Seasons of the Storm by Elle Cosimano

Author:Elle Cosimano [Cosimano, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062854247
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

27

Safe House

FLEUR

The drive to Jack’s safe house is quiet, except for the occasional cough and sniffle from the back seat. Jack’s driving; he’s the only one aside from Chill who knows exactly where we’re going.

I drop my feet from the dash, growing drowsier the more comfortable I try to make myself. Jack glances over as I peel off my sweater and aim the AC vent toward my face. No one objected when Jack set the thermostat as low as it would go. Instead, they took the sleeping bags from their packs and spread them across each other, and within minutes, they were all asleep.

One of us should stay up and keep Jack company. One of us should keep an eye out for crows, but the cold air only manages to leech my energy. I blink out the window, my eyelids growing heavier as the trees blur by. When the sun rose this morning, revealing the first turning autumn leaves I’ve seen in decades, I felt a rush of nostalgia, flashes of memories of plastic Halloween buckets overflowing with candy and my mother’s good linens around the table at Thanksgiving, of hayrides and candy apples stuck in my teeth. But the farther west we drive, the lower the temperature falls. The piles of browning leaves along the side of the road remind me of Hunter, and the guilt sucks every ounce of warmth from my bones.

Jack hasn’t said a word since we started driving. I wonder if he’s battling memories of his own.

“You should rest.” His voice is husky, his bloodshot eyes focused on the hypnotic white lines flashing by on the road. He points ahead of us, where a mountain range forms distant hazy peaks on the horizon. “It’s not far. We’ll be there in a few hours.”

I turn in my seat, toward the familiar sound of Poppy’s soft snores. She coughs, curled into her sleeping bag on the floorboard. Chill stirs in the seat behind her, his glasses low on his nose. Marie’s mouth hangs open beside him, her head pressed against the window, with Slinky fast asleep in her lap. Woody’s crammed in the rear bench seat between Amber and Julio. His skin looks sallow in his sleep, feverishly pale, but his bleeding has stopped, and for now, that’s all we can do. We can’t risk stopping at a hospital or a clinic. Cameras are mounted in every store and gas station. For all we know, they’re on every highway marker and exit sign, too. We’re eight teenagers in a stolen SUV full of camping gear and bloody clothes, midmorning on a school day. The last thing we want is to draw any more attention to ourselves.

I keep my eyes peeled for Gaia’s spies and speed traps on the side of the road. But the farther west we travel, the more it begins to wind. My head lolls with the motion of the car, and I close my eyes.

Just for a second.

Tires crunch slowly over gravel. I blink, blinded by the orange glow against the inside of my eyelids and jostled by ruts in the road.

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