Changeling (26 page)

The bag revealed itself in the far corner, a black satchel seeming better suited for a blackmail payday than medical supplies. I unzipped and sorted through the array of bandages, syringes, medicine bottles, tape, and instruments. Perfect. Shouldering the bag, I quick-stepped it back down the hallway. Past a dingy bathroom and one bedroom, to the only other room in the small house.

Kinsey was laid out on the bed with his feet propped up on a pillow. Noah hovered by his chest, one hand still applying pressure to the wound. Jimmy and King stood by the foot of the bed, tense. Worried. A nice feat for a man with no face.

“The bullet didn’t go clean through,” Noah said.

“He needs a hospital,” I replied.

“No.”

“He could die.”

The pain in his glare told me he knew that without me saying it. He was willing to risk Kinsey’s life over not getting caught. From what I knew about the family in front of me, it had been Kinsey’s choice. Maybe whispered to Noah in the back of the wagon, maybe decided on before they met me this morning. Either way, nothing got in the way of getting Aaron back safely. Not even their father’s death.

King shimmered, his entire body fading out like a camera gone out of focus. I blinked, sure it was an illusion. He cleared, and had taken on the appearance of Miguel Ortega.

“Ortega had emergency medical training,” King said. His
voice was no longer Ortega’s, but some strangled, scratchy sound somehow formed into words. Like a synthesizer wheezing out its last few chords. He no longer possessed Ortega; he couldn’t pull off the complete show, just a glamour. I could only imagine where the poor officer’s remains ended up, but did not want to ponder that right now. All things in their proper time.

“Can you remove a bullet?” I asked. “If it stays in, he could get an infection.”

King shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You have to try,” Jimmy said.

“Jimmy, get rid of that car for me,” Noah said. “We’ll take care of Dad.”

“But—”

“Please, it can’t sit out there and draw attention. Find a hiding place a few blocks from here. Make sure you can’t see it from the street.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, poised to argue again, but didn’t. I sympathized with his desire to stay and make sure everything went okay with—

“Dahlia, can you go with him?” Noah asked.

I blinked, stunned. He wanted me to leave. I caught his gaze, free of anger or annoyance, and understood. He didn’t want Jimmy there to witness the guerilla surgery, and he didn’t want Jimmy running around alone. Noah and King could handle the medical side of things.

“We’ll take care of it,” I said.

He tried to smile, but couldn’t seem to manage it. “Thanks.”

“We’ll be careful,” I said before he could.

With a confident smile, I grabbed Jimmy’s wrist and tugged him out of the bedroom. He let himself be led and that surprised me. I expected more resistance, but he seemed resigned to following orders given by his older brothers. In that way, we were very much the same. I allowed Teresa and Ethan and the others to dictate my actions and control my world, because they were older. They knew more about being heroes and living with superpowers and, in those things, I didn’t mind being led.

But this was new territory, and I was stuck in a situation that was—if not completely of my own making—partly my fault. I was cut off from my friends. This time I had to take the lead and fix it.

I released Jimmy’s wrist as we passed through the kitchen. He maintained momentum and followed me outside, jogging around to the passenger-side door. I slammed the back of the wagon shut, then climbed into the driver’s seat. The odor of blood tingled my nose.

“They treat me like a child,” Jimmy said as I backed down the driveway. “They always have, both of them, but I’m not a child.”

“It’s just because they’re older.” I checked traffic before easing out onto the street. “They want to protect you, Jimmy.”

“Noah’s worse than King is, but once he and Aaron are together, he’ll be just as bad.”

It took a moment to process that line of thought. The whole “two people in one” concept remained elusive. “So are
the Scotts more protective of each other than the Wild Cards were?” I asked.

“About the same, I guess.” Jimmy pressed his forehead against the window. “But when you combine the two, the instinct grows. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I think I understand.” I made a left turn onto the next block, eyeing every shadow for movement. “And I think more people will understand than you think, Jimmy. What you did was an accident, and what Noah did was an act of mercy.”

“What about King?”

A car drew near, driving in the opposite direction, coming right at us. I squinted into the bright morning light. My stomach twisted, palms instantly sweaty. An LAPD cruiser, bearing down on us. Mouth dry, I clenched the wheel, resisting the sudden urge to urinate.

Jimmy sat up straighter, probably sensing my distress. His eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

“Just relax, act natural,” I said. “It’s probably a routine patrol.”

“In this neighborhood?”

Excellent point. I slowed just a bit, hitting the speed limit on the dot. We still had dealer’s plates, so no crime there (except for the small fact that the dealership was halfway across town). He had no reason to pull us over. Hot even under the blast of the air-conditioning, I kept my eyes forward.

The cruiser drove right on by. I didn’t chance it and made a right turn onto the next block, exhaling hard the moment the cruiser was out of sight. We had to ditch the car before
the dealer I’d assaulted woke up and reported me—if he hadn’t already.

Three houses down, I whipped into an unpaved driveway. The house was a two-story, boarded-up wreck, probably home to a dozen or more squatters. I drove right into the overgrown yard, past a broken-down swing set, and angled the car as close to the rear of the yard as possible. I wiped the handles and steering wheel as best I could with the edge of my shirt, then climbed out.

I couldn’t see the road from here. “This’ll do,” I said to Jimmy.

He followed me back down the driveway to the uneven neighborhood sidewalk. We had a bit of a hike back to the Jarvis house, and it left us both completely exposed. I tucked my arm through his and leaned close.

“Just pretend we belong here,” I said.

He nodded, easing his stance a fraction. It wasn’t the most natural gait. The summer sun glared down at us, baking the pavement and scalding my exposed skin. We were both sweating by the time we reached the end of the block. I had half a mind to simply bolt, run as fast as I could back to the hideout and the safety of those four walls.

“Can I ask you something?” My question invaded the tense silence around us.

Jimmy shrugged one shoulder. “Sure.”

“Why’d you burn down your store? It had to be hard, destroying something that was part of your life for so long. Jimmy’s life, I mean.”

He stopped walking and gaped at me. “It burned down?”

“Yes.” I turned to face him. “Last night. You didn’t do it?”

“Of course not.” His eyes shimmered, adding to the illusion of extreme youth. He was twenty-one, but seemed stuck on sixteen. If they hadn’t set the fire, who had?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just assumed . . .”

We continued walking, surrounded by an uneasy silence broken again by a question. This time, Jimmy asked it. “Do you love him?”

“Who?”

“Noah.”

I stumbled. “Jimmy, I barely know him. I mean, I do like him, and I don’t want to see him hurt.”

“He said he fell in love with you the first time he saw you.”

Stumble number two almost landed me flat on the pavement. The air was suddenly too hot, too humid to breathe properly. “No, he didn’t.” Impossible.

“Noah wouldn’t have asked King to shoot your friend and risk Aaron’s life if he didn’t love you.”

This time I stopped walking completely, too stunned to trust my feet any longer. The world grayed out around the edges as I struggled to process Jimmy’s words. I’d obviously misunderstood something. “Noah did what?”

Jimmy looked at me with wide-eyed fear, splotches of red brightening both cheeks. “Crap.”

“King didn’t miss?”

“Um, no.”

King had shot Teresa on purpose. Which meant Noah had lied. Again. White-hot fury settled in the pit of my stomach, sending acid into my throat. Let him try and talk himself
out of this one. I wanted him to try so I could make his right eye match his left. Never in my life had one person managed to infuriate me so often in such a short span of time, his actions disguised as . . . what? Good intentions?

Hah!

Jimmy jumped. Had I said that out loud? Or was he poking around in my head?

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

I started walking, uncertain until the moment he asked. “I’m going to go back and make sure your dad is okay.”

“I meant to Noah,” he said as he scrambled to catch up.

To Noah? I could think of a list of things guaranteed to be loads of fun. For me. “We’re going to be having a serious discussion in which he convinces me why I should continue helping you three, instead of going straight to the police.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

The arctic air-conditioning
felt wonderful when we entered the house twenty minutes later. King sat at the kitchen table, back in his original form, sipping soda from a can. He didn’t look up, but he didn’t need actual eyes to tell me where exactly he was looking. I had trouble imagining Noah faceless and hairless, just a swatch of skin over a skull and the few odd holes. I almost preferred King masquerading as Ortega.

“How’d it go?” Jimmy asked, pausing long enough to lock the door.

“He’s resting,” King replied in that artificial voice. His jaw
and tongue worked without lips to move and form sounds and syllables.

I glared at the doorway. “Noah?”

“Bathroom, washing up.”

Leaving them behind, I crept down the hallway, past the bathroom and sound of running water, to the last bedroom. The peeling wood door stood halfway open. I peeked around the side. Kinsey still lay in the middle of the bed, pale as the dingy white sheets around him, his shoulder bandaged. Blood had seeped through, probably stimulated by their field surgery. The medical case rested on top of a nearby bureau. Intricate wood patterns matched the bed’s headboard and side tables. The furniture that had once cost a pretty penny now sat in ruin, remnants of a lifestyle the city of Los Angeles hadn’t boasted in twenty years.

Water stopped running in the aged pipes. A door squealed. Footsteps whispered closer, stopping right behind me. The scent of generic soap mixed with sweat greeted me. My entire body went rigid. Lucky for his fingers, he didn’t touch me; I’d have broken them.

“Will Kinsey be okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Noah replied. “We gave him a little morphine, but I’m afraid to give him more. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

I had to try again, for Kinsey’s sake. “Noah, I could call—”

“No.”

I tensed. “Why not?”

“Because it brings someone else into this mess we’ve made ever since Aaron was taken.”

“Like telling King to miss me and shoot Teresa?”

He inhaled sharply, practically a gasp. His fingers closed over my shoulder. I pivoted and felt the sting against my open palm. Saw Noah’s head snap sideways and the red imprint blossoming on his cheek. Neither of us moved. Seconds passed before I remembered to breathe. I crossed my arms over my chest, as if that could keep my rage tucked inside.

“You ask me to help you,” I said darkly. “You ask me to trust you. Then you fucking lie to me. Again!”

“Dahlia, I’m—”

I held up a silencing hand. “If you say you’re sorry one more time the next place I hit you will not be your face. The only words I want to hear from you, Noah, are why. You barely knew me. You could have let King kill me, done your other favors, paid the money, and had Aaron back by now. So why?”

A storm of emotions brewed behind his eyes. Emotions I simply could not interpret—would not. He needed to say it, damn him.

“Any explanation I could give you,” he finally said, “will just sound like a worn-out cliché.”

“Sure, right, because feelings are clichés.”

Anger broke to the surface, seeming to darken his green eyes. “Tell me what you want me to say, Dal. What do you need to hear?”

“Nothing.” If he had to ask, I didn’t want to hear it. Not now, not ever. “Do you have a phone?”

“For what?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

To shove up your ass.

“I need to call Gage and let him know I’m alive, for one thing. And maybe I can find out exactly what happened at the parking garage.”

He hesitated, and I was glad. I didn’t even trust myself always to do the right thing—as if I knew what the right thing was in this situation—so he had no business doing so when I couldn’t. I had no clue what I’d really say once I got on the phone.

Noah reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced a cell phone. I took it and slipped past him into the hallway. He didn’t follow.

I walked into the other bedroom and closed the door, aware of the power in my hands. Power over his family’s future with a single call. Only that wasn’t true, was it? He hadn’t followed me to listen in or monitor my conversation. He’d trusted me not to betray his family. Then again, he could have just asked Jimmy to read my mind.

I flipped a light switch. A single, bare bulb hung from an exposed ceiling fixture. The bed was neatly made. A suitcase had been shoved haphazardly into a corner, near a broken wooden chair. The furniture was younger, the bed smaller. A child’s room at one time, probably a boy.

I sat on the edge of the bed, but instead of dialing Gage’s private com, I dialed Ethan’s. It rang half a dozen times, and just as I resigned myself to leaving a message, the line clicked over.

“Hello?” Ethan’s voice, uncertain and curious. Noise in the background was intermittent and hazy, as though he was in a car.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Dahlia? Where the hell are you?” The concern I detected was genuine, the question immediate.