I want to laugh; I want to tell him that he’s full of shit. He’s not saving anyone. He’s killing people. But I bite the inside of my cheek, stuffing the words down.
“I’m trying to save you, too,” he adds, darkness sweeping over the already-shadowed lines of his face. “I doubt either of us want to die like this”—he touches the splotchy skin below his gray, dead eye—“waiting for the sickness to eat away at our organs, our eyes, until we’re rotting in the ground like all the rest.”
A coldness blooms in my chest, a shiver of something right at the cusp of my thoughts.
“I know you’re heading to the sea,” he says. Eyes sharp like barbed wire. “You’re escaping, leaving all this sickness and death.”
My ears start to ring—crackle, crackle, hiss.“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Cut the shit!” he barks, the scar across his throat shivering when he swallows—an awful sight—and I jerk back, startled. He’s been so calm—eerily, unnaturally calm—but now his temper flares across his miscolored eyes, and it feels like something inside him is starting to crack. “We both know what I mean—” he adds, baring his teeth. “The fact that you’re here, no longer hiding, must mean that those stars are in alignment. The ones the Astronomer has been waiting for.”
He knows.The back of my skull throbs.He knows too much.But how? I want to run, I want to sprint toward the door and pound my fist against the wood, but I know it won’t open. And there’s nowhere to hide in this narrow room. So I stand my ground, holding down the terror, not wanting him to see how frightened I am.
He strides around the side of the desk that separates us, and I square my shoulders to his. I’m starting to think he’s the kind of man who respects that: someone who’s unafraid, who stuffs down their weakness. It’s the cowards who find themselves at the wrong end of his anger. “And your map—that mark cut into your flesh—is going to take us there.” His teeth grind over the words, turning them to dust.
Instinctively I want to touch my neck, feel the comfort they bring. But I keep my hands at my sides, curling them into fists to keep from shaking. Keep every part of me from rattling.
“You can help us, Vega.” His gray eye shutters quickly before opening again. “Tell me where the map leads.”
In my mind, I trace the length of my tattoo, following the curve down my neck to my torso, spreading in starburst constellations, until it winds along my stomach to my right thigh, making a wandering path to my shin and the top of my foot. Several constellations linked together. And if I peered up at the sky tonight, in this latespring season, I could follow those same constellations, track them.
And they would lead me straight toward the setting sun. “East,” I tell him, a partial lie.
But his mouth curls, irritation glinting in his eyes—he’s losing his patience. “You know that’s not enough. I need to be able to navigate. I need to know every point in the sky.” There is a twitch at his temple, eyes fluttering rhythmically, out of time with each other.He’s sick.Dying. This is why he’s so desperate—he thinks I can save him before death reaches up inside his chest and strangles the air in his lungs.
When I don’t answer, his eyes click away from me, and in one swift motion, he unsheathes a knife from the back of his belt—a place where I couldn’t see it—and pulls it free. He taps it at his side, a sudden power in his hand. And Iknow, the back and forth of our discussion is now over. “I tried to make this easy on you,” he spits now, jaw thrust forward. “We could have worked together.” He lifts the knife so the blade is pointed at my chest, only an inch from my skin.
I shift uncomfortably, one hand pressed to the corner of the desk. I think about Noah, the blade he held to Holt’s throat. I think about how close we each came to killing him. But failed.
My fingers twitch, eyes narrow.
The plate I hid is at my feet, tucked under the desk—I just need to bend down and grab it, swing it against his skull, and if I hit him hard enough, maybe he’ll drop to the ground, knocked unconscious.But then what?I’ll take the knife, use it to pry back the boards on the windows. Or I could threaten whoever is on the other side of the door, tell them that I’ll kill Holt if they don’t let me out. I’ll use him as leverage. I’ll get outside, and then I’ll run.
“We all have roles here,” he says, tapping the end of the knifeagainst my chest. “Do you know what my role is, my talent?”
I meet his eyes but don’t speak. My mind is thinking only of the plate—so close. I just need to reach for it, then stand back up and strike him in the skull. Hard.
“I know how to hunt people,” he continues. “And get what I want.” He lifts the blade toward my face, the tip of my nose. “And I’ve been hunting you for a very long time.”
A sound stirs outside, shuffling footsteps, and Holt looks toward the door at the far end of the schoolhouse.This is my chance. I drop to the floor, reach for the plate—I have a good hold on it, firm, steady, and I rise back up—ready to swing it wide and strike Holt at his temple… when there is pain in my chest. A white-hot sharpness.
Holt has swung his gaze back to me and is shoving me away from the desk, one hand around my throat, while the knife is pressed to my chest bone—blood weeping to the surface.
I drop the plate and it clatters to the floor.Shit.Holt slams my head against the wall, a hard crack, and then the knife is at my throat, right where my heartbeat quivers in my veins. “Not sure what you intended to do with that.” His voice is guttural, all the pleasantries gone from it. “But I see you’re more than just a girl with a tattoo—you’re willing to fight for what you want, and that’s good. That’s important.”
He presses the knife harder, and I feel the warmth of blood dripping down my throat to my chest. He’s broken through my skin. I suck in a breath.Breathe, breathe. It’s only a little blood. Not enough to kill me. Keep breathing.
“Tell me how to read the map,” he demands.
I exhale out through my nostrils, hot, terrified, but I stare into his one dead eye, refusing to answer.
He slides the blade higher, up to my chin. “Are you willing to die for it?” he asks. “Are you willing to bleed out on the floor like a gutted hog?”
I clench my jaw and lower my eyes on him. “You won’t kill me,” I say. “I’m the only one with the map. You need me.”
His teeth tap together, then grind with a force that makes me wince. “Smart girl,” he says, his face so close to mine that I can smell the oil in his slicked hair, the scent of tobacco and sweat on his sickly skin. He lowers the knife, and I pull in a quick breath before his hand grips my throat and yanks me back, forcing me to turn so my face is crushed against the wall. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but then I feel the cold blade of the knife again, making trails down the back of my neck, down my spine. The place where Noah touched my flesh with his fingertips in the lake. “But I could peel your skin back and cut out the marking.” He says, an awful wetness to his words, like his mouth is hung open. “Maybe you’ll die, bleed out. But if you survive, I suspect you’ll start talking.” He grates the blade up to my hairline, as if marking the path he will take, how much flesh he will remove. “And if you die, at least I’ll have the constellation. And I’ll find someone else to interpret it.”
“There is no one else,” I choke, swallowing hard, my voice barely audible. “I’m the only one, the last one.” The blood is warm, still spilling down to my chest.
