The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (33 page)

My legs move, stiff,
as I cross the street, Horatia’s hat in my fist. The bitter
jealousy builds and builds until I get close enough to see the
man’s face. I drop the hat.

He’s not a secret
Tia’s hidden from me. He’s a secret we share. His face might be
thinner than it ever was and his hair might be shorter and look
black against the pale morning, but I’d recognise him anywhere. I
saw his face every day for three years—it’s burned into my memory,
heightened by my grief and confusion and resentment.

My brother.

John.

“God.
” When his brown eyes meet mine
I stagger forward and into his arms. I might want to punch him for
leaving us, but he’s family and I love him unconditionally. The
three of us huddle together on the street corner and for a minute
it’s like no one can touch us, like nothing bad has ever happened.
Like I never crossed the fence, like Tia never left me, like John
never made us think he was dead. It’s like we’re back
home.

John’s scent of sweat
and spice drags up memories of nights spent in our living room in
Forgotten London listening to his dramatic brand of storytelling. I
breathe it in, and in, and in, and my heart swells. I’ve missed
him, missed him holding us together, missed him making us laugh
with his embellished tales, missed the comfort and protection of
having an older brother.

We
detangle so John can look at us both closely. “Your hair’s longer,”
he says to me. “And
you
”—he gives Tia a grin—“When did you grow up?”

Tia gives him a dirty
glare in response. The dark expression transforms her into a feral
animal.

“Where have you been?” I ask, speaking the words because
Horatia won’t. “Why did you drive off and leave us? Why didn’t you
tell us you were
alive
? Why haven’t you been here where we needed you?”

“How could you leave
us?” The quietest whisper but it has my heart hammering. My eyes
snap to Tia.

John squeezes my
shoulder but I shrug his hand off. My temper has a hold of me
now.

“Not here,” he says.
He begins to walk, like he knows we’ll follow. We do.

07:49. 01.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Leeds.

John shares a
hole-in-the-wall bookshop with a quiet brunette girl—the girl Kari
was scowling at when we first landed in Leeds. Her name is Cat and
she doesn’t say anything more than a minute of small talk, though
when John starts talking I’m pretty sure she’s listening. I don’t
think it’s shyness that keeps her quiet, but a careful
watchfulness. I don’t know what to make of her.

John strips off his
dusty brown coat, throwing it over a packed bookshelf. He stuffs
his hands into his jean pockets, shoulders hunched. Noticing where
my attention is, he says, “You can trust Cat. She’s from Forgotten
London, too.”

“What zone?” I
ask.

“
Underground.” Her tone says she’d rather give me blood than
answers.

“Oh.” I drop my gaze to the scuffed floorboards, flinching
away from the flood of thought and emotion Underground London Zone
brings to the surface. I won’t think about what might have happened
to me and Tia while we were there. I won’t think about Marrin.
I
won’t
. “You
didn’t evacuate with the Guardians,” I remark.

“No.” Cat turns her
back on us and plucks a book with a ripped spine from a shelf. She
hoists herself onto a wooden stool and pretends to read. I’m not
stupid enough to think she’s really reading; she just wants us to
think that so she can learn our secrets. Cat isn’t offering up her
own secrets so I’m going to be careful about mine.

“Where’ve you been?” I
ask John, squinting against a flare of light. The sun’s up now. It
makes the hundreds of books crammed into this cardboard box of a
shop gleam a gradient of amber, red, and pink.

Tia leans against a
solid bookshelf, her arms crossed and her attention squarely on
John. I expect her to say something but she doesn’t. I suppose she
doesn’t need to—her lowered eyebrows and puckered lips are enough
to suggest fiery words and insults.

“Sit down,” John says.
“This’ll take a while.”

“I’ll stand.”

His eyes turn pleading
but he doesn’t argue. He sinks into a tan leather arm chair and
looks up at us. “I’ve been investigating the President.” When I
open my mouth he holds up a hand. My jaw snaps shut. “You know that
envelope? The one my brother gave me before he died?”

“Yeah. What about
it?”

“It said to open it in
2040. I did.”

“And what was in it?”
The question comes out harsh. Getting answers from John is like
getting mercy from Officials and I don’t have enough patience to
deal with it right now. I just want the truth—and all of it.

“A letter and a
purpose. You could read it yourself if I hadn’t burned it. The gist
of it is this: the President is responsible for all the shit of our
world and he needs to be stopped before he destroys what’s left of
us.”

“That’s the
Guardians’
purpose. If you wanted to stop the President, you
would have joined them. Don’t try and tell me you didn’t know they
existed.”

“I did,” he admits.
“But I never wanted to join them. I didn’t have that strong an
opinion about the President until the letter. Figured the world was
bad enough without adding secret movements and rebellions to my
life. Plus, I was a coward. Still am, actually, but I’m pretending
to be brave.”

John leans forward,
his elbows on his knees, ragged and pale. He looks at Horatia with
worried eyes. “Why is he watching you like you’re going to break?
Like one false move will shatter you?”

“You were gone,” I
answer for her. Bile hits the back of my throat along with
bitterness and fury. “You left us and—Tia doesn’t speak now. I’m
not saying it’s your fault but you should have been with us.”

He scrubs a hand over
his face. “I didn’t choose to leave—the Officials chose that when
they tried to kill me. Lucky I had the envelope, or I’d really be
dead.” He peers up at Tia with sad eyes. “I’m sorry.”

My
anger is fading now. I don’t feel like punching my brother when I
look at him. “What do you mean you’d be dead without the envelope?
What the
hell
was
in it?”

“A
letter that had been passed down for generations. It was from my
great great grandfather. Maybe another great, I don’t know. He gave
me a drug to fake being dead for a day, a clip that could unlock
any door, and a few other things. But they came with instructions.
At the top of the list was that I was under no circumstances to
tell you or Horatia
anything
until you reached this town. Said you needed to
go it alone.”

“Why?” I pick at the
crumbling spine of a history book. On a second thought I pocket the
small volume. It won’t hurt to learn some of our history,
especially the royalty I’m related to.

“Don’t know. The
instructions don’t come with reasons. I’m just meant to follow
them—and if I do everything right, I’ll be able to keep it all
intact. The world. The timeline.” He pauses, and then picks up
another train of thought. “One of the instructions was to come for
you when F.L. was Falling. Whoever wrote them, they know things
nobody else does. It’s like they see everything, know everything.
Can’t fight with something like that. I wasn’t sure I’d even follow
the instructions until that day—but after that, how could I not?
They’d saved your lives.”

“And these
instructions … they told you to leave us at the Guardian checkpoint
without an explanation or a goodbye?” My fingers have curled into
fists. I unfurl them and pinch the inside of my wrist. It helps,
but it shouldn’t.

Seeing something in my
expression, John comes over to me, and it’s all too much. When he
hugs me I don’t even think about pushing him away. I rest my cheek
against the soft wool of his jumper and let myself hope that he’ll
stay this time.

“The instructions
saved your life once. How do I know they won’t again? How can I not
follow every single one of them if it means keeping my family
alive?”

“So
you did all this for me?” My voice is strangled. “How does that
even make sense? I needed you, John.
I
needed you.
I didn’t know—I
don’t
know—what to do. I
need my brother.” I let go of him, trembling and unable to contain
it. Too late I realise I’ve spilled all my fears and thoughts for
Cat to hear.

John doesn’t let me
go. He grips my shoulder—his hold too heavy—and only then do I
realise he’s struggling to hold himself together too. “Don’t think
I didn’t need you, too. I’d never been by myself, and then all of a
sudden I had to do everything alone. Without Thalia, you, Tia, Wes.
I didn’t know how to do that,” he says. “But I had to.”

He slumps back to the
chair and sinks into it. He says, “The President is a time
traveller. He goes between this year and seven others—in the past.
He’s not just ending this world with the Strains and Officials.
He’s putting everyone in the past in danger. Every time he goes
back, he goes a week earlier, a month earlier, a year earlier. He’s
doing fine now, but eventually he’s gonna change something, and
something big. Something that should never have happened. The
instructions will help me stop it, when I find him. That’s why I
keep leaving. I’m trying to find out everything about the
President—nobody knows who he is, not really. If I can find out who
he is …”

I don’t have any
words. If I wasn’t for Bran I wouldn’t believe what John’s saying.
I’d argue, call him mad. Instead, I listen.

John sits up
straighter, leans towards us. His gaze begs us to understand, to
forgive him. “He came out of nowhere five years before the flares
struck. A dozen dead politicians meant he could rise to a high
position within two years. In five years, he was the President of
States—without anyone voting for him to be there, without anyone
knowing who he really was. Everyone was blackmailed and threatened,
I reckon. There were protests and investigations into his real
identity at the time but those were all abandoned when the flares
and The Sixteen Strains struck. He’s been in power ever since.”

“That’s why you were
researching the Strains,” I say.

“I was doing what the
instructions told me, gathering everything that was available.
Since then I’ve been using … different methods to get
information.”

“Like what?” I try to
weigh Tia’s reaction but her eyes are closed, her face contorted
with pain. It takes a long moment before I realise why—all this
talk of the President is bringing his son to the front of her mind.
Marrin. I’d forgotten he was the President’s son.

“Bribery,” John
answers. “Manipulation. Torture occasionally.”

“Torture?” I frown.
“You?”

He tugs at his hair.
“I’ve had to learn things you wouldn’t believe. Torture’s a lot
like a bar fight. Your opponent just doesn’t hit back.”

“Right.”

“Moving on.” John
wipes his expression clean. “I’ve been collecting every scrap of
information I can, trying to find the identity of the President and
trace him back to his real time.”

“And then what? Time
travel? Go back and kill him as a baby?”

“Essentially.”

I
take another book from the shelf beside me—
A Concise History of North America
—just for the chance to break eye contact. He’s willing me to
understand, to forgive him for leaving, but I’m not there yet.
“That’s crazy,” I say. My belief has run dry. I tuck the book into
my pocket and step closer to my sister. “You alright?” I
murmur.

She smiles sadly. I’m
pretty sure that’s a no, but she’s coping. I put an arm around her
shoulder as another book catches my eye.

It has a purple spine
with turquoise vines on it. It’s the missing title, the mystery,
that draws me in. I edge it out with my free hand, acknowledging
that I should stop collecting books, that they’ll weigh me down—but
there’s something about the oldness, the smell, and the feel of
having a book in my hand that’s impossible to resist. I’d take them
all if I could. Or just move in here.

Victoriana
is inked in a sloping
hand on the cover amidst a curling pattern of tendrils and flowers,
branches and thorns. If it’s possible to love a book, I’ve fallen
deep and fast.
Mine
, my heart sings. I sit the book with the others in the
pocket of my new coat. It weighs down the thick wool but I don’t
care. I’m allowing myself to be impulsive for this one thing. These
three things.

“I got Wes out,” John
blurts. His expression is one of madness, but genuine madness.
Honest.

Tia gasps.

I
shake my head. “
What?
”

“I got Wes out,” John
repeats. “I couldn’t—I was too late—I got him out for Thalia. He’s
in the safe zone in Plymouth.”

“Is she—?”

There’s no other word to describe John than
crushed
. “She’s gone.
For good.”

He looks so broken
that I forget my bitterness. I kneel at the foot of his chair and
grab his hand in both of mine. His eyes shine with emotion. Tia
stands behind his chair and rests a hand on his shoulder. In the
end it doesn’t matter how much we hurt each other. Family will
always be family.

***

Branwell

04:23. 02.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Leeds.