the device in her hand and is dialing. Her other hand covers his mouth as she flashes him a look of utter exasperation that he returns tenfold. Charlie peels it off, but instead of dropping her hand, he wraps his long, narrow fingers around hers and holds on. And she lets him. The tension that had seemed to ricochet through her softens.
“Hey, Zuzu—yeah, everything’s good here, what about you? You keeping Cate on her toes? Ah, that’s my girl.” She gives the others a little thumbs-up. “We’ll be back soon. I know, I’m sorry—”
“She’s a friend,” Charlie explains in a low voice. “They have her enrolled in a school pilot program in D.C. We couldn’t take her with us without raising some red flags, and she was not happy.”
“My ears are still blistered,” Liam complains. “The sass. The sass! Too much time with Vi.”
To Vida, who is now smirking, Charlie adds, “Tell her to do her homework!”
“She’s been sassy all along,” Ruby says, rolling her eyes. “You and Chubs just treated her like she was a little angel—”
“Excuse you,” Charlie—do they seriously call this string bean of a boy Chubs?—says, outraged. “She is an angel.”
“Exactly. She wasn’t born, she was found at the end of a rainbow,” Liam agrees.
“Why do you always have to take it to such a weird place?” Charlie complains.
I can’t keep up with this back-and-forth.
Vida hushes them with a wave of her hand. “Yeah, the chatter died,” she says into the phone. “We’ll try to recharge—did you find the present I left for you?”
“Was this present a knife?” Liam asks, sounding legitimately nervous.
“An angel that is now fascinated by weaponry,” Charlie amends, glaring at Vida.
Vida ignores them both. “Can you get Nico for me? Hey, Nico—yeah, no, everything”—her voice pitches several degrees louder—“everything is fine. Are you near a computer—yeah, okay, stupid question. Slow down, Turbo—”
Mia leans forward, trying to catch whatever hints she can from the voice on the other end of the line. I’m gripping the seat cushion so hard, pieces of the upholstery are gathering under my nails. A green blur of trees slips by us, and it feels like we are being fast-forwarded through this; I can’t keep up with my hope and confusion.
“Can you check to see if a kid was transferred out of the Zone One station—what other station would I be talking about? Yeah, it’d be deep network—these asshole bureaucrats can’t take a shit without someone filling out a form in triplicate, of course there’s got to be some kind of a record—I don’t know, whatever keywords they use as code for Reds? Oh my God, I swear—”
“Put him on speaker, Vi,” Ruby says, interrupting whatever is about to explode out of the girl’s mouth. She does as she’s asked. “Hey, Nico, it’s me. You might find something if you look for a medical alert or incident flag.”
“I’ll try that.” The voice that comes tumbling out of the phone sounds as young as any of us, and that catches me off guard. But…of course. Of course they would trust another kid with this, over an adult. “But Ruby, aren’t you supposed to be heading back now?”
Another reference to some silent clock that’s ticking down without any sort of explanation as to why. Everyone’s eyes in the car swing over to her, even Liam’s. I’ve been watching his expression grow harder and harder in the rearview mirror, until now it seems set in deep unhappiness.
“Plenty of time,” Ruby says calmly. “Anything?”
“Well…actually, yeah. There’s a request for a medic at a safe house in Ashland, Ohio—urgent, prefer one with PSF training.” As he talks, my heart begins to throb painfully in my chest; it’s so real, I can barely feel Mia’s broken nails clawing into my arm as she grips it.
“Ashland? Why Ashland?” she’s asking.
“Ohio?” It’s the first word we’ve gotten out of Liam in a while. He breaks his gaze on the road again and shoots Ruby a pleading look that she acknowledges by brushing her fingers against his cheek. I realize I’m staring, and force my eyes back on the forest sailing by us.
“Ohio’s on the way to Indiana,” Nico points out. “And—yeah, another requisition just came in for a unit to meet them at the safe house with Grade Five restraints.”
Grade Five restraints. I can’t let myself imagine what those look like, but Mia clearly is. Her breathing grows harsh, uneven.
“Then they do know what he is,” Ruby says, confirming my fear. “Dammit. Is there any kind of