WHATEVER TAI-GE BELIEVES, HOWL IS right. We can’t hope that our luck extends to magically being able to keep the heli with no consequences. Or to have found a Red with intimate knowledge of exactly where we need to go, who also happens to want to jump in a heli with the Chairman’s absent-without-leave son, a traitor Second, a Fourth, and a Wood Rat when all the masks and food are in the camp he just vacated. Fate, instant karma, and destiny combined wouldn’t be that generous, not even if I’d taken off my stars back in the City and become a nun.
The propellers clip on and off, as if Tai-ge’s trying to find the right height, the right wind before defaulting on the quieter correctional propellers that allow us to glide in comparative quiet. Before I get to the cargo bay door, June peeks through into the cockpit all by herself. Her eyes search the cabin over before stilling on me. Instead of hopping up next to Tai-ge at the controls to watch Tai-ge fly as she usually does, June goes to her rucksack where she threw it down in the center of the floor. She drags it to a corner and sits, clutching it to her chest.
I pull open my pack where it’s propped up by the storage closet and snag a handful of dried pears. The silence emanating from behind the storage closet door makes my spine tingle, as if any moment I’ll hear shouts or screams or . . . something. I’m not sure what it is I’m afraid of happening. Xuan attacking Howl? Or perhaps Howl falling in line with all the nightmares I’ve had about Menghu. I didn’t tell him to hurt Xuan, but now I’m second-guessing, wondering what Cale would have assumed I meant if I asked her to search a potentially dangerous Red.
When I sit down by June, her face is empty as the cockpit windows, pressed over with gray clouds. The drone from the propellers goes silent again. Hopefully Tai-ge has found the right altitude. “You going to tell me about it?” I whisper. “How do you know him?”
June doesn’t blink. It seems as though she hasn’t in a while, as if the split second of darkness will bring monsters. She points to the storage room, a question on her face.
I nod. “He’s in there with Howl. And I need to know if we should let him get sucked out of the cargo bay while we’re up high or if there should be torture involved first.”
June doesn’t smile. I don’t blame her. It wasn’t that funny. When she finally reaches out for a slice of pear, I feel the breath stream out of me in relief as if June breaking down would turn me catatonic and mute as well.
“I don’t know.” She flinches as the propellers burst into motion, assaulting our ears, then stuffs the pear into her mouth.
“You don’t know whether we should torture him?”
“His face is wrong,” she says around the slice of pear.
“Wrong?” I fight the manic laughter drumming to be released at just how many ways that could be taken. At least she’s talking again and not pulling back into her girl-size turtle shell. “Okay. But you do know him, right? It isn’t just that you don’t like patchy beards?”
She nods slowly.
“How?”
June’s stare might as well be boring holes in the floor. But she shakes her head.
“June, no matter what he is or what happens next, I will protect you. I think Howl would too.” It jars to hear those words coming out of my mouth, but whatever it is Howl has done, I believe June’s on the list of people he’d like to keep alive, if possible. “Please, June. Anything you tell me will help. You don’t have to keep secrets. You don’t have to be alone. I’m here.”
She looks at me, her vacant stare slowly coming into focus. But then she sits up a bit straighter and pins me with that greenstone gaze. “It’s from before.”
A warmth blossoms in my chest, as if it can somehow leap from me to her and soothe the worry out of her. “From before you met us?” I ask.
“He was there when they took her.”
“They? Took who?”
“My mother. We ran.”
A chill creeps down my neck, making its way slowly to my heart. “What do you mean you ran?”
June blinks, but it’s too slow, as if she’s been hypnotized, one step before falling asleep. “My family had to. From them.” She doesn’t look at the storage closet again, but I know Xuan must be one of “them.”
“Dad never explained,” she continues. “Just said we had to find her. And then he said nothing. And then it was better if I said nothing too.”
The storage door cracks open, and Howl comes out on silent feet, going to the cluster of maps stuck in Tai-ge’s pack. Tucking them under his arm, he looks at me. “Can I borrow the key?”
Tai-ge tears his eyes away from the controls. “Can we wait a minute to plan? I can set us on autopilot once we’re far enough from City camps that we should be safe. That way we’ll all be able to talk.”
“I thought . . .” I bite my lip, trying to find the right words. Howl raises his eyebrow at me. “I want to talk to him first, Tai-ge.”
“Why? If I’m in there, then—”
“No.” The air feels close in the heli, the wet smell of dirty slush from outside mixed with moldering clothes that haven’t been washed filling my nose.
Tai-ge doesn’t turn around to look at me, his shoulders unnaturally straight in his chair. I pull the key from my pocket and hold it out to Howl. He takes it, running his fingers along the rough edge, but doesn’t turn to go in the room. “Is June okay?” he asks quietly.
June looks up at him, but it’s only a quick flick of her eyelashes before she’s back to melting holes in the floor with her gaze.
“I’m not trying to pretend you aren’t here, June. I just . . .” Howl scratches at the scruff coating his jaw. “If you’ve already said it once, I didn’t want to make you say it again.”
“Whatever is wrong, you must be mistaking Xuan for someone else, June,” Tai-ge says from his chair. He couldn’t have heard my whispered conversation with June, but a burst of irritation hits me at hearing him so easily dismiss her all the same.
June almost seems to shrink, whatever makes her June pulling back from her skin to a safer place. I crouch down by her, putting a hand on one of her knees. “I believe you, June. You are safe. At least from Xuan.”
Howl joins us on the floor. “I’m not above pushing him out. Really.” It’s hard to know if he means Xuan or Tai-ge, but I don’t look away from June to clarify.
June holds his gaze, then looks back at me. Her shoulders relax a fraction, and she nods.
Howl touches my arm, and I forget to flinch away for a second. “Would you rather have Sev out here, or would it be okay for me to take her in with me?”
June holds her hands out for the dried pears I grabbed, then gestures at me to go. I stand, worried that if I leave, June would fall to pieces on the heli floor, but she gives another annoyed sort of wave with her hand, curling around the pears as if it’s just her and them in the universe. A promise of food and a place to lay her head. I have to swallow down a sudden feeling of helplessness.
“Come on, Sev.” Howl’s still there, waiting. “There’s still a lot we can do.”
Where does Howl get the right to guess what I’m thinking? I nod once, unconvinced. Then again, determination flooding through me. If June can’t face down this demon, I can. That’s a start.