offer to get us into the tunnels is null and void.
I pluck the phone from my pocket and send a text to Coop.
R U OK? I’m so sorry I didn’t go with you! If Wes weren’t there, I would have fought my way into that ambulance.
He texts back. Already home. Just a few stitches. Marky says hello. She wishes you were here.
I wish I were there, too.
A sniffling sound emits from the closet.
Do mice sniffle? I seriously doubt Ephemeral has an infestation, or at least not a common blight of the vermin variety.
I make my way over, soft-footed, and pull back the door. The light pours in revealing Hattie the Human curled in a fetal position bawling her hollow eyes out.
“Hey,” I say it sweetly, heading in and plucking her to her feet. I lead Hattie to her bed and offer a box of tissues.
Now that I know she’s only slightly mutated in nature, I’m far less afraid of her.
“What’s going on?” I rub my hand over her back and startle when I realize I can trace out every vertebra running up her spine.
“Flynn is gone.” Her large eyes spray out in a network of crimson veins. “I’m going to get in trouble.” Her lower lip trembles as if she were shivering. I hadn’t noticed how beautiful Hattie was until now with her full lips, her high cut cheeks with a natural rosy glow.
She brings her hands to her nose, and I can’t help but note her alarmingly frail limbs. I hadn’t noticed her thin frame before. She’s been bundled in layers of sweaters and coats since she’s arrived.
“Why would you get in trouble?” I want to add, and why are you so damn thin but let it go for now. Amber Garrett, my best friend back in Cider Plains was skinny as a rail, with no butt or boobs on the hormonal horizon. She could eat a box of donuts during every meal and have nothing to show for it. So I decide to take it in stride for now.
She swallows hard and shakes her head as if she’s said too much already.
A mean shudder races through me, and this time it’s all for Flynn.
“When was the last time you saw him?” I ask, carefully slipping my hand over the exposed flesh of her arm, playing it off as if I were still trying to comfort her.
She squints into me and slides a good foot away.
She knows—she’s a Celestra after all.
“He said he found them and that he would bring me roses.”
“Flynn found your family?” I’m not sure how much of this I believe. She’s still not the Hattie Tobias I thought she was.
She nods. “He kissed me.” Her fingers tremble over her lips as if reliving the memory.
Stupid, stupid Flynn. I knew I should have kept a sexual leash on him. Who knew he was into Fems? Or at least that’s what we believed she was at the time.
“Hattie…” I swallow hard. “I know who you are.” I say it as a fact.
“You do?” Her brows pitch.
I so caught her. She’s not even trying to deny it.
“Yes. I had your DNA tested. I know damn well you’re a full-blooded Celestra.” I want to know more—everything, but I leave that part out.
Her face loses its affect. All of the fear and worry dissipate, and she lets out an eerie looking grimace.
“Look.” She points to her ridiculous expression. “I’m practicing.” She lets out a congested laugh.
“Practicing what?” I reach for my phone in the event I need to bullet out of here.
“Smiling.” She dulls out again. “Flynn taught me all sorts of things. I can wrap my arms around you for a very long time, but Flynn said not to do that to other people. He asked me to save all my hugs for him.”
“Hattie?” I scoot back on the bed as a morbid realization sets in. Her skinny body, her flat personality—she does remind me of the Tobias sisters. In fact, she sort of reminds me of how they looked in captivity. “Where are you from? Where did you live before you came to Ephemeral?”
“In the tower.” She says it plain as water, as if she hadn’t just made a reference to some medieval form of captivity.
“Was the tower in Trinity County?” Somehow I think the process of elimination is necessary.
She gazes off with a lost expression—her eyes, blank as a doll.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I only knew homely rooms, food once a day. But in this world…”