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My throat constricted as we kept moving, Myra’s fingers gripping my jacket. I knew in my heart that we probably wouldn’t find her mother. Unless the girl had died along with her mom in an accident of some kind, she was here alone. Most children stayed on Juniper Landing for approximately five seconds before they were ushered to the Light, too young to have unresolved issues or to have done anything in life that would mark them for the Shadowlands. But since we’d stopped ushering people, the few kids who had shown up here these last, agonizing days were still here. One adorable boy named Oliver had wept nonstop for his parents upon arrival, until the mayor had taken him aside and worked her magic on his mind, basically making him forget he’d ever had parents. He’d jumped up and run off to the other brainwashed kids to start a game of tag. It was the first time I understood the real benefit of her powers.
“You were pretty impressive out there,” I told Liam, trying to change the subject.
He lifted his shoulders as best he could. “I’m a lifeguard. It’s what I do.”
We were making our way up the path to the mayor’s front door, the pavement lined with dead brown marigolds and piles of wet, withered leaves—things we wouldn’t have seen in Juniper Landing when we first arrived here, when even the plants could never die. A sort of traffic jam had occurred near the front of the house, and people stood on their toes, angling for a look at the front of the line. Liam’s charge started to whimper.
“This looks like it’s going to take a while,” Myra stated, her brown eyes full of concern as she looked at the girl.
“Come with me,” I whispered.
Liam raised his raven eyebrows, intrigued, and our small party stepped away from the line. I led Liam and Myra toward the back of the house, where there was a patio with a door to the kitchen and great room. We slid open the glass door and finally stepped out of the rain.
The scene that greeted us inside the house was astounding. Every last stitch of cozy, beach-house furniture in the sprawling great room had been cleared away, and in its place were rows of cots, each covered with a plain white sheet. Krista and Lauren moved about, efficiently smoothing bedding and setting up gauze and bandages and bottles of antiseptic on tables. On the far side of the room, the injured streamed in through the front door, where they were checked in and assessed by Police Chief Grantz and the mayor herself. Pete and Cori helped their patient onto a bed nearby.
“Where should I take her?” Liam asked me.
“See the blond woman by the door?” I said, gently rubbing the girl’s back. “She’ll want to take a look at her.”
“Got it,” he said, and carried the little girl toward the mayor.
“Come on, Myra. Let’s get you a bed,” I said.
“I don’t want to cut the line,” she said a bit uncertainly as she glanced around.
I smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
We took a step, and Myra listed to the side. Panic gripped me as her eyes rolled up, and I desperately tightened my grip on her, but it was impossible to hold her suddenly lifeless form. Pete noticed and rushed over to help, ducking under Myra’s opposite arm.
“What do we do?” I said.
“Here. Get her to the bed.” Pete nodded at the nearest cot. Together we staggered toward it and turned around, sitting down with Myra between us.
Myra groaned and her head lolled forward. Then her arm fluttered off my back and she touched her hand to her head.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You fainted. I think.”
“You should lie down, but keep your head propped up,” Pete said. I shot him a questioning glance. His green eyes were bloodshot and his nose was red. Sweat poured down his face. “My dad was a doctor,” he explained to me under his breath. “If you’re faint or dizzy, you’re supposed to rest but keep your head over your heart.”
“Good thing we ran into this nice young man,” Myra joked.
I smiled at Pete, who sort of grimaced in return. “Yes. A very good thing,” I said. Pete and I were not the best of friends, considering that not so long ago he and his pal Nadia had accused me of ushering innocents to the Shadowlands. This was the first time I’d spoken to him since Tristan and Nadia had fled, thereby exonerating me and making themselves look guilty as sin. Maybe that was why he currently seemed unable to look me in the eyes.
Once Myra was propped up on a few pillows, she gave me a nod and patted my arm. “Thanks, Rory. You go see if someone else needs your help.”
“I’ll be back,” I promised her. “Thanks, Pete,” I added.
But he had already moved on to the next bed to help Cori with another patient.
I turned around to do the same and was immediately overwhelmed by the frenzy of activity. Darcy and Fisher were leading people to cots while some of the older Lifers tended to wounds and complaints. The stream of “survivors” coming through the door was never ending, and I wondered whether we’d even have enough room for all of them. That was when I spotted a pair of people so odd they momentarily took my breath away. Huddled together a few beds from where I was standing were a guy and a girl, about twenty years old, with white-blond hair in the exact same bowl-cut style, their bangs wet and scraggly over their foreheads. Their features were so similar—broad foreheads, straight noses, angular chins—that I might not have guessed their genders except for the fact that the girl was wearing a plain black dress while the boy wore dark pants and a white shirt. They both had light blue eyes and their skin was an olive hue. Their temples were pressed together as they whispered to each other, but their gazes darted around the room, taking everything in. It was eerie—their awkward pose, the way they were communicating so intensely without looking at each other. An eerie, bloodcurdling sort of fear moved slowly through me, the way the fog had engulfed the beach my first night here. Something wasn’t right about them. I could feel it.
“Rory!”
I quickly wove my way over to Krista, who was waving me down. She had pulled her blond hair into a low ponytail and was looking a lot less freaked than she had down by the docks. Somehow she’d managed to change into a dry white cotton dress and flip-flops and was setting up an oxygen tank, flipping switches and turning knobs like she’d been doing it every day of her life. I glanced over my shoulder at the creepy twins. They were watching me. I forced myself to turn my back to them. Pretend they weren’t there.
“How do you know how to use that thing?” I asked Krista.
