HOW MANY ANSWERS YOU SEEK ARE JUST A PART OF YOU, WAITING TO BE FOUND?
The game has changed.
Fresh from her first brush with mortality, a fragile Sadie Matthau is playing human in New York while the Survivors endure unimaginable tragedy. Wrought wit...
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I AWOKE WITH A JOLT, MY BODY STILL POISED NEXT TO LIZZIE'S, EVERETT STILL beside me. He startled.
"What is it?" he said. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, sorry," I said, sitting up, away from Lizzie. "I had a bad dream."
"No you didn't," he said bewildered.
"Of course I did. Just now. I was asleep and dreaming," I said.
"You didn't sleep, Sadie. Your breathing changes when you sleep. You sound different," he reasoned. "You were never asleep."
This puzzled me significantly. It seemed to puzzle him too, only he could explain it away by assuming my grief was escalating to hallucinatory levels.
I was too jarred now to know what to do or not to do, but since the dream — er, non-dream? — had given me a distraction from the par alyzing pain I felt next to Lizzie's body, I thought I should take the out while I could.
I got to my feet, more steadily than I thought possible and said, "I can't hide anymore, can I?"
Everett stood up. "I admit there is a great deal to address. But only if you're okay. Are you?"
I looked down at Lizzie, feeling the grief, yes, but feeling some sense of clarity. My mind was returning to the way it usually worked, the pace and rhythm of my thoughts finding their normal cadence. "I will be," I said.
"You really don't want to say goodbye?" he said, slipping his arms around me.
"Isn't that what funerals are for?"
An uneasy look crossed his face. "You need to talk to John about that . . ."
"Why?"
"Just . . . talk to him."
I sighed, rubbing my forehead. Reality was calling. I needed to emerge from this cave in what seemed like one piece, even if I weren't. "No time like the present." I took Everett's hand, and we walked down the dirt hallways to the apothecary and back into the church.
Mark was waiting for us in the meeting room. At the long table, he sat opposite Rebecca, who looked as if she hadn't moved since we left. They were very clearly not speaking.
"We need to talk," Mark said.
"Can't you see she's still trying to recover?" Everett shot. "Whatever it is, it can wait." Everett's expression was uncharacteristically hostile in the firelight. At first I was frustrated at his answering for me, but by his face I could tell it wasn't about me. It was about Mark.
I thought back to one of the last times I'd been with the two of them — the night before we went to Oaxaca and found Raven, when Mark had gone too far when taking my blood for the Fateor elixir and Everett had been the one to heal me. Something had happened between the two of them, and Everett had threatened Mark to get away from me. After that, too much had happened for me to ever find out why one was mad at the other, and after that? I disappeared. That had been over a month ago. Were they will angry at one another?
