Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,60

on death row and was scheduled to move to a more secure facility next month,” Ella Martinez goes on.

My stomach somehow sinks even further—I didn’t know that she was changing prisons, even though I saw her a few days ago. She didn’t tell me.

“She is considered a danger to the public, and anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call this number …”

A phone number pops up on the screen in large red digits, while my mom’s face hovers in the corner of the screen. I take a long swallow of coffee, realizing Brekken’s eyes are suddenly, for some reason, on me. But now it’s my turn to avoid his gaze, feeling the burn of suppressed tears all down my throat, trying to blink away the water brewing behind my eyes.

The camera follows the column of smoke rising from the prison, trailing it up into the gray sky. The smoke doesn’t look like anything else on Earth. It looks like magic.

Eventually, everyone drifts from the room except for me and my uncle. We stay glued to the news for a while, hanging on the anchor’s every word, but no more information seems to be forthcoming. Ten minutes in, my phone starts blowing up with texts and calls from Dad that I don’t answer. I silence the phone instead. But the messages glare up at me from the screen.

Have u seen news?

U ok????

Plz call me.

I send a quick text back, not wanting to talk to him or anyone right now with the awful churning in my stomach.

I saw. I’m okay. Call you in a few?

Ok. Talk soon!

“The authorities are probably going to want to question us,” Marcus says quietly. He looks pale and shell-shocked, his stress curls rising high. He turns to me. “Maybe you and I should go camp out at the condo for a few days, just in case they come looking.”

The condo is an empty apartment in a boring one-story complex on the edge of town. It’s Marcus’s legal address, meant to keep the inn off all official paperwork. It’s where he gets his mail and meets up with any visitors he doesn’t fully trust. But I’ve never spent a night there.

“Why?” I hear myself ask. “We don’t know anything.”

“Just in case …”

The unspoken end of the sentence hangs in the air between us. Just in case what? Mom shows up here at Havenfall?

I should be happy. She was sitting on death row for a crime she didn’t commit, and now she’s out. I should be cheering that she’s made a clean break, wherever she is. How or why shouldn’t matter. But the image of the smoke on the TV screen sticks in my head. The destruction, the hole in the prison wall. Something isn’t adding up. The Mom I know isn’t capable of that kind of destruction. She isn’t even interested in being free.

“I’m going to go make some calls,” Marcus says, and turns to go.

“Marcus,” I start, reaching out to snag my uncle’s arm.

He turns back with a question on his face.

“You don’t know anything about this, do you?” I ask.

I don’t know what I want the answer to be. If it’s yes, it means he’s kept more secrets from me, when I thought we were done with secrets. But it also means that at least someone is in charge here. Someone has answers.

“Trust me,” he whispers, his eyes drooping. “I wish I did.” He doesn’t flinch or look hurt. He just looks at me and shakes his head. “No, Maddie,” he says, and his voice is soft but strong. “I won’t lie to you again. I promise.”

Later, I call Dad.

“So,” he says, none of the usual warmth in his voice. He just sounds wrung out. “Your mother.”

“My mother,” I echo because I don’t know what else to say. I fidget with my comforter, tracing over the edges of the diamonds cut from Byrnisian silk and Fiorden velvet.

“You were the last person to visit her, the other day,” Dad said, sounding wary. “Did she seem any different? Did she say anything strange?”

I shake my head. This, at least, I don’t have to fake—I’m as at a loss as he is.

“No, she was … the same as ever. You know.” I swallow. “Passive. Quiet.”

At least when she wasn’t lecturing me about my feelings for Brekken, or dropping mysterious hints about Winterkill and the gauntlet.

“What about your uncle? Does he have any ideas?”

“Nope,” I say, distracted. “Not in the slightest.”

Dad lets out a breath. I can