said in a choked voice. “He loves you. He always did. He told me he sent people to check on you, your safety meant everything to him—”
“You know what he sold in the Box, right?” Sammi felt the thrill of forbidden knowledge; she only knew this because she’d heard it from Colton, who overheard it from a couple of the raiders who used to go up to the Box for medicine trades. They’d stay there for a few days and party, and then return to the shelter they were in before coming to New Eden. “Drugs. Booze. Sex. Like, as in prostitutes?”
She spat out the last word, making it as ugly as she could, curling her lips around the syllables—and still there was a little thrill to the revelation. She realized that until now she had been trying not to believe it, trying to explain it away. She’d told Colton to shut the fuck up, that her dad traded food and medicine, that he protected people, helped the ones who needed it. But of course that was a lie. Just another one of her father’s lies.
“Kind of funny,” she said, making her voice as bored as she could. “My dad’s a pimp, and Cass, well, since she’ll fuck anyone, I guess that makes her his whore.”
Valerie’s arm shot out so fast that Sammi didn’t have time to duck. The slap was more shocking than painful, hard and stinging and making her head whip around. She bit her lip, and tears stung her eyes. She put her fingertips to her mouth and touched blood.
“Oh my God, Sammi,” Valerie said, horrified. “Oh my god I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean, oh, please—”
But what Sammi felt was victory, a mean and hungry victory, and she bared her teeth in a snarling grin. The hot, stinging impression on her cheek where she’d been struck meant that she had won. “No worries. I’d be pissed too. I mean, you’ve been so nice to my dad. Look at you, in your little skirts and all, and with your sewing, you probably thought you could make a home for you guys, with curtains in the window and a hope chest or whatever, right?”
Valerie made a horrified sound in her throat, a convulsion of shock and grief. Sammi knew she was hurting her, but she’d been hurt so many times and it wasn’t like anyone was very concerned about that, was it? Valerie—with her mended dresses and inspirational quotes and wind chimes—was just pathetic. Sammi was doing her a favor. She’d either deal with this or not; she’d get over her dad or she’d sink like a stone, and then she’d be the one who wasn’t careful when she ate her salad, or who went on the mainland without a weapon, or who walked into the water until it filled her lungs. Whatever. It wasn’t Sammi’s fault.
“I mean, I guess you could still do that,” she muttered. “Get dad to build you a little picket fence. You’ll just have to move Cass in with you, so you guys can share him.”
Valerie had been backing away from her, little stumbling steps, her sneakers too white, as though she’d found bleach and soaked them. But now she turned and ran, weaving and unsteady, heading for the path that led to her place, the sound of her wailing eerie and heartbroken.
“Sammi,” Sage cried. Sammi had almost forgotten she was there, on her knees in the dirt, up against the house. “Sammi, look.”
Jammed through the slot in the side of the house were fingers, the nails torn and bloody, deep gouges in the skin.
Phillip’s fingers.
Chapter 12
CASS WOKE FEELING like teeth were working her head from the inside. Her eyes were gritty and her mouth tasted like the fetid rot in the bottom of a trash can. She staggered out of the bed after checking on Ruthie—a trembling hand pressed to her cheek, feeling the warmth and her daughter’s steady pulse, calmed by the sight of her hair tangled and cascading over the pillow—and down the stairs, skipping the third one from the top, the one that squeaked. It was already getting late, the sun rising in the sky, and people would be up in the house. Cass heard voices from the kitchen and slipped out the back way, the damp cold hitting her like a washcloth dipped in ice water.
She went down to the shore and did her morning routine there. She brushed her teeth twice with the kaysev stub, spitting over and over again into the river. This time, she checked the other shore first, and there were a few of them there already, though they looked sleepy, too, bumping and stumbling into each other as they got as close to the water as they could. They kept up a steady stream of muttering, but it wasn’t the desperate hungry keening that signaled a hunt. Cass tested the air with a damp finger—sure enough, she was downwind. And sheltered by the overhanging willow that was coming back into leaf, they couldn’t see her.
On another morning Cass might watch them for a while, taking in the details of the clothes they’d been wearing since before they turned, of what was left of their hair. It could be a fascinating exercise, looking for clues to who they’d been—a gold watch that still hung on a bony wrist, the remains of a tattoo in the ruin of a bicep, a hank of dreadlocks stringing across a filthy scarred scalp; a T-shirt with a now passé slogan or a skirt with last season’s flared hem.
But today she didn’t care. She just didn’t care anymore. After last night…dear God, the boy had looked so terrified, his skin already getting the sheen. He had to be what…two days in? What had they served two days ago?
It was a useless exercise, since everyone was allowed to visit the pantry freely and help themselves to the snacks the cooking staff left out each day, bowls of greens and pans lined with kaysev “cookies,” the hard little nuggets studded with dried berries and sweetened with the syrup made from cooking the juice crushed from kaysev stalks.
It was just impossible to know, especially since the kids liked to spend their free days on North Island, frequently plucking raw kaysev to avoid coming back and eating at the community table. Cass understood that, remembered how much she’d wanted an identity of her own at that age, how she’d cherished the fleeting moments of freedom when she and her friends could pretend that they never had the homes and parents and lives they were all so desperate to outgrow. She knew the kids stole kaysev wine from the pantry, that they’d learned how to roll their own cigarettes. She even knew where they kept their little weed patch, although she hadn’t been sure it was the kids’ and didn’t feel right turning it under or trying to catch the gardeners in the act. It wasn’t her place to judge—that was for damn sure, especially now.
She thought of the little band of New Eden kids, Phillip and Colton and Kalyan and Shane, all the girls—Kyra and Sage and especially Sammi, oh, Sammi, and the thought of her hit Cass with a fresh assault of dread and fear and guilt. She had to talk to Sammi, had to explain again how they must never, ever eat anything that hadn’t been grown on Garden Island, that hadn’t been checked and rechecked and prepared by the kitchen staff. But how could she get Sammi to listen? What if Cass had had a chance to reach them, warn them, and had squandered it?
What if Phillip was her fault
No, no, she couldn’t do that, wouldn’t do that. It didn’t help. And God, it hurt, it hurt so much to wonder about all the ways she’d failed and people she’d hurt, if she indulged that kind of thinking for even a minute she’d never get up off her knees in the mud at the edge of the river, she’d just sink into it until it covered her over and buried her. And that wasn’t happening, not as long as Ruthie lived.
Cass splashed her face with water and dried it with the cloth she kept in her kit. She squatted to relieve herself, the urine splashing into the brackish edge of the river, and as she watched the Beaters it almost looked like they were trying to copy her, crouching and crab walking at the water’s edge.
Only…they weren’t
