The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Silence

HER QUESTION HAUNTED ME. "HOW MANY ANSWERS WE SEEK ARE just a part of us, waiting to be found?" she'd said to him. When he'd said nothing, she sighed heavily. "I suppose it fits. Five new scars, you could say."

I heard him lightly kiss some part of her, the undeniable sound of stone lips against wet skin. Her scars, maybe. The symbols on her wrist. The hollow of her neck I'd always paid too much attention to. Something.

Then he said: "I'll love these like I love all the other scars. Like I love all of you."

And Sadie said, "Do you love me, Everett? Really?"

He said, "Of course I do."

"Then tell me one day this will all be over," she said.

"One day this will all be over," he said. Too quickly. Idiot.

She said, "Promise me."

And this time, he hesitated a bit. "I love you," he said.

"Promise me," she repeated.

Then he actually stopped, and I knew what he was thinking because I knew the way my big brother thought: One way or the other, one day, this would all be over.

"I promise," he said.

Gin and I were avoiding all the meltdowns around us. Ben held an inconsolable Noah against his chest. Sarah was sobbing uncontrollably in one of the guest rooms. Hannah was wan dering the forest, crying too. And Sadie was in Everett's bathtub, having just determined that the one person she loved the most and the one person she hated the most in her life inside the City walls were her parents.

I sat with my sister, the only one as good at pretending everything was okay as I was, watching The DaVinci Code. But only because she got bored with an episode of Jersey Shore, a rare occurrence, and she ended up here.

"I'm craving pizza," she said, which was a lie. She was craving a human's blood or a naked girl or both. She channeled these desires into a regimen of denial and eating human food.

"What kind of pizza?" I asked, only half paying attention.

"I don't know. I hadn't gotten that far into the craving process," she said. And then she started talking about how Tom Hanks didn't fit the Robert Langdon in her head, but that chick from Amelie was on point.

I couldn't have cared less. I was worried about Sadie. Paralyzed with worry, really, which was so uncharacteristic I pretty much didn't recognize myself. I hadn't been a worrier since Ginny got her head straight.

And because I couldn't be the one sitting on the floor next to her while she sat in a bathtub and poured her heart out, I got to watch movies on satellite, listen through the floor, and pretend I wasn't worried.

Everett was stupid to make such a promise. He knew what I did. But he told her he loved her, and he promised it would be over. He was only ever half-right with her. If I were him, I would have told her I loved her, but I also would have told her the truth.

But what did I know? The only girl I ever loved was somewhere in northern Canada ripping the heads off humans, and totally, contentedly in love with my older brother.

I hated how much I could hear in this house.

Ginny lobbed a pillow at my head. "I said are we feeling olives or not?" she asked.

In desperate need of a moment to think, I froze time, and everything went still. Ginny stopped talking, the TV was quiet, no one in the house moved, and I inhaled the silence, distancing myself from the emotion radiating around me. I counted to three and unfroze everything.

"Sure, Gin. Olives. Brine and salt remind me of the hard stuff," I said. Blood. Gin and I had been calling it "the hard stuff" since she fell in lust with a girl in Tokyo in 1976.

"If I order it, will you project to get it?" she asked. She either wasn't sensing how out of it I was, or she was unwilling to believe I was having emotion and so she ignored it. The latter was likely the closest to true.

"Yeah, whatever. That's fine," I said.

Halfway through dialing, she nodded at the TV, "Hey look! Those are like the human symbols."

"What?" I asked.

"Focus, Polly!" Ginny said, snapping her fingers. She pointed to the TV again and rewound so I could watch the scene again. Tom-Hanksas-Robert-Langdon was explaining the sacred, ancient symbols of male and female, a V that he called a chalice, and an inverted V that he called a spade. "See! That's what was on Sadie's wrist and the human's wrist! We should tell Sadie! I bet all human symbols are like that, though it seems like the supernatural ones vary person to person."

"Gin, let's leave Sadie be. It's been a long enough day. You can tell her soon. Okay?" I said.

"Okay," she said, a little dejected.

"I thought we were ordering pizza," I said to distract her.

"Oh yeah!" she said, bouncing up on her knees. She dialed the phone again, and I went back to blocking out the sounds of Sadie and Everett below me.

"Hey Gin, why don't I get the pizza, and you go make us a fort in the Tree. Let's hang out there all night and get away from the sad saps.

Sound good?"

"You have the best ideas, Polly."

When I got back, we spent the night watching old movies and talking about girls, and I relished the quiet of the underground.