The Rising

ELEVEN

WE WERE BACK AT the “campsite,” which was just a sheltered clearing with an empty spot that should have held a campfire, except that we had nothing to start one.

When Corey announced he had something to tell Daniel and me, Ash decided to take a walk. I would like to think he was being polite, but he probably just didn’t want to sit through a boring personal conversation.

“I know what I am,” Corey said. “I looked up those two words you guys saw on that paper with skin-walker and benandanti. I had to guess at spellings, but I eventually got a hit.”

Daniel caught my look and gave an abashed nod. We hadn’t even thought of that. The words had been blocked when we looked them up in Salmon Creek. That should have been the first thing we researched at the library.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We should have done that.”

Corey looked confused. “Why? Finding the right term for what I am is hardly a priority. It’s not like looking up something that’s supposed to be real. Whatever we find on the web is just stories. Like with you guys. I looked up you both, too. Daniel’s supposed to be fighting for the olive crops. I bet you don’t even know where the nearest olive crop is.”

“No idea,” Daniel said.

“And Maya? You’re supposed to be an evil witch.” He paused. “Well, they got that part right.”

I pitched a pebble at him.

“Hey, I was nice to you earlier. Gotta balance it out. Point is, I looked up sileni and xana. Hayley and Nicole are xana, which is a really obscure kind of Spanish mermaid-siren cross. A blond water spirit that sings. I couldn’t find much on them. But apparently, they have some kind of evil-fighting skills themselves. You know how sirens are supposed to drive guys crazy with their singing? Well, xana can do that, too, but only to folks who deserve it.” He paused. “Which means I really gotta be a lot nicer to Hayley.”

“Good idea,” I said. “So that makes you a sileni, then. Which is . . . ?”

He poked a stick at the dirt, like he was prodding an imaginary campfire. It took a moment before he said, “You know what a satyr is?”

“Um, a guy who’s half goat?”

He glowered at me.

“What?” I said. “It is, isn’t it? Centaur is part horse. Faun is part deer. Satyr is—”

“It’s a lie. They were confused with some Roman monsters when the Romans and Greeks started hanging out together. The real Greek satyrs were followers of Dionysus. They looked human.”

“Dionysus,” I said. “God of wine, women, and song. You know, when you said you didn’t fit your type—”

“Yeah, yeah. So okay, these satyrs liked to run around, drinking and chasing women and playing some kind of harmonica. Their leader was a guy named Silenus, who had visions of the future.”

“Ah . . .”

“He was a minor god,” Corey said. “He taught Dionysus.”

“Like Chiron and Achilles.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, right. You slept through Greek and Roman mythology. You said you didn’t need to know it because it wasn’t applicable to your life. Guess you were wrong, huh?”

Daniel chuckled.

“So Silenus was a minor deity,” I said. “What’s the connection to you?”

“It’s complicated. You remember those long stories we had to write in English last year? Mr. Parks accused me of having constancy errors?”

“Continuity errors,” I said.

“Whatever. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Your characters changed names. More than once.”

“Only by a few letters,” he said. “Anyway, obviously Parks never read myths. Those guys were zinging out continuity errors all the time. Sometimes Silenus was one guy and sometimes sileni was a word used for all his followers.”

“It’s the influence of other cultures. Plus regional difference and the impact of oral storytelling.”

“Was that an exam answer you memorized?” He shook his head. “No one likes a keener, Maya. Stuff the commentary or I’ll call your brother back.”

“I heard that,” said a voice from the woods.

“Yeah?” Corey called back. “You know how to avoid hearing things you don’t want to? Don’t eavesdrop.”

“Hard to do when you have super hearing,” Ash said as he stepped into the clearing.

“Also hard to do when you won’t go very far, in case that Uzi-toting sparrow finds you.”

Ash flipped him off and strolled back to the “campfire,” taking his time, so we wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking he wanted to join us.

“Yeah, you’re a sileni,” Ash said as he lowered himself onto a log.

“You knew?” Corey said. “Thanks for the 411.”

“You never asked.”

“I’m asking now, then. What else can you tell me?”

Ash shrugged. “Nothing, really. I know what benandanti, xana, and sileni are, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me, so I didn’t see the point in studying up. You’re supposed to see visions, which I guess you do. That’s your main power. That and charm.”

“Charm?”

Another shrug. “Like benandanti have the power of persuasion, sileni have the power of charm. People like them. Doesn’t seem as if that one kicked in yet. Maybe someday.”

“Hey, I’ve got charm. It just works better on chicks.” He glanced at me. “Right?”

I arched my brows.

“Not you,” he said. “I mean chicks I actually like.”

Daniel sputtered as my brows went higher.

Corey glared at both of us. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” I said. “Speaking purely from an observational standpoint, you have your charms. Particularly with girls who’ve been drinking or whose sense of judgment is otherwise impaired. Which probably comes from the satyr angle.”

“Very funny. What happened to wanting to make me feel better about this whole vision thing?”

“That was before I discovered you’re a Greek god. I don’t think you get to feel bad about that.”

“Greek god?” He smiled. “I kinda am, aren’t I?”

“Great,” Daniel muttered. “His ego really needed that.”

“A minor Greek god,” I said. “Very minor. Possibly with a horse tail. Or goat legs.”

Corey reached over to thump me in the arm and I ducked away, laughing.

I could see Ash getting ready to leave again, so I turned to him. “Is there anything else you can tell us? About any of the types?”

He shrugged. “Probably not. Depends on what you already know.”

I could just ask him to tell us everything he did, but I had a feeling that the more specific our questions were, the more likely he was to answer. Lengthy discourses weren’t his style. Yet another reason to wonder if we really were related after all.

“Can we tell you what we know and you can help us fill in the blanks?” I asked.

“Guess so.”

His tone suggested he’d really rather not, but he’d agreed, so I plowed forward before he changed his mind.

According to Ash, Project Phoenix hadn’t attempted to resurrect four extinct supernatural types. It had tried for six. Two had been a complete bust, though, as far as anyone could tell, which is why they weren’t on Mina Lee’s list. As for what those two types were, Ash didn’t know. It didn’t concern him.

That seemed like a selfish way to look at things. But living in Salmon Creek, I could afford to pursue anything that interested me. I had parents who gave me everything I needed. I didn’t even have to take a part-time job. No Salmon Creek kid did. Our “job” was school. If we wanted to do more, we were encouraged to volunteer in our community.

If you lived on the streets, though, your job was survival. You couldn’t afford to take an interest in much that didn’t directly affect you. Obviously, Ash had focused on the skin-walker aspects of Project Phoenix. Anything else, he’d learned incidentally. I couldn’t imagine not wanting to know more. Not being curious. But so far, he hadn’t shown much curiosity about anything—our situation, our experiences, our lives. Maybe even that—basic personal curiosity—is a luxury for some.

Given his lack of interest, I suppose it was surprising how much he remembered of things he’d heard in passing. He knew what the four successful types were even before meeting us. He also knew that every kid between the ages of fifteen and seventeen in Salmon Creek had been a Project Phoenix subject.

Every kid between fifteen and seventeen. Every kid in our grade, most in the grade below us, and a few in the grade above. That didn’t even cover all the subjects, though. There’d been a lot of attrition at the beginning—parents realizing they didn’t want their kids being brought up in a lab after all, however utopian that lab might be. All four skin-walker parents went on the run, as Rafe already told me. Which is why they’d fought so hard to get me back into the fold.

There’d been six subjects in each of the six groups. Thirty-six altogether, excluding the preliminary subjects like Annie. Of the eight in Salmon Creek showing powers—me and Rafe, Daniel and Sam, Serena, Nicole and Hayley, and Corey—seven had been on that helicopter. The eighth—Serena—was already dead. Was that a coincidence? No. We were the only ones for whom the modifications seemed to work.

While it was still possible there would be late bloomers, we were the guarantees. That’s why we’d been on the same helicopter. That’s why the mayor went with us. We were the most precious cargo. The Nasts knew that, which is why they’d targeted our helicopter. Hell, it’s probably why they started the fire to force the evacuation.

That was really all Ash knew. I’m not sure how much it helped our situation, but at least we understood it a little better.