CHAPTER NINE

Prairie Lake Station

APRIL EMERGED FROM A CORNFIELD ON THE EDGE OF TOWN with Isabel and Joshua, feeling—for the first time—very much like a runaway. She was only a couple of miles from home, after all, and if they were headed into town it was possible someone who knew her might spot her. That simply wouldn’t do. She tried her best to look innocent and anonymous. She told herself she had every right to be here—the call of the missing piece could not be ignored. It was as simple as that.

But maybe they weren’t headed into town. Up ahead, the amber lights of the local Metra station glowed. The station sat between two vast commuter parking lots, each one as wide as a football field. Since it was nearly seven thirty, with the trains only running every hour or so, the lots were all but empty.

At some point on their hike, a subtle shift had occurred in their little group. Joshua had begun to lead the way, no doubt using his keen sense of direction to take them wherever they were going. But so far, instead of leading them toward the magnetic call of the missing piece, he’d been taking them away from it. For April, this was beyond frustrating, and frankly a little worrisome. When she’d politely asked where they were headed—how they were planning to get into the city—Isabel had said only, “Arrangements have been made.” But now, as Arthur drifted overhead and dropped into the parking lot, April looked at the train station in the distance and felt her heart slump in her chest.

“We’re taking a train?” she said.

“What?” Isabel said blankly. “No . . . no train.”

April breathed a sigh of relief. The thought of getting a raven on a train was problematic, to say the least. But it still didn’t answer the question of how they were getting to the city.

They started across the parking lot, weaving between the dozen or so cars that still remained. Arthur meandered alongside, exploring, warbling low to himself. He hopped briefly onto the hood of an SUV, clearly in a good mood. He stopped to examine something small and shiny—a coin or a pop top, maybe—and then began tossing it into the air. He was playing. Isabel watched him with a smile. Meanwhile, keen little sparks of mischief fired in April’s head.

There were nearly to the station when a northbound train came and went. A lone woman got off and headed toward them. April hid her face as the woman passed them, but the woman barely glanced their way. As they crossed the tracks, Arthur swooped in silently and took up a perch on the near end of the long station building. April continued to sip at his happiness, his contentment, his still-blooming wonder at being free and able to fly again. His carefree mood was the perfect remedy for her own stewing worries.

Isabel glanced over at her. “Keep it low,” she murmured.

“I am,” said April.

They cut across the empty platform, headed for the far end of the darkened station building. But just as they moved under the shadowed eaves, Arthur’s mood abruptly shifted. April stopped dead.

A sudden alertness. A jolt of alarm.

She spun and looked back over the abandoned parking lot, toward the dark sea of corn beyond. The woman who had gotten off the train looked to be headed for a car at the end of the lot. “Someone’s out there,” she said.

Isabel turned, pressing Joshua against the wall. “I don’t see anyone. I don’t feel anything.”

“But Arthur does.” April closed her eyes, wary of opening herself too much to the vine. If only she could know what Arthur was seeing. If only the vine weren’t broken. His keen eyes had spotted something moving out in the distance beyond the woman, something—

“Easy,” Isabel warned.

April couldn’t see, but Arthur’s perceptive mind began to fill in some of the blanks. Shapes approaching from the field beyond the lot, following their trail, headed this way. Unnatural shapes. Hated shapes.

She opened her eyes. “Riven,” she said. “Mordin. They’re coming.”

Isabel didn’t hesitate, didn’t question. She grabbed Joshua’s hand and broke into a sprint. April followed, her backpack bouncing as she ran. She quickly moved out of range of Arthur, but they all heard his hoarse, challenging cry as it echoed across the entire station: “Rrrawk! rawwk! rrawwk!”

April dared to look back as she rounded the corner of the building. A hundred yards off, she spotted the Mordin in the fading light. Two tall and angular forms like living trees, like praying mantises stretched into grotesque, humanlike form. Her heart fluttered as they passed by the woman from the train, but the woman merely nodded at them. April ducked quickly out of sight after Isabel.

A tall hedge lined the tracks behind the station. The threesome slipped behind it and kept running, Isabel in the lead. They turned and hurried up a long gravel drive that ran behind an auto repair shop closed for the day.

Isabel stopped behind the garage and took a knee. She began digging through her pockets, breathing hard. “They’re on your trail,” she muttered.

“I’ve been careful,” April said. “Barely sipping.”

“You’ve been fine. It’s your wound they’re following, but even then, they’ve been lucky to be doing so well.”

“I thought maybe they wouldn’t follow us into town,” April said. “That they’d be afraid of being seen. But that woman in the parking lot saw them and—”

Joshua shook his head gravely. “Only people with the talent see the Mordin how they really are.”

April wondered if that included him. “So they’ll follow us wherever we go,” she said. “But they’ll keep their distance because of you, right, Isabel?”

“Yes, but we have a bigger problem now. I promised our ride there was no danger. She won’t be happy if we show up with Mordin in pursuit.”

Our ride. Apparently they were meeting someone who would drive them into the city. “So what do we do?” April asked.

“I can’t do anything about your wound, but maybe I can use it.” Isabel pulled something small and silver from her pocket—a paper clip. She began to unfold it. “I need your help, April. Drink from the vine. Deeper than you have been.”

“But won’t the Mordin feel it?”

“That’s what I want—I need you to bleed.”

Bewildered, April probed at the vine. Arthur was nowhere nearby, but down in the gravel driveway, a bug was crawling. She spotted it at once—a beetle, clambering over tiny stones as big as boulders. She invited the beetle’s dull, robotic mind into her own. Plodding and purposeful, some deep instinct was driving the bug, some instinct April didn’t recognize, something as crucial as hunger but less . . . selfish.

“More,” Isabel said. At her chest, Miradel began to swell. “Quickly.”

April closed her eyes and opened herself wider. Not too wide—she couldn’t risk a whiteout—but still she felt a buzzing in her temples. The vine’s amputated stem throbbed. Surely the Mordin could sense her now. She tried not to think about it, concentrating on the beetle instead, and all at once she understood what the bug was doing. It was a female, bloated with eggs. Heavy and urgent. Vital. It was looking for a place to lay them. The need was primal and powerful and—for April—a touch embarrassing. She let it pour through her.

Suddenly she felt a tug. Not a physical tug, but a kind of mental pull through the vine, as if her thoughts were made of fabric and a burr had become snagged in the threads. A moment later, the snag pulled free, taking something with it. Her eyes flew open. “That’s enough,” Isabel said, staring down at the paper clip, which was now a flat figure eight. “Shut the vine down now.” When April didn’t react right away, still drawn by the beetle’s lovely, life-filled need, Isabel said harshly, “Shut it down, or I’ll do it for you.”

April did as she was told, yanking her thoughts away from the insect. She silenced the vine as best she could. She glanced back toward the train station. No sign of the Mordin. She thought maybe she saw a flicker of black in the sky—Arthur?

Isabel unhooked Miradel from around her neck and held it in her palm. In a wink, the already swollen sphere expanded to the size of a grapefruit, crackling audibly, its woven surface breaking open. Green light flickered within, every shade of emerald. “One second,” Isabel said, and she slipped the bent paper clip into the sphere. It dropped to the center and hovered there. Isabel held Miradel between her hands—one above and one below—her face rigid with concentration. The paper clip twisted in place at the core, glittering and weightless.

April could tell by Joshua’s face that he was as bedazzled as she was. His little mouth hung open. “What are you doing?” April whispered at the woman.

“I’m buying us time,” Isabel replied, staring intently into the wicker ball. A moment later, she lifted the wicker sphere with her top hand. The paper clip fell through a hole in the bottom of the ball. She caught it deftly and stood up. “This,” she said, holding out the paper clip, her eyes gleaming.

“What is it?”

“A decoy. A thread of your injury, spun into a loop. It’s louder than you. It’ll wind down eventually, but for now—” She tossed the paper clip high into the air, onto the roof of the garage. April heard it skitter to a landing. “We can get away while they investigate. Now let’s move.”

Isabel took Joshua’s hand once more and ran. April peeked back around the corner again, hoping to catch a glimpse of Arthur, but what she saw instead nearly froze her. The two huge Mordin were crossing the train tracks now, still distant but coming ever closer, their strides long and purposeful. As she watched, one of them stepped calmly over a bench as if it were no more than a fallen log.

April turned to run. But just then, from directly overhead, she heard a familiar crooning call. She looked up and saw Arthur perched on the roof of the garage, peering down at her. She’d been so furiously trying not to use the vine that she hadn’t even noticed him coming closer. The raven held something tight in his beak. A stick? A wire? Arthur turned his head and the fading sunlight caught the object just right—a flat and zigzagging figure eight.

“Hey!” April whispered, waving her arms at him. “Put that down!”

Arthur ruffled his feathers and crooned at her again, using only his throat so that he would not drop the paper clip. The vine practically screamed at April, tempting her to tune in to the bird, to figure out what—if anything—he intended to do. She fought off the urge as best she could.

“Listen,” April pleaded. “You can’t follow me. Not with that thing. I’m going this way. You go that way, okay?” She began to back up as quickly as she dared. “No following.”

She’d gotten thirty or forty feet away when Arthur lifted his wings and launched himself into the air, straight toward her, still carrying the paper clip. Panicked, she crouched and scooped up a handful of gravel, then hurled the stones underhand at Arthur. She didn’t want to hurt him, of course, but she needed him to go away, to go anywhere but here. And for his own safety, she needed him to drop the paper clip. The bird dodged the stones acrobatically, coming to a near stop in the air. The vine brought her an unmistakable—and so unwanted—stab of astonishment and confusion, of rejection and betrayal. She understood in a flash that the paper clip was a present. A gift for her. Unwilling to drop it, Arthur veered away and flew back toward the train tracks and out over the parking lot beyond, taking the paper clip with him.

April thought her heart would break, but she told herself there was no time to feel bad. She pushed the vine’s talk down again and turned and ran. Isabel and Joshua were nowhere in sight. Surely they hadn’t abandoned her? She ran blindly up the drive and came out into a neighborhood of cozy little homes. A voice called to her.

“April! Here!”

April turned. Isabel was crouched down between two houses with Joshua, waving frantically. April hurried over.

“What took you so long?” Isabel demanded.

“Arthur took the decoy. He flew off with it. I—” She could not bring herself to admit that she’d had to chase him off.

“Will he be okay?” Joshua asked, his eyes wide with fear.

“He’ll be fine,” Isabel said. “This is good luck. The bird will draw the Mordin away and he’ll—” She stopped and looked up at April sharply. “How many Mordin were there?”

“Two.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes. Why?”

Isabel stood. “Mordin hunt in packs of three. We need to move. Joshua?”

Joshua led the way. They walked swiftly, not quite running. He cut through the backyard and then through the playground of the neighboring Catholic school. He led them through the park, and across the nearly dry bed of Boone Creek. All the while April kept the vine silent, trying not to listen for Arthur. But every time she saw a bird bigger than a robin, she couldn’t help but look twice.

“Where are we going?” April asked. Small as the town was, she didn’t spend a lot of time here, and she was half lost now.

“The post office,” Isabel replied curtly.

“Is that where our ride is?” April asked, tired of the half answers. “Or are we going to mail ourselves into the city?”

Isabel didn’t laugh. “Our ride is waiting at the post office. She’s a Keeper like us, and she’ll take us where we need to go. We’ll be gone before the Riven even know it.”

Gone. But what about Arthur?

They walked on, Joshua in front. He never said a word, never once hesitated. He seemed totally confident in where he was going.

“I suppose you memorized the location of every post office in the country or something, huh?” April asked him after a while.

“No,” Joshua replied lightly. “Just Illinois.”

They passed almost directly beneath the town’s water tower, then headed uphill to a manmade pond. On the far side, they crested the high, grassy bank and found themselves atop a long slope covered in sickly looking ash trees. At the bottom of the hill, April recognized Route 120, the two-lane highway that cut through town. There was the funeral home, just across the road, and a few blocks beyond that, she could see the faded flag of the post office. Joshua had gotten them there much more quickly than April would have believed.

“Isabel,” Joshua said quietly, pointing, his voice a worried whisper. “Look.”

April looked, and goose bumps poured down her arms. On the far side of the highway, a monstrous figure stood in the shadows of the funeral home. A Mordin—apparently Joshua could see the creatures truly. April was pretty sure this Mordin was the same one that had spoken to her in the woods. Not only did he seem bigger than the others, he also had an arrogant bearing that gave him a distinctive air of command.

Isabel growled low. “He thinks he can’t be fooled,” she muttered, as if she knew the Mordin personally. But then she gasped as another figure walked up and joined him. It was clearly one of the Riven—same pale skin, same long arms—but it was much smaller, no taller than a tallish human. This one had a distinctly feminine look, perhaps because of its long hair pulled back into a thick braid. The braid was so blond it was almost white.

Isabel grabbed April and Joshua by the arms and pulled them down onto the grass, behind the lip of the embankment. “Quiet!” she said. April was shocked to see real concern in the woman’s eyes.

“What is that?” April whispered. “It’s not a Mordin.”

“No. Another kind of Riven—an Auditor.” Isabel grimaced as if she hated to say the word. “We’re in great danger.”

Isabel’s apprehension began to seep into April’s own bones, chilling her. “Why?” she asked, as calmly as she could. “What’s an Auditor?”

“The Auditor won’t be afraid of me like the others are. Now be quiet. Be quiet and don’t move. Don’t even think of the vine—I can’t risk severing you now.”

Joshua burrowed up against April, interrupting her thoughts. “Did they see us?” he asked.

“No,” April said firmly. “They won’t find us.” But inside, she felt no such confidence. Isabel had promised to protect her, and April had gone along with it—even risking the terrible misery of severing. And now, as it turned out, Isabel seemed to be saying there were things she couldn’t protect them from.

“If they do find us,” Isabel said grimly, “run. I will fight them. I can’t promise how it’ll turn out, but I’ll try. Be quiet now. Let me think.”

They waited. They could see nothing but the square pond just below and the bare, slender branches of ash trees stretching over the water. Tiny frogs croaked among the reeds around the pond, but April kept them shut out, refusing to add even the tiniest trickle to the vine’s presence. Distantly she became aware that she could catch snippets of the Riven talking, their voices rising occasionally over the murmur of traffic. Their speech was crackling and hissing, like wet logs burning. It made April’s skin crawl. And then, suddenly, she couldn’t hear them anymore.

“They’re gone,” Joshua said, as if he too had been listening. He made as if to rise, but April grabbed his arm.

“No,” she whispered, staring into the sky.

A small black shape was gliding toward them, dropping out of the twilight. Wings spread wide, it banked gracefully and then alighted on a branch out over the water. As it bobbed its head at them, April struggled not to reach for the vine.

Arthur.

He was all right. He’d found her. But he was strangely silent, and with a creep of horror April realized why—he still held the decoy in his beak. The paper clip glinted keenly against his black feathers, presumably still broadcasting a loud, false echo of the vine’s wound.

Isabel saw it too, or perhaps sensed it. “Send him away!” she hissed urgently at April. “Tell him to go!”

But of course that wasn’t how being an empath worked, and Isabel had to know it. The vine was a one-way street. Much as she hated to do it, April would have to scare Arthur off, just as she had before. She groped desperately through the grass for something to throw. All she found was a twig, which she flung at the bird, but Arthur only watched as her sad throw fell way short. April dug into her pocket. Dog food—no good. But there was something else there, something round and smashed flat.

The bottle cap. A gift from Arthur. She wouldn’t throw it, no, but . . . maybe she didn’t have to. She looked up at the raven, at his crystal-black eyes. She looked at the shimmering water below. She looked up at the precious, shining figure eight in Arthur’s beak.

It was a gift. Another gift for her.

April nodded at him. “Yes, thank you,” she called out softly. “Thank you.”

Arthur cocked his head. He shuffled from side to side, clearly unsure what to make of the situation.

“Thank you,” April said again, making her voice as sweet as she could. This had to work. It would work. The Riven were coming.

Arthur fluffed his feathers. Through the vine, a tiny stab of happy hope. “Henkyoo,” he crooned at last, and as he spoke, the paper clip tumbled from his open beak, falling toward the water below.