Of Delicate Pieces (33 page)

“Why would they do that?”

“It was an agreement to keep them out of the holding centers and to keep the family together.” He knocked on the glass. “See.”

Currency offered for Lorraine Havilah from the council of Parrish, Maryland to Astor, Oregon. Sale completed.

It was signed by Abigail Frank.

The lettering burned Alex’s eyes. “That’s a Havilah being sold. This was … was this Astor Havilah’s daughter?”

It said she was sold to Astor, Oregon. Her father must have gotten her back after creating the town Jonas visited. Alex’s heart lifted finding a positive piece to the story.

“Do you know Rae?”

An invisible wind whipped through the aisle, rustling Alex’s hair, cradling her in her own shock.

“What did you say?” Chase asked.

“Rae. She wanders into town sometimes.”

“She was with us the last time we were here,” said Alex.

“Ahhhhh. That’s how you gained entry.”

Alex couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “She knows you?”

He cocked his head, casting a shadow over them. “That’s her contract.” He snapped his fingers and the light brightened below the document next to Alex.

“
She’s
Lorraine Havilah?”

“Why, yes.”

No wonder Rae attached herself to Alex. She was a Havilah, like her. The document said that Rae was three when she was sold. Her spirit projection couldn’t be older than three, so how did she die without her father getting her back? It was written there in black and white that she was sold to Astor, Oregon. If the sale was completed, she should have been alive.

When Alex asked Maori, he shrugged a high, bony shoulder. “We should probably be thankful she didn’t live much longer than three, knowing who her
brother
turned out to be.” He shook his head. “The last thing we need in this afterworld would be another Syrus Raive.”

Alex looked down at her feet. Indeed.

Alex and Chase doubled back through the aisles of illuminated treasures. Alex might as well be an item for sale. She should snatch a firefly light and dangle it above her head with a price tag.

“I guess we were wrong about the exit,” Chase said. “Rae might have meant something else by sketching this store. I’m sure there’s a telephone in this town somewhere. We could travel that way.”

On the other side of the glass, not one piece of the sidewalk was visible under the feet of the crowd gathered outside.

Why is the Patrol here?
Chase thought to her.

Where?

He flicked his chin in the direction of the sidewalk.
Follow me.

They fell into the masses and zigzagged around singers, artists, dancers, and observers. Alex kept her head down and a hood covered her head to conceal her. Halfway down the road, the crowd parted.

Chase scooted sideways, pulling Alex along, to avoid whatever was coming. They stumbled into an easel, and Chase muttered an apology to the girl sitting on a stool. The girl set down her paintbrush, adjusted her earbuds, and slid her easel closer to the building.

Alex and Chase were trapped between the shops behind them and the crowd moving as one, shuffling further away from the street, which was now filled with the sound of stomping feet.

Dozens of voices harmonized in a chant: “Equality now. Equality now.”

“Those aren’t spirits,” Chase warned.

Alex stood on tiptoe and saw white squares rising and falling in the air. On one of them, thick red letters spelled out
Soul = Soul
. Her hands began to shake. “Are they from Moribund?”

“Moribunders wouldn’t be picketing in their own town. This is as close as the gifted can legally get to Eidolon.”

“It’s the gifted?”

The white signs reached them, and Alex swayed side to side to find a hole in the crowd. She wanted to see them. Would they look like Duvall? Eccentric and whimsical. Would like act like Liv? Angry and confused.

“Protesting,” Chase replied. “Yes.”

She crouched down to see through the legs of the people in front of her. The marchers ranged from tiny toddler feet to giant combat boots.

“Oh no,” Chase muttered.

Alex stood up. “What?”

Chase zipped his lips. Above the heads of the crowd, the white signs continued to bob up and down but these signs had photos on them … of Alex’s face. The caption:
CHANGE IS NOW
.

Alex spun around to face the store, cupping her hands around her eyes and looking into the window. The door displayed a sign saying,
At the Festival. Visit us by the bandstand.
There could be a phone inside though.

“Alex, we need to try to project.”

“But we can’t see where we’re going.”

“We need to try. We have to get out of here now.” Chase grabbed her hand. “Focus on that lamppost down the road. We can do this gradually.”

Alex wasn’t sure this was the best idea. What if they separated? She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and hoped for a better solution. She stepped closer to the painting girl, who wasn’t bothered by the chaos surrounding her. Alex tapped the girl on the shoulder.

She removed an earbud.

Alex inched toward the easel, which held art supplies and a cell phone. “Can we borrow your phone?”

“Oh my God!” a voice shouted beside them. “It’s her!”

Alex wished she knew how to alter her appearance. She retreated into Chase’s mind to see muddy colors. These people weren’t going to ask for her autograph. They were afraid of her.

“Why is she here?” A woman wrapped her arms around the shoulders of her children and began to back away from Alex.

The rest of the crowd did the same. They gave Alex a clear view of the street and the protesters … and Jack’s gang across the way.

Jack stepped into the road, bringing the march to a halt. Carr followed him, linking his arm through Jack’s. Hecker did the same. And several others. They stood as a fence, dividing the march, blocking the gifted from their mission.

The crowd on the sidewalk didn’t make a sound, waiting to see what would happen next.

The gifted stopped. They looked like normal people: kids wearing sports shirts, fathers with children sitting on their shoulders, teenagers with perfect hair and makeup. Someone whistled, and Alex flinched, expecting the worst.

Instead, the gifted continued forward. They resumed their chants and marched, walking right through Jack’s barricade. They stepped through Jack like he was invisible, and Alex felt the urge to run out into the street and march with them.

She took a step closer to the street. Bad idea. Jack met her gaze before shouting. “It’s Alex Ash. Look! Over there! Sephi Anovark!”

A violent wave of wind barreled through the street, jostling everyone gifted, spirited, or neither. For a second, no one moved. There was no telling where it came from, but then a sharp jolt shook the ground under her feet; someone had struck. Both sides retaliated. Bolts of energy rocketed from everywhere. People screamed and ran. Chase grabbed Alex and pulled her back, but not before she saw the Patrol flood the street. They seized the gifted and pinned their arms behind their backs.

“No!” They didn’t do anything!

Chase cursed and reached for the phone on the easel, but the girl snatched it up. Both sides of the street converged like oil and water, mixing together in a tide of scalding madness.

Alex reacted. She screamed. She let it out louder than she ever had at the medical center. From her nonexistent gut to the depths of her soul, she opened her mouth and allowed it all to be free. It launched out of her like a separate entity, causing the town to tremble. The spirited fell to the ground while the unaffected living gawked at her in confusion.

Chase snatched the phone from the girl’s grip and punched in a number. “Get in.”

Alex didn’t stop screaming until she felt the shock of the radiofrequency waves.

Liv’s grandmother said this was a calling, that it was in her bones. Liv wasn’t so sure, but she belonged here more than she belonged with the giggling, flirty lemmings at her school. She didn’t like people, especially the ones her age who called her a freak and made fun of her weight. She couldn’t fit into trendy clothes, and her hair didn’t flip in a peppy way. If it did, she’d cut it off.

She emerged from the back room, tapping on her phone. “Damn prank call.”

“For such an outspoken child, you’ve been rather lost in your thoughts recently.”

Liv plopped down on the window seat and rested her chin on her hand. She couldn’t tell her grandmother that she hated life. She was surrounded by dead people, so a comment like that would sound ungrateful. “I like the woods,” she said, looking out the window. “No matter the scary stories.”

“Don’t be thinking that since you can’t see all the things that go bump in the night that they aren’t there. Those woods aren’t safe for you. There are more horrors out there than you can imagine.”

Liv wanted to die. Was that crazy? Yes. She couldn’t say it out loud or she might end up in that asylum like Alex did. She didn’t belong in this world; she belonged with Alex and the Lasalles. They’d always been larger than life like they were too crazy, too free, for this world. When she tagged along, it felt like watching a television show or reading a story. And when they were gone, all she wanted was more. To see them. To watch them. She never stopped thinking about them.

She couldn’t measure up to their personalities, but they were the only people on this earth who made her feel like she mattered. How many times had they braved the edges of the Parrish woods to find a better hiding place for buried treasure? Even when Kaleb and Gabe were older, they would play along with the younger ones because there were ways to make the games thrilling. Upping the stakes. Teasing the spirits in the Parrish woods. She shuddered to think what might have happened to them if the Jester didn’t patrol the trees.

“Why are bad things allowed to exist?” Liv wondered aloud.

“Because nature is a siren. We are all built differently. You ask why horrible things exist, but terror wonders why people like you exist. Gatekeepers and caretakers are necessary.”

Liv reached for a yellow voix stone and spun it in her fingers.

“We are appraisers, and that is what we are meant to do. Sometimes people have to be brave enough to accept a life that isn’t ordinary. Your friends understood that. It’s all a part of fate.”

A gnarled voice interrupted them. “Fate schmate.”

Liv hated that stupid clown slouched in the doorway. He sat sideways with his longs legs propped on the doorframe.

“Get your feet off my walls,” Thea commanded.

“Technically, I’m not really touching it.”

“Of course you are. Don’t you ever wonder how things get so dirty? It isn’t only the bodied who make the messes.”

“A doorway isn’t furniture,” the boy argued, but he lowered his feet nonetheless.

Thea looked at him in dismay. “And what’s your issue with fate? You don’t think Sephi knew what she was doing?”

“Oh, she knew.”

“But you scoff at it?”

“The things that Sephi predicted she helped to create. How is that foreseeing the future?” The Jester began tossing Thea’s shoes down the hallway. “She predicted that the way this town operated would drive the residents insane. There’s a mental institution here now.”

Liv stood up the retrieve the shoes. “Sounds like she was right.”

“The institution was created because the Havilahs went insane after Sephi cursed their daughters to look like her! When they weren’t hurling themselves off cliffs, they were drowning their own babies.”

Liv stopped in her tracks, looking around the corner of the hall and then under the couch. She felt the haunt of hidden eyes. She owned a cat when she was little, and sometimes it would hide in the strangest of places like under pillows or in between shoeboxes in the closet. Liv would know the cat was there watching, but she couldn’t find her. She had the same feeling now.

Thea took out a tube of lipstick and reapplied. Then she opened her compact mirror and puffed up her short curls.

“What are you doing, Grandma?”

“Tell your friends to sit down.”

“What?” Liv glanced at the door where the Jester still slouched.

He snapped his fingers at her. “Why are you looking outside? You don’t have friends who need to use doors.” His shoulders slumped. “Aw, man. They didn’t bring their pretty friend this time. Where’s the Gossamer girl from last year?”

Liv never understood what it meant to feel a heart skip a beat until now. She spun around and looked in the foyer to find Alex and Chase standing hand in hand. Liv clutched her chest as her heart felt a happy devastation. They were dead but together.

Alex’s innocent eyes grew wider than usual. “Thank goodness you’re still here. Can you see me?”

Through her tears, no, she couldn’t. “I can hear you.”

“Hey, Liv,” she heard Chase say.

“Oh, my God, Chase, I’m so sorry.” Her voice cracked. “I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t save her.”

It should have been her. She would have traded places with Alex in a heartbeat. Then she’d be free of this body and this cage her grandmother calls “a calling.”

Something covered Liv’s hand. It was like dipping her fingers into a current of energy. Tears spilled out of her. Chase was squeezing her fingers.

“I didn’t expect you to,” he assured her. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry I put you through all this.”

Liv swallowed a sob. “I’ve missed you guys.” She felt energy surround her when Alex touched her shoulder.

“We miss you. You were so important to me. You still are.”

To hear beautiful, tragic Alex Ash say this to her felt overwhelming. Alex didn’t need more than Chase. She chose to like Liv. Here was proof that Liv was likable.

She couldn’t stop staring at them even when they sat down in the living room. The Jester crept closer to listen even though he pretended not to care. Chase sat next to Alex, leaving no space between them, just like he had in life. It made Liv happy.

“Thea,” Alex began, “the hunters can’t take you, right?”