He moves forward. “You’re bleeding,” he says, reaching for my hand. I shake my head, warning him back. I’m not about to let him use a silly little slice as a distraction, but Jack’s concern is regrettably genuine as his expressions sags. “Oh, honey… not another mirror.”
My stomach twists.
“It was just a little nick with my knife,” I tell him, “and nothing to worry about. I’m fine. But you… what’s going on? The auditorium? Why is there a meeting of the Grave at the high school?”
And, again, why didn’t I know about it?
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing, Allie?—”
Bullshit.
My jaw goes tight. “Daddy.”
It’s a manipulation tactic, and I’m not afraid to admit that. He hates it when I call him by his first name, but when I call him ‘Daddy’ like I’m a kid again instead of a hard-earned twenty-five, he’s putty in my hands.
Especially when I add, “You’re not hiding something from your own daughter, are you?”
It’s not an unfounded suspicion. For weeks now, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m out of the loop. That there’s something everyone knows… except me. It’s an intangible belief, like catching the wind in the palm of your hand: I feel it, I almost have a grasp on it, but it isn’t there when I look for it.
Except for now.
A fleeting expression of pain flutters across Jack’s tired face, there and gone again before the guilt can really creep in. Fucking shame that he hurriedly rearranges his features into a look I know all too well.
His “leader” look.
The one that says that not even I’m getting around it.
“What? That? Eddie’s helping me set up another one of those boring meetings we’re always having.” He waves his hands, dismissing the meetings though I’m well aware that the only reason Jack is always going to meetings at the high school is because he insists on them. “There weren’t any lurkers sighted last night, but some of the boundary boys think that we could be in trouble tonight. Like the beasts are biding their time.” Considering lurkers are too brainless to do anything but hunt to feed, I doubt it. I don’t get a chance to tell him that, though, before Jack is adding, “We’re weighing the benefits of doubling up patrols to make sure there’s always a pair of sensors”—someone with Hallie’s unique ability—“and hunterson duty after nightfall instead of leaving some of our borders unprotected. It’ll put a strain on our sensors, but the boundary boys think it’s worth the risk. A debate like that could go on for hours, sweetie, you know how it is.”
“And that’s all?” I know how it is—and I also know that can’t be all. “What about ‘he’?”
“‘He’?”
As a hunter who knows their place in the Grave, I’m not usually so curious about the day-to-day running of the community. I trusted Jack. Relied on my father. Give me a mission, a rig, and a match, and I’ll protect our people the only way I can.
But, nowadays, I’m on the bench. If Jack’s trying to shut me out of hunting, he should’ve expected I might turn my attention elsewhere.
Like, oh, a called meeting with astranger.
There are no strangers in the Grave. If you were a survivor in our community when we closed ranks, you’re one of us. If you’re part of the Outside world, you’re a target for the lurkers. We protect our borders. We don’t let anyone in or out.
At least, I didn’t think we did.
“Yeah,” I say pointedly, “you said ‘he’… ‘he’ might be trusted. ‘He’s at St. Matthew’s. You called him a stranger, Jack. Who’s ‘he’?”
Jack blinks once, twice, three times before he visibly relaxes. “Oh. I know what you’re talking about. You must’ve misheard. Eddie and me… we were talking about Oliver. You know him, don’t you, honey?”
Oliver. He was a sanitation worker in the old days. Now, he fancies himself a hunter, even if he—like Hallie—gets his worth in that ability to sense when a lurker is lurking. In all of the Grave, there’s about forty people who can. That’s only about tenpercent. Jack appreciates his skill, though he won’t let the tall, lanky, klutzy man in his early thirties anywhere near a flame.
I narrow my gaze. “Yeah. I know Oliver.”
He’s definitely not a stranger—and I definitely heard Jack use that word.
My dad still tries to play it off like he didn’t. “He has this cockamamie idea that he should take a group of survivors past our borders, see if there’s anything we can salvage for our stores. Eddie sent him to Audrey so the doc can talk some sense to him.”
Audrey Monroe isn’t a doctor. Not really. A second-year nurse who once worked at a hospital an hour away, she’s one of the only survivors with any medical training at all. She’s also a kind soul with a good nature, and though Doctor Wilson—a surgeon before the Turning—did the most when it came to my recovery and healing, it’s Audrey you can find at St. Matthew’s at any given hour of the day.
That would explain why Jack mentioned ‘he’s at the church. If Oliver is actingstrange-ly, maybethat’swhat I heard. I bite the corner of my mouth, wondering if I could buy that. His story rings true and yet?—
