“So. Are you going to explain the pants?” Logan asked as we rumbled down the highway. His headlights lit up the chunks of snow that fell into the road.
“I ran into an old friend at the bar and she . . .” I said, not sure how to finish the sentence.
“. . . gave you her pants?” His voice rose with the question.
“Well. Not voluntarily.”
Logan looked over at me, doing a double take before a grin slid up the side of his mouth.
He shifted gears, and we lurched forward. The whole cabin of the truck smelled like him. Like spice and earth and warmth, like forgotten coffee cups and the stale, faint memory of cigarettes, like the upholstery held onto a decades-old scent.
I looked over at him, the angles of his face in sharp relief in the shadows and brief shine from other headlights.
I felt my face flushing and looked down at my lap. I had to focus on the drifts . . . and why the hell I was sleepwalking now. I had too many other things to worry about to keep getting distracted by a man.
Maybe that’s why being distracted feels so good. I thought back to the moment in the hallway of the Yard. It made sense. I was used to fear, used to vigilance. But this . . . looking over at a man in the dark, that was indulgent, it was a moment to catch my breath. It was nicer to wonder about the merits of man smell than to try and figure out how in the hell I sleepwalked myself out of town during a vivid drift.
I’d thought the drift was an anomaly. That maybe the Hushed it belonged to would move on, taking this weirdness with them.
But it seemed like they were only getting closer.
I shook my head. I couldn’t think about that right now.
“Wait. Did you just stand someone up?” I asked, remembering what he’d said about meeting a friend.
“No. She canceled about a minute before I saw you.”
I didn’t know how to act. Suddenly I was so aware of everything. So aware of the stupid leggings that suctioned onto my legs like latex. No wonder Tansy was horrible. Half of her body was constantly in a state of suffocation. I pulled at the fabric, letting it snap soundlessly back into place over and over.
He was so close. He made the seat feel small. He was so . . . there.
“Why did you think I was disappointed that you were Hushed?” Logan asked finally.
I stopped fidgeting.
“You acted like it.”
“I was just surprised.”
“There you go. Surprised. Disappointed,” I said.
“Those are not the same things at all,” he countered.
“They are to me.”
A thick, expectant silence filled the cab, like it was a void waiting for me to throw something into it. I twisted my hands in my lap.
“I wasn’t disappointed,” he clarified.
“Then what were you?”
He didn’t skip a beat.
“Intrigued,” he said, looking over at me.
A neutral word.
He was intrigued.
So was I.
“So why the name Eerie?” he asked after a beat.
Safe enough. I could answer that.
“My brother named me. It was raining a few days after we stirred, and he remembered some word for rain in a foreign language. Sirimiri. So that’s what he called me. It got shortened to Eerie over the years. I saw ‘Fabian’ on a map at a rest stop in Missouri and named him the next day.”
“Brother?”
“Well. We stirred at the same time. He found me. Saved me—”
Careful. Careful, here.
“—at the shipyard where we both stirred. In California.”
Lying came easy, like muscle memory.
Logan nodded.
“So. We just called ourselves brother and sister. Easier than explaining.”
“Are you guys still close?”
I nodded. Despite everything—his lies about the slip pill, the accident, and all our fights—the answer rang out of my chest, true and strong.
“Very.”
The word pulled on my heart. It was my anchor, the thing that kept me from tipping too far either way.
“You have any brothers and sisters?” I asked.
“Nope. My dad died when I was seven, and my mom went to prison when I was eight. Though, with all the affairs he had, I sometimes wonder if I don’t have a half-sibling or six running around.”
His tone was the edge of ice, carved down like a razor. Stephen Winspeare was found poisoned in his house one evening in March, eleven years ago. I’d only ever seen his picture—the one his company used for their mailers—in old newspaper articles Fabian had saved on his computer. He’d been handsome, just like Logan. I’d never heard anything about affairs, just about his donations to school lunch programs and the number of new employees he’d hired. Maybe that’s because no one wants to speak ill of the dead . . . especially now that those ills could speak for themselves.
The silence was back. But this time, it wasn’t that it was uncomfortable. What was uncomfortable was realizing that I enjoyed the sound of his voice more.
“I’m sorry. For everything. It must have been rough.”
“Everyone has sad stories,” he said.
His father was murdered, and then his mother was put away for life for the crime. She died in a fire seven years after that. That wasn’t a sad story. That was sorrow beyond words.
A tragedy of which I am a piece.
He looked over at me again, quickly. Our eyes met. He looked away.
What am I doing here?
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked. He handed it to me. I typed in Rory’s number.
I looked up. We’d gone higher into the mountains, and it was beautiful. The air was cold and clear, and the glass slowly steamed. I touched the condensation, looking out at the tall trees. The darkness around us should have felt menacing, but I felt nothing but peace.
Eventually, the truck slowed.
I looked up.
We pulled through a gate, following a thin dirt road as it veered sharply to the left. We drove through an area of dense woods, so thick it felt like we were in a tunnel. The trees cleared suddenly, and I finally realized how high up we were. The mountain gave way to a sharp drop to the right, and I gasped as I lifted myself in my seat to look over. Low clouds and moon-soaked mist lay thick over the glittering lights of the downtown area; only the occasional tree was tall enough to break through. The road forked again to the left as it wound further up the mountain, but we pulled straight ahead. Just in front of us, wedged between the steep incline of the mountain and the ledge, was a two-story A-frame cabin. String lights stretched from the front porch to the surrounding trees. Some bulbs were burned out, and a worn patio set of chairs and tables was covered in reddish-brown pine needles, but it looked well-loved.
“Where are we?” I breathed, even though I knew the general location of this place. We were near Ironbark Prison. Fabian had driven up here a few times, trying to get a glimpse of it from the road, knowing it wasn’t smart for us to poke too close. He could never see it, and I was glad when he finally gave up. I took a deep, steadying breath and kept my eyes on the warm glow of the lights.
“My cabin. My aunt bought it when my mom started her sentence at Ironbark so she could be close. Now it’s mine. The press hasn’t found out about it yet. So we should be good.”
I followed him to the door without a word. The wood steps creaked under our feet.
It was tidier than I thought it would be. I’d always thought men who lived alone must live like Reed. But his house was bright inside, with high ceilings and exposed wood beams. Tasteful dark green couches rested near the wall, and a warm salt lamp glowed on the end table. A winding staircase sat in the middle of the front room, leading upstairs, with two adjoining rooms breaking off on either side. I caught a glimpse of a kitchen toward the back.
A bright orange cat slinked down the staircase, meowing feverishly.
“I hear you, Watson, I hear you,” Logan said, walking through the living room toward the kitchen. The cat followed, playfully swatting at the back of his legs.
“Just give me a second, yeah? This little guy will attack you next if I don’t feed him. Come in.”
I walked into Logan’s house, breathing in the smell of cut pine and wet dirt. It was cold, and I shivered as Logan fed the cat, turning on lights as he went. The wide windows gave a clear view of the forest beyond. Moonlight cut through the trees, and my eyes slowly adjusted. I’d always approached this part of the mountains with a tight-fisted fear. I would practically hold my breath until Fabian was ready to turn around, so I’d never really taken a deep breath this high up. But once I did, I could see the beauty I’d missed every other time I’d been down this road. Behind me, Watson kept meowing, and Logan talked to him in a soft voice as he opened a can. I turned and froze.
The coffee table was covered in papers. Clippings of his mother’s trial, charts, uncapped highlighters. The abandoned coffee cups and protein bar wrappers reminded me of Fabian’s room. I took a step closer. I recognized some of the newspaper clippings—Fabian had the same ones.
Logan was knee-deep in Ironbark investigations, too.
They should compare notes, I thought. My heart hitched slightly as I remembered Fabian’s warning. If my memories came back to me at once and they had anything to do with Madeline, it wouldn’t be safe for me to be around Logan. The Pull was bad enough when there were miles between a Hushed and a Wounded, and when the Hushed had several months or years to get used to the urge. Fabian was right about this being dangerous.
I stared down at the papers and folders, my heart beating faster. My eyes roved over the words and pictures, trying to look at it all at once to get it over with.
Nothing.
Nothing happened. There was no sudden rush of realization or clarity. There was nothing in my memory except shadows and stains.
“Sorry. I would’ve cleaned up if I knew I was going to be having guests,” he said as he walked back into the room. If he’d seen me looking at the papers, he wasn’t mad.
He moved to the fireplace and kneeled, lighting a match. The room roared to life. I hadn’t realized how cold I was until that moment. I stepped forward, letting the heat wash over me.
“Careful. Those look like they might melt and fuse to your legs,” he said, looking up at me.
I stepped back, cursing.
“If I had known I would be wearing these all night, I would’ve just opted to run around naked.” I pulled at the fabric once more. They stuck to my legs.
Logan let out a soft laugh. “Maybe it’s your punishment for stealing them. They never want to leave you.”
“You’re hilarious.”
Logan stood. “Hold on.”
He ran upstairs, his footsteps sounding throughout the house.
Moments later, he came back down with his arms full of clothes. “I had some of my aunt’s old stuff here. Here.”
He pointed to the bathroom off the kitchen, and I slipped inside.
The leggings came off my legs like wallpaper. I sighed in relief as I pulled on the sweatpants and shirt. My hair was damp from the snow that had melted in it, and I wound it in a loose knot at the back of my neck.
Logan looked up at me as I walked back into the living room. I held the silver pants up.
“You got them off,” he said, placing all the folders in the middle of the table. “Want to burn them?”
I looked at the leggings. “I don’t think this stuff would even burn,” I whispered, holding them up to inspect them. I balled them up, tossing them near my boots.
“And it’s probably not good for your fireplace.”
“Gross. Yes. Are your legs okay?”
“Yes, but I mean, do people really wear things like that? In that bar, do you see many girls wearing plastic pants? Is it a Gravedigger trend?”
“I don’t know. That was my first time there.”
“And your date didn’t even show up,” I joked, half kidding.
“It was a friend. An acquaintance, really,” Logan corrected.
“Sounds like the beginning of a film noir. You meet in a dark bar. You barely know each other.”
“The sounds of drunks screeching in the background, calling for the murder of innocent people,” Logan mocked, looking up dreamily. “The perfect spot for romance, wasted, since I was just meeting a hacker I’d hired.”
I stopped, knowing we were moving closer to real conversation. Serious was coming. I just didn’t want it here yet.
“No, that sounds even more romantic. It’s a dangerous job. One you’re not sure you’ll survive. The two of you, on the run from the law.”
Logan shook his head as he stood. He’d taken off his jacket while I was in the bathroom and was wearing a dark gray long-sleeved shirt with buttons down the top. The first one was undone, and he’d rolled the sleeves up. I could see the outline of his shoulder muscles through the thin fabric. I looked away, taking a deep breath. Then I turned back. I looked, and I didn’t squash the heat that stretched up under my ribs.
“I’m pretty sure this particular hacker had a partner. Does that kill the vibe?”
“Nope. You’ll just fall in love along the way, and then she dumps them in the end and chooses you.” Talking to Seph about her TV obsession was paying off.
“Well, I had no idea I was signing myself up for such an adventure.”
“Really? Cause I’m pretty sure adventure is the subtext of the sentence, ‘I hired a hacker.’”
His eyes glinted as he walked past me, and I realized I held my breath as he moved around me into the kitchen.
What are you doing?
I shoved the thought down, under the ugliest parts of me and to the left of this is crazy this is dangerous. I was living. I was doing something other than surviving, and it felt good. I wanted more.
I turned and watched as he pulled two mugs down from the cabinet.
“Can I ask you something? It’s one of those things I’ve always been afraid to ask because I’m pretty sure it would be considered offensive.”
“Well, when you start like that, how could a girl resist?”
He set the mugs down on the counter but kept his hands on them.
“How do you know what film noir is? I mean, not just that. How do you know anything? Like did someone have to teach you everything about the world?” I made a face, biting back a laugh at the thought.
Logan stopped, staring down at the mugs before turning them over. “See? That sounded offensive.”
“No. It’s not. I just have never had to explain before. We just . . . know. We call it periphery.”
He stopped and turned his whole body toward me.
“I know what my human knew, kind of. I have a general understanding of culture and history. Not everything. Dregs. Weird tidbits, or odds and ends that wound up with me. People we recognize from their lives. Old locker combinations. My brother remembers bits of foreign languages, and my best friend is good with directions. She can find anything or anyone. I hate seafood, and I have no idea why. I have a really good photographic memory. And I always just knew that those hey, stranger, black-and-white mystery films were called film noir.”
And that’s all I know.
“That makes sense, I guess.” Logan put water into the coffee maker, though his face was darkened.
“What? Not the answer you were expecting?”
“No. I don’t know what I was expecting. I just thought . . .”
He set the coffeepot into the machine.
“I guess I just thought you were your own people, you know? I never would have guessed that it worked like that. That you were partly someone else.”
I was very still, and I saw his expression drop. “No, God, no, I didn’t mean it like that—I’m such an idiot. I know you’re a person—”
I shook my head and stepped into the kitchen.
“No, I know. It’s not that. I . . . like the questions, and I don’t blame you for not knowing everything about us.” I meant that. “It’s just . . . I had a friend who would have agreed with you. Sarah. She thought we were hijacked souls, or something. Pulled from our place in history and stuck here to fulfill a purpose. That it wasn’t just periphery. That there was a bit of us, whatever that meant, in there, too.”
Logan nodded. “Your friend was smart.”
“She was. She always saw the best in bad situations.”
The coffee maker beeped, and he poured scalding liquid into the cups.
“You don’t agree with her?”
I sighed and watched him pour milk into the cups. He held up sugar, and I nodded.
“I don’t know.”
He held out my cup.
“Isn’t it like . . . three in the morning?”
Logan nodded.
“It will warm you up. I’d offer you my jacket, but the last time I did that, you threw it back in my face.”
I rolled my eyes, and he lifted the mug to his lips.
We walked back into the living room. Logan sat on the couch. Watson lay sleeping on the middle cushion. I took the opposite side.
Exhaustion hung on my bones, pulling me deep into the soft fabric. I tucked my legs against my chest.
“Why don’t you want to go home?” Logan asked.
I considered what I could say, and what I couldn’t. I was starting to see that the most important decisions rise at the most unassuming moments. Not at podiums or in front of thousands. Not when there’s a weapon in your hand or a camera in your face. The biggest, most important moments were like this, tucked away in the silence in the space between the popping of the fire. It was in the breath I was taking, giving a moment to decide to tell the truth.
“My brother and I had a fight.”
Logan set his mug on the arm of the couch and looked over at me. My heartbeat thundered in my chest.
“We spent a year or so after we stirred just traveling across the country. We lived on food from gas stations and hitched rides in the back of cargo trucks. Slept in people’s garages. I know it sounds miserable, but it really wasn’t. It was just Fabian and me. Even when we could only afford toast and one black coffee to split in the grossest diner possible in the middle of Kentucky backwoods . . . it was us. But with the Internment trying to track Hushed, it became more and more dangerous. Any state trooper could have the enhanced black light scanner.”
“The one that detected the biolumins in your blood?”
I nodded.
“I thought they said Hushed registration would be voluntary?” Logan asked.
“It always starts that way, doesn’t it?” I countered.
He looked down and nodded.
“We even saw a convenience store clerk with one, once. He held it out over customers’ hands before doing business with them. So, our only chance was finding slip pills.”
Logan didn’t look confused.
“You’ve heard of slip pills?” I asked.
“The ones that suppress the biolumins and pass you off as human?”
I was impressed.
Logan smiled and pointed to himself.
“Felony record, remember?”
“Yeah. Well. One night, Fabian said he’d found pills for us. The effects only last a couple of years, but that’s more than enough time to disappear. Start over. Play human long enough so people thought we were.”
My voice slowed as the thick memories came back all at once. It was hard to parse them out. The way I’d sat looking at the rain through the window of my booth beside the empty Pizza Hut in the Love’s truck stop, waiting for him.
The crushing fear when he was five minutes late.
The way I’d almost cried when he showed up soaked to the bone, a pink pill in his hand.
He didn’t tell me that the deal he’d been working on for a month fell apart and that the guy only managed to get one. He lied and told me he’d taken his already.
I thought everything was fine. It was, until later that night, when the car we’d hot-wired flipped once. Twice. Three times, stopping only when it hit the base of a tree.
The paramedics pulled me out and lay me across the grass. I stared up into the purple clouds—a typical New Orleans summer storm—as they ran the detector across the inside of my forearm. Clear.
I turned, fighting the paramedic’s orders to stay still, ma’am, just in time to see them do the same to Fabian as they strapped him into a gurney. His eyes were shut. He wasn’t moving.
It’s an unregistered Boney, someone said.
And I realized what he’d done.
For two days, the Internment thought I was human, sitting there at his bedside. They had no way to prove otherwise. They probably thought I was too lovestruck to leave him, that Fabian and I were running away together, and something went wrong.
It would’ve been hilarious, the kind of thing Fabian would’ve laughed at, had he not been dying from complications of a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. We don’t get sick, or at least, nothing serious. I’ve had colds and the stomach flu, but nothing life-threatening. Something about being a Hushed protects us from chronic illness as well as aging. But we’re not indestructible. The Pull, knives, guns, car accidents—we didn’t die easy, but we were easily killed.
Somehow, the Internment figured it out. Maybe it was how I looked at them like I hated them, or maybe it was because, despite my DNA telling them I wasn’t a Hushed, there was no record of my existence.
They waited three days. Three days of me sitting next to an unconscious Fabian, listening to him struggle for breath, watching his body lurch and buck. Then they offered me a deal.
Admit I was Hushed. Register Fabian and myself with the Internment. In return, they would save his life. I’ll never forget how cold the woman’s voice was, and how even she kept it when she had to speak louder over Fabian’s gasping.
There wasn’t a choice.
I leaped out of my chair, yanked the pen from her hand, scrawled our names across the dotted line, and screamed for them to do it.
Thank you for your cooperation, they said as they wheeled him toward surgery.
I blinked, letting the warmth of the fire bring me back to the moment.
A single tear slipped down my cheek, and I brushed it away. I looked back at Logan. He hadn’t moved through the entire story.
“So you both wound up here?” he asked quietly. “How?”
I’d left out the part where Fabian told me—through wet breath still in the car as we were trapped upside down, as we heard the sirens wailing—that he’d arranged for me to go stay with a community of Hushed in Oregon. Once I was safe and away, he’d make his way to Rearden Falls. He knew that idea scared me.
He’d signed up for Rearden Falls as soon as he was well enough to hold a pen in his broken fingers, and I went with him.
“It’s where Fabian wanted to be,” I said. Which was true. “He’d heard about it from some other Hushed and thought it sounded peaceful.” Which was decidedly not true.
“So you had a fight about that night?” Logan asked.
Yes and no.
“He wants to protect me. He thinks he needs to.”
“Does he?” Logan asked.
I took a deep breath through my nose.
“Probably.”
I looked over at Logan. He turned to face me and set his mug on the coffee table.
“Because you have a habit of winding up in holding cells with people like me?”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t call it a habit. Predisposition, maybe.”
“You didn’t need anyone’s protection, though,” he said, joining in with a laugh of his own.
“Well. I needed yours,” I said, quietly, thinking about how he’d kneeled by me in the cell. He looked over at me, the firelight dancing in his eyes.
“It was bad then, huh?” he asked. “The panic attack?”
“How did you know?”
He leaned forward. “My dad used to have them. They would get pretty bad sometimes. Do you think that’s from your human too?”
I pressed my lips together and shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m pretty sure if there was anything in me that belonged to me, that would be it.” I swallowed hard. The only thing worse than having a panic attack was talking about them, but it felt easy, with him.
Too easy.
It’s the easiest thing in the world, Rory had said. I bit the inside of my cheek as I stared at him. He was so close, closer than I’d ever let a human before.
“Well. I guess you’re glad you pulled over to help me, huh?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood as I looked up to meet his eyes.
He didn’t laugh or look away. Instead, he looked down at his coffee and rubbed the back of his neck.
“People have been treating me like I was made of glass since I was eight. I was ‘the boy with a dead dad and a murderer mother.’ You’re the first person in a long, long time to let me help them. Everyone thinks I’m too fragile. You didn’t act like that.” He looked up at me. “I’m very, very glad I pulled over.”
I sipped the coffee, using the brief moment to gather my nerve. I didn’t know what to say.
“Okay. Your turn.”
I turned to face him, feeling bold. We were at the hard parts now. Pointing to scars and showing where the knives went in.
“What was the hacker for?”
The words came out strong, though I worried they would waver. Every time I stepped closer to Ironbark, I risked the point of no return. But there was something thrilling about uncharted territory too. I’d never been here before.
Logan narrowed his eyes at me.
“My mom was innocent.”
I nodded.
“This is where people usually check out,” he said, motioning to the front door with his head.
“I’ve heard stranger things,” I replied.
His gaze was skeptical. He was quiet for a moment, almost like he was at the edge of something and trying to decide if he should jump.
“I knew she was innocent. I’d told you . . . there was a side to my father that no one in Rearden Falls wants to admit existed—a side you could only see if you lived with him and saw how my mom covered up bruises with three layers of makeup. I didn’t want him dead, I should probably put that on record. But I saw the look on her face when the cops showed up at our doorstep and told her my dad was dead. I knew right then that she had nothing to do with his murder.
“So when I grew up, I got mad. I pushed and searched and was determined to get my mom out of prison, no matter how much she begged me to leave it alone. Her lawyer and I thought we had enough evidence for an appeal. And then one night, they showed up at my house.”
My skin tingled. “Who?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I just know there were five guys in suits standing in the kitchen. They beat the shit out of me. It took six weeks and two knee surgeries to even walk again.”
I searched his face in the dim glow of the fire.
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Fuck. You were a kid,” I bit out, and Logan shrugged.
“They told me that it was my last warning, and that I should’ve listened to my mom and backed off. And they told me that she would be next if I didn’t drop it.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I told the police I’d walked in on a robbery. And then I left it alone, because I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her. But when she died, I had nothing to lose.”
“Except your life?” I countered, even if I was in no position to be telling people off for putting themselves in life-threatening situations.
Logan smiled sadly. “Sure. You could say that.”
“Is that where your felony record comes from?” I asked.
Logan smiled and shrugged. “Two counts of breaking and entering and one count of disorderly conduct. Worth it, in the end.”
He leaned over and grabbed the folders from the coffee table. “I’ve managed to get what I could from different sources. Legal and, well, not legal.”
He held them out to me, the weight pulling his wrist down slightly.
I opened the first. It was about Sam MacDonald, the guard with the kind face.
I flipped through the papers on the right, looking through the bits and pieces of Sam MacDonald’s life.
Logan looked over.
“Sam MacDonald. He grew up in at least three different places before settling in West Virginia and going to high school,” Logan recited, his voice soft.
“Do you remember him?” I asked, looking over at him.
Logan glanced down at the picture in my lap.
I clasped my hands together so he couldn’t see the way they were shaking.
“He talked to me once. Just before those guys beat me up. I was at visiting hours, and my mom asked me to stop digging, to stop pushing. She cried and told me to leave everything alone, and then she left. I sat there, you know, because I didn’t know what to do. I was sixteen.” He laughed softly at the last word. “Anyway. Sam . . . Officer MacDonald talked to me for a moment before he followed her into the hallway.”
“What did he say?”
Logan’s eyes roved across the ceiling as the memory replayed across his mind. “He told me that she was dealing with a lot. And that she loved me. That she wanted more for me than what I was chasing.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it?” I asked, flipping through the papers.
Logan nodded. “I knew a lot of prison guards. Seven years’ worth. Not one of them ever did anything like that.”
He opened another file.
The picture was of a younger man with floppy brown hair and a sweet smile. He didn’t look like someone who would work in a prison—I always thought that when I looked at that same picture when Fabian was telling me about his research.
Dr. Walter Davie.
“He was the prison doctor,” I said when I found my voice.
There were pages of information. Fabian hadn’t been able to gather much on Walter Davie. Just the basics. Logan, it seemed, had been able to dig up more.
“Not just a doctor,” he said, flipping through the file. “A geneticist, Eerie. He got his Ph.D. at MIT and went on to work for the defense department’s anti-bioweapon task force. I’m talking DARPA, RAND Corps shit.”
He showed a document verifying Dr. Davie’s security clearance.
My heart pounded. This was new earth, pulled up and plowed over. This is what I’d dreaded, and here I was, staring it in the face. Maybe Fabian was right. Fabian is always right. I waited for the panic, but it didn’t come.
I could have told Logan to drive me home. He would have. I didn’t have to look at this. But something deeper than fear kept my eyes on the page. I wanted to stare this down.
I wanted to know the worst it could do.
“None of this information was in the public record about Ironbark. You tell me why a woman’s prison in North Carolina needs to have a world-class geneticist on staff, especially when he only came in once a month for their checkups.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
Nothing. No triggers, no rushing realizations. My heart found its steady rhythm again.
“I don’t have much, though. I’ve been digging for years now. Aunt Natalie was digging for even longer. No answers yet. But there will be.”
“The hacker,” I said, filling in the blanks.
Logan nodded.
“I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to do better than meeting in a Gravedigger bar if you want to avoid prison time for hacking a federal database,” I said.
Logan scratched Watson, who had wandered over. “It would be a small price to pay.”
He said it so offhandedly, like he didn’t think twice about saying it. “My mom always protected me when my dad came home looking for a fight. She fought for me—” His voice was full of restrained emotion.
Something in my chest twisted violently. I remembered the bodies I’d stepped over—the ones I’d tripped on the night I stirred—and wondered if one of them was Madeline.
He was right. There was something going on at Ironbark that was off the books. Something that wasn’t right.
I couldn’t tell him where I stirred. Even if I could, I couldn’t tell him what I knew, because I had nothing to offer but slices of fire-drenched memories that were as helpful as bits of ash. But for the first time ever, I felt an anger in my bones that wasn’t brittle. I was angry with the people at Ironbark. They had gotten away with something dark, something evil. Fabian was right.
I closed my eyes, remembering the prison that night. The smell of the smoke and the sound of the fire alarm blaring so loud I thought my ears would bleed.
Madeline didn’t deserve what happened to her. None of them did.
“Can I look through the rest?”
“You want to read these?” he asked. “Why?”
I stopped. I couldn’t tell him the real reason. Careful, here.
“You saw how the cops treated Rory and me. Any chance to nail law enforcement—count me in.” The lie rolled off my tongue easily.
“Fair enough,” Logan said.
The slipshod knot came undone at the back of my head, and hair fell into my face.
Logan leaned forward. He didn’t hesitate before brushing it out of my eyes. His thumb skimmed my cheekbone, and I shivered. I loved the way it felt, and I closed my eyes. From the thrum that was pulsing just under my skin, I felt like I understood why being a human, or something close, at least, could be something good.
It’s the easiest thing in the world.
I wanted him to touch me. Then I pulled back slightly, terrified that he would, because I realized I would have no idea what to do if he did. The look in his eyes had changed. He looked at my face like he was trying to memorize it, like he was sure I’d disappear at any moment. I was sure I was looking at him the same way, and I knew I needed to tell him the truth. Once more, just to be sure he understood.
“I’m not human,” I said.
He didn’t skip a beat. “That’s fine. I don’t much care for humans.”
His thumb brushed over my cheekbone. It was a slow movement, like he had all the time in the world and wasn’t going to waste a second. His rough fingers singed my skin. I wanted to disappear into the sensation. I wanted to devour it and let it devour me, I wanted to understand it all and leave it a mystery—
Watson jumped up on the table, startling me. He sniffed the coffee cups, and then flopped down onto the files, stretching out.
Logan’s hand dropped as he laughed, and I swallowed hard, trying to catch my breath.
“We’re going to need more coffee. I think he got fur in yours,” Logan said, standing and grabbing both cups before disappearing into the kitchen.
When he was safe in the kitchen, I flopped back against the couch. My chest was on fire.
I could still feel his fingers on my cheek, and I wanted to put my hand to my cheek and keep the memory of the touch against my skin. I wanted to cut out this night and set it away from everything so nothing could reach it and it couldn’t reach anything else. But that’s not how it worked. Everything was intertwined.
I was going to help Logan. That was more important than whatever I was feeling, and I couldn’t afford to be distracted. And he knew I was Hushed, but he didn’t know the real story.
He walked back in with my coffee and set it on the table. He sat down and rested his head on the back of the couch.
His shirt was pulled a little to the right, and I could see where his collarbone connected to his shoulder. His chest was a ridge of hollows and sinews. I drank in the sight as he opened a different folder.
It would be easy. I could feel it. I could drown in this feeling.
But I had a chance to do something good. How I was feeling about him could stay my secret. It was only right that I had one of my own.
* * *
Two hours later, I was still flipping through files.
Logan was asleep next to me, his chest rising and falling softly with every breath.
It made sense that Logan would think his mother was a saint, but it turned out he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Her pure heart was reflected in not just her own file, but in others as well. Two weeks after she first arrived, she stopped a fight between Bree Cavendish and Monique Cavers by jumping in front of Monique when Bree pulled a shank made out of a melted toothbrush.
She’d been written up twice for saving her rations and giving them to one of the pregnant inmates.
I turned the pages, comparing logs and shifts until everything blurred before my eyes.
A letter fell out.
I glanced at Logan asleep next to me. He’d said I could read everything. But this felt too personal.
I set it down, and then picked it up again and opened it before I could stop myself. It was addressed to Logan’s Aunt Natalie and dated a few months before she died.
It’s okay. I know it sounds terrible, but it’s better that I don’t go on like this for the next twenty years: giving everyone I love false hope. Logan can close that chapter of his life and move on. That is my greatest hope for him. To find a love to sink his roots into, to know that he fell in love with a woman who can bring light to his eyes.
There is not much of a silver lining. I’m not so much a naive dreamer to not recognize that. But I’m not alone in here. There are so many people here willing to shoulder the burden of the pain we all feel. I’ve been so blessed with this.
— M
I set it down.
Nothing.
No memories.
Still, something burned in me as I looked at the curving words on the paper.
My chest ached for him. His mother’s words were so alive that it felt like I could almost hear her voice.
The fire was almost completely dead. Embers gave off a red glow, but the rest of the room was shrouded in shadow.
I gently set the files back down on the table. I’d read everything there was to read on Madeline Winspeare. I’d read six different reports of what may or may not have happened at Ironbark that night. And nothing came to get me. I wasn’t the answer to what happened to Madeline, and I was relieved. It made me feel sick and glad at the same time, like when I’d realized that guard was dead the night I stirred. I was glad there was nothing I could do to help her. Still, I felt a weight on me, and I heard the echoes of screams in my memory. If I hadn’t been so scared, I could’ve searched for a way to help them. Maybe I could’ve even helped her.
I felt a heaviness in my heart as I sat with the realization that Fabian had been carrying this feeling since we stirred. I still felt protective of him. I still wanted to get him out of Rearden Falls. But I knew now that it wasn’t as simple as I had thought it was.
Logan shifted longwise across the couch. In the dim light, I caught a glimpse of metal I hadn’t seen before. A crucifix slipped out from between the buttons on his shirt, its thin silver chain glinting in the last glow of the fire. The purple bruise on his eyebrow looked darker, and I reached out, pulling back slightly before recommitting. I wanted to touch him. So I did. I brushed my fingers over the bruise, then down the side of his face. Over his jawline.
He was beautiful. I felt a drop in my gut like I was plummeting, but at the same time it was like someone had hooked me behind the belly button and was lifting me up. I looked at him, really looked at him, just like I had with the view from the windows: his full lips, parted softly in sleep. The thick column of his exposed throat, the pulse jumping just under his skin. It was almost too much.
Rory’s words came back to me. Don’t be so afraid that you don’t live.
I turned, curling my feet up under me as I looked down at Logan. I took a deep breath. I knew what I wanted to do, but I was scared. Not of dying. No, this fear was different and new.
I didn’t know if he wanted me like I wanted him. This desire was new, so I assumed the pain of rejection would be its twin. If wanting him felt this good . . . him not wanting me would gut me. And that was possible. He could have just seen a girl in trouble and helped. But I knew how it felt when he touched my cheek, and how I felt in my gut where Rory said I would.
Go live.
Slowly, I laid myself carefully next to Logan. I wasn’t sure if it was okay, but then he curled himself into me. His breath was soft on my neck, and I leaned back, closing my eyes and trying to sink into the moment as much as I could. I wanted it to leave a deep imprint in my mind, so when this was over, when it was done, I’d be able to recall this.
Logan’s fingers moved on my skin, and I put my hand over his.
And I knew, in that moment, I’d become those stupid girls in the stories. The ones who didn’t walk away. The ones who risked everything for a man they’d touched in the firelight.