SILENCE CRASHES down like a wave. Everyone is staring at us, and heat rises in my cheeks. I never said I’d go, but if I try to back out, I’ll look like a coward in front of everyone. And of course Gabriel was counting on that.
“You and Ada,” Ms. Stuart says sharply. “Gabriel, has it crossed your mind that Ada was taken from her family just a few hours ago and that some sensitivity might be called for? Dragging her in front of a screaming mob doesn’t quite meet that standard.”
Gabriel shrugs that off. “We look like their own kids, Ms. Stuart. So we can make them feel ashamed of themselves.”
Something starts slamming rhythmically against the gate. All around the room kids are clutching each other in balls of massed feathers and bristling fur. A tiny girl bursts out wailing.
“You mean, you want to exploit Ada to make them feel ashamed. Did that occur to you as soon as you saw her, Gabriel? Of course a pretty, human-looking girl could be useful strategically. But Ada is not here to be a weapon in your war.” She stalks across the room to us, white-knuckled and fuming.
War. So even Ms. Stuart talks that way?
“And if they break in here? Rowan would be fine, at least until he came ashore. But what about everyone who can’t just hide underwater? What would they do to Noah, or Destiny, or Ophelia?”
There’s a shriek of feedback from the amplifier. “You little freaks better come to us now! If you don’t, we’re coming for you. You think we can’t ram through this gate?”
“I’m going,” I say. Hearing those words coming from my mouth fills me with cold nausea. “Not because of Gabriel. I just don’t want the younger kids to be so scared.”
“Ada, it’s more dangerous than you realize. We don’t know what weapons they’re carrying, but we do know that they’re enraged, and probably drunk to the point where they’re not in their right minds. You have nothing to prove to us.”
But even as she says it, Ms. Stuart’s voice is wavering. And the truth flashes in my mind: she thinks I can help protect everyone, the way Gabriel does. It’s just that she hates to see me like that, as a potential tool instead of as a kid.
Gabriel grins. His skin is bone white and his blue eyes gleam; oh, so he thinks this is fun. “Let’s do this.”
He tries to take my wrist again, but I yank it away. I’m not letting Gabriel pull me along like it’s all his decision. We zigzag past everyone and slide back the glass door, and then we’re both running down the hill, the grass at our feet streaked gold and blue with falling sun and long shadows.
Headlights pierce between the black bars of the gate: a heavyset pickup truck reverses, then slams forward again with a horrible metallic squeal. I can see the blurred reddish silhouette of warm bodies massed close together in the dimness under the trees. A fiery plume spews into the air above them. Those people brought a flamethrower? There’s a babble of shouting voices and what looks like two men up on the truck fighting over something.
Gabriel said that we look like their own kids. Can he really control his skin? So far it’s burst into a tumult of colors every time I’ve seen him get upset. If his whole plan is based on the two of us passing for normal, what will happen if he loses it in front of a bunch of violent drunks?
I can’t think about that now. The truck accelerates again, and the gate groans with the impact. We have to make this stop.
We’ve reached the bottom of the slope, where the shadows grow denser. They spot us and a shout goes up. I don’t really know, but I guess they see us only as two dark, basically human shapes running in their direction. Gabriel takes my hand, and this time I don’t pull away.
We charge straight into the beaming headlights and stop twenty feet back—out of range of the flamethrower, probably, but that won’t help us if someone has a gun. The whole mob stops yelling. Their faces press forward in a row of glowing ruby blobs. The last of the sun is fading behind them, so to Gabe they probably look dark, with barely any detail on their faces.
“You wanted to see us?” Gabriel calls. “Here we are.”
I glance over at him, and he’s doing a great job of looking like a regular, handsome human boy. So far, anyway. In front of us the crowd is murmuring in confusion. We’re nothing like they expected.
“You’re not the ones we had in mind,” a man booms in reply. He climbs up onto the cab’s roof and stands there swaggering on spread legs. I see the speakers now, up on the back of the truck; maybe those men were wrestling over the microphone. The guy on the cab has it now. “Why don’t you send down some of those bug-faced brats you’re hiding?”
A few shouts follow that. A fist pounds on the bars. For a moment there, it seemed like Gabe’s plan was working, but now I can feel their madness starting to seethe again.
We can make them feel ashamed—because it’s harder to look at us and pretend we’re not kids. My whole job is just to be a person, then, and hope that they’ll see I’m a person.
I let go of Gabe’s hand and step forward. “Hi,” I say. “I’m Ada Halcyon Lahey. I’m in seventh grade. I think maybe you don’t understand, but there are a lot of little kids here. You’re frightening them. Could you please go home?”
And then I notice for the first time what most of them have in their hands. Rocks and a few gasoline-reeking bottles with rags stuffed in the tops. My legs go rigid, and my breath clumps like ashes in my throat.
“Little kids?” the man with the microphone sneers. His shirt is white against the dimness, and the red heat of his blood makes it glow like a lantern. He’s thirtyish, dark-haired, muscular. “Or little kimes?”
I have to answer, but I can’t make a sound. I feel cold and brittle, as if I could shatter at a touch.
But then Gabriel is beside me. “Which are we?”
The man looks him up and down. “Who knows? We can’t see everything you’ve got.” A few people titter, but at least that didn’t get a big laugh.
Gabriel pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the grass. He’s still as blank and pale as paper, just the ruby of his body heat shining softly as he walks past me. Straight toward the gate.
“You don’t expect a twelve-year-old girl to take off her clothes for you, do you? But you can look at me, if you’re so curious. So what do you see? Would you be proud of yourself if you hurt me?”
There’s a brief silence, then someone mutters, “What are we doing here? Let’s just go.”
He’s only a couple of yards away from them when I see it start: rippling amber and bronze and blue lap up his naked back like flames. His skin seems to light up in every cell—so he has some kind of bioluminescence, which makes the illusion of fire a lot more convincing. I’m behind him so I can’t guess what the crowd is seeing, but I can hear them gasp as the colors beat higher, starting at his waistband and whirling up to his shoulder blades.
“My God!” a voice yells. “He’s burning! He’s burning from the inside!”
“Gabriel!” I call. “Come back!” I thought he was just getting too emotional to control himself, but he laughs. Loud and harsh.
He’s doing this on purpose. His skin looks like fire-flooded glass now all the way to his hair. The people crushed against the gate start to shriek and stumble over one another, fighting to get away from him, and he still keeps on advancing very, very slowly. He’s being incredibly brave, but there’s also something appalling about it. He’s enjoying their fear so much.
“You, boy! Keep back! Do you hear me? Keep back!” The man on the cab screams through his microphone so loudly that his voice rips into scraps of noise. He has a rock in his other hand.
“I’m behind a locked gate,” Gabriel points out. “We’re kids, and anyway you’ve got us outnumbered, thirty to two. So what are you afraid of?”
“I told you to stay back!”
I see a woman fall as people shove her. A boot slams into her neck, and she howls. Why won’t he stop?
And then I’m running again. I grab Gabriel’s shoulders, and the people who are still watching yelp in shock and alarm. It must look to them like I just sank my hands into blazing coals, though in fact his skin feels cool in the dusky air.
“Gabriel, what are you doing? You said we were just coming here so that they would understand . . . so that they’d feel ashamed of threatening us!”
“That part is your job. I’m here to make them ashamed of what pathetic cowards they are. See, Ada? We’re a team.” He’s smiling, but it’s more like a snarl.
That’s when a hand flies up and something dark comes whizzing out of the crowd. There’s a crack that seems to be made of both sound and pain at the same time, and blackness blooms through my head.