The silence was flat and stony. I stared at each of them in turn. Eliot wouldn’t meet my gaze. Addie fumed silently, her eyes narrowed to slits. Laurel worried her lower lip between her teeth.
“Eliot?” I asked. “Please. It’s the last thing I’ll ask you for, I swear.”
“Don’t say that,” he replied. “Can you guarantee they won’t come after my family?”
“Absolutely,” Simon said. “We protect our people.”
“I’m not your people,” he said with a slow, reluctant nod. “I’m Del’s.”
I went up on tiptoe to hug him. “Thank you,” I whispered, and his arms came around me.
“I’m going to be pissed if you die,” he murmured.
“Me too.”
Simon cleared his throat. “I need an ID. Something that will get me past the front desk at CCM.”
“I know someone,” Laurel said, and Addie hissed at her. “What? Just because you don’t like going to bars doesn’t mean I can’t.”
I grinned at Addie. “She is definitely a keeper.”
She didn’t smile back. “It’ll never work.”
“Never’s a big word,” I said.
“I don’t understand why we can’t try to fix the Consort,” she said. “Why do you have to tear down everything the Walkers have built?”
“Bad beginnings lead to breaks,” I said. “Isn’t that what we’re taught? The Walkers are built on a bad beginning. Let’s push the reset button.”
I reached for her hand, but she yanked away from me, her voice shrill enough to shatter glass. “You are a sixteen-year-old girl, not the leader of the rebel forces! This isn’t one of Eliot’s movies. This is real life, and you know what happens to the rebel forces in real life? They get outgunned, they get massacred, and then they get forgotten.”
Laurel opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. Eliot ducked his head, distress furrowing his brow.
“Wow, Addie. Thanks for the support.” I turned to Simon, who was lounging against the counter looking mildly curious, at best. “Let’s go. We can finish this at Amelia’s.”
He straightened and offered me his arm. Before I could move, Addie blocked my way. “How do I support you if you’re dead, Del?” Her eyes glittered with tears and terror. “It isn’t a question of believing in you. It’s me, being selfish. I’ve seen what they do to Free Walkers. And I can’t stand the idea of them doing it to you.”
I exhaled slowly, and my anger went with it. “My odds aren’t terrible, Addie. I had an amazing teacher.”
“Who got caught. He wasn’t that good.”
“I’m talking about you, moron. You did the best you could, even when I was a pain in the ass.”
“You’re still a pain in the ass,” she said, but her voice cracked, and she smiled when she said it.
“I was never going to have a place in the Consort,” I said. “You know that. I’ve never had it in me, the way you do.”
“If you’d just go along,” she said desperately. “If you’d just try, Del. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. We can make people listen. We can change their minds, but we have to be patient.”
“Every day we wait, more Echoes are dying.”
“Better them than you,” she said.
Next to me, Eliot made a noise of agreement.
“What are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
My stomach bottomed out. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
“You have to tell them,” she said. “I know you’re not close, but put yourself in their position. Do you really want the news coming from Lattimer? Or a Consort guard?”
“What do I say?”
“Tell them the truth,” she urged. “You’ve never tried to explain Simon, or the Free Walkers. You assume they won’t understand, but you haven’t given them a chance.”
“I have! But they don’t listen. It’s never that I do things differently—I do things wrong. That’s never going to change, no matter how I explain it.”
“Try. Once. If they don’t listen, you can leave with a clean conscience. Otherwise, they’ll keep cleaving. And when the truth finally comes out, they’ll feel terrible. If you can convince them now, they might become allies, instead of enemies.”
“If.” Such a small word, easily dismissed. But “if” made entire worlds. “If” changed the course of the universe. One breath, two letters, three strokes of a pen. And contained within was more power than a star. I bent my head. “I’ll try.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Days until Tacet: 11
THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED in a blur of training and school and furtive, meticulous preparation. Simon returned to school, but not the basketball team—his “transfer” made him ineligible to play