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  “Don’t!” Clara cried. “I know it will heal, but I don’t want you to do it again!”

  Jamil laughed and threw the blade at a tree about ten feet away from where he and Clara stood. It whipped through the air and embedded solidly into the tree. He retrieved it and repeated the action. After several throws, he winked at Clara.

  “Your turn.”

  After what seemed like a million poorly aimed throws, Clara grew discouraged.

  “I can’t do this. It’s stupid. I quit!”

  “Clara, just relax. Pretend you’ve been doing this your whole life. Focusing, targeting, being super-humanly awesome. You’ve got this.” He encouraged.

  “That’s the problem, Jamil, I’m not like you. I haven’t been doing this my whole life. It doesn’t come naturally to me.”

  “It will.” He smiled. There was something oddly familiar about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Fine.” She blew her hair out of her eyes.

  “Close your eyes. See with your mind.”

  “Okay, Yoda.”

  “I’m serious. Close them. Good. Now, picture the target in front of you. Do you see it?”

  “Umm, yeah. Kinda.”

  “Keep looking. Keep focusing.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  “On the count of three, I want you to throw the knife.”

  “Jamil, what if I miss?” She was as unsure of her abilities as she’d ever been. This day-one middle-of-the-woods training session didn’t seem to be helping much.

  “You won’t. I promise.”

  Clara wanted to trust him. There was just something inherently good about him. She’d been drawn to him even at Breemont. She wondered if Dr. L—it was still hard for her to call the woman with whom she’d been through so much by her first name—would have some psycho mumbo jumbo to say about the “crush” she’d developed. Maybe some kind of pseudo-Stockholm Syndrome-ish kind of thing.

  She drew back her hand, closed her eyes, and threw as hard as she could.

  “Bullseye!” Jamil shouted triumphantly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Cabin

  That afternoon, Ollie, Lydia, and Jamil set out to search for any supplies or food with which they could easily travel. They’d need to be moving on soon. It wouldn’t be long before Owen and Diana caught up to them.

  Clara had been instructed to stay inside and stay alert. Everyone was in agreement that Clara was safer in the cabin than out in the open. Clara was fine with that. She didn’t feel the need to go trudging around in the woods anyway. Clara spent most of her free time reading an old Cosmo from a billion years ago. By the third time through, she could recite it by heart, but it was the only thing she had. She fixed herself a snack—Spaghetti-O’s, of course, because Ollie wasn’t around to lecture her.

  She rinsed her dish and lay down on the couch. She couldn’t have been asleep for more than twenty minutes when she was roused by a loud noise.

  Clara wasn’t expecting Ollie, Lydia, and Jamil to be back so soon. She stretched awake and was slightly annoyed by the disruption. She hadn’t had much time to herself to process all of the proceedings of the last few weeks—the last year, really, so she enjoyed every moment she could manage, especially the moments when she could enjoy a normal teenager nap.

  At first, she thought the door was sticking worse than usual, but then she realized whoever was on the other side of it didn’t realize they had to heave it open. Whoever it was had never been inside the cabin before. Alarmed, she wondered who on earth would be out here in the middle of nowhere trying feebly to open a dilapidated cabin door. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a fox this time like when she and Lydia were hiding in the woods. This wasn’t good. And to make matters worse, the door wasn’t locked, so if whoever it was wanted in, they were eventually going to get in. It was just a matter of time.

  The unwelcome guest tried the door again. Clara attempted to summon some kind of see-through-the-cabin-door power, but apparently she didn’t have one in her arsenal. Next, she tried to listen. Nothing. Nada. But she did have an eerie feeling. She crossed to the far window, crouching as she crept into the living area. She’d have the best vantage point here. She climbed onto the couch and carefully pulled back the tattered fabric just enough to peek through. She only saw a long jacket and heels. Okay, so it was a woman. She pulled the makeshift curtain back just a bit farther and terror filled every fiber of her being.

  What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, she thought to herself. She looked at the analogue clock on the outdated oven. It would be three more hours until anyone would be back to help. She debated on hiding or escaping through a window. She decided on the latter.

  She ran to the bedroom—the farthest and most secluded location from the front door. She pulled back the curtain in that room to see if Karen had company. As far as she could tell, Karen was alone. How did she find me? Clara wondered as she attempted to pry open the bedroom window. It hadn’t been open in years and the last paint job had sealed it shut. She yanked with all her might, but it wouldn’t budge. Why couldn’t she just use her powers when she needed to instead of accidentally and at inappropriate times? She yanked one last time, but it still didn’t give. She wondered if she could break the glass quietly enough and run fast enough to escape. She thought she could, but as she raised her elbow to the glass, she heard the front door burst open.

  “Clara? Bug-a-boo, where are you?” Karen called.

  Clara scrambled from the window and slid under the bed she’d been sleeping on for the last several weeks. She held her breath as she listened to Karen click around the cabin in heels.

  “Clara, I know you’re here. I watched your friends leave without you earlier. Let’s talk, Bug.”

  Clara cringed at the once treasured nickname. Shivers climbed her spine in sections.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Her sickeningly cheery voice sang.

  If they had been playing the game they played when Clara was little, she would have answered with the same sing-song voice: “You’re getting warm-er!” But Clara was no longer a child, and this wasn’t a game. This was a woman who lied to Clara about who her parents were. This woman was in on all of this.

  Karen’s heels clicked closer still. She opened the closet door and paused before pulling the moth eaten clothing aside with gusto. No luck. She spun around and smiled when her eyes fell upon the bed. Click, clack. Click, clack.

  Clara stared directly at the toes of Karen’s leather pumps. She heard the bed creak and felt it sag when Karen sat down on it.

  “You, know, Bug, I did what I had to do. It was the right thing.” Karen explained. “I mean, you’re the property of BioTech, not your parents. I was just trying to get you back to your rightful owner. Come out and let’s talk.”

  She sounded syrupy sweet, and it turned Clara’s stomach to hear Karen, who was supposed to me her mother’s best friend, talk about her parents that way. Clara’s whole life had been a lie. Aunt Karen had been a lie. The fertility trial was a lie. Clara choked back a quiet sob.

  “Mmhhmm. So you are under there. I thought so.”

  Karen stood. Clara watched the heels turn to face her again.

  “I suppose if you’re too stubborn to come out, I’ll have to drag you out by your pretty brown hair.” Karen’s voice sank into a sinister tone.

  Clara watched in horror as Karen bent down and grasped the quilt in her hand. As Karen yanked it up, she yelled, “Got ya!”

  Clara squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see the face of betrayal before it attacked. She tensed her body and readied for the coming confrontation.

  Nothing happened. She kept her eye closed in anticipation, but instead she heard a “hmph” and a slow click-clack trailing away. When she summoned the nerve to open her eyes again, she could see that she was alone in the bedroom and safe for the moment. Why hadn’t anything happened? Why hadn’t Karen pulled her out kicking and screaming from underneath the bed
?

  Confused, Clara glanced around the room for clues. She’d made one pass and seen nothing. Wait. She’d seen nothing. She scanned back to the mirror in the corner. The reflection showed most of the room. She studied it. She waved her hand. She crawled forward and waved again. She slid out from under the bed and stood before the mirror. In the glass, the reflection showed an empty room.

  “I’m invisible!” She thought. She peeked out into the cabin. Karen had made herself at home at the kitchen table facing the front door. On the dining table before her lay a gun. Clara couldn’t believe her eyes. Aunt Karen…here…with a gun…to kill her. How do ya like that, she thought. Clara tiptoed back to the mirror to check her reflection again. Still invisible. Good.

  Clara thought of ways to incapacitate Karen. She spied a rolling pin in the dish strainer behind Karen. If she could just get to it, she could clobber her in the back of the head with it. That worked in movies; she hoped it would work here too. Clara checked her reflection once more and then crept toward the kitchen.

  She was halfway there when she and Karen both heard a creak. Clara froze. Karen in an instant was pointing the gun directly at Clara.

  “Oh, God, this is it.” Clara thought to herself.

  “Ugh. I guess it was just the cabin settling. I hate old, creepy places like this,” Karen said as she replaced the gun on the table and turned her focus back toward the door. She wanted to be ready for Clara when she returned. Behind Karen, Clara breathed a silent sigh of relief. Carefully, she continued her seemingly endless trek toward the kitchen. Finally, she arrived. Clara took the rolling pin out of the strainer, gripped it with both hands, and swung it like a bat. The force knocked Karen forward into the table where she slumped, dazed but maintaining consciousness. Karen tried to sit up, unsure of what had just happened. When her head came up from the table, Clara swung again. This time, it did the trick. Clara rushed to the junk drawer where she knew duct tape could be found—her father had used it to fix just about everything. Score! She found a roll and set about her business.

  First, she bound Karen’s wrists, and then her ankles, winding the tape several times. Next, she wound the roll multiple times around Karen’s shoulders, and chest, adhering her to the chair. She repeated this action for Karen’s thighs and calves. There was no way she’d get loose. Not on Clara’s watch.

  When Clara was sure she was secure, she scraped the chair away from the table and turned it to face the couch. That’s where Clara planned to be when Karen awoke. Face to face with her new enemy.

  When Karen came to, an hour had passed and the sun was setting. She rolled her head around in a circular motion to loosen her neck and shoulders. She tried to reach for her throbbing head, but couldn’t raise her hand. Grogginess turned to alarm as her eyes shot open.

  “What the hell…what…”

  “How does it feel?”

  The intruder laid eyes on the now visible Clara and realized her predicament. She snapped her head to one side and cracked her neck.

  “Bug.” She said, even and flat with eyebrows raised.

  “Don’t you ever, ever call me that again!” Clara screamed.

  “Oh, Clara, play nice. Didn’t your parents teach you manners? Didn’t they teach you to respect your elders?” She toyed with Clara.

  “You don’t get to talk about my parents. Do you hear me? You don’t get to cheat, lie, and steal…you don’t get to treat them this way and then talk about them.”

  “Let me out of this mess, and I’ll take you to them, Bug.” Karen lied.

  “I told you not to call me Bug.” Clara reminded through gritted teeth.

  “Well, hon, while we’re on the subject of monikers, my name’s not Karen. Never has been. Kay Crider, pleased to meet you. I’d offer you my hand, but well...” She nodded down toward her restrained arm.

  Clara took two steps backward.

  “Kay? Crider?”

  “Oh, honey, you didn’t think I’d use my real name, did you? No, sweetie, that would have been silly.”

  Clara stared at her as she felt the last bit of normalcy rip away from her being.

  “You see, your parents raised you, but I watched over you. We made you, and I’m what you might call…quality control. If I’d have gone by my God-given name, they’d have been able to trace me to other families. Families that call me Aunt Brit, ReRe, or just plain Susan. I’ve been a part of so many families I’ve lost count.” A serpentine smile slithered across Kay’s face. “But my real name…when I’m not playing house...is Kay. Call me Kay, sweetness.”

  Clara didn’t speak for many minutes. How many other kids had crawled in her lap and let her stroke their hair? How many other mothers listened to parenting advice from their best friend who, by the way, had no children of her own? How many other lives had she infiltrated, how many still trusted her? She had to be stopped, but first, Clara demanded to know the question she’d been longing to know the answer to since she left 417 Canal Street.

  Clara screamed “Tell me where my parents are right now, or so help me…”

  “What?” Kay cackled maniacally. “What will you do, Clara?”

  “You know what I am, and you know what I’m capable of!”

  “Ha, but you don’t know how to use it. You’re just a baby. Come with me, to the compound. We’ll teach you what you’re really made of.”

  “The what?”

  “The Compound. That’s where you were headed before that moron helped you run away. We train there.”

  “We?” Clara’s chest was heaving. She didn’t know if it was because of her fury, or because of her curiosity.

  “Clara, there are others. Others just like you. We’ve been harvesting for years. What?” she laughed hysterically, “You think you’re the first? Did you think you were special? That’s so cute.”

  Clara’s world was spinning. Others? There are more? She was excited, but that excitement quickly turned to worry. Had they had the same experiences she’d had over the last several months?

  “Where?” Clara demanded.

  “Untie me, and I’ll take you there.”

  “Fat chance, Kay.” Clara spat the name as if it were rancid meat. She now despised the woman who had seemingly helped raise her.

  “Where…are my…parents?” She sneered through gritted teeth as she approached Kay with ominous intent.

  “They obviously don’t care about you. If they did, they’d be here.”

  “I said…where…are my…parents.” Now Clara was almost in Kay’s face. “I want to know what you’ve done with them!”

  “You wanna know where your parents are, ‘hon’?” Clara winced at the word ‘hon’ just as her mother always had. “Dead. Long gone, sweetheart. The both of them are six feet under, decaying and full of worms. And they have been ever since the night of your “break”.”

  Clara, in a state of shock and confusion, didn’t comprehend what had been said. The world was now turning in slow motion as she processed the information. She shook her head ‘no’ as if that would change the past, as if it would change the present. She mouthed the words, “No, no, no, no, no. No! This isn’t real. This isn’t happening,” while Kay cackled in the background.

  When Clara’s eyes finally met Kay’s again, the look on her captor’s face stopped Kay dead in her tracks. Her cackling ceased, and for the first time in a long time, Kay Crider felt fear.

  “You BITCH!” Clara howled as she delivered an utterly epic right hook. The blow was solid enough to cause the chair to which Kay was bound to nearly tip over, but surprisingly, it teetered back onto all fours instead.

  Stunned by the force of the blow, Kay shook her head. Her ears were now ringing and the world was trying to go dark. She made eye contact with Clara and spit a mouthful of blood into the floor at her feet. She resumed her laughter.

  It was a bad decision; Clara dealt another blow. With red-rimmed teeth, Kay began to speak. “The night you came home from babysitting, we were watching. We were always watching
you, Clara.” Blood trickled from the corner of Kay’s mouth and she spit again. “When you came home, your powers were strong. You had a vision on the street. You knew what was coming in the very near future, you just didn’t know how.”

  Clara listened intently. The full force of her parents’ deaths had not yet hit her, and amazingly, she was still able to function. She thought back to that night coming home from the Coolsons’. She thought hard. She tried to remember. The memory was almost there.

  “Like I said, hon, you’re just a baby. We can fix that.”

  “Tell me what happened.” Clara growled.

  “We watched. We waited. We thought maybe it would pass, but it didn’t. We allowed your dad to bring you in and calm you down. Later, when you went to bed, we got down to business,” Kay snickered tossing a squinty glance to Clara. Her left eye had almost swollen shut at this point, so a squint was all she was capable of at this point, anyway.

  Clara bent forward nose to nose with Kay. She looked her directly in the eye and clenching her teeth in rage, demanded, “What…did you do…to my parents?”

  “After your mom and dad got you to sleep, there was a text waiting for sweet, innocent little Melanie. From guess who? Her best friend, Karen. It was all scripted of course. I told her that I was in town and wanted to see her right away. When she finally got the text, it was late. She told me you had had an episode and she and your dad were thinking about taking you to the hospital. I convinced them otherwise. I told her to leave the door open and I’d be there soon. I walked right in. I told them to come outside so we could talk without disturbing you. Melanie didn’t want to leave you, but best friends can be pretty persuasive. Once they were outside, they were gagged and thrown into the trunk of an associate’s car. It was late and it was dark. No one saw a thing. It was perfect!”

  “She trusted you!” Clara was livid. “She trusted you, and this is how you repay her?”