Falls the Shadow (21 page)

I drop it into my lap, mumbling about how the stupid thing was
supposed
to be waterproof. A second later, Jaxon's phone lands with a soft
thump
in the covers beside me. He doesn't say anything. Doesn't ask who I want to call, or why; he's not even looking at me anymore. And I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but my first thought isn't to thank him or to dial my house's number.

It's to find his recent calls.

To figure out exactly who was trying to reach him in the hallway earlier, and who he might have been trying to reach while I was asleep. I can't bring myself to follow through with it, though. Maybe because I'm afraid of my suspicions being right, or because I want to see this phone as some sort of peace offering—an attempt to put our shattered trust back together again—and I'm not going to be the one who ruins it.

So I focus on trying to reach my parents. Once again, though, I'm not surprised when they don't pick up. I convince myself that, if my phone were working, I would have at least ten messages from them by now. That it's still perfectly normal for them to not be answering this call. After all, in the past, when we've found ourselves in the middle of a media storm, my parents would always see to it that we dropped off the radar until things calmed down. Which meant not going anywhere. Not socializing. Not answering the phone, even—especially not from a number like this one, which they wouldn't recognize.

Never mind that it might be their daughter calling.

They're too busy trying to keep the stone wall around our family from crumbling, so of course they don't have time to answer.

“Calling home?” Jaxon asks softly.

I nod without looking up.

“No one's there?”

“Maybe not. I probably just missed them.” I shrug. “Communication's never been our strong point,” I add
with a quiet laugh. I sound perfectly composed. Perfectly fake. My mother would have been proud to hear it.

Keep it together, Catelyn.

She may as well be right beside me, speaking those words into my ear. I clench the phone in a trembling fist until my knuckles turn white, and it's all I can do to keep myself from throwing it at the wall.

Jaxon appears at my side a second later, gently pries the phone from my grip, and tosses it back onto the bed. He takes my shaking hand in his, and the concerned look on his face tells me that I must look at least as bad as I feel. I think about pushing him away, about telling him I'm fine even though we'd both know I was lying.

But, at least for the moment, I'm tired of keeping it together. I'm tired of walls. I don't want to be like my parents, always building up and never breaking down, no matter the cost.

So instead I meet Jaxon's calm blue eyes and very carefully tell him the truth: “I know it's dangerous to go after Violet. But I have to. I can't go home without her.”

There is no home without her.

I expect him to keep arguing. But he doesn't. He just pulls me close, rests his chin on top of my head, and breathes deeply in and slowly out, warm air breezing through my hair and sending shivers down my neck. I stop thinking about pushing him away. My hands stop shaking. My body is still against his and for the moment, at least, everything feels strangely peaceful.

If my sister is a hurricane, I think, then maybe Jaxon
could be the eye to her storm. A patch of blue sky, calm and centered even as the winds whip around and around us—that's what he was before all of this. It's what I want him to be now. I want to trust him again so much that it's painful. However stupid, however desperate, and however loud my mother's warnings are echoing in my head—

Don't give anyone the illusion that anything they do can affect you. You can't give them that control, because there's no telling what they'd do with it.

She's right, too. I don't know. I could wake up in a few hours, and he could be gone. He could promise to stay, promise to help me, and all that could turn out to be more lies. Or not. There's really no way of knowing, and maybe at some point you have to decide who's worth the risk, even if there's a chance they'll wind up hurting you in the end.

And right now, this feels worth it. So I don't pull away from him. My cheek is still resting against his shoulder when I ask, “Does this mean you're staying out here with me?”

He keeps his arms tightly wrapped around my waist but leans back enough so that our eyes can meet.

“I'm not going anywhere, Cate.”

“Wake up.”

Jaxon's voice is quiet, muffled by the pillow I've got wrapped around my head. I don't open my eyes right away. I want it to be a dream, like it always was before, like all the times I drifted off in class and daydreamed about him softly calling my name.

Because he's calling it now. But it's not the same. His tone is all wrong. Fear edges his voice, and I feel that same fear in his touch a second later when he grabs my shoulder and gently shakes me until I sit up to face him.

It takes only a quick glance at him to tell me that I was right. Something's wrong.

“There's someone in the hotel,” he says.

“Who?”

“Someone from Huxley—a half dozen of them, actually. I saw their trucks, and more were pulling up as I came back inside. Apparently, we didn't have as much time as we thought.”

“How many trucks, exactly?”

He doesn't answer, but that look in his eyes tells me that we're in trouble.

I jump up from the bed, grab the nearest bag, and start
throwing things inside it. My body is still weak, still sore, and some of the bumps from earlier have turned into ugly, discolored bruises; but I don't have time to baby my injuries right now. After this first bag is filled, though, the next one I grab is the one with medical supplies. I take the pain pills out of it, swallow a couple, then throw both bags over my shoulder. Jaxon glances over his shoulder at me and almost smiles.

“I wish Seth was as enthusiastic as you in the morning,” he says. He's got his brother propped up with one of his arms around his shoulder, but the second Jaxon tries to pull him to his feet, Seth collapses to the ground with a
thud
.

“You're going to have to carry him,” I say. “He's still too out of it.”

He nods, and while he lifts Seth onto his back, I scurry around the room, collecting everything else in sight.

A minute later, we're in the doorway, breath held, bodies tense, eyes scanning the hallway on either side of us.

“Why are you carrying me?” Seth groans, “I can walk. I can walk . . . so good . . . I can . . .
so good
—you don't even know, man. . . .”

I bring my face very close to where his rests limply against Jaxon's shoulder. “Shut. Up,” I whisper. I hate to be mean to him right now, because he looks awful—his normally tan skin is pale and glistening with sweat, his chocolate eyes dull and lifeless—but he's being entirely too loud. And I swear I just heard footsteps.

I lean farther out into the hallway, listening.

My sister's words from last night crash into my head:
everything she said about Huxley, about how they would probably be coming for me even sooner than they'd planned on.

As soon as now?

“Your girlfriend's rude,” Seth mumbles behind me. “And I think you should dump her.”

“So which way do we go?” I ask, ignoring Seth.

“Good question,” Jaxon says. “We should have mapped this place out better last night, had a better escape route planned. We should have—”

“We were busy fighting off my psychotic sister last night, remember?”

“Still.”

I try to focus on the parts of the hotel I've been to, try to remember the layout of the halls I ran up and down while I was searching for Violet. It's mostly a blur, though.

“We need to go out the way we came in,” Jaxon says. “So we can head straight to the car—the less time we're running around outside, the better.”

“But if anyone sees us, we're screwed,” I say, frowning. “We're not going to be able to outrun them while you're carrying him.”

“You have to leave me,” Seth groans, stretching a hand dramatically into the air. “Save yourselves—”

“Tempting, but no.”

Jaxon gives me an anxious look. “So what are you suggesting we do, then?”

I don't think I even realized what I was thinking until he asked. But now I do.

“One of us is going to have to create a distraction—”

“No.”

“—so we can get Seth safely to the car—”

“No.”

“—and it's going to have to be me. I can't carry Seth. We'll make our way toward that exit, and then you guys hide in one of the rooms while I draw everyone away from it.”

“And then what?” I can tell he's fighting to keep his voice at a whisper.

“I'll catch up,” I say, starting into the hallway. He reaches for my arm, but I twist out of the way and keep walking. Someone has to move. Otherwise, at the rate we're going, we'll still be standing here arguing about what to do while the Huxley creeps drag all three of us away. I can't let that happen.

“How, exactly, do you plan on getting out?” Jaxon demands.

The pool room flashes back into my mind. I remember it more vividly than anywhere else, and I remember a door tucked into the corner of the room and so covered in dust and grime that it almost blended into the cracked concrete walls. It wasn't that noticeable. They might not be guarding it. And I
think
I remember how to get back to it.

“When you get to your car,” I tell Jaxon. “Drive it around until you can see the pool room. I'll get out through there and meet you at the road.”

I press against the wall and peer around a corner into the next hall. It's clear. But the hairs on my arms and all
along the back of my neck are already sticking straight up now, every nerve ending in my body anticipating the worst.

Am I crazy for thinking we can actually make it out of here alive? All three of us?

“You can see one of the main exits from the pool,” Jaxon says, grabbing me and pulling me into an empty room. “There will be people guarding it. You'll be shot the second you step outside.”

“I'll run really fast.”

“I'm not joking, Cate.”

“Me either.”

I slide one of the bags from my shoulder and start to dig through it while Jaxon backs slowly toward the corner of the room, crouches down and lets Seth slide from his back and to the floor with a quiet
thump
. I ignore him as he returns to my side, still trying to argue with me the whole time; I'm more focused on the small, diamond-shaped weapon that I've finally managed to find. It's one of the weapons I'm glad I asked Seth about last night—capable of filling an entire room with smoke in an instant—and it was the first one that came to mind when I thought about distractions.

I give the diamond another glance, reminding myself how it works. Jaxon tries to snatch it out of my hand, but just then we hear voices in the hallway, followed by footsteps, and he freezes with his fingers still outstretched toward me.

The voices get louder, and my heart pounds faster;
I clutch the diamond to my chest and stumble away from Jaxon. I don't have time to argue with him anymore. Seth mumbles something from the corner, and my thoughts jump back to the pain, the uncertainty, that I know Jaxon was feeling last night; I know he's feeling it now, even though he'd never admit it.

“You have to make sure Seth gets out,” I say, because I know that will make him stay. I know he can't argue with that.

Jaxon only calls my name once as I sprint out of the room. He's stubborn, but not stupid; if he can't stop me from doing this, then I think—I hope—he knows better than to screw it up by drawing any attention to himself and Seth. Something tells me he's going to be pissed when he sees me again, though.

Assuming we actually see each other again.

I follow the sound of the voices to the end of the hallway and peer around the corner into a mini lobby area that I vaguely recognize. My guess is that it was grandly decorated at one time, judging by the intricately carved arched doorway I'm leaning against. There are still a few paintings on the wall as well, though they're faded beyond recognition and covered in cobwebs and dust. There's even a crumbling fountain in the center of the room.

And that's where they are. Two men in Huxley uniforms, gathered around that fountain. There's a third one leaning against the left wall, right next to the little corridor that leads to the entrance we originally came in through. They're talking casually. Laughing, even.

Like this is no big deal, them being here to kill me.

I pull the diamond from my pocket and move swiftly and silently to the hallway farthest from the entrance-corridor. I size up the main room, trying to decide the best place to lob the weapon so that it makes it hard for them to see and follow me but not so thick that Jaxon and Seth don't have a clear path to escape.

Laughter echoes through the room again, sinking into my skin and further fueling the rage growing inside me.

I swipe the activation dial on the weapon and step into plain sight of all three of them. And then I start shouting. They turn in unison and lift their guns at the exact moment the curtain of thick, black smoke billows up between us. But they've already seen me. The bait's been laid, and as I turn and sprint for the nearest hallway, I keep yelling, keep giving them the sound of my voice to follow until I'm sure they're on this side of the smoke wall, and Jaxon and Seth are safely moving behind it on the other.

A blaze of white-hot energy hits the wall to my left. I turn, trying to see how close the shooter is, and look back to the path ahead just as another man in a Huxley uniform rounds the corner. He sidesteps to avoid our collision, grabs my shoulder, and slams me against the wall so hard that it knocks my breath away. While I'm still disoriented, he roughly grabs my chin and jerks my face up to meet his.