“It’s not my dad’s fault. He doesn’t know what I’m doing,” Caitlin said in a shaky whisper she didn’t recognize. “P-please don’t do anything to hi—”
He slapped her, hard. Caitlin felt her bladder loosen as a realization swamped her: Maritza was killed with a knife. Caitlin sagged, losing control of her muscles. She had never felt a sensation like it. Only the man’s support kept her upright, and she should be running from him as fast as she could, even if he was her best friend’s father.
“You’re in danger,” Dawit Wolde said. “Do as I’ve said, or I’ll kill you myself.”
The rules for a police bust were easy: Don’t resist. Call the lawyers. Say nothing. But this was different. Caitlin didn’t have rules for being discovered by Fana’s father.
Caitlin dropped her soda can and ran, holding her burning cheek with both hands. She knocked over a metal mixing bowl, making an explosive clatter against linoleum. Caitlin vanished inside the pantry, slamming the door. You have to hide the Glow. Caitlin fumbled with the flaps of her knapsack and dug inside the bag for the can of hairspray with a false bottom she used to hide the vials. Her hands shook.
Father Arturo’s voice came from the hall. “Caitlin?”
Caitlin saw Father Arturo in her imagination from his photograph: long-faced, about thirty, a Mediterranean man with a thick Florentine accent. Large, kind eyes. She had to warn Father Arturo, but her body wouldn’t budge. Her mind was stuck on three words: He killed her.
Three heavy footsteps. Father Arturo must be in the kitchen. Bottles on the shelves rattled behind her as she hid her stash behind cans in the dark pantry. She heard a sudden sound, like a harsh breath. Then, silence. Caitlin’s heart thrashed.
“Who sent you?” Dawit’s voice said.
Caitlin tried to think of a lie.
But he wasn’t talking to her. A sudden, agonized man’s scream came, an Apocalypse on the other side of the door.
“Answer, and you’ll see a doctor,” Dawit said. “Who sent you?”
Was Father Arturo dead? Caitlin couldn’t hear anything over the din of her heartbeat.
“Per favore,” Father Arturo said. “I d-don’t know what you mean. We have n-no money…We’re a shelter for homeless w-women and children…” Father Arturo was alive, but he was coughing. He might be talking through his own blood.
“Basta!” Dawit said. “Begin again. The truth, this time. Ora.”
“I’m a p-priest!” By now, Father Arturo could only wheeze.
“Why the gun?” Dawit said. “Dimi.”
“Sicurezza. P-protezione,” Father Arturo said, hardly a whisper. “We have r-robbers.”
Caitlin heard another scream, but this time it was hers. She couldn’t see beyond her tears, but she felt herself come flying out of the pantry. “Stop! You’re hurting him!”
Everything was blurry at first, but as she blinked the scene came into focus: Father Arturo lay helpless on the floor, and Fana’s father was kneeling on top of him with his knee pinned to Father Arturo’s chest. The priest was already impaled with a knife beneath his ribs, pushed to the hilt. Blood dribbled from the priest’s lips. He groaned, writhing.
Caitlin shoved Dawit with all her strength, but not hard enough to push him away so Father Arturo could breathe. “He’s a priest. That’s Father Arturo!”
Suddenly, Dawit’s elbow snapped out at Caitlin, jabbing into her stomach with enough power to topple her to the floor and steal her breath. Caitlin blinked with tears of pain. Even with the room robbed of all its oxygen, Caitlin clawed toward Dawit again.
“He had a gun, Caitlin,” Dawit said, pushing her away. Again, she fell back, this time hitting her head against the kitchen counter. The room swam in a way that made her realize she was stunned. But she pulled herself up again, scrabbling for the counter.
“Caitlin, you know th-this man?” Father Arturo gasped. Momentarily, his struggle ceased.
For a hysterical instant, it all seemed like one tragic misunderstanding. It must be. Dawit Wolde, meet Father Arturo. Father Arturo, meet Dawit Wolde.
But Caitlin O’Neal couldn’t say a word.
Father Arturo tugged at Dawit’s jacket pocket, and for the first time Caitlin saw the gun. Caitlin watched a horrifying maelstrom on Dawit Wolde’s face. This man was not Fana’s father. He was someone she didn’t know.
“I’m a p-priest!” Father Arturo cried, his arm flailing toward the gun.
“A dead one,” Dawit whispered.
Father Arturo’s neck broke with a damp, muffled crack. Dawit was nearly panting, his face wet with perspiration as he held the dead man in a perverse embrace, his arm locked tight around Father Arturo’s neck long after the priest’s head dangled in his collar, silenced. Finally, Dawit pushed him away, as if the corpse disgusted him.
Caitlin watched the impossible scenario unfold, her thoughts banished. She felt warm urine dribbling into her shoes.
“I won’t hurt you,” Dawit told her, carefully sliding his knife into his pocket. He held up his bare palms to her. His voice was gentle. Caitlin was shocked at how much she needed to believe him. He said he wouldn’t hurt her. He promised.
“Everything is fine, sweetheart,” Dawit said. “It’s fine.”
Caitlin sobbed, giving him a baffled look. Everything is FINE?
Dawit Wolde covered his eyes with his hands and sighed a grieved sigh, his fingers trembling as much as hers. She might have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t been so petrified.
He looked like a fallen angel wondering how he could ever confess his sins to God.
Four
Longview, Washington
Monday
12:35 p.m.
Fana, stop!”
The Blazer lurched to a halt with a shriek of brakes, jolting forward. Jessica Jacobs-Wolde braced herself with a palm against the glove compartment. A yellow school bus from Longview Public Schools drove past, hardly a foot from the Blazer’s age-faded hood. Small palms and noses pressed against the bus windows to see the car that had nearly broadsided them. Some of the children were smiling, as if car crashes were only a spectacle on their GamePorts.
“Didn’t you see the red light?” Jessica said. “Pay attention when you’re driving.”
Fana flung her head casually to sweep her dreadlocks away from her face, but Jessica noticed that her daughter’s hands clung to the steering wheel so tightly that paths were drawn by her veins. Fana was terrified. “How am I supposed to see the light way over there?” she said.
Jessica took a quenching breath, the way she did when she began her morning prayers an hour each dawn. Give me patience, Lord.
There were parking spaces in front of the stately homes beyond the intersection, across the street from Lake Sacajawea Park’s inviting rows of Douglas firs. A place to rest. “When the light changes, pull over and give me the keys,” Jessica said. “You need a break.”
“You mean you need a break.”
“When the light changes, pull over, Fana.”
Fana had been in a snappish mood all day, and it wasn’t like her. But first things first. First, you need to get those damn keys away from her. Jessica tried not to bring her thought’s conclusion to consciousness, but it nudged free anyway:…before she kills somebody.
Fana gave her a look that could melt glass. Then she yanked the car’s gear into park and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “You want the keys?” She flung her car door open and jumped out, slapping the keys onto the seat. “There. Now you know I won’t kill anybody.”
The stoplight on the pole turned green as Fana’s car door slammed behind her.
“Fana, where—,” Jessica began, right before the rear door opened and Fana climbed in back. At five-ten, Fana was nearly as tall as her father. Dawit had also bequeathed his red-brown complexion and exotic beauty, with only the bulb of Fana’s nose to remind Jessica that this was her child, too. And Fana was definitely as moody as Dawit. No question about that.
Jessica sighed. Two c
ars were visible in the rearview mirror, waiting patiently. One was Melaku’s familiar black Orbit, the driver idling at the requisite distance while he followed. Fana was never allowed out without at least one tail, and there were probably others nearby. Jessica had learned what it might feel like to be the president, flanked by Secret Service.
Jessica started the engine. “Tell me what’s wrong with you today.”
Silence. Fana’s favorite retreat.
From the time she was three until she was nine, Fana hadn’t spoken a single word aloud. Jessica had prayed her daughter’s silence would be temporary, like Maya Angelou’s in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—and luckily, Fana had snapped out of it at the dinner table one day, asking for mashed potatoes like it was no big deal.
That had been one victory, but there would be a long, hard war ahead.
“Sweetheart, when I was your age, I nearly drove Mom into a canal,” Jessica said. “That’s what happens when you’re learning. Let’s stop at The Brits and have lunch.”
“I’m not hungry,” Fana said. “Let’s go back.”
Jessica had not expected to hear the words “Let’s go back” from a girl who complained incessantly that her world was too confined. They were only thirty-five minutes south of home, but it would have been smarter to put off this field trip after Dawit had gotten called away. And safer.
“Fana, you’re supposed to talk to me when you’re having a problem.”
Stoic silence. Fana twirled the thin end of one of her ropy dreads around her index finger. Dawit was better with Fana when she was like this, with the endless patience he reserved for his children. If Jessica hadn’t been so grateful for his mastery, she might have been jealous of their bond.
Jessica hoped Dawit would come home today. He’d promised during his too-brief call last night. Before he’d left, he’d been vague about where he was going, and last night he’d been more vague about where he had been. But Dawit didn’t trust phones, even sat phones, so she would get more out of him later. Dawit had sworn to her years ago that there would never be another secret between them.
And there was something he didn’t want to talk about. Like father, like daughter.
“Fana, if you tranced out while you were driving, just say so. Stop pretending with me.”
In the rearview mirror, Fana blinked, looking downward. “I didn’t trance out,” Fana said quietly. “Everything got…blurry. Just for a second.”
Jessica had never known Fana to have blurred vision. This was something new, another unforeseen problem. It was both a blessing and a never-ending trial that Fana was so different.
“When did the blurriness start? On the Interstate?”
“No, or I would have said something. I said it was for one second. At the light.”
“Did you feel dizzy?”
“Should we call the pediatrician?” Fana said, her voice coarse with sarcasm.
In seventeen years, the only doctor Fana had seen was Jessica’s sister, who had ushered her into the world. Fana would never need a doctor. Once, Jessica had believed that was enough for a lifetime’s peace of mind. But she knew better now.
“I just want to know what’s wrong, Fana. Let’s see Teka when we get back.”
“Let’s not,” Fana mumbled. She was tired of her teacher’s intervention, and Jessica couldn’t blame her. Teka’s methods seemed too intrusive sometimes. Oftentimes.
“We’ll have to tell your father. He should be home today.”
Unless Jessica imagined it, Fana’s face in the rearview mirror grew sullen. Usually, mentioning her father was the surest way to make Fana smile.
“Don’t bother,” Fana said softly. “I know what’s wrong.”
“What?”
“There are too many people here,” Fana said, gazing through her window at passing cars full of strangers’ faces. A sad defeat sat across her daughter’s lips, and Jessica had never seen her daughter look defeated. “I need to go back home, Mom.”
Fana said the word home as if it had been acid on her tongue.
Sometimes, it seemed to Fana that she knew every fir tree along the roadway.
She knew every shade of green, every pattern in the bark, each patch where the stands thickened or thinned. She had every highway sign memorized, knew every turnoff. The Five. Exit 60. The 505. She always knew exactly where they were, as if they hadn’t been moving at all.
How did that song by Phoenix go? My soul gets cold from standing still / If I can’t test my wings I’ll die. / Don’t wanna die for a while. / I think I’ll fly for a while.
A prophetess with a piano. That song had been on Fana’s mind all day, and she hummed the melody under her breath while she sat behind her mother and watched the same trees go by. She would be a shut-in if not for the I-5 corridor from Toledo down to Longview—or up to Seattle, when her parents were feeling adventurous. She would be an eccentric hiding in the woods, sheltered by the silence of the trees. Like the others.
I think I’ll fly for a while.
Fana’s sigh burned her throat. She would never fly like the girl in the song. She couldn’t even drive a car. A school bus carrying forty children had blurred her eyesight and made her brain short out. She had only been away from home for two hours and twenty minutes, and she was so anxious to get back that her palms were sweating.
What had made her think she could go driving and have lunch in town like a normal person? Dad had taught her five languages, but normal wasn’t in her vocabulary in any of them. The thought of her father made Fana’s stomach cramp, and the song on her breath died.
Her father had been in her dream.
It was just a dream. Dreams don’t always mean anything, she’d told herself when she’d realized that sweat had soaked through her pillow while she’d slept.
Her father stands in a large ornate room, all marble and glistening gold. A priest in white ceremonial regalia and a cardinal’s cap kneels on the floor before him, grasping a golden chalice full of blood. Her father walks behind the priest in slow, measured steps. A girl who might be Caitlin stands watching in the darkened wings, her hands clasped before her face as if she is deep in prayer, but her eyes are wide and frightened.
“I’m a priest,” the man in the white robe says.
“A dead one,” her father says, and swiftly breaks his neck. The chalice’s spilled blood soaks the corpse’s white robe crimson…
This dream meant something. Fana had nightmares at least once a week—nightmares worse than most people’s, she was sure—but this dream had felt more immediate. She had been a witness last night, not a dreamer.
Mom knew something, too, even without a dream or any gifts beyond intuition. Fana allowed a few of her mother’s thoughts to slip past her protective veil, and Mom’s anxieties pricked her like a swarm of tiny insects. Like bees.
MY FAULT WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP HER
Feeling like an intruder, Fana shut Mom’s thoughts away. It was harder work all the time, but Fana could ignore the noise in other people’s heads. Usually. Besides, Mom didn’t have answers, only questions. The answer, Fana knew, lay within the dream.
As fiercely as she fought against remembering most of her dreams, Fana fought now to make sense of the latest vision thrust on her by her unconscious. She wished she knew how to order her dream the way Teka had tried to teach her, dissecting the symbols.
Her mind went back to the chalice. The blood.
That part was simple, suddenly. Dad knows, Fana thought, understanding.
“Oh, no,” Fana said aloud. Her heart throbbed as her body went cold.
“What, honey?” Mom said.
Fana shook her head. Her abrupt insight had surprised her so much that she’d forgotten she was riding in a car with her mother. She tried to keep her panic from her face.
“I’m sure it’s no secret to you,” Mom said evenly, her brown eyes sad and steady in the rearview mirror, “but you’re worrying me, Fana.”
I’m worrying me, too. “Sorry.
I’m just tired.”
She should tell her. She had no choice. But Fana’s lips stayed melded together. Slowly, she sank far back against her seat, wrapping herself in a tight embrace. Fana was slipping into a grimly familiar place now. She wanted to vanish. To trance out.
The green sign proclaiming Toledo appeared. Fana heard the placid clicking of the Blazer’s blinker as Mom prepared to exit the Interstate and take her on the road home. Behind them, Melaku’s car followed, as always.
“Mom…,” Fana began, ready to confess. But this time, her mother didn’t hear her.
I was right. None of them will understand, but I was right.
Remembering her resolve calmed Fana’s muscles, unwinding them. She had known this day would come. It was miraculous that they hadn’t been caught before now. Three years was a long time. That was why Caitlin had been in the dream, she realized. Caitlin was in trouble!
But why a priest? What did that part mean?
More than ever, Fana felt like a prisoner as the Blazer jounced from the main road to the dirt path leading to the wooded colony that was the only home she could remember. There was a gate farther up the road, where the land’s original owners had once welcomed visitors, but their destination veered east, two miles’ drive on a narrow, barely navigable path that had once been a horse trail, through dense stands of old-growth forest that hid the colony from the world. Western red cedars. Cottonwoods. Douglas firs.
But there was more to this land than five hundred acres of freely growing nature. Webs of trip wires were invisible to the eye, but Fana knew every leaf, stump and mound of soil that hid them. The colony’s security measures were meant to keep unwanted visitors out, but to Fana they had always seemed designed to pen her in. She had made a game of learning how to slip past the hidden traps unseen, the rare times she took pleasure in exploring her gifts.
Three years ago, she had made it all the way to the paved road leading to town without alerting anyone to her feat, her biggest triumph. To meet Caitlin there.
As the Blazer neared the clearing where the houses stood, Fana sensed the four men who lived among the trees, sentries as fleet as deer who had no thoughts other than protecting the colony of twenty-eight people. No thought except protecting her.