Oppression (24 page)

24.

WILLIAM NEVER SAID anything about my Thanksgiving with Anna. If he was still angry, he kept it to himself. I did catch him checking over his shoulder every so often, but Kara must have kept the visit a secret, because I hadn’t seen any sign of Ryder.

“We should do something this weekend,” I thought out loud as I popped some frozen waffles in the toaster. In the past week, the two of us had taken to confining ourselves to each other’s company, unaffected by the world outside.

William was sprawled out on the couch, head buried in the weekly Headquarters newsletter.

“No can do,” he said without as much as a glance away from the article. He didn’t offer any more explanation than that. Did he taunt me with his ambiguity on purpose, or was it just in his nature to maintain a certain level of mystery?

“Why not?” I finally asked.

“We already have plans.”

“What plans?” I asked predictably. Without a beat, he answered, as if he’d been waiting to tell me for days, but didn’t want me to know it.

“We’re going somewhere.”

“Well . . . where are we going?”

“It’s a little out of the way, so we’ll be staying for the weekend,” he added without acknowledging my question.

I grabbed the waffles as they popped up and made room for myself on the couch, shoving William’s feet aside with my hips.

“So, you’re not going to tell me?”

“Nope,” he answered simply.

“Will you tell me if I guess?”

“Sure,” he said with a smirk as he set down his newsletter. “You’ll never guess.”

“Well, how will I know what to pack?”

“You’re already packed.” His sinister expression only added to his already stunning good looks, making it hard to be annoyed.

“How?”

“I packed for you last night when you fell asleep. The bag is in your closet.”

I nibbled one of the berries off of my waffle. “What if you forgot something?”

“I didn’t.” Confidence was never something he had to dig very deep to find.

“Swimsuit?” I questioned, hoping for a hint.

He shrugged. “Might need it.”

“What shoes did you pack, flip flops or tennies?”

“Both,” he grinned widely.

“What about underwear?” I blurted out.

“Yep.”

“You seriously dug around in my underwear drawer?” I asked completely mortified. What did he see? I wasn’t exactly the lingerie wearing type of girl. Horrifying images of pink Tuesday cotton briefs and old Hanes that had been washed too many times made me groan with embarrassment.

He laughed. “Don’t worry. I just grabbed and stuffed. I didn’t see anything.”

“Good,” I shot out, not really believing him.

As the day crept on, lingering in suspense of what was to come and when, none of my guesses got me any closer to our mystery destination. Between loads of laundry, I found out that we weren’t going out of state, but he wouldn’t tell me where in California. I had eliminated Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County, but I wasn’t exactly certain he
would
tell me if I had stumbled across the right answer.

Overly antsy, I’d finished all the dishes, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and William even helped me scrub the bathroom from top to bottom, making the place officially immaculate. Finally, after showers and dinner, he opened my closet and grabbed my bag.

“So, are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Well, how am I supposed to know if I’m ready if I don’t know where we’re going?”

“Nice try,” he said, beaming with excitement. “We’ve just got to stop downstairs before we leave. Nics and Sam are meeting us at Cearno’s.”

Without letting me look in my duffle, William took off to get the car with it in hand.

Nics and Sam were waiting on the sidewalk as I locked up my door, and I wondered why they weren’t inside enjoying a mocha blast or a strawberry sun tea. It wasn’t until I walked over to meet them that I saw the red and white CLOSED sign hanging from inside.

“Hey.” Sam spoke through the car window as William drove up. “Cearno said we could park in his spot. You wanna drive around back so we don’t have to lug our gear out here?”

“Gear?” I asked, picking up on the terminology.

“Yeah, it’s heavy,” Nics said as she slid into the back. Sam followed right behind leaving the front seat for me.

“So why is Cearno’s closed?” I asked a little worried for the future of the place. “It’s not closed for good, right?”

“What? No,” Sam laughed. “He always closes down for Lenaia.”

“Sam, come on,” William groaned.

“Lenaia?” I asked completely lost. “What is that?”

“What?” Sam hiked his shoulders up defensively. “You haven’t told her? How was I supposed to know?”

“Whatever. Just help me load the stuff into the trunk.”

I could hear the two of them bickering quietly from the back about what had just happened, but all I really had was a name. I realized that I hadn’t even seen what William had packed in the trunk. I had no idea what was being shifted and shoved around back there as they tried to fit everything in.

“So, you’ve never even heard of Lenaia?” Nics asked from behind me.

“No,” I admitted, turning to face her. “Should I have? It’s not some initiation thing is it?”

“No, it’s just a holiday festival. It’s really fun actually.”

“Oh come on, Nics, you too?” William complained as he re-entered the car. “Are you both completely incapable of keeping things to yourselves?”

“I just told her it was a festival, jeez. She was all worried you were dragging her off to some initiation ceremony or something.”

“Really?” he laughed. “Well, in a way it is. You’ll never forget your first Lenaia.”

As we continued down the seemingly infinite straightaway into the nothingness of the I-5 freeway, the evidence of the ever-present city began to taper off. I couldn’t imagine where we were going, but I realized this might be a very long drive. The blackness deepened as we left the city’s lights behind, and the mountains silently tucked themselves away effortlessly into the night, so well that I couldn’t tell where they ended and the sky began.

After several hours of driving through small town after small town, William exited unexpectedly. It was an exit that most would overlook. There was no street name or promise of distant civilization, just an anonymous cutaway that wound into the abyss of open space. Despite the apparent lack of any sort of gas station or pit stop, William showed no signs of stopping or re-entering the freeway. He simply kept on while the lights of our car were swallowed up in the natural folds of the terrain. Only after a few sharply bending curves did I catch sight of several other sets of taillights blinking in the distance like an airline runway outlining our path.

I looked around in all directions at the black emptiness surrounding us. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” William answered quickly, before the others could give anything away.

I raised my eyebrows, unsatisfied with his answer.

“Don’t worry,” he added. “Those are other Descendants ahead of us. We’re not the only ones headed this way.”

“Hardly,” Sam said.

“So I take it this is no back road to LA then?”

“Not so much,” Nics answered with a grin.

“Seriously, guys,” I urged. “What, is there some secret city out here in the middle of nowhere? I mean this isn’t even a paved road.”

Sam laughed at my paranoia. “I don’t know, William. I don’t think she likes surprises.”

“No, I do, I just . . . How do you know other
people
won’t follow us out here?” I asked, moving the conversation away from the topic of me.

Nobody answered.

“I guess we don’t,” Sam said from the back seat. “Nobody’s ever followed us before.”

“Like you’d notice,” Nics teased him.

“I’d notice,” he said defensively.

“Yeah.” She sounded unconvinced. “Like you
noticed
when Gino Piloske tracked you for three whole days for a class project.”

“Okay,” Sam countered. “First of all, Gino’s bloodline is Artemis. His ability is tracking.”

He paused for a while, satisfied with his response.

“And second?” Nics asked, egging him on.

“Do I even need a second?”

I smiled to myself, resisting the urge to turn around and watch them banter.

“Well, you said ‘first,’ which implies you have a second.”

“Fine.
Second
. I
did
know he was tracking me. I just didn’t want him to fail his project.”

“Yeah right,” she exclaimed.

“Shut up, Nics.”

“Oh, I’m just kidding around, jeez.”

I let the sound of their bickering fade to background noise as I mulled over my unanswered question. It was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know every little detail about how they lived.

“I’m sure they have security,” William said, glancing away from the road with a reassuring smile. He’d still been hanging onto my last words. “They have a major committee set this thing up every year. They would never let it go unprotected.”

“How long have you had Lenaia? I mean how long have you been celebrating it?”

“As long as anyone can remember.”

“Hey,” Nics interrupted belligerently from the back.

“Wow,” William reacted.

“Well, he’s reing bediculous.”

“What?” I asked aloud.

“Being ridiculous,” William interpreted.

“Sstopet, Sam,” Nics slurred. “I know what you’re tryindo.”

“Sam,” I said mildly scolding. This time I did turn around. “Is she drunk?”

“She was annoying me,” he returned with a shrug.

“You think just because I’m a little
tipsy
, I can’t fight you?”

Suddenly my vision blacked out, like the deep night sky had swallowed up the world around me. Everything was gone, but somehow still there. I clung to my seat, registering the fact that I could still feel.

“Hey,” I shouted. “What’s happening?” But my words were drowned out by the sound of everyone reacting at once. I wasn’t the only one who was blindly hurling through the black space that surrounded us.

“Nics, stop. We can’t see,” I heard William yell, but by then it was too late. She lifted her shield just in time for us to watch the car plow nose first into a ditch.

“Shoot,” Nics muttered as we looked around at each other.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked. Nobody seemed hurt.

“Yeah,” Sam answered, rubbing his head which had bumped against the window.

“Dammit, you guys,” William snapped after seeing no one was injured.

Nobody spoke. The silence seemed to deepen as he put the car in reverse, only to find that accelerating dug us further into the soft billowing dirt.

“Now what?” I dared to ask with harmless interest.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I haven’t seen a car in the rearview this whole time.”

“I told you we should have left earlier,” Sam said.

“That has nothing to do with it. If you wouldn’t have gotten so aggressive,” Nics spat.