The Awakening

Thirteen

I STARTED TO RUN to Aunt Lauren. I made it a few feet before Tori’s mom locked me in a binding spell. I dimly heard her say something, but I didn’t know what it was. My ears were filled with my own silent screams as I stared at Aunt Lauren, motionless on the ground. Finally Mrs. Enright’s voice came through.

“I should probably ask where my darling daughter is.”

“Right here,” said a voice behind me.

Mrs. Enright’s head lifted. Her brow furrowed. Her lips parted. Then she jolted backward, hit by a spell from Tori. My binding broke. I lurched toward Aunt Lauren, but Tori grabbed my arm.

“We have to go,” she said.

“No. I—”

Mrs. Enright recovered, hands flying as she launched a spell. Tori yanked me out of the way and it hit the wall, blasting a blackened crater.

“You can fight her,” I said. “Stop her, and I’ll get the gun—”

“I can’t.”

Tori heaved on my arm. I pulled away. She muttered “Fine,” let go, then raced off, disappearing around the corner. Tori’s mom lifted her hands again. Then a voice shouted, distracting her, “They’re over here!”

I took one last look at Aunt Lauren and ran.

There was no way we were getting to that delivery gate now. I soon realized why Aunt Lauren had sent us ahead—so she could watch our backs because we’d be exposed to any employees entering the side yard and we couldn’t afford to raise any alarms.

We peered around the corner of the next building, saw that open expanse, heard voices coming, and knew we’d never make it.

“Now what?” Tori said.

I didn’t answer.

“Come on!” she whispered. “What’s the plan?”

I wanted to grab her and shake her and tell her there was no plan. I couldn’t even wrap my head around the concept. My aunt might be dead. Dead. That’s all I could think about.

“Chloe!” she whispered. “Hurry! What are we going to do?”

I longed to tell her to leave me alone. Come up with her own plan. Then I saw her eyes, bright with fear fast turning into panic, and the words died in my throat.

She’d just learned Liz was dead. She’d seen my aunt possibly killed by her mother. Neither of us was in any shape to think, but one of us had to.

“Your aunt said the Edison Group won’t come close to the front,” she said. “If we run for it—”

“They’ll make an exception. Or find a way to cut us off. But…” I looked around. My gaze stopped on the huge building dominating the yard. “The factory.”

“What?”

“Stay close to me.”

I knew of two doors—the emergency exit we’d escaped from Saturday night and the main entrance Derek had broken into. The main doors were closest. As we headed for them, I whispered to Liz, asking her to run ahead and scout the way. If someone was coming, she’d whistle.

The door was in an alcove. I darted in and I pressed against the wall while Liz zipped through the door. She was back in a second.

“There’s a guard dead ahead,” she said. “I’ll distract him. You open the door a crack and listen for my whistle. You know a place to hide, right?”

I nodded. When we were here Saturday, Derek had us opening all the doors, searching for an exit, and I remembered a storage room that would be perfect.

When Liz gave the all clear, I eased open the door. Tori danced impatiently behind me, though I’d asked her to watch for anyone approaching.

Inside, Liz was at a closed door twenty feet away. The guard stood beside her, staring down at the knob as it slowly turned one way, then the other.

We slipped past. I could hear the distant rumble and thump of machinery and the laughs and shouts of workers. This section, though, was quiet.

We made it to the side hall easily, as the guard stood transfixed by that mysterious turning doorknob.

Liz raced up behind us. “Where to?”

I gestured to the adjoining hall. She sprinted ahead, turned the corner, and whistled the all clear. Our luck held, and we made it safely into the storage room. As its door closed, the guard’s voice echoed down the empty halls.

“Hey, Pete, come here! You gotta see this. The knob was turning by itself. I tell you, ever since Dan did a nosedive into the saws, this place has been haunted.”

He was right. Saturday night, I’d seen the ghost of a man jump into those saws. Then he’d reappeared and done it again. Was that some kind of penance? Aunt Lauren had done bad things, maybe even committed murder. If she was dead, would she go to Hell? Was she—?

I swallowed hard.

“What now?” Tori whispered.

I looked around. The room was the size of a classroom and full of boxes.

“Find a place in the back,” I said. “There’s lots of dust, which means they don’t come in here very often. We’ll hide—”

Liz ran through the door.

“They’re coming!”

“Wha—?”

“Dr. Davidoff and Sue. She saw you by the doors.”

Thanks to Tori, who’d kept such a good watch…

“Are they inside?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

“Is who inside?” Tori asked as Liz took off. “What’s going on? What’d she say?”

I told her, then opened the door a crack.

“What are you doing?” she said, tugging my sleeve. “Are you nuts? Close that!”

Tell her to be quiet, and she got louder. Tell her to stay back, and she pushed me into the line of fire. Tell her to watch for our pursuers, and she hovered at my shoulder instead. Open the door to listen, and she wanted to drag me back inside.

Ah. The beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Friendship? We’d be lucky if we survived a temporary partnership.

I told her I was trying to listen. When she argued, I glared; and for once in my life, it actually worked. Her mouth shut and she backed into the room, sulky and glowering, but silent.

“Can I help you?” the guard’s voice echoed down the hall.

“Yes, we’re looking for two teenage girls,” Dr. Davidoff replied. “We believe they came in here. They’re runaways from a nearby group home. They’re fifteen years old. One’s about five six, short dark hair. The other is five feet, reddish-blond hair.”

“With red streaks,” Sue added. “Painted red streaks.”

The guard chuckled. “Sounds like my kid, only hers are blue. Last week they were purple.”

“Teenagers,” Dr. Davidoff said with a fake laugh. “These two of ours are always slipping away. You know what girls are like. Running off to see their boyfriends and buy new lip gloss. They don’t mean any harm, but we worry about them.”

“Sure. If I see them, I’ll give you a shout. You got a card?”

“We’re quite certain they’re in here.”

“Nope. This is the only door that opens from the outside, and I’ve been at my post all shift.”

“I understand. But perhaps if we could take a look—”

A chair squeaked and I pictured the beefy man rising. “This is a factory, folks. Do you have any idea how many safety regulations I’d be breaking if I let you poke around?”

“We’ll wear hard hats and safety glasses.”

“This isn’t a public building. You can’t come in here without an appointment and an escort.”

“May we speak to the plant manager, then?”

“He’s out. Meeting. All day. I told you, no one got past me. Your girls aren’t in here. But if you really want to check, that’s fine. Get the cops and I’ll let you in.”

“We’d prefer not to involve the police.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to, ’cause it’s the only way you’re getting past me.”

After the guard chased them off, we holed up to wait for dark. We each found a separate spot, far enough apart that we had an excuse for not chatting. That was fine with me at first. Like Tori and I would have anything to chat about. But after a while, even bickering would have been better than this silent waiting with nothing to do but think. And cry. I did a lot of that, as quietly as I could. I’d taken out the envelope so often it was covered in tearstains. I wanted to open it, but I was terrified that whatever was in it wouldn’t be a good enough explanation, that it couldn’t be good enough, and I so desperately needed it to be.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped it open. Inside was money, but I shoved that into my pocket without counting it, then unfolded the letter.

Aunt Lauren started by explaining how necromancy worked. In necromancer families, not everyone saw ghosts. Most didn’t. Aunt Lauren didn’t. Nor had my mom or their parents. But my uncle had. My mother’s twin brother, Ben—I’d never known she’d even had a twin. Aunt Lauren wrote.

Ben died long before you were born. Your mom would have showed you pictures, but you were too young to understand. After she was gone…there just didn’t seem any point in bringing it up. He started seeing ghosts when he was a little older than you are now. He went away to college with your mom, but it was too much for him. He came home. Your mom wanted to quit and come back, too, to keep an eye on him. He insisted she stay at school. I said I’d watch over him, but I didn’t really understand what he was going through. When he was nineteen, he died in a fall. Whether he jumped or whether he was running from ghosts, we never knew.

Did it matter? Either way, his powers had killed him. I kept telling myself ghosts couldn’t hurt me, but in my gut I knew I was wrong, and here was the proof. Just because you can’t reach out and push someone off a roof, doesn’t mean you can’t kill him.

Your mom had been looking for help for Ben before he died. Our family had some connections in the necromancer world, and eventually someone gave her a contact name for the Edison Group. Only Ben went off the roof a month before she got the message. Later, when I started med school, I contacted them. If they were scientists, they could use doctors; and if I could help people like Ben, that’s what I wanted to do. Your mom wasn’t involved. Not then. That didn’t come until she wanted to have a child.

She’d planned to have kids even after what happened to her brother?

As if in answer to my question, Aunt Lauren wrote:

You have to understand, Chloe, it’s like any other genetic disorder. It’s a risk we accept. If we have a child and she has the power, then we deal with that. Your mother wouldn’t take that risk, though. Not after Ben. She wanted to adopt, but with your father, that wasn’t an option. There were…things in his past. The agencies didn’t consider him a suitable parent. Your mother was miserable. She wanted children so badly. She looked into other alternatives, but they all cost money and at that time, your parents were living in a rat-infested hole downtown. Every penny they earned went to your father’s new business. Then I told her about a breakthrough with the Edison Group. A team had isolated the genes that conferred powers for necromancers. By testing the potential carrier of that gene code and the proposed human parent, we could determine the likelihood that a child of that union would be a necromancer. Jenny was so excited. I ran the tests on her and your dad…and it was almost certain that any child they had would be a necromancer. I tried to persaude her to consider other options, maybe artificial insemination with another biological father. But she was so tired and so crushed that she just didn’t have the energy to consider alternatives. And she suspected I was trying to come between her and your dad, because I’d made it clear I didn’t think he was right for her. We didn’t talk for almost a year. Then, I called her with the most amazing news. A breakthrough, here at the lab. We couldn’t give her a child who wasn’t a necromancer, but we could eliminate the dangers that killed our brother. She could have a child who could speak to the dead on her own terms.

But it hadn’t worked out that way, as I knew. When I started seeing ghosts so abruptly, Aunt Lauren said she’d told herself nothing was wrong. I wasn’t one of the failures—I just needed time to adjust to my new powers. The Edison Group had insisted I go to Lyle House, though, and she’d agreed, still expecting they’d discover I was fine, and then I could be told the truth.

She’d kept believing that until she learned that I’d raised zombies at Lyle House. Still, she told herself it was okay—we’d deal with it. The group had promised that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t be killed. A necromancer wasn’t dangerous, they told her, so there was no reason to terminate me.

Still worried, she’d started digging for answers, just like I had, and she learned the same thing I had—that they’d lied. Apparently, they’d lied about a lot of things, she said, though she didn’t go into detail.

That’s what changed everything for me, Chloe. I know it’s horrible to admit I only realized my mistakes when my own niece’s life was in danger. Until then I’d done what I thought was right—the greater good and such. But, in doing that, I forgot my oath as a doctor, to first do no harm. I did harm and I’m sure I’ll pay the price, but I won’t let you pay it with me. That’s why I had to get you out.

Three final paragraphs. In the first, she said that if I was reading this letter, then she hadn’t gotten away with me. If I’d left her behind, she understood. If she’d been killed, that was the price she’d paid. And if she’d been taken by the Edison Group, I wasn’t to go back for her. I was to keep going and find Simon and his dad, Kit. She had no idea what had happened to Kit. She’d searched the Edison Group files and she was convinced they weren’t involved in his disappearance, but that was it.

She also told me to make sure I wore my necklace—always. I remembered how quick she’d been to get it back for me when I went to Lyle House without it. In the letter, she didn’t say much about it, only that it was supposed to ward off ghosts. But it didn’t. Or maybe it was working, and if I lost it, I’d start seeing a lot more ghosts, my powers running unchecked.

The next bit was about my dad. He didn’t know anything, not even about me being a necromancer. So if I escaped and she didn’t, I needed to stay away from him.

Then came the final paragraph. Three more sentences.

She wanted a child so badly, Chloe. And you are just as wonderful as she imagined. You were the center of her world.

Tears burned my eyes, that old never-quite-healed ache flaring. I took a deep, shuddering breath, folded the letter, and put it back in my pocket.

We’d been there over an hour when Liz came racing in with the news. “She’s not dead. Your aunt. She’s okay.”

From the excitement on Liz’s face, you’d think she’d just learned her own aunt had survived. It didn’t matter that Aunt Lauren was part of the group that murdered her. All she cared about was that this news would please me. Looking at her glowing face, I realized that as good as I tried to be, I could never be as selfless as Liz.

My relief was cut short by a fresh worry. What would they do to Aunt Lauren now that she’d helped us escape? Now that she’d betrayed them. Thinking of that reminded me of another betrayal. Rae’s.

I’d trusted her. I’d vouched for her to the guys, persuaded them to let her join us, and she’d turned us in.

Rae was the one who’d insisted that the boys weren’t coming back. She was the one who suggested I go to Aunt Lauren, who’d talked me into it when I’d hesitated.

I remembered the night we’d left, lying in our beds trying to sleep. She’d been so excited about her powers and not the least concerned about what lay ahead of us. Now I knew why she hadn’t been worried.

Aunt Lauren said Rae honestly thought she was helping me. Betrayal as tough love, forcing me onto the path chosen for me, certain she was right and I was just too stubborn to see it.

Now both she and my aunt were trapped with the Edison Group. Once the glow over her new life faded, Rae would see the cracks and pick away at them until she realized the truth. I hoped she didn’t. I prayed both of them would just hold tight and do whatever the Edison Group wanted until I could return. And I would return.

Finally Liz popped in to tell me that Dr. Davidoff and his crew had given up, assuming Tori and I had snuck past the front gates and were long gone. They’d left a guard behind, keeping watch from some hidden spot, in case Derek showed up, following my trail.

At five, the whistle blew, the workday ending. By five thirty, the building was empty. Still we waited. Past six, past seven…

“It must be dark out by now,” Tori whispered, crawling over to me.

“Dusk, not dark. We’ll give it another hour.”

At eight, we left.