Cadence didn’t wake up until something like three o’clock in the morning. By then, I was sound asleep in my bed. Heaven forbid I stay up past midnight to see if my sister made it through her procedure alive. I was still stunned that my parents had only visited her the one time. Even Aurora had stopped by twice in the afternoon to make sure Cadence was okay, and she wasn’t even family. But when I woke up the next morning, I had a message from my big sis assuring me she was okay. I breathed a sigh of relief and got ready for training.
My mom was banging around in the kitchen when I came out to grab a protein drink to down on the way over. Having missed the day before, the last thing I wanted was to be late. Chances were someone would have a snide comment waiting for me either way. “Oh, you’re up,” my mom said, glancing at the clock on the stove. “Can I fix you some breakfast?”
Something seemed weird, and I wondered if my mo
“Why is it so quiet?” I asked Brandon, not liking it one bit. I wasn’t sure what it was that had me on edge, but it was unsettling.“Would you like for me to sing you a song?” His sarcasm is almost as brutal as his father’s.“No thanks.” I’ve heard him sing. I opened up my computer and got to the page for our algebra class before we could get off task. It was easy to do if I wasn’t careful, and the last thing I needed was to waste my time. Getting a good grade on this test would be difficult if I wasn’t diligent.“Are you hungry? I’ve got some leftover Chinese food. Or I can make you a sandwich.”He is always trying his best to get me to lose focus. “Not right now, thanks.” I checked over the list our teacher had given us of what to study and realized there were at least three skills I hadn’t yet mastered. “Can we just get to it?”&ldqu
Hines was such a weirdo. His hair was dark black except for a white stripe, and it stood up on top of his head about two feet. He had black rimmed glasses thick enough to be double paned windows, and he was as nervous as a skittish kitten anytime he got anywhere near danger. It didn’t take me too long to see him in my mind.He was on an airplane, and he wasn’t paying me any attention at all. I walked around in his mind for a few minutes and picked up all sorts of absent thoughts and memories, though I couldn’t exactly tell where he was going. I saw an image of the Eiffel Tower in his memory and decided it might be Europe, but I didn’t think it was France. And then he turned his head.It took me a moment to recognize what I was looking at—or who I was looking at, I might say. “Oh, no,” I muttered as I realized what must’ve happened. I hadn’t known I’d even spoken aloud until I said it again. “Oh,
“Well, hello there, sunshine,” Elliott said, talking to my sister.Resting back into his chair, Cadence asked, “How’s it going?” I could tell by her tone she was questioning his countenance as much as I was.“It’s going. It’s going.” He tossed his leather jacket on the back of the chair, making Cadence’s hair blow out around her. He was definitely faster now. I could tell already. “You will never guess who I ran into downstairs.”I wondered if Elliott would still be this happy if he knew who I’d just run into on a plane. “Who?” Cadence asked.Elliott waved at Brandon and I but didn’t say anything directly to us as he headed into the kitchen, still talking to Cadence. She followed. “Your beloved,” I heard him say as he rounded the corner. “And it was weird, but he was back to himself for a few moments. It was strange.”My eavesdrop
The thrusting of a grilled cheese sandwich under my nose brought me back to reality. I looked up to meet Brandon’s eyes and smiled, thanking him with a loud growl of my stomach. “I figured you had to be hungry.” He sat down beside me, and Elliott took his regular chair across from us, an open bag of Cheetos in his hand, his fingers already orange from the dust.“How’s the mathing going?” he asked before slamming another handful of chips into his mouth. “I never did see the point.”“It’s going,” I replied, biting into a perfectly melty, delicious, buttery gift from the gods. Brandon has a way with bread, cheese, and butter that transforms them into something otherworldly. “I don’t think I’m going to be up for this test, though, if you guys are going out tonight.”“Yeah, we haven’t decided for sure yet. Depends on what you find out. But if Cadence is going, I&rsqu
Back in my room, I sat on my bed and tuned out the sound of my mom vacuuming the living room floor for the hundredth time. It occurred to me that she needed to make some friends and get out of the apartment more, but I didn’t know who to suggest. Age is such a weird thing here. There was no way to tell if people were three hundred or eighteen unless you just knew their story. I couldn’t imagine my mom hanging out with Aurora or Meagan, but maybe someone like Hannah would be a good match for her. The thought of my mom drinking a latte with Ashley had me cracking up. She might look like Jamie’s other girlfriend, Ellie, but she wasn’t vintage. I felt sorry for my mom that she was here all day long, but then, that was her choice, I supposed. At least she got to decide whether she stayed or went.I leaned back against the headboard, a pillow behind my back, and closed my eyes. Normally, for something this important, I’d go up on the roof, but it wasn&
It occurred to me that a nap might be a good idea. Sometimes, my math teacher allows permission to take the test at exactly midnight, which is great for people like Brandon who are awake in the middle of the night. Maybe I could take the test before the hunt. I decided I’d better wait and see what my sister had planned, though it wouldn’t be surprising if she had decided to show up in Lexington sometime around two or three o’clock in the morning.I heard my sister’s voice and realized I’d dozed off for a few minutes. My mom was asking her a bunch of questions about her day, and Cadence’s voice was shifting from polite to annoyed. I decided to go ahead and save my sister, so I went out into the living room. “Hey, Cass,” she said, a look of relief on her face. “Ready to tell me what you got?”“Sure,” I said, not making direct eye contact with my mother for fear she’d start asking me a bunch of
The algebra test was ridiculous, and by the time I’d finished it, I was ready to rip my messy bun right off the top of my head. I really don’t care about how many fence posts Billy needs to erect an enclosure around his pigs when length is represented by X and Y is the time it takes to fly from Nairobi to Shanghai on the back of a one legged flamingo. I mean, really, when am I ever going to need any of this?But what I did need was to figure out how to get in Holland’s way long enough for my sister and her team to do what they needed to without tipping the Vampire off. I tried to shift my mind away from my arch nemesis, a.k.a. mathematics, and focus in on Brandon and the others. They were nearing the outskirts of Lexington right as I tuned them in, and for a moment it was like I was right there beside them.Elliott was driving, Cadence in the passenger seat, with Brandon sitting next to Roar and Meagan, Ashley, and Martin in the way-back. I knew my si
The next thing I knew, my sister was sprinting through the yard, flying after one of the Vampires. She’d always been incredibly fast since she’d Transformed, but this was a kind of speed I couldn’t even articulate. She caught up to him quickly and a few seconds later, Spittle exploded in a pile of ash. I assumed my sister must’ve used one of the grenades Christian made, the kind I’d used to set Gibbon on fire, but I couldn’t tell what she’d done without losing my grip on Holland.A sense of peace settled around my sister’s countenance as she and Elliott stared out over the Missouri River, and I decided I could probably let my shield down now. It looked as if they must’ve gotten everyone or else they wouldn’t be standing around. I took a few really deep breaths, trying to make sure I had fully left Holland. She hadn’t done a single thing to try to stop me, which seemed odd, but I got the notion that she was look
Cadence was glowing, holding both of her babies, one in each arm. I smiled at her and then focused on Josephina. She wasn’t crying now, but her little face was wrinkled as if she might burst into tears at any moment. Aaron had his hand on her back, beaming with pride as he looked at his little family. Jamie and another Healer, Ona, were cleaning up a tray table, but I caught his eye, and he winked at me. I hoped he could tell how grateful I was. If it wasn’t for him and his life saving blue magical healing powers, not to mention his medical skills, Cadence never would’ve come back to life.“Where’s my new favorite lil girl?” Elliott asked beside me.“Hey! I’m your lil girl. You’re going to have to think of something else to call her.” I threw an elbow at him.“Oh, I’m just teasing,” Elliott assured me. “Still, she is definitely lil. And she is my girl.”“I&rsqu
I’ll never forget the day my sister died. Even now, eight months later, sitting outside of Jamie’s operating room with Brandon’s hand in mine, every time I think about what happened that day, I get tears in my eyes. So many things could’ve gone differently, if only one of us would’ve made a different choice. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what I could’ve done differently myself that day, and even though everyone tells me there’s no point in dwelling on it, what’s done is done, it still haunts me sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep at night, when I can so vividly see Cadence hanging there in the air before she plummeted to the ground, the whoosh of power that left my hand just missing its mark.The new Hunter Leader is a guy named Daniel Bower. He came in from California a few months ago. He’s awesome. I’ve known him for a while. He’s the one who helped capture Professor Stewart after th
I continued to beg and plead with her to come back to us. At fifteen minutes, Scarlet’s whispers were loud enough for me to detect what she was saying to Cale. “How long will he give it?”“I don’t know.” Cale seemed agitated and upset, certainly more connected to my sister than Scarlet. “Not yet.”“Please... Cadey, please.” I felt as far and as deep as I could, thinking about how I’d had to go so very far into her brain to plant that dream. The clock continued to tick. Cadence still wasn’t breathing, and Jamie began to sound desperate. At twenty-five minutes, when Jamie said “thirty,” his voice broke. He knew that the chances of her coming back to us now, after this long, were minute at best. He couldn’t give up, though. We couldn’t give up.Aaron blew two breaths of air into my sister’s lungs, and Jamie started counting again.Something was diff
After Aaron finally moved forward, I followed, staying back a little bit. I didn’t want to see her like that. I had never seen a person’s body after they’ve fallen that far, but I could imagine what it was like.Only when I finally did take a few hesitant steps around the trees, Brandon’s hands on my shoulders, she didn’t look like I expected her to at all.Cadence was lying flat on the ground with her hands folded over her abdomen, sort of like Snow White. Her feet were out straight, and her hair was blown out around her. She looked absolutely beautiful. And still. So very, very still.Jamie was doing chest compressions, and when it was time to breathe, Aaron did that for my sister. Some sort of automatic pilot must’ve turned on for him because his movements were very robotic. Jamie would say thirty, and Aaron would breathe into my sister’s open mouth twice before Jamie started counting again.Tears were rolling
“No!” My scream echoed across the mountainside as I watched in horror as my sister fell. I cannot guide what I cannot see, and I didn’t have a chance to get a grip on her before she plummeted. My hands shot out in her direction, but the surge of power I’d sent to grab her went over her head. I saw a streak of blue do the same and knew Jamie had missed as well.Fumbling through Cadence’s stream of consciousness, I tried again, hoping I’d be able to figure out how to get my powers around her before she hit the ground, but she was moving too fast, and without my eyes on her, I wouldn’t be able to get a grip.Part of me wanted to at least jump into her head, to be with her, to let her know she was okay, but then, the thought of what she was about to endure, when she hit the tops of the trees and then cascaded down through them to the earth, I couldn’t bear the thought, and I knew she wouldn’t want me to see it.I
“Brandon!” I shouted, floating over to where he had disappeared. He didn’t answer, and I realized he must’ve fallen all the way in. “Dang it.” I looked around the battlefield. I knew he was safe down there, but I hated that he was in that miserable place. Cadence was firing at Daunator now while Christian moved in, to place the grenade, I assumed, so I thought perhaps she’d be safe for a few minutes. I decided to help Brandon.“Are you all right?” I asked, using my telepathy.“Thank goodness,” he thought, probably not even to me. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just really dark in here.”“I know. Hold on, and I’ll get you out.”“If I hold on, won’t it be harder for you to get me out?”“All right smarty pants.” I needed to focus all of my energy if I was going to do this
“You okay?” Brandon shouted to me as he moved a little closer to where I was standing. The holes in the ground were not shaking now as much as they had been before, but they were still an obstacle we had to consider. I didn’t want him to get too close because of my tornadoes, but I was glad he was nearby.“Great,” I called back, sending another pile of creatures over the side of the mountain.Aaron was fighting his way through the crowd of black creatures, working his way to Cadence. The path was getting clearer, as far as the minions were concerned, but once he got within about a hundred yards of Cadence’s location, one of the Vampires that had been engaged with our forces closer to the top of the mountain broke off, clearly on his way to intercept the Guardian Leader.Whether he liked it or not, Aaron wasn’t alone now. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but Eliza was running parallel to him, fighting off
Moving the black creatures off of the ledge worked well, and I was just starting my second round when I realized my sister had taken off running toward Daunator. Christian had reached him already, a grenade in his hand. I prayed he didn’t get sucked down into another hole. The fact that Cadence was so far away from Aaron was worrisome, but he was busy with the creatures. While Cadence was slowed a few times by the minions sinking their teeth into her arm or grabbing at her heels, for the most part, they seemed to be letting her through, which seemed like a bad sign to me. Did Daunator want her to fight him?A blast of light illuminated the mountain, and then a wave of smoke obscured my view of Christian and Daunator. He’d thrown a grenade, the old kind, the ones he knew wouldn’t work. When the smoke cleared, Daunator’s laughter echoed through the air, and Christian went flying twenty feet in the air.Paul’s voice came over the IAC as I tos
Christian’s eyes widened. “Get out of here? We can’t. We have to get Daunator.”“We will. But for now, we need to go back and regroup. The most important thing is that you’re safe now,” Cadence explained to him.Christian was starting to freak out again. “No, Cadence, you don’t understand. We can’t just leave from here! We can’t just let him go!” His eyes were wild, and he reached forward and grabbed my sister’s shoulders. That lasted about half a second before Aaron grabbed him and pulled him off.“Listen, Christian, I agree. It’s important we come back and end this, but you need medical attention. And a good visit with Hannah.”And a shower, I thought to myself. But I was staying out of this one for the moment. I felt a stirring in the ground and a shift in energy somewhere further up the mountain. The argument was about to be moot.“No,