The Replaced(56)

I thought Simon’s grandmother was wrong about girls like Griffin—wanton was the wrong word after all. Simon might have been off the mark when he said she wasn’t crazy.

Griffin’s brain was scrambled like those eggs in that don’t-do-drugs commercial:

This is your brain.

This is your brain after being transported 200 million light-years and having your DNA messed with by aliens.

I would probably use the words stone-cold crazy for someone like her.

“Where’s Franco now?”


His eyebrows bunched together. “That’s the thing. A few months later, Franco was ambushed during a recruiting mission, same way the other recruiting teams had been. He was never heard from again. About that same time, Eddie Ray just . . . disappeared. I mean, if he wasn’t guilty, then where’d he go?” His lips tightened as he shook his head. “Griffin had managed to worm her way into the camp’s council, and it wasn’t long before she was voted in as leader of the camp.”

“And Thom? How come he left?”

His gaze clouded over. “I don’t know the whole story. We never talked again after Willow and I took off, at least not until that morning when we showed up at Silent Creek. But most of the camps stay in contact through a convoluted communication system. Gossip manages to get around. Indirectly, I heard he couldn’t stomach the new leadership, and if I had to guess, I’d say he finally figured out Griff had been using him all along.”

“Time’s up.” When Nyla interrupted us again, I peeled my hand away from Simon’s. It was the second time Nyla had caught us like that, and I was sure she was starting to get the wrong impression.

I meant to ask Simon if he’d ever regretted leaving with Willow, or questioned her loyalty. But I already knew his answer, because Willow was as trustworthy as they came.

It was Griffin whose loyalty I suspected now.

Was it possible she’d been the one responsible for betraying the Blackwater recruiters all those years ago as a means to get to the top of the pecking order? Was anyone really that narcissistic and power-hungry?

Cold dread settled heavily in my stomach at the very thought.

I prayed I was wrong.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


IN A PLACE LIKE BLACKWATER, WHERE NO ONE really slept, there was always activity. So by the time we’d reached the heart of the camp, the darkness that stretched far into the desert had been replaced by strategically placed floodlights that made it almost as bright as daytime.

It was as if night never even existed.

When we reached the cafeteria, Nyla dragged me to a halt. “When Dakota brings your friend out, you’ll join them and she’ll take you back to your tent.” I assumed Dakota was the girl who’d shuttled Natty away after our showers.

“Don’t worry, I’ll work this out.” Simon was quiet when he spoke. “You won’t have to stay under guard much longer. I promise.”

I was just about to tell him I wasn’t ready for him to go, not quite yet, when Griffin’s voice pierced my newfound calm seeing Simon again had given me. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Are you kidding me?” I exhaled dramatically before facing Griffin. I felt like a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I hoped this didn’t mean I’d lose the small freedoms I’d been allowed so far.

Griffin emerged from the tent maze, her attention not directed on me or Simon, but on Nyla. She looked thoroughly hacked. “I knew when I couldn’t find her”—she indicated me when she said that—“that he’d be involved.” This time she gave just the slightest nod of her head toward Simon. “But I never suspected you,” she reprimanded Nyla, her eyes narrowing, and she looked dangerous when she said it. The kind of dangerous that made my skin pebble all over with stiff goose bumps.

“Griffin, don’t blame her. This was all my idea.” Simon stepped in front of Nyla to explain, and I was thinking it wouldn’t matter what he said because Nyla had betrayed Griffin—a real betrayal, not the made-up kind she’d accused Willow of, either. There was no way she was letting Nyla off the hook for this.

But then something happened, and suddenly none of those things mattered.

Suddenly everything changed, at least for me they did.

It was the laugh that did it.

I had to reach for Simon in order to stay on my feet, because all at once my legs were unreliable, like I was standing on stilts I had yet to master. The sensation of guilt over getting caught with Nyla and Simon turned to something else entirely as it spread, prickling my skin everywhere and making every tiny hair on my body stand at full alert.

My heart stopped—like stop-stopped—and I waited for it to start again, the same way I waited to hear that sound, the laugh, for what seemed like forever and a day. And when I finally did, when I heard it, my heart not only started to beat once more, it pounded.

Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud . . . beating so freaking hard I almost gasped.

Simon looked down at me, and I wasn’t sure if I saw sadness in his copper eyes, or if he was asking for an explanation I couldn’t offer, while inside hope was struggling to the surface.

All around us, people like us, other Returned, were doing the things they did—training for whatever Griffin told them they were training for, running in their symmetrical clusters, talking to one another, eating, and some of them, somewhere, were probably even managing to sleep.