After the End(37)

“Why was the bird having a panic attack?” he asks, his voice a note higher than normal.

“Whit was trying to get him to come back and tell him where we are,” I say, and then, seeing a twitch in Miles’s right eyebrow, correct myself. “I mean, Whit was going to read his memory to see where we had gone.”

Miles nods, his eyebrow still twitching. “So you used my shirt as a straitjacket.”

“It’s called swaddling,” I said. “It’s to calm him.”

“Because that’s what you do when you’re ‘close to the Yara,’” Miles says, ending in a spooky voice; then his lips form that sarcastic smile that makes me want to punch him.

“No, that’s what you do when your baby’s freaking out. So, Poe’s a raven—I inter-species extrapolated. And it worked. What would you have done?”

“Rolled down the window,” Miles says. “Let the bird go before it shits all over my backseat.” He gestures to two white splats on the upholstery and looks mildly upset.

I roll my eyes and pull out the atlas. “We need to get off this main road. When Whit realizes that Poe’s not coming back, he will come after us. And if we were headed in the right direction—toward my clan—this would be one of the obvious routes we would take.” I trace our path on the map and find a junction where two small roads veer off and away from the highway, one meandering past a lake before it joins back up with the larger road near Idaho.

There’s a road sign within view, and I compare it to the map and calculate how far we are from the turnoff. “We’ll keep driving another sixty miles and then exit,” I say, and then wait.

Miles sighs and turns the key in the ignition. I’m going to have to tell him more. I need him to understand what’s happening or else . . . Or else what? a voice says in my mind. Or else he might leave me. And I still need him, I think, cursing the fact that, for some reason, I need this boy to help rescue my clan.



UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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28


MILES




“GIVE ME BACK MY WATCH, YOU FLEA-RIDDEN winged rodent!” I am chasing a raven around a clearing in the woods in the middle of nowhere Oregon as a brainwashed teenage ex–cult member meditates by the campfire. It seems that crazy spreads, because I have finally lost it. I’m at the end of my rope.

“It’s shiny,” Juneau calls, shaking herself out of her trance. “Ravens like shiny things.”

“Why did you even let him out of the car if there’s a chance of him flying back to Whit?”

“He’s not acting paranoid anymore. Whit stopped trying to get him, so he’s safe now.”

I stop chasing the bird and walk over to stand in front of Juneau. “Where. Are. We. Going,” I say, my teeth clenched so tightly I have to bite the words out.

“Like I said, I’m trying to figure that out,” she says calmly.

I stare at her, my eyes wide. “Three days, Juneau. We’re on day three of our demented road trip now. If you don’t tell me right now where we’re going, then I am out of here. Gone. And I will leave you and the bird here and go back to California and you’ll have to find someone else to drive you. Someone who doesn’t mind sleeping on the ground and being forced to eat innocent wildlife on a daily basis by an insane hippie.”

“Innocent wildlife?” Juneau says, confused.

“The roasted lizard we ate last night. Which, along with the bunny we ate on the mountain, makes two innocent wild animals that I consumed within twenty-four hours. What next? Bambi? Why don’t we eat something non-innocent and annoying? In which case, I vote for the bird.”

“If you don’t want Poe to pick up your things, you shouldn’t leave them sitting out,” she rebuts.

“I didn’t! It was in my bag!” I growl, and spin to see my bag sitting on the ground beside the tent, its contents strewn all over the ground. “I’m going to kill you!” I yell, and make a lunge for the bird, who flaps away and alights on a branch too high for me to reach.

“Go ahead. Leave us, then,” Juneau calls. She turns and walks away from our campsite, out of the clearing onto the pebble beach lining the lakefront. Sitting down on a flat boulder, she pulls her knees to her chin and looks out across the water. I sigh, and my anger fizzles out when I remember what she looked like last night in the tent.

She looked her age—a rare occurrence. She looked defenseless, even though her hand stayed inches away from her loaded crossbow all night. She looked sad.