Jack turns to Julio, his tone teetering toward defiant. “He left me a note at the cabin—a number and a cell phone. I don’t know how he found us. We probably picked up a smaze when we left Croatan Beach, but it hardly seemed like the time to argue about it.”
“So you called him instead of telling us something was up,” Julio says with a disgusted look. “Weren’t you the guy who said we all had to ditch our phones so we couldn’t be tracked? For all we know, that cell phone pinged a tower and led those Seasons right to us.”
“There’s a bounty on our heads! They would have found us anyway. And if Lyon hadn’t warned us they were coming, we’d probably all be dead.”
“So you’re taking advice from the man who crushed a Season under his shoe?”
Jack’s eyes swirl white in the firelight. “When I told him about Hunter, he asked me if I ‘took’ him.” Julio shrinks back at the mention of Hunter’s name. “I thought Lyon was speaking figuratively, but when Névé was dying and her magic was leaving her, it occurred me to that maybe he wasn’t. It made sense. It’s how Gaia reclaims her magic when we’re Terminated, the same way she transfers it to something else—the crows and the bees, the flies and the smazes. I thought if I took Névé’s magic before it was gone, I’d be strong enough to save the rest of you.”
Jack’s face pleads with me, as if he’s waiting for me to yell or take sides or pass judgment. But I don’t know what to think. Or what to feel. Guilt, because I wasn’t strong enough to hold Névé safe under my roots? Shame, that Jack stole a dying soul to save us? Revulsion, that he could even comprehend doing something like this, or horror, because I’m thankful that he did?
“Névé’s transmitter was dead,” he says, desperate to explain himself. “Her neck was broken. There was nothing any of us could have done to bring her back.”
Amber tears at bits of grass and tosses them into the fire. “Her magic changed you,” she says without looking at Jack. “I looked in your eyes when you held that knife to my throat, and you weren’t you. How do we know we can trust you?” She jerks her chin toward the tents. There are only two of them. This entire journey has been based on trust. Trust we’ve all blindly given and fought for, because we need each other to survive. I think back to that moment at the cabin, when Julio and Amber stood side by side against Jack and I was forced to choose between them.They stayed because I did. Because I believed in him. And now he’s looking at me from the edge of our camp, asking me if I still do.
“I didn’t know what taking her magic would do to me.” Jack’s voice breaks. “It was too much magic. Too much power. I didn’t know how much of myself I would lose in the moment or how much of Névé’s death I’d carry with me, and for that I’m sorry,” he says to Amber. To me. To all of us. “But don’t ask me if I regret it. Because I’d do it again, a million times over, rather than lose a single one of you.”
When none of us speak, he stalks away through the brush, beyond the light of the fire. My heart leaps, ready to rush after him.
“Jack!” Amber calls out.
His footsteps fall silent.
“Do you still want to kill me?” she asks.
I feel him, breath held, still close.
“No more than usual,” he says quietly.
Some of the tension leaves Amber’s shoulders. She reaches into her backpack and tosses a can of beans into the darkness. It smacks into his palm. “Then stop being a snowflake and come eat.”
“So that’s it?” Julio asks, rising to his feet. “He holds a knife to your throat and you’re just going to forgive him?”
Amber shrugs, but there’s a lingering leeriness in the way she looks at Jack as he nears. “It wasn’t the first time.”
The flames snap, fueled by a torrent of hot wind. “But this time was different,” Julio says. “You could have died. Forever. For real.”
“You could have died, too!” Her throat’s thick. Her fiery gaze drops to the puncture in his chest. “If I had been in Jack’s position, I would have done the same for you.”
Julio’s mouth opens. The wind shifts, uncertain as it settles. Slowly, he sits back down, closer to Amber than he was before.
Jack returns to the fire, hovering just beyond the reach of its heat. We’re quiet, all of us probably thinking the same thing as we divide up cans of vegetables and beans, wondering how this revelation changes us. All this time, we thought we had to balance our power to preserve our strength, to share it equally. But maybe we’re no more than animals. If we get hungry enough, desperate enough, the strongest of us will take what they need to survive.
Julio makes a face, jabbing his spoon into his uneaten can of beans and shoving it away from him. “Couldn’t you have stopped at a Burger King or something?”
“Fast-food restaurants have security cameras.” Jack fights with the lid of his own can, giving up with a curse when the aluminum tab breaks off. “If we lie low, we can still get to Arizona in one piece.”
“Says the soul sucker who held a knife to Amber’s throat.”
They glare at each other over the fire. It snaps, scattering sparks.
Someone’s stomach growls.
There’s so much wrong with us. So much I can’t fix. I can’t bring our Handlers back, or Hunter’s life, or the magic we stole from Névé to save ourselves. I can’t change our mistakes, or take back the things we’ve said to one another in moments of weakness. But maybe I can bring comfort to the deep wounds we’re all feeling. Maybe tonight, my strength can heal us.
“Give me a minute,” I say, brushing the dirt from my legs and slipping silently into the night.
JACK
