“Keep your head down.”
Ollie and Tera crouched in a shadowy clump of stalagmites. To their left, two guards sauntered along the shoreline. They didn’t appear to be looking for a prisoner, or even aware that one was missing. When they disappeared around the bend, she jumped up.
“Now. Let’s go.”
He followed her, again. He would have followed her anywhere, this compact, mysterious, rescuing angel. He wondered, not the first time, if she was real. Was he back in his cell, dreaming? Had he fallen into the water trough and hit his head?
“Over here.”
Tera climbed down a small ledge that was bathed in darkness. Ollie tried to do the same, but couldn’t see the ground well enough to master his footing. He stumbled, scratched his hands and arms on the calcified surfaces, and then climbed back to his feet. When he stood, he saw a boat tied onto a stake on the shore. A familiar giant crow sat in the back, watching their approach with wary, onyx eyes. Mrs. Paget.
“Quiet,” Tera warned. Ollie thought she was talking to him, then realized that she was pointing a finger at the bird, which had begun to open its beak and lift its wings. “Shut up. I mean it. I don’t want to hear it.”
The wings dropped; the beak snapped shut. Ollie had not thought it was possible for an animal to look quite so…resentful. He also had not thought it was possible that he would someday feel the need to apologize to an eight-foot, pissed-off crow.
“C’mon, get in,” she said, unwrapping the rope from the stake. That time, she was talking to him. Ollie needed no prodding; he jumped from shore to boat without hesitation. Tera followed. She climbed onto the back of the crow and whispered something in its ear. The bird puffed its feathers before lifting two huge, black wings into the murky air. With a mighty flap, they were off.
Ollie felt the wind on his face and gasped at the suddenness of it, at the freedom. Had they done it? Had they really done it? He dared to turn and look at the tower, now retreating into the pumpkin-colored fog. It looked much the same as it had the first time he saw it: still tilted precipitously, still emanating an almost audible hum of evil. As the boat sped away, Herrick’s End grew smaller by the minute. Soon, it would be gone. But not for Ollie. He knew already: It was too late. Like a parasite crawling into a fresh wound and settling under the skin, the place had infested him. He shivered.
As if echoing Ollie’s thoughts, the crow opened its beak in a sudden, defiant cry: Caw! Caw! Caw!
“That’s enough,” Tera said. Her petite frame—five-one or five-two, he’d have guessed—made her seem childlike, but her stern, hardened gaze gave the opposite effect. At the moment, that gaze was focused squarely on Ollie. “And you,” she said accusingly. “What happened to staying low? Staying invisible?”
He stammered, trying to formulate an answer.
“What did I say when I dropped you off?”
“You, uh…” Ollie cleared his throat. “You said to stay out of sight.”
“That’s right. I said don’t let them see you. Don’t let anybody see you. And then what did you do?” She continued on, not pausing to let him reply. “You jumped right out into the damn clearing. Right under the lights! Krite almighty. What were you thinking?”
Ollie stared at her. “You saw that?”
“Yeah, I saw that. I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have brought you there.” Her tone was softening. “I tried to stop you. I told you not to go. But you wouldn’t listen.”
He nodded.
“I knew you weren’t…one of them.”
He nodded again and said, “Thank you.”
She let out a short, frustrated puff of air.
“No, really, thank you. That was crazy! You saved my life!”
“Yeah, well…” Tera turned her attention to the reins in her hand. She was wearing the same getup he’d seen her in before: an off-white jumpsuit studded with holes and patches; a headlamp; and that strange toolbelt full of arbitrary items that didn’t look anything like tools.
“But…why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why did you come back for me?”
She didn’t look at him. For several seconds, all he heard was the sound of water lapping against the sides of the boat and the whistle of air in his ears. Then she said, “What does it matter? I came. It’s done.”
“You said there was…an arrangement? What did you mean?”
Tera dropped her eyes to meet his. “You ever heard that expression about not looking a gift horse in the mouth?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, of course. But—”
“You know where that comes from?”
“You mean, the expression?” Now Ollie was tipping from mere confusion into complete befuddlement.
Tera tightened her grip on the reins. She seemed to be studying him. “Back in the day, if you wanted to buy a horse, you would inspect its teeth,” she said. “Make sure it was healthy and whatnot. Make sure you were getting your money’s worth. But if someone gives you a horse, for free, you don’t look at the teeth. You take what you get, and you say thank you.”
“Right. But—”
“Do you want the damn horse or not?”
“Yes!”
“Then quit looking at the teeth. The teeth are fine. Got it?”
“Yes. Got it,” he said. Suddenly, his three layers of clothing became unbearably oppressive; sweating and squirming, he pushed up the brown and red sleeves. It didn’t help.
Mrs. Paget pushed the boat through the darkness, led by a single, dim headlight at the bow. Gradually, the nothingness gave way to hazy, distant sights. Ollie squinted into the gloom, making out shapes, colors, and what looked like human figures. The boat began to slow as they passed small outcroppings of land, possibly islands, dotted with ramshackle structures and a blur of movement. People, mostly women, hustled this way and that. As far as he could tell, no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to Tera’s passage. Or her passenger.
He felt a wave of elation followed by a brutal slam of regret: He had left Dozer behind. The one guy who’d had his back in that hellhole. Not to mention all those other Floor Five captives, who hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of monstrous, interminable existence—No. Stop. Ollie scrunched his face and shook his head. He couldn’t think about that now. For all he knew, this was some weird trick. He had to keep his wits about him.
“Where are we going?” Ollie asked.
“We have to get you somewhere safe,” she answered. “Just stay down. We’re almost there.”
Stay down? How exactly was he supposed to do that? After slouching and twisting in various useless ways, he finally lay flat on the bench seat, limiting his view to the phosphorescent glow of the ceiling high above his head. The longer he stared upward, the more he could swear that the roof of the cavern was…moving. Undulating. Before long, he found himself mesmerized by the radiating pulse of its light—like a vast, blue, beating heart, bursting out of the rock itself.
Ollie tried to keep still. He tried to keep quiet. But he didn’t like the way the crow was eyeing him, as though it was thinking about dinner. Specifically, about dinner in the form of the fat, juicy, helpless human lying on the seat nearby. Ollie could imagine the bird taking a few steps, leaning forward, and casually pecking his eyes out with its machete-sized beak.
A loud clunk and a jerk knocked him out of his musings. The boat had hit something.
“All right, we’re here,” Tera said.
They had stopped at a dock. Beyond that, Ollie could see faint outlines of yet another stalagmite thicket.
Mrs. Paget stretched both wings, looking unconcerned.
“Let’s go.” Tera hopped out of the boat and looked over her shoulder.
Ollie got to his feet, steadied his balance, then stepped aside when it became clear that Mrs. Paget intended to exit the boat next. The bird’s feathers brushed against his face as it passed. He rubbed his nose and stifled a sneeze.
Tera held out a hand to the crow, which ambled toward her and allowed itself to be hooked up to a lead. Together, they stepped off the dock and onto a sandy shore. It was a surprisingly pleasant spot, like a moonlit beach where teens might gather to drink and screw around.
“Coming?” she asked, turning to look back at Ollie.
Hell, yes, he was coming. What else was he going to do? His heart pounding, Ollie scrambled to keep up.
The three of them walked in silence along a well-worn path. At first, he saw nothing else: just the path, the stalagmite forest, and the water. Then the bumpy calcifications gave way to a more barren landscape dotted with strange tufts sticking out of the ground in neat rows, like crops. Beyond that, they passed a scattering of small sheds, or possibly houses, constructed mostly out of tin sheeting, cobbled wood planks, and textiles that might have been bed sheets. The structures were surrounded by haphazard assortments of wheeled carts, bottles, buckets, and clotheslines strung with earth-toned jumpsuits and socks.
This must be the company town, he realized. Or, in this case, the prison town, full of people who kept Herrick’s End running and well-supplied.
“Most people are inside now, eating,” Tera said in a low voice. “We just need to keep moving.”
At the mention of eating, Ollie’s stomach gave a piteous growl. Tera stopped in her tracks to look at him.
“Was that you?”
His face flushed red. “Sorry. I haven’t eaten in a while. I mean, they gave me food, but…”
She held up a hand in a “say no more” gesture. “I’ll get you something soon. First, we just have to drop off Mrs. Paget.” Tera pointed to her left, where Ollie saw a building that looked like a stable. Most of the stalls were already filled with other freakishly large black crows, but one stall was empty; Tera walked the bird inside and closed the waist-high gate.
“Good girl,” she said, patting the black feathers.
Caw! the bird responded.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Tera. Then she dug around in a small storage area and emerged with a bucket full of seed, pinkish chunks, and some sort of scaly, six-legged creature that Ollie could swear was still alive. She dropped the bucket into the stall, where Mrs. Paget descended on it ravenously. Ollie winced as the bird tore the small wiggling animal in half and tossed it down its gullet.
“That should do it,” Tera said, sounding pleased. She wiped her hands on her pants and looked at Ollie. “You ready?”
It was such a simple question, really.
Yes, he was ready. He was ready to collapse. He was ready to cry. He was ready to start therapy to try to unpack his disaster of a childhood. He was ready to go back in time by a week and restart the day when he had made the most horrible, half-witted, moronic decision of his life. And just a few hours ago, he had been ready to die.
But that wasn’t, of course, what she was asking.
“Yes,” he said, straightening. “I’m ready.”
They left the stable and returned to the dirt path, passing only a few more structures before stopping in front of one that seemed particularly dilapidated. The front “door” was no more than a curtain. The walls were made of random collections of materials—metal, wood, stone chunks—that seemed precariously balanced on each other, rather than firmly connected. There were no windows. The roof, such as it was, looked almost like a quilt, sewn together with patches of plastic, fabric squares, and possibly animal skins.
Ugly as it was, the house also gave Ollie an unexpected feeling of comfort, like a home-baked cake that looked terrible but probably tasted terrific.
“Home sweet home,” Tera said.
“You live here?”
She nodded.
“Oh! It’s…nice.”
“It’s a dump.”
“No! It’s—”
“It’s a dump,” she said again, this time with a happy shrug. “But it’s my dump. And I’m afraid it’s all we’ve got. Unless you want to sleep in the stable with the crows.”
He shook his head, hard.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Tera sighed. “So, here’s the thing. This isn’t just my house. I live with a bunch of other people. Women. And they might not…” Her voice trailed off.
Ollie tilted his head.
She shifted and continued. “They might not be so…open to the idea of you staying the night. They’re going to be a little skittish, you know what I mean?”
Ollie thought about the men he had encountered at Herrick’s End. Yes, he definitely knew what she meant. “Maybe we should just forget it,” he said. “I don’t want to get you in any kind of trouble.”
Tera waved away the suggestion. “Nothing like that,” she said. “It’s just… Well, they might say no.”
Ollie swallowed. Of course, they would say no. This was a house full of women, living a hop, skip, and boat ride away from a prison full of violent offenders. And here he was, a hulking giant of a man, dressed in a prison-guard uniform, appearing at their door to ask for shelter. Pinkie-swearing to behave himself. “So, what should we do?” he asked.
Tera opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by a voice beside them. “Maybe you should just ask.”
A woman had appeared in the doorway. She wore a long, dark braid and a wrap of ivory-colored fabric that looked vaguely like a sari. Her arms were folded.
Tera jumped at the sound. “Ajanta! Hi. I was just…”
“You know we can hear you, right?” the woman said. She spoke in a soft, Indian accent. Ollie guessed she must have been about 40 years old.
“Right, of course.” Tera looked sheepish. “This is, uh, Ollie.”
Ajanta looked him up and down. “Not really a guard, I take it?”
Tera shook her head.
The three of them stood in awkward, tense silence. Then the older woman pursed her lips and looked around. “Well, I suppose you’d better get inside.”
She disappeared behind the curtain. Ollie and Tera looked at each other in surprise, then scrambled to follow.
The house was larger than it had appeared from the outside. Ollie stepped through the doorway to find one big room filled with a hodgepodge of bunks, washbasins, stools, and rickety shelving units. In the center of the room, a fire pit simmered while the smoke rose through a hole in the fabric ceiling. Two more young women sat in front of the fire, both staring up at Ollie with wide, mistrusting eyes. He looked down at his shoes.
“This, apparently, is Ollie,” Ajanta said. “Ollie, this is Derrin and Kuyu.” She pointed to each as she said the name.
The two women, whose arms were intertwined, were a study in opposites: Kuyu was petite and pudgy, with dark curls. She seemed to be of Asian descent, with a broad, heart-shaped face, full lips, and lopsided eyebrows. Almost everything about her was round and rosy. The tall, angular Derrin, on the other hand, had stringy blonde hair and eerily pale skin. She reminded Ollie of the blue-suited men he had first encountered in the Neath. Her eyes were too large. Her nose was too small. She looked more like a child’s drawing of a woman than an actual woman.
“Hi,” he mumbled.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Kuyu asked, “What is he doing here?” And not in a friendly kind of way.
Tera took a deep breath. “Ollie is from the Brickside.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Tera shot her a glare and continued. “He’s not one of them, okay? He came here looking to help a friend, but…” She faltered, her gaze traveling to his face. “But it didn’t work out. They grabbed him up over there, and I got him out. Today. A few hours ago. As soon as things die down, I’m going to get him to the exit hatch. But he needs somewhere to stay tonight.”
“Just tonight?” Kuyu asked.
Tera nodded.
Ollie slumped as best he could, trying to look humble and grateful and innocent all at the same time. Mostly, though, he was staring at the fire. Just above the flames, a pan rested on a metal grate, simmering with small strips of white meat that crackled as they cooked. The smell was smoky and torturous; saliva flooded his mouth.
When Derrin finally spoke, her voice was graveled. “What do you know about this guy, Tera? This is crazy.”
Kuyu, who seemed to be about 21 or 22 years old, nodded in enthusiastic agreement. Two lumps on her shoulders looked like a football player’s pads: one white, one black. As she shifted, the shoulder pads shifted, too: revealing themselves to be not pads at all, but living, breathing little creatures. Each had smooth fur and a protruding ivory-colored bill, giving them the look of fuzzy cannonballs with platypus mouths.
“I told you, he’s not one of them,” Tera said.
“How do you know?”
“I just do, okay? Do you trust me or not?”
Ollie watched silently, half-expecting Tera to break out another parable about horses and rotten teeth. She didn’t.
“Of course, we trust you,” said Kuyu. “It’s him we don’t trust.”
Ajanta stepped forward. “There’s only one way to know for sure.”
A long silence followed. Then, Tera’s eyes widened in recognition. “No,” she said. “We’re not doing that.”
“You know it’s the only way.”
“No!”
“What?” Ollie interrupted. “Doing what?”
“Nothing,” Tera said. “We’re not doing anything.”
Ajanta stepped closer. “Ollie, we have a…substance that can tell us quite a lot about a person. It can show us a person’s intentions, and character. It can tell us if we need to be afraid of him, or if we will be perfectly safe in his company.” She smiled sweetly.
Ollie found himself nodding. “Great! Great, let’s do that.” He looked at Tera.
“No,” she said again, her mouth set in a firm line.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because she’s not telling you the whole story,” Tera answered, glaring at Ajanta. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear,” said Kuyu, who sounded like she was reading from a fortune cookie.
“I have nothing to hide!” Ollie turned out his palms to Ajanta. “Really! Nothing. How does it work?”
The older woman cleared her throat. “It’s called Dark Heart. A reactive powder. The darker the heart, the more it reacts.”
“Reacts…how?”
Tera touched his arm. “I’m telling you, Ollie, it’s some bad shit. Seriously bad. If it does react, it hardens your body. Your skin. Some people even get paralyzed. Like, permanently.”
“But I don’t have a dark heart,” he said. If anything, his heart was too light. And too fragile, and too trusting, and too incredibly stupid. Obviously. He swallowed and turned back to the group. “So, it will be fine. I’ll take it.”
“You understand the risks?” Ajanta asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes.”
“All right, then.” She looked at the others. “We’re all in agreement, then? If there is no reaction, he can stay the night.”
Derrin and Kuyu nodded. Tera gaped at them and refolded her arms. “No! I am not in agreement.”
“Sorry, Tera. It looks like you’re outvoted,” Ajanta said. She walked to other side of the small room and began rummaging through a shelving unit.
“Don’t do this,” Tera said to Ollie. “We’ll figure something else out.”
“Like what?” he asked.
She stared at him but didn’t answer.
Ajanta was walking toward him with a cup of liquid and a small vial of powder. She poured the powder into the cup, stirred it with a tiny stick, and then placed it in his hand.
No one spoke. The smell of the fire-grilled meat wafted past his nose, driving Ollie to the brink of something savage. He stared down at the foamy liquid. In contrast to the meat, the cup smelled like…nothing. Which was a shame, considering that it might be the last drink he would ever have.
“Salute,” Ollie said, lifting the cup. The Italian toast made him think of his mother, which made him want to cry. Then he raised the liquid to his lips, said a silent prayer to whatever god supervised the proper function of magical reactive potions, and poured it down his throat.
All four residents of the little house watched him intently. Tera held a hand over her mouth. Ajanta took a few steps backward. Derrin and Kuyu seemed not to move at all.
Within seconds, Ollie felt a tingle rush through his limbs. His fingers and toes got a zap of simultaneous static electricity; his vision became impaired with squiggles of white and pink light. Then, the squiggles became…images. He saw a flash of himself at age eight, stealing a pack of AA batteries from Mario’s Mercato. He saw himself lying to his mother. Passing along a nasty rumor about a boy even less popular than he was. Cheating on Mrs. Newsome’s civics quiz in ninth grade by writing all the answers on his sweaty palm.
Venial sins, Father Thomas would have called them. Say two Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, and all will be forgiven.
The minor infractions continued to blink, flooding Ollie with low-grade embarrassment and shame. And then, they just…stopped.
Ollie looked down at his hands. He tried to ball them into fists, wondering if his muscles would obey the command from his brain. They did. And then he wondered, too late, if a dark heart was inheritable. Could his father have passed it down through the bloodline like an overbite? Was Matteo about to screw him over again?
“How long does it usually take?” he asked.
“Not long,” Ajanta answered.
They waited. Ollie shifted from one foot to the other. Then he asked, “Can I sit? My feet are really killing me.”
Kuyu looked at Derrin, then shifted to leave room on the log.
Ollie settled down beside them. Next to his head, the platypus-cannonball creature on Kuyu’s left shoulder stretched out its head, sniffing him. Ollie stiffened but didn’t move.
A few more minutes ticked by. The women shot each other telling glances over Ollie’s head while he pretended not to notice.
Finally, Ajanta heaved a deep breath. “Well, it seems as though we have our answer.”
“Or, that shit doesn’t work,” Kuyu muttered.
“We agreed to the terms, and Ollie complied. One night,” Ajanta added, moving her stern gaze to Ollie. “That’s it. After that, you’re on your own.”
He nodded. “Thank you. Really. Thank you so much.”
No one answered.
Tera rubbed her hands together and sauntered over to the fire. “How about some dinner?” she asked him.
Kuyu’s head snapped up. “Hey, we never agreed to—”
“Krite, Kuyu, he’s starving. What the hell is the matter with you?”
The brunette thrust out her lower lip. “He’d better not eat all of it.”
“I won’t,” Ollie said, eyeing the crackling pan with desperation.
Tera reached for a spatula and scooped some of the white meat into a wooden bowl. “Looks like blindfish tonight,” she said, handing the bowl to Ollie. “Made with Ajanta’s secret blend?”
Ajanta gave a modest shrug.
Ollie took the bowl. When no one handed him a fork, he began eating with his fingers. Blindfish, it turned out, tasted a whole lot like cod. It was tender and oily, flaking at his touch. He couldn’t identify the seasoning and didn’t care. Whatever it was, it was spectacular. Salty and simmery and piquant. Wicked good, as they said back home.
Conversation resumed around him. Ollie’s belly began to warm. His muscles began to relax. He saw Tera watching him; they shared the briefest of smiles. She was so pretty. Not in a conventional, scrawny model kind of way—more like a badass beauty. She’d be right at home in one of his video games, leading a team of soldiers into battle. Piloting a fighter jet. Ice-climbing up a sheer cliff to retrieve a hidden treasure.
He remembered, suddenly, the first time they had met and introduced themselves. How her hand had slipped so naturally inside of his. How it had lingered there for a moment or two longer than was strictly necessary.
And here she was again, smiling at him—at him!—across a smoldering fire. This crazy-cool, gorgeous girl, who had just single-handedly saved his life. He felt a wash of gratitude. And suddenly, he felt something else, too. Like the fish seasoning, he couldn’t quite put a name to it. But he knew that he liked it. A lot.