Chapters (42)
- TITLE PAGE
- COPYRIGHT PAGE
- DEDICATION PAGE
- CONTENTS
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-EIGHT
FOR A SINGLE DAY, I wondered if we could cancel prom, avoid the whole thing, but then I realized that the Mazikin were watching, and that no matter what we did, they would know. Better they come after us in a way we could plan for than to come up with something we couldn’t anticipate.
I talked to Henry once or twice over the next few weeks. He was lying low after the Jewelry District Massacre, in which twelve individuals were murdered in what was thought to be some sort of turf fight between vigilante groups. The police were apparently seeking connections between these killings and the attacks on the homeless camps, seeing as some of the individuals killed in the warehouse had been survivors of the earlier raids. Nancy, my PO, and her pals on the force came to talk to me informally a few times, but seeing as there were no witnesses, no physical evidence, and about a million other, more plausible perps, they eventually decided to leave me alone and spend the taxpayers’ dollars elsewhere.
The Mazikin were lying low, too, though we weren’t sure if it was because they didn’t want to draw more attention to themselves or because they were busy planning something horrific. We patrolled every night, but the streets were eerily quiet. We began to wonder if human informants were alerting the Mazikin to our movements, making it easier for them to avoid us and more human attention.
Along with Jim and Malachi, I obsessively watched every student at Warwick High, wondering which of them was on the wrong side. But whenever I could, I avoided the cafeteria, preferring to eat outside with Ian and let him distract me for a half hour each day. Seeing Laney with Malachi made me want to hurt her. Even the idea of them together added fuel to my training sessions with my Lieutenant, which left us both spent and aching. More than once, I hit him harder than I should have. More than once, he made me pay for it. More than once, Raphael had to be called in to fix us up afterward so we didn’t go to school the next day looking like we’d participated in a prison riot.
My times with Ian were the only moments I felt normal and even the slightest bit happy. Seeing him smile reminded me why all the vigilance and training was worth it and helped ease the ache of missing Malachi a little. I hung out with him at a party one night when it was my turn to guard our friends and realized how much I enjoyed his company. I even attended a few of his home games, though I spent the time staring at the spectators, trying to figure out which of them were Mazikin spies. Time was running out.