“N-No, I’m here.”
Hayden leaned in and brought his mouth down on mine. I sank into him—his warmth and his love. When he pulled back, his eyes shone in the dim light.
“I want to go h-home.”
“Hospital first,” he said. “Then we go home. Together.”
My eyes fell around the dark recesses of the cellar—the area I’d thought would be my final resting place. They roamed over the damp walls covered in mold and over Hayden’s shoulder where I saw Mr. Theo—on his feet, gun in hand.
“Hayden—watch—”
But it was too late. Hayden gasped and shifted as if he planned on shielding me with his body. I broke into a wild struggle, so powerful that Hayden jolted to his left just as the gun fired.
Mr. Theo missed, but he was aiming again.
Using the last of my strength, I pushed hard. I heard Hayden yell my name, but I focused on Mr. Theo. He fumbled with the gun. With all the burns, he moved in halting jerks. Anger and desperation propelled me across the slick floor. The pain didn’t matter—nothing did but stopping Mr. Theo.
He leveled the gun, not at me, but at Hayden. I stretched out, running my hand under the hem of his charred pants and circling the sticky flesh of his ankle. He jerked once, twice. His entire body went rigid, even his fingers. The gun slipped from his hand, hitting the floor with a sharp rattle of finality. I held on.
Mr. Theo dropped to his knees, arms splayed out like some kind of fallen angel. A grayish color raced over his skin, veins bulging and darkening as if someone had taken a charcoal pencil and traced the fine lines. He turned his head and stared down at me, mouth gaped in a silent scream. In that heartbeat, our eyes met.
I felt my lips spread into a smile.
A great and terrible spasm rolled through his body, then his eyes rolled back and he fell face-first into a cold puddle. Mr. Theo didn’t move again.
Over the next couple of hours I slipped in and out of reality. When I woke in a warm place, I reached for Hayden. My fingers curled into the empty air until someone gently guided my arm back.
Cromwell moved into my line of vision. “Hayden’s all right. Just getting checked over again.”
I blinked and my head rolled in the other direction. A white curtain fluttered and a machine beeped. There were voices far away. Or were they close? Things were kind of foggy from there on out. Someone in medical scrubs shot a syringe into the IV tube snaking from my arm, which didn’t help with my observation skills at all—not to mention I felt like I was floating halfway off the bed.
“Don’t touch her skin, whatever you do.” Cromwell—I was pretty sure that was Cromwell. Talking to the doctor, I guessed.
I couldn’t open my eyes again. I felt pleasantly numb. Detached. A door opened and closed. I hoped it was Hayden. I held my breath, waiting, hoping, waiting, floating some more.
“So this is Project E?” said a female voice I didn’t recognize.
“Yes, this would be her.”
“Do you want us to take her? We have a place for her immediately.” The woman’s voice was soft and melodious. She sounded like Mom. I liked that.
“No,” Cromwell answered after a stretch of silence. “She’s one of mine now. And she’s very important.”
“You should take better care of her, then. It would be a shame to lose this one, too.”
Then I floated up and up, past the ceiling and into a bright, warm nothing.
“It hurts. I can fix it.”
“No. Olivia, don’t touch it.” I pushed at the arm hovering way too close to the side of my face. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
She sat back on her heels, dipping the bed. “Emmie, why are you hurt?”
I turned my head slowly and stared up at the ceiling. How could I tell a five-year-old that my crazy English teacher had wanted to kill me? I couldn’t. So I settled on the same thing I’d told her ever since I’d woken up with her next to me. “I was in an accident.”
“With Hayden?”
My heart squeezed. I’d only been awake for a little while, and Olivia was the only person I’d seen. “Yes, with Hayden.” Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t like accidents.”
“I know, honey, but everything is okay now.”
“You promise? No more accidents?”
I smiled, but it was more of a wince. When I’d first woken up, I’d hobbled into the bathroom and gotten a good look at myself. Half my face looked like someone had pummeled it. I had a knot the size of a golf ball on the side of my head. Even now, every inch of skin hurt, every muscle felt torn, and every bone ached, but my leg and wrists had suffered far worse. Olivia said I had over a hundred stitches, so I deducted eighty from that. I couldn’t see most of my hands; they were wrapped in heavy gauze.
“Emmie?”
“No more accidents. I promise.” I started to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced me back down. I hit the pillow, grimacing. I felt out of it, tired and so damn thirsty. “Olivia, want to do me a favor?”
Her head bobbed eagerly.
“Can you get me something to drink?”
“I can get you juice. I can help.”
“Juice would be great. Olivia—” She was already off the bed and at the door. “Olivia, I love you.”
“I love you, Emmie!” Then she took off flying from my room. I could hear her little footsteps all the way down the stairs.
Slowly, I tried to push myself back up again. It didn’t work. I stared at the ceiling until my eyes started to drift shut. The next thing I knew, Cromwell was pulling my desk chair across the room and sitting by the bed.
“Where’s Olivia?”
“You were asleep when she brought the juice up.” He motioned at the bed stand. There my juice sat. My mouth watered. “She’s with Liz. Do you think you can sit up?”
With his careful help, I was able to sit up long enough. My throat burned, but I downed the entire glass before lying back down. “I feel… weird.”
“You were given some pain medication at the hospital, and again this morning. You don’t remember that?”
I frowned. “No.” All I remembered from the hospital was floating through the rafters. I must’ve been really high.
“I need to talk to you. Do you feel up to it?”
“Okay,” I said, but there was something about the hospital I thought I should remember. It was there, on the very edge of my memories, hazy and out of reach.
“Parker and Hayden filled me in on most of what happened. I can understand your distrust of me and my intentions, but I hope you have learned that’s not the case.”
I thought that was a very smooth way of asking if I’d learned my lesson. “Parker was in my head again?”
“We thought it would be easier than making you relive everything.”
I guess that made it okay—sort of. “So, you worked with his sister.”
Cromwell let out a soft breath and nodded. “It was a very long time ago, before Hayden and the others. Theo was a child, and I had no idea his gift was like Olivia’s. His sister had a remarkable gift.”
“Remarkable?”
“She was the first, Ember. No one before her had ever showed that type of gift, and no one after her—until you. With what happened to her, I didn’t want to attempt the same thing.” He paused, a small smile appeared. “I never intended to send you to the Facility. I didn’t want you to have the same fate she did. I don’t expect you to believe me, but you have no idea how her death ate away at me. She was why I started searching for others, hoping to get to them before the gifts became too much to control.”
“But… you worked with her? In the program?”
“I did,” he admitted. “It was a long time ago, Ember.” And that was all he would say about that. His next words distracted me, anyway. “From what I could gather, it appears that Theo did tell you the truth about your father. He was going to transfer guardianship of Olivia to one of the doctors at the Facility. I’m sorry. I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear.”
No. It wasn’t. I didn’t even know how to deal with that—what to think or where to begin. All I could acknowledge right now was the sick twisting of my heart.
“I’m really sorry.”
It could’ve been the drugs, but he actually looked sympathetic. “Isn’t someone going to do something to stop them? They can’t do this to people, let parents sell their children.”
“The Facility never used to be like this, and trust me, something is being done about them,” Cromwell said, anger sparking deep in his eyes. “But it’s not something you need to worry about right now. I know it’s hard for you not to focus on it, but you need to get better.”
What I needed… I didn’t even know what I needed.
“There’s one other thing I want to talk to you about.” He took a deep breath. “I know you’ve been working with my son. We had a very long talk last night.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
“I always knew he wouldn’t listen to me when it came to you. I’m just surprised by how far he disobeyed my wishes.”
“He… he just wanted to help me.”
Cromwell raised one brow, and the bland expression on his face slipped a degree. “It appears Hayden had his own motives.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ember, I know you and Hayden are… involved with one another. I’m going to be honest with you; I’m not thrilled. Among other concerns, you both live under my roof, but I suppose it’s a good thing he didn’t listen to me.”
“It is?”
“Kurt told me you grabbed him in the cellar, and that your touch didn’t hurt him. It seems I should’ve supported Hayden when he first asked to work with you.”
“I can’t touch… for a long period of time. Maybe a minute.”
“But that is miraculous, considering where you were before.”
That same word from Olivia’s file popped in my head, but I decided to let it go. “I guess so.”
Cromwell leaned forward and held out one hand. “I need to see if it’s true.”
“Are you serious?” The look that he gave me said he was. I sighed, too tired to argue. “If it doesn’t work, well, I guess you’ll know.” Then I touched my hand to his. His fingers felt smooth to me, like the man never used his hands for anything other than pushing a pen. A couple of seconds passed, maybe about thirty, when he seemed satisfied.
“Miraculous,” he murmured again. He stood. “We’ll talk more later. Get some rest.”
“Cromwell?”
He stepped at the door, twisting back. “Yes?”
“Is… is Theo dead?”
“Yes.”
I let out an unsteady breath. “I don’t know how to feel about that.”
Cromwell came back to the bed, studying me a moment. “Do not think for one second that Theo wasn’t going to kill you. He saw you as having the future his sister should’ve had. And you defended yourself, but you did more than that.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled.