ONE THING WAS crystal clear to Astrid as she stood in the drenching rain: the secret she had kept for so long was no longer a secret.
She looked down at the street and saw Orc there. He was staring up at her, his stone-and-flesh jaw slack.
And coming up the street behind him were four other boys. She recognized Lance and Turk. The other two she barely knew.
All four were armed. Orc didn’t need a weapon.
She scanned in every direction, frantic, looking for some source of support. Maybe Sam had come back. Maybe Brianna. Maybe Edilio and some of his soldiers.
But no, the streets were abandoned but for a sick-looking girl, crouched and weary, moving in the general direction of the plaza, stopping to cough, staggering on.
Orc had defended Astrid once before, rescuing her from Zil and his Human Crew thugs. Now four of those thugs were pointing at her, at the amazing rain cloud, then breaking into a run, all eager malicious energy.
The cloud was growing. The rain was spreading.
Orc was standing in it, an animated gravel heap under a deluge.
The others slowed and then stepped gingerly into the rain and, like Orc, tilted their heads back and drank in the wondrous fresh water.
She had a gun. Would she use it?
“It’s the ’tard,” Turk yelled. His face broke out in a grin. He was standing beneath a tree that was decorated with a yard sale’s worth of clothing and bits of broken toys. “It’s that dumb brother of hers, Petard!”
Turk circled past Orc and hopped the fence into Astrid’s yard. His friends followed warily, eyes darting from Astrid to Orc. Orc did nothing.
Then, in a sudden rush, Turk was up the stairs and standing on the platform. The others crowded beside him.
Turk laughed loudly, gleeful. “It’s the ’tard! He’s the one making it rain.”
“Orc!” Astrid cried.
“That little kid must have some mad powers,” Lance said.
“Go away,” Astrid said.
She was aware of the fact that her drenched nightgown clung far too closely to her body. The gun in her hand weighed a ton.
“Grab the kid,” Lance said. “If we have him, we control the rain, right?”
There was blood on Turk’s shirt. Too much of it.
“What have you done?” Astrid demanded.
Turk looked down at the blood. He seemed surprised by it. “Oh, that?” He laughed savagely. “That’s nothing much. Just means we run this place now, Astrid. No Sam around, huh? Where’s mister light hands?”
“Orc!” Astrid cried out. She didn’t want to reveal the depths of her fear. But she knew what Turk would do. And she did not want to use the gun. Not even now, not even for Petey.
“What other tricks can the ’tard do?” Lance demanded. “Float in the air, make rain. What else?”
“Mutant retard. Freaktard,” one of the other kids said, and laughed tentatively like he wasn’t quite sure it was funny.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Astrid said. She was chilled now and beginning to shiver. “He was just thirsty. He has the sickness, the flu, and he was thirsty.”
On the street below, other kids were coming out of their homes, carrying bowls and buckets. They advanced with wondering eyes, edging toward the rain curtain as it edged toward them.
“The ’tard must be some kind of serious moof to do this,” Lance said. “Blow off the top of the house? Call up a rain cloud? That’s, like, at least three-bar powers there. Maybe four.”
“If you bother him, he may stop.” The threat was a sudden inspiration and it worked. Lance’s eyes narrowed even further and Turk was suddenly very still. Drinkable water was important, even to such sub-geniuses as Turk and Lance.
Then Turk shook his head and said, “Nice try, Astrid. But if the freaktard makes rain whenever he gets thirsty, all we gotta do is keep him thirsty and we own the rainmaker.”
“Wonder what he does when he gets hungry?” Watcher asked.
The rain beat on the carpet. It was already pooling around their feet. Shallow puddles in dirty carpet.
Turk made his decision. “I think we’re just going to take old Petard with us.” He motioned to the two younger boys. “Grab him.”
The pistol came up suddenly, almost as if the gun itself had made the decision. Astrid aimed it at Turk.
Despite the rain her mouth was dry as parchment. Her throat wouldn’t make sounds. Her finger was on the trigger, stroking the grooves, feeling it. Her thumb was on the safety.
She clicked it off.
All she saw now was Turk’s face, and the v-sights of the pistol.
“You aren’t going to pull that trigger, Astrid,” Turk said.
A sound from the steps. Running feet.
Edilio emerged. He had an automatic rifle aimed at Turk. “It’s over, Turk,” Edilio said.
Astrid dropped the pistol to her side. She breathed a huge, shaky sigh of relief.
“You going to let Astrid just own this freak?” Turk demanded of Edilio.
“Drop all your weapons. Right now!” Edilio yelled.
The two younger kids looked to Turk for guidance.
Lance was the one who moved. He raised his own pistol and pointed it at Little Pete. “Anyone shoots anyone, the ’tard takes one in the head.”
“Man, you don’t want to do this,” Edilio warned.
“Yeah? Well, listen up, Edilio: Albert’s dead.”
Edilio’s eyes opened wide.
“See, the situation has changed rapidly,” Lance said in a parody of a newscaster’s voice. “So, now, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a Mexican standoff. You squeeze one off, Edilio, chances are I can still get the kid. Bang.”
“You should understand what a Mexican standoff is,” Turk mocked. He raised his own gun and aimed it at Astrid. “See? Now it’s even more complicated. Lance is right: Albert is, uh, not feeling well. Forever. So no one is even paying you, wetback. You need to walk away. Run before the immigration cops get here.” He laughed.
A terrible thought formed in Astrid’s brain: if Little Pete was killed it might all end.
A simple act of murder . . .
What kind of life did he have? Was Little Pete’s life worth all of this? Was it worth Edilio dying? Was it worth the many more deaths that would surely happen? Was it worth all of them dying in this violent, foul, God-forsaken FAYZ?
“Go ahead,” Astrid said flatly. She let her pistol drop to the sodden carpet. It splashed. “Go ahead. Shoot him. Kill Little Pete.”
Diana and Caine had made love several more times. In her bed. In his bed. In the big bedroom with its ego wall of the two movie star parents grinning out from photos taken with Leo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, that actress who was in Mamma Mia!, Steven Spielberg, Heath Ledger, and a bunch of people who were probably famous but looked more like they were businessman types.
Diana was in the kitchen, wearing a robe and slippers and heating some food for Penny. New England clam chowder. A quesadilla. A mismatched kind of meal, she supposed, but Penny wasn’t going to complain. They were all still a long, long way from complaining about food.
Diana had not intended it to be this way with Caine. Somehow she’d imagined the one time, but not an endless series of sequels. But Caine’s appetite had not been sated. He had come back to her bed in the night. And then, this morning, before the sun was even up.
Something was happening to her. She was coming to like Caine. Love? She didn’t even know for sure what that meant. Maybe she loved him. That would be strange. He wasn’t exactly lovable. And once you knew the real Caine, he wasn’t even likable.
Diana had always found Caine fascinating. And she’d always found him attractive. Hot, she would have said when she was younger. Hot in a cold sort of way, if that made any sense.
But this was different. She wasn’t using him now. That was her usual attitude toward Caine, at least that’s what she’d always told herself: he was useful. A girl like Diana, a girl who enjoyed taking risks, who enjoyed sticking a knife of wit and cruelty into other girls at school, who enjoyed taunting the panting hormonal boys and leering old men, a girl like that could use a strong male protector.
And Caine was definitely a strong protector. It would take a suicidal guy to cross him. Even before Caine had started to develop powers, he was the kind of boy other boys steered clear of. He wasn’t always the biggest or the toughest-looking, but he was always the most determined. The most ruthless. You knew if you messed with Caine, you’d suffer for it.
She supposed, if she had to be serious, that she’d long ago developed genuine emotions for him. Of some sort. Not love. Not even like. But something. Something normal people might have thought was sick, in a way.
Emotions. But not what she felt now—whatever this was.
Diana plated the quesadilla and poured the soup into a bowl. She set it all on a tray and carried it upstairs. She knocked, opened the door, and placed the tray of food in front of a sleeping Penny. It was like feeding a dog.
She found Caine out on what had once been a well-manicured lawn that covered the ground from the house to the cliff. It was now wild with weeds, some as much as head-high. He was looking toward the distant town through his telescope.
He heard her approach. Without looking back he said, “Something’s happening in town.”
“I don’t care.”
“A cloud. Like a rain cloud. In fact, I think it is raining. It’s just a small cloud. Way down low, though, not an illusion in the barrier.”
“You’re probably seeing a reflection. Or an illusion.”
Caine handed her the telescope. She wanted to refuse it, but she was curious. She looked. The town leaped closer. Not enough to see people, but enough to see that there was indeed a cloud, just one, hanging far too low, staying put in one place. The gray smudge beneath it might be falling rain.
“So?” she asked. “So some freak has developed the power to make a cloud.”
“You don’t wonder who? That’s a pretty major power.”
Diana sighed theatrically. “What do you care?”
“I don’t like the idea of there being another four bar. Two of us is already one too many.”
“It doesn’t mean it’s a four bar,” Diana said. “Brianna and Dekka and Taylor are only threes. They have greater powers than that.”
“At least a three bar, though.” He took the scope back. “You don’t think if they can find a way they’ll come after us? If Sanjit made it there alive, then Sam knows what we have here. You don’t think he’ll come after it?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I don’t think he’ll look for a fight with you. He’s not as insecure as you are.”
Caine snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s my problem: insecurity.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no way for us to get back even if we wanted to.”
“There’s always a way, Diana. There’s always a way.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t find a way.”