We took the rowboat in the opposite direction we had come from, and I completely rethought my theory about being more comfortable in smaller boats. The open air was nice, but the small boat rocked and added a deep element of fear to the queasiness I felt on our first ship. Once they let me out from the blanket, Gabriel suggested I focus on a point in the distance that wasn’t moving. Unfortunately, watching the island go up in flames brought on a lot more uneasiness than relief. Can a Gifted come back to life after their body is eaten by fire?
By nightfall, all I could see was a tiny speck in the distance, that I assumed was the island in flames, but it could have been anything. I gave up on asking the guys where we were going, or if Caleb was okay. The consensus was that they knew absolutely nothing about our next move. We traveled mostly in silence, with directions the only thing that broke it. Gabriel took over rowing for a while, then they switched a few times before we let ourselves float. I felt like this was a terrible idea, letting the water take us wherever it wanted to, but they both pretended they had a plan and knew what they were doing.
It was dawn by the time our rowboat hit sand, waking me with a tiny thud.
“Where are we?” I asked, trying to get my bearings.
“I was aiming for Mexico, but it could also be Cuba,” Embry shrugged. It didn’t matter where we were, as long as it wasn’t where the Big Bad was.
“And where do we go from Mexico-slash-Cuba?”
“We need to keep moving,” Gabriel said simply. I hoped he was right about the Big Bad giving up after a few months. For many other reasons, but I would not be able to spend the rest of my life on boats.
“Towards Italy? Or towards a cave in the middle of the amazon?” I tried to figure out what my life was going to look like for the next little while.
“Off the grid, but safe,” Embry told me. “We will stay in remote places and travel under the radar, but we will also try to bring you to friends and find bunkers where we can keep you safe.”
“Until they burn the island to the ground,” I pointed out.
“You’re the only person who didn’t have an opportunity to not be a part of this,” Gabriel reminded me.
“What happens if Sam and Deanna need help? How can they contact us if we’re off the grid?”
“You’re forgetting that we were around long before cell phones and the internet. If Sam needs our help, we’ve taught him ways that he can reach out. Even if we’re off the grid and don’t see it, someone will, and someone will help him,” Embry reassured me, either through his confidence, or his Gift.
“Today is a beach day then?” I made an attempt to lighten the mood, to show him I was okay.
“No, today is a hiking adventure through beautiful scenery with wildlife all around us,” Embry sold it like a super fun excursion to unsuspecting tourists.
“Let’s go,” Gabe was all business, heading straight for the line of trees that bordered the beautiful, abandoned beach we shipwrecked onto.
“Aye, aye, captain,” I sighed before following him. Embry was right about it being absolutely beautiful. I would have loved to go on an adventure vacation last year, but now that it was a rushed and intense trek through wilderness to hopefully avoid the army that was trying to kill me, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
For the first hour, we had no trail to speak of. It took forever to advance even a little bit, because Gabriel and Embry had to move the overrun vines or help me climb over fallen trees. Eventually we came across an abandoned hiking trail that hadn’t been cleared in a while, but at least I could tell where we were going. Fallen trees became an obstacle to get over, rather than the norm.
“I don’t want to ask how much longer, but…” I asked after my stomach made a growl that could rival a lion’s roar.
“But we haven’t eaten since the grilled cheese yesterday,” Embry let me know he understood.
“Normally when people say something was so good that they don’t have to eat for the rest of the week, they don’t mean it literally.”
“You can eat the nuts,” Gabriel said of one of the trees we had passed.
“How many lives would you bet on that?” I asked. The tiniest of smiles cracked through Gabriel’s serious façade.
“If memory serves we’re an hour from a little farming town. We can get something there,” he softened.
“You’ve been here before?” I asked before the trees opened up to reveal a gigantic waterfall.
“One of Caleb and Etta’s many weddings,” Embry smiled at my expression.
“It’s beautiful,” I remarked, taking it all in.
“Beautiful enough to make you forget—”
“Still hungry,” I cut him off without taking my eyes off the view. “But if we’re going to take a break, this place is perfect.”
“Maybe a few minutes to get organized,” Gabriel gave in, removing his backpack and pulling out something thin and pointy.
“Do you think someone will be waiting in the small farming town?” A shiver ran through me.
“Of course not, they would have no way of knowing where we ended up.”
“So that’s just in case?” I asked, nodding my head to his weapon.
“In case someone happens to be in town on vacation, or the villagers don’t take too kindly to strangers, or if there’s a wild animal. Lots of variables.” Gabriel was either trying to reassure me, or to remind me that the world at large could be dangerous even if you weren’t on the run.
“It’s just a precaution, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Embry put his hand on my arm and I couldn’t help but relax.
“I hate that you can do that,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.
“Even if I tried not to use my Gift, I would still be trying to make you smile,” he explained why it was nearly impossible for him to turn it off with me.
“I guess there are worse things than having someone who wants to see you happy,” I conceded.
We were able to stay a few more minutes at the waterfall before we continued our hike, encountering some monkeys along the way, before finally meeting our first human.
“Hola,” I told the little boy from behind Embry and Gabriel, who each had their arms out to protect me from the child. “Estas solo?” I had been waiting years to put what I learnt in Spanish class to good use.
The boy, who looked to be about six, stared at me, making no effort to communicate, or to get back to whatever it was he was doing on the path.
“Do you know another dialect he might understand?” I asked Embry.
“He understood,” Embry assured me, looking distrustfully at the boy, who pulled out what I thought was a toy, but saw was a gun just before Gabriel pounced.
He used his speed rather than force, removing the bullets and emptying the chamber while the boy looked on in wonder.
“Superman?” he asked with a heavy accent.
“Not even close,” Gabriel said before carrying the boy over to one of the thicker trees and tying him to it.
“I’m sensing this isn’t a quiet, friendly, farming town,” I confronted them.
“It is. But there’s also a cocaine farm on its outskirts, the kind that is heavily guarded, illegal, and will shoot witnesses rather than finding out why you’re on their property.”
“Even little kids?” I asked. The boy was barely older than Clara.
“Sometimes,” he said simply before we kept moving.
Eventually we made it to a clearing with tall grass and tiny houses in the distance. At least a dozen men worked the field, but not a single one of them approached us or reacted in any way when we walked past them to get to the closest house. We stayed along the forest line, in case we had to retreat.
“You’ve got this?” Gabriel asked Embry once we found cover.
“You know the drill,” he agreed, giving me a smile before walking off, as Gabriel put out his arm to hold me back.
“What’s the drill?” I asked him.
“He’s going to ask if we can borrow a truck or buy passage to the border.”
“And if he says no?”
“We run.”
“Gabriel.” I didn’t find it funny, but he wasn’t laughing.
“Embry is highly trained, and he knows how to control the room.”
“I’m not sure how helpful it’ll be to make them happy and calm,” I argued.
“People don’t usually want to shoot you when they’re calm and happy, but those aren’t the only emotions he can summon.”
“Is he going to make them love him?” I realized that would be a way to buy him time to escape, but it also made me rethink my relationship with Embry.
“Love doesn’t work like that. We can’t make someone feel it, or take it away. Even Etta can heal anything, but she can’t mend a broken heart.”
“Interesting.” I liked the idea that the Gifted had limits to what they could do.
“Embry uses his Gift to make people happier whenever he can, but he can also use it to make them feel small, helpless, depressed, suicidal…you can fight it if you know it’s coming, but if you suspect nothing…” he let the thought linger, but shook himself out of it when he saw my face. “He usually convinces people with words and a smile,” he assured me.
I was stressed out and staring at the house for another five minutes before Embry came out with a smile on his face, giving us the thumbs up.
“A car?” Gabriel asked.
“Horses?” I saw a bunch of them galloping in the distance.
Embry shook his head for both of our guesses. “Oscar can take us as far as Albuquerque, but if we get stopped at the border, he’ll pretend he doesn’t know us.”
“I have my passport.” I reached into my backpack to try and find it. This would be my first chance to use it since I convinced Sam to let me have one. And to renew it when it expired. All without ever leaving Massachusetts.
“We won’t be needing it,” Embry shook his head. “And if we did, we wouldn’t use yours.”
“Right. Under the radar.”
“Way under,” he agreed.
“I thought you were joking,” I looked over to Embry, involuntarily jumping when the rooster beside me pecked at my head. Embry had talked our way onto the back of an old pick-up truck, filled with hay and poultry, covered with a grey tarp.
“I thought they’d be in cages,” Embry apologized. “You get used to it.”
“Do you do this often?” I leaned as far away from the rooster as I could without exposing myself to the chicken on my other side.
“Once with Cassie,” Gabriel surprised me when he spoke up, a fond smile on his face.
“And once before it all began,” Embry added.
“Before what began?” I asked.
“Before she left,” Embry said simply. “When my biggest concern was finding someone my father approved of, and we all knew Gabe and Annabelle were going to get married and live happily ever after.”
“My bachelor party,” Gabriel said like he had completely forgotten up to that point.
“You guys traveled like this voluntarily?” I raised an eyebrow at them.
“We mistakenly trusted John, my older brother, to be the sober and responsible one,” Embry explained. “Halfway through the night he decided we were having a lot more fun than he was, so he joined in.”
“And the chicken truck came in…”
“We left the local watering hole and each stumbled towards home, but Embry and I took a nap on the way. We hit the hay,” Gabe recalled. I couldn’t help but smile at the way they were both remembering a time when they were happy and the best of friends.
“We woke up in a neighboring town, to a surprisingly unhappy friend of my father’s,” Embry shared.
“He was friendly when I offered him the rest of my ale,” Gabe shrugged with the hint of a smile.
“I’m sure,” I smiled, picturing it with difficulty. Gabe never let loose, so I couldn’t imagine him pass-out drunk and making a joke.
“How did you get back?”
“We helped him deliver the rest of his eggs, then we convinced him to drop us off at home.”
“Embry was the best at getting you out of trouble,” Gabriel smiled. “I wish you’d been at dinner when I explained to Belle what happened.”
“She was upset?” I asked.
“We’d had plans for the afternoon and I showed up smelling like chicken and manure,” Gabriel said before he caught himself, realizing he’d shared too much.
“I bet she forgave you.” I wasn’t sure where it came from. I didn’t know much about her, but I could see Gabriel pulling away, and I wanted him to talk about her. About a time when no one was special or in danger and they were just young and in love. Or, in Embry’s case, trying to find love.
“It took tea with her aunt as well as letting her father give me a tour of the gardens,” Gabriel confirmed my suspicions.
“I thought her gardens were the talk of the town?” I asked, remembering her memory.
“They were, the first hundred times we saw them. After growing up in them and having to give the tour a million times, to every new person who came to see them, we sort of got tired of them,” Embry explained.
“Mr. Owens never tired of them. He loved explaining how the garden was enough to sustain them, and it represented his family, and they brought some of the plants with them from England… Annabelle usually saved me from the tour, but that night she did not.”
“Well, you deserved it,” I sided with her.
“I deserved a lot worse,” he agreed.
“At least you got a couple of decades of fun before thirty-five or so miserable ones.”
“They weren’t all miserable,” Embry argued, looking to Gabriel to back him up.
“We had a few good ones,” he agreed, somewhat reluctantly.
“A year every other decade?” I asked.
“Most people are miserable,” Gabriel shrugged.
“So being semi-immortal is more of a curse than a gift?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gabriel agreed while Embry said, “No.”
“Sometimes,” Embry relented.
“No one wants to live forever alone,” Gabriel said simply.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized.
“It’s not your fault,” Embry assured me.
“Some things are worth it,” Gabriel added.
“Like getting to meet you,” Embry teased.
“That’s really sad if I’m the highlight of your last three centuries,” I laughed at how pathetic that would be, which got Embry to join in, and Gabriel, after trying to get us to quiet down.
“I’m glad I met you too,” I said. “Not only because I’d be dead without you, but I’m glad we were friends before all of this happened.”
“Me too,” Embry agreed.