“Sucked out,” he breathes. “Dreams eat my thoughts.”
Icy shudders wrack me. What in holy hell? Has my brother finally gone raving nuts? If so, I’m not sure that me always watching him like a mama hawk would have made any difference. Tears threaten to slip over my lids and down my cheeks but I force them back. If my brother is broken, I can’t fall apart too. One of us has to stay strong; we’re the hinge between the Fireseed and the Reds. We need to honor whatever we’ve become. Did Jan have anything to do with how my brother feels? “Where’s Jan? And Vesper? Have they bothered you?”
Thorn blinks up at me. “Jan friendly.”
“Oh, really?” This makes me immediately suspicious. “How was he friendly?”
“Candy.”
“Candy, eh?” Dr. Varik’s cautions about me eating cake and pastries in my condition as part plant roll through my mind. Plants don’t tolerate sweets well. Could Jan have poisoned Thorn, even unintentionally? “We need to get you to Dr. Varik’s right away.”
“No!”
“Why not, Thorn? You like Dr. Varik, remember?”
“No Dr. Varik.” His eyes grow so wide I see the whites around his irises.
It almost seems as if someone’s brainwashed Thorn, but how’s that possible? We don’t have a hypnotist at the school. That idea would make me laugh if I weren’t so worried. Maybe Thorn’s decided that he doesn’t relish checkups any more than most kids. Still, it’s out of character since last time Thorn was fawning over Dr. Varik. “Why are you scared of going to see the doctor?” I ask him gently.
He covers his face with his hands and rocks, a sure sign of his terror.
I get up and stare out the window, watch the Reds rampage in the violet-streaked sky. “Why are your Reds flying all over the place? They normally stay in the Fireseed field, in their perches.”
Thorn slowly rises to a sitting position and props himself up with his hands. “Reds. No more listen to me.”
“Why not?”
He shakes his head, clearly as baffled as me.
“What should we do then?”
“Clean my head, Rube.”
I frown at him. “What on earth do you mean by that? Wash your face?” He only repeats the request. We need a trip to Dr. Varik’s whether or not Thorn approves. “I’m going to let you sleep while I think about what to do.”
“Stay near,” he murmurs, his eyes still wide. “Dream of blue ships. Take me away.”
My heart stops with a thud. “Blue ships?” Holy effing fire! Like the ones in my own sickbed dreams? I scramble out of the room, and crash straight into Armonk. “Did someone come here and mess with my brother when we were in Vegas? Someone in a pearl blue ship?”
“No,” says Armonk, “I’ve kept my eye on him the whole t—”
“But you may want to see what Jan has in his desk drawer,” Blane cuts in as he marches up behind Armonk.
We step over the mess on Jan’s floor: socks stiff with dried sweat, Nevada’s pistol manual, spent bullets and two crusty sea apples in a bowl. Inside Jan’s pants drawer is a wad of cash, as thick as a Fireseed stalk. Blane counts it out, while Armonk stands lookout in the hall.
“Frying hell! This is close to 2,000 Dominions,” Blane exclaims. He has a hard time gripping the cash in one hand there’s so much of it.
I don’t bother to ask what Blane was doing snooping around in his bureau drawer. In fact, I start to unearth pants, shirts, Jan’s lone jacket stinking of gun metal, and old papers, crumpled and refolded to shreds. Nothing notable, though, until my eyes fix on a familiar image in his sock drawer: a card with the pearly globe logo. “Hold on, I know that.”
“What, Ruby?” Blane leans over me, scanning the card.
I shout, “This logo was on the Stream implants that George put in us. But there’s no address on this card, no nothing.”
Armonk peers out of the window. “Ask the culprit, Jan’s coming in now.” Reaching for his bow, Armonk slips behind a dresser. He nods to Blane, who stuffs the bills in his pants pocket and ducks behind Jan’s door. Are they really going to make me deal with him?
The clatter of Jan’s boots and the sight of his acerbic face glowering at me as he stomps in make my insides curdle. “What are you doing in my room?” he accuses. Glancing around, he notices that his things are strewn even farther afield than he tossed them, because he says, “What’d you do with my stuff? I asked you a question, Cult Girl.”
“What did you do to my brother?” I growl, and hold up the business card. “And where did you get this?”
Without answering, he stalks toward his drawer and yanks it open, rifles through the pants. “You stole my cash!” He grabs me with his sinewy arms, and squeezes hard as he shakes me. “Where’s my frying money, witch?”