armor.
“I wanted to work to make sure we didn’t need places like Haven,” I told her. “This was their way of helping. I have mine.”
Or, at least, I did.
Haven wasn’t sanctioned by the government. It, and other places like it, would never be, because they brought kids outside the protection and monitoring the government provided. These places returned the Psi to the dangerous way we’d been forced to live before.
I’d never doubted that the kids at Haven had escaped from truly terrible situations. Abuse and neglect that came after being returned to their families, runaways who’d refused to go back at all, who’d been made to use their Psi abilities against their will…
I understood. I’d only struggled to understand why they hadn’t been brought to us to find better living situations. Existing in the shadow of society was an invisible, fragile existence.
Lisa and Jacob exchanged a look. He gave a shake of his head, and the girl’s shoulders slumped.
“Sorry,” she started. “I just—”
“I get it,” I told her. “I do. Let’s just…figure out what’s going on. I need to find a charger for that phone, and I need to hear everything you know about what’s happening with—”
Lisa put a finger to her lips, looking up at the curious faces peering down at us from the houses.
They don’t know, I realized.
“They’re on a long pickup trip,” Jacob said meaningfully. “They’ll be back soon.”
They were lying to the others—lying by omission, but still lying. It had to be to protect the younger kids, but I would have thought, given the circumstances that brought them here, they would have been given the respect of being kept informed.
“Come on,” Jacob said. “Miguel is waiting for us in the Batcave. I’m sure he’s already got some theories about your new friends.”
As we made our way to the house’s wraparound porch, the kid in Tree House Four sent a message can—an old coffee tin that had been weighted at the bottom—across a rope line to Tree House One. It zipped over our heads with a whispering sound. All the houses seemed to be connected to one another, and to the window that marked the attic of Haven. Where Liam and Ruby slept.
“Everything good?” Another teen, also dressed in black, jogged up from the back of the house. Her long braid swung out behind her, and she seemed winded.
“Yeah, it’s under control,” Jacob said, handing his gun over to the girl. “Jen, this is Zu; Zu, this is Jen.”
“Hi,” the girl said. “You made tonight pretty damn interesting. Should I go help the others?”
“They have it handled,” Jacob said. Then he added sheepishly, “Could you do me one favor and put this away in the lockers upstairs? We have to go debrief Miguel.”
“Sure,” she said, taking his weapon. “If you don’t need me, I’ll put mine away, too.”
Jacob ran up the steps of the porch, opening the door with a dramatic sweep of the arm he’d clearly picked up from Liam at some point. Jen went ahead of us, disappearing as she headed down the entry hall. I steeled my nerves and stepped through the doorway into the cool, cedar-scented air, almost forgetting to wipe my feet on the worn welcome mat.
That awkwardness I’d felt outside was nothing compared to what swept through me now; it was almost physically painful. What little familiarity I’d had with the place evaporated in an instant. I was vaguely aware of Lisa explaining the setup of the house as she walked in behind me, but most of my attention was on the hallway itself.
While the outside of the house had been designed to camouflage itself in nature, the inside threw colors and patterns at you from every direction. The rugs were a trail of dizzying yellow and blue; wildflowers burst from a crooked vase. A strand of colored lights wound up the banister of the front stairs.
But my eyes kept drifting to the walls. On our brief tour, years before, Ruby had explained that it was too dangerous to keep photos of the Psi who stayed with them, whether the kids were there for a few months or years. They had been thinking about encouraging them to leave a piece of artwork—so that the house, and all of its inhabitants, would never forget them.
Clearly, they’d made their decision.
The result was a mishmash of frames scattered over the main hall and up the staircase. Most of the Psi had done drawings or paintings of Haven itself, but others had decided to do