What happened out there? What did you see? Why can’t you speak?
The answers to those were what we’d find inside. So not everyone at Monterey Compound but nevertheless, a great deal. Everyone had trauma. Nothing new about that.
“Reina, you said it was something about acoustic signals and dolphins?” I pivoted around in my seat.
Reina sat cross-legged on the counter, a notepad in her lap as she ran through the profiles I’d pulled for her review. People she may want to talk to in person. Shit in their files that made me arch a brow and could besomething, anything we could grasp onto.
“I say a lot of things, but yes, go on.” Her long legs dangled over the side and she hopped down. Reina hovered over me upon approach, the silver chained cross around her neck that once belonged to Seth cool against the back of my head. “Find something juicy?”
Tomás’s attention piqued, and he glanced over. His attention lingered on me as he waited for me to speak. “Could be nothing. But we had an arrival a couple of months ago specifically stating that the further they got from Covert, the Pansies clicks and groans became less rhythmic and more chaotic.”
“Interesting,” Reina said, tearing the page from the tome and parsed through it, jotting down some notes.
“Does it say where they came from?” Tomás asked, his hand fell over his buzzed, dark hair, his presence looming now that Reina had paced back across the room.
“Yeah.” My voice came out as a whisper, and I cleared it. “These are from the Transient Nation arrival stack. So everywhere. Why?”
“Okay, a few months ago, the closer they got to Salem the fewer originals they saw in the area. That’s a direct correlation to whatever Ronan had going on, yeah?”
“We already know that another species of Pansie was born about a year ago,” I said. “That’s what kicked this whole thing off—when Michael and Logan got bit.”
Something danced in his light brown eyes as he spoke. I hated it. “Have you considered migration patterns? Pansies arepeople. People are animals. So are dolphins. There’s less now than last week. It’s getting hotter. Bodies decay in heat.”
“Duh,” Reina chimed in with an exaggerated nod, jerking forward at the statement. “The decay is still slower than what you’d expect from you and me on the way to the afterlife, since they aren’t, like, actually dead, though.”
“Following. But, hear me out Ms. Scientist andSeer, what’s the typical behavior of a pod of dolphins?”
“Um, they’re smart as heck. Complex communication patterns, coordinated group movements in both hunting and migration …” Reina’s voice trailed off and her eyes glistened in distant thought.
Tomás sighed impatiently, sliding across the room on the wheeled chair and reached for the report. “And the Pansies are doing what …”
“Well hot damn.” Reina muttered. “They’re following the food source.”
“Who’s name is on that report?”
I shrugged and met his stare. It was unsettling, as though he was seeing through you but not in the creepy, cloudy way those around me described my gaze. Tomás watched people, as though their secrets were an open book to him, and he found humor in that. “Everything’s blending together at this point. I’m not even checking unless I see something significant enough to set aside.”
“That doesn’t seem helpful.” He teased.
I scoffed, tossing my hair over my shoulder. “And what do you do around here again?”
“What I do here is irrelevant to my po?—”
“Oh brother.” I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Reina, whoever it is, we need to go talk to them. Now.”
Mischief decorated Reina’s sharp features as she ruffled through the stack of interview papers in front of me. Her cheerful tone was a sickening giveaway that she was about to putme through hell and enjoy every second of it. “Sure, you lead though, since there’s a good chance they’ll tell you everything and then some.”
I glanced down at the page she set before me. Tomás inched forward, his eyes narrowing. “You know him or something?”
It was Hal’s interview. And we didn’t have to go far to get more information. Down the hall and around the corner in fact. My old quarters. I’d avoided him as much as possible. If it weren’t for Emma, we’d be no contact for sure. His wife, my fallen friend, Laurel dying hadn’t made us like each other all the same. Instead, we operated in a sense of understanding and respect for all the shit we’d been through since we last resided in the same space. Sometimes trauma bonds you. Other times, you couldn’t help but have a desperate urge to get further apart.
We both grieved too much. If we were left alone together, I feared we’d stay in a pit of each other’s sorrow and depression forever. Ergo the kids and my family. If we drowned ourselves in other things, then we could both pretend this was how life was meant to be. There was no alternative to this. Shit happened, and you dealt with the hand you were given. The universe worked however the fuck it wanted to, and we were all victims of the whims and wind in which it took us.
For those reasons alone I was glad to have left them my quarters. I didn’t want to go back. Riley’s old place with Abel felt good … it felt better. A place to start over. Again. Or deal with the time I had left.
If I wanted to talk to Hal though, there was only one place we could find him at this time of day. And it was the last place I wanted to be.
Alexiares
