“No!” he interrupted me in a louder voice.
I jumped, startled, and the little pill slipped from my fingers. It dropped to the metal floor with a faintly audible clink. I felt the blood drain from my face as though a plug had been pulled.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized quickly, his eyes repeating their restless circle. “But you shouldn’t linger here.”
“Why?” I managed to whisper. My fingers twitched anxiously at the empty air.
“There was a… disappearance recently.”
“I don’t understand. A disappearance?”
“It could have been an accident… but there might be…” He hesitated, unwilling to say the word. “Humans may be in this area.”
“Humans?” I squeaked, too loud. He heard the fear in my voice and interpreted it the only way he could.
“There’s no proof of that, Leaves Above. No sightings or anything. Don’t be anxious. But you should proceed on to Phoenix without unnecessary delay.”
“Of course. Or maybe Tucson? That would be closer.”
“There’s no danger. You can continue with your plans.”
“If you’re sure, Seeker…”
“I’m quite sure. Just don’t go wandering off into the desert, Flower.” He smiled. The expression warmed his face, making it kind. Just like all the other souls I’d dealt with. He wasn’t anxious about me, but for me. He wasn’t listening for lies. And he probably wouldn’t recognize them if he was. Just another soul.
“I wasn’t planning on it.” I smiled back at him. “I’ll be more careful. I know I couldn’t fall asleep now.” I glanced at the desert out Jared’s window with a wary expression, so the Seeker would think that fear was making me alert. My expression tensed into a taut mask as I caught sight of a pair of lights reflected in the side mirror.
Jared’s spine stiffened at the same time, but he held his pose. It looked too tight.
My eyes darted back to the Seeker’s face.
“I can help with that,” he said, still smiling but looking down now as he fumbled to remove something from his pocket.
He hadn’t seen the change in my face. I tried to control the muscles in my cheeks, to make them relax, but I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to make it happen.
In the rearview mirror, the headlights got closer.
“You should not use this often,” the Seeker went on, searching the other pocket now. “It’s not harmful, of course, or the Healers wouldn’t have us give it out. But if you use it frequently, it will alter your sleep cycles… Ah, here it is. Awake.”
The lights slowed as they approached.
Just drive by, I begged in my head. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
Let it be Kyle at the wheel, Melanie added, thinking the words like a prayer.
Don’t stop. Just drive. Don’t stop. Just drive.
“Miss?”
I blinked, trying to focus. “Um, Awake?”
“Just inhale this, Leaves Above.”
He had a thin white aerosol can in his hand. He sprayed a puff of mist into the air in front of my face. I leaned forward obediently and took a sniff, my eyes darting to the mirror at the same time.
“It’s grapefruit scented,” the Seeker said. “Nice, don’t you think?”
“Very nice.” My brain was suddenly sharp, focused.
The big moving truck slowed and then idled on the road be-hind us.
No! Mel and I shouted together. I searched the dark floor for one half second, hoping against hope that the little pill would be visible. I couldn’t even make out my feet.
The Seeker glanced absently at the truck and then waved it forward.
I looked back at the truck, too, a forced smile on my face. I couldn’t see who was driving. My eyes reflected the headlights, shot out faint beams of their own.
The truck hesitated.
The Seeker waved again, more broadly this time. “Go ahead,” he muttered to himself.
Drive! Drive! Drive!
Beside me, Jared’s hand was clenched in a fist.
Slowly, the big truck shuddered into first gear and then inched forward through the space between the Seeker’s vehicle and ours. The Seeker’s spotlight outlined two silhouettes, two black profiles, both facing straight forward. The one in the driver’s seat had a crooked nose.
Mel and I both exhaled in relief.
“How do you feel?”
“Alert,” I told the Seeker.
“It will wear off in about four hours.”
“Thank you.”
The Seeker chuckled. “Thank you, Leaves Above. When we saw you racing down the road, we thought we might have humans on our hands. I was sweating, but not from the heat!”
I shuddered.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be perfectly fine. If you’d like, we can follow you to Phoenix.”
“I’m just fine. You don’t need to trouble yourself.”
“It was nice to meet you. I’ll be pleased when my shift is over, so that I can go home and tell my partner I met another green-first Flower. She’ll be so excited.”
“Um… tell her, ‘Brightest sun, longest day’ for me,” I said, giving him the Earthly translation of the common greeting and farewell on the Flower Planet.
“Certainly. Have a pleasant journey.”
“And you have a pleasant night.”
He stepped back, and the spotlight hit my eyes again. I blinked furiously.
“Cut it, Hank,” the Seeker said, shading his eyes as he turned to walk toward the car. The night turned black again, and I forced another smile toward the invisible Seeker named Hank.
I started the engine with shaking hands.
The Seekers were faster. The little black car with the incongruous light bar atop it purred to life. It executed a sharp U-turn, and then the taillights were all I could see. They disappeared quickly into the night.
I pulled back onto the road. My heart pumped the blood through my veins in hard little bursts. I could feel the fierce pulse throbbing through to my fingertips.
“They’re gone,” I whispered through my suddenly chattering teeth.
I heard Jared swallow.
“That was… close,” he said.
“I thought Kyle was going to stop.”
“Me, too.”
Neither of us could speak above a whisper.
“The Seeker bought it.” His teeth were still clenched in anxiety.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have. Your acting hasn’t improved much.”
I shrugged. My body was so rigid, it all moved together. “They can’t not believe me. What I am… well, it’s something impossible. Something that shouldn’t exist.”
“Something unbelievable,” he agreed. “Something wonderful.”
His praise thawed some of the ice in my stomach, in my veins.
“Seekers aren’t all that different from the rest of them,” I murmured to myself. “Nothing to be especially afraid of.”
He shook his head back and forth slowly. “There really isn’t anything you can’t do, is there?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“Having you with us is going to change everything,” he continued under his breath, talking to himself now.
I could feel how his words made Melanie sad, but she was not angry this time. She was resigned.
You can help them. You can protect them better than I could. She sighed.
The slow-moving taillights did not frighten me when they appeared on the road ahead. They were familiar, a relief. I sped up-just a little, still a few miles below the limit-to pass them.
Jared pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment. I understood what he was doing: reassurance.
He held the light to his own eyes as we passed the cab of the truck. I looked past him, through the other window. Kyle nodded once at Jared and took a deep breath. Ian was leaning anxiously around him, his eyes focused on me. I waved once, and he grimaced.