“Taken?” There was that word again. It had haunted me in Olympus Hills and now followed me here. I want to sit down in the dust right here and now. On top of the day I’ve had, this last bit of information is more than I can bear. People aren’t supposed to disappear from Ellis. Bad things don’t happen here. This is supposed to be the safe place. My haven.
“Jonathan said he found a receipt for a bus ticket from Saint George to Salt Lake City in the stuff CeCe left in her apartment. Only the station said the ticket had never been redeemed. Jonathan said he remembered that CeCe had some friends in Salt Lake, and they just took off and left me here. Your mom said she was going to call you.”
Yeah, but my phone is in a bucket of rags back in Olympus Hills. She could have left a thousand messages without my knowing it.
“I think they’re totally overreacting, if you ask me,” Indie says. “So what if she didn’t take the bus after all? I still think she jumped at a chance for a new job to get out of this hellhole.”
“Daphne,” Lexie calls out from the car. “I don’t think Haden’s doing so well.”
Dax and I exchange a worried look.
“Um … carsick,” I say to Indie.
“Yuck. I’m out, then. I’m supposed to finish watering plants before I can lock up.”
She goes back in the shop, and Dax and Tobin help me get Haden into the house. He’s grown very cold; his fingers and lips look blue. We settle him on the couch and I pile blankets from the linen closet on top of him. Each one smells like a piece of home to me.
Brim curls up in a ball on top of Haden’s chest and starts purring. My mom always claimed that the frequency of a cat’s purr has restorative properties that can help a person heal more quickly. At the moment, I hope she’s right.
“This place is … quaint,” Lexie says, coming through the door, followed by Garrick and Joe. Garrick plants himself at the kitchen table, looking as forlorn as possible. Joe lingers in the doorway, like he’s not sure he’s welcome here. “You guys have running water, right?” Lexie asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But if you’re looking for a bathroom, you’ll have to trudge to the outhouse in the backyard.”
Lexie looks like she’s about to faint in horror.
“I’m kidding. The bathroom is upstairs, second door on the left.”
“Oh good,” she says, but from the bewildered sound of her voice, I’m sure she thinks that a house with only one bathroom is almost as archaic as one with an outhouse.
She makes her way up the stairs, with Tobin trailing behind her. Garrick lays his head on the kitchen table. Joe clears his throat from the doorway.
“You can come in, Joe,” I say, but I don’t look him in the eye as he enters the house.
He starts to approach me as if my invitation to join us had meant more than that. “Daphne, I …,” he starts to say, but I hold my hand up to stop him.
“Don’t, Joe,” I say, barely able to keep my anger in check. “I don’t want to hear any more of your apologies right now. I don’t have the energy. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“Daph, please.” He holds his hands out in front of him.
“I forgive you, Joe, for what you did. But that doesn’t mean I can forget.” I know that Joe hadn’t intended on trading me personally to the Underrealm when he made that deal, but knowing that he would give up the idea of me for fame and fortune still stung like hell. It sucks knowing your father would have chosen to make it so you never existed in order for him to become a rock star. “Now respect me when I say I don’t want to talk about it.”
Joe nods and slinks to the kitchen table, where he sits across from Garrick. Both of them bury their heads in their arms.
Dax opens the fridge and asks if he can make a taco for a snack with the meat and tortillas he finds in a couple of Tupperware tubs.
I nod my approval and I find myself wondering just how long I’ll be stuck in this house with all of them. It’s not like they can all stay in hiding forever.
But where do we even go from here?
How do you combat a race of beings that can control the weather?
Guilt eats at me. This is all my fault. My very existence, apparently, is putting everyone in this house in danger. My instinct is to figure out a way to protect them, but I don’t even know where to start.
The things Sarah said about my origins and my destiny come back to me. She’d called me many things other than just the Cypher. She said I was the Keeper of Orpheus’s Heart and Soul. The Vessel of His Voice. I remember Joe telling me about how Orpheus was such a great musician that he could control the elements with his voice—animals, trees, rocks, and such. Even monsters and gods were not impervious to it. I think about how I was able to calm Brim when she’d gone all beast cat, and how my voice had caused the Keres to go solid enough for Haden to kill it. I’d even been able to use Simon’s persuasive tone against him to weaken his hold on my friends.