Chapter Twenty #3
“I heard you. I promise I did.” It really wasn’t Lucy’s imagination.
Jillian sounded nothing like the scared woman who had answered the phone.
It had always been so much easier for Jillian to be in a crisis than to be anticipating one.
“But something is wrong. I can hear it in your voice. I know you, sweetheart. You didn’t call me at this hour just to talk. ”
Lucy was breathing fast enough now that the cold air stung her chest. She’d made a mistake. Of course Jillian knew something was wrong.
“Mom,” Lucy said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, when I have more time to talk. Please don’t buy a plane ticket until then. Please just wait for me.”
But she was lying. Of course she was. And her mother always knew when she was lying. “It looks like the earliest I can get there is tomorrow night,” she said. “But I will get there. Lucy, please don’t hang up. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
The pain in Lucy’s skull felt like a knifepoint now. It was almost over. She wouldn’t make Jillian listen to it ending. “I have to go,” she said. “Goodbye, Mom.”
The woods were so quiet when she hung up.
Quiet enough, for a moment, that Lucy risked scrolling through her texts once again.
She dismissed Jillian’s return call, though she felt the red voice’s longing to answer it.
There would be more food, after all, if her mother came. And her sisters were so hungry.
She could feel herself crumbling by the time she opened her text threads again. But this time, she didn’t try Athena’s name. In one final burst of inspiration, she scrolled to Natalie.
Vanya has Mila, she typed. Tell Athena get out of studio. IF YOU SEE ME, RUN.
After she hit the send button, Lucy started to throw her phone out of reach, in the direction of the nearest tree. But when her arm was halfway through the air, she stopped. Lowered it. Very neatly tucked her phone back into her purse.
And then Lucy Easting was gone.
The thing that was not Lucy Easting walked out of the woods.
The campus was as empty as it had been before. Only the lamplight was there to greet her. It didn’t hurt her eyes this time. Everything was so much harder when one was fighting their own nature. Lucy had gotten so close to understanding that.
It was just past four a.m. now. In less than two hours, the first light would start to touch the sky.
As she wound her way through the arteries of Rollins University, little signs of life tugged at her hearing.
Low voices in the science building, babysitting their experiments.
The slow, syrupy heartbeat of someone in the student center, fast asleep over his studying.
His blood was sluggish in his sleep. It could have been enough to make Lucy hungry again.
But that wouldn’t do. Her sisters hadn’t eaten yet tonight. Nor had her maker.
Lucy turned past the student center, onto the path that would take her downhill. And she followed the path to the radio station.
Athena would still be there. Natalie said she had to be moved out by morning, and she didn’t have the courage to leave in the dark.
Even off the air, the studio was still the safest place in the world for her.
It must have been hard for her to let Lucy into that place, knowing what would happen.
She should have listened to her own instincts.
The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting reached into her purse and withdrew her ID card. Then she swiped into the building and walked, languidly, down the now-familiar halls. She was in no rush. Two hours was an abundance of time. Though the quicker she finished, the quicker she could eat.
Mila would be upset. The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting found, to her irritation, that this bothered her a little.
But there was only so much she could do.
When she brought him Athena Barnes, her maker would let Mila go free.
The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting couldn’t ask for any more kindness from him than that.
Maybe Mila would come to understand that, in time.
She swung open the door to Athena’s suite.
And the room was silent.
The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting stared at the scene ahead, uncomprehending.
The cushions were still piled in their corner, as was the sleeping bag.
The recording equipment sat waiting on the desk.
But the drawers looked as if they’d been hurriedly, haphazardly emptied out.
The only thing left, as she drew close, was a single stake, left behind in the top left drawer.
It shivered a little from the force of her footsteps.
Rocked from side to side, as if someone had just let go of it.
In all the years since she met Ivan Volkov, Athena Barnes hadn’t once left the safety of her studio before sunrise. Until tonight.
Which was the keenest relief Lucy had ever felt.
And it was her feeling it. The red voice had faltered. There was no obvious place for the compulsion to drive her now. Natalie had gotten the message. And Athena was gone. Hopefully safe.
Lucy breathed out heavily as she reached into the desk drawer. She had time. She didn’t know how much. Which meant no more hesitating. No more clinging to a life that, it seemed, she was never meant to have.
As she lifted the stake, she ran through a litany of mental apologies. To Natalie, for being such a high-maintenance party guest. To Athena, for driving her to wherever she was now. To her mother, for proving her right. To Mila, for not being able to collect her personally.
But Athena and Natalie would find a way to save her. Lucy hoped, as hard as she could, that they’d all make it out alive. She hoped Mila would get the chance to rethink her best-case scenario.
She lined the stake up against her chest—but something made her pause. A soft footstep against the floorboards. Lucy faltered, and turned.
The last thing she saw was Athena, swinging something directly at her head.