On the fourth day, after Caleb’s boxing workout, he brought me to the kitchen for a cooking lesson.
“Croque-Monsieur?” I verified after he told me what we were going to make.
“The key to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This gives you the stomach,” he agreed.
“Maybe a man should be cooking his way into my heart.” I resented the implication that my goal in life should be to find a man to marry me, then remembered that he was from that time period, even if he didn’t look it.
“Etta loves fancy French things. Or simple things that are fancy because they’re French. She grew up with a bit of Paris-envy.” I thought he was ignoring my comment, but then he said, “And he does need to woo you, and be worthy, and you should have an equal partnership, but on his birthday, or times when he’s amazing and you want to let him know you appreciate him, this is a meal that can do that.”
“I was mostly teasing. You’re incredibly old, so you can’t help it,” I assured him with a smile.
“You’re right, I am very old,” he agreed. “But I have also been a huge feminist for over a century.”
“To impress Etta?” I asked, sensing a trend.
“Because society was implying that she didn’t have the same rights as me. That she was somehow less than human,” he said like he found the entire concept unfathomable.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized for my assumptions.
“She likes to call me her giant teddy bear. I’m big and strong, but I’m a bleeding heart. We went to marches and demonstrations, but if we weren’t Gifted, she never would have lived to see any of the things we fought for come true.”
“She sounds incredible,” I gave him a smile.
“You think I’m biased, but she’s amazing. She’s stronger than me in every way but physical. She’s fierce and vulnerable and caring…she’s perfect.”
“Why do you come here to be the guardian then?” I asked.
“I figure a year every couple of centuries is enough to make her miss me,” he smiled.
“I hope I get what you have someday,” I told him.
“I hope everyone does,” he agreed. “Now are you ready to learn?”
“Yes, chef.” I gave him a salute and got a nod in return.
“Two pieces of bread, ham, butter and cheese,” he told me the ingredients while whisking away in a frying pan.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Béchamel sauce. It’s butter and flour, a little milk, then some mustard and nutmeg to be fancy,” he said while combining the ingredients.
“Is this a ploy so I can make it for you every day as a thank you for the boxing lessons?”
“This is out of the kindness of my heart. If you feel so inclined to practice on the daily, that’s your prerogative,” he played innocent.
“I see.” I looked at him skeptically while he finished making his sauce.
We put the béchamel sauce on the first slice of bread, then we layered it with cheese, ham, cheese, another slice of bread, more cheese, ham and topped with cheese.
“This is really decadent,” I said while he put them in the oven for all the cheese to melt.
“I told you. Simple, fancy, French,” he put words together that didn’t form a sentence, but I completely understood.
We stayed in the kitchen to make sure we didn’t burn them, then went outside to eat them on the Adirondack chairs out front.
“The view is gorgeous,” I said of the island, biting into my Croque-Monsieur. “And this is delicious.”
“Why thank you,” he said with a head tilt and a smile.
“You guys lived in Paris?” I asked.
“We’ve lived all over.”
“What’s your favorite place in the entire world?” I thought of all the magical places he could name.
“Wherever Etta is,” he smiled. I should have expected it.
“If she was with you wherever you went,” I amended.
“Texas,” he said after a while.
“Really? I’ve heard Europe is gorgeous, Iceland looks amazing…what does Texas have?” I asked.
“Nothing anymore.” He took a bite that encompassed at least half of his sandwich. “It’s where I’m from. They say home is where the heart is, and Etta is my heart, but Texas is my home. If I go back, I know none of them are there anymore, but it’s where I feel closest to my mom and my sisters and brothers…”
“I get it,” I assured him. My whole life, I wanted to travel and see the world, especially since I was always confined to the manor, but the more time I was spending away from it, the more I missed the rooms and hallways that smelled like home.
“What are we talking about?” Embry asked, coming out with one of the Croque-Monsieurs we had left on the counter for him and Gabriel.
“Home,” I shared. “Yours would be Italy?” I guessed.
“Italy is home,” he agreed.
“But that wasn’t your first thought,” I called him on it. “Boston?” I asked.
“That is where you are,” he smiled.
“Where is your favorite place in the world?” I asked, rolling my eyes at his answer.
“Anywhere can feel like home, depending on who is with you,” he gave a cop out. “I spent so long speaking of Italy like it was the home I lost, that I didn’t realize home had changed until it was the Boston from my childhood, or a villa in New Orleans that I missed.”
“You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone.” Gabriel stepped out as well, so the four of us sat in Adirondack chairs eating fancy grilled cheeses.
“I know exactly what I have,” Caleb assured them.
“Not if you’re sitting here with us you don’t,” Embry argued.
“Or I also know what’s at stake.”
“Are there a lot of Gifted who are hunting other Gifted?” I asked, figuring my life wasn’t the only thing at stake.
“Not a lot, considering how many of us there are, but enough to warrant places like this,” Caleb told me.
“Not all of them are hunted by other Gifted. When you look twenty-three and your driver’s license says you should be eighty-six, people start by assuming it’s a forgery, but eventually they take notice,” Embry added.
“This is like an FBI/CIA hideout too?” I asked.
“Law enforcement have been an issue,” Caleb glanced at Gabriel, who did not look happy.
“But scientists and armies are usually the bigger concern. Subjects that don’t die are exactly what mad scientists and ruthless generals want to study and replicate,” Embry sent a shiver down my spine.
“Have any of you been caught?”
“I have my doubts about Area 51.” I could tell Caleb was teasing to lighten the mood, because he smiled instead of looking worried.
“No one I’ve known has been caught and tested against their will for longer than a night or two, but we’ve had doctors we trust run every test in the book and medically, there is nothing wrong with us,” Embry told me.
“It’s like we’re frozen in time,” Gabriel shrugged. “We don’t age, and we heal back to however we were before we first died.”
“What happens if you accomplish your—”
Before I finished my question, an alarm went off inside the lighthouse, as well as on Caleb’s watch. “What does red mean?” I changed my question, knowing red lights weren’t good.
“This doesn’t make sense.” Caleb stood and looked around as if he expected and army to rush at us from every direction.
“Which part?” I asked.
“We have different colors for different warnings. Blue when someone enters the airspace, green if a boat is nearby. Yellow means a threat is attempting to breach, like when we were coming through the rocks and the coral with the abandoned ships,” Embry explained to me while we went underneath the lighthouse.
“Red means they’re already here?” I guessed.
“It means they’ve made it past all of the defenses and breached the final perimeter,” Caleb explained.
“The electric wooden fence?” I asked, remembering how he had to turn it off for us to come in.
“Exactly.”
“What happened to the other alarms?” I asked, thinking we missed a few.
“They can be turned off, like if I know a cruise ship is going by or an air show is coming up and I don’t want to be bothered. They were on when I checked last night, but lower level alarms are something you could disable by hacking into the computer system.”
“He hacked us?” I asked.
“It’s a high-level encryption, especially remotely. I assume he got someone who knew the codes.”
“You don’t change them?”
“We do, but the Gifted can always find them so they can get help,” they implied that the Big Bad was using one of the people who knew the access codes. Or that someone switched sides.
“Red can’t be disabled though. Every time a new person sets foot on the island you need to manually turn it off with the current guardian’s fingerprint, or the alarms go off,” Caleb explained why we got at least that much warning.
“How long will this hold?” I asked of our underground haven.
“Against nuclear attacks or human enemies, we can stay months or even years until we run out of food and water,” Caleb said proudly.
“But against a Gifted who knows how to get in?” I asked of our current situation and got nothing in return. “How long do we have?” I asked again, knowing that them not answering meant things were bad.
“It depends on what they want and who they have with them. We have six sections down here and each one has reinforced steel doors. They can withstand an explosion, so we can hide you at least three doors deep and—”
“If the Big Bad is up on the island with his magic and an army of Gifteds, and what he wants is me?” I cut him off.
“We’re not going to wait here long enough to find out how long we have,” Embry told me. “We’re leaving.”
“How do we do that?” I asked as the alarms got louder. As far as I could tell, the only entrance on the island to get down here was in the lighthouse, which wouldn’t take long to breach.
“There’s an escape in the theater. The tunnels are tight, but it will bring you to the buoy,” Caleb shared.
“The one with the rowboat?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Embry tried to be reassuring, which worked as long as his attention was on me, rather than figuring out our next move with Gabriel.
No one but me seemed concerned with us escaping via rowboat after we barely survived coming here with a much sturdier vessel. “Won’t they know about the escape? Or see us rowing away?”
“Only guardians know about the escape and only people who have used it would know where the escape ends up. A lot of tunnels leave from different rooms and let out at different locations,” Caleb sounded sure of himself, but it had to be for my benefit. “And we can use a distraction to make sure they’re not looking at the water while you row away.”
“Any more fertilizer?” Embry turned to me with a smile.
“I happen to be a life-size distraction, so I’ll go give them the guardian schpeel while you leave by the theater. Hopefully I can give you enough time that they won’t be able to catch up,” Caleb decided.
“I don’t like this plan,” I voiced.
“You don’t have a choice,” he told me.
“They’ll kill you,” I pointed out. They kept saying I wasn’t taking this seriously, but Caleb was about to face them on his own to cause a diversion.
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he winked at me before turning to Embry. “I’ve got this,” he assured him, leading to a long look between the two, which ended with Embry nodding.
“Have you accomplished your purpose?” I asked Caleb. It might be naïve, but with my limited knowledge of the Gifted, as long as he hadn’t done what he was meant to do, he could lose his powers or gain new ones, but he wouldn’t die.
“I don’t think so.” He was honest, but it didn’t reassure me.
“You heard him, let’s go,” Embry ordered before I could comment on the admission. I looked to Caleb, horrified, but he nodded in a way that told me to leave, so I did.
At first, I thought Caleb was exaggerating. The tunnels behind the screen of the movie theater were big enough for the three of us to crawl through comfortably, with Gabriel leading and Embry tying the rear. Eventually though, they got smaller. Much smaller. I took off my backpack and had to keep my body flat and pull myself along, wiggling through, but unable to stay on my knees. I was having trouble, so I could only imagine how hard it was for them.
The alarms turned off suddenly, which I feared meant we lost Caleb. It took what felt like hours after that before I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The buoy was hollow, and while it looked like it was floating from the outside, it was held in place by the tunnel it was attached to. I had to roll my body onto my back so that I could hoist my upper body through, then stand inside the buoy, which was wider than usual. I put my hands on the top of the rim and jumped up, like you do on a pool ledge. Gabriel was on the other side, in the rowboat, to help me over.
I could see the island off in the distance, but we were on the other side of the forest. Other than the lookouts, who were facing away from us, no one could see our tiny boat. They had me lie down on the bottom and covered me with a blanket before Embry rowed us further and further away from what was supposed to be a safe haven.