The Cage(56)

“All right, Caretaker,” she muttered, stepping back. “Take care of this.”

She swung the mallet with all her strength against the glass. Nok shrieked. Cora cringed, expecting a satisfying crack and shatter of glass. The mallet was real wood, not whatever fake substance everything else was made of, and yet the moment it connected with the window, nothing happened. Not a crack. Not even a thud.

“Dammit!” She hurled the mallet to the ground.

Her vision started to fracture into little dots, as if the lights of town were a spinning kaleidoscope. Pain ripped through her head as lack of sleep caught up with her all at once. She sank to the ground.

Lucky crouched next to her. The sweat had dried on his shirt in the cool evening air. He nodded toward the croquet mallet. “Did you really think that was going to work?”

She pushed her mess of hair out of her face and sat up. “I don’t know. I had to try.” She watched the others tearing into her plate of food on the diner porch. “Look at them. They’re like wolves. Don’t they understand what’s happening? These are creatures who took us from our beds. Who are forcing us to breed for their own twisted purposes. Who keep kids in cages and cut off their fingers.”

Lucky crackled the knuckles in his left hand. “The Mosca cut off fingers, not the Kindred.”

“They’re all part of the same system! The Kindred protect us only as long as we obey them.”

She moved closer, brushing his leather jacket, catching a trace of his fresh soap smell that reminded her of home. Home. Maybe at this moment Charlie was pulling his Jeep into the driveway, and Sadie was running out to meet him.

“I can’t take it, Lucky. I’m going crazy.” At Bay Pines she’d checked off the days on a calendar, but she had no boxes to check now. No end date. Just the seashells, but there was an endless ocean of them. Would she keep collecting them until they filled the house, spilling out the windows into the marigolds? For months? Years? She curled up tight, wishing she could disappear into herself. She needed help. She needed a way home.

She needed a sign that there was hope.

A soft, familiar plink sounded on the black window behind them. Cora lifted her head. When dusk had rolled in, clouds had come too.

A drop of rain fell on her bare toes.

She stared at the patch of water, dumbfounded. Every day in the cage had been identical. Sunny skies without a trace of clouds. It rained in the jungle, and it snowed in the forest, but always on a predictable schedule, and never in the town. Now the rain started softly, a few errant drops at a time. The clouds grew heavier, making the day darker. It had been so long since Cora had felt a drenching rain that she’d forgotten the way it smelled. So earthy.

Nok shrieked with delight, jumping up and down and clapping, her mood flipping on a dime, as though the fight had never happened. She took Mali’s hands, swinging her around, trying to make her dance, but Mali just pitched her head toward the sky in distrust. The rain grew. Big fat drops formed rivulets and streams and rivers on the black windows. Rolf was trying to trace them with his finger, but there were too many.

“Why?” Cora turned to Lucky, rubbing her throbbing temples that were soaked with rain. “Why are they doing this? What do they hope to gain by changing things?”

“You’re tired, Cora. You haven’t slept.”

“You know I didn’t take everyone’s food, right?”

A slight pause. “Sure.”

Water flowed down his handsome face like tears, finding the valleys of his eyes, dripping off his jaw. Even if she hadn’t known him at home, and even though the Kindred had dressed him in a stranger’s clothes, she recognized sincerity in his face.

“They want to see what we’ll do.” She twisted her head toward all the watching windows. “They’re standing there now, watching us. You see them, right? The shadows?”

“Sure. I see them.” But his eyes stayed locked to hers. He tucked a wet strand of her hair gently behind her ear. “Do you trust me?” There was a strange hitch to his voice.

Her headache reverberated in her skull, louder and louder, but she nodded.

“Then come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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28

Cora

LUCKY LED HER ACROSS the grass toward the weeping cherry tree that burst with thousands of blooms. “I found this place the first day, when you vanished.”