The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,57

held up her hands. “I’m not going to be dramatic about it.” Then, with one last nod toward me, she added, “But if you so much as scratch her, I’ll redefine that word for you.”

The boy drew me over to Lisa, to the boat, steadily guiding me into it. He made enough of a show of flashing his gun that I felt like I couldn’t see what was happening to the others, not without exposing the whole charade.

He dragged the small boat back into the water, and, somehow, the three of us fit comfortably on it. As we drifted away, I took in a deep breath of the cool, moist air rising from the moon-bright water. The more the distance grew, the less I understood what had just happened. I’d expected them to try to fight being separated, knowing they wouldn’t want their tool out of sight before they could use me, but…

Not like that.

The opposite shore was a few dozen feet away before the boy pulled off his mask and took in a steadying breath of his own. Jacob.

“That was something else,” he said.

“Seriously,” Lisa said, a bit shakily.

“You all right?” Jacob was a good foot and a half taller than I’d remembered. Even sitting in the boat, he still had to duck slightly to look me in the eye. He’d been the quietest of the original three, almost painfully shy. At the time, I’d thought he resembled Chubs, both in appearance and in his energy. Now he looked like he could bench-press him.

“Zu?” he said, a bit more urgently. “You did want us to pull you away from them, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. I had to fight the urge to keep from looking back.

“You didn’t use the normal procedure, but we weren’t sure if you just…didn’t remember it,” Lisa said, hesitating over the last part. “It’s been a while.”

“That was smart, using the X symbol,” Jacob said. “Miguel figured it out right away. We rowed out behind the house and circled around the long way to meet you. Good call with the stalling.”

I wanted to feel proud of that, or even just acknowledge that this insane plan had worked. Somehow, it was just…

Please.

“I’m all right, and yeah, that was what I was after,” I said as we bumped into shallow water. “Safe to assume my new reputation has preceded me?”

I barely knew these kids; we’d only met once, and that had been minutes, not even a full hour of interaction. We all just happened to fall inside Ruby and Liam’s bright constellation.

In that moment, though, with their sympathetic eyes on me, that automatic assumption of my innocence, I could have hugged them both and never let go.

“Listen,” Lisa began uneasily, “before we go in…”

The boat rocked against the water, but neither Jacob nor Lisa moved to get out. Then I remembered.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Didn’t Charlie tell you? Ruby and Liam left two weeks ago to do a pickup,” Jacob said, “and neither of them came back.”

Three Years Ago

I REALLY HATED TUESDAYS.

It was like the world had decided that Mondays were for easing into the week, but Tuesdays—Tuesdays were fair game. It was the start to the apartment being empty and quiet, when my phone went silent as a sudden rash of meetings swallowed my friends whole. Worse, it was the day Mrs. Fletcher had decided should be our math day.

I had no problem with math. I liked it, actually. It was straightforward in a way nothing else seemed to be in life. There was only one right answer, and usually only one right way to reach it. It had none of those uncertainties of writing and reading, where a single word could change the meaning of a sentence. Math was fine.

The problem was, this was math Chubs had taught me a year and a half ago, and Mrs. Fletcher refused to skip ahead because true understanding can only be reached by adding one building block after another.

Somewhere in the nearby living room, the text alert on my phone went off with a cheerful ding.

I sat up straighter, leaning back in my chair to peer around the edge of the breakfast bar.

Where did I leave it…?

From that angle, all I could see was Nico’s back. He sat on the couch, noise-canceling headphones plugged into the computer as he typed away on whatever program he’d spent the last week coding. There was no way to get his attention, to have him check to see who it was from—to see if