The Lost Girl Read online

  I reach for his hand and give it a tentative squeeze before letting it go. “Ray? Thank you for trying to change their minds about me.”

  For some reason, this only seems to make him look slightly sick. “Come on,” he says.

  It’s not as bad as his anxiety made me fear it would be. Sonya must have told people that I would be coming, and that Ray would be bringing me, because no one looks particularly surprised. People greet Ray and only a few seem a touch frostier than usual, their eyes judging, questioning. Sam avoids me, but others say hello, though they don’t say my name. They probably don’t know what to call me. “Amarra” is a bit of a faux pas now.

  No one stares. They have their own lives. They go back to whatever they were doing before we came in: chatting or finding a drink or attempting silly dances on Sonya’s makeshift dance floor.

  Ray and I find a table littered with bottles and cans by the kitchen doorway. As Ray pours a Coke into a glass, I spot Sonya in the kitchen. She’s alone and on the phone, with more drinks on the counter behind her. She waves her hand desperately at Ray.

  “I think Sonya wants to talk to you,” I say. “Maybe she doesn’t like your shirt?”

  Ray smiles almost unwillingly. “It’s definitely going to be abuse of some kind,” he says. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  He crosses into the kitchen to see what Sonya wants. I put my bag down on the table and stay where I am, drinking my Coke as fast as possible to look like I’m doing something. A girl called Tara, the older sister of someone in the class, strikes up a conversation. I only last ten minutes with her before the combination of Coke and nervousness makes me need the bathroom. I ask Tara if she knows where it is, and she points helpfully up the stairs. I thank her and follow her directions. I knock on the bathroom door first to make sure there’s nobody in there already, before going in and turning the lock. The music becomes a dull throb through the door. There’s a window open in the corner and the fresh air is lovely.

  On my way down, I almost collide with Ray on the stairs. He looks like he’s downed three or four shots of vodka since I last saw him.

  “Ray, are you—”

  He puts a finger to my lips, stopping me. He isn’t moving like he’s been drinking. His hand is mostly steady.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says. “She was. Is. Was. You are too. You both are.” He leans close and I am too startled to step back. “I called you a monster once. But you’re not. I am.”

  His head draws in and he kisses me. So light, like the swipe of a fingertip against my lips. My heart jolts in shock. I respond instinctively without any thought or will of my own. I can’t breathe. I can taste the vodka on him. He tastes bitter.

  Ray pulls back and rubs his eyes like he can’t understand how he ended up here. He leans his head against the wall. “You have to get out, Eva.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “You need to go,” he says. And I realize that behind the slightly drunken desire, the pain, the memories of someone else and of me, there’s something else. Guilt.

  Fear.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask more sharply. My heart’s still pounding. My mouth is dry and raw and soft. I bite my lip, trying to bite away the lingering traces of the kiss.

  “Come with me.” He takes me by the elbow and pulls me back up the stairs. To the first door on the right. Behind us, someone hoots, someone else makes a lewd comment, and I turn red. But Ray ignores them and pulls me into the room and slams the door shut behind us.

  He takes me to the window and draws the curtain back. “There,” he says urgently.

  “You’re going to have to explain—”

  “Just look,” he interrupts me.

  I look. I have no idea what to look for, so at first I see nothing. Just the cars already parked outside, including Ray’s. The trees. The dirt road. And far beyond, twinkling between trees and fences, the faint lights of the main road about half a mile away.

  Then I see someone moving. There’s a car parked behind Ray’s that wasn’t there before. It pulled in after us. There’s a woman standing by the passenger door, rummaging around inside. She’s in her twenties, in tight jeans, a leather jacket. I don’t recognize her. I watch as she pulls something out of the car, and then my eyes travel down to an odd bump at the bottom of one leg. Like she has some padding around her ankle.

  My knees wobble. Suddenly I am somewhere else, staring at a man with an outdated map, and Sean’s voice is in my ear. His hand has clamped down on my elbow. He’s afraid.

  The woman reaches into her car to pull something else out. She moves quickly, but not quickly enough. She hikes up one leg of her jeans and shoves two shiny things into a sheath strapped around her calf. They both flash in the lights from the house, flashing silver.

  Knives.

  In an instant I understand, though I can’t quite believe it. I turn to look at Ray, disbelieving, incredulous. This can’t be happening.

  “Is she a hunter?” I ask very quietly.

  He nods, jaw working like he can’t bring himself to speak.

  “And”—something inside me splinters in two—“you brought me here so that she could find me?”

  He nods.

  15

  Silver

  I had laughed about the hunters. They were blind tigers. I used to tease Mina Ma about them; I’d threaten to run amok and end up in their clutches. And I never quite believed the man Sean and I saw was a hunter. They were always a lesser threat. They should never have found me.

  “Congratulations,” I hear myself say. “You beat Amarra and the Weavers to it. You’ve killed me.”

  He shakes his head. “She hasn’t seen you yet. She doesn’t even know what you look like! You can leave before she finds you—”

  “It’s too late for this,” I say, dashing tears off my face. “Do you think warning me changes the fact that you brought me here in the first place?”

  “You have to understand,” he whispers, “I only wanted her back.”

  I stare at him. The pieces click together.

  “That hunter,” I say, pointing at the window in shock, “is she the woman who told you all that stuff about how Amarra might still be here? How I’m stamping her out?”

  The look on his face makes the answer obvious. “Sonya found them,” he says. “At first she was angry and wanted to punish you for lying to us. I guess she blamed you for being there when Amarra wasn’t. She found a website, told them she knew an echo. She wanted them to take you away, but she didn’t want you dead. They told her they wouldn’t kill you.” His words come out in a rush, tumbling out; he’s pleading with me to understand. “They said that if Amarra’s soul was still alive, they could bring her back. They told her she needed to get you somewhere quiet, not public, so they could examine you. They didn’t want a scene. She thought about using the party and—”

  “And then she told you about it,” I say, “and you talked to the hunter and she was sweet and told you exactly what you wanted to hear.”

  Ray stares bleakly at me. “I didn’t agree to this as easily as you think,” he says. “I wanted to think of another way. I want her back so badly, but I wasn’t happy about this. You and I, we spent all that time together. I know you. I care. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  A ragged sob creeps up my throat. “I don’t care what you wanted!”

  “She was just so sure. The hunter, I mean. She was so sure we could get Amarra back.”

  “If you weren’t blind with your obsession and your grief, you wouldn’t have believed a word she said! Hunters want to destroy us. Not our souls, which they don’t even believe we have. Not our minds. All of us. She wasn’t going to try and bring Amarra back. She’s a hunter, for god’s sake. What did you think they did to us? Cuddle us?”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” he says desperately. “That’s what Sonya wanted to talk to me about. She said she was on the phone with the hunter and things didn’t sound right.” He grips me by the shoulders. “Yo
u have to get out of here. It’s not too late, you can—”

  I jerk away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Eva, please. Let me help you get out.”

  “I don’t want your help,” I say. Hot, salty tears burn their way down my face. I wipe them away. “I don’t care what you thought you were doing. I don’t care how many lies you believed. I don’t care how much you loved Amarra or how much pain you’re in because you lost her. You brought me here to die.”

  I turn away from him and stare out the window. My blood feels frozen with fear. The hunter is still outside, scanning the farmyard, the trees, taking stock of the area. It’s started to rain. I shiver, thinking of the knives strapped to her calf. I have only a few minutes before she comes looking for me.

  I can’t believe this is happening.

  I thought a year would never be enough time. But it seems such a luxury compared to a few minutes.

  My hurt freezes into stone. Maybe I haven’t yet thought of a way to protect myself from the Sleep Order. But here? Here things are different. I will escape. I will not allow myself to be killed by a hunter.

  “She doesn’t know what I look like?” I ask Ray flatly.

  He shakes his head. “I was supposed to point you out.”

  “Then I’ll walk right past her.”

  I pull the clip out of my hair, letting it fall and hide my Mark again. Without so much as a last look at Ray, I leave the room and start for the stairs, knitting my hands tightly together to keep them from shaking.

  “Hell, he’s quick,” a boy on the landing remarks, grinning, taking in my tousled hair.

  I ignore him and stalk past.

  I am almost at the door when I see Sonya open it. The hunter’s on the other side. I stop in my tracks. Someone’s left a cigarette on a table, unlit, and I snatch it and continue toward the door. Sonya looks stressed and frightened. My hands are shaking and it’s all I can do not to look up at the hunter. I force myself to ignore her and look at Sonya instead. I smile.

  “I’m going to have a cigarette outside,” I say, waving it at her. I slip carefully past the hunter. “Jaya shouted at me for blowing smoke in her face.”

  I wait for Sonya to expose me, but she only presses her lips together. She turns back to the hunter. “Um, I think she’s upstairs with Ray.”

  Good girl, I think savagely.

  The door closes behind them, leaving me out in the chilly night. I don’t have much time. The rain has slowed to a fine silver drizzle. I drop the cigarette to the ground and scan the dark dirt road. What am I supposed to do? Walk to the main street? Try and catch a rickshaw this late? I feel for Amarra’s phone in my pocket, then realize my leggings don’t have pockets. My stomach clenches. The phone is in my bag inside the house. Idiot.

  Unless—

  I study the wooded area by the dirt road, trees and broken fences stretching out across the farm all the way down to the street. It might be my only chance. If I’ve vanished, the hunter will have to give up and leave, find other quarry somewhere else. She’ll search the house, but she can’t search Sonya’s entire farm in the dark.

  If I can conceal myself among the trees and wait her out, I can call a taxi once she’s gone. I’m not going back with Ray, that’s unthinkable.

  Heart pounding, I hobble past the parked cars. These shoes hurt. But I press on, slipping into the dark of the wet earth and heavy trees beyond. A squirrel brushes against my leg, making me gasp in shock.

  I hide behind a damp tree trunk and lean my head and trembling hands on the wood. My heart is hammering so loud I can’t hear much else.

  Too soon, the house door slams open. I stiffen in terror, pressing closer to the tree.

  “How can she be gone?” I hear an unfamiliar female voice demand. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “She’s not in the house. We looked.”

  They draw closer to the hunter’s car. And to me.

  “Why would she leave? Did someone warn her?”

  “I wasn’t with her,” Sonya replies. “I was watching out for you. I don’t know when she went.” She can’t quite hide her relief, however, which makes the hunter’s face darken.

  “And you?” she demands of Ray.

  He plays the angry, defensive role very well. “No one told me I had to watch her every single minute,” he snaps, but he’s kicking at the ground, a sure sign that he’s nervous. “Sonya asked me to keep her busy, so I took her upstairs and tried to talk to her. Distract her, you know. Maybe she looked out the window, saw something that scared her.”

  “I wasn’t standing here polishing an ax,” the hunter says coldly.

  “She’s paranoid. I guess the Weavers taught her to see everything as a threat. She said she needed the bathroom. I couldn’t follow her there, could I? But she was gone awhile, and when I went to check, it was empty.”

  The hunter paces back and forth. “Stupid kids,” she says in frustration, loud enough for all of us to hear.

  My forehead is covered in icy sweat and rain. I lean my head on the tree again, swallowing. Ray and Sonya don’t speak. Sonya, loud, bold Sonya, looks small and scared. Ray has his hands in his pockets and keeps kicking at the ground. I see him glance at the trees, wondering where I might have gone. The hunter paces, coming alarmingly close.

  “We have to find her,” she growls at last. “I’m not leaving without having a look around.”

  “You’re going to search all this?” Sonya gestures at the wide expanse of farm and trees. “It’ll take you all night!”

  The hunter swears violently, but her shoulders sag in defeat. I am about to let my breath out, let the relief surge through me like pure oxygen, when I see her slam to a halt. She’s paced back in my direction and she stops, staring at the ground. She tenses like a fox.

  “These weren’t here when I arrived,” she says excitedly.

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Tracks,” she says. “Footprints. The ground’s wet from the rain. Don’t these look like a girl’s high heels to you?”

  Ice fills my lungs. My shoes. I didn’t think about my shoes. Out in the yard, Ray is horror-struck.

  “I’m sure it’s not—” he starts.

  “I’m sure it is,” says the hunter, hiking up her jeans. A flash of silver, and there’s a knife in her hands. “She went this way. She couldn’t have gotten far. Not in those heels.”

  “Why do you have a knife?” Ray asks angrily, though he knows the answer. “You said you’d just examine her—”

  “Of course,” says the hunter sweetly, her eyes fixed on the trees. I’m too afraid to move. She will see me. “But I need to keep her from running away, don’t I? Echoes are dangerous. I know, believe me. I watched my husband’s echo destroy everything we loved. I know what they’re capable of.” She smiles back at Ray. “It’s just a silly little knife. Won’t do anyone any harm.”

  Sonya shudders. “This was a mistake,” she says miserably, futilely. “We don’t want—”

  “Too late,” says the hunter.

  I don’t think about it. Adrenaline flashes hot through my body and I move. I rip the high heels off my feet and start running. It gives my location away, but I can outrun her. Tigers are fast, but deer run faster.

  My bare feet recoil at the rough earth, the sharp twigs, and the puddles, but this is no time to be fussy. I race through the trees, aiming for the main road. I push violently through the undergrowth, scrambling over broken bits of fences. I run so fast my lungs burn and my legs ache, my blood roars in my ears.

  I can’t stop. I hear her running behind me, not far away, all teeth and tongue and hunger. I have the strangest thought: I want Matthew. Matthew with his lazy drawl and his casual mockery and his utter lack of care. With his songs in my dreams.

  I am his creation. He values that. He might be willing to destroy me. But he will also make sure no one else does.

  Especially not a hunter.

  The thought of his scorn makes me plow on, through the pain, the burn
ing in my lungs. I am a creature, a girl, life stitched from nothing. I am eerie and frightful. And I’m stronger than all of them. I can’t allow any hunter, or Weaver, or betrayal, to defeat me. Believing that is all I have. It’s all that might save me.

  So I run, outrunning her until I can’t run any longer and, inevitably, I falter. There’s a cramp in my side. Not far from the main road, from the lights and the smell of gasoline and concrete, I slow down.

  She pounces.

  We tumble to the earth, slipping over a fallen log, crashing onto wet leaves. I see a blur in the dark, a sharp silver streak, and I twist out of her reach. The knife catches my leg instead and I howl in pain. Fire spreads through my skin. Blood mixes with the rain.

  I fend her off, twisting her knife hand away from me, but she’s stronger. Bigger. Trained for this. I try to wriggle away. She digs her knee into my slashed leg. I gasp through my teeth.

  “It doesn’t have to hurt,” she hisses, “if you stay still. If you go quietly.”

  I utter a pained, broken laugh. She should have asked Ray and Sonya about me before trying to kill me. They might have told her I don’t go quietly.

  Something digs into my back. I reach for it, hoping for a stone, but my fingers close around my hair clip. I must have held on to it after unpinning my hair. It cracked under my weight. I can feel the pieces.

  My finger slips over a tooth of the clip. It’s sharp. Sharp.

  I seize the broken teeth and strike at the hunter’s face. My knuckles catch her lip; the teeth catch her in the eye. She drops the knife with a squeal and clamps her hand over her eye. I flex my good leg to kick her off me. Blood drips off my bare foot into the ground. I can barely feel it, it’s only a shadow lost in the agony of my leg.