Gideon was smiling again. That broad, vicious grin. The words were Verrick’s. “You want to ask me a question. You want to know how your parents died. You’ve wondered all this time, haven’t you? It’s the question you take with you into sleep. The worry that haunts your dreams. Would you like me to tell you?”
Leon tensed. He choked out one word. “No.”
“They died screaming.”
I felt Leon recoil, the hard slamming of his heart. I feared he was going to attack, but instead he lowered his left arm. The bright spin of lights under his skin dimmed. He tightened his grip on me.
He was going to teleport us.
“Leon, no—you can’t teleport me,” I said. “Leave me here. Let me talk with him. He was listening to me.”
“You are out of your mind,” he hissed in my ear.
“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t think. I started amplifying.
He froze. “Stop.”
“No. He hasn’t attacked. He isn’t going to hurt me. He wants my help. He needs my help.”
“If you weren’t in danger, I wouldn’t be here.”
His words stung, but I shook my head. I didn’t stop amplifying. I held to the bond, feeling the heat that coursed through my veins, the surge of strength.
“Dammit, Audrey!”
He wouldn’t do it, I told myself. He wouldn’t risk teleporting.
And then he blinked us out of my room, into nothing.
The darkness closed around me, seconds lengthening. One heartbeat I was in the muffled yellow light of my room, pleading, twisting in Leon’s hold; the next I was in this blank, weightless void, and there was no air to give my words voice, and no arms clasped about me. Then that, too, receded; the darkness dissolved, the empty gave way, and there was gray sky above me, heavy falling rain.
Leon released his grip so rapidly, I stumbled forward in surprise.
“I told you to stop amplifying,” he growled. “Don’t ever do that again.”
After steadying myself, I whipped around to face him. He was furious—but so was I. “Then don’t abduct me! I told you not to teleport!” I dragged my sodden hair out of my eyes. I could barely see through the rain. We were in a field of some sort. Tall grass climbed up to my ankles, bending beneath the downpour. In the distance, I glimpsed the bright beam of headlights along what might have been a highway. There didn’t seem to be buildings anywhere near us. No shelter to be found. I lifted my arms to shield my face. Rain dripped down my nose, clung to my eyelashes. My clothing was already molded to me. “Where are we?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Which meant he’d overshot the distance again. “Well, where were you trying to go?”
“My apartment.”
“This is clearly not it.”
“Yeah, thanks.” He reached into his pocket and removed his phone, but instead of using it to pinpoint our location, he lifted it to his ear.
“Who are you calling?”
“Your mother, to let her know there’s a Harrower hanging out in your bedroom.”
I turned away, squinting in the direction of the highway. It might not have been a highway at all, I thought—it could be a back road, some long dirt lane curving toward a farmhouse. Maybe Leon had teleported us north, across cities and suburbs, and accidentally carried us all the way to my old home. Maybe if I started walking, I’d find the pines swaying in the storm, the little yellow house with its porch swing and a light in the window, and Gram’s blue truck still parked in the gravel drive. I closed my eyes, imagining it. I understood now Iris’s desire to erase time. If I could walk backward and reach that house, and see Gram smile and point at the stars, I’d tell her that I was done with secrets. I wanted no more stories. I’d tell her she was wrong. There was such a thing as fate. You couldn’t escape it. It was like a carrion bird circling above you. Every second, every breath, you felt that circle tightening.
I sighed. More likely we’d traveled south, since that was the direction of Leon’s apartment. We were probably in Iowa again—though, since my Amplification was much stronger than it had been three months ago, we might have gone even farther. For all I knew, we could be in Texas.
When I turned back to Leon, I found he’d unbuttoned his shirt and was using it as a dripping, misshapen tent while he studied his phone’s GPS. There was a streak of lightning in the distance, and then a low boom of thunder. More headlights shone on the road, cocooned in the thick gray mist. After another minute or so, Leon returned his phone to his pocket, then strode toward me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
My spine stiffened.
He scowled. “Can I get us somewhere out of the rain, or are you going to object to that, too? Would you rather I just leave you here?”
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed.
Despite the increase in my Amplification ability, Leon had apparently learned to gauge the distance better, because we were still in Minnesota. We’d landed a few miles south of Northfield, and after a few more teleports—a vacant parking lot, another rainy field—we arrived at his apartment.
Leon didn’t have a TV, and his only pieces of furniture were his bed and an old wooden desk he’d brought from his grandfather’s house in Two Harbors. Since he didn’t have shelves, he’d piled textbooks and paperbacks in tall stacks along the walls. That was the only part of the room that appeared cluttered. The hardwood floor was spotless—at least before we started dripping all over it—and his desk was clean, organized with his laptop beside a couple of notebooks, a pencil cup set near the back. The bed was neatly made. His walls were bare, though there were a few nails jutting out of the paint. In the hall outside, two people were arguing loudly. I glanced down at my feet, to my wet sandals and the pool of water that was growing steadily around me.
The apartment was a studio, which meant Leon couldn’t just disappear into a room and avoid me—unless he planned on hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the night—but he made it clear he wasn’t interested in talking. Without a word, he left me in the middle of the room while he stalked off toward the closet. I said his name, but he ignored me.
He yanked off his tie and let it drop to his feet. Next he tugged off his drenched button-up shirt, which was soaked into the consistency of tissue paper, followed by his undershirt, and then tossed them both onto the floor. I took that as further indication of his anger, given how tidy he usually was. Still not looking at me, he reached into the closet, and then tossed a towel in my direction.
“Dry off.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t have figured that one out on my own.”
He shot me a glare. Then he turned his back again and stripped down to his boxers.
I paused toweling myself in order to watch him, then quickly looked away when he glanced over his shoulder at me.
“How soaked are you?” he asked.
“I’m about to grow gills.”
He dug into his closet again, balled up a shirt, and threw it at me.
I caught it with both hands and clutched it against me a second. It was going to be huge on me, but I didn’t particularly care. I held it out in front of me. The fabric was a faded yellow-gold, and it bore the words Two Harbors Agates in maroon script. His high school team, I guessed. I brought the shirt to my face. It was soft, and smelled like soap and clean linen.
“Are you smelling my shirt?”
Embarrassed, I let my arms drop. “I’m just in shock that you own a T-shirt.”
“If you don’t want it, give it here,” he snapped.
Instead of replying, I dragged my wet tank top over my head and added it to the heap on Leon’s floor. “You were in sports?” I asked, somewhat surprised. He’d never mentioned it. And since I knew he’d skipped a grade in school, and his response to summer break from college was to take even more classes, I’d sort of figured he’d spent his pre-Guardian free time reading encyclopedias.