The Replaced(58)

“You’ve known all this time,” I accused Griffin, wishing she hadn’t sent Tyler away, but seriously glad to be alone with her so I could have the chance to give her a piece of my mind. “I heard him—he told you my name. He told you I’d been taken. All this time we were in the same camp and you knew we knew each other. You knew he’d want to see me, and you didn’t bother telling either of us. Why would you keep us apart like that? What’s wrong with you?”

But Griffin, or “Griff” as Simon so adorably referred to her, didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by my allegations, not in the way I wanted her to be. I wanted her to be ashamed the way a normal person would have been.

Instead she stared at me expressionlessly, like the dictator I suspected she was. “I did it for Tyler. He’s only been here a short time, and I wanted to ease him into camp life. Keep his old life separate from his new one. You showing up here, that was . . . inconvenient. I would’ve told him eventually.”

“Bull.” My hands were shaking at my sides and blood pounded past my ears as I challenged her.

Griffin just snorted. “Really none of your concern what I do, or do not, tell my people.”

“Tyler’s not one of your people.”

“He is now. Ask him.” She smirked, and I knew she had me. I’d seen him. I’d seen the way he looked to her as his leader. And I’d heard the way he’d described me—like I was his brother’s girl and the two of us were pals, the way we’d been before I’d come back.

“How did that even happen?” I asked, trying to stay angry with her but losing steam. “How did you . . . find him?” It was supposed to be me, I wanted to shout at her. Or maybe I wanted to shout it at myself for failing yet again. I was supposed to find him.

Griffin gave me a tight-lipped look and said, “I have people who give me information.” Then she turned to Simon and explained, “Tyler’s a good kid. He’s fitting in here—”

But I cut her off as I spun on Simon now, unsure who I was more upset with: Griffin for laying one of those Finders-Keepers claims on Tyler—my Tyler—or Simon for not helping me get to him first. “Did you know?”

Simon threw his hands up, hostage-style. “Leave me out of this. I had no idea what she was up to.” Simon looked at Griffin instead of me, and I couldn’t help thinking of our conversation about Tyler that day in the library, when Simon told me I couldn’t wait for Tyler forever.

“Okay, yes, Simon told me you were looking for a boy. Someone who was important to you,” she said in a pacifying voice as she tried to smooth things over. “But how was I supposed to know you were the same Kyra Tyler had been talking about?”

“How many Kyras do you know?” I asked, but there was no point arguing. Griffin held all the cards. She was in charge of whether I would see Tyler again, or not. The best thing I could do was keep my mouth shut.

She gave me a condescending smile. “Look. Tyler didn’t know much when he got here. He didn’t remember how he’d been taken, and he certainly didn’t say anything about having a girlfriend back home.” I hated the way she was determined to remind me of that. She seemed to enjoy making it clear that his memories didn’t include me, at least not the important parts.

He didn’t remember the day I’d stumbled into his kitchen and fallen into his arms, mistaking him for Austin. Or the beautiful chalk drawings he’d done for me. Or taking me to his favorite bookstore and leaving me gifts outside my window and sending me messages at all hours of the night.

He also didn’t remember any of the things that had gone wrong after I’d cut myself on that box knife right in front of him, contaminating him . . . and the way he’d gotten sicker and sicker until I’d been left with no choice but to drag him up to Devil’s Hole to be taken.

As far as he was concerned, I’d vanished five years ago and had never come back.

And now Griffin acted like her claim on Tyler trumped our history together, as if none of those things ever existed at all.

Simon surprised me then, when he said to me, “This must be hard on you,” because it had to be hard on him too. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, watching me anxiously. I tried to tell myself he didn’t seem worried that Tyler was here, and that worried wasn’t the same as threatened.

But I knew better. I could see it written all over his face: Simon wanted more, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d hoped we’d never find Tyler at all.

I couldn’t worry about Simon’s feelings, or the fact that Tyler couldn’t remember me. All that mattered was that we’d found him, and I was determined to make him remember me if it was the last thing I ever did.

“When can I see him again?” I begged Griffin, still frustrated she’d sent Tyler away with Nyla. “Please. I’ll do anything.” I refused to acknowledge that hurt-puppy look in Simon’s eyes, and ignored his words altogether.

“I’ll have Nyla bring him to us, but first . . . there was a reason I was looking for you,” Griffin said slowly, her voice sticky. “Jett needs to show you something.”

Jett. I’d waited days to see Jett again, face-to-face.

I followed clumsily, eager to reach Jett, to hear what he had to tell me, and just as twisted up about when I’d get to see Tyler again. Griffin led Simon and me to the same white building where I’d spied her and Jett earlier while I’d been doing drills with Natty. She knocked again, the same way she had then, only once, and then we, too, slipped inside.