The Marked Read online

“Whatever.” Anna adjusted a bowl of salsa on an end table. “You’re the first ones to arrive. I was just finishing getting the house ready.”

  “Anything we can do to help?” Cam asked.

  “No, don’t worry about it. You can have a seat. There’s just some soda in the garage that needs to go in the fridge. I’ll grab it.” She turned toward the kitchen and almost knocked into me. “Oh, Dancia. I didn’t see you there.” She barely looked at me before turning back to Cam and fluttering her lashes. “You know, if Dancia could grab the soda you could help me pick out some music.”

  “You don’t mind, do you, Dancia?” asked Cam. He was already hungrily eyeing the stereo.

  Don’t let her get to you, I told myself. It’s too early to lose it.

  “Of course not,” I said pleasantly. “I’d love to help.”

  “Great. Now, Anna, I’ll pick music, but only if you let me play Seattle bands,” Cam said with a grin. The two of them headed toward a cabinet in the back of the room.

  “I’ll show you how to get into the garage,” Molly offered.

  “Thanks.” I gritted my teeth and followed her through the kitchen into the three-car garage. Molly gave me a pitying smile as we grabbed cases of soda. “Anna and Cam have the same taste in music. No one else quite gets it.”

  “I listen to those bands all the time,” I said with a dismissive flick of my wrist.

  The truth was that Cam and I hung out in the woods, ran together, studied, held hands, and kissed. But we never listened to music.

  Molly raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You do? Which bands do you like best?”

  “Grass,” I said, thinking of the CD Cam had given to me a few weeks ago. I had stopped listening after the first two songs. They made my head hurt.

  We carried our load back to the kitchen, which was easily the size of my entire house. Polished stone countertops encircled the room; an island with a sink and stove was in the center. Molly pulled open the door of an enormous stainless-steel fridge…which was completely full of soda.

  For a moment, we stared at the packed shelves in awkward silence. Molly slid her hands deep into her pockets.

  “I guess Anna forgot that she’d already brought in the soda,” I said finally.

  “Must have,” Molly agreed.

  I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  As the night progressed, the music got louder, and the house became packed with all the Program students. I didn’t want to follow Cam around like a puppy, so I talked to some of the sophomores and the seniors I knew from hanging out with Barrett. Cam came by a few times, but I waved him off. Everyone wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t easy dating the most popular guy in the school.

  I was sitting with Esteban when Barrett arrived. Esteban was a Somatic who was impervious to outside temperature. He wore T-shirts and shorts all winter long, even when it snowed. He also had a tendency to bob his head up and down and hum to himself when he was walking through the halls at school. I assumed that this was because he was always thinking deep thoughts. He read a lot of philosophy and loved to talk about it. I enjoyed the conversations, though I was never entirely sure how to respond when he told me something I’d said was, “deep, man, really deep.”

  After greeting Esteban, Barrett gave me a bear hug. “Hey, what’s goin’ on, D.? How’s my best girl?” Then he looked around with an expression of mock guilt. “Oops, I better not say that too loud. I don’t want Mr. Sanders to think I’m poaching.”

  I whacked him on the sleeve with a grin, thrilled to see him. I hadn’t thought Barrett would come, given his feelings about Cam and his crew, but I guessed the party was big enough to transcend such things. “Shut up, you idiot. Cam knows he has nothing to worry about.”

  He winced theatrically. “Oh, that hurts. Your boy could work me over, is that what you’re saying?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure who would win in a fight between Barrett and Cam. Cam was a serious warrior. I’d seen him and Trevor spar, and it was like watching two kung fu masters. Barrett, on the other hand, resembled an out-of-shape monk. I could hardly imagine him raising a finger to defend himself.

  Still, Barrett could throw fire thirty feet across a room. That gave him a serious advantage.

  “You’d be too lazy to fight back,” I said. “You’d have to pacify him with your stunning good looks.”

  Barrett flung his long hair back over one shoulder and struck a pose. “Do you think it would work?” He was easily a head taller than anyone else in the room, and with Anna’s soft party lighting, his gangly profile threw a huge shadow on the wall behind him.

  “I’d go with the fire thing, myself,” Esteban said.

  “Good plan.” Barrett peered around the room. “So, besides the crappy music, how’s the party?”

  I hid a smile. “Fine.”

  “Where’s the boyfriend?”

  I pointed to the back of the room. “Over by the music.”

  “Waiting for you?”

  “No.”

  Barrett nodded decisively. “I had a feeling you might need rescuing.” He grabbed my hand and started leading me toward the door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not far. Just out front.”

  I hesitated. Cam didn’t approve of Barrett generally, and never seemed pleased when I hung out in the Senior Corner with Tara and Lucas and the others.

  “Come on, just for a few minutes.” Barrett put his hands over his ears and feigned being in pain. “Give your ears a break.”

  The music was awfully loud. And it wasn’t as if Cam’s not liking Barrett meant I couldn’t be friends with him.

  I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the front door and followed him outside.

  THE COOL air bathed my cheeks as I left the house. I hadn’t realized how hot it had gotten in there. As we walked down Anna’s long driveway, the music faded to a dull buzz, and I heard the quiet strains of a different song coming from a hulking SUV parked just down the street. Lucas and Cyrus were sitting on the curb beside the car, and Sarabelle and Elliot—a couple I’d only met a few times—were snuggling in each other’s arms at the back of the truck. Tara sat sideways in the front seat with the door open, her feet dangling toward the curb, a tiny black dog in her lap. She leaned over to adjust the stereo, and I nodded unconsciously as I recognized the tune.

  I paused a few feet from the truck. Barrett walked over and put his arm around Tara.

  “Hey, D.,” Tara said, greeting me.

  “Any food inside?” Cyrus asked.

  “Chips and whatnot. Some wrap things,” I replied.

  There was a chorus of disapproval. “I thought there’d be food,” Lucas grumbled. “They had chicken wings last year. And pizza. Are you telling me there’s no pizza?”

  “I think Anna’s on a diet,” I said. “She doesn’t eat pizza.” There were more groans and a few laughs. I basked in the pleasure of being surrounded by people who disliked Anna as much as I did.

  Barrett bobbed his head. “I knew we needed to rescue her, Luke,” he said with a grin. “She was trapped in there.”

  “Well, you got her. Can we go now?”

  I turned to Barrett. “I thought we were just hanging out. I can’t leave.”

  “Come on,” he said in a singsongy voice. “You can’t stay here. The music will rot your brain. Not to mention the company.”

  “Barrett!” I looked back toward the house, feeling guiltier by the second. “You guys go without me.”

  “There’s a spot nearby where we can get a little privacy,” he said. “Luke’s dog will keep watch for us. You can practice levitating.”

  I stuck out my jaw. “I am not levitating.”

  We’d started arguing about this a couple of weeks earlier. Since I could manipulate gravity, Barrett thought I should be able to make myself fly. I, meanwhile, wanted nothing to do with levitation. I was terrified of heights. And I knew better than anyone that my focus still needed work. If my attention wavered while I was lev
itating, I’d fall like a rock. This had happened a number of times with objects I had attempted to manipulate. I was not prepared for it to happen to me.

  “You can practice on me,” Barrett said. He walked around to the back of the truck and climbed onto the bumper. “I’ll jump off here. Just a few feet off the ground. No one will notice.”

  “I’ll drop you if I get distracted,” I warned.

  “Don’t get distracted,” he argued. “Focus.”

  “Easy for you to say, Zen master. I just started training! You’ve been doing it for years.”

  Tara eyed me. “I wouldn’t mind if you dropped Barrett on his butt, D.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know you’d like it, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Barrett climbed down, apparently having accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to change my mind. “You’re getting better, D. Last week you moved that chair across the room without blinking.”

  “You are not a chair.”

  He grabbed a can of soda from the seat beside Tara and popped open the top. “So you’ll try harder. It’s good to raise the stakes.”

  “Kids,” Esteban broke in, sotto voce, “sorry to interrupt, but is it just me or is there a menacing gang of thugs headed our way?”

  Everyone moved away from the car to get a better look. I strained to see the shapes in the darkness. There were at least eight of them, perhaps more, but it was hard to tell, because every time they got close to a streetlight, a tiny figure would step out of formation and touch the lamppost. Then there would be a fizzing sound, and the light would flare brightly, then go dark.

  Without being able to see their faces, it was hard to describe what made these people so frightening, other than the fact that one of them had the power to short-circuit streetlights. It must have been the way they moved—in a phalanx, a stocky guy at the front walking purposefully as they headed toward Anna’s house. They also weren’t talking. That sent the creepy factor up several notches.

  “Not just you,” Barrett confirmed. “Definitely menacing.”

  “Should we go in the house?” I whispered. Suddenly, I desperately wanted Cam next to me.

  Right next to me.

  Or, better still, in front of me.

  They were just a few houses away now, and I could see that there was a mix of male and female, at least ten altogether, some with long coats, others with vests, all wearing red bandannas in one style or another—around the forehead like a headband for the girls, at the wrist or neck for the boys.

  There was enough light from the remaining streetlamps and Anna’s house to illuminate their faces as they got closer. They were all teenagers, I guessed. The guy in front looked a little older, maybe twenty. The others were hard to make out, especially the ones in the back, but they were all grim and silent, and they were staring right at us.

  Cam must have heard my prayers. Or maybe, I realized with no small amount of trepidation, he had felt someone using a Level Three Talent. As the phalanx neared, music spilled out of Anna’s house. I turned to see Cam behind me, framed by the light in the doorway.

  “Trevor!” he snapped to someone behind him when he saw the gang headed in our direction. “Tell Trevor I need him. Fast.”

  Barrett and the others inched back toward Lucas’s car. Without thinking, I moved closer to the house—and Cam. Unfortunately, this left me isolated from the group. Not exactly what you’d want, when facing down a pack of menacing teenagers who were probably packing something under those coats and vests. Still, when Barrett motioned to me to move back in their direction, I shook my head helplessly. My legs seemed to have frozen.

  Cam paused next to me as he strode toward the street.

  “You should go back to the house, Dancia,” he said in a low voice.

  His softly spoken command gave me a thrill of pleasure even as it hardened my resolve to stay put. If something was going down, I wasn’t going to let Cam deal with it by himself. I had a strong suspicion Barrett and the others would be less than helpful in a crisis.

  Esteban elbowed Lucas. “I’m thinking this party officially sucks.”

  “What do they want?” I heard Tara whisper.

  “I’m sure they want to be friends,” Barrett said.

  Someone snickered. I was too horrified to do anything but stare, wide-eyed, at the approaching nightmare.

  Cam paused at the edge of the driveway. The gang stopped in front of him.

  “Nice night, isn’t it?” Cam said evenly.

  “Very nice,” the leader of the gang agreed. He jerked his head to the side in an apparent signal to his troops, and they fanned out in a wider formation.

  “What do you want?” Cam asked.

  “I thought I’d introduce myself,” the leader said mildly. He had broad shoulders and a thick chest. His round face might have been sweet if it hadn’t been for the fact that he radiated a quiet kind of fury just under the surface. He wore a leather bomber jacket; his bandanna was tied around his neck, train-robber style. “The name is Thaddeus.”

  “Nice to meet you, Thaddeus. Now, there’s a party going on here. I think it’s best you leave.” Cam crossed his arms over his chest.

  “So unfriendly,” Thaddeus said reproachfully. “You haven’t given me a chance to deliver my message.”

  “What message?”

  “Your Watchers have been giving my people a hard time lately. We’d like for it to stop.”

  I took an involuntary step back. They knew about the Watchers?

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that for you,” Cam said, seemingly unfazed by Thaddeus’s demand. “There was a little disturbance up at the school the other day. We tend to take these things seriously.”

  “That’s too bad. I had hoped we might be able to get along.”

  Cam leaned back on his heels. “It’s up to you. Leave now, and we can.”

  Thaddeus shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.” He turned as if to leave, but took only one step before he stopped. “Just one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” Cam asked.

  “A message. For your boss.”

  That was when Thaddeus did exactly what I’d feared. He reached inside the pocket of his leather coat and pulled something out. I had just opened my mouth to scream when I realized it was a brick, not a gun or dagger. Deliberately, he turned toward Lucas’s car and hurled the brick at its front window. The sound of shattering glass sent me ducking for cover, my head in my hands. A second later, I looked up just in time to see Trevor running down the driveway toward Cam, with Sam, Kari, and Geneva behind him. Meanwhile, Thaddeus was headed right for Cam.

  Meeting the gang leader’s charge, Cam launched himself at Thaddeus with a series of blindingly fast movements. I stared in amazement. Cam was into martial arts, but I was unprepared to see him enter the fight with arms and legs flying—he even went from a full backflip to a spinning kick. The display seemed to stun Thaddeus, allowing Cam to get in a satisfying kick to the face. Thaddeus might have been able to hurl bricks forty feet through car windows, but Cam moved twice as fast. When Thaddeus finally did come out swinging, Cam ducked swiftly to avoid a series of punches, then got in an uppercut before dancing out of reach.

  It took only those few seconds for the rest of the group to engage themselves in battle. Trevor faced off against a girl with long brown hair in a braid, her bandanna tied around her forehead. She crouched down, hands loosely guarding her face. He swung at her with a clenched fist, but she spun around him like a tiny cyclone, easily avoiding his punches, then bringing alternating feet under his chin with a staccato motion that sent him reeling. He paused for only a moment before coming back toward her with his hands flying.

  Kari sparred with a snarling girl dressed all in black, who seemed to dance as she fought. She reminded me of a ballerina, except that every leap ended with an openhanded strike to the face or jab with an elbow. Geneva and a boy who must have shared her talent for acrobatics turned somersaults in the air and swung at
each other while they were ten feet off the ground. A moment later, they would land on the ground like cats, lightly springing on the balls of their feet before launching themselves back into the air.

  Barrett and his friends didn’t join the fight, despite the fact that there were five of them, and that Cam, Trevor, Kari, Sam, and Geneva were outnumbered two to one. The seniors ducked behind the car and watched. Lucas and Esteban had bemused expressions on their faces, while Tara kept shaking her head and wincing.

  But it was Barrett whose behavior I couldn’t understand.

  He stood beside the curb, lips pressed together tightly, hair pushed back, intently assessing the situation. For once, he wasn’t smiling or laughing. In fact, he wore an expression I’d never seen on him before. He crossed his arms over his chest, a mixture of frustration and anger written in his eyes. If I didn’t know him, I would have found him distinctly intimidating.

  Yet he didn’t do anything.

  For all his speed, Cam couldn’t hold out against Thaddeus’s fists forever, and he finally took a direct blow to the face. When he struck back with a blind punch, Thaddeus grabbed his arm and twisted him around, then landed three quick strikes in a row to Cam’s lower back. Cam grunted and fell back a few paces.

  I whipped around to face Barrett. “Do something!” I cried. “Help him!”

  “They created this,” Barrett said. “It’s their fight now.”

  “What?”

  “It was only a matter of time.” He shook his head, mouth tight, dark eyes flashing.

  I could hardly process what he was saying. Barrett was standing there watching Cam get beat up because he thought Cam and the others had picked this fight? No way. If your team was threatened, you helped. Even if the people in trouble weren’t Barrett’s friends, we had all taken an oath of loyalty to the Program. As far as I was concerned, this was an attack on the Program. I didn’t know why, or who the gang of bandanna-wearing thugs were, but they were after us.

  And they were winning.

  I stepped forward a few paces.

  “Don’t do it,” Barrett warned. “You’ll get hurt. Let the police handle it.”