“Don’t worry, dear,” I said. “He’ll be dropping by soon.”
Faraday smiled, and I wondered if she would report these words back to my family. I’d already placed Sebastian’s key in the lost and found, to focus the eyes watching our campus on someone sneaking in, instead of out.
I made my escapeduring the rugby team’s weekly run.
Fall-term finals were starting in a few days, and winter had crashed down on us in a mass of frigid arctic air. After a semester of wildfire smoke, a nearby murder, and multiple Hellions vanishing, the energy on campus was edgy and curdled. The final Primal Scream of the calendar year was tomorrow night—the perfect time to escape.
But I’d heard enough screaming for one year.
The Hellcats ran in sweatpants and hoodies. Most wore their hoods up, forming an anonymous mass of rugby thighs and profane marching songs. Every Tuesday, they passed Lavernick just before noon.
I left my family phone in the Sun Parlor, went to the back stairwell,and added a layer of pilfered rugby gear. Then I slipped out the door and into the Hellcat throng with nothing but the clothing under my sweats and the last $100 bill from my bug-out bag.
A few women on the team noticed me, but no one said anything. Rugby wasn’t a legacy sport—we don’t seek out unnecessary injuries.
I wondered how closely the family was surveilling me. I hadn’t spotted any extra Mortons on campus. Perhaps the other legacy students, still loyal, had been drafted to watch the wayward prodigy.
I didn’t look over my shoulder. I just ran.
We flowed up through the Terraces, past Sebastian’s share house from junior year—festooned with pirate flags by the new occupants—and into the clear-cut beneath the power lines. The Old Campus crouched in the forest to our right.
When we passed the statue of the seated woman, the team saluted, mirroring her broken hand. By now, I’d let myself drop to the rear of the pack.
As the trail brushed the edge of the trees, I slipped away.
My rugby gear dropped piece by piece into the tall grass. Soon I was in forest camo patterns, the ruin of Halcyon Hall ahead of me.
I hadn’t seen Peter’s masterpiece since the night of the fire. The top floor had been obliterated, the rest charred black. The husk still fluttered with yellow caution tape, tattered and faded after eight months. My footfalls crunched on splinters of charcoal in the brittle grass.
Peter would have loved it.
Bitter lemon in my mouth.
I didn’t stop, running past the old stables and overgrown tennis courts, then up the path to the derelict gazebo on the ridge. From there, I took one last glance back at Helshire, wondering if the alarm had been sounded yet.
There were no signs of pursuit, no indication that anyone in that cluster of gothic spires, brick towers, and modern steel was missing me.
I could feel my connections to the place, woven over the last fouryears. My first home away from the estate. My first Primal Scream. My first kill.
More strings for the pyre.
I waited to catch my breath, then turned away and left Helshire for the last time.
76
Sebastian’s safe house was dark blue.
It was on a narrow road with asphalt edges fading into grass yards, no sidewalks or curbs. Aluminum siding and garden ornaments. Basement windows set in concrete, like every house squatted on its own bunker. No streetlights, just a clear sky and a half-moon.
The key he’d given me was back at Helshire, so I had to ring the bell.
There was no answer at first, and I wondered if I’d gotten the address wrong—all those hours spent trying to forget it, in case the empathogens wore off and my old self came back.
I had no choice except to wait. I’d had my cab from the bus stop drop me a quarter mile away, and I was down to ten bucks.
Then the curtains rippled, and muffled footsteps approached. The door swung open, and he looked me up and down. I was dirty, exhausted, still wearing the clothes from my escape.
He stepped onto the porch and folded me in his arms. Warm, solid, real. “You made it.”
