“You had no place else to go,” he reminded me in a hushed voice.
“I had a place to go until they said I couldn’t start college. Wait. . . .” I inched away so I could face him full on. “Did you set up that whole swim-test thing at the registrar’s office?”
He shrugged.
Busted. The bastard. “You did, didn’t you? How’d you even know I couldn’t swim?”
“I know many things.”
“What, you’ve got, like, a Goth mind probe in addition to powers of persuasion?”
He gave me a blank look, and I barreled ahead, sensing I’d hit a nerve. “That’s right, don’t think I couldn’t tell. You used some sort of weird hypnotism or touch, or something, to convince me to come.”
“Believe me, you’re not that easy.” His tone implied I was all-around difficult.
“So that’s how”—I looked to the open car door, lowering my voice—“that’s how you Tracers do it? You have persuasive powers?”
“In varying degrees.” Ronan glanced at his colleague in the driver’s seat. The guy was immersed in a chat with Strawberry Blonde, oblivious to the conversation in the back-back. “Most girls respond when I use my eyes alone. You’re more difficult.”
“Don’t tell me. That’s why you kept touching me?” My heart fell, seeing the answer on his face. The way he’d taken my hand, all those touches to my arm, my shoulder—the purpose had been to enthrall me, to convince me to get in his car, onto his plane.
I scowled. I’d known guys like him weren’t interested in girls like me, and yet stupid me had gone there in my mind for just a moment. “You tricked me.”
He went on the defensive. “You’d hit rock bottom, Annelise.”
“And this is better? In what universe is avoiding a drunk father and subsisting on waitressing tips more rock bottom than this?” I slumped against the door, the window cool on my forehead. “Silly me. Being totally alone on an island of bloodthirsty monsters is a real step up.”
“Believe me, you only arrive here if it’s your last stop.”
“Harsh.” I stared blindly out the window, wondering if he was right. Had I sunk that low? All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I had to find a way out. “I’m not that pathetic.”
Movement caught my eye. Lilac was approaching. She already had a mini posse following her. A bunch of mindless electrons buzzing around her radioactive core.
But then I realized. If this was my last chance, it was their last chance, too. Lilac and her ilk were just as desperate as me. And that meant Lilac had secrets. She and I had something in common; I just couldn’t imagine what.
She climbed in—gracefully, I might add—and glowered at me. Gaze shifting to Ronan, she held up her parka. “Could you toss this in the back for me?” Her tone was saccharine sweet.
At his nod, she whipped it right at my face. The metal nub at the end of the hood string snapped me in the eyes.
“Oops!” Smiling, she gave an innocent shrug.
That was it. I would find a way out of this place. When he’d talked me onto the plane, I’d thought I’d be in for some cool schooling, but this was brainwashed-cult crap, and I was not down with it.
It was only a matter of time before I annoyed someone as badly as Mimi had, and I refused to have my guts spilled in front of an audience of Barbies. My last stop would not be on some vampire’s dinner plate.
Once everyone settled, I leaned close to Ronan’s ear. “How do I get out?”
“Shush,” he hissed. “You can’t get out.”
As the other girls loaded in, I considered my situation. I was more helpless and alone than I’d ever been in Florida, only now I was surrounded by things that wanted to eat me. The driver put the truck in gear and drove. I felt as desolate as the bleak, gray world outside my window.
I called my mom’s picture to mind, taking strength from the memory of her yellow hair, that bright yellow pantsuit. It seemed that, yet again, I’d be forced to make my own way, in a world bled dry of color.
Ronan was wrong—I would get out. I’d survived the most difficult and loveless of childhoods, and I’d survive this, too. I leaned close again, and felt him bristle. “So Watchers aren’t allowed to leave the island? Ever?”
“Of course,” he said, his voice tight with tension, “Watchers are allowed to leave.”
“Then how do I become a Watcher?”