I nodded. Still, Morgan had given in a little too quickly when Cal had announced that he and Dana were going to surveil the warehouse.
“You guys wait here,” Cal had ordered.
There had been something about Morgan’s face as he’d clamped his mouth shut that told me he was actually hesitant to disagree with Calvin.
Was the super-G-T seriously
scared
of my best friend, I now wondered.
Morgan did his read-my-mind-without-actual-telepathy thing. “Not scared, darling. Cautious,” he said quietly to me out of the corner of his mouth.
Still, it was enough to make me think. Hard.
How
were
we going to convince a kind of scary Calvin to submit to the detox procedure? I just couldn’t imagine him volunteering to be strapped onto that operating table in Garrett’s dad’s office.
And as Garrett went into Calvin’s car to get his jacket—it was getting nippy—I whispered to Morgan, “Do you honestly believe there’s a chance that the detox will work, or are we just using it as an excuse to put Calvin down, like a rabid dog?”
“Good analogy,” he said. “There’s no cure for rabies, either—and it makes dogs both terrified and insane. If your dog got rabies, wouldn’t you want to be humane?”
It wasn’t quite an answer—and yet it was, and my heart sank. “But Cal’s not a dog,” I whispered back fiercely.
“So we should treat dogs better than we treat people?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have time, but even if I had, I’m not sure how I would’ve answered that.
But not only did Garrett rejoin us, but Cal and Dana also came running back to the car, their footsteps soft and quick on the pavement.
“There are definitely people in there,” Cal said, sounding a little too gleeful, considering just how dangerous this was. If we got caught, Dana, Morgan, and I would be kidnapped and sold as slaves, while Cal and Garrett would be murdered where they stood. Of course, if we survived, we had
Convince Calvin that we’re going to save him while really we kill him before he jokers
at the top of our to-do list. In light of that, slavery and murder seemed almost acceptable.
“Three people in a small room, here in the back,” Cal continued. “There was a skylight on the roof that we looked through, and we think we saw her.”
“What?
Her?
You mean, Lacey?” I asked, looking sharply at Dana.
Her face was impassive. “I’m not positive. We can’t be sure…”
Calvin made an impatient sound. “It was her,” he insisted. “Seriously. It had to be.”
“That girl—the second girl—was wrapped in a blanket, and we only saw her face for a moment,” Dana started.
“But she looked exactly like Dana. Identical eyes,” Cal said. “Plus she was the right age.”
Dana nodded carefully.
“The second girl,” I repeated. Cal had said there were three in this back room. “Who’s the first girl? And who else is with them?”
“This is where it gets extra crazy,” Cal said. “The first girl was April. For real, Sky. It was April, from school.”
I frowned. “Wait.
April
April? As in, crazy April from last year?”
Calvin and I had become friends under extremely stressful circumstances—to put it mildly. I’d been the new kid at Coconut Key Academy, and Cal and I had bonded over lunch—just in time to save each other from a disgruntled student named April who had started waving two very lethal-looking guns around in the middle of the school quad. The consensus had been that she was attempting to commit suicide-by-cop, and for some weird reason had decided that I should also die that day.
Long story short, everyone had lived, but April had been arrested. I’d always assumed she’d been transported to some court-ordered psych ward. Although the mysterious circumstances surrounding that whole ordeal, and the ominous words April had whispered to me—
You. You’re one of us—
before the cops took her away, had recently made me wonder if April was a G-T.
Cal nodded. “Yup. That April. But it’s weird. She looks…better than she did before. Like, not so crazy. Like she has her shit together. I dunno. That doesn’t make sense if she’s being rented out to Destiny addicts. Although maybe her last owner was nice—”
“Cal,” Dana interrupted him.
“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry. I forgot that Destiny addicts can’t be nice. My bad.”
“Three people in the back room,” Morgan said, bringing us back on track. “I assume the third’s a guard?”
“Looks like it,” Dana reported, “although I didn’t see any weapons. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one.”
“The guard’s a woman?” I asked.
Dana nodded. “Older woman. Midfifties,” she said in a tone that was carefully devoid of emotion. She sounded like she was reciting a laundry list. “Short, gray hair. Military apparel, but again, not visibly armed.”
“How about the rest of the warehouse?” Morgan asked. “Anyone else there?”
Cal nodded. “We couldn’t see inside, but Dana used her G-T mojo. She could feel that there’re a dozen people in the front of the warehouse.”
Dana turned to me. “When we were looking through that skylight, we saw a series of pipes that makes me believe there’s a water source—a bathroom or a kitchen—in the next room over from where the guard is with the two girls. If we can flood that area fast, the three in the back will come out the back door while the guards in the other part of the warehouse go out through the doors in the front.”
I nodded. That made sense. For at least a short time, April and the other girl—maybe, please God, it
was
Lacey—would be alone outside with a single guard. And us. One against five G-Ts plus Cal and Garrett were odds that I liked. Provided we could get the two girls into the car and zoom out of there before the twelve people from the front of the warehouse stopped us.
Still, I glanced at Cal, remembering the last time I’d used my water-based TK to try to help. “You sure you want me to—”
Dana cut me off. “Just do it.”
————
It was a good thing that adrenaline was my best friend when it came to channeling my G-T abilities. Because at the moment? Adrenaline and I were having a serious bonding session.
I could feel my heart racing as I pictured Dana’s helpless sister inside that warehouse, and my heart pumped even faster.
It was now or never. I could sense the water inside that warehouse, too. A lot of it. I could
feel
the pulsing rhythm of the water traveling through the pipes, just as surely as I could
feel
my own blood working its way through my veins.
Thum-THUM. Thum-THUM
.
All of these girls, taken and used—for what? Why did this need to happen to innocent people? Why did Cal—my best friend and one of the greatest people I’d ever met—find himself sentenced to almost-certain death because of greedy, selfish people like Rochelle?
Why?
I was ANGRY! SO ANGRY! SO!
ANGRY!
Maybe a little
too
angry, come to think of it.
Water burst out of the pipes with such force that the first-floor windows exploded outward, sending shards of glass flying through the air.
For a moment, my mind sent me back to that day in the school quad with April—the day that Calvin had saved my life and I’d saved his. The day that April had been taken away in a police vehicle. Windows had shattered on that day too.
This time? I knew the destruction was my own doing.
I took a step away and covered my head with my hands to keep any flying fragments from hitting me. Dana had draped her body over Cal’s, while Morgan shielded Garrett. Water roared out from the building and onto the pavement, picking up bits and pieces of debris as it dispersed into smaller rivulets on the slope of the driveway.
The next sound was the back door as it burst open.
Twilight had surrendered to true darkness, and the light from the open doorway illuminated the pitted ground. By now, Cal, Dana, Morgan, Garrett, and I were all tucked off to the side, huddled behind a rusted and long-forgotten blue mailbox, our figures blending into the dark outlines. Around our feet, water rushed and twisted as it seeped downstream toward the storm drains.
“Careful! Step carefully!” It was the voice of the guard—the older woman, barely audible over the roar of the water. She held the door open, and I could see that her boots were soaked through as water rushed around her calves and escaped out the doorway.
A teenage girl splashed through the doorway behind her, brown hair mashed against her wet face. Her T-shirt stuck to her chest, and she swung her arms wildly to keep her balance as the flooding water whipped around her legs.
Calvin was right. It was definitely our old friend April.
“Where’s Ell?” the guard asked her.
April squeegeed her hair back from her face. “What? I thought you had her, Miss Aurora!”
“I didn’t. I don’t!” They both turned to look back into the building.
Dana drew in her breath sharply and said, “Lacey’s still in there!” She moved, as if to charge through the door and into the flooding building.
But Morgan said, “Wait! Let me.”
“Who’s out there?” the older woman demanded as both she and the girl turned sharply toward us.
Meanwhile, Morgan had started…undressing? He pulled off his shirt and yanked off his jeans and his underwear, too.
“Seriously?” Garrett said, but I knew what Morgan was doing, and I tried to help him.
“Hold this,” Morgan said, thrusting his clothes into Garrett’s arms.
He dropped into a four-legged position and, without hesitation, morphed into animal-mode. But this time, instead of a pit bull or a dachshund or even a Portuguese water dog, Morgan opted for a…
horse
?
If we were surprised, I can only imagine what it looked like to April and her guard. An enormous horse—and I’m talking majestic white stallion—just suddenly appeared from behind a relatively tiny mailbox and galloped toward them.
“
What the hell!
” April hollered. She pushed the guard out of the way as Morgan rushed into the building, his hooves clip-clopping and splashing through the flooded walkway.
And that really should’ve been a clue. Along with calling the so-called guard
Miss Aurora
, April had just kept the older woman from being harmed. So…maybe Miss Aurora
wasn’t
a guard?
But Miss Aurora was now completely spooked and probably believing they were under attack. She fumbled in her jacket and pulled out a small but deadly handgun as she moved toward our hiding place.
Calvin either wasn’t paying attention, or he hadn’t done that particular math equation (respectful title of
Miss Aurora
plus April saving Miss A’s life most likely equals Miss A is neither a guard nor one of the bad guys), because before she could point the weapon in our direction, he let out an animallike growl and leaped onto the top of the mailbox. His movement was stealthy and graceful and terrifying as he extended his legs and balanced effortlessly atop the slope of the metal box. Dana and I stood up too, although something inside of me kept me from reaching out and touching him.
“Calvin, don’t,” I started to say, but he’d already blasted Miss Aurora with his crackling, blue-tinged electrical current, and she screamed in pain and fell onto the ground, the weapon flying out of her hands.
Dana was there instantly, and she scooped the gun up, mostly because April was frozen in place, staring at Cal.
April’s expression quickly morphed from pissed to scared. “Oh my God, you’re an addict!” she shouted at Cal.
At that same moment, the truth of what was happening here registered with Dana, too, as she looked from April to Aurora. “Oh my God, you’re
both
G-Ts!” Dana shouted at them.
It was then, in that eureka moment of
Hey, we’re almost all G-Ts here, except for the kindhearted Destiny addict who’s still and admittedly kinda creepily perched up on that postal box
, that Morgan came galloping back out of the warehouse with a blanket-covered girl on his back. She was clutching his neck, his horse mane blowing gracefully in the wind like they were on the cover of one of those historical romance novels my mom liked to read, where everyone always wins their happily-ever-after at the end. Always.
But before Dana could win at least a part of her HEA by finding out if that girl riding Morgan really was her long-lost sister, Garrett said, “Heads up!”
Because a whole pack of people came rushing toward us. It was the dozen who’d been up at the front part of the warehouse. No doubt someone had heard Miss Aurora scream when Cal zapped her. Or they’d heard Morgan’s galloping feet, or…
Let’s face it, this little rescue operation had left its stealth status behind a long time ago.
But chances were that whoever was sharing this warehouse with three unguarded G-Ts was probably also not part of an illicit Destiny ring.
Sadly, Calvin still hadn’t figured that out. The sky lit up blue, and the world erupted.
“Cal! Don’t!” I heard Dana shout, although my ears rang so loudly, I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard her or if I’d just read her lips. She’d swiveled and changed directions, running toward Calvin. Watching her was like watching a movie scene in slo-mo. She crossed and uncrossed her arms over the front of her body as she signaled him to cut it out. She shook her head and bellowed “
No!
” over and over again—to no avail.
Because, when I turned to look at Calvin, he wasn’t looking at Dana. His eyes weren’t even open as he turned his face to the sky and pointed his hands rod-straight in front of him, extending his fingers into the air like ten makeshift gun barrels. Most awful of all was that Calvin’s lips were curled up into a menacing smile as he unloaded his terrible Destiny-induced power into the crowd.
Blue lines shot from his fingers, the stringy, thin angles of the laser-light trails reminding me of a Taser blast. And I knew that the damage he was causing was amplified by all the water on the ground. Currents were traveling along the pavement, carried along by the floodwater. All twelve of the people rushing to the rescue fell down and writhed on the pavement. April fell too, her body convulsing as Cal’s power lapped through her in nauseating waves. As I watched, horrified, the blue electrical trail found its way to Miss Aurora as well, and she fell to her knees.