Charlie hoisted Johnny over his shoulder like a fireman. Johnny flopped, limp, smearing Charlie’s clothes with blood. Blood painted Johnny’s seat.
“It’s bad,” Fana said. She could feel Johnny’s heart struggling. He was bleeding to death.
“Bad enough,” Charlie said. “Vamos.”
A glance told Fana that the scuffed white rear door to the clinic was locked, and she didn’t sense anyone inside who could let them in. She whirled around to look for Caitlin, whose legs dangled out of the door like a child’s.
“Caitlin, hurry!” Fana said. She ran to Caitlin and held her hands.
Caitlin looked up, startled, and shook her head, her lips shivering. “F-Fana…I’m so sorry…,” she said. “I d-don’t know why I sh-shot him…”
“It was an accident,” Fana said. Because their situation was so dire, Fana tickled Caitlin’s mind with a quick massage.
And something felt…wrong.
Just like the temporary blockage Fana had felt when she’d tried to probe Johnny at the casino, Caitlin’s mind did not yield as usual. Caitlin’s fear and horror clamored, but part of Caitlin seemed hidden. Masked. Part of Caitlin did not seem afraid or horrified at all, more like a detached observer. Worse. A deeply hidden part of Caitlin seemed to be smiling.
Fana gazed deeply into her friend’s eyes, as if they could show what her inner world did not. Caitlin’s eyes were red from tears. She looked weary and broken.
It’s your own mind blocking you, so you won’t hurt her like Aunt Alex. Stop zoning.
“Do you have a key to this place?” Fana asked her.
Sniffing and wiping her face, Caitlin nodded.
Fana tugged on Caitlin’s hands to bring her to her feet. “You got us this far, Caitlin. You can make it. Johnny needs us.”
Charlie was waiting for them at the rear door, staggering under Johnny’s weight. Caitlin fumbled with her keys, nearly dropping them. The siren was closer, maybe only a couple of blocks away. Fana tried to mentally pick the lock the way she had broken the McDonald’s security camera, but her mind flailed with confusion. She didn’t have a clue how to begin.
Caitlin could open the door. It was more important to shake the police.
Fana closed her eyes. With the help of the siren, for the first time in memory she could clearly see a remote object without a mental struggle: A white Santa Cruz County sheriff’s car was approaching, driven by one officer. A male. Fana knew him, suddenly: Sgt. José Calderón. Fifteen years of experience. A father, a son, a brother. The closer he drove, the more intimately her thoughts merged with his. Fana could taste the coffee and onions from his lunch.
POWPOW
Using her memory of the gunshots, Fana re-created the sound inside Calderón’s head. She misdirected him a dozen blocks farther, hoping the distraction was enough. Adrenaline surged through him; Fana felt his excitement prickle across her skin. Her heart sped with his. Her mind overflowed with jargon as Calderón picked up his radio, reporting what he had heard.
The siren wailed past, toward Fana’s phantom gunshots.
“Fana!” Charlie called, pulling her back to herself.
The door was open, and Charlie and Caitlin were already inside the darkened clinic. Fana followed them, slamming the door. She could barely see the windowless storeroom, which was crammed with boxes of supplies.
“Let’s get to the tunnel,” Charlie panted.
“No, not yet,” Fana said. “I have to look at Johnny.”
“You’re the boss,” Caitlin said. The door she opened led to a narrow hall. Light.
The examination room was a few feet beyond the doorway, lighted by a window. The room was bare except for an exam table and an empty supply cabinet with open doors. Charlie lowered Johnny to the frayed cushion on the table while Fana held Johnny steady so he wouldn’t roll to the floor. He lay on his side, almost fetal.
Johnny’s T-shirt was soaked with blood, worse in back than in front. Fana lifted the fabric from Johnny’s abdomen, wiping away blood so she could see his injury. A neat hole spurted out thin streams of blood where the bullet had passed, below his ribs. The exit wound was a mess: The bullet had punctured vital organs, or ruptured an artery. She didn’t know enough about physiology to trust her mental gifts to heal him. If she guessed wrong, she might make it worse.
She would have to give him some of her blood.
“Shit, what can we do?” Charlie said.
“I know a little about medicine,” she said. “My aunt and uncle are doctors. I’ll try.”
“What do you need?” Anxious perspiration gleamed on Charlie’s face.
Fana needed Caitlin, but her friend was sitting on the floor against the wall, hugging her knees, staring at nothing. Caitlin’s paralysis was as scary as Johnny’s injury. Zoning.
Fana sighed. She hated to lie, but she needed privacy. “Sterile bandages. Alcohol.”
“There’s gotta’ be some in back.”
“Be careful,” Fana said. “The police might see the car and come looking.”
“I’m always careful.” Charlie kissed her forehead, the way her father kissed her mother.
Fana pulled the tiny knife from her back pocket and stretched out her forearm beside Johnny’s bleeding wound. She glanced at the doorway to make sure Charlie was gone, then she jabbed the blade into her skin. After the initial flash of pain, Fana felt the familiar tingling that signaled that her skin was already repairing itself. She never bled much, or long.
But it was enough. Fana rubbed her skin against Johnny’s, pressing her wound to his, mingling their blood. She could change his blood when his heart stopped if she used the Ceremony, but that was too risky. She couldn’t wait for him to die. Besides, Fana had never performed the Ceremony before. What if it didn’t work? Instead of waking up as an immortal, Johnny might just die.
Blood healed by itself, Ceremony or not. Her blood wouldn’t protect Johnny from his next injury or illness, but maybe it would be enough to heal the damage to his organs. Teka had told her that her blood was more powerful than anyone else’s. She hoped her Teacher was right.
Fana gazed at Johnny’s face, which looked untroubled in sleep. She pressed her palm against his warm forehead. He was handsome too, she realized. His face shined with promise.
“Magic show’s over,” Caitlin said in a monotone, startling her.
Caitlin now stood behind her, clear-eyed and alert. Caitlin took Fana’s hand and lifted it away from Johnny, almost as if she’d been jealous about the way she’d been touching him.
“Welcome back,” Fana said. Caitlin only grunted behind her.
Fana peered closely at Johnny’s injury. The blood had already stopped its rhythmic spurting, and the wound seemed to be congealing at the edges. She had to lean close to see, but the clots were there. Her blood was strengthening Johnny’s, speeding his healing. Fana smiled.
“It’s working,” Fana said, relieved.
Caitlin didn’t answer. When Fana turned around, her friend was gone.
Instead, Charlie stood in the doorway with an old wheelchair loaded with medical supplies, his cowboy hat askew. “What’s working?” he said.
Fana pursed her lips. “Praying,” she said. Mostly, it wasn’t even a lie.
Charlie had brought gauze, tape and topical antibiotics. He helped Fana disinfect Johnny’s wounds with cotton swabs, and he wrapped his midsection in bandages. Charlie was strong, and he secured the bandages tightly, as careful as a doctor. They worked quickly. Even now, Fana was aware of her arm pressed against Charlie’s. Yearning burned from her skin, and she was sure she felt rising heat from his; their bodies were always in a separate communication.
“The people waiting for us can get a doctor,” Charlie said.
Caitlin had never mentioned that anyone would be waiting for them.
“Another safe house,” Charlie said, seeing her puzzlement. “A church.”
Usually, the mention of a church didn’t make Fana shiver. But it did, t
his time. “I just had a dream about a church,” she said.
Charlie smiled. “Then it’s destiny.”
Charlie hoisted Johnny up again, and Fana helped him sit Johnny in the wheelchair, where Johnny’s limbs dangled. His head hung forward, limp. Fana noticed that her T-shirt was dotted with Johnny’s blood. There had been blood in her dream, too.
Something isn’t right. The certainty was so vivid that Fana did not follow Charlie into the hall as he pushed Johnny in the wheelchair.
“Caitlin said there was a secure phone here,” she called after him. “Where is it?”
“Not here,” Charlie said over his shoulder. “Nogales on the Mexican side.”
Fana sighed. Right. She had forgotten that the neighboring cities shared a name, even if a newly fortified fence separated their people.
Leaning against the doorway of the bathroom, Caitlin waited with a flashlight across the hall. Caitlin smiled when she saw Fana, but her smile was warped by a glitter in her eyes.
“Someone is still tracking us,” Fana said. “I feel it. Someone…” She glanced around the empty clinic, which looked like it had been hurriedly cleared. Stray papers littered the floor. There was no one else inside, yet she could feel eyes watching her. “Someone close.”
Caitlin only shrugged, still smiling. What was wrong with her?
“More reason to hurry, no?” Charlie said.
Caitlin stepped aside with a sweep of her arm, inviting Fana to the bathroom. “Welcome to the rabbit hole,” Caitlin said, sounding playful again.
The tunnel was in the bathroom floor.
Caitlin pushed aside a woven rug and lifted a thick square of the bathroom tile’s panels, revealing a dark, yawning hole in the floor. The hole was narrow, not even three feet by three feet. It looked like something the Life Brothers would have built, except that all of the colony’s shelter entrances were in the woods.
Her mother, Gramma Bea and Aunt Alex were underground too, in the shelters. The knowledge came to Fana easily, peeling ignorance away as if she had known all along. They know danger is close, she realized. She was relieved and felt her anxiety’s binds loosening.
“How long is the tunnel?” Fana said.
“Almost a mile,” Caitlin said. “The Railroad’s greatest accomplishment. Smugglers built part of it, and we did the rest. Took almost a year.” Pride shook her voice. “This tunnel was originally for smuggling illegal drugs. Then they figured out there was bigger business in prescription meds. Lots of retirees in Arizona.”
Fana walked to the edge of the tunnel and stared. Two shiny handgrips led down, but beyond them she saw only the deep pitch of the descent.
Shadows waited beneath her feet.
Twenty-six
Nogales tunnel
1:47 p.m.
Fana shuddered, claustrophobic. The tunnel was narrow, with barely enough room for Charlie to push Johnny’s wheelchair. In his cowboy hat, Charlie was so tall that he had to duck.
The rough walls were fortified with plywood, but they were mostly soil and rocks, flaking away when she brushed too close. Lightbulbs were strung overhead the length of the tunnel, spaced just within sight of each other, more for reassurance than vision. They needed their flashlights to light the way.
Charlie had said it would only be about a mile, but the walk seemed endless. Fana was close to choking on the thick smell of raw sewage all around them, coating her hair and skin. She would have nightmares about this smell, just as each new horror of this day would follow her dreams. She would stink for days, but the smell would wash away. What about the rest? The tunnel brought back memories Fana thought she had shed.
Circuitous darkness. A long-haired man with a gun. Mahmoud. A wall of bees.
I was afraid, and the bees did what I couldn’t do.
Fana had seen the wall of bees in her nightmares, but she hadn’t realized how the image fit into her past until now: She and her mother had been fleeing the Lalibela colony the first time she’d met Dad and his people. A man with a gun, Mahmoud, had chased them into a tunnel. Then bees had come, blocking the tunnel in a swarm. The bees had protected her, Mom, Dad and Teferi.
My bees.
No. Not hers. The Shadows’. Whatever controlled the bees had their own wishes, and they enjoyed my fear. They still remember me. The Shadows wanted to ply her with sweet talk and imaginary treats, like when she was three. If she lost control and fed the Shadows, Fana didn’t know what she would become. Teka had warned her.
Charlie grunted. The tunnel floor was rough and uneven. Charlie kicked aside an empty beer bottle, and the glass rattled against the wall as it spun, echoing.
Johnny was still unconscious in the chair. Fana had to hold him so he wouldn’t fall.
But Johnny’s heartbeat was stronger all the time. Fana trained herself to listen for it, and she enjoyed the reassuring thump-thump beneath her thoughts, a pleasant drumbeat to pace her walking. Johnny would be fine. She had saved him. That was the first good news all day.
Caitlin’s thoughts were a quiet burr. Caitlin’s anxiety level had dipped to almost nothing once they were in the tunnel. Fana probed once to make sure Caitlin was all right, and she found a calm hum.
That’s it. No more probing. Will you ever learn?
“Almost there,” Charlie said.
The wheelchair hit a bump, and Johnny shifted, his arm falling loose. Fana caught Johnny’s arm and nestled it across his chest. “You keep saying that.”
Charlie chuckled. “I mean it this time. Not even a hundred yards.”
Fana peered ahead, but she saw only the pathetic glow of the next lightbulb.
“Are you sure?” Fana said.
“Trust me.” Charlie’s words were almost a plea.
Fana did trust him. Why not? Charlie hadn’t zoned once today, which was amazing. Especially for a mortal. If Caitlin heard that thought, she would accuse Fana of bigotry, but Fana knew it was harder for mortals to keep their equilibrium. For mortals, death was much more than an inconvenience. Yet Charlie was as fearless as a Life Brother.
“Thank you for getting Johnny down here,” Fana said.
Charlie looked at her over his shoulder, grinning. “Hey, if you care about him so much, he’s mi familia. Is he your boyfriend?”
Fana couldn’t believe it, but she was smiling. Again.
“No,” she said. “He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t have one.”
Hearing herself, Fana winced. Did she sound like she expected Charlie to be her boyfriend just because he had kissed her? Someone as rootless as Charlie probably had girls waiting in a dozen cities. Even without probing, she could feel his past sexual experiences simmering in his memories. It’s not like he expects you to be the mother of his children.
“Good to know,” Charlie said, grinning. “In case you’re the mother of my children.”
It was like speaking in thoughts to Teka! Fana peered into the darkness to try to see Charlie’s profile better, longing to find his eyes. Only his radiant smile was visible, but his smile was enough. They were making each other smile. Today. Now. They were a miracle.
Aunt Alex and Uncle Lucas had met during a time of strife, and it had woven them together at the roots. And Mom had told her that the first thing she’d loved about Dad had been the way he’d seemed to know her already. Mom’s love for Dad had been born instantly: She’d found it in his eyes. His smile. Mom had buried those feeling about Dad for a long while, but the impression was always there.
That was the happy part of Mom’s memory, before it had been turned upside down. Dad insisted that he hadn’t delved into thought perception until Teka had helped him a few years ago, so he hadn’t heard Mom’s thoughts on that first date. But Mom wasn’t sure; maybe he’d cheated with his mind, whether accidentally or on purpose. And then there had been the lies.
Would Charlie feel betrayed like Mom one day, too?
Fana itched to return to the treasures in Charlie’s head. To see his mother’s face. To see him when he was
ten. How long would it be before she could tell him about her blood? Or about the hurricane? Could she ever?
Suddenly, Fana’s stomach ached, sharp pain. Fana’s mind and body always suffered in concert. She would not lie to Charlie the way Dad had lied to Mom. She would not pretend.
“I’m not the mother of your children,” Fana said. “Sorry.”
“We should ask Caitlin,” Charlie said.
“I know the truth,” Caitlin said in a singsong. The perkiness in Caitlin’s voice surprised Fana, since Caitlin’s walk was so slow and listless. “There are no two others in the world, nor in the history of the world, better matched than you.”
It was too dark to see Caitlin’s face clearly. Although Caitlin didn’t sound sarcastic, Fana suddenly felt angry. “Johnny just got shot, and we’re fugitives. Maybe this isn’t the time to talk like we’re thirteen years old.” Caitlin would have said that, if Caitlin had been acting like Caitlin.
“We’re not talking like children, Fana,” Charlie said. “What’s more adult than admitting that we don’t know anything about tomorrow? I’ve put away childish things. That’s why I kissed you, Fana. That’s why I want to kiss you again. And again.” She could barely hear him even in the silence of the tunnel. He had a hypnotist’s voice, tickling her skin. Charlie sighed. “I don’t always tell the truth—I have my vices—but I don’t do anything unless I mean it. My kisses are words, not just kisses. My kisses are a promise.”
A poet, Fana thought. Teka was the only other poet she knew, but his poems couldn’t be translated into words. Charlie’s poetry was meant to be spoken aloud.
“When do you lie?” Fana said. It would be foolish not to ask.
“Only when the truth would be misunderstood,” he said.
Amen, Fana thought. “There are things I can’t tell you,” she said. “Things about myself.”
Charlie’s smile faded. “Me, too.”
“I can’t stay with you if my family needs me.”
This time, Charlie didn’t answer right away. He paused a moment, slowing his walk.