Incarnate

Past the walkway and onto North Avenue, I sneaked through the city, keeping to shadows. When I had to cross intersections, I held my breath and sprinted, hyperalert for sounds other than that of my shoes on cobblestones. Sleet pattered to the ground. I was almost grateful for the noise to blot out my footfalls, but it blotted anyone else’s, too.

 

The city seemed bigger for every step I took, and the temple farther away. I ran down North Avenue and stopped short at the market field. So much empty space. I imagined a shadow of me streaking across the field and my stupid black clothes pressed against the white buildings.

 

Great.

 

Sleet tapped harder on the city, glistening under the iridescent light. If I didn’t move, I’d turn into an ice statue right here.

 

I searched the gray-lit area and listened as long as I dared. I still had to get around the Councilhouse, not to mention find some kind of entrance into the building, and a way to get Sam out. Just because I could pick the lock on my window didn’t mean I knew anything about the soul-scanners used in the more secure parts of the city.

 

“No more stalling,” I whispered, and pushed myself across the market field. Too loud. My shoes slapped the cobblestones. My breath hissed and whitened the cold air. I held the straps of my backpack to keep it from bouncing, but that didn’t stop the contents from jostling. Forget someone seeing my stupid black clothes against the building; they’d hear me coming first.

 

After an eternity, I slipped on wet stone and landed against the Councilhouse wall, bounced off, and crumpled to the street as breath whooshed from my chest. I coughed and gasped into my sleeves, waiting for my vision to clear before I tried sneaking around the building.

 

Black clothes. White building. Sam would have anticipated this. Anyone would have. Anyone but me. I hated being new.

 

Once again confident in my ability to breathe, I searched the field. Sleet glittered on the cobblestones, making the road slick. But the weather came from the north, so as soon as I was on the south side of the Councilhouse, I’d be out of the worst of it. I hoped.

 

I started around, keeping low, but the building was twice the length of the market field; it would take forever if I insisted on creeping. I made a run for it. Cobblestones slid under my boots, but I didn’t stop. Up one side of the half-moon stairs, behind the columns that guarded the doors, and down the other side of the stairs. The market field stayed clear.

 

Meuric’s house loomed on the corner of the southwest quarter. Lights burned upstairs, but no silhouettes stood in windows, waiting to catch me misbehaving. Li and the guards wouldn’t check on me until morning. By then, I’d be out of the city.

 

Thunder rumbled in the north. Worse storms were on the way.

 

I slipped around to the south side of the building and brushed ice off my clothes and backpack. Shivering, I checked Meuric’s house one more time—nothing—and crept around in search of the window I’d seen before.

 

The temple shed just enough light to see by. As much as I hated the strange patterns that shimmered across its white surface, I was grateful for the light as I looked for a way into the Councilhouse, like the side doors that led into the library.

 

Yellow light came from a window only hip-high, sliced with iron bars. I knelt and peered through the glass as more thunder growled.

 

The room was mostly belowground, lit with old-fashioned bulbs like Purple Rose Cottage. I couldn’t see much from my vantage point, but bars divided the room into several sections with cots and toilets. Cells. One sat just beneath my window, but I couldn’t see anyone in it. In the next cell over, Sam slumped on a cot, facing away and talking with someone I couldn’t see. Glass muffled their low voices.

 

I tapped on the window. Sam’s back straightened, and a face appeared in the window right in front of me. Startled, I fell to my butt and smothered a yelp in my mittens. Stef grinned and fiddled with latches. The window slid up, and warm air billowed onto my face.

 

“Whew.” Stef shivered. “Cold out there.”

 

“It’s sleeting.” I wrapped my mittens around the bars.

 

“Ana!” Sam stood against the bars between his cell and Stef’s, reaching one arm toward me. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

 

When Stef stood away from the window, I tore off one mitten and slipped my hand through. Our fingers scraped and caught, but my shoulder was already pressed against the bars; I couldn’t stretch farther. Resignedly, I pulled my arm free and held my fingers against my chest. “I’m leaving.”

 

He dropped his arm. “Leaving?”

 

I nodded. “Leaving Heart. Range if I have to.”

 

Stef glanced between us. “Did something happen?”

 

The mixture of cold and heat made my eyes water. “I can’t live with Li. Not for a few years, not even for a few more days. I have to get out, even if it means letting go of everything I was trying to find.”

 

Sam bit his lip. His face was dark and shadowed in the uncertain light, like how I’d first seen him by Rangedge Lake. “Did she harm you?”

 

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