The mousy young woman seemed to have found her voice, and she was the one who had spoken, with eyes blazing.
“I don’t hear anything about a place for us in all this,” she added. “Or are we supposed to do a Chris and just melt away? Go back and be locked up like nothing ever happened?”
“Go back?” I asked, confused.
“Chris already did, this morning,” Sophie told me quietly. “He said his chances of survival were better at school.”
I remembered his expression at Wolf’s Head, when the private army Whirlwind had brought were climbing the stone seats toward him. And I couldn’t say he was wrong.
“But you didn’t go with him?” I asked. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did—”
“We want to be here,” Aki said quickly, and Dimas appeared out of nowhere to nod in agreement.
“It’s been . . . weird,” he said softly. “But I like weird.”
Kimmie didn’t say anything. But the sandwiches she’d been multiplying, because even the council’s heaping baskets hadn’t been enough for Were appetites and the kids had missed out, suddenly cascaded down to the floor, threatening to bury the backseat in salmon paste and turkey clubs. She looked up, her dark eyes huge.
“I like weird, too,” she whispered.
“We all do, or we’d have gone back with Chris,” Jen said impatiently. She glared at me. “The question is, do you?”
I held up a furry hand. “Don’t really have a choice.”
They didn’t seem reassured by this, so I spelled it out. “What? You didn’t really think I’d leave you guys behind?”
And then Caleb was yelling and swerving off the road, as the front of the van was mobbed by screaming, crying kids.
* * *
It was a long way back to Vegas. Apparently, Relics can cover some damned ground, and we had. Four hours’ worth, to be precise.
Fortunately, Were trackers had been able to find us. Unfortunately, that left us jouncing over dirt roads, when they existed at all, for hours until we finally hit some blacktop. And then we still had miles to go.
I watched us eat up the road and wondered how life could change so much so fast. Someone once said “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” And it felt kind of like that. Or like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and wondering where it went.
I guessed I was going to find out.
“So, does it help at all?” Cyrus asked me quietly.
The kids were eating sandwiches, and playing some game where you had to guess the pop song in as few notes as possible. Only Aki couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, adding an extra layer of difficulty. People were laughing and throwing things at him when he told them his latest answer, which had sounded nothing like the song it was supposed to be.
I watched them with a small smile, and then looked back at Cyrus. “Does what help?”
“It seems to me that you’ve saved a lot of kids lately. The five of them, from those internment type schools, Jack from imprisonment by that bastard of a mage, and you’re joining me in my mad crusade to save who knows how many from the streets.”
“What’s your point?”
“Does it help? With the one you lost? With Adam?”
I finally realized what he meant. And for a moment, I was back there, standing in the doorway of my laundry room, watching a boy’s blood seep out onto the blindingly white tiles. I felt a shiver rip through me.
“Does all this help you?” I asked. “With Colin and Jayden and Danny?”
He smiled slightly in understanding. “No.”
“Me either.” I thought some more. “But it’s nice.”
He pulled me close, and his warmth immediately banished the chill. “How about we go home and do some laundry?” he whispered, against my hair.
I rested my head on his shoulder. “Yeah.” I said. “That sounds good.”
