The Cage(91)

“How the hell did you do that?” he bellowed.

“You do not scare me,” she said.

He tried to stand, flustered and cursing, but she seemed able to hold him down with a single finger against his forehead. Was this some sort of alien ninja shit?

“I don’t scare you?” he roared. “What do you think happened to the girl you replaced? You look like her, you know that? Same dark skin. Same long hair. Be careful or you’ll end up like her too. She’s dead because of me.”

Mali leaned in, her finger digging into the center of his forehead. “I see my predecessor’s body. I see her wounds. She drowns on her own.”

“She was running away from me.”

“She runs from the Kindred. Serassi stands behind you, your first day here. The previous Girl Three sees her. It frightens her enough to flee into the ocean, where she thinks she can swim away. She does not yet understand that she is no longer on Earth.”

Leon’s muscles, cramped with pain, suddenly released. The pain melted away but was replaced by a rush of shock, then denial, and then rage.

“They’re the reason she’s dead?”

“They have her body. They perform tests on it.”

Rage choked him. He forgot about the stringy-haired girl sitting on his chest. He forgot about how she’d immobilized him with a single finger. All he could picture was Yasmine’s green eyes, so round and full of fear, and how he’d hated himself every day for driving her into that ocean.

But she hadn’t been running from him.

He felt like he could breathe for the first time in days. Maybe her ghost wasn’t haunting him for revenge; maybe it wanted revenge on their black-eyed kidnappers, and he was the only one who could get it for her.

Mali leaned close. “You can make a choice. You can choose to do what is right.”

She removed her finger from his forehead, freeing him. He sat up, pushing her aside, leaning into his throbbing hands.

He hadn’t killed Yasmine—they had.

He stood in a daze and stumbled to his camp, and stared at the paintings of Yasmine’s haunting eyes. Mali’s words lodged in his head like a splinter. He ripped down the bedsheet, and all the paintings, and then stormed deeper into the jungle.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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44

Cora

AFTER THE ARGUMENT AT the diner, the rest of Cora’s night was as surreal as a nightmare.

Lucky took her to see a film in the movie theater, ten minutes of a goat standing in a field while the phantom smell of popcorn choked her. He spent every hard-earned token he had on chocolates and gummies from the candy shop, which Cora forced down with a smile, never mind that they made her stomach burn. At suppertime he played a song on the jukebox about finding true love.

The entire time Cora smiled, and smiled, and smiled, just like her father had taught her to do. Her mind was too tired to fight anymore. It was clear that this newfound peace was shaky, at best. Lucky might believe that they were a happy little group in a perfect little prison—except for Leon, of course, insane in the jungle—but the others clearly didn’t. Mali was as cryptic as ever. Rolf eyed Cora suspiciously, while Nok’s smiles were so frost coated that Cora shivered like she was back in the alpine area.

Evening fell, and the artificial stars appeared one by one, and Lucky followed her heavy footsteps upstairs to the bedroom they would now share. She crossed the threshold and stopped abruptly. The fog in her head returned.

A quilt rested on the bed. A Persian rug was stretched on the floor. Watercolor paintings hung on the wall. A ceramic dog sat on the foot of the bed. It was like taking a dizzying step back into her old bedroom—into her old life. There were even constellations drawn on the ceiling.

“I wanted to surprise you.” Lucky came in behind her, fiddling awkwardly with a book on the shelf. “I listened when you told me what your bedroom was like, and I’ve been redeeming tokens for similar prizes. I know it isn’t exactly the same, but I hoped it would make you feel better. Like this was home.”

She sank onto the corner of the bed. Memories spilled back, of scribbling lyrics at her desk, gazing at the stars outside, petting Sadie. She picked up the ceramic dog. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was back on Earth.

But she let the dog drop to the floor. It wasn’t Sadie, it was a toy. The thing that Lucky didn’t realize was that her bedroom in Richmond had been as artificial as the one here. She had come home from Bay Pines to find every trace of her mother gone, moved to an expensive condo in Miami that she’d only see on weekends after a long flight. As if to make up for it, her father had completely redecorated her room. He’d covered the stars she’d painted on the walls with expensive wallpaper. He’d hung elegant curtains over the windows where she used to stargaze. He’d poured thousands of dollars into giving her a room fit for a princess—or for a daughter who’d taken the fall for him—but he had only succeeded in excising everything that had made it hers.