Shine (6 page)

Gina’s face froze. “This girl died in the plane crash?”

“Yes. Along with two hundred and fourteen other people.” Ritter aimed a sharp gaze at me. “So you’d better start talking.”

“Absolutely not,” Gina said. “My client has been completely forthcoming about the incidents of last Friday night. She knows nothing of this alleged meeting between the two boys.”

He ignored her. “Aura, when Logan passed on in the cemetery, did he mention his conversation with Zachary Moore?”

I didn’t need Gina’s advice to know what to do: shut the hell up.

“The more information you give us,” Ritter said, “the less we’ll have to extract from Zachary.”

A chill zipped among my internal organs. “What do you mean?”

“The FBI has transferred him into our custody.”

No.
I wanted to beg and scream, but could only emit a feeble “For how long?”

“Aura.” Gina’s voice held a warning.

“As long as it takes to get answers.” Ritter looked at Gina. “His parents are being released today, and they’ll be home tomorrow.”

“They’ll leave their son behind?” Gina asked.

“They have no choice.”

My mind whirled. What would the DMP do to Zachary? I’d heard of people being detained for weeks. How would he feel knowing his parents had been forced to abandon him?

“Can I see him?” I asked. “Please?”

“Aura, do not speak. Agent Ritter, let me get this straight.” Gina was in full-on lawyer mode. “You’re detaining a minor based on the claim of one fourteen-year-old ghost? Even if Zachary could talk to ghosts—which he can’t—since when is it a crime to do so?”

“It’s not a crime, it’s a curiosity. Zachary Moore is a pre-Shifter. We want to know how it happened.”

Aunt Gina slammed her hand on the table. “It
didn’t
happen. This ghost witness can’t lie, but she can be mistaken. I demand you set Zachary free.”

“Sorry.” Ritter peeled open another folder. “He didn’t help his case by threatening the officers who searched him at the airport.”

“Threaten how?” I reached for the file, which Ritter snatched away.

“Apparently he said, quote, ‘If you touch my mum or dad, I’ll
punch you so hard you’ll have eyes at the back of your head.’ ”

I would’ve laughed if I weren’t so close to throwing up.

“Charming fellow.” Ritter shut the file and pushed it aside. “You certainly know how to pick ’em.”

Right then I could’ve punched someone myself.

“We began to speculate,” Ritter continued. “Perhaps it wasn’t Logan who was special. Perhaps it’s Zachary. As the last person born before the Shift, maybe he’s some sort of pre-Shifter/post-Shifter hybrid. Do you know?”

I folded my hands and straightened my back, then put on a blank look that said,
I can keep my mouth shut all day
.

“Know this, Miss Salvatore,” Ritter growled. “We’ll find out if Zachary Moore is extraordinary. One way or another.”

“Did Logan tell you about meeting Zachary?” Gina asked once we were in the car with the doors shut.

I’d used the long walk out of the DMP headquarters and across the visitors’ parking lot to decide how to answer. It was an easy choice—I’d promised Zachary I’d never reveal
his
power, much less the fact that we could exchange powers with a kiss.

“Logan couldn’t tell me about something that didn’t happen. Ghosts can’t lie.” I jerked the seat belt across my chest.

“But the DMP has a witness.”

“You’re the one who said their witness was bull.” I checked my phone for messages so I could avoid her eyes. “The DMP is making stuff up.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them.” She turned the ignition with a quick
wrist snap. “But if this post-Shifter witness could be real, you need to tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” I started answering a text from my friend Jenna. She’d known Zachary was leaving last night and was wondering if he’d been on Flight 346.

HIS FLIGHT WAS EARLIER,
I Replied.
HE’S FINE, THX!

Gina kept talking as she drove out of the complex and onto the tree-lined parkway. “This is a whole new can of worms. If Zachary can talk to ghosts, they’ll want to know why. They’ll want to know if it has to do with him being the Last. Which leads back to you, as the First.” She plucked the phone from my hand. “Listen to me when I’m talking.”

I swallowed my anger, though it burned my gut. If Gina got too annoyed, maybe she wouldn’t take me to see Zachary’s parents at the deportation center. I needed to see the Moores myself. If they’d survived questioning unharmed, maybe Zachary had, too.

“I don’t know anything about a meeting between Logan and Zachary,” I told Gina in a calm, firm voice. “But Logan is definitely gone now, and I’m really, really scared for Zach.” The second sentence was the absolute truth.

Gina’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, hon. This must be hard, and I’ve made it worse by riding you all morning. I’m just trying to protect you.”

“I don’t know if you can anymore.” I turned toward the window so I couldn’t see her pain when she realized I was right. “I don’t know if anyone can.”

Aunt Gina’s lawyer friend Cheryl, who specialized in immigration cases, met us in the lobby of the deportation center in downtown Baltimore.

“You’re just in time,” she said. “We’re leaving for Dulles in fifteen minutes.” Cheryl led us to a nearby hallway, which smelled faintly of floor wax. “As their attorney, I have to make sure they catch their flight without further detainments.”

“How are the Moores?” Gina asked her.

“Ian’s a fighter. So’s his son, I hear.”

“You haven’t seen Zachary?” I tried not to shout. “How do we know he’s alive?”

“I’ve seen the surveillance tape of his arrest. If you ask me, his detention is extremely suspicious.”

“Suspicious how?” Gina asked.

“Usually when a minor doesn’t board a flight, the airline sends a security officer to search for them, not the FBI. And Zachary was arrested mere minutes after the explosion, before they officially suspected a bombing.”

I could barely believe my ears. “So he never should’ve been detained in the first place? Will they let him go now that that kid confessed to the suicide bombing?”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, hon.” Cheryl touched my shoulder briefly. “Now that he’s in DMP custody, I have to go through a whole different process. They claim they have cause to hold him, and I have to prove they don’t.”

A ball of rage began to form in my core. Zachary had been set up. The plane crash was just an excuse to get him back in DMP hands.

“They can’t make Zachary disappear,” Gina said, “even if he is a foreigner. We’ll get him out, Aura.”

“When?”

“Hard to say.” Cheryl sighed. “The DMP keeps putting up roadblocks in the court system. It’s like they planned this.”

They probably had, before grabbing us last week. It could be him
and
me stuck in there.

We entered a warmly decorated office, with plants and a sofa and a calendar with photos of dogs—those gray bird dogs, whatever they’re called. Not the harsh, prisonlike atmosphere I was expecting.

Ian and Fiona sat across a desk from a heavyset immigration officer in a yellow shirt and blue tie, who gave me a welcoming smile.

“Aura.” Fiona swept me into her slender arms and clung tight. “I’m happy you came.”

Happy.
It was so like her—so like Zachary—to gloss over the worst hurt. Though he’d acquired his dad’s Scottish accent, charm, and bluster, his mother had bestowed her endless English patience.

“Are you guys okay?” I realized my question’s stupidity. “I mean, are you hurt?”

“We’re fine, Aura.” Ian stood unsteadily, gripping the back of his chair and looking much older than his fifty-eight years. It seemed like he’d aged since I’d seen him yesterday. “It’s no’ us you should be worrying about.”

“Have you seen Zachary?” I asked him.

“Aye, too briefly.” He looked past me at his wife. “I dunno how we walked out of there. How could we leave our son behind to be—” Ian coughed twice, lowering his head and putting out a hand to stop us
from helping him. “He’s a brave boy, Aura. A very brave boy.”

“I know.” Zachary had stood up for me after we first met, when I was harassed by my classmates about Logan’s death. He’d stepped between me and an armed DMP agent when we were detained last week. And he’d caught me when I almost fell off a cliff racing to escape, though I could’ve easily knocked him off with me.

It was my turn to be brave for him.

“What can I do?” I glanced at the immigration officer, wondering how much we could say in front of him.

“Just keep yourself safe.” Ian pressed his hand on my shoulder to emphasize the last word.

The sadness in his eyes made my own feel full and hot. “I can’t believe they’re making you leave him behind.”

“Don’t worry about us. Here.” He pulled me close and patted my back. I put my arms around him, gasping at how frail he felt.

Then Ian whispered, “Someone will be contacting you shortly.”

I hoped he meant someone from MI-X who would not only help me, but also get Zachary released.

“We’ll call you the moment we arrive,” Fiona said.

“Can’t MI-X do something?” Gina asked. “They’re DMP’s counterpart. You’d think there’d be a mutual respect or agreement that—”

“Respect?” Ian’s rough voice rose again as he let go of me. “The DMP thinks we’re their servants, not their partners. But they’re frightened bairns shrieking at every bump in the night. I should know, I—”

He grimaced, then erupted into a hacking cough, longer and
stronger than before. Fiona helped him sit while he fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. The immigration officer drew one from the pocket of his own jacket slung over his chair.

“I’m sorry.” The officer held out the handkerchief.

“Sorry?” Ian’s green eyes filled with fire. “ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t give us our fuckin’ son, now, does it?”

“Darling …” Fiona touched his shoulder.

“Ach.” He bent over, elbows on his knees, hands clasped at his forehead. Slowly he dragged his thumbs over his salt-and-pepper brows to calm himself.

My heart crumpled. I’d seen Zachary make that exact gesture a hundred times since his dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Sometimes in history class I’d catch him doing it and have the worst desire to stroke the angles of his face, smooth every worry line until his eyes filled with peace.

I knew it destroyed Ian to not be able to provide for his family—and worse, to be the one who needed caretaking. Despite the power he once wielded in MI-X, he was helpless to protect his own son.

If Zachary wasn’t released soon, this ordeal would surely hasten Ian’s death. And if Zachary couldn’t be at his father’s side at the end, my kindhearted boyfriend would be consumed by misery and rage. Like a living shade.

I’d do anything to stop that from happening. Anything.

A
ura.” On the phone, Megan sounded like she’d been crying. “Sorry I’m running late.”

“What’s wrong?” I took a seat on the city bus headed down Charles Street. “Is it Mickey?” Megan’s morose boyfriend, Logan’s older brother, was the usual cause of her tears.

“It’s everything else.” She sniffled. “We’re doing three viewings tonight for Flight 346 victims. That’s why I can’t meet you on time.”

“Did you have to talk to their ghosts?” At her family’s funeral home, Megan translated dead people’s wishes for their services.

“One of them, this fourteen-year-old girl. She said she won’t pass on until her little sister stops crying. Sometimes I hate this job.”

Megan rarely complained to me about work. She couldn’t wait to take over the business one day and make it more ghost-friendly,
catering to goths and punks or anyone who wanted drama with their final exit.

“I never cry when strangers die,” she told me as my bus rumbled past row homes in various states of repair—some boarded up and falling apart, some with full flower gardens and painted porches. “But I can’t stop thinking about this crash. On TV it’s nothing but Flight 346, Flight 346. I feel like I know every person on that plane, even the ones who aren’t our clients.”

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically, though I’d tried to avoid OD’ing on disaster coverage. Maybe it was callous, but I was too worried about the living to mourn the dead.

I thought about the fourteen-year-old girl Megan had mentioned. Could she be the DMP witness who saw Logan and Zachary talking in the airport?

“How was your interrogation?” Megan asked.

I was relieved to hear she knew nothing about Zachary from watching the news. Gina said the DMP wouldn’t release his name to the press, supposedly because he was a minor. But I wondered if it was really because they didn’t want the public scrutiny.

An old guy in a floppy hat got on the bus and sat in front of me. I looked around, but didn’t see any seats away from people who might hear. “I can’t talk about it.”