“Not going to what?” Finn’s panicked gaze bounced from Tate to Foster and back again.
“Oh, god, Finn. I’m not going to hurt you.” Foster let out a grunt of annoyance. She had passed panic and was well on her way to frustration—at Tate for Superman-ing all out in the open, at Finn and the beautiful girl standing next to him for showing up when they did, and at herself for not using her Jedi mind trick the second she heard Finn’s voice. “Just look at me.”
“Look at you?” Finn’s dark eyes were completely rimmed in white. “I haven’t been able to look anywhere else since I saw,” his motion took in Tate and a few feet of air above him. “Whatever that was.”
“Flying! A human being flying in the air!” Finn’s counterpart added emphatically.
“Yeah, but … well, it was just … I didn’t really…” Tate scratched the top of his head and cast his gaze up to the sky.
Foster totally got it. It had to be rough—flying, falling, and then immediately being confronted by the only friend he’d made since losing his family. So Foster wouldn’t erase their memories only because Finn and his lady friend might run away screaming to anyone who would listen about the flying science experiment living out at Strawberry Fields, which would be like waving a giant Hello! Here we are! flag at Doctor Rick and the Core Four. She would erase their memories for Tate, so that he could keep his friend.
Foster cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and focused on channeling her ability with far more concentration than she ever had before. “You didn’t see Tate fly.” She paused. She expected something—the prickling heat she’d felt at the Quickie Mart or even a gentle sigh of acknowledgment from her element. But she felt … nothing. She squinted, intensifying her level of concentration, and tried again. “Nothing out of the ordinary happened here. You only saw Tate and me standing with our feet on the ground looking at the trees.”
The young woman looped her rich Tiger Moth–brown arm around Finn’s and drew him against her protectively. “You just tried to Men in Black him.”
“What? Like with that flashy memory wiping thing?” Tate inched closer to Foster, waves of nervous heat thickening the air around her. “No. No way. That’s not real.”
“Well, neither are flying white boys,” she countered.
Foster would have commended her on her levelheaded retort had she not been caught off guard by the fact that nothing had happened. Finn still had the same shocked, wide-eyed expression and was still staring at the air above Tate’s head like a pulley system would appear if he just waited long enough.
Maybe she’d focused too hard. Since her birthday, her Jedi mind trick had worked each time she’d used it, but she hadn’t been trying very hard. She’d just said what she needed and it sort of happened.
“Sabine’s right. You tried to wipe my memory.”
Foster opened her mouth to attempt a more casual approach to erasing what Finn had seen, but stopped at the genuine sadness woven through his words.
“But it didn’t work,” he continued with a bit more grimness. “I know what I saw.”
“What we saw,” Sabine added.
Tate’s gaze was a weight against Foster’s profile, and she turned to face him, wincing in apology at the steam practically shooting from his bright red ears.
“So whatever you want to call it, it didn’t work,” Finn said. “And I’m a little pissed you even made the attempt. I can keep a secret.”
“Cora didn’t hire him simply because he’s good at feeding livestock.” Sabine’s round cheeks were ruddy with frustration. “If the cats had thumbs, they could do that.”
“Well, my job is a bit more involved than only feeding animals, and certain ones need certain things, so…”
“I know, babe. Sorry,” Sabine said through clenched teeth. “Just trying to make a point.”
Cora? Foster thought with a shake of her head. What does any of this have to do with Cora?
“Wait. What was that about being able to keep a secret?” Tate asked the question perched on Foster’s tongue.
“She said some things,” Finn said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “That one day there might be people who come out here looking for the two of you and that we couldn’t ever say anything about anyone who lived here. Not the truth, anyway.”
“We made up a story and I buried this place and your real identities. If anyone looks, everything will lead exactly where we want it to,” Sabine said.
“You told her?” Foster clenched her jaw so tightly she could feel her pulse in her teeth.
“No, Cora did.” Sabine balled her hands on her hips. “She trusted us. Both of us.”
“And it wasn’t easy. It was a long process, getting this job, Cora’s trust.” Finn wrapped his arm around Sabine’s shoulders. “But Sabine and I, we’d do anything for Cora. She helped us…” Eyes misting, he bit his lower lip and inhaled shakily before continuing. “She’s a good woman, and we’ll keep her secrets to the grave.”
Sabine reached up and squeezed his hand. “We’ll offer you the same thing we did Cora—our word.”
Foster ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth and thought about what Finn and Sabine had said. Cora trusted them. But did Foster really believe that? And if Cora trusted them then Foster should, too, right? But without asking any questions? This wasn’t like the letter Cora had left that, what they could read of it, detailed, at the very least, something way too suspicious to overlook and at the opposite end something that could end up getting her, Tate, and six other people killed. This was a guy Cora hired and his maybe girlfriend possibly using Cora’s name to gain her trust.
Foster crossed her arms over her chest. “Sabine, I need to talk to you. Alone.”
Sabine’s braids brushed her triceps as she nodded stiffly.
“We’ll be back,” Foster called over her shoulder to Tate and Finn as she led Sabine closer to the tree line.