Otherbound (40 page)

“Amara is back in Bedam,” he said. “I'm making her come back already. Please.”

The scissors moved a fraction of an inch away from Pat's chest. He saw muscles loosen in her hands. He dared take a breath but couldn't move yet.

“Amara contacted the mages? And you
helped
her?” Pat—Nadi—said. Only then did Nolan's eyes flicker from her hands to her face.

Of
course
Nadi could dig through Pat's memories when Nolan couldn't even touch Amara's. Nadi must know all about how they'd hunted through the notebooks for clues.

“She's coming back. I promise. I just wanted to know about Cilla—but talking to the mages didn't work and Amara was being stupid and she didn't care about Pat, and—she's coming back. I can still control her. I'm sorry. She's
in Bedam
! She'll be at the palace by noon. Sooner. Within the hour. I promise!”

Nadi tapped the flat points of the scissors against Pat's shut eyelids. “I know you do.”

“Please,” Nolan rasped.

“You're sweating a lot, Nolan. You're shaking. Is your control wearing off yet? What do you think will happen if you miss
your deadline? Do you think I'll go,
Oh, it's not like Nolan can do anything about it anymore, so I might as well forget about that family of his?
'Cause you're wrong.” It was as if Nadi was
trying
to sound like Pat instead of herself now, so much that it raised the hairs on the back of Nolan's neck. “I have a question for you: If you're making Amara turn back, how come you're here with me?”

She ran the scissors lightly along Pat's arm. She pricked, once, in the hollow of her elbow. The scissors were too blunt to poke through. She applied more pressure. The skin turned yellow.

“You might want to hurry back before Amara turns around, hey?”

“I … Please don't …”

“Go while you can, and your sister will be fine,” Nadi said.

“Pat!” Claudia shouted from a couple of feet away, over the heads of a rehearsing set of identically dressed patients. “Mr. Lopez wants to see you! We're starting in five minutes!”

“Be there in a sec!” Nadi shouted. She looked back at Nolan and smiled Pat's toothy grin. “I'll see you soon.”

Nolan fought his way through the crowd, his eyes trained on the exit.

“Nolan!” Sarah Schneider said brightly. “I didn't know you—”

Not now
, he wanted to say, but the exit called to him, and the words didn't come. He shoved past her, his eyes on that door, his mind back with Pat, and Sarah's voice barely registered.

He'd meant to sneak by his parents. Sarah's interruption had caught their attention, though. “Who was that girl? How's Pat doing?” Mom touched Nolan's shoulder as he passed. “We have seats over there.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“You're going in the wrong direction. Are you having a seizure?”

“No—could you just—give me a minute?”

“Now? Can't you wait until the break?” Some of the lights had gone out. A voice announced that the play was about to begin, and requested that everyone take their seats. A screech of the speakers caused the crowd to collectively wince, then laugh, because they were in a middle-school gym getting ready to watch a middle-school play, and the sun was shining, and they were in such good moods it hurt.

Nolan gripped fistfuls of his hair. He had to bring Amara to the palace. Now. Any moment, Nadi might peek at the crowd and see him lingering next to Mom.

“Nolan, just sit down,” Mom said, sounding stern now. “Oh, what are you doing to your
hair
? It's all messed up now—never mind. Grandma Pérez wanted to talk to you. Did you bring your report card like she asked?”

Anger bubbled up, the same way he'd felt it do so often
in Amara's body. It felt hot. Untamed. He couldn't let it out. Couldn't.

Walgreens
, he told himself, but guilt no longer helped.

“It's not like the play is that long,” Mom went on. “We'll be home before you know it.”

Nolan shook his head, trying to think of a way out, trying to … He blinked. The world turned green, like Amara's, and he saw a glimpse of Ilanne's hunched form on the grass.

He hadn't meant to do that. The pills were wearing off.

The headmaster walked onstage to test the microphone.

“Nolan!” Dad leaned toward him from his seat. “Sit down!”

Another blink, another flash of Amara's world, and the second he was back in his own, the words spilled from his lips: “Leave me
alone
!” Too loud. People were watching. His parents, Grandma Pérez, Sarah. “Just—shut—up! For once!”

The headmaster fell silent. A couple of heads turned.

Mom reached for his arm, but he yanked it away, and with his head spinning and hot, Nolan stalked past the audience, out of the gym, and back into the sun.

Nolan didn't have to announce himself to the palace guards. They took one look, saw the small Elig servant that Ruudde must've told them to be on the lookout for, and restrained his arms.

He let them. The faster Nadi saw that he'd returned, the better. He couldn't let Pat down. He couldn't let the pills wear off.
On Earth, he'd walked straight to the pool—a five-minute walk from Pat's school—and shut himself into a private changing room.

On the way there, he'd seen involuntary glimpses of Amara's world over half a dozen times. Fractions of a second. Snippets of noise.

Just when he'd started to forget what it felt like.

“I hate that it had to come to this, Mr. Santiago,” Nadi said. She—and even seeing her in Ruudde's body, it was so easy thinking of Ruudde as a
she
, now that Nolan knew—met Nolan in the courtyard. “I don't like threatening people. It just seems to be the only thing that works.”

“You're good at it,” Nolan said flatly once the guards released him. If he didn't play the part of the beaten-down victim well enough, Nadi might suspect something.

It wasn't hard. He felt beaten down plenty.

“Do I have to put you in a cell this time?”

“If you want to,” Nolan said.

Nadi thumped his shoulder. “You're learning.”

They put Nolan in the guest room where he'd talked to Nadi for the first time, around the corner from the cell block. They wanted him close to Cilla.

A handful of dusty books lay on the windowsill. Amara studied them while Nolan lingered in the background. Every time he heard steps that might be Nadi's or Jorn's, he snapped into control.
He couldn't let them open the door to see Amara and no one else directing her movements. Amara had asked Nolan to do exactly that, since it'd keep up appearances that he was on Nadi's side, but Nolan sensed her rage and helplessness every time. He could only sign a million apologies that helped her not one bit.

He wanted to go home to check on Pat—

—but he only dared sneak out for a few seconds at a time, standing up from the changing-room bench with shaky legs, taking his phone, deleting the missed calls, checking the texts. There were several, even though no one had followed him from the gym.

The oldest message was Dad's. Nolan read it in between unwanted blinks to Amara's world.
Pat saw you run. She cried onstage. Come back, Nolan.

Then another one, sent ten minutes later.
Tell us you're all right.

Five minutes after that, Mom had sent one, too.
Nolan, where are you?? We're not angry. We're worried. Please come back. We'll call Dr. Campbell, Ok?

He texted them that he was safe, then texted Pat,
I'm sorry about the play. And everything. Are you Ok?
He wanted to explain what was happening, but his fingers hovered uselessly over the phone. Nadi might take over again and know exactly what he told Pat—

—so he went back. He clung to Amara's world with all his might, from the books in her hands to the storm cover over the
window. The pool would close soon, and he couldn't afford to be woken up.

He'd never thought he'd
try
to get sucked in again.

Hours after his arrival at the palace, Nolan heard two short, sharp wails in the distance. The sign Amara and Ilanne had agreed on. The mages were ready to attack.

Nolan knocked on the door, then creaked it open. In the hallway outside his room, an unfamiliar guard looked up from her solitary card game. One hand went to her baton.

“May I talk to Ruudde?” Nolan signed.

“I'll pass on a message. Anything else?”

Nolan shut the door. He counted on Nadi considering him a top priority. He was right: within minutes, Nadi stood in the doorway. “If you or Amara have another brilliant escape plan, don't bother. I've placed a ward around the palace. No one crosses without my knowing about it.”

Nolan masked his reaction. Wards would make the mages' job harder. Distracting Nadi just became even more important.

“So, what is it?” She straightened her topscarf. “I do have a job aside from babysitting you, kid.”

“Can you explain what we're waiting for? I thought you wanted us gone as soon as possible.”

“We're arranging a boat. Storms over the Gray Sea are slowing us down.”

Backlash. Or Ilanne buying time to gather the other mages. Judging by the signal from before, she'd been successful. Now
Nolan just needed to keep Nadi busy while the mages infiltrated the palace. He needed to give Ilanne as much time as possible with Cilla.

“Is Cilla all right?” He didn't have to feign his concern.

“Of course she is,” Nadi said irritably. “We'd need you if she weren't.”

Nolan nodded, and he wondered how those movements came across now. Were they his or Amara's? He'd never controlled her body this long. He didn't know if he was becoming more like himself or more like her. Then—

—then Amara's body sagged. Just for a moment. Just long enough for her breath to be delayed by a half second. Just long enough for Nolan to know he was running out of time.

Their roles were shifting.

When he regained control, his head felt light and the world alien. He grasped at straying thoughts and bundled them together. He had to keep going and keep up his part of the distraction. “Is Cilla eating?” he asked in a burst of signs.

“We're not giving her much choice,” Nadi said. “Your pills are fading, aren't they?”

What did “not much choice” mean? A third spell on top of the curse and anchor, massive spells to begin with, was unthinkable. Nadi had to be threatening her. Her favorite weapon.