I was helping Angel and Nudge carry their bags to the chopper when I finally made my decision. I flagged down my mom, who was turning off the lights and shutting the front door. “Wait—we need to bring Jeb,” I blurted before I could change my mind.
“What?” Angel hissed, recoiling in surprise.
Iggy was indignant. “Max, he wanted to kill Fang, we can’t just—”
“We can’t just leave him out there to die,” I cut him off. “He saved our lives once, and we owe him this. No matter what he’s done.”
Sometimes being a leader isn’t about winning. Sometimes it’s about doing what’s right, instead of what’s powerful.
“We’ll keep him under lock and key,” my mom agreed, giving me a look that said I’m proud of you. “He’s a sick man, but not an evil one.”
She immediately set about tying up Jeb’s hands and feet while the rest of us loaded Fang into to the chopper on a makeshift stretcher. Total had to be forcefully scooped and carried into the back, protesting all the while that he couldn’t go anywhere that might be too far away from Akila. Mom reassured Total that Akila would be waiting for him at the place we were headed. She refused to divulge anything further.
The pilot started the helicopter, and the deep noise of the blades filled our ears as we fastened our seat belts.
I sighed as the chopper lifted off the ground and we left everything—all of our emotional baggage, Ari, a hundred dead Erasers, and the empty house in Newton—behind us. I wondered briefly what the neighbors would think of the mess we’d left in our wake, and couldn’t help smiling.
73
WE WERE FIVE hours into a very long flight on Nino Pierpont’s fancy private jet when Fang’s eyes finally fluttered open.
“Fang!” I shrieked. I was so ecstatic I almost kissed him right there, in front of everyone. Instead I settled for hugging him tightly, like my life depended on it—way too roughly for his injuries.
“Max?” he croaked. “What… happened?”
I took a deep breath and told Fang that he had been hurt really badly in a fight, and that when the fight was over, he was unconscious. I told him that Ari had been taken down in the fight, but I didn’t mention Dylan. I told him how my mom had come for us, how it turned out that, in the end, Jeb was just another stupid whitecoat who had lost his mind. I was breathless, talking as fast as I could. I was afraid if I stopped talking, even for a second, I’d start sobbing again.
“Whoa, there.” Fang smiled and reached up, tracing a hand down the side of my face, winding strands of my hair around his fingers. “Stop talking and let me just tell you how great it is to wake up staring at your face. Okay?”
That was maybe the most direct thing Fang had ever said to me. A lump formed in my throat. “Okay,” I croaked.
“Okay, so… it’s really great to wake up looking at your face.” He blinked, like his eyes were still trying to focus. “It’s… beautiful, actually.”
The lump in my throat got bigger. Way bigger. “I thought…” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”
“Come on. You really thought I’d leave you right when things were getting interesting?” Fang gave a gruff little laugh that sounded more like a cough. “Not in a million years.” His eyes turned serious then, and he took my hand, bringing it to his cracked, swollen lips. “I’ll never leave you, Max. Not ever again.”
My heart leaped. I squeezed his hand and nodded. “Me neither.”
For the rest of the flight I didn’t budge from Fang’s side. Sometimes I just sat there and watched his bruised face as he slept. Sometimes I woke from my own dozing to see his dark eyes watching me, as if I were a stranger and he was meeting me for the first time. And the whole time, awake or asleep, Fang never let go of my hand. Not once.
And here’s the weird thing: Even with all the awful stuff that had gone on, that was still going on, I felt content. I felt whole.
I felt right.
I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. With Fang and the flock by my side, I could face anything. Come what may.
“So, where are we going, again?” Fang asked, yawning. He squinted out the window.
“To the one place in the world where you’ll be safe,” my mom said, turning around in her plush seat a few rows ahead of us. “To paradise.”
Book Four
PARADISE
74
SIX BIRD KIDS and one very jet-lagged flying dog stepped off Pierpont’s plane into glorious sunshine and tropical humidity.
We left Jeb on the plane; my mom said that this place had a medical team who would deal with him, and that they knew to keep him under guard.
“Just a short walk to your new home,” my mom said, and soon we were parading after her through the welcome shade of the rain forest.
I looked around me, struck dumb with wonder. Vines snaked up towering trees fuzzy with neon moss. Birds twittered and trilled all around us. Through a window of branches, we could see distant cliffs falling sharply to a beach of bleached sand and turquoise water.
My mom was right: If you looked up “paradise” in the dictionary, this would be it.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
“To our new life,” Fang said, threading his fingers in mine, his smile implying so many things we hadn’t been able to put into words: Together. Our new life together.
I grinned, dizzy with the possibilities of this place.
“Oh, my gosh!” Nudge said breathlessly. “Iggy! Feel the moss on the trees. Everything is lush and gorgeous and so green. And there’s parrots!” she squealed. “That’s the noise you hear above, that weird cackle. There are tons of ’em—blue and red and yellow. They’re huge!”
Gazzy flew up to join the parrots and started swinging from vines, Tarzan-style, and Iggy zoomed up after him, deftly maneuvering through the trees.
“Quickest way to ruin our first day in paradise? Scraping your feathered butts off the jungle floor!” Total yelled, and Gazzy hung upside down by one foot, giggling maniacally.
“Ooh, I bet there are waterfalls, too,” Nudge continued, ignoring the boys. “Tropical paradises always have waterfalls! Don’t they?”
My mom smiled indulgently. “They do, and there are.”
“Tree house!” Gazzy yelled from above. “Oh, man! You guys, look at all the tree houses!”
The tree houses were camouflaged so well that I hadn’t noticed them at first, but he was right—now I could see their shapes forming a village high in the jungle’s canopy.
A village just for us.
“They have our names on the doors!” Gazzy yelled. “Nudge, this one’s yours.”
“Really?” Nudge bolted up there as fast as her wings would carry her.
Nudge’s tree house was the most chic-looking of all the tree houses: ultramodern, with sleek, clean lines. It was minimal—almost delicate—and seemed to be held together by nothing more than sap. “A canopied bed!” I heard Nudge exclaim from inside. This was followed by a “Gazzy! Off!” I snorted with laughter.
“I think that’s yours over there, Total,” my mom said, pointing to an enormous mansion of a tree house.
“Mine?” Total asked, gaping upward. “Oh, Dr. M! Look at those glorious arches, the Grecian lines! Plush, with understated elegance and seaside charm,” he gushed. “So classy! So regal! It’s so… me.”
Just at that moment we heard a bark—and it wasn’t Total’s high-pitched yap, but the joyful call of a much bigger canine. A wet nose peeked out from between some of the tree-house branches above.