Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #4)(27)
She was sure Keefe could feel her panic. But instead of teasing her, he said, “So, when are you going to tell me what you guys are hiding? Something about the gnomes, right—don’t think I didn’t notice all those nervous glances.”
Biana couldn’t have looked guiltier. “We . . . just wanted to make sure it was true before we said anything,” she mumbled.
“And it’s good we waited,” Sophie added. “Mr. Forkle gave me better information.”
She explained their worry about the elvin footprints outside the Wildwood Colony, and how two teenagers made them, not the Neverseen.
“So . . . you thought you had evidence that my mom was poisoning gnomes and you decided not to tell me?”
Keefe looked so betrayed, Sophie wished she could think of something better to say than, “It turned out to be nothing.”
“That’s still not cool. We’re going to find out a ton of awful things about my mom as we go along. I don’t want to have to worry that everyone’s hiding stuff from me. You know how that feels, Foster. You hate it as much as I do.”
Sophie sighed. “Okay. From now on we’ll share.”
Keefe nodded, but he didn’t look happy. And his frown deepened when Della pulled Fitz close for a good-night hug.
“Come on,” Dex told Keefe. “We need to brainstorm ways to punish Wonderboy.”
“That’s right,” Keefe said, perking up a bit. “We’ll form our own Empath-Technopath Cognatedom. We can be Keefex!”
“Why not Deefe?” Dex asked.
“Because Deefe sounds lame.”
“You guys are lame,” Fitz said as he trailed behind them up the stairs.
“Are you sure it’s smart to leave the boys alone?” Biana asked as she followed Sophie and Della to their tree house.
“?‘Smart’ isn’t the word I’d use,” Della admitted. “But we’ll sleep better than they will.”
The gnomes had been busy while they were gone, hanging glass orbs filled with swirling flashes of color all over their tree house. The effect was breathtaking, even if it also made Sophie squirmy when she realized the dots of light were some sort of iridescent flying bug.
Della’s bedroom had also been finished, and it looked like a presidential suite, complete with a private bathroom and a closet full of radiant gowns.
Sophie and Biana had new clothes too, and this time there were pants! Also: the world’s weirdest pajamas. Sophie had no idea why the Black Swan would choose a purple furry onesie—with feet. It was quite comfy when she put it on, but she was glad her windows had thick drapes so no one could see her padding around her room.
Next she needed to find a place to hide Kenric’s cache, but her options were limited. Her desk only had one drawer, and her canopied bed sat on an elevated platform with no space underneath. Her best choice was to tuck it into a hidden pocket in the strap of her purple backpack. The cache barely fit, but the lump wasn’t noticeable, and she slipped the Imparter into another pocket and dumped out everything else.
Her eyes welled with tears when she found Grady and Edaline’s note. They’d tied it to Ella, the bright blue stuffed elephant she couldn’t sleep without:
We will never be more than a few words away.
~Love, Mom & Dad
Sophie wasn’t sure what they meant, until she noticed the silver box they’d included. Inside was the teal memory log Alden had given her to record all of her dreams and triggered memories. And her illegal, unregistered Spyball from the Black Swan.
Her hands shook as she picked up the palm-size silver sphere and whispered, “Show me Grady and Edaline Ruewen.”
The Spyball turned warm, and a bright flash filled the orb, painting the sphere with an image of her adoptive parents. They sat with Alden in his curved office with sleek glass walls. Half the room was made of windows overlooking the lake, and the other half was a vibrant aquarium. Sophie knew the room all too well. She’d been in it often—usually when Alden needed to have an unpleasant conversation.
But Grady and Edaline didn’t look upset. In fact, all three of them were reading long yellowed scrolls. More scrolls were piled on the desk, the floor—every flat surface in the room. Sophie couldn’t tell what they were working on, but it looked important.
“Stay safe,” she whispered, tracing her fingers over their faces.
She watched for several minutes more, wishing one of them would look up. When they didn’t, she let the image blink away. She realized then, with a twinge of guilt, that she hadn’t checked on her human family in weeks—maybe even months. She’d been so distracted by all the huge problems she’d been facing, she’d . . . forgotten.
“Show me Connor, Kate, and Natalie Freeman,” she told the Spyball, using the names she wasn’t supposed to know. The elves had changed her family’s identities after they’d erased Sophie from their lives, fearing she might try to contact them. Being erased had been Sophie’s choice—her final gift to spare her family a lifetime of grieving a missing child. The only reason she knew who they were was because the Black Swan gave her the top-secret information.
The Spyball turned warm again, and when the image appeared it showed three different scenes. It must’ve been daytime where her family lived, because her dad was sitting at a desk in a windowed office, her mom was driving somewhere, and her sister was doodling on her notebook in a classroom. The normal, everyday moments looked so foreign compared to the things Sophie was now used to seeing.