My brother could die.
I’d lost my way, because not only had I lost my power and my memory, but …
This thing I’d been doing the last few years? Helping people? Fighting the bad guys?
I’d done it under the auspices of being a fugitive for the last year, which hobbled me.
But I’d also done it with incredible, near-limitless amounts of money available to me, and the power of flight to guarantee I could escape just about any situation that got too dicey. I’d turned tail and run a few times, and when I wanted to stand and fight, I had lots of power to do that as well.
Now?
I was standing in the middle of a field with the ability to punch, with a Walther PPK in my waistband, and the power to suck souls if someone held contact with my skin long enough.
It was hardly nothing, but it also wasn’t the power to fly, to throw fire in any direction, to cast webs of light that could net people up like a holy Spider-man, to throw fear and paralysis into their minds, or, failing that, heal from just about any wound they could inflict or turn into a four-story dragon and rip them apart with my teeth.
I let out a long sigh.
“Why the hell did Harry send me out here to talk to you?” Cassidy asked. “I lack the soft skills for this. I mean, can you imagine a person less interested in feelings than me?”
“You’re less interested in the feelings of others, Cassidy,” I said, “I’m pretty sure you have your own, since I’ve been on the receiving end of your ire before.”
“That’s a reasonable point,” she said, all computer-like again. “But I don’t know why Harry thinks I can help you with this—this baggage of yours.”
“Who am I to you, Cassidy?” I asked, turning around to her.
Cassidy stared at me with shrewd eyes. “You’re an occasional obstacle to be overcome and an occasionally useful person when our objectives align. You did save me from Harmon, after all.”
“Cold. Analytical. About what I’d expect of a thinking machine.”
“Thank you,” she said, completely sincere.
“That wasn’t a … never mind.” I shook my head. Why the hell did Harry send her after me? “You’re not going to have a real news update on anyone’s condition for hours, are you?”
“If they die, I’ll probably have one sooner,” she said, and then seemed to realize what she’d just said. “Which … would be bad, I guess …?”
“Yes, that’d be bad,” I said, and realized that her last, drawn-out sentence had been one of the longest ones I’d ever heard Cassidy try and construct, almost like she was struggling, even with her big, fast-moving brain, to put together an answer in an expedient fashion. She was taking more time to be as sympathetic as she could.
Unfortunately, she was still Cassidy, but … points for effort.
And that drove home an old truth I’d learned a long time ago—that there was nothing you could do if you just stood around waiting for things to happen. I could stand out here in this snowy field all damned day, but there’d be no news that’d reach me here that wouldn’t catch me in the car, no action I could take here that would help my brother or my friends …
“Let’s go, Cassidy,” I said, starting the short walk back to the car, snow crunching beneath my feet as I put one foot in front of another and started away from the fields, away from the cold, away from nature … and back to action.
Back to Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Home.
28.
Eilish drove. Harry gave her a long pep talk, warning her about the dangers of switching lanes, but frankly, we were on the freeway, and there was a massive divider between the left and right lanes, so he must have gotten the reading that she’d be fine, because shortly after he turned her loose to drive, he conked out and slept through almost all of Illinois.
Night was falling when he woke up to find us quiet. Cassidy had been silent; no news was good news, even though I pressed her for an update every few minutes at first, until finally I just let it go and silence reigned.
An hour past the Wisconsin state line she said, “Reed is in serious but stable condition,” and I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for thousands of miles, for years of my life.
Little updates came trickling in on the others, too, and somewhere before we got to Madison, I fell asleep.
I woke in the dark and blinked as I saw a sign that said HUDSON NEXT FOUR EXITS.
“Where are we?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Hudson, Wisconsin. Gateway to the state of Minnesota and entry point to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Harry was at the wheel now, and he smiled over at me. “Almost home.”
“Yeah,” I said and sat up. I’d missed a long stretch of hilly roads and country from Madison to Eau Claire, and now we were almost to the state line, which coincided (but was not really a coincidence) with the St. Croix river.
We passed Exit 4, a truck stop exit with an outdoors store right off the ramp and a greasy spoon diner to take care of any burgeoning desire you had for oiling up your internal organs before you headed into the city.
Then we passed Exit 3—three miles to the river—the road that led south to the college town of River Falls.
Exit 2 was where all the action was—banks, big box stores, little strip malls, Hudson had most of the stuff the suburban set needed to get by on a daily basis.
Then we crested the short hill as Interstate 94 rose slightly ahead of us, and the St. Croix river spread before me as we headed down toward the long bridge below.
Exit 1 loomed right on the bank of the river; it led to historic downtown Hudson, a neat little strip of riverfront shops and restaurants and stores, a piece of refurbished Americana that thrived in the summers when the boat traffic on the St. Croix was thick from here north to Stillwater, Minnesota, and south to Prescott, Wisconsin. On the Fourth of July you could practically walk from one bank of the St. Croix to the other, and the fireworks displays …
A little memory tweaked at me. I’d had a boyfriend, Jeremy Hampton, and we’d come down here and watched the fireworks by the shore on the Wisconsin side. They always started late, because the sun didn’t set until 9 PM in the summer, the days so long they practically crawled past. It wasn’t quite Alaska with its midnight sun, but it was about as close as you could get in the continental US.
I realized belatedly I was squeezing my hand as we rolled down the hill at 70 miles per hour and reached the St. Croix River bridge. There was hardly any traffic now, rush hour long over, and the clock told me it was a little after 2 AM. Some semi-trailers rolled along with us, a few cars for variety.
And when we crossed the state line into Minnesota, I realized my cheeks were warm and wet. I ignored them, and so did everybody else, but I wiped them with my sleeve nonetheless.