The van was seemingly unoccupied. The doors were locked, so I couldn’t check the secret compartment, but I felt fairly certain that if she’d come this far, she wouldn’t be hiding in there.
“Ariane?” I whispered against the passenger-side window, just in case. My breath fogged the glass, but nothing moved on the inside. I could see the map we’d used, neatly folded up and tucked into a cup holder. Napkins from one of our Culver’s visits overflowed from the glove box, where I’d stuffed them. The hotel key card Ariane had kept was resting on the shelf beneath the speedometer and other gauges. The dairy fairy—a mini stuffed cow with pink gauze wings and a tiny wand in one hoof—that I’d bought for Ariane at the convenience store where we’d gotten our Illinois map dangled from the rearview mirror.
I backed away from the van, a little unnerved at seeing it empty, almost abandoned looking. It was a capsule of our time together since leaving Wingate, which was kind of awesome. But seeing the van like this, without either of us in it or preparing to get in it, it felt more like a sealed exhibit, as if the life had been drained out of it. Now it was one of those dinner scenes you see in pictures from Pompeii. The plates were still on the table, chairs pushed back. But the people were just gone.
I shook my head against the tide of superstitious and stupid thoughts. She wasn’t gone. She just wasn’t here.
Inside the school, then. That was the next logical choice. I headed toward the door, fists at my side, determined to fight my way in if necessary.
But unlike earlier, nobody seemed to notice my presence or care. I crossed the threshold, watching the office warily, now that I knew where it was. Postschool, it held quite the collection of teachers, chatting and laughing. I could hear the hum and thump of a photocopier, and the phone was ringing.
After hours, none of them seemed to be concerned about someone walking in. The few students I saw passing through the hall ahead of me moved with purpose, to practices, rehearsal, or tutoring, presumably.
I headed off down the hall, following the same route Ariane and I had taken before. There were dozens of rooms and an unknown number of closets and hidey-holes in this place where she might have taken refuge to avoid being seen. Ariane? I focused on her name and imagined projecting it throughout the school, bouncing off the walls like a sound wave.
No response. Because she didn’t “hear” me or because she didn’t want to?
I grimaced. She might be angry enough at me to stay away.
ARIANE! I tried again, even louder, imagining myself shouting. I’M HERE. I’M SORRY! CAN WE TALK? PLEASE?
Still silence. No movement.
The doors were open to most of the classrooms, as they were now empty except for teachers hunched over laptops or wiping whiteboards clean, which made searching a little easier. But no more successful.
I opened the few closed doors I could find, and in the process I discovered the practice room we’d used for our conversation with Ford. The same kid we’d scared off earlier sitting at the piano, glumly picking out notes.
He looked up at me and froze.
“Sorry,” I said hastily, and backed out.
I continued down the hall, checking rooms and nodding to the few people I passed as if I belonged. When I reached a dead end, I retraced my steps and found a different branch to check.
But the school wasn’t that big, and once I found my way to an auditorium with actual velvet chairs, like in one of those old-time movie theaters, I was running out of obvious places to check.
I returned to the hall, near the atrium, which seemed to be the approximate center of the building, all the hallways spiderwebbing around it. An atrium in northern Illinois? Why? So they could stare at snow for half the year? These people had more money than sense.
“Ariane?” I called. “Are you here? I just want to talk.”
Now the quiet was taking on a punishing quality. Or maybe that was just my guilt talking.
“Ariane.”
“Ariane!”
A couple heads poked out in the hall to stare at me, but I glared and they retreated. One advantage of my height is that people rarely want to challenge it.
“Ariane!” I bellowed again.
Then a door somewhere nearby banged open, and I started in the direction of the noise.
I rounded the corner and saw a door shuddering from its impact with the wall. One of the bathroom doors with the fancy clouded glass in the upper half.
A paper sign flapped on the outside of the door.
IN DISREPAIR. DO NOT USE.
I rolled my eyes at yet another instance of the Linwood Academy putting on airs. Because “broken” just wasn’t good enough for them.
I felt myself pulled toward the door. Not drawn in the sense of intrigued or curious, but physically pulled.
My shoes slipped on the wood floor as I automatically leaned away from the force.
Only there wasn’t much room for leverage. The force around me held fast, dragging me forward and squeezing maybe just a little too tight.
I stumbled into the bathroom, my shoes catching on the threshold as the power around me dissipated. And then the door banged shut after me, almost smacking into my back.
Ariane stepped out from one of the stalls, and my immediate rush of relief vanished when she opened her mouth. “You are determined to be a menace, aren’t you?” Her voice was cold and harsh.
I gaped at her. No matter how upset she’d been with me before, she’d never looked at me like that. Not since the first day we’d talked and even then…
As she tipped her head, seemingly waiting for a response, I saw the vertical line carved into her cheek. And those eyes, dark and bottomless, as if they were void of all feeling.
Not Ariane. Ford.
I shook my head, my thoughts in a nauseating whirl as I struggled to catch. If Ford was here, that meant Ariane was…not.
A horrible feeling rose up in me as my brain replayed the scene I’d witnessed, in sharp HD quality. The trio of hybrids climbing into their big, black, Laughlin-provided SUV. And that strange momentary hesitation from Ford before she’d climbed in.
Ariane’s plan was simple and brilliant…but incredibly risky.
And I was too late to stop her.
19
Ariane
THE DARK INTERIOR OF THE SUV reeked of new leather and too much men’s cologne, a mixture that would now forever be associated in my mind with blinding terror.
I was in the middle seat, close enough to see the precise line of the haircut on the driver’s neck, smell that he was the source of the offending musky odor, and notice the plastic communication bud in his ear when he turned to check traffic before pulling out.
So close. Agent Blonde, as I nicknamed him, was so very close. And though I hadn’t had the chance to confirm it, I suspected he, too, was carrying concealed under his jacket. I’d seen a gun on Lando, the other guard, when he’d held the SUV door open for us. (I named him after the Star Wars character he vaguely resembled. I may have been slightly punchy with panic.)
That gun—and Agent Blonde’s presumably as well—was the real thing, not the kind with tranquilizer darts like I’d seen on Dr. Jacobs’s retrieval teams.
Theoretically, these men and their weapons were here to protect the hybrids (a.k.a. Laughlin’s investment), but I was willing to bet they’d been trained with scenarios that would involve turning those weapons on their charges.
Carter’s shoulder pressed against mine on one side. Nixon was folded up on the other side of me.
I imitated their position. Staring straight ahead, hands resting neatly, palms down, on their knees. Three little statues in a row.