Fever (23 page)

For what? I don’t know, exactly. I can’t say that I’m sorry for bringing him out of the mansion with me, because the thought of being alone right now is crushing. And I’d only be worrying for his safety, all alone in Vaughn’s basement of horrors, among the corpses of my dead sister wives.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I say.

Gabriel is quiet for a while, and then he says, sounding surprised, “Did you have a plan for how it would be?”

“No,” I admit. “I thought we’d make it home, and my brother would be waiting for me. I thought, maybe—I don’t know. I thought we’d be happy. Now I realize how stupid I must have sounded, after every possible thing has gone wrong.”

“Wanting to be happy is not stupid,” Gabriel says.

It’s quiet for so long that I think he must have fallen asleep. But then he asks, “So what now?”

“I find my brother,” I say. “I’ll start looking near home.” The word hurts in a way I never imagined it would. “Check the factories first, see what kind of jobs he might have had while I was gone, and if he let anyone know he was leaving.” It doesn’t sound like something my brother would do. Outside of me, there was no one he trusted with the details of his life. But it’s all I’ve got to go on.

“Okay,” Gabriel says. “I’ll go with you. But for now try to get some sleep, okay? You’re starting to worry me.”

And because he does me the courtesy of playing along, letting me hope for something that is clearly futile, I pretend to sleep.

After the rest of the house has gone silent, I hear the floorboards creaking as Claire moves about upstairs. Silas stumbles into his bedroom, and in the darkness he manages to step around the bodies of the strangers who have taken over his floor. Water from his freshly showered hair drips onto my face as he passes.

Gabriel has moved onto his side, facing away from me, his breaths even and clear now that the drug has left his system.

The coils of Silas’s mattress creak, go silent awhile, creak again. I hear his blankets rustling. And clearly my fake sleeping isn’t fooling him, because eventually he whispers to me, “Is Grace really alive, or were you saying that for Claire’s sake?”

“It was true,” I whisper back. “We were climbing down the other side of the fence, and she fell behind. But she was friends with one of the guards there, and I don’t think he’d let anything happen to her.”

Silas is quiet, taking this all in. Then, “How was she?”

“Brave,” I say. “Smart.” I decide not to mention the angel’s blood.

He hesitates. “Did she mention me?”

“She didn’t mention anyone. I didn’t even know her name was Grace.”

I know I should be kinder, but it’s the truth. Lilac—or, Grace—is not the twelve-year-old girl that was Gathered away seven years ago. Time may have let her retain some of her old traits, and her pretty face, but it has changed her. If only one year away was able to turn my life upside down, seven could obliterate a girl entirely.

I inch toward Gabriel, close enough to smell the still-damp hair that is almost, just a little, like the ocean. I tell myself that if I ever get to sleep tonight, I’ll dream of the North Atlantic. I’ll dream of catching rainbow trout while coasting on a ferry that takes me toward Liberty Island at high noon, my skin warm with the sun.

But instead my dreams are of nothing but blackness, and the smell of burned wallpaper.

I wake earlier than the rest of the house, and I reach over my pillow and into Lilac’s bag. My hand fumbles around until it finds the page with my brother’s notes. By the green glow of Silas’s bedside clock, I hold the page over my face and try to read it. I can’t make the words out too well, but it doesn’t matter. They still wouldn’t make sense.

“Have you been up all night?” Gabriel murmurs. I look over and realize his eyes are trained on me in the darkness.

“No,” I say. “Go back to sleep.”

But he doesn’t close his eyes until I’ve returned the note and settled down again.

I listen as Claire’s footsteps ease down the creaking staircase, and then I hear her moving about in the kitchen. I wonder if she’s slept at all either. What must be going through her mind, to know the fate of her missing daughter? Seven years is a long time. Long enough to presume a person dead. Long enough for the shock and the hurt to scab over. I still miss my parents, every day, but I’ve stopped seeing their faces in crowds. I’ve stopped expecting them to come back to me somehow. How must it feel to discover a loved one presumed dead has been alive the whole time?

Probably the way my brother will feel when he sees me again. If he ever does.

I close my eyes, try for sleep. I know I’ll need the rest if I’m going to spend the day searching Manhattan for traces of my brother. To deal with the shock of how the tables have turned.

But sleep doesn’t come. I lie there for what feels like hours, until the light makes the insides of my eyelids bright beige and a toddler starts wailing in his crib, setting off a chorus.

Breakfast smells delicious, but the food is like paste in my mouth. Those bright spots of light are swimming in my vision again. But I know that Gabriel is watching me, and so I smear extra jam on my toast and force it all down.

Maddie and her new friend, Nina, have become inseparable. I last saw them spinning circles around the piano as though they could hear a song the rest of us couldn’t.

The news is on the small TV that Claire keeps on the kitchen counter. More about the outrage at the president’s idea to rebuild the labs. There are some supporters, of course, but the news favors the angry opposition. For instance, the first generation woman who has buried all six of her children, having conceived them with the hope that there would be a cure in time.

Silas mutters about the stupidity of trying, and I glare across the table at him. “Have something to say, princess?” he coos.

I gather the plates from the table, taking his just as he was reaching for the last bit of waffle drowning in syrup, and bring them to the sink.

The news story changes to a segment about President Guiltree’s lineage, how more than a century ago, citizens could vote for their president. It worked for a while, so the story goes, until opposing sides began battling among each other. Now the presidency is inherited. The shortened life spans of the new generations threaten this tradition, but Guiltree seems to think he can solve this by having as many children as possible. The fact that all of his children are sons is also suspect. Many have speculated that he is running his own private genetic lab to manipulate the gender of his children. Some speculate that he already has the cure, though I don’t see why he’d keep that a secret.

There’s a crash in the living room, followed by the hiccup and wail of a child, and Claire dashes to the rescue.

Once she’s gone, Silas says, “They should leave well enough alone,” to no one in particular.

I spin around to face him. “You call a death sentence ‘well enough’? There’s nothing wrong with pursuing a cure.”

Silas snorts, turning up his nose at me as he crosses to the fridge, takes out a carton of milk, and drinks straight from it. “Rebuilding that lab will create jobs, and that’s all the good it’ll do. After that it’ll do nothing but give people hope.”

“Hope is a bad thing?” I say.

“When it’s false hope.”

Gabriel starts to say something, but I cut him off. “Who’s to say? There are talented scientists, talented doctors, and maybe hope isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it’s what keeps us together.”

There’s rage stirring in me like paint spilled into water, making everything red. But just a few weeks ago, I was lying beside Cecily on Jenna’s trampoline, telling her there was no cure and to get that through her head. I wish I could undo that; I’d been so stricken by grief that for a while I’d forgotten myself. It goes against everything my parents fought for. Everything they died for.

Silas laughs without any humor. His eyes are languid like the eyes of Madame’s girls. There’s a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire. And I can see that he’s given up. “You’re so naïve, princess,” he says.

I have been called so many things this past year. Sweetheart, Goldenrod, Empress, Princess. I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.

“I know more than you think,” I say.

He comes close, his nose inches above mine, and I can hear his lips parting when he says, “Then, you know that you are going to die.” His eyes are searching my face, challenging me. I can’t argue, and he knows it.

All that comes out is a small “Maybe.”

“Maybe nothing,” he says. “That lab explosion was a blessing in disguise. It made us all face facts. Live for today, while you can.”

That’s enough for Gabriel, who grabs my arm and moves me away. I’m shaking all over, and there’s something angry that won’t make it to my lips; all that comes out is a frustrated grunt that seems to shake the walls as I stomp from the room and up the stairs. Maddie and Nina move to approach me, but quickly think better of it and go back to their game of trying to weave through the banister.

There’s nowhere to go but Silas’s room. Gabriel trails after me and closes the door. He reaches for me, but I’m pacing, moving my mouth and trying to get the words out. I can barely see straight. Finally I blurt out, “Smug.”

I ball my hands into fists. “He has no right—who does he think he is?”

“He shouldn’t have called you naïve,” Gabriel offers, trying to help.

“It isn’t that,” I say. “I mean, yes, that’s part of it, but—he said the explosion was a good thing.” I stop pacing and chew on my knuckle, feel the bone between my teeth. “My parents were killed in that explosion, Gabriel. They were killed because they believed they’d find a cure. And they were doing such good things in the meantime! They were caring for newborns, and taking in pregnant girls who had nowhere to go, and—” My voice cracks. Through tears I glare out the window, where Silas is going into the shed. He breathes into his red hands for warmth, fidgets with the lock, and disappears inside.

From up here he seems so small. He’s a petal of ash tumbling toward the sky, all that’s left of the flames.

Strange how easily things disappear.

Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other.

“It’s okay,” Gabriel says. His hand hovers near my arm, but I think he’s afraid to touch me.

“My parents would have done more good things,” I say. “Great things.”

“I know,” Gabriel says.

“They didn’t want this for Rowan and me. My brother—he’s smart. They were teaching him to become a scientist, but after they died, he gave up. He gave up because we had to take care of each other.”

I stare at my reflection in the glass, and I can see two versions of myself: the twin sister, and the bride.

“It was supposed to be better than this,” I whisper.

When Gabriel and I announce our plans to head into the shipping district, Claire doesn’t question it. Silas mumbles something into his tea about how he’ll never see us again. He thinks we’re abandoning Maddie. But Maddie either knows this isn’t true or doesn’t care, because she can’t be interrupted from her game when I pass her on my way out.

The walk feels twice as arduous as it did yesterday. My legs are stiff and heavy, and I keep my head down to avoid the blinding sun. Gabriel doesn’t press me for conversation. Sometimes he’ll reach over and rub circles on my back. I think he expects me to cry or something, but I am beyond crying. Beyond feeling anything. Beyond thinking of anything but the most immediate of actions: Cross the bridge. Start with the factories closest to my home and then work my way along the shoreline. Do not pay attention to the water—it is full of memories and sunken continents, and many places in which a person’s mind can drown.

In every office of every building, I deliver the same quick speech. I’m looking for my brother. His name is Rowan Ellery. About this much taller than me. Blond hair. One blue eye, one brown eye. You’d remember him if you saw him, probably.

But no one does. Over and over it’s the same thing.

Until we reach a food processing plant, and a first generation man with freckled skin, a hairnet, and a stained shirt with the word “supervisor” on the chest knows who I’m talking about. He goes on an angry tirade about how Rowan—he’s made up a less-than-charming nickname for him—worked for him right up until he stole one of the delivery trucks with a rather expensive supply of canned soups inside it. This man is so angry, his words so heated, that he ignores my next question each of the several times I ask it. Finally Gabriel takes over for me, places a hand on the man’s shoulder. Manages to calm him down with his placid, easy expression, his blue eyes making contact but holding no aggression. “How long ago?”

The man blinks. “Months,” he says. “I knew something was off about that kid. Always muttering to himself, disappearing for an hour once. But he got deliveries done quick enough, so I kept him around.”

I try to reconcile my brother with the person this man is describing. Rowan always had a quick temper, and if he was particularly upset, he would mutter under his breath the things he wished he could have said to fix the problem. Mostly unkind things, but lucid at least. He would only stop when I put my hand on his arm, talked softly to him. After the Gatherer broke into our home, my brother was furious for days. Pacing. Worrying. And just when I thought he was calming down, he shattered a window with his fist. But I never considered how deep his anger could go, or if his tirades could stop making sense if he went about it long enough.

Just as he had always been there to protect me, like that night the Gatherer held a knife to my throat, I had always been there to calm him back down. I was the only one who could do it.

A lead anchor of guilt sinks in my stomach. He’s out there somewhere because I couldn’t reassure him. I couldn’t bring him back from the darkness beyond the edges of his own mind.

My voice sounds a thousand miles away when I ask, “What did the truck look like?”