Page 55 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
Marion shakes her head. “Not about Alice.”
There’s a tone Marion’s got—it’s her tell, and years of game nights have me tuned into it. “What is it?”
Marion sighs. “The person she’s been messaging most with for the past few years, love_cookies210, they don’t exist. No other internet activity whatsoever. Kind of odd.”
“Indeed it is,” I breathe out. It lines up too close to the missing hikers and their nothingness. Lots of pieces falling together, but none of them fit yet. “You thinking Sector?”
Marion shrugs. “Nothing we could dig up, Wyatt. Your girl’s good, but someone’s got an eye on her. Sector, or one of theotheragencies.”
The feeling that whatever’s coming our way is closing in on something that’s too intimately tied together for my likingdescends upon me like a summer storm, fast and violent. I stare out the big front window at Alice.
Barnes is holding his side, he’s laughing so hard, and she’s got tears streaming down her cheeks as she cackles. But I know how fast a storm can change directions, and Alice is a force of nature.
I wonder how long I’ve got ’til she decides to bolt on me.
Chapter 25
Alice
“Alice!” Fallon laughs, throwing back her dark, glossy waves. “What makes you think you have achoice? I’m the head bitch in charge, if you haven’t noticed.”
I sigh, resting my elbows on the farmhouse table that’s become deeply familiar to me. Old protest songs leak from the boombox on the vintage credenza. The corkboard at my back is far from empty after our visit to Dr. Waterhouse and our…encounteryesterday afternoon. As always, the space smells of rich spice and wool sweaters, which soothes me. And even though Wyatt ran home to grab some supplies for Halloween, his pine-and-woodsmoke scent still lingers in the air and on my skin like a comforting blanket.
“I’m just not sure if I’m up for it,” I admit, curling my fingers into the pockmarked surface of the table. “Yesterday was…a lot, Fallon.”
She frowns at me. Apparently, saying no to a girls’ night out with Fallon is a serious offense, at least judging from how violently she starts zesting one of the limes. “If you’re not okay with hedgerider life,” Fallon warns me from the counter, hervoice low and firm, “then you gotta cut my brother loose, Alice. That boy is fallinghard.”
My head snaps up at that. “No, no, Fallon,” I say, desperately backpedaling, making incoherent gestures with my hands. “The hellhounds, Sector, a friendly little shootout in a parking lot? I can handle that. It’s…”
Fallon frowns at me then, putting the zester down and striding over to where I’m seated at the table. There’s an empty glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in front of me—I could drink a hundred more, but I’m trying to be reasonable—and my notebook is open, my fingers cramping from a desperate attempt to collect all my theories.
“Okay. So if it’s not that, then what exactly is it? You’ve been weird all day,” she says, powerful hands gripping the back of the chair opposite me. I stare at the tattoos exposed by her rolled-up sleeves for a long moment, searching for the right words.
When I don’t find them, I bite down on my tongue, roughly dragging a hand through my hair. My skin goes hot, heart pounding furiously in my chest. I don’t know how to tell her what I’m feeling. That yesterday reminded me of the past, of my grandpa back on the farm. Of the fact that I’ve never truly been able to shake the feeling it’s my fault, somehow.
Maybe if I hadn’t been there, my grandpa wouldn’t have defended the farm so fiercely. Maybe if he hadn’t seen that rare slice of land as the only way his daughter and grandchild could actually survive the days to come, he might have just complied with the soldiers. Maybe then he would’ve left with my grandma, and maybe we would have found somewhere safe. Maybe then the sound of bullets and the sight of those guns wouldn’t have sent me into such a spiral.
I’ve hidden it fairly well, I think. Barnes and the citrus were a good distraction, but once the adrenaline wore off, the dread seeped in. “Look, something happened when I was a kid,” Ifinally say, looking up to meet her eyes. “The agents with the guns yesterday afternoon just reminded me of it. I’m a little shaken.”
Understanding dawns on Fallon’s face, so vulnerable and impossibly gentle that my throat catches. “Oh,” she says softly, draping herself over the back of the chair. “I get it, Alice. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
I shrug. “Of course you didn’t,” I reply, pulling the sleeves of my thick oatmeal-colored sweater over my hands. “I didn’t tell you.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Fallon asks, something mischievous flashing in her gaze. I raise my brows expectantly as she stands up straight, her hands pressed together in front of her chest. “Over drinks? At girls’ night? We can get drunk and cry and maybe vandalize one of my ex’s cars!”
Despite myself—and the sour pit of despair in my belly—I laugh so hard I snort, which sends Fallon into a bout of laughter, too. I have to admit, it feelsgood. It feels good to be around people who have been through shit. It makes it easier. A lot of the people at OrthCon lived through the Catastrophes and the Reformation, sure. But they weathered those years from behind the gates of sprawling compounds. Some of them were even able to leave the country, only returning when things got better. We aren’t the same.
But the Hayes kids? They get it, just like Fallon said. And they all seem to understand that sometimes I need gentleness, and other times I need gallows humor.
“Besides, Alice, you should know stuff like that doesn’t usually happen,” Fallon adds as her laughter fades. “Sector doesn’t usually intervene. At least not like that.”
I falter, chewing on my lower lip. Wyatt said the same thing last night. Neither one of them seems to understand that their statements only make memoreworried. What if I’mthe problem? What if it’s me being here in Blackbird Hollow that’s causing Sector to intervene more directly—with outlawed weapons, nonetheless?
“Yeah,” I reply with a forced smile. “Well, yesterday was free exposure therapy, I guess.”
Fallon snorts, turning back to the counter. “You’re fucked up, Blythe.”
“Takes one to know one, Hayes,” I shoot back.
