The Flight of the Silvers (48 page)

“You still blame me for that.”

“No. I always blamed Evan.”

“Then why did you get so distant after that?”

Zack considered pinning that on Evan too, but then he’d have to explain the teasing hint about Amanda and Peter, a romantic prophecy that still bothered him to no end.

“I’m too tired to open that box,” he replied. “Let’s just agree I’m a schmuck and move on.”

Hannah watched the cat roll around on the carpet, purring in mindless bliss. For a moment, she thought Amanda and Zack would do the same. Now she wasn’t sure if they’d kiss, fight, or fall asleep on each other. In any case, it was time to leave them alone.

Just as she rose to her feet, Amanda took Zack’s advice and changed the subject.

“I’m worried about Hannah.”

A sharp new panic gripped the actress, freezing her in place. Her inner self waved her on with flapping arms.
Go! Leave! You don’t want to hear this!

“She’ll be all right,” Zack assured Amanda.

“You’ve only known her ten weeks. I’ve known her her whole life. I know what trauma does to her.”

“You’re looking down from the big sister perch.”

“I’m not looking down, just back. She has a history, Zack. It’s right there on her wrists.”

A storm of screams brewed in Hannah’s throat. She clenched her fists and vanished into the bathroom. The startled cat bolted down the stairs, past the chaise longue.

Amanda raised her head at the scurrying footsteps. “What was that?”

“Bad luck,” said Zack.

“Great. Like we need more.”

Amanda fixed a tense gaze at the sleeping-gas collar on the coffee table, a grim souvenir of her incarceration. Forty minutes ago, she asked Zack to reverse the lock, a task he’d initially refused out of fear of rifting her. She had to remind him that he was a man of minor miracles, able to rot a swinging banana from twenty feet away, grow keys out of keyholes, and turn old mice into young ones. He’d led an actress and two teenagers into battle with armed federal agents, and won.

Ultimately he’d indulged her, concentrating on her collar with the sweaty apprehension of a bomb defuser. The moment he popped the lock on her very last shackle, Amanda’s regard turned a hot new color and she fought the urge to kiss him. Now as she pressed against him, his heartbeat thumping against her breast, she wished she had her sister’s skill with men. She wished she could find just the right words to express her feelings, her qualms.

Then she considered that Zack was an artist. Maybe he didn’t need words.

Thin white strands of tempis slowly sprouted from her forearm, twisting around their locked hands like ivy. Zack leered with grinning marvel as small white leaves sprouted from the vines.

“Wow. Amanda, that’s beautiful. You ever do that before?”

“No.”

Her ropes wrapped tighter around them, driving the point home. The cartoonist aired a loud, somber breath.

“Guess we have a bit of a problem.”

“Guess we do,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do about it,” said Zack. “I spent four years in a bad entanglement.”

Amanda fixed a heavy stare at her naked ring finger. “Five and a half.”

“With everything going on, I’m not sure I can handle another one. I’m not saying it’s inevitable. Just possible. And after all the drama with Theo and Hannah . . .”

The tempic leaves withered. The vines retracted into Amanda’s skin. Zack checked her grim expression.

“I just pissed you off again, didn’t I?”

She shook her head. “No. I understand your hesitation. It’s smart.”

“Then why do I feel so stupid right now?”

“Because you know.”

“Know what?”

“That we don’t have much longer to live.”

Amanda struggled to her feet. Zack watched her as she moved to the shuttered window.

“You know they’re going to get us sooner or later, Zack. Whether it’s the Deps or Rebel or Esis, it’s just a matter of time. And yet here I am, worrying about being a proper widow. Here you are, worrying about the fights we might have a month from now. There is no month from now, Zack. Not for us. Maybe we should just . . . I don’t know . . .”

Zack joined her at the window and gently turned her around. When she realized he was simply drawing her into a hug, she fell into his arms with maniacal relief. Yes, yes, yes. Hugs were good. Hugs were safe.

“I’m sorry, Zack. I’m all over the place. I don’t know what I’m saying right now.”

He caressed her back. “It’s all right. You had a crappy day by anyone’s standards.”

“Make it better. Say something sweet to me.”

“Can it be about your looks?”

“No.”

“Because you’re very, very pretty.”

“I don’t care,” she said, though she held him tighter anyway. She cared a little.

“All right. Give me a moment to think it over.” He rested his chin on her shoulder, amazed that her hair could smell so good after twenty hours of captivity.

“You remember when we were on the balcony—”

“Oh God, Zack.”

“No, no. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the moments before, when you and I were cracking each other up with silly wordplay. I said I was antaganostic. You called yourself a tempis fugitive.”

She bloomed a wobbly smile. “I remember.”

“Yeah, well, that’s when I started to get nervous, because there aren’t a lot of people who can crack bad puns in Latin, or go joke for joke with me like you did. I knew from the start that you were strong and smart and very, very pretty, but nobody told me you were funny.”

The widow’s lips curled in a wavering smile. Zack pulled back to look at her.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen with us, Amanda. I just know that women like you are jackpots to guys like me. You don’t think short term with jackpots. You don’t screw them on the couch when they’re feeling vulnerable. I’ll wait as long as it takes for us to get our shit together. I don’t want to go the way of Hannah and Theo. We do this right or we don’t do it at all.”

Amanda held him so fiercely, she feared she’d break his ribs all over again. When she first met Zack, she had no idea that he was a rigid perfectionist, an uptight moralist, a minder, a mender. No wonder it felt so good to hug him. They were practically twins.

She ran a gentle hand down his cheek. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I won’t.”

“I wasn’t saying it to—”

“I know. I’m just thinking ahead. Wherever we end up running, whether it’s Brooklyn or Canada or God knows where, the six of us are going to rest and heal. And then once we get our act together, you and I are going to slip away for an evening. I don’t care if it has to be the second room of our criminal hideout, we’re going on a date. Some things have to be done the normal way. Even for people like us.”

His responding smile was warm enough to melt her. Amanda embraced him again, speaking stern but trembling words over his shoulder.

“Just don’t die on me, Zack. Don’t you dare die on me.”

He pressed her back and let out a glum sigh. “I can only promise to try.”

“Well, if you ever need more incentive, you think about our third date. I’m not Catholic about everything.”

Amanda covered his loud laugh, and then tensely bid him good night. She would have loved to rest with him down here on the couch, but the temptation to do something—

(do not entwine)

—would mess up their wonderful new plan.

She scrambled upstairs in dizzy haste, then conducted a stealthy check on the others. Theo and Mia were visible in their rooms. David and Hannah were tucked away behind closed doors. Amanda stowed her concerns, then climbed into bed with Mia.

As her eyelids fluttered with teeming fatigue, the widow’s mind shot like fireworks into the many branching futures. She pondered all the obstacles between her and a happy life, counting her issues like sheep.

Just as she began to drift off, the dangling wires of her memory connected and Esis breached her thoughts once again.

Do not entwine with the funny artist.

Amanda’s eyes sprang open in hot alarm. She stayed awake and disturbed for hours.

—

At the jagged tail end of his twenty-hour slumber, Theo fell into a dream that by now had become painfully familiar. He existed as a disembodied spirit, a formless being drifting slowly through a silent gray void. A bright white wall stretched endlessly in front of him like a vertical tundra, radiating a bitter coldness that chilled him to the core.

Theo dreaded coming here, but this was his job now. There was something he needed to find on this wall. He was the only one who could do it.

He kept moving without any idea of direction. Up, down, left, right. It all looked the same. It was only when he moved toward the wall that he could make out the infinite beads of light that comprised its surface. Each one was burning agony on his thoughts, like a magnified sunbeam. He kept his distance and never stopped moving. He had so much area to cover. Too much. Whenever he thought about it, an arch panic overtook him.
I can’t do it, Peter. The wall’s too big. The string’s too thin. I’ll never find it. I don’t even think it ex
ists.

And yet he kept traveling, searching the wall for the one little strand that meant everything to everyone. The only thing worse than being in this cold and dreary hell was leaving it, since he knew he’d have to face his companions and tell them once again that he failed.

Though they always thanked him for trying and assured him that tomorrow would be a better day, Theo could see the heartbreak behind their expressions. They knew as well as he did that there were only so many tomorrows left. While he flittered and flailed on the other side of the wall, his friends were merely waiting. Waiting for the sky to fall again.

—

He jerked awake on the futon, his chest moist with sweat. He did a double take at the clock when it told him that it was 2:12 in the morning. Theo had slept nearly a full day in this dingy little office. Even his coma didn’t last that long.

He relieved himself in the bathroom, gargled a shot of mouthwash, then lumbered down the stairs. The smell of sizzling bacon made his mouth water. He’d barely had a bite to eat since Nemeth.

The moment Hannah saw him, she dropped her spatula in the frying pan and hugged him.

“Thank God. I was starting to get worried. How you feeling?”

“Like Rip van Winkle.” He saw Zack and Mia at the table. “You’re having breakfast at two
A.M.
?”

“We did some heavy sleeping ourselves,” Zack said.

The cartoonist seemed awfully chipper for a man on vampire time. Mia, by contrast, looked thoroughly morose. She aimed a dull gaze at her lap through her tangle of bangs.

Hannah pushed him to the table. “Sit. I’m making waffles too.”

Theo studied her carefully as she returned to the stove. He knew her well enough to recognize the “everything’s fine” voice she used when she was bottling her anger at someone. He could practically hear the creak of the crossbow string. Mercifully, the quarrel didn’t seem to be aimed at him.

He took a drowsy gander at the map book in Zack’s hands. “We leaving today?”

“I don’t know. Depends on David.”

“Well, you know what he’ll say.”

“I’m talking about his health, not his preferences. If Amanda says he’s not ready, we’re staying.”

Theo gazed out the window at the lumic lamppost. “She’ll be waiting for us in New York.”

“Who, Melissa?”

“Yeah. She knows exactly who we’re going to see.”

“Peter’s a dozen steps ahead of the Deps,” Zack replied. “He knew just where your truck would be, how many agents were guarding you. I don’t think those people are a problem for him.”

“You think Peter’s an augur too?” Hannah asked.

Zack shook his head. “No. I’m guessing he’s more like Mia. The two of them have some kind of portal juju going on.”

Mia’s expression grew darker. She’d received two new messages from her future self earlier, neither of which offered any practical value. One of them was cruel enough to make her cry. If Peter shared her affliction, she pitied him.

Theo jerked a lazy shrug. “I’m still not sure what to think of the guy, to be perfectly honest. I just hope—”

A sudden stabbing jolt caused him to wince and press his temple. Hannah rushed to his side.

“Theo!”

“I’m all right,” he assured her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. If your problem’s coming back—”

“It’s just a headache. I’m fine.”

Zack eyed him warily. “Have you had any premonitions since they drugged you?”

“Not a one,” Theo said, hoping that was true. The great white wall still loomed large in his thoughts.

Mia’s stomach gurgled with stress as she recalled the first vague note she’d received from her elder self today.

Don’t get too comfortable. You’re not out of the storm.

—

Amanda sat quietly on the guest bed, tending David’s wound with edgy distraction. Though the widow had steeled herself with five deep breaths before knocking on David’s door, she was pleasantly surprised to find him genial. His pain was just a fraction of yesterday’s. The stumps of his fingers showed no signs of infection. Amanda thanked God for the double mercy. She couldn’t have handled a second attack of scorn. Not in her state.

David studied Amanda warily as she unwrapped a new roll of bandages. “How’s Mia?”

“She’s all right. Worried about you.”

He sighed with lament. “The way I acted, I don’t blame her. I’ve never experienced pain like that before. It was . . . enlightening.”

Amanda eyed him strangely. “Enlightening?”

“Ever since it happened, I’ve been thinking about the people of the past, the way they accepted agony as just another part of their lives. With all our advancements in technology and medicine, I’m wondering if perhaps we lost something as a species. A certain fortitude.”

“No one can accuse you of weakness, David. You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”

“Well, I appreciate you saying that.” He cracked a dour smirk. “If Nietzsche’s right about the things that don’t kill us, then Zack’s really going to be afraid of me soon.”