Christian’s hand trembles as he puts the keys in the ignition. Then his jaw tightens and the truck rumbles to life and we peel away from the curb. Neither of us says anything for a while, the only sound the gunning of the engine. I want to tell him that he’s driving too fast, that the last thing we need is to get pulled over, what with us all bloody and a baby in the front seat, but I don’t have the heart. He’s doing the best he can.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he turns onto the road that will lead us out of town.
“I don’t know,” he says. “The girl, the one who I didn’t—” He stops talking for a minute and takes a shallow breath, like he’s trying not to puke. “She’ll probably call for reinforcements. I don’t know how long it will take her to get to hell and back.”
“Lucy,” I murmur.
He glances over at me sharply. “How do you know her name?”
“She’s Jeffrey’s girlfriend.”
If it’s possible for his face to go any stonier, it does. “And she knows who you are? She knows your name?”
“Yes.”
“Then we can’t go home,” he says, as if that settles it.
I fight down a wave of panic. “Why? It’s hallowed ground; your place and mine both are. It’d be safe there.”
He shakes his head. “The hallowed-ground thing works on Black Wings, not Triplare.” He takes a deep breath. “We have to go,” he says slowly, deliberately, because he knows this is going to upset me. “They’ll be hunting you. They’ll be after the baby, too. We have to get far away from here.”
“But Angela—”
“Angela would want us to keep Web safe,” he says.
I know he’s right, but there’s a finality I feel in this moment, like if we go now, if I leave this place, we’ll never come back. We’ll always be running. We’ll always be scared.
“Clara, please,” he says softly. We’ll figure something out. But right now I need you to trust me. I need you safe.
I swallow, hard, and nod. Christian lowers his head for a second, relieved, then reaches under his seat and pulls out a faded road atlas. He opens it to a map of the United States and lays it across the dashboard.
“Close your eyes and put your finger down on a spot,” he says. “And that’s where we’ll go.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and touch my finger to the page.
I wonder if I will ever see Tucker again.
We drive through the night. In the morning we pull over at a rest stop to clean up and then Christian goes into Walmart for some new clothes, a car seat, and baby supplies. He surprises me by unlocking the silver box in the bed of his truck to reveal an escape kit straight out of an action movie: a bunch of documents, birth certificates, fake driver’s licenses, something that looks like insurance paperwork, and the biggest pile of cash I’ve ever seen.
“My uncle,” he says by way of explanation. “He could see into the future—not just his own, sometimes, but for others. He always said someday I’d have to run.”
His uncle was a bit extreme. But then, here we are. Running.
I try to fix Web a bottle of formula, but he won’t drink it. He takes one good look at me now that it’s light and starts crying. Hard. Nothing I do seems to help. I am not his mother. Where is my mother? I can practically feel him wondering. My grandmother? What have you done with them?
“You should try to get some rest,” Christian says after we pull back out onto the highway and Web, lulled by the vibrations of the road, finally goes back to sleep.
There’s no possibility of that. Whenever I close my eyes, I’m back in that stairwell listening to somebody kill my friend’s mother. I’m in the dark room waiting to be killed myself. I’m watching someone die right in front of me. Instead I reach into my pocket and take out my cell and call Billy for like the tenth time since we fled Jackson.
She doesn’t answer, which makes me all kinds of paranoid that somehow Lucy has gotten back to hell by now and rallied some evil army of the undead and has already been to my house looking for me, possibly stumbling over an unsuspecting Billy. I keep imagining it like a scene out of a horror film, where Lucy is standing in front of the answering machine, laughing wickedly as she hears my voice trying to warn Billy.
“Hi, Billy, this is Clara,” I say into the phone, my voice cracking on my own name. “Call me. It’s important.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Christian says after I hang up. “Billy can take care of herself.”
I think about the blood. The sound of Olivia’s body hitting the stage.
“It’s okay, Clara,” Christian murmurs. “We’re safe.”
I turn to look out the window. We’re passing a ridge full of wind turbines: tall white windmills, their propellers whirling round and round, cutting the air. The clouds leave shadows as they move between the sun and the earth, like dark creatures roaming the land.
Will we ever be safe again? I wonder.
Christian takes one hand off the wheel and reaches for mine. He rubs his thumb across my knuckles, and it’s supposed to comfort me the way it always does. It’s supposed to fill me with his strength.
But all I feel is weak.
15
PLAYING HOUSE
The place I pointed to on the map ends up being Lincoln, Nebraska. When we get there, we find a hotel. The clerk at the front desk, a round, kind-looking woman in her late fifties, smiles at us like we’re a married couple and leans over the desk to get a peek at Web.
“Oh my, he’s a tiny one,” she says. “How old?”
“Nine days,” I answer, suddenly nervous, and her expression clearly reflects that she thinks nine days is too soon for me to be traveling with a baby, but that’s not her business.
“We’re visiting the in-laws,” Christian says, putting his arm around my waist and pulling me to him like he can’t stand for us to be six inches apart. “It’s not the best arrangement, staying in a hotel, but what can we do? She doesn’t get along with my mother.”
How easily he jumps into this role: devoted husband, sleep-deprived father.
“Believe me, I understand,” says the lady almost slyly. “We have those rolling port-a-cribs. Do you need one?”
“Yes, thank you. You’re a lifesaver,” he answers, and I swear she blushes when he turns on that high-wattage smile of his. He keeps his arm around me as we walk out of the lobby, but as we wait for the elevator, his face goes grim again.
We get Web settled in the port-a-crib next to the bed, and he goes right back to sleep. I guess babies sleep a lot at his age. I 411 the number for the pizza place in Mountain View, hoping to talk to Jeffrey, although who knows what I would say to him. How do you break it to your brother that his girlfriend’s a homicidal black-winged Triplare and she’s just vowed to kill me?
“He’s not here,” Jake says when I ask for Jeffrey. “It’s his day off.”
“Well, can you tell him to call me?” I say, and he makes a noncommittal noise and hangs up.
I don’t know what else to do.
Christian insists that I take the first shower. I stand under the scalding spray and scrub my skin until it’s raw, getting off the last of Olivia’s blood. As I stand in front of the steam-wiped mirror combing out my hair, my own face seems to accuse me.
Weak.
You didn’t try to save Anna, or to stop them from taking Angela. You didn’t even try.
Coward.
You spent all these hours training to use a glory sword, because your father told you that you’d need it, but when the moment came, you couldn’t even draw it.
Gutless.
I grip the comb so hard my knuckles turn white. I don’t meet my eyes again until my hair is done.
When I open the door, Christian is sitting cross-legged on the single queen bed, staring at the painting on the wall, a picture of a large white bird with long legs and a stripe of red on the top of its head, spreading its wings, its toes touching the water, although I can’t be sure whether it’s taking off or touching down.