-up power cord serves as a rope.

“Surprise,” he says, and the Fade vanish from my mind completely. “Do you like it?”

“When did you do all of this?
How
did you do all of this?”

“I don’t sleep much lately. Not since . . .” He rotates his arm from habit, and the missing mention of the Fade attack becomes an uncomfortable pause. “I dragged everything down here during the days.”

“But your arm . . .”

“Isn’t really that bad.” He shrugs, wincing as he reaches for a jar beside the cactus. “I even found real sand.”

I drop beside him. Tobin waits until I manage to curl my uninjured leg beneath me, then twists the lid off and spills the contents into my cupped hands.

It’s cooler than I expected. I thought sand would carry the warmth of the sun, but it reflects the heatless light of the moon in tiny crystal pieces. I catch some in my fist, pouring it from one hand to the other, mesmerized by the texture and sound of such tiny grains falling together.

“I did that for an hour when I first found it,” he says as he reaches for another fistful. “Feels strange, doesn’t it?” he asks.

“It crunches.”

We sit together, mirroring each other’s movements until I forget I’m afraid of the night.

“Where’d you get it?”

“In a box when I was looking for the blanket. With this.”

It’s a picture of a smiling family in the sun. A barefoot little boy in short pants and no shirt pours a bucketful of sand on a man’s stomach while a woman covers his feet. Behind them an endless stretch of blue water runs into the sky at the horizon. He flips the photo over so I can read the neat script on the back:
James making a sand daddy. The Cove ’23

“James is my dad’s name. He was named for his fifth-greats-grandfather.”

I wonder if I was named for someone.

We siphon the sand back into the jar, making sure the lid’s on tight so it won’t spill.

“Did you know your grandparents?” I ask.

“When I was little.”

“I think I knew mine, too.”

It feels like there were people in my past who’d been around forever. They existed, and somewhere beyond my sight, they might still.

I hand his photo back and wonder if Tobin can tell that I’m jealous that he knows what his past looks like and I don’t. It’s not fair; I have the sudden urge to destroy it and put us on even ground.

He folds the photo in half and tucks it back into his pocket, leaving me to feel ashamed for something I never even said or did. The desire was enough.

“How come there weren’t many pictures of your mom in your house?”

“She mostly stayed out of camera range.” I’ve made him uncomfortable; his sad smile turns more guarded.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I don’t know what it’s like to have a mother.”

Forgetting myself is bad enough; forgetting what it’s like to be loved is worse.

Tobin reaches into his shirt and pulls out his dog tags, handing them to me. “We get these when we age out of school,” he says. “They hold your name and division, that sort of stuff.”

“Cassandra Darcy,” I read.

“My mom.”

“She was a healer?” I ask, running my hand over the snake and staff engraved on the front of the tag.