The Marked (8 page)

I sighed. “Jack’s gone, Grandma. I told you that a month ago.”

She shook her head, and the car swerved a few inches in either direction. A bottle of water fell down at my feet from where Grandma had propped it between the seats. Someday, I promised myself, I would have a car with actual cup holders. “That can’t be right. I could have sworn I saw you with him the other day.”

“Maybe it was someone who looked like Jack,” I said. “Hector’s got the same color hair.” Sometimes Grandma would imagine things and then talk to me about them as if they were real. I chalked it up to old age.

Grandma sighed. “You’re probably right. It’s too bad he’s gone. You seemed like such good friends.”

“I miss him,” I admitted. “But it’s for the best. Jack always seemed to be getting into trouble at Delcroix.”

“Nothing wrong with a little trouble.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, you’d be thrilled if I got detention.”

“If it were for something you believed in—yes.” Grandma sat up straighter so she could see over the steering wheel as she turned in to our driveway. “I don’t care what kind of grades they give you at Delcroix. I wanted you to go there so you’d have the chance to learn how to use your gifts, and be confident enough to fight for what you believe in.”

“I know, Grandma,” I said. This was a speech she had given me a hundred times before. Whether it was standing up to a bully on the playground or arguing with a teacher at school, Grandma always said, some things were worth fighting for. I’d heard that speech since I was a kid, though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what Grandma had ever had to fight about.

“You know that if anything does happen with Jack, or up at that school, you can always tell me about it.”

I glanced over at her, caught off guard by her serious tone. She stared at the house, eyes watering, but before I could ask what she meant, she had tucked her keys into her purse, once again her usual absentminded self.

“And if you have sex with that boy,” she said, as she opened the car door, “I’ll kill him myself.”

My eyes flew open. “Jeez, Grandma, I’m not going to have sex with Cam just because we’re going to a party!”

She just smiled a little smile and heaved herself out of the car. “Glad to hear it. Now, would you mind putting in a load of laundry? I’m completely out of clean underwear.”

TO SAY
that I obsessed over Valentine’s Day would be an understatement. First, there was the matter of giving a present. What if I did something elaborate and Cam handed me a card? Then again, what if he did something special and I gave him a bar of chocolate?

I ended up buying him a new Mariners hat. We always joked about how gross our baseball hats were because we worked out in them. So I guess that showed how well I knew him. Maybe not as romantic as a drawing pad, but it would have to do.

Then there was the party—and Anna. It was easy enough to avoid her and her suspicious stares when I was at school, but I could hardly do the same when we were at her house. I would have no excuse not to talk to her. And even if it sounded ridiculous, I wasn’t entirely sure she
wouldn’t
arrange for some disaster to befall me during the party. Yes, I was paranoid. Delcroix Academy did that to you.

February fourteenth brought a steady, cold rain. I spent an extra half hour that morning putting on makeup and trying on clothes, thoroughly annoying Catherine. I ended up borrowing Esther’s cashmere sweater, even though I was terrified I’d spill something on it and have to babysit for the rest of my life to replace it, and I took a pair of ballet flats from Allie’s roommate Heather, who was the only one on the floor with feet as big as mine.

I met Cam on the stairs on the way to breakfast. Or I guess I should say he was standing on the first-floor landing, one hand on the old wooden banister, waiting for me. He handed me a dozen red roses and a handwritten note on a piece of white paper. I opened the note first. It said,
I’m yours. Love, Cam.
I clutched the roses to my chest and stared with delight at the confident block letters.

“Do you like the roses?” he asked.

I couldn’t speak, so I grinned and nodded stupidly as I handed him the hat, which I’d tucked into a shiny gift bag and tied at the top with a white ribbon. After writing half a dozen notes and consigning them all to the trash, I’d given up and simply written his name on the bag.

Cam tore the package open and pulled out the hat. “Hey, exactly what I needed!” He smiled and kissed me, right there in the stairwell.

I wasn’t nervous after that.

After dinner, Molly, Claire, Trevor, and I piled into the old Explorer Cam had borrowed from one of the seniors. It had beaded seat covers and the faint odor of wet dog. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Molly smiled and wished me happy Valentine’s Day, and Claire was downright chatty. Everyone from the Program seemed to breathe easier when there weren’t non-Program students around. The strain of keeping the secret affected us all, even if we didn’t talk about it.

Anna lived almost an hour from Delcroix, so we had a lot of time in the car. Unlike Grandma, Cam actually paid attention to traffic signals and drove somewhere near the speed limit. He and Trevor talked most of the way down about some simulation thing they were doing the next week that involved battling another group of Program students. They discussed strategies, how to use the talents of the people in their group, and what their weaknesses were.

I guessed it was Watcher training. Or maybe those “field exercises” Barrett had told me about. I still had a hard time imagining Cam—my Cam—as a full-fledged Watcher. So I tried not to listen.

Anna lived in a suburb outside Seattle. There were lots of hills and huge houses that looked like mansions, all right next to each other, each with matching landscapes of neatly trimmed bushes and flower beds around the front. A few of them still had their Christmas lights up.

Anna and her mom met us at the front door. Anna’s mom was small, like Anna, with a thin, muscular build. She had the same heart-shaped face as Anna, but there was nothing Bambi-like about Mrs. Peterson. Her movements had a military precision to them, and her face had serious lines around the mouth and eyes. We exchanged a few pleasantries, during which I had the impression she was analyzing me down to my DNA. I was immensely relieved when she moved on to scrutinizing the others.

Cam was his usual charming self, and Anna’s mom clearly loved him. She wasn’t a huggy sort of person, but she gave him a warm smile, which is more than she gave the rest of us. I suppose she must have gotten to know him when he and Anna went out. After talking to each one of us, she told us she’d promised Anna she would stay in her office during the party, and headed up the stairs.

The mood changed as soon as she left. Anna shuddered dramatically. “She’s so embarrassing.”

“What do you mean? I like your mom,” Cam said.

“Whatever.” Anna adjusted a bowl of salsa on an end table. “You’re the first ones to arrive. I was just finishing getting the house ready.”

“Anything we can do to help?” Cam asked.

“No, don’t worry about it. You can have a seat. There’s just some soda in the garage that needs to go in the fridge. I’ll grab it.” She turned toward the kitchen and almost knocked into me. “Oh, Dancia. I didn’t see you there.” She barely looked at me before turning back to Cam and fluttering her lashes. “You know, if Dancia could grab the soda you could help me pick out some music.”

“You don’t mind, do you, Dancia?” asked Cam. He was already hungrily eyeing the stereo.

Don’t let her get to you, I told myself. It’s too early to lose it.

“Of course not,” I said pleasantly. “I’d love to help.”

“Great. Now, Anna, I’ll pick music, but only if you let me play Seattle bands,” Cam said with a grin. The two of them headed toward a cabinet in the back of the room.

“I’ll show you how to get into the garage,” Molly offered.

“Thanks.” I gritted my teeth and followed her through the kitchen into the three-car garage. Molly gave me a pitying smile as we grabbed cases of soda. “Anna and Cam have the same taste in music. No one else quite gets it.”

“I listen to those bands all the time,” I said with a dismissive flick of my wrist.

The truth was that Cam and I hung out in the woods, ran together, studied, held hands, and kissed. But we never listened to music.

Molly raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You do? Which bands do you like best?”

“Grass,” I said, thinking of the CD Cam had given to me a few weeks ago. I had stopped listening after the first two songs. They made my head hurt.

We carried our load back to the kitchen, which was easily the size of my entire house. Polished stone countertops encircled the room; an island with a sink and stove was in the center. Molly pulled open the door of an enormous stainless-steel fridge…which was completely full of soda.

For a moment, we stared at the packed shelves in awkward silence. Molly slid her hands deep into her pockets.

“I guess Anna forgot that she’d already brought in the soda,” I said finally.

“Must have,” Molly agreed.

I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

As the night progressed, the music got louder, and the house became packed with all the Program students. I didn’t want to follow Cam around like a puppy, so I talked to some of the sophomores and the seniors I knew from hanging out with Barrett. Cam came by a few times, but I waved him off. Everyone wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t easy dating the most popular guy in the school.

I was sitting with Esteban when Barrett arrived. Esteban was a Somatic who was impervious to outside temperature. He wore T-shirts and shorts all winter long, even when it snowed. He also had a tendency to bob his head up and down and hum to himself when he was walking through the halls at school. I assumed that this was because he was always thinking deep thoughts. He read a lot of philosophy and loved to talk about it. I enjoyed the conversations, though I was never entirely sure how to respond when he told me something I’d said was, “deep, man, really deep.”

After greeting Esteban, Barrett gave me a bear hug. “Hey, what’s goin’ on, D.? How’s my best girl?” Then he looked around with an expression of mock guilt. “Oops, I better not say that too loud. I don’t want Mr. Sanders to think I’m poaching.”

I whacked him on the sleeve with a grin, thrilled to see him. I hadn’t thought Barrett would come, given his feelings about Cam and his crew, but I guessed the party was big enough to transcend such things. “Shut up, you idiot. Cam knows he has nothing to worry about.”

He winced theatrically. “Oh, that hurts. Your boy could work me over, is that what you’re saying?”

I wasn’t entirely sure who
would
win in a fight between Barrett and Cam. Cam was a serious warrior. I’d seen him and Trevor spar, and it was like watching two kung fu masters. Barrett, on the other hand, resembled an out-of-shape monk. I could hardly imagine him raising a finger to defend himself.

Still, Barrett could throw fire thirty feet across a room. That gave him a serious advantage.

“You’d be too lazy to fight back,” I said. “You’d have to pacify him with your stunning good looks.”

Barrett flung his long hair back over one shoulder and struck a pose. “Do you think it would work?” He was easily a head taller than anyone else in the room, and with Anna’s soft party lighting, his gangly profile threw a huge shadow on the wall behind him.

“I’d go with the fire thing, myself,” Esteban said.

“Good plan.” Barrett peered around the room. “So, besides the crappy music, how’s the party?”

I hid a smile. “Fine.”

“Where’s the boyfriend?”

I pointed to the back of the room. “Over by the music.”

“Waiting for you?”

“No.”

Barrett nodded decisively. “I had a feeling you might need rescuing.” He grabbed my hand and started leading me toward the door.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far. Just out front.”

I hesitated. Cam didn’t approve of Barrett generally, and never seemed pleased when I hung out in the Senior Corner with Tara and Lucas and the others.

“Come on, just for a few minutes.” Barrett put his hands over his ears and feigned being in pain. “Give your ears a break.”

The music was awfully loud. And it wasn’t as if Cam’s not liking Barrett meant I couldn’t be friends with him.

I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the front door and followed him outside.

THE COOL
air bathed my cheeks as I left the house. I hadn’t realized how hot it had gotten in there. As we walked down Anna’s long driveway, the music faded to a dull buzz, and I heard the quiet strains of a different song coming from a hulking SUV parked just down the street. Lucas and Cyrus were sitting on the curb beside the car, and Sarabelle and Elliot—a couple I’d only met a few times—were snuggling in each other’s arms at the back of the truck. Tara sat sideways in the front seat with the door open, her feet dangling toward the curb, a tiny black dog in her lap. She leaned over to adjust the stereo, and I nodded unconsciously as I recognized the tune.

I paused a few feet from the truck. Barrett walked over and put his arm around Tara.

“Hey, D.,” Tara said, greeting me.

“Any food inside?” Cyrus asked.

“Chips and whatnot. Some wrap things,” I replied.

There was a chorus of disapproval. “I thought there’d be food,” Lucas grumbled. “They had chicken wings last year. And pizza. Are you telling me there’s no pizza?”

“I think Anna’s on a diet,” I said. “She doesn’t eat pizza.” There were more groans and a few laughs. I basked in the pleasure of being surrounded by people who disliked Anna as much as I did.

Barrett bobbed his head. “I knew we needed to rescue her, Luke,” he said with a grin. “She was trapped in there.”

“Well, you got her. Can we go now?”

I turned to Barrett. “I thought we were just hanging out. I can’t leave.”

“Come on,” he said in a singsongy voice. “You can’t stay here. The music will rot your brain. Not to mention the company.”

“Barrett!” I looked back toward the house, feeling guiltier by the second. “You guys go without me.”

“There’s a spot nearby where we can get a little privacy,” he said. “Luke’s dog will keep watch for us. You can practice levitating.”

I stuck out my jaw. “I am
not
levitating.”

We’d started arguing about this a couple of weeks earlier. Since I could manipulate gravity, Barrett thought I should be able to make myself fly. I, meanwhile, wanted nothing to do with levitation. I was terrified of heights. And I knew better than anyone that my focus still needed work. If my attention wavered while I was levitating, I’d fall like a rock. This had happened a number of times with objects I had attempted to manipulate. I was not prepared for it to happen to me.

“You can practice on me,” Barrett said. He walked around to the back of the truck and climbed onto the bumper. “I’ll jump off here. Just a few feet off the ground. No one will notice.”

“I’ll drop you if I get distracted,” I warned.

“Don’t get distracted,” he argued. “Focus.”

“Easy for you to say, Zen master. I just started training! You’ve been doing it for years.”

Tara eyed me. “I wouldn’t mind if you dropped Barrett on his butt, D.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know
you’d
like it, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Barrett climbed down, apparently having accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to change my mind. “You’re getting better, D. Last week you moved that chair across the room without blinking.”

“You are not a chair.”

He grabbed a can of soda from the seat beside Tara and popped open the top. “So you’ll try harder. It’s good to raise the stakes.”

“Kids,” Esteban broke in, sotto voce, “sorry to interrupt, but is it just me or is there a menacing gang of thugs headed our way?”

Everyone moved away from the car to get a better look. I strained to see the shapes in the darkness. There were at least eight of them, perhaps more, but it was hard to tell, because every time they got close to a streetlight, a tiny figure would step out of formation and touch the lamppost. Then there would be a fizzing sound, and the light would flare brightly, then go dark.

Without being able to see their faces, it was hard to describe what made these people so frightening, other than the fact that one of them had the power to short-circuit streetlights. It must have been the way they moved—in a phalanx, a stocky guy at the front walking purposefully as they headed toward Anna’s house. They also weren’t talking. That sent the creepy factor up several notches.

“Not just you,” Barrett confirmed. “Definitely menacing.”

“Should we go in the house?” I whispered. Suddenly, I desperately wanted Cam next to me.

Right next to me.

Or, better still, in front of me.

They were just a few houses away now, and I could see that there was a mix of male and female, at least ten altogether, some with long coats, others with vests, all wearing red bandannas in one style or another—around the forehead like a headband for the girls, at the wrist or neck for the boys.

There was enough light from the remaining streetlamps and Anna’s house to illuminate their faces as they got closer. They were all teenagers, I guessed. The guy in front looked a little older, maybe twenty. The others were hard to make out, especially the ones in the back, but they were all grim and silent, and they were staring right at us.

Cam must have heard my prayers. Or maybe, I realized with no small amount of trepidation, he had felt someone using a Level Three Talent. As the phalanx neared, music spilled out of Anna’s house. I turned to see Cam behind me, framed by the light in the doorway.

“Trevor!” he snapped to someone behind him when he saw the gang headed in our direction. “Tell Trevor I need him. Fast.”

Barrett and the others inched back toward Lucas’s car. Without thinking, I moved closer to the house—and Cam. Unfortunately, this left me isolated from the group. Not exactly what you’d want, when facing down a pack of menacing teenagers who were probably packing
something
under those coats and vests. Still, when Barrett motioned to me to move back in their direction, I shook my head helplessly. My legs seemed to have frozen.

Cam paused next to me as he strode toward the street.

“You should go back to the house, Dancia,” he said in a low voice.

His softly spoken command gave me a thrill of pleasure even as it hardened my resolve to stay put. If something was going down, I wasn’t going to let Cam deal with it by himself. I had a strong suspicion Barrett and the others would be less than helpful in a crisis.

Esteban elbowed Lucas. “I’m thinking this party officially sucks.”

“What do they want?” I heard Tara whisper.

“I’m sure they want to be friends,” Barrett said.

Someone snickered. I was too horrified to do anything but stare, wide-eyed, at the approaching nightmare.

Cam paused at the edge of the driveway. The gang stopped in front of him.

“Nice night, isn’t it?” Cam said evenly.

“Very nice,” the leader of the gang agreed. He jerked his head to the side in an apparent signal to his troops, and they fanned out in a wider formation.

“What do you want?” Cam asked.

“I thought I’d introduce myself,” the leader said mildly. He had broad shoulders and a thick chest. His round face might have been sweet if it hadn’t been for the fact that he radiated a quiet kind of fury just under the surface. He wore a leather bomber jacket; his bandanna was tied around his neck, train-robber style. “The name is Thaddeus.”

“Nice to meet you, Thaddeus. Now, there’s a party going on here. I think it’s best you leave.” Cam crossed his arms over his chest.

“So unfriendly,” Thaddeus said reproachfully. “You haven’t given me a chance to deliver my message.”

“What message?”

“Your Watchers have been giving my people a hard time lately. We’d like for it to stop.”

I took an involuntary step back. They knew about the Watchers?

“I’m afraid I can’t do that for you,” Cam said, seemingly unfazed by Thaddeus’s demand. “There was a little disturbance up at the school the other day. We tend to take these things seriously.”

“That’s too bad. I had hoped we might be able to get along.”

Cam leaned back on his heels. “It’s up to you. Leave now, and we can.”

Thaddeus shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.” He turned as if to leave, but took only one step before he stopped. “Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Cam asked.

“A message. For your boss.”

That was when Thaddeus did exactly what I’d feared. He reached inside the pocket of his leather coat and pulled something out. I had just opened my mouth to scream when I realized it was a brick, not a gun or dagger. Deliberately, he turned toward Lucas’s car and hurled the brick at its front window. The sound of shattering glass sent me ducking for cover, my head in my hands. A second later, I looked up just in time to see Trevor running down the driveway toward Cam, with Sam, Kari, and Geneva behind him. Meanwhile, Thaddeus was headed right for Cam.

Meeting the gang leader’s charge, Cam launched himself at Thaddeus with a series of blindingly fast movements. I stared in amazement. Cam was into martial arts, but I was unprepared to see him enter the fight with arms and legs flying—he even went from a full backflip to a spinning kick. The display seemed to stun Thaddeus, allowing Cam to get in a satisfying kick to the face. Thaddeus might have been able to hurl bricks forty feet through car windows, but Cam moved twice as fast. When Thaddeus finally did come out swinging, Cam ducked swiftly to avoid a series of punches, then got in an uppercut before dancing out of reach.

It took only those few seconds for the rest of the group to engage themselves in battle. Trevor faced off against a girl with long brown hair in a braid, her bandanna tied around her forehead. She crouched down, hands loosely guarding her face. He swung at her with a clenched fist, but she spun around him like a tiny cyclone, easily avoiding his punches, then bringing alternating feet under his chin with a staccato motion that sent him reeling. He paused for only a moment before coming back toward her with his hands flying.

Kari sparred with a snarling girl dressed all in black, who seemed to dance as she fought. She reminded me of a ballerina, except that every leap ended with an openhanded strike to the face or jab with an elbow. Geneva and a boy who must have shared her talent for acrobatics turned somersaults in the air and swung at each other while they were ten feet off the ground. A moment later, they would land on the ground like cats, lightly springing on the balls of their feet before launching themselves back into the air.

Barrett and his friends didn’t join the fight, despite the fact that there were five of them, and that Cam, Trevor, Kari, Sam, and Geneva were outnumbered two to one. The seniors ducked behind the car and watched. Lucas and Esteban had bemused expressions on their faces, while Tara kept shaking her head and wincing.

But it was Barrett whose behavior I couldn’t understand.

He stood beside the curb, lips pressed together tightly, hair pushed back, intently assessing the situation. For once, he wasn’t smiling or laughing. In fact, he wore an expression I’d never seen on him before. He crossed his arms over his chest, a mixture of frustration and anger written in his eyes. If I didn’t know him, I would have found him distinctly intimidating.

Yet he didn’t do anything.

For all his speed, Cam couldn’t hold out against Thaddeus’s fists forever, and he finally took a direct blow to the face. When he struck back with a blind punch, Thaddeus grabbed his arm and twisted him around, then landed three quick strikes in a row to Cam’s lower back. Cam grunted and fell back a few paces.

I whipped around to face Barrett. “Do something!” I cried. “Help him!”

“They created this,” Barrett said. “It’s their fight now.”

“What?”

“It was only a matter of time.” He shook his head, mouth tight, dark eyes flashing.

I could hardly process what he was saying. Barrett was standing there watching Cam get beat up because he thought Cam and the others had picked this fight? No way. If your team was threatened, you helped. Even if the people in trouble weren’t Barrett’s friends, we had all taken an oath of loyalty to the Program. As far as I was concerned, this was an attack on the Program. I didn’t know why, or who the gang of bandanna-wearing thugs were, but they were after us.

And they were winning.

I stepped forward a few paces.

“Don’t do it,” Barrett warned. “You’ll get hurt. Let the police handle it.”

“But—”

“What are you going to do? Let them use you as a punching bag? You honestly think that’s going to help?”

I wanted to argue, but Barrett was right. I fought like a six-year-old girl. When I’d practiced on a bag in my self-defense class, I had been lucky to escape the bag’s knocking
me
over. If I took on someone who knew what the heck they were doing, I’d have been a bloody lump in a matter of minutes.

“There are other ways to fight,” I said.

I faced Thaddeus and deliberately tuned out the rest of the fighting. I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I focused my mind in anticipation of figuring it out.

“Stop, Dancia,” Barrett’s voice snapped over my shoulder. “You aren’t ready.”

“But—”

“No.”

I’d never heard him sound like that, with no room in his voice for compromise or discussion.

“I want to help.”