Trudy pulled out the tray of baked rolls, and I bent to shove the next tray of risen dough into the hot, smoking hole. It took a little jostling and balancing to get it in just right.
As I sweated in front of the fire, I heard some kind of commotion outside the kitchen, echoing down the hall from somewhere else in the caves. It was hard, with all the random sound reverberations and strange acoustics, to judge distances here.
“Hey!” Jamie shouted behind me, and I turned just in time to see the back of his head as he sprinted out the door.
I straightened out of my crouch and took a step after him, my instinct to follow.
“Wait,” Ian said. “He’ll be back. Tell us more about the Dolphins.”
Ian was sitting on the counter beside the oven-a hot seat that I wouldn’t have chosen-which made him close enough to reach out and touch my wrist. My arm flinched away from the unexpected contact, but I stayed where I was.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked. I could still hear some kind of jabbering-I thought I could hear Jamie’s excited voice in the mix.
Ian shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Jeb…” He shrugged again, as if he wasn’t interested enough to bother with figuring it out. Nonchalant, but there was a tension in his eyes I didn’t understand.
I was sure I would find out soon enough, so I shrugged, too, and started explaining the incredibly complex familial relationships of the Dolphins while I helped Trudy stack the warm bread in plastic containers.
“Six of the nine… grandparents, so to speak, traditionally stay with the larvae through their first stage of development while the three parents work with their six grandparents on a new wing of the family dwelling for the young to inhabit when they are mobile,” I was explaining, my eyes on the rolls in my hands rather than my audience, as usual, when I heard the gasp from the back of the room. I continued with my next sentence automatically as I scanned the crowd to see who I’d upset. “The remaining three grandparents are customarily involved…”
No one was upset with me. Every head was turned in the same direction I was looking. My eyes skipped across the backs of their heads to the dark exit.
The first thing I saw was Jamie’s slight figure, clinging to someone’s arm. Someone so dirty, head to toe, that he almost blended right in with the cave wall. Someone too tall to be Jeb, and anyway, there was Jeb just behind Jamie’s shoulder. Even from this distance, I could see that Jeb’s eyes were narrowed and his nose wrinkled, as if he were anxious-a rare emotion for Jeb. Just as I could see that Jamie’s face was bright with sheer joy.
“Here we go,” Ian muttered beside me, his voice barely audible above the crackle of the flames.
The dirty man Jamie was still clinging to took a step forward. One of his hands rose slowly, like an involuntary reflex, and curled into a fist.
From the dirty figure came Jared’s voice-flat, perfectly devoid of any inflection. “What is the meaning of this, Jeb?”
My throat closed. I tried to swallow and found the way blocked. I tried to breathe and was not successful. My heart drummed unevenly.
Jared! Melanie’s exultant voice was loud, a silent shriek of elation. She burst into radiant life inside my head. Jared is home!
“Wanda is teaching us all about the universe,” Jamie babbled eagerly, somehow not catching on to Jared’s fury-he was too excited to pay attention, maybe.
“Wanda?” Jared repeated in a low voice that was almost a snarl.
There were more dirty figures in the hall behind him. I only noticed them when they echoed his snarl with an outraged muttering.
A blond head rose from the frozen audience. Paige lurched to her feet. “Andy!” she cried, and stumbled through the figures seated around her. One of the dirty men stepped around Jared and caught her as she nearly fell over Wes. “Oh, Andy!” she sobbed, the tone of her voice reminding me of Melanie’s.
Paige’s outburst changed the atmosphere momentarily. The silent crowd began to murmur, most of them rising to their feet. The sound was one of welcome now, as the majority went to greet the returned travelers. I tried to read the strange expressions on their faces as they forced grins onto their lips and peeked furtively back at me. I realized after a long, slow second-time seemed to be congealing around me, freezing me into place-that the expression I wondered at was guilt.
“It’s going to be okay, Wanda,” Ian murmured under his breath.
I glanced at him wildly, searching for that same guilt on his face. I didn’t find it, only a defensive tightening around his vivid eyes as he stared at the newcomers.
“What the hell, people?” a new voice boomed.
Kyle-easily identifiable by his size despite the grime-was shoving his way around Jared and heading toward… me.
“You’re letting it tell you its lies? Have you all gone crazy? Or did it lead the Seekers here? Are you all parasites now?”
Many heads fell forward, ashamed. Only a few kept their chins stiffly in the air, their shoulders squared: Lily, Trudy, Heath, Wes… and frail Walter, of all people.
“Easy, Kyle,” Walter said in his feeble voice.
Kyle ignored him. He walked with deliberate steps toward me, his eyes, the same vibrant cobalt as his brother’s, glowing with rage. I couldn’t keep my eyes on him, though-they kept returning to Jared’s dark shape, trying to read his camouflaged face.
Melanie’s love flowed through me like a lake bursting through a dam, distracting me even more from the enraged barbarian closing the distance quickly.
Ian slid into my view, moving to place himself in front of me. I strained my neck to the side to keep my view of Jared clear.
“Things changed while you were gone, brother.”
Kyle halted, face slack with disbelief. “Did the Seekers come, then, Ian?”
“She’s not a danger to us.”
Kyle ground his teeth together, and from the corner of my eye, I saw him reach for something in his pocket.
This captured my attention at last. I cringed, expecting a weapon. The words stumbled off my tongue in a choked whisper. “Don’t get in his way, Ian.”
Ian didn’t respond to my plea. I was surprised at the amount of anxiety this caused me, at how much I didn’t want him hurt. It wasn’t the instinctive protection, the bone-deep need to protect, that I felt for Jamie or even Jared. I just knew that Ian should not be harmed trying to protect me.
Kyle’s hand came back up, and a light shone out of it. He pointed it at Ian’s face, held it there for a moment. Ian didn’t flinch from the light.
“So, what, then?” Kyle demanded, putting the flashlight back in his pocket. “You’re not a parasite. How did it get to you?”
“Calm down, and we’ll tell you all about it.”
“No.”
The contradiction did not come from Kyle but from behind him. I watched Jared walk slowly toward us through the silent spectators. As he got closer, Jamie still clinging to his hand with a bewildered expression, I could read his face better under the mask of dirt. Even Melanie, all but delirious with happiness at his safe return, could not misunderstand the expression of loathing there.
Jeb had wasted his efforts on the wrong people. It didn’t matter that Trudy or Lily was speaking to me, that Ian would put himself between his brother and me, that Sharon and Maggie made no hostile move toward me. The only one who had to be convinced had now, finally, decided.
“I don’t think anyone needs to calm down,” Jared said through his teeth. “Jeb,” he continued, not looking to see if the old man had followed him forward, “give me the gun.”