NIGHT FELL ALL AT once. The rain stopped abruptly, lingering in puddles on the boardwalk. Leon crouched behind a bush and spied on the cherry tree. He’d seen Lucky and Cora disappear beneath its branches, and he could guess what was going on in there. Another couple forming according to those damn dots on their necks. First Nok and Rolf. Now Cora and Lucky. Didn’t any of them have an ounce of self-restraint?
“Animals,” he grunted. He stood up and sauntered back toward town. The lights were off in the shops and the house—the others must have gone to bed. The rain had soaked his clothes, but he’d long ago stopped caring. His dress shirt was worn and stained, rolled to his elbows and undone at the neck. The suit pants were caked in mud from crawling through the jungle. He climbed the stairs to the diner and tugged at the door—his stomach howled for food—but it was locked.
“Here.” He turned just in time to catch an apple flying his way. Mali stood in the shadows, her face unreadable beneath the long braids. “There is no food today. Only empty trays except for Cora’s. I find this on the farm.”
His stomach howled louder. What shifty game was Cora playing at, stealing all the food?
He took a hefty bite of the apple. “Cheers. Now if you don’t mind, bugger off.” He started down the steps past her. She so unnerved him, with those shockingly light brown eyes, that permanent scowl. Her hand shot out as he passed, clamping onto his bare forearm.
“Are you returning to the jungle.” She spoke all her questions like a statement, something else that unnerved him.
“Not any of your business, is it, kid?”
Her hand fell away, but that cold stare kept him prisoner. She was like a walking ghost, haunting him.
Ghosts. He flinched as a shadow seemed to pass through him. He whirled toward the ocean, breathing hard. The feeling of eyes on his back. A presence that wasn’t quite human. It had started the first day; he’d thought it was the Kindred watching behind the panels, but now he sensed it was something else.
Someone else.
Mali’s eyes flickered to the cherry tree. “Cora and Lucky kiss behind those branches. They will soon obey the third rule.”
Leon snapped out of his daze.
“You really are a little spy, aren’t you?” He ignored the fact that he’d been spying as well. “Well, don’t worry about those two. Cora looks sweet, but trust me, that girl’s got a dark streak. She’s not obeying a thing. And Lucky won’t either, as long as she tells him not to.”
“They have no choice. The twenty-one day mark approaches.” She took a step to her left, head shifting like a snake. “They must obey. We all must.” Her hand snaked out to grab him, and he slapped it away.
“Hands off. Don’t get any ideas about you and me.”
“You have no choice.”
“What’s the Warden going to do, get his Caretaker to lock me up? Joke’s on them. It was only a matter of time before I was behind bars back on Earth anyway. Here’s a piece of advice: stay away from me. I’m not a good person.”
A vision flashed in his head of a girl with green eyes and a heart-shaped scar on her chin. A headache tore through his scalp. She’d been the first thing he’d seen when he woke. He’d been on the boardwalk, head throbbing and vision blurry, and a beautiful Middle Eastern girl leaning over him with the most shocking green eyes.
“I’m Yasmine,” she’d said. “I don’t know where I am. . . .”
Mali tapped his forehead, jerking him back to the present. “The Kindred do not take bad persons.”
Sweat poured down his forehead. He wiped it away, trying not to think of the girl with the heart-shaped scar. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
“Yes I do. Cassian lets me watch you before putting me here.”
Leon froze. His heart started thumping extra hard. He turned on her slowly. “What exactly did you see?”
Yasmine’s green eyes flashed in his head again. She had woken him on the boardwalk, and he’d jerked upright. His head had been pounding and he hadn’t been thinking straight. All he knew was he was somewhere he didn’t belong, and there was an ocean and shops and a beautiful girl. He’d grabbed her hard enough to bruise her. He hadn’t meant to threaten her. But she must have been so scared already, and his size frightened people. . . .
“What did you see?” he growled.
“I see you taking care of Nok. You know she is scared so you sneak to the farm when no one is looking and get her a peach. You leave it for her on the bed.”
He sighed in relief. Mali hadn’t seen, then. That look of fear crossing Yasmine’s face, and her tearing away, and him chasing after her, certain she had answers, still so dazed he didn’t know what he was doing. She’d run straight into the ocean and dived into the water. Leon had yelled at her to come back. By the time he’d gone in after her, she’d stopped moving.
Drowned.
While trying to escape from him.
He stopped pacing and glared at Mali. God, he hated how she never seemed intimidated by him, no matter how he tried to push her away. He hated most of all how much he liked the shape of her face, and that stringy hair, and that cold look.
He jabbed a thick finger in her face. “Listen, kid. You may think you understand humanity, but you’ve been living with those bastards for too long. I’m done with this whole social experiment. They can mess with time, spy on me, I don’t care. I’m done with this—you most of all.”
He stomped past her toward the house, where he ripped off a few sheets from a spare bed and stuffed them into a pillowcase, then stormed out the back. The jungle called to him. He’d never belonged in this pretend town anyway. He should have taken Yasmine’s death as a hint that he belonged alone. A cold shiver ran through him, and he whirled toward the ocean.
Was it Yasmine’s ghost? Was she the one giving him headaches?
He turned back around and kept walking.
He liked the solitude of the jungle. No talking. No arguing. No stringy-haired girls with scarred fingers. There were the black windows, sure, but what did he care if he was on display? Let them watch. All they’d see was a guy not giving a shit.
“Be careful.”
He nearly jumped. Mali stood behind him on the path. How she’d moved so fast to get there, he wasn’t sure. In fact, in the moonlight and shadows, he wasn’t sure she was real at all, and not a hallucination.
“There is a reason the Kindred create the town. Humans are not meant to live on their own. Away from the group you start to lose yourself.”
The branches around her rustled, and when he caught up to her, ready to unleash a string of curses, she was gone.
Had she even been there?
Shaken, head throbbing, he pushed farther into the jungle. He’d slept in the huts before. With the sheets, he could make himself comfortable. He could scavenge food from the farm. He didn’t need the others at all. If the Kindred wanted to punish him for it, let them try.
He paused and tilted his throbbing head toward the sky.
Sometimes he thought he could hear the moon moving.