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He needed to talk to these middle schoolers, to figure out which side they were on.
And he needed to do it without the Merricks.
“Let’s not be stupid about this,” said Michael. “There’s a Guide in town. If we figured out these kids were working with Calla, then he will, too. We need to stay the hell away from them.”
“No way,” said Gabriel.
“I agree with Michael,” said Hunter.
They all looked at him in surprise. He shrugged and lied through his teeth. “Well, I think we should give it a few days. Calla was obviously the ring leader. Let’s see if they make another move.”
Hunter glanced at Simon, a kid who was bullied mercilessly. Hunter knew what the Merricks had gone through for years. He wondered if these new Elementals were going through the same thing.
And he wondered if it would have been easy, too easy, for Calla to convince them to rebel.
CHAPTER 20
While they shared a campus, the middle school and high school had different hours. Hunter and the Merricks had to be at school early, the middle schoolers didn’t start until after nine. He couldn’t exactly skip class to stake out seventh and eighth graders—that would probably draw attention.
Instead, he decided to head over at the end of the day, to watch the younger students as they bolted for the buses to go home.
But that meant Hunter had seven hours of class time to kill.
Other students spent that time building locker shrines to the students who’d lost their lives. Hunter spent most of it feeling like he could have stopped the whole thing.
Or like he was betraying the Merricks somehow.
He tried to talk himself out of that feeling. He wasn’t planning to feed Kate information about them. And what were they doing for him anyway? Letting him live in their house until they decided to pack up and leave town? Michael had made a comment this morning that he was going to figure out how much money they had to work with. There was talk about leases and walking away from the business and—Hunter had to leave the room, because it all pointed toward leaving him here to deal with this mess.
And even after reading through all the files, he had no idea where his mother stood on everything. She wasn’t a Guide—unless she’d also hidden that from his father. Hunter had run all kinds of scenarios through his head, but he couldn’t make any of them work at all. Did she approve of his father’s profession? Of Hunter continuing his mission? If she didn’t, she sure wouldn’t have left him with weapons hidden among his things.
To say nothing of his father’s old files. Did she know about the Merricks? Those files had been held together by an ancient rubber band; he didn’t get the impression anyone had read through them recently.
He wanted to call her, to confront her and demand answers.
But maybe she didn’t have answers. She’d hidden those things when she could have come right out and given them to him.
Not to mention that he’d spent months grieving for his father and wondering how anyone would ever understand him again. She’d known. All this time—she’d known.
His thoughts were spinning out, not finding traction anywhere. Hunter actually looked forward to fourth period, when he could see Kate and tell her what he’d learned, what he’d planned.
was true empathy in her eyes, and it softened something inside him. “Thanks for trying to help.” He paused, thinking of all the warnings about trusting the Merricks. Thinking of the folders upstairs. He pushed the hair back from his face and sighed. “Maybe later I could get your opinion on something—”
A hand shoved him back, and Chris said, “Maybe later you could remember that she’s not your girlfriend.”
“Hey,” Becca started. “It’s fine.”
Hunter smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. Chris’s aggression made his decision about Kate much easier to consider. “Maybe later you could remember that Becca has a mind of her own.”
Chris gave him another shove, a little more violently. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here—”
“Hey!” said James, his little boy voice carrying over everything else. “Use words, not hands.” Then he glanced at Hannah.
“Right, Mom?”
“Absolutely right,” she said, completely unfazed, pulling another piece of chicken from a bucket.
But Chris backed off.
