The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

Red Eye, pt. 1

AS EVERETT PACKED UP ONE OF OUR BEAUTIFULLY TRICKED OUT Land Cruisers and Mom gave Sadie the rundown of her mobile apothecary, Dad came downstairs with something interesting. He held two glass jars in his arms, each containing a floating, glowing object that looked like fireflies. Red fireflies. Sarah hovered over him.

"Let me be clear that I still don't support my children's blatant disregard for my position as leader of this family, but that doesn't mean I don't want to help whatever it is Sadie's trying to do," he said, setting the jars on a table in front of us. "Here you have the teleportation powers of two Red Bloods. Only two of you can have them. I can tell you who I think should get them, but I realize you will ultimately decide yourselves."

"Were these given willingly?" Sadie asked.

"It seems like you'd be grateful even if they weren't, but, yes, they were. Now, Sarah is here to bestow them upon two of you," he said.

We discussed it briefly. "First one goes to Sadie, obviously," I said. No one argued with that. "No need to give me one because I can project. No need to give Ginny one because she can mirror and can use it as long as one of us has it. That leaves Ben, Noah, and Everett."

"Give it to Everett," Ben said. "Noah and I could find our way back to the group if we were separated."

No one argued with that either, so Sadie said, "Done and done. Sarah, if you wouldn't mind." Dad opened the jar and let the smoky spirit escape, and Sarah quickly bestowed it on Sadie, laying the glow onto her skin until the skin glowed on its own, absorbed the mass, and disappeared. She repeated the process again with Everett.

Ready to go, we went out to the cars, but Sarah called after us. "Wait. Everett, I need to give you something."

"Sure, Sarah," he said. "What is it?"

"My bestowal power. You have Lizzie's ability to merge, and if you had my ability to bestow power, you would have the complete process of acquisition. You can merge others' powers to your own or to other creatures' powers. You could take and give. These belong in one person, as long as he is a good person, and I believe you are. And you need them more than I do," she said in earnest. There was desperation in voice. She was probably losing her nerve and wanted him to take it before she changed her mind.

Then again, maybe she wanted to be rendered useless in the war. Maybe giving up the power was her out.

"You think I'm good?" he said quietly. It seemed like an honest question.

"I do," she said.

Everett looked to us for guidance. Sadie reached out to him and said, "Respect your elders, Ev. Do what she says." This was enough motivation for Everett. He summoned Sarah's power, brought it to the surface of her skin, then he bit her where it appeared. He even healed her on his own this time. Adelaide put her arm around Sarah's shoulder and guided her inside.

Everett turned to us and said, "What the fuck just happened?"

I laughed and punched him the arm. "Congrats, Gold Heart. You just became the most powerful one among us in fifteen seconds flat."

"Ahem," Ginny fake coughed behind me. "I think you mean second most powerful."

I kissed her forehead. "That goes without saying."

ON THE DRIVE, EVERETT AND GINNY TRIED TO GIVE AND TAKE POWERS FROM Noah, Ben, and Kutoyis. Near the Canadian border, Ginny figured out how to give Ben his water power back that Ev had had for a while, but neither had budged on any of Kutoyis' abilities. I doubted they would.

I sat up front with Sadie, who was unusually quiet, and I tried to pretend I didn't know why. As if her long sleeves weren't armor enough, she had stacked three bracelets and Everett's watch on her left wrist to completely obscure the five symbols that plagued her arm now.

I wanted to talk to her. To tell her I knew what it was like to have an asshole for a father and that you can't let that get you down. Besides, Sadie was only a creation of John's — if she was a creation of John's — by a technicality, whereas I was my father's son in more ways than I could stomach thinking about.

Trying to decide if this was the perfect thing or worst thing to offer, I said, "If you want to talk . . ."

She cut me off. "I don't."

That was enough for me. I switched subjects. "I wonder how long it will take for us to get tired of each other," I said, nodding back to the rest of the group. "It's the paradigmatic road trip conundrum."

She glanced back at our motley crew in the rearview mirror, then she looked at me with a weighted look. What? I said to her in my mind, pushing my thoughts outside my bulwark like I'd learned to. She grabbed her phone and started typing something. Texting while driving? I joked. What are you trying to do, get us killed?

"I have supernatural reflexes," she said, "and no one in this car can die in a car accident." She handed me the phone. The screen read We're not going to stay together. Only as long as we need to, then it's just you, me, and maybe the other trackers.

Ah, drama. Sadie didn't know how to make a decision without creating it. I don't know if she didn't trust my big brother, didn't like carting a bunch of us around with her, or what, but she never made the move that would make everyone happy. I understood this, of course. I didn't care about making everybody happy, but I recognized the headaches that would come when I didn't. Or when she didn't.

I cared about Ginny, though, because there wasn't another soul on earth who looked out for her. I worried a little bit about Sadie's plan to leave her out. Gin was the most powerful of all of us. And if we ran into trouble, she would be the most useful. She could use everyone's powers against them.

"Not going to say anything about that?" she asked.

Not in here, I said. She seemed to accept this. "What's our first stop?"

"Bigfork or Swan Lake to check in, then up the mountain. I need to see if we can get an update from Andrew. Then I'll see if Kutoyis thinks he can break the protections he put in place around the city since none of us can see it anymore. It won't help us to be fighting to protect a city we can't get back into," she said. "Then to Bigfork to see what cryptic messages Lizzie left for me with Beverly," she said. I raised an eyebrow. "Haven't heard about that? Ah well, you will."

"And then?"

"Then we'll go for real. Consider this a layover on the way to a real destination that is, as of yet, undetermined but very important."

I was smiling at her. Smiling at her focus. Happy for her, despite all of this. She caught me doing it and gave me a sideways glance. "What?" she said.

"I'm really proud of you, Sadie. You're going through a lot, and you're handling it with all the badass ferocity I always knew you had in you. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm glad to be your partner in crime."

She smiled back.

The Black Keys' song, "Have Love, Will Travel" blared out of the speakers. At the words, her kind of love drives a man insane, I laughed to myself, looked back at my big brother. I wondered if he could keep up with her the way he thought he could. I knew I could, but that was beside the point.

That was always beside the point.