Spark (17 page)

I glance up at movement in the courtyard. Leonard comes from the house, carrying a metal briefcase, Miriam beside him. I hit the stop button, the motor groans and I hop off the treadmill, taking a moment to recover my land legs. “Kit, you wanna find Jamie and tell him I’m done if he’s ready to run drills?”

“Tell him yourself.” She screws her nose up. “I’m stopping here.”

She won’t be kept out of the loop. I sigh.

Leonard pushes through the door and smiles a fleeting, weighed-down smile. “This arrived from Jeremy.” He swings the briefcase onto the workout bench and unclips the latches. Miriam stands at Leonard’s shoulder with the same even mask she’s been wearing since I found out she’s a liar.

“I thought he was against all this.” I can’t hide my disgust. Jeremy Gallagher didn’t believe in breaking protocol. When he’d found out Jamie had not only told his parents about the Affinity Project, but broken his uncle’s cover, things had got ugly. There had been more shouting in the study the night before as Leonard argued with his brother during yet another long-distance call.

“Jeremy’s pragmatic enough to accept the damage is done. He supplied us with an expert doctor and he thought these might be of use.” Leonard opens the lid on a set of six watches and phones. “They’re all linked. Satellite communications. You two will be able to send an alert at any sign of trouble.”

I slip the cold metal watch over my wrist and shiver. “Have you heard from Doctor Sullivan?”

Leonard purses his lips. “That was my next bit of news, or non-news.”

“No ID,” Kitty mutters.

“He managed to map past the synthetic gene to find the pre-modified markers, but there’s no match in police records.”

My stomach sinks.

“It was never fail-safe,” Miriam says. “Only the signal matters and you’re doing everything you can to strengthen your frequency sensitivity.”

I grit my teeth. I don’t need a pep talk from her.

“In the meantime,” Miriam says, “school starts in three days and you’re all going to Gainsborough.”

Kitty pales. “School?”

I sit winded on the bench. In the future I picture, we stay holed up on the estate like survivalists, amassing arms, awaiting Armageddon. The idea of letting Kitty loose in an uncontained environment spins me out.

“A
Stray
won’t touch you there,” Miriam says. Her gentle assurance grates my nerves more than the whispering.

“And too bad if he’s sitting next to her in math?” I mutter. Kitty frowns and I instantly regret not holding my tongue.

“It’s the safest place you can be,” Miriam says to Kitty as though she had voiced the concern. “A
Stray
’s instinct for self-preservation is our greatest advantage. Evie will be in all your classes and it will be better than hanging around home.”

Kitty knots her fingers. “Boot camp is looking a bit tedious.”

“And what about training?” I say, thinking of the wasted hours in a classroom.

“There’s plenty of time before and after school,” Miriam says. “It’s really what’s best for Kitty.”

She may as well have poked me with a stick. “You don’t get to tell me what’s best for Kitty. If it had been up to you, I’d still be across town, waiting for–”

“Evie.” Kitty gives me a scolding look. Even Leonard frowns, but Miriam keeps her hurt behind her mask.

I drop my gaze. “I can’t afford Gainsborough.”

“I can,” Leonard says. I start to argue but he squeezes my shoulder, all final and brooking no disagreement so I shut my mouth. He closes the case and turns to the door, Miriam behind him.

“School together. It’s what we always wanted.” Kitty drops onto the bench next to me and bumps my shoulder. “When are you going to make up with her?”

I sigh. She had reached out to Miriam and can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t. Her generosity makes me feel like a miser.

“You’re so rude to her all the time and she never fights back.”

“Give it a rest, Kit.”

“Barb made up with her.”

I snap my head towards her. “Since when?”

“Since this morning. They were hugging it out in the kitchen.”

My one ally gone. “Great.”

She taps her pen on the soft moleskin covered journal. “Miriam loves you.”

Logically, I know it. Logically, I know I love her too. Being at odds with Miriam makes me uncomfortable and I don’t take pleasure in my power to hurt her. But her violation of trust has formed a block in my mind that I can’t get past. “School, huh?”

She narrows her eyes at the change in subject. “I missed out on Lila’s road trip, school might actually be fun.”

The thought of trying to function in a social setting while playing bodyguard sounds exhausting.

“Well,” she continues, “it’s got to be better than sitting around all day watching you and Jamie circling each other.”

I sit up straight, heat in my face. “Circling?”

“You heard me. Circling.”

As though summoned, Jamie appears in the courtyard. I stand up, my back to the door, tucking my hair behind my ears. Kitty clicks her tongue. I scowl but when the door opens I adjust my expression and turn. Jamie strolls in looking too good in long shorts and loose shirt, buoyed and ready for action. His mood has lightened with each day’s evidence of my swift healing – a sign of my “promising” development. I know he draws hope from it the way I draw hope from Kitty’s optimism. But it makes me nervous that the whole house of cards will give out, and I swallow the urge to confess my horrible dreams. They’ve become worse each night, like I’ve tapped directly into the head of the Stray.

“School, then?” Jamie raises his eyebrows, that disarming up and down bounce.

“Apparently.” I will Kitty not to say anything that’ll embarrass me.

She rises beside me, rubbing her hands. “What’s on this afternoon?”

“Actually,” Jamie inclines his head, “I figured Everton deserves to see me on the receiving end of some target practice.” Yesterday’s “training sessions” involved paintball guns and me getting shot in the ass.

“Oooo!” Kitty brightens. “Jamie showed me this when I got home from the hospital. It’s brilliant, Evs, you’ll love it. I’ll get the crossbow.” She drops her journal on the bench and scoots out back to the storage room, the invisible tether stretching with her. I make the automatic reach into the bandwidth like I always do whenever she leaves my side. Now I can do it with my eyes open, though I tend to grow still and stare into the distance. But with nothing more than static in the signal I give my attention back to Jamie, who watches me with approval.

I fold my arms, self-conscious that he knows what I’m doing. “No dice with Sullivan then?”

He shakes his head, his expression resigned. “Would have made things a lot simpler.”

We both sigh.

I frown. “Did she say crossbow?”

“Just some fun.” He grins. “A good bit of Rapid Kinetic Learning for you.”

I don’t like the sound of it and when Kitty appears with the crossbow and a quiver of arrows, I definitely don’t like the look of it.

“We should probably go outside,” Jamie says. “Kitty’s aim can be a little off and Barb won’t like it if she breaks another mirror.”

Kitty levels the crossbow at his head. “You should have done this as one of your coming out tricks – would have convinced us you weren’t completely barking.”

I shiver, imagining the conversation Jamie has had with his parents. It makes me grateful to be an only child. The thought of a brother or sister in the mix is more stomach-churning than the threat of what Affinity will do about the break in protocol. Who would sit back and do nothing, let their sibling wander around unprotected with no promise of an emerging Shield and no way to tap into their signal to scan for a threat? Screw discretion. I would have done the same thing if I were Jamie; though, for his sake, I worry about what Affinity Project discipline looks like.

“He told us everything, after I was discharged. We thought he was raving, till he took us out on the lawn and we saw him move. Course, I still refused to believe it.” Kitty hugs the crossbow. “Then he showed me his back–”

Jamie brings his hands together in a sudden loud clap. “Come on. You can shoot me, that’ll cheer you up.”

Out on the front lawn, Kitty strides away from us, swinging the crossbow. Jamie stops by the stone wall and nods me to the side, but I stand there looking back and forth between them. He really means for her to shoot him. Something clicks inside me and I stretch my hands out with a fierce rush of feeling. “This is not remotely funny.”

Kitty ignores me and loads an arrow into the shaft. She holds it between her feet and pulls back the line with a grunt. I don’t like it. I could hiss with how much I don’t like it but it’s the direction of my concern that baffles me. Why would I be anxious for Jamie? “Kitty. Stop.”

They’re actually going to do it.

She balances the weapon before her.

“Jamie. Stop her!”

He just winks. “You might want to step aside, love.”

That last word gets my attention; casual, English, familiar. I’d worry at it for meaning but the let-down of adrenaline demands all of my attention. “I don’t want to see this! Seriously!”

At the sound of the safety latch, instinct takes over. I swing around and fly across the grass before she can pull the trigger. Her eyes flash wide before I ram her and we fall through the air in slow-motion catastrophe.

Several things strike me in the vacuum of time. The sharp smell of panic sweat. The pounding of Jamie’s feet. His shout. Kitty’s escalating squeal. Two distinct heartbeats, one a frenetic metronome, the other a startled skip. The slow hurtling crossbow, turning over and over, glinting in the light. With an infusion of exquisite dread, precognition comes, midair. The crossbow will make three full rotations before it hits the ground, releasing the trigger, launching an arrow directly at Kitty’s head – if I let her take the impact of our fall. I grip her tight around the waist and turn her above me, extending my arm over my head, palm down, ready to catch the missile.

Kitty lands with a mighty “Ooof!”, forcing air from my lungs. There’s a metallic click and a burning sensation in my right hand, Jamie above us, panting, swearing. Kitty struggles to get up but I hold her vice-like against me. I can’t take my eyes off my hand. I hold an arrow as if I’ve just picked it up off the ground. It’s hot in my palm like rope burn.

“Evie.” Jamie kneels by my head and turns my face, his expression terrifying. The full horror of my mistake hits me. I gasp and release Kitty. She pulls back, sheet white. I sit bolt upright and drop the arrow like a stick of dynamite, and we all sit staring at it.

“Kitty, I’m sorry,” I choke. I put her in danger – me and no one else. Nausea churns my stomach. I press my hands into the grass to still my trembling. “You could have been killed. I don’t know why – I didn’t want–” I shut my mouth. What can I say? That I was afraid for Jamie? The idea scrambles my brain.

Kitty lets loose a wild whoop, frightening me as she bounces on her knees. “Did you see that? Bloody hell, Jamie!” But his face is impossible to read.

“I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot. I – I was afraid.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder and nods at his sister. “Look, she’s fine.”

Kitty jumps up. “I’m going to tell Dad!”

“No!” I shoot to my feet. “Leonard will freak.” But she’s already racing back towards the house. “This is terrible. Why would she tell him?”

“I expect because it’s very good news. You don’t get it. It took me a month to develop reflexes like that. I mean, serious practice.” He rises up and moves towards me. “May I?” He takes my hand, his expression curious like he’s listening for something. My trembling eases and he turns my palm over and blows on the red mark, rubbing it gently with his thumb. “Smarts, yeah?”

My whole body tingles. I swallow. “How did I do that?” I don’t mean catching the arrow. I mean jeopardising Kitty’s safety to protect him.

“No idea.” He keeps up the circular pressure on my palm. “Incredible you could override your instinct like that. I didn’t think it was possible.”

But that’s the thing, another instinct had taken over. It makes no sense. I squeeze my eyes closed, wishing I could undo it. “It was a mistake.”

“I hope not.”

My eyes pop open to find his gaze locked on mine.

“Unless of course it was an insult.” He arches his eyebrow. “I might be offended if you thought I wasn’t up to catching an arrow.” His grin stretches out. “Works better for me if you couldn’t help yourself.”

I’m too upset to laugh. “But it’s not good, is it?”

“I would say it was exceptional – that you’re exceptional.” He shakes his head. “Wait till they get a load of you.”

Before I can ask what he means he looks past me at the house. I follow his gaze. Barb watches us from the newly glazed kitchen window, her face like stone. I pull away. “She didn’t see that, did she?” I’m not sure if I mean the crossbow incident or the hand holding.

“Judging by her expression, yeah, she did.”

I wake to the sound of quiet movement – Barb coming in with a tray of food.

“This is how you sleep?”

I’m so used to sleeping on top of the bed in sweatpants and sneakers that it takes me a moment to figure out what she means. “Is everything okay? What time is it?” I rub my eyes to erase the image of my nightmare, as though she might catch the shadow of it behind my eyes.