Where Silence Gathers (Some Quiet Place #2)(19)

Overhead, a bird calls to another. The canopy of leaves—still recovering from the long sleep of the past few months—struggles to hide them. Then one bird takes flight, flitting to another branch in a flurry of brown feathers. It hops to a different tree, this one close to the entrance of the mine. I stare at it again. Mom’s voice haunts me. William, don’t!

“My dad worked down there. He knew those mines better than anyone,” I say. The bird lifts into the sky and soars to better places.

“Is that why you came here? To feel closer to him?”

It would make sense. A pretty lie, tied up with a pretty red bow. But no, that isn’t why I really came here. The mines. The mines. “Just needed to clear my head,” I mutter, raising the gun. Revenge doesn’t respond, and he steps away. I fire off another shot.

Bang. Smoke billows from the muzzle. The action feels empty. I imagine the bullet putting a hole into Nate Foster. But with thoughts of him comes thoughts of someone in a white T-shirt, who speaks of redemption and hope. Things I’ll permanently leave behind when I actually do face Nate Foster.

“What do you know about my dad?” I ask Revenge without looking at him.

He shrugs. “Not much, honestly. Once, years ago, you told me your father was frightening. When I asked you why, I couldn’t get anything else. I figured you just didn’t want to talk about it.”

This raises too many questions that have no answers. My mind goes to the next topic that’s been bothering me. I try to think of a careful way to bring it up.

“So are you going to tell me about Forgiveness?” I blurt. I don’t know if I say it because I want to know or because some part of me wants to drive Revenge away.

His countenance darkens. Like with Saul, the space between us doesn’t feel like inches or feet or yards; it feels like miles.

“You won’t give up, will you?” he snaps. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious.” Now I shrug, but I can tell it hardly convinces him. The truth is something I won’t say out loud. As infuriating as he was, I found Forgiveness … interesting. The way he looked at me has been impossible to forget. It wasn’t like I was a dealer selling the drug he wanted or just another duty to be carried, though. No, Forgiveness stared at me as if I was someone.

And that’s a drug all its own.

Revenge picks up a fallen branch. He stoops and plucks a pine cone from the ground, too. Then, with one swift movement, he throws it into the air and swings. The cone shatters. I wait.

“We’ve been doing this dance for centuries, Forgiveness and I,” he says finally. “Sometimes it’s over within minutes. Sometimes—like with you—it takes years.”

“What takes years?”

He looks at me. A breeze toys with his bright hair. “The choice.”

For so long, I’d thought of the other plane as something inhabited by feelings and nature. It’s still difficult to wrap my mind around the knowledge that all this time, there’s been something else. “Are there more? Choices, I mean?”

Now it’s his turn to shrug. “A few. Not as large a group as the Emotions, or even the Elements. Choices only exist if they’re significant enough that they change the course of a human life. And sometimes the choice is made so quickly that even you, with your Sight, can’t catch them. Truth and Lie, for example. Now those are some slippery characters.” Revenge grins, expecting me to smile back. When I don’t, he expels a breath that sounds infinitely resigned. “What else?”

I bend and pick up the shards of the pine cone, even though it’s fruitless to try to put it back together. They nestle in the center of my palm, permanently broken. Revenge waits. “How does this work, exactly?” I finally ask.

I’ve never wanted to hear the answer before, and we both know it. Maybe because with Nate Foster in jail, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. Or maybe because I wanted to cling to something that wasn’t mine to have.

“The same way it works for everyone else, even with your Sight,” Revenge answers after a long, long pause. “You won’t be picking me or him. You’ll be picking what we are. You can’t just decide to grab my hand one day and that’s it. When you’ve really made your choice, I’ll know, and that’s the moment I’m free to touch you.”

The pieces of the pine cone fall to the ground. I don’t know what to focus on. The gun, the mines, him, the sky. Clenching my jaw, I decide on the tree I’ve just decimated. “How many times have you been picked?”

“Does that really matter, Alex?”

“I guess not.” Because I can picture them—those people who were stronger than me. Who made their choices while here I am, using the forest as target practice and hurting the family I have left. That’s not the only reason I back down so easily, though. More questions are crowding into my throat, questions I won’t ask: Did you befriend all those others, too? Or am I just another game?

I twist so I can see Revenge’s face again. But he’s gone.

Wind whistles through the woods. No, not just the wind. Alexandra. “Shut up,” I growl. I turn and shoot the tree so many times that it’s more holes than bark.





EIGHT


SAUL. FRANKLIN. SWAN LAKE. Every time, the computer rejects my words. I sit in a booth in the diner, inhaling the scents of grease and sweat while I try to unlock my father’s secrets. The weekend has come and gone and still I haven’t been able to find the right word.