In the end, it was Gillian, red-haired Gillian, who gave me the plan, although I doubt she meant to do so. We were sitting together, with Mike as her constant shadow, sharing hot cocoa in one of the comfortable, quiet common areas of the school. And Gillian was talking about Pearl, surprisingly; few of the children ever mentioned her, except in euphemisms (such as calling her “the Lady”).
None of them answered my questions about what she was like, except Gillian.
“She was like you,” she told me. Mike grabbed her hand, probably to warn her to shut up, but she shook him off. “Pretty, I mean. And really cold.”
“She doesn’t mean you’re cold,” Mike said. “Just—”
“Not like us,” Gillian finished. “And yeah, I meant cold.Don’t tell me what I meant.”
“You shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Why?” Gillian tossed her red hair over her shoulders in a gesture that practically dared Pearl to appear and strike her down. “I hateher. The Lady. She tried to make me love her, but I never did. I hated her then, and I really hate her now.”
“Gillian,” I said, “this is important. How often did you see her?”
“See her?” She paused for thought, then shook her head. “Almost never. But she was always there, you know? You could feel her all the time.”
“But she did show herself.”
“Only a couple of times. She didn’t look—right. Like wax or something, not a real person. It was weird and creepy.” Gillian considered for a few more seconds before she added, “When she was there, when she was like that, it didfeel different, though.”
“Different in what way?”
“Like—less. Like she wasn’t watching us, except when she looked right at us. Does that make sense?”
It did, and I felt an unreasonable jolt of excitement. If Pearl’s omniscience limited itself as she took physical form, even as rough a form as Gillian described, then there were ways to fool her. Ways to hurt her.
“When did she take form?” I asked. Gillian, for the first time, looked at Mike, who shook his head mutely. “Please. This is important. I need to know.”
“I’m going to tell,” Gillian said to Mike.
“You know what she said. She said she’d know.”
“Well, I don’t care if she does.” Gillian looked right at me and said, “It was after they woke up our powers. When there was one they thought was special, she’d come to see. Sometimes she showed things to us. Sometimes.”
“What kind of things?”
“It’s hard to explain. She showed us the future, I guess. And the past. And she showed us how our parents were gone and she was all we had.” A muscle jumped in Gillian’s tensed jaw. “But she wasn’t. We had each other.” She was holding Mike’s hand again, and her knuckles had gone pale. “We always had each other.”
I nodded and stopped the conversation; I could sense that even Gillian, brave and angry as she was, would go no further with it. Mike pulled her away, leaving me alone to consider what she’d said.
As the fire burned down to ashes and the night settled in deep and cold, I murmured, “She comes to the camps. She comes in the flesh.”
If I could get in, if I could get close, I could destroy her while she was in skin, or at least damage her badly. Gillian had given me the clue. She’d said that Pearl’s omniscient presence had ceased when she was inside flesh. That meant Pearl couldn’t maintain both things; she could be energy or she could be flesh.
Flesh was vulnerable. I knew that better than anyone.
I waited until the next day to speak to Luis, at the end of a silent meal. Our guides had left us, no doubt wanting us to process all the information we’d been given so far, although I had no illusions that there weren’t ears listening, both mechanical and actual. “I’m going to say something you may not like.”
He grunted and took a sip of Diet Coke. “Yeah, that’s not really new, you know. You do that a lot.”
I let the silence stretch for a moment, long enough that his smile faded, and I felt him tense in readiness for what I was about to say. “I’m not staying here.”
He stopped, watching my face. I couldn’t tell, in that moment, what he was thinking, but I knew what he was feeling: the same slow, rolling anger he’d been carrying since he’d first realized how damaged Isabel had become. The anger we shared, and the need for action. The difference between us was how we defined actions to be taken. “Why?”
“Because my fight is out there. Can I be of value here? Yes. But I could be of value anywhere, in any hospital, any war zone, any disaster. My dutyis to find Pearl and stop her. I can’t do that from here.”
“You think I don’t want to run off and get my revenge on? Damn straight,” he said. “But I can’t leave Ibby to face this alone. And neither can you. I know you better than that.”
I swallowed. “You’re wrong. I can.”
It was black and brutal to say, but I needed to leave no doubt, and I was dreading the violence of his response ... but not for the first time, Luis surprised me.
He looked back down at his plate, picked up a potato chip, and ate it with careful deliberation. Then he said, “You know these kids need our protection,” he said. “And our help. Isabelneeds our help.”
“These children are Pearl’s failures. Her castoffs. Her rejects, Luis. She won’t threaten them; it’s to her advantage to have them seeded out here in the world, causing mayhem and absorbing the best efforts of our Wardens. She throws the wounded and dying in our path to slow us down. Don’t you see that?”
“No. I see kids who need help, and who the fuck do you think you are, calling them failures?” Now I’d made him angry—or, more accurately, given him a target for his rage. Me. “It takes more courage for them just to get up every day and face the world than you’re ever going to know your whole life. You calling Ibbya failure? A reject?”
I had, of course. “That isn’t a personal judgment ...”
“The hell it isn’t!” He shoved his plate aside, got up, and paced, glaring at me with sullen fury. “You cold bitch.You can really sit there and say this to me. I always knew you were some kind of alien inside, but damn. I thought you cared.”
“I do. I love Ibby,” I said. “And I love you. But I know my duty, and it isn’t here. It isn’t doing this. This is nothing but bandages on a mortal wound.”
Luis Rocha let out a harsh bark of laughter. “ Love. Yeah, I figured you’d be bringing that up sooner or later. You always hurt the ones you love, right? Well, fuck you. That’s not love; that’s selfishness. We don’t need you. Just get your shit and go, if you’re going to cut and run. Ibby’s better off without you dragging it out. So am I.”
I’d been prepared for this to hurt, but not this much. Not as if my intestines were being dragged out and burned. Oddly enough, it wasn’t only the hurt, though—it was anger, too. I was right, and Luis knew it. He just couldn’t bear to hear it.
And that made me see him as weak. As human.It made it perversely easier to say, “If you don’t want me here, there’s no reason for me to stay, is there?”
“None,” he said. His eyes had turned obsidian-hard, and there was no trace of the man I’d kissed just yesterday. The man who had held me and shown me the sweetness of human life in ways I’d never imagined. The one who’d made me lose myself in him.
That man had been an illusion, a ghost, and now he was gone.
I kept my voice steady with an effort. “Then I’ll leave tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t delay any longer.”
“Yeah, I know, you’ve got a destiny and shit,” he said dismissively. “Too important for all us little people to stand in your way. Especially us failures and rejects.”