“Where’s your mask?” I asked Katrina.
In answer, Katrina picked up two masks off Mr. Kale’s desk and handed one to her uncle.
“Thought you might like to see a couple of familiar faces before we begin,” she said, and winked before donning her mask.
Mr. Kale, his face now hidden, took a step back from the chair and made an open-armed gesture as if to say, It’s all yours.
A vision popped into my head of a prisoner being strapped to that chair and a hood pulled over his face and—
I felt that tingling in my brain again, right before Mr. Kale said, “It’s a regular chair, Miss Price. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” I told him, but my voice wavered. I took a deep breath, like it would have to last me a while, and sat.
Before the Seekers converged around me, I saw one of them lift the ventilated lid of a small black pot, revealing the orange glow from within and releasing a small puff of smoke. And I saw the metal rod resting on its side near the pot … a metal rod with a perfect circle at one end.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen a branding iron in real life, but I knew instantly what the metal rod was, and fear seized my throat like a choking hand.
Then Seekers surrounded me, a shrinking red circle. Those featureless black faces gazed impassively down on mine, eyes shining from almond-shaped holes in their masks. Each one placed his left hand on the shoulder of the Seeker in front of him.
“What’s going on?” My words came out in something approaching a wail.
“Relax,” Katrina said. “Like I told you last night, we need to do a little bonding ritual to seal the deal. Then you’ll be one of us. We’ll know we can trust you and the masks can come off.”
A ritual? Had she mentioned a ritual? No, no, no. I would have remembered that.
Mr. Kale moved around in front of me and let his gaze settle on mine. I felt that tingling in my brain again, the feeling you get when one of your limbs falls asleep and then starts to wake up.
The Seekers nearest Mr. Kale placed their hands on his shoulders, so the whole group of them was connected.
“It’s going to be okay,” a black-masked Seeker said. I recognized Quentin’s voice. “We’ve all been through this. After, you’ll be connected to the rest of us. We’ll be your conductors.”
I thought of the way the Seekers seemed to move as one, like there was some kind of invisible thread connecting them. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be tied to them, bonded and branded as a Seeker for the rest of my life.
“But why is a ritual necessary? I already agreed to join.” Something I was regretting more and more every second. I should have listened to Jeremy, even if he had considered killing me. I should have stayed away from the Seekers. “Can’t I just take an oath or something?”
Mr. Kale glanced at Katrina over my head. “You said you explained everything to her.”
Katrina shrugged. “Maybe she wasn’t listening.”
“Mia,” Mr. Kale said. “The circle is to contain and concentrate our joined energy. I’m going to put my hands on your head now. You will feel some slight pressure and a bit of tingling, but there shouldn’t be any pain.”
“Wait. Let’s slow down and—”
I felt Mr. Kale’s hands come to rest lightly on top of my head. The hands settling there were gentle enough, but the buzz of electricity I felt from that touch was like an electric shock. I jerked in the seat. It wasn’t like being struck by lightning. With lightning, the pain was so brilliant that it became something beyond pain. This was different.
“You said it wouldn’t hurt.” My voice came out so thin I doubted anyone but me heard it. Then the pressure began, like someone was squeezing my brain, wringing it out like a sponge.
Let me in, Mia. Stop fighting. Let me make you one of us.
It was Mr. Kale’s voice, and a part of me wanted to do what he said, give in and let this happen. But that part was tiny. Minuscule.
No! Get out of my head!
The heat gathered in my chest, crackling energy.
I heard Mr. Kale gasp.
What are you doing?
I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted his hands off me. Wanted that pressure in my brain to be gone.
Please, stop this, Mia. Don’t fight me. I’m not your enemy.
A charge vibrated over my skin.
We need you, Mr. Kale said.
I don’t need you! I threw the words back at him, and the charge running over my skin pulsed once. Then the pressure in my head was gone. Mr. Kale’s hands were gone. The Circle of Seekers widened and broke as they stumbled backward, a few of them gasping, clutching their hearts as though they’d been defibrillated.
I shot to my feet, and a wave of dizziness swept over me. For a moment my vision went black and sparkly, and then it cleared. I turned around. Mr. Kale had his back against the dry-erase board, and he was breathing in heaving gasps. His mask was gone, and his too-long hair hung in curtains over his eyes, only his nose protruding. His hands were up and he was staring at them through the veil of his hair. Wisps of smoke curled from his fingers, like he’d just crushed a handful of smoldering cigarettes.
“Uncle!” Katrina hurried to his side to examine his hands. “What did you do to him?” she snarled at me.
I saw that the skin on Mr. Kale’s palms was blackened, crisp and cracking, and my mind reeled backward to London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, to the burns covering Janna’s legs, the handprints scorched onto her chest.
When I began backing toward the door, no one tried to stop me.
18
MY BODY WENT through the motions. Went to class. Sat down in assigned seat. Stared at words and equations on dry erase board. My mind was another matter. It kept returning to Mr. Kale’s classroom, reliving what had happened there.
He’d been inside my head, but this time he hadn’t merely spoken to me. This time there had been pressure, that terrible pressure, like he was trying to mold my brain into a new shape.
During classes, I kept sneaking glances at the other students, mentally photoshopping black masks onto their faces. I examined their backpacks. Did they seem too full, maybe because they had red cloaks stuffed inside? Were their hands turned facedown on their desks to hide circular brands?
When lunch came, I didn’t want to go to the cafeteria, didn’t want to risk running into Quentin and Schiz, or worse, Katrina or Jeremy. Didn’t want to feel eyes on me and wonder if they belonged to some other faceless Seeker, or some guy who wanted me dead. At least the Followers didn’t hide who they were. You could always see them coming.
I found an inconspicuous alcove where I could lie low and watch as students flowed into the cafeteria, keeping an eye out for Parker. After ten minutes, he still hadn’t showed. Where was he? I needed to talk to him, make him understand that the Seekers were not playing around. They did rituals and wore scary masks and did things to your brain, things no one should be able to do.
I went in search of Parker, starting outside on the school’s cement front steps, where he and his friends used to eat lunch.
There was a breeze blowing off the ocean, and my skin seemed to shrink around my body when it touched me. The storm was closer now. If there actually was a storm. I’d checked the weather report again that morning. The forecast hadn’t changed. The promise of sunny, seventy-degree days stretched ahead of us for the next week.
A group of Followers dressed in white that was blinding to look at in the noon sun were standing on the sidewalk out in front of the school, holding hands and swaying and singing some sort of tinny, high-pitched hymn. The Followers on each end of the line held up white poster board signs glued to wooden stakes.
Only the Righteous Will Survive, one sign read.
My skin ached. My thoughts were scrambling over and over one another like ants racing to the top of their hill.
What if Parker went back to Mr. Kale to beg to join the Seekers?
I hadn’t fulfilled my part of the bargain.
I had run away before they could complete their initiation.
Parker was still fair game.
No. I’m the one they want, I reasoned with myself. I’m the one with the Spark. I’m the supposed Tower girl.
Reminding myself of this didn’t ease my mind. There was only one way to do that, and it was to find my brother. I had already searched for him in all the places I could think to look, except one, the last place I wanted to go, but the first place I ought to have checked.
Room 317.
But when I got there I found that Mr. Kale’s door was locked and the lights were off. Had he gone home for the day to treat the burns I’d inflicted on his hands? I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for what I’d done. I hoped I had fried the brand right off his palm. That’s what he deserved for trying to mind-control me.
I listened at Kale’s door for a moment, but heard nothing from the other side.
I did hear voices, though … coming from one of the classrooms down the hall. Since I had no other lead on where Parker might be, I decided to investigate. I followed the voices to the source and peered through the small rectangular window in the classroom door.
At first all I saw were the Followers, five of them, their white-clad bodies seeming to blend into one mass. You almost couldn’t tell where one of them ended and the next began. They were crowded around someone, and I couldn’t see who that someone was. But now that I was right on the other side of the door, I could make out their words.
“—a fight you can’t win,” said a female Follower with her hair pulled back in a brutally tight bun. Rachel. I recognized the raw, red place on the back of her neck where her tattoo used to be. “Prophet’s Followers outnumber your Seekers, and we have God on our side. The sixth seal will open on April 17, and the earth will tear itself apart, and the unrighteous will be destroyed. There will be no afterlife for your kind. You will be sucked down into oblivion and exist forever in an eternity of darkness.”
Rachel moved slightly, and I caught a flash of black hair and red lipstick. I sucked in a breath.
Katrina.
“We’ll see,” Katrina said, affecting an air of indifference.
“Prophet has seen it! There’s nothing you can do to stop the storm!” This from another of the Followers, a guy whose white clothes were so pristine I figured he must carry a bleach pen everywhere he went. His tongue darted to lick his lips, leaving them wet and glossy, pink as raw pork. “It is God’s will that the earth be cleansed. Prophet tells us so.”
Katrina smiled and told the guy to perform a physical impossibility.
The Follower sputtered, pink lips squirming on his face like a sea creature had attached itself to him. “You can’t speak to me that way. I am a Follower of the Light! Show some respect!”
“If your God has a problem with it, what’s he waiting for?” Katrina asked. “Tell him to strike me down.” She threw her hands in the air and stared up at the ceiling. “Come on, God of the Followers! Let’s see what you can do! Show me some wrath!” She cocked her head, as though anticipating thunder, and then smiled. “Nothing.”
Pink Lips smiled back. “Our God is too great to trouble Himself with an insignificant creature like you. He works through us, His faithful servants. And I believe it is His will that you learn some humility. Don’t you, Sister Rachel?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I think that’s an excellent idea, Brother Anthony.”
Katrina’s confident expression departed. She looked longingly at the door, as though wishing she were on the other side of it. When she saw me she blinked, her mouth parting, as though she would call to me for help.
But she didn’t. She clamped her mouth shut and took her eyes away.
The Followers broke their wall of white and fell on Katrina like a pack of jackals on a wounded gazelle. But Katrina wasn’t wounded. She was fully alive and ready to fight. She kicked and punched and struggled and bit Pink Lips on the hand so hard he screeched. I stood like a statue outside the door, my mind racing toward the inevitable conclusion that any second now I was going to have to do something to help this girl I despised.
But I hesitated, and then hesitated some more.
Despite Katrina’s savage efforts to free herself, the Followers pinned her flat on her back on the surface of the teacher’s desk.
Rachel grabbed Katrina’s hair and yanked it until her neck stretched, winding it around her fist. “Such pretty hair. I used to dye my hair black, before I found Prophet, but it never looked like this. It was always dull. Yours is so shiny. I bet you love it, don’t you?”
There was a big pair of metal scissors in a ceramic jar on the desk, among the pens and pencils. Rachel grabbed the scissors in her free hand and went snip, snip at the air.
Katrina’s eyes grew to the size of golf balls.
Something broke in me. Maybe it was because I’d had my hair sheared away by lightning so many times, but I couldn’t stand to see it happen to anyone else, even someone I hated.
I swung the door open, but too late. Rachel chopped through Katrina’s hair, right next to her scalp.
Rachel let out a cry of triumph as the thick rope of glossy black hair came free in her hand. “Who owns this school now, Seeker?”
The door was on a spring and slammed shut behind me with a BANG! startling me almost as much as it did the Followers.
“Let her go,” I said, proud of the implied or else tone I achieved without having to make an actual threat I probably wouldn’t be able to carry through. And it turned out I didn’t need threats. My sudden appearance surprised the Followers so much they lost their grips on Katrina.
She tore free of them and shot toward me. Eyes glassy, she reached up and touched what remained of her hair. She appeared younger without that black river swimming down her back, her oil-dark eyes bigger and wider, almost innocent.
The Followers smirked at us. They had formed their unbroken line again, standing shoulder to shoulder.
“You’re one of them now, aren’t you?” Rachel said. “I told you not to join them. Our numbers are far greater than theirs. The tide has turned in favor of the light. You could have been saved.”
“As long as I’m not one of you, I’m happy,” I told her.
“Two days,” Rachel said. “That’s all the time you have left. When the storm comes, you’ll wish you’d chosen differently.”
“What are you going to do when the world doesn’t end?” I asked her. “Will that prove once and for all that Prophet is a fraud, or will he make some excuse, convince you God was testing your faith?”
“Prophet is a true prophet of God,” Rachel said, doing her best to stare me down. I had to admit, she was good at it. “He’s never wrong. You’ll see.”
I spoke with more confidence than I felt. “I can’t wait to watch your prophet make a fool of himself in front of the whole world.”
Rachel took a step toward me, eyes dangerous. Her arms hung at her sides, one hand still clutching the scissors, going snip, snip, snip.
Katrina moved for the door. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
For once, I had no problem doing what Katrina wanted me to do.
19
AGAIN, I FOUND myself in the ladies’ lounge with Katrina, when I should have been looking for my brother. At least I knew he wasn’t with the Seeker I trusted the least.
I leaned against a sink and watched as she picked at the remains of her hair with trembling fingers.
“Maybe we should tell someone what happened,” I suggested. “The principal or whoever’s in charge now. Rachel and those other Followers would probably be expelled.”
Katrina let her arms fall to her sides, giving up. “It won’t change anything.”
Her eyes began to water. Her face was emotionless. She didn’t make a sound. But tears leaked from her eyes one after another. Then her chin trembled, and she broke. A single sob wrenched from somewhere down deep inside her.
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“My hair …” she said, and covered her face.
My chest felt tight, like my heart had swelled and there was no more room for it behind my breastbone. I couldn’t help it. I felt the pressure of sympathy tears trying to pop free. I thought of all the times my hair had been scorched away and I’d been left not just a lightning-scarred freak, but a bald-headed, lightning-scarred freak.
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “It’s kind of cool, actually. You just have to even it out and put some sticky stuff in it. Then you’ll look like Audrey Hepburn. Very classy.”
Katrina lowered her hands. Black mascara tears cut crooked trails down her cheeks. “Thank you for helping me up there. I know I’m not your favorite person. You could have left me with them, and I don’t know if they would have stopped at cutting off my hair.”
I looked at the floor, thinking of how long I’d watched at the window, doing nothing. If I had interrupted sooner, Katrina might still have her hair.
“You’re welcome,” I said humbly. It was easy to be humble when you had nothing to be proud of.
“And I’m sorry,” Katrina said. “You know, for blackmailing you and everything. I didn’t see any other way to get you on our side.”
I wasn’t quite ready to forgive her for that one. “How did you end up in that classroom with a bunch of Followers?” I asked, changing the subject.
Katrina shook her head. “It was my own fault. Sister Rachel set a trap for me and I fell right into it. She let me see her ‘spreading the good word’ to a couple of girls near the staircase, and then she took off up the stairs. I followed her. She knew I would. She stayed just far enough ahead of me to make me think I was chasing when she was actually leading.”
I hoisted myself up to sit on one of the sinks. “What’s so important about Skyline? I mean, why are you so protective of this school?”
“Because the Seekers claimed it first.”
“As your recruiting station? And the White Tent is Prophet’s recruiting station?”