33 Clean Out Your Skeletons from the Closet
Clean Out Your Skeletons from the Closet
We have to get out of here before Adele comes back.
“You let us walk in here blind, right into a trap,” Calvin says.
“No, I followed you into a trap that you helped Adele set.” My guilt doesn’t quite blot out my anger.
Calvin swears, drags himself to his feet, and looks for an escape.
“You can’t get out,” Meredith says bitterly. “Trust me. We’ve all tried.”
“We’ve all messed up,” Zara says, “letting Mommy Dearest play her mind games with us. Now pull it together and let’s get the hell out of here.”
I call out in desperation, thinking of Eldi’s watch, lying on the table. “I know you’re not just a watch. If you want to get Eldi out safely, get Doug and Dave. The Winnebago.”
The watch flickers on. I can only hope it can do something.
“Go bags and the antidote to the werewolf suppressant,” Zara says suddenly. She follows my example and speaks to the watch, quickly relaying a set of directions. “Tell them where your bag is, too, Meredith; I know you have one prepared.”
“Are you sure you can trust either of them?” Calvin asks me quietly.
“You’re one to talk,” Meredith snaps at him. “Can we trust you? I was the one who called you, tried to warn you and Reggie. Which I wouldn’t have done if I’d realized you were a double-crosser passing information on to Adele.”
Calvin looks like she’s slapped him. To me he says, “I’m sorry, Reggie. I swear I stopped as soon as I realized what Eldi was.”
“Now isn’t the time,” I say. “Zara’s right. It’s been Adele all along, turning us against each other.”
“You finally figured that out, did you?” Zara says. “I was serious when I offered to help you the other night. That’s why she locked me in here. I didn’t tell her where you were.”
“Right, well, if we’re working together now,” Calvin says, “let’s brainstorm. You know the place best, you know your—you know Adele. How do we leave when Doug and Dave get here?”
“We can’t go out the way we came in,” I say. “She left that option to lure me in. I’m sure of it. That will be the first place she checks, if it isn’t already locked down. Think unexpected, anything ridiculous she won’t have planned for.”
Meredith doesn’t hesitate. “The launch pad, the only entrance she won’t be expecting us to take because there’s nowhere to go. It’s on top of a cliff.”
“Can you fly anything?” Calvin says. “I can’t.”
“No, but you said think ridiculous options,” Meredith answers.
Calvin swears. “Maybe we could climb down, or maybe the robots—”
“The Winnebago can fly if Doug or Dave or the watch can get it here,” I say.
“Of course it can,” Calvin mutters.
“I hope you were listening,” Zara shouts toward the watch. “Tell Doug or Dave. However that works. Who the hell are Doug and Dave, by the way?”
“We have to get out of here, though, if Doug and Dave don’t come for us,” Calvin says.
The door clicks open as Calvin speaks, and Dave appears in the shadows around the doorframe. I’ve never been so thrilled to see him.
“Zara, meet Dave,” I say.
Dave makes quick work of the door locks. Eldi hesitates like a frightened kitten in the back of the cage when I try to coax her out.
“Please, Eldi, it’s me, I promise.” She wordlessly creeps forward with Calvin and Dave, both coaxing her along.
It takes everything in me not to scoop her up.
Meredith is already grabbing our weapons and the watch from the table.
Zara accepts the syringe that Dave hands her with one of his tentacles and steps toward Calvin.
“Nice to meet you, Dave,” she says as she moves toward Calvin with the syringe.
Zara gives Calvin a sardonic look when he glares daggers at her.
“You want your powers back, right? This is the antidote; it will speed things up. Or if you really don’t trust me, you can wait a day or so.
” He looks like he wants to argue, but he swears and holds out his arm for Zara to slide in the syringe.
He yelps, and Eldi leaps from his arms as he turns into his wolf form and then straight back a few times, a magical shrug into his powers.
Dave gleefully trundles at the vanguard of our little party, snaking tendrils ahead of us in the darkness as we climb flights of stairs and make our way through the maze of corridors.
I realize what he’s doing when we pass the first guarded checkpoint with both guards slumped to the floor.
A slow puddle of blood is leaking from under one of them. Dave clicks an appendage ominously.
“Sadistic little thing, aren’t you?” Calvin mutters.
“Don’t complain. Just be glad it isn’t you,” Meredith says. “He’s not killing them, only maiming the worst of them.” But she speaks in a low voice to Dave, muttering directions. From then on, he leaves some upright. They fold back into the shadows upon a quiet signal from Meredith.
“How many agents have you turned to our side?” Zara asks, a note of pride in her voice.
“Enough,” Meredith says tersely.
The launch pad is as deserted as the rest of the base. From this vantage, I can see a blazing fire, a dark swirl of smoke obscuring the stars by the front entrance. I don’t know what Dave did, but he did it thoroughly.
Winnie trundles up, headlights off, and Doug flings open the door from inside. The Winnebago lifts into the air before the door closes behind us, Doug a mad whirl of tentacles and worried chirps.
“Eldi,” I say, reaching for her where she cowers by Calvin’s feet.
She moves forward cautiously, as if unconvinced it’s me behind the mask, but Calvin intercepts her. “Wait, Eldi. Let me try to get the mask off Reggie.”
Doug and Dave whirl about, fussing around Eldi like a pair of anxious grandparents, prodding at her insistently.
It takes Calvin only moments to tear apart the back of the mask, metal crumbling under his fingers, but it feels like longer. When I finally rip it from my face, I hurl it hard against the wall, where it bounces off and hits the floor, sliding under the table and out of sight.
Eldi nearly bowls me over again as she leaps into my arms. I hold her and sob into her hair as she pats my back awkwardly.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. I should never have told you to go. I love you, Eldi.”
“Love you,” Eldi says. I’d be content to hold her forever, but all too soon she wriggles, craning her neck to look around. “Goat?” she questions.
Calvin gives me a tissue and hands Eldi her raggedy stuffed Goat.
She gleefully cuddles him, and I blow my nose and try to compose myself.
Her watch gives my wrist one last squeeze, then unlatches itself and slithers like a snake over to Eldi, who greets it with a fond pat, like an old friend.
Then Eldi leaps up, grabs her tablet off the table, and hops into her nest above the cab, apparently completely unfazed and ready to leave behind our misadventures.
“You kept this?” Meredith is holding the glued-together, too-small pot and overgrown healing cactus. “I’m surprised it’s still alive.” Her face is hard to read.
“It’s a survivor,” I say. My knees are aching, but I don’t move off the floor as the silence stretches awkwardly. “I fucked up. But I thought you two would be better off without me. That I was just as bad as Adele. I’m sorry I left you both behind.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard a lot of bullshit in my life,” Zara says, crossing her arms and sitting stiffly at the table. She looks out of place and uncomfortable, still in her wrinkled suit.
Meredith, by contrast, looks completely at ease, lounging in leggings and a T-shirt across from Zara. “You both left me behind,” she says.
Zara looks chagrined. “I stayed for you. It isn’t my fault Adele kept you away from me. I was trying to get us out; I had plans. It was complicated. But Reggie abandoned us both, and I wasn’t going to do that too.”
I can’t help the tears rolling down my face as Zara glares at me and Meredith looks conflicted. “I’m so sorry; I really am,” I say. “If you believe nothing else I say, fine. But at least believe I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought you were better off without me.”
“You promised you’d come back,” Zara says.
“I know.”
“You said Meredith was my responsibility. So I stayed.”
“I know.”
Zara cracks first. She sinks to the floor with me. Meredith holds it together for a few moments longer, but soon the three of us are crying together and holding one another.
Silently observing, Calvin leans on the counter by the sink, his eyes wary as he looks down at me.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about who I am, Calvin,” I say when we’ve all marginally regained our composure.
“I’m sorry I gave her any information about you,” Calvin replies.
“I thought if you knew—” My throat feels like it’s swelling, but I need to explain. “The things I’ve done—I wanted to forget—”
Zara shifts uncomfortably, but Meredith leans forward.
“We could talk alone later?” Calvin offers tentatively.
“No secrets, lies, half-truths. That’s what got us here in the first place,” I say to my sisters. “But there are some things I need to talk to Calvin about in private.”
“Barf, gross,” Meredith says. Zara snorts.
“About what Adele said, that I told her about you and Eldi, I need to explain that,” Calvin says.
“Why did you tell her anything about us?” I can’t help the accusatory tone even though what I’ve done is arguably worse.
Calvin reaches a hand to pull me to my feet, but I hesitate.
He waits patiently. “She emailed me a couple of years back. Told me she was your mother and that you’d run away from an abusive boyfriend.
Said he’d made you cut contact, caused a family falling-out.
She said she didn’t want to pressure you, just wanted to know you were safe. ”
I thought I was free, but Adele has been keeping track of me all along. Calvin is still talking.
“She was convincing. She told me things about you that made me sure she knew you. That you hated lightning, not that you were afraid of it, but that you hated it.”
I hate her so much.