Return Once More (The Historians #1)

He held her away, eyes widening in recognition before they slid to me. “Stop! Jean, Teach, let her go.”

“Why? They’re Historians. They could tip off the Elders in two minutes,” one of the boys barked, a dark curl falling into his eyes.

“She’s my sister.”

“So?”

“Let her go, Teach.” My brother took a step forward, his face dark and threatening in a completely unfamiliar way. The boys dropped my arms. Jonah let Analeigh go and she stumbled against me, her hand finding mine.

“Should we run?” she asked silently.

“No. It’s fine.”

Jonah’s dark eyes softened as he ran a hand over my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“What the hell are you doing here? How did you know where I’d be?”

I eyed his companions—Jean, Teach, and the unnamed third—then cocked my head toward the bins that had provided Analeigh and me cover. “Can I talk to you in private?”

“Jonah, we have to go. Those Dockers aren’t going to be unconscious forever, and we need to be well away from Roma before they wake up. That junker ship of ours can’t outrun the Enforcers and you know it.”

“She’s not a junker, Sparrow. The older models are better, you know that.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that they’ll catch us. We need to go.”

The boy my brother called Sparrow had blue eyes that clashed impressively with his nearly black hair. The old, threadbare T-shirt clung to the muscles rippling across his chest. He grinned when he caught me staring. “You never told us your sister is so … grown up.”

My brother growled, then stepped in between Sparrow and me, cutting off my line of sight. He leveled me with a glare that would have worked on anyone else. “Leave.”

“No.” I stuck out my chin. “I need to talk to you and I’m not leaving until I do.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Kaia. Go back where you belong.”

“I found your cuff in your room. That’s how we got here. And I’m going to keep using it and showing up wherever you do until you talk to me. Might as well get it over with today.”

“Just bring her with us. If she’s got a travel cuff she can get back to the Academy whenever she’s ready,” the one named Teach said.

Light bounced off his honey-brown hair. The false sunlight on Roma shone brighter than in most of Genesis, maybe to compensate for the drab days spent toiling in factories, and I squinted. Indecision fluttered across Jonah’s features. They’d always revealed his every thought and feeling to me—or so I’d thought before he’d left without a word. He looked different, and not only because of the bumped, horrible scars on his throat and wrist where the tats had been dug free. He seemed older, more serious, than in my memory.

“Jonah, come on,” Sparrow urged, all of the playfulness gone from his voice and posture.

Jonah nudged me in front of him. “Let’s go, Special K. You, too, Analeigh.”

We followed the pirates back through the fence, then jogged through deserted back alleys, hugging buildings and making little noise crossing the glass paved roads and sidewalks, until we reached one of the four docking portals. Three dockmasters lay sprawled in a heap, their electric-blue uniformed limbs tangled together. Snores emanated from at least one of them, so I assumed they were all alive—either dosed with a sleeping draught or stunned into unconsciousness.

We stepped over them one at a time. Teach and Jean went first, followed by the flirtatious Sparrow, then Analeigh and me, with Jonah going last. We tramped in hurried silence through the air lock and then onto the air bridge that connected the pirates’ ship to Roma. The air changed subtly, turned colder, as we left the terraform behind and hung suspended in a tube over empty space.

We stepped through a dented metal door and into a second air lock. Jonah slammed the outer hatch into place and turned the lock, and once the oxygen light above the interior door flicked from red to yellow to green, we stepped onto the ship.

Which, no matter what my brother said, was a junker.

Rust spots dotted the cargo bay floor, leaving brownish red splotches across the faded blue metal. Stairs rose to a second level, a thin, wobbly-looking railing accompanying them. Sealed containers littered the bay, filled with stars knew what, and a rack draped with stunners and wavers hung on one wall. The smell in the air reminded me of mildew and spoiled dairy.

“This is a piece of crap,” Analeigh said, somewhat accusingly.

“Hey. Do not insult my baby. She flies with the best of them,” Jonah snapped.

“Some of us are about more than a pretty face,” Jean joked, elbowing Sparrow in the ribs.

“Jonah’s pickier when it comes to the faces on his fleshy ladies. Not that any of them can hold a candle to Anne Bonny,” Sparrow replied.

“Anne Bonny?” I asked, shooting my brother a look.

He shrugged, a slight pink tingeing his cheeks. “That’s her name. The ship.”

“Okay, well, Jonah, go ahead and have a little chat with your pretty sister. I’m going to get this gorgeous bucket of rust in the air before we get busted and have to really test her engines.”

Sparrow started for the stairs, and I turned to Analeigh. “Why don’t you go with them and check out the bridge.”

“But—”

“Please, Analeigh. I’ll be ten minutes talking to Jonah and then we’ll go back.”

She checked her watch, frowning. “Ten minutes, Kaia. Breakfast is in twenty.”

I nodded and turned, catching Jonah whispering something to Jean, his eyes on Analeigh as she started for the steps. Teach held out a hand to her but Analeigh ignored it, climbing the swaying staircase unassisted.

My brother jerked his head and Jean followed, leaving the two of us alone in the cargo hold. Jonah watched until Analeigh and his friends disappeared, a strange twist of emotion on his handsome face. It disappeared as he turned back to me.

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