Cadence turned to Lucy and asked how she was doing, and Lucy told her she was doing okay. I thought Lucy had acclimated very well to her new life, especially since she’d moved in with Tara. She was also taking online classes now and was enjoying them. “Do you think it would be okay if I started watching the training sessions?” Lucy was asking. My ears perked up. I couldn’t imagine Lucy wanting to get up early to go watch people work out. It sounded odd. But then, I guess she was just excited to get on with this as soon as possible.
My sister didn’t answer right away, so Lucy continued. “I know I can’t participate yet, but if I could watch that would be cool.”
It did not sound cool to me, but I would be happy to have Lucy there, so I said nothing. Cadence slowly nodded. “Yeah, sure. I’ll ask Aurora.”
“Thanks,” Lucy said, looking relieved. I wondered if she’d been thinking about asking that for a while.
Cadence smiled at her and then pulled herself up off of the couch like she’d been sitting the wrong way for too long and it hurt. “You should probably go do your homework before Mom blows a gasket.”
I couldn’t help but huff at her. I hadn’t even finished lunch yet. No one else would be running off to finish their studies. “Are you going back up there?” I asked, trying to figure out how much time I had.
“Nope,” my sister said definitively.
“How long did you say I’d be gone?”
“Like, a half-hour tops,” Cadence said as she approached the door.
I looked at the time on my IAC and figured my sister had actually been in Brandon’s apartment for about ten minutes. “Then I have twenty minutes.” I smiled at her deviously, hoping she wouldn’t go rat me out. I knew she wouldn’t.
Cadence shook her head at me. “You kids behave.” She put her hand on the doorknob and then froze. “Brandon, do you know where your dad is?”
Something about her tone caught my attention. I figured Cadence knew where Elliott was because it sounded like they’d been in the same meeting, and if Aaron told Cadence to come and talk to me, he likely told Elliott to go do something else. Clearly, she didn’t know where he was. Or... maybe she had another reason for asking....
“No. Out doing important Guardian stuff, I guess,” Brandon said with a shrug.
“Right.” Cadence let that sit for a moment, still holding the doorknob before she asked, “How’s your mom?”
It would have seemed like a strange question coming from Cadence, who rarely showed any interest in anyone else’s family at all, but she had just asked Lucy about her dad, so it wasn’t all that surprising.
Brandon and I had had a long IAC conversation about his mom just the day before while my mom thought I was reading my history assignment. “Better.” His face lit up a little bit, and I patted his hand. “I talked to her yesterday. Rehab seems to be working. She’s signed up to take college classes in the summer.” He was proud of his mom for the first time in a long time, I knew, and I was glad to hear she was finally getting the help she needed—thanks to Elliott. If he hadn’t pushed Amanda and paid for everything, she’d probably still be the dysfunctional mess of a woman Brandon had left in Oklahoma.
“That’s awesome.” Cadence looked as if she was actually leaving this time, and when she pulled the door open and said, “See you guys,” I was relieved to see her go. I love my sister—but she’s also my boss.
We all shouted goodbye, and I checked the pizza boxes. There was only one slice of pepperoni left, and I knew for a fact everyone else had already eaten their weight in it, so I scooped it up.
“You think you’ll get in trouble for staying so long?” Tara asked me, wiping her mouth on a napkin.
“Probably,” I said with a shrug. “But I’m going to anyway. She can’t keep me from doing my job later, and that’s all that matters. I won’t have time to hang out this afternoon with homework and going up on the roof to contact Holland.”
“I do not know how you live like that.” Lucy took another bite of cheese pizza, shaking her head.
I didn’t really know how to respond, so I didn’t say anything. Lucy wasn’t used to having the same sort of supervision I had always had, but she was right. My mom had taken it up several notches in the last few months. I knew she was worried I’d get hurt, but Jamie and Christian had both run tissue samples on me, and both of them showed I was indestructible. I didn’t think that was actually the case. Mina—Bonnie’s mother—had mentioned there was another girl like me before, and while I hadn’t been able to find any record of Heather, Mina told me she was gone, which made me think she’d been killed. If she could die, I could die. I just didn’t know how. And neither did my parents—which was why my mom kept me on a short leash most of the time.
The conversation shifted back to popular movies, and I tried to stay a part of it, even though my mind was wandering to other topics. I thought about what I might find out when I visited Holland. The crocopire seemed very explainable to me. If we knew they could shift into wolves and mist monsters, why not crocodiles? But I was eager to see if Holland still seemed ill and to see if I could get a more specific location on Spittle. I needed to convince my sister to go after him. While we continued to drag our feet, they were still out there planning, formulating ways to get us. I would’ve thought the attack in Shenandoah would’ve been enough to jar Aaron to his senses, but it hadn’t. Who knew when the next slaughter might take place? I might not be able to get them locations on all of our enemies, but I was pretty sure I could track down Spittle. And since he was just as much responsible for what had happened to Tara as anyone else, I was ready to turn him to ash.