Seven
Ghosts
For the record, if you want a good night’s sleep, I do not recommend air mattresses—or sharing an apartment with someone who snores.
Fortunately, adrenaline wiped away the last remnants of my fatigue the moment I stepped off the copter that morning. Instead of the park, it dropped us off at the Southeast corner of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue, in front of the rubble of what Simon said had once been Pulitzer Fountain. Mai Lynn was already waiting. We’d chosen this spot as our home base, of sorts—the place we’d return to after our grid searches in order to regroup and share notes.
The skeletons of once-proud office buildings and hotels blocked the early-morning sunshine. A few trees grew here and there, some of them right through the broken pavement and sidewalks, their green leaves the only color contrast to the gray of those empty structures. Directly across from us stood The Plaza hotel, just another pile of stone and glass with no real value. It amazed me to think people used to waste thousands of dollars to stay in its rooms.
Once the copter flew off, the city settled into an eerie silence. This far from the activity of the Warren, Manhattan started to feel like the graveyard I’d always imagined it to be.
“The observation tower is still getting sensor ghosts on its thermal satellite,” Simon said, repeating information to Mai Lynn that Aaron and I had already learned. “So we’ll be doing this blind, as we thought.”
“Satellite images take the fun out of the hunt,” Mai Lynn replied, the purr in her voice deeper than yesterday.
“Ethan, I want you in the sky,” Simon continued. “Look for any kind of movement on the ground, and if you see anything larger than a feral cat, do not investigate on your own.”
I nodded.
“Mai Lynn will shift and go alone. Scott and I are together on the ground. Today’s grid is east to Third Avenue and south of Seventy-Seventh Street. It’s more than enough city to scout for one day.”
Aaron didn’t look thrilled to be partnered with Simon, but it made the most sense. Mai Lynn and I could move faster on our own. We both had walkie-talkies, set to the same frequency—the only electronic devices Warden Hudson allowed on the island.
“Report every thirty minutes,” Mai Lynn said.
“How will you manage that?” I asked.
She smiled, then began to strip in the middle of the street. I studied a crack in the side of The Plaza, until a gentle growl stole back my attention. A gray-brown cat, larger than a house cat but smaller than most big cats, swished her ringed tail at me. Little tufts of fur came out of her ears, reminding me of a lynx, but the coloring was different.
“Jungle cat,” Simon said as he knelt next to her. He reached out as if to pet her, only he had a collar on his hand. “The material’s stretchy, so it won’t choke her when she shifts back.” To the collar, he attached the walkie. It didn’t exactly make her blend, but she was less obvious than if she roamed around the city as a lioness.
“Everyone have the right time?” Simon asked.
Aaron and I held up our left wrists in synch, showing off the cheap watches we’d been given for the duration of our search. I glanced at Mai Lynn the Jungle Cat, half expecting Simon to put one on her paw.
He saw me looking and smiled. “When she hears our reports, she’ll know it’s time to check in.”
She tilted her head at me, catty eyes seeming to say, “Duh.”
“Thirty minutes, then,” I said. “Happy hunting, I guess.”
I stepped back a few feet to give myself room to call the air and not blow them over. It swirled around me, thickening beneath me, and I used its force to lift me up. Soon I was drifting a hundred feet above the ground, moving north along Fifth Avenue.
Even though at least a dozen eyes from a dozen different guard towers were probably watching me, soaring above the ghost town of Manhattan was the most alone I’d felt in years. On my left, Central Park bore few scars of the battles waged there, most of the destruction long since overgrown by nature and time. The city on my right, though, lay in fractured pieces of broken stone, shattered glass, and twisted metal.
New York City had been part of so many battles, and not just Manhattan. All of the abandoned boroughs bore the aftereffects of a five-year-long war that left devastation everywhere it touched. Flying above the city now, I was an eyewitness to the destructive nature of our Meta powers and what happened when we chose to be enemies, rather than allies. Our parents and mentors had done this.
Were we strong enough, smart enough, to stop it from happening all over again?
I hope so. For Muriel’s and Caleb’s sake.
My path shifted without real thought, and the street became sun-parched ground dotted with occasional trees. I didn’t register where my new direction was taking me until a broken, blackened spire appeared on the horizon—Belvedere Castle. I flew toward it like a moth to a flame, everything else forgotten under the pull of that distant place where my life had changed.
I hovered above it a moment, mesmerized by the sight of the stone patio, the busted windows, the broken beams no longer sheltering the steps we’d hidden upon a lifetime ago. Several spots on the stones were stained black by old blood—Teresa’s grandmother’s, William’s, Nate’s, mine.
The stones seemed to vibrate with energy when I landed, as though they still held the power of the emotions we’d felt that day. Grief and fear twisted my insides, and I closed my eyes against the onslaught of memories crashing down on me.
• • •
My shoulder hurt like hell. I’d never been shot before, not in my whole life, so I didn’t know what to expect, and it was nothing like any pain I’d felt before. Burning and ripping and cold all at once, every time I moved. And I couldn’t even bandage it, had to just let it bleed.
“We stand here,” Gage had said. “The man out there was right. It comes down to what we do tonight. We have to make our parents and mentors proud.”
His words, spoken like he was a seasoned general instead of a fifteen-year-old kid, got me off my wounded ass and onto the line. I didn’t know how much wind I could muster like this, when a strong breeze could probably knock me right over. It was raining hard, the cold sweeping under the pavilion where we stood.
The top of the castle exploded, showering the patio with rock and wood. Someone screamed—might have been me. I’m pretty sure Teresa did, too, so brave for such a little kid. Smoke swirled. A female Bane crested the stairs at the far end, spotted us, and let out a whoop probably meant to alert the others.
Bitch.
With a shriek of anger, Janel let loose a blast of hailstones that the woman avoided like a pro. More Banes appeared. Time to fight. Fear and agony consumed me, a fire in my gut I tried to harness and use to control the wind. Only I couldn’t.
The fire spread through my entire body, from my scalp to my toes, like I’d been injected with boiling water. Everything seemed to stop while I existed in that pain. I couldn’t even scream, couldn’t see if anyone else felt it. Was I dying? Being burned alive? Why wasn’t someone putting me out?
The agony stopped, leaving behind a sudden, consuming chill. Rain smacked me on one side of my face; the other was pressed against wet stone. Someone nearby was sobbing. I shivered, then tried to sit up. My shoulder screeched in protest—still shot, still at the castle. Nothing else made any sense. Not a damned thing.
Next to me, a high-pitched keening sound made me spin around. I nearly slammed into a stone pillar. Marco was huddled on the ground, holding his knees to his chest, stark naked and shaking. I scooted closer to him, looking for wounds. Was he hurt? Is that why he’d shifted back?
The others were talking, asking questions. I ignored them and reached for Marco with my good hand. “Marco?”
He snarled at me, but it lacked . . . well, the animal fierceness I’d heard him use dozens of times in the past. His arm lowered and one eye rolled wildly—one pale green eye. The bright green blaze that had always been there was gone, extinguished. “I can’t . . . can’t . . .” he tried, then broke on a sob.
My chest constricted. I’d never seen Marco cry before. I rarely saw him out of animal form, so this was seriously freaking me the hell out.
“My powers,” Janel said somewhere behind me. “Can you guys . . . ? Oh my God.”
The horror in her voice dragged my attention off Marco and over to the rest of my friends. They wore versions of the same face—shocked, horrified, scared. I reached for the wind, just to feel the comfort of its caress.
Nothing happened.
My panic level racked up a notch. I tried again, but the wind ignored me. All I felt was a dull ache in my chest, like an organ had been removed and a hole left in its place.
“Can’t shift . . . can’t shift,” Marco moaned.
“What’s happening?” Renee asked. “Please, someone, what’s happening? Gage?”
“I don’t know,” Gage replied. “Shit, who has the gun?”
Someone found it, passed it to him, and dunce that I was, I finally figured out why. The Banes who’d been charging us were clumped together on the opposite end of the stone patio, and they looked as confused as we did. They also weren’t attacking, but that didn’t mean anything. Had they felt what we felt? Or had they done this to us?
A man with black hair and a crooked nose looked over at us. The hate and accusation in his face made me scoot closer to Marco, who’d curled into a fetal ball and wasn’t moving. I wanted to cover him with something, but we were all wearing one-piece jumpsuits. All I could do was stay close until Gage figured this out.
One of the Banes, a youngish man with brown hair, took a step away from his group. Toward us. Gage raised the gun, and the man backed off. All of them backed off, the big cowards, until every Bane in sight had gone back the way they came.
Everything got a little blurry, and I struggled hard to stay awake. Passing out seemed like a really, really bad idea. “Did we win?” I asked.
“I don’t think so, Ethan,” Gage said. “Something tells me we all just lost.”
• • •
The shrill screams of seagulls startled me out of my memories. A dozen of them had landed on the stone patio, a few on the walls, oblivious to my presence. I’d squatted down next to the same pillar where Marco and I had huddled that day after our powers were stolen away, and I didn’t even remember walking over there. Fragments of those old emotions lingered like stubborn cobwebs, refusing to let go. Refusing to let me stand back up.
We hadn’t known right away that the Banes had lost their powers, too. We hadn’t moved from that spot at the castle until a squad of National Guardsmen found us.
I’d had nightmares about that day for years afterward. Each time, the end was nothing like reality—Gage didn’t have the gun, the Banes still had their powers, and I watched all my friends die horrible deaths. I was always the last one standing, and it was always Jinx staring me down at the end, laughing. Those nightmares, while not my fault, had been a trigger for a lot of the problems I had with my foster parents.
And for the punishments.
To hell with the Bacons!
I’d escaped ten years ago and not looked back, and I had no intention of doing that here. Not in this place. I stood up, and the quick movement startled the swarm of seagulls into scattering with indignant cries. It also made me stumble sideways as my numb legs protested suddenly being bent straight again. How long had I been sitting like that?
“Scout Two here.” Mai Lynn’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie in my pocket. “I have something at Sixty-Eighth and First. St. Catherine’s Park.”
“Scout Two, this is Scout One,” Simon replied. “We’re about fifteen minutes away, heading toward you.”
I grabbed my walkie and pressed the Talk button. “Scout Three, on my way,” I said. At least someone found something while I was off in La-La Land. “Scout Two, should I swing by and pick you up?”
A bit of a pause preceded his answer. “We’re at the corner of Madison and Sixty-First.”
“Acknowledged.”
I was at least fifteen blocks north of where I needed to get, so I took to the air amongst the chattering seagulls. Simon and Aaron were exactly where he said they’d be. I arranged them one on either side of me, then put my arms around their waists.
“Have you ever done this before?” Simon asked.
“Yep, just not this long of a distance,” I replied.
Aaron made a face. “Is it too late to walk?”
“I promise if I’m about to drop you, I’ll find a soft landing spot first.”
“That’s sweet, thanks.”
I grinned. “Hold on tight. It gets windy up there.”
Collecting the right force of wind to carry three people the distance we needed to go took a little extra concentration. I bet our trio looked a sight to the guards in the towers, too—three grown men flying over skyscrapers and churches and business centers long since abandoned and left to rot. I relied on Simon to guide me. He pointed at a rectangle of green among the blending shades of gray and brown.
I put us down on a tennis court, a small part of the equally small city park. The trees and bushes had grown wild around a playground, and a rusty iron fence surrounded the park on all sides.
“That was kind of cool,” Aaron said. “Flying.” He was grinning, and a hint of himself briefly peeked through Scott’s mask.
“And I didn’t even drop you,” I replied.
“Over here!” Mai Lynn said. She popped up from behind a tree a few yards away and waved us over.
Halfway there, it struck me that she was investigating the park in her birthday suit and didn’t seem to care. Not that it particularly bothered me—I never had much of a fascination with breasts—but I couldn’t speak for my companions. I caught enough flash of skin, though, to notice she didn’t have the same obvious fur patterns that Marco did. Of course, Marco didn’t have cat eyes 24/7 either, like Mai Lynn.
“What did you—?” Simon cut himself off as the answer to what she’d found became obvious to all of us.
Under the shade of an elm tree was a grave marker and a mound of recently turned earth. The marker was a simple cross, two wood planks lashed together with yellow rope. Written in black was a name: Whitney. None of the prisoners listed on the official documentation were named Whitney, first or last. And the mound was too small for an adult.
“Oh my God,” I said. Cold fingers crept down my spine.
“Someone’s child,” Mai Lynn said quietly. Her breath hitched, and she covered her mouth with her hand.
I had no grief left for this unknown child—just massive amounts of anger. How had she died? Why had she died? Had she been alone? In pain?
Simon crouched next to the marker and closed his eyes. While his Meta powers required line-of-sight contact in order to take over your mind, he could also sense the auras related to Meta powers. And with those auras came what he called emotional ghosts. The sooner he arrived at a place where a Meta had used their powers, the stronger the aura and emotional ghosts.
“They didn’t leave very long ago,” Simon said, eyes still shut. Still concentrating. A line creased his forehead. Moisture beaded along his thin eyelashes. “So much grief—God.”
Mai Lynn circled behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Can you tell who was here?” she asked.
“Some, yes. Joseph Gold. Derek Thatcher.”
Names I knew, powers I could recall, but not the name I wanted—
“Frederick McTaggert.”
Bingo.
Jinx had been here. Recently.
“There’s another child with them,” Simon said. “He’s not familiar to me.” He named two other Banes I recognized, whose powers were fairly low-level.
“Two children you didn’t know about?” I asked, unable to keep my anger from making my voice shake.
Simon wiped his eyes before he stood up. “Apparently so, yes.”
“Amigos,” Aaron said. “Over here.”
He’d wandered a good ten yards away to stand beneath another tree, his back to us. I saw it before I got halfway there—a second grave marker. The mound it overlooked was adult-sized and covered in a thin layer of grass. Dana was written in faded paint on the cross.
Dana Parks had been one of our missing Banes.
“That’s one of nine found,” Mai Lynn said.
I mentally went over the list of names in my head, and an awful thing occurred to me. “She was their mother,” I said. “The other eight are all men. Whitney and the unknown boy were her kids.”
“I think you’re right,” Simon said.
“But how did she and Whitney die? Or were they killed?”
“Killed for what reason?” Mai Lynn asked with a furious snarl.
I threw my hands up in surrender, in no mood for a pissed-off cat attack. “I’m just asking a question. We don’t know anything right now, except for their names.”
“Are we certain their bodies are here?” Aaron asked. “And that these are not decoys?”
“No, the grief is real,” Simon replied. “And you’ll have to accept that, because we aren’t about to dig up their bodies just to be certain. If Warden Hudson wants more proof than my word, he can send people in to check later, but grave robbing is not our job.”
Good thing, too, because I had zero desire to dig up the body of a kid for any reason whatsoever. Simon’s word was good enough for me. “Simon said they weren’t here very long ago,” I said. “Mai Lynn, can you figure out where they went?”
“I’ll try.”
She shifted quickly into her jungle cat, then loped back to Whitney’s grave to pick up the scent. As soon as she was gone, Simon turned and pinned me with a furious glare. “ ‘Were they killed?’ Are you serious?” he asked.
I blinked hard, too stunned by the rapid temper shift to speak right away. “It was a question, Simon,” I said. “One any good investigator would ask, especially considering we don’t have a cause of death or even a body to examine. We can’t rule out anything, even if we hate it, until we actually know something.”
He relaxed a little, but still looked like he wanted to punch me in the eye.
“Look,” I said, “I could have asked that with a little more tact. You two are parents, I get it. I’m sorry.”
Simon glanced in the direction where Mai Lynn had disappeared. “We’d do anything to protect Caleb. I can’t imagine losing him.”
“Hopefully you never have to.”
“Hopefully.”
We searched the rest of St. Catherine’s Park, but found no other graves or signs of the people we were tracking. Mai Lynn came back after a good half hour of circling the park and sniffing everything in sight.
“It’s no use,” she said after shifting back. “It’s likely Freddy is using his Jinx powers to affect mine. I can’t tell in which direction they left.”
“Do you think they’ll come back here?” I asked.
“Possibly. They may even be watching us now. Jinx disrupts the Meta abilities of others, so the enhanced senses my feline forms possess are useless.”
“But Simon could still use his powers.” I fluttered the breeze through her hair to prove my point. “I’m fine.”
“It’s a guess, Ethan, that’s all.”
“Okay, fine. I’m asking if they’ll come back, because I think we should leave one of the walkies. Who knows? Maybe someone will want to talk.”
“Unlikely.”
“That they’ll come back or want to talk?”
“Either.”
“It’s worth a try,” Simon said. He unhooked his walkie from his belt and headed toward Whitney’s grave marker. “I’ll be right back.”
Mai Lynn shifted again, then bounded off after him.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Aaron whispered, without Scott’s accent.
“Yeah.” I shivered, then started for the road, eager to leave this park-turned-graveyard behind. “This whole city gives me the creeps.”