The Cage(79)

But can I really leave the others here?

She twisted her hair in her fist. Below, at the base of the dune, the shimmering ocean seemed even brighter. Cora felt on the verge of something, like pieces of a dream coming back to her, or a song she had long ago forgotten the words to. Pain fractured her skull as the ocean grew so bright she had to squint against it. Why would the Kindred turn the lights up? She clutched her hands to the sides of her head, wincing against the pain. She could almost see a shape moving among the waves. A swimmer.

The dead girl’s ghost, she thought. Cora was still wearing her dress.

No—ghosts didn’t exist. She rubbed her eyes, but her ears were roaring too. Her sense of balance felt off. Was it another panic attack? Or a pulsing headache, like she’d had in the bookstore?

Her hands buckled against the sand. Her head threatened to rupture. Just as suddenly, the harsh light and colors muted back into reality. The lights were the same dusky evening shade as always. The waves lapped calmly. Even her headache eased. It was as though nothing had happened. She pushed herself up from the sand with shaky legs.

Is this how people lose their minds?

She glanced toward the tangled jungle. Lucky had told her she was on her own, but there was still a tattooed Maori smuggler out there. Rolf already thought they were conspiring together. Leon might still want to escape as badly as she did. But she wasn’t going out there without a way to protect herself. For all she knew, Leon’s heart might have grown as black as the tattoos on his face.

THAT EVENING, WHILE THE others ate, she tiptoed back to the house, up the stairs to Lucky’s bedroom. The guitar rested on his pillow.

Cora touched it gently, afraid the wood wouldn’t be wood at all, but it was hard beneath her fingers, and when she knocked, it made a hollow sound. A memory returned of Rolf trying to play it while the others danced in the rain, so blindly happy. She picked up the guitar by its slender neck and clamped her fingers over the strings to stifle any errant notes. Then she slammed it with all her strength against the dresser.

It splintered. The long neck ripped off and strings snapped. The echo of notes faded gradually. She glanced out the window to make sure the others hadn’t heard, then assessed the wreckage. She could bury the splintered wood in the mulched paths, and Lucky would never know. He’d assume that the Kindred had taken it, or Leon had stolen it, or maybe the captivity would get to him and he’d forget he’d ever owned a guitar . . . just like, in time, he would forget about her.

She wrapped the six guitar strings around her wrist like bangles and sneaked out toward the jungle.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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38

Mali

NORMALLY MALI DIDN’T MIND the Greasy Fork, with its jukebox music and checkerboard tablecloths, but today everything about the diner annoyed her. She picked at her food, ignoring Nok’s plea to go to the beauty parlor together.

“But you would look so pretty with curls,” Nok argued.

Frustrated, Mali shoved her chair out and slunk from the room, leaving her pudding unfinished. She squinted up at the scalding sunlight and hugged Rolf’s military coat more tightly around her.

She couldn’t shake something that Cora had said: when Cassian had taken her to the menageries, she’d seen a little girl with blond hair shorn closely and missing two fingers. Mali had been through too many owners to keep count, but the last one had been the worst. He’d kept her and another girl locked in cages and made them fight each other or animals.

Anya.

Their owner had sold Anya’s beautiful blond hair and four of her knucklebones.

Even if they’d only been together a few months, Anya had been the closest thing to a sister that Mali ever had. Like Mali, Anya had been taken at a young age from her home—a place called Iceland—by the Mosca traders. But unlike Mali, she had never grown submissive to their captors. She had always tried to escape her owners. First at age six. Then at seven. Always talking about proving that humans were as intelligent as the Kindred. After Cassian had rescued them from the fight ring, Serassi had told Mali that Anya had died due to complications from old wounds. And yet here was Cora, saying that Cassian had taken her to see a human child that he knew well, with blond hair and two missing fingers.

Could Anya still be alive?

Mali glanced over her shoulder, making sure the others weren’t watching, and ran up the steps to the drugstore. She couldn’t be certain if Serassi would be watching; Serassi rarely observed them herself, far more consumed with analyzing data the other researchers collected. Hormone levels, fertility rates, the science of couples and romantic liaisons—that was Serassi’s particular interest, but Mali pressed her hand to the black window and focused her thoughts on wishing to speak to her.