This morning Prairie announced that we had a special mission to take care of. From the looks she and Anna exchanged, I knew they’d already talked about it, but it wasn’t until Prairie and I were in the car that she told me anything more. Anna and Kaz stayed behind with Chub, but Anna gave Prairie a small plastic bag as we left. Prairie slipped it into her purse, but not until I’d glimpsed the syringe it held.
“You remember Vincent,” Prairie said softly as we drove northwest through the city neighborhoods.
How could I forget? I remembered his vacant staring eyes; his wasted body, motionless in the hospital bed; his waxy skin and shrunken form, kept alive only by the extraordinary efforts of experimental medicine. But most of all, I remembered the anguish in Prairie’s eyes when she looked at him, even after so many years had passed since her greatest mistake.
The first time I saw Vincent, I was horrified by Prairie’s choice: she had brought Vincent back from death, healed him after the last breath left his body. It was the one thing I knew must never be done, and I’d been sure I would never be tempted. But that was before I fell in love.
As we drove through the night, I thought about Kaz lying wounded in the dirt after the Pollitt house blew up. I remembered my terror when his eyes rolled up in his head, my desperate grief when I couldn’t find his pulse. I remembered my tears falling on his beautiful face and the warmth of his hand in mine and I wondered if I would have had the strength to let him go.
When we arrived at the tidy brick convalescent home, Prairie chose a parking space at the far end of the parking lot, out of the glare of the streetlamps. She cut the engine and turned to me.
“This is risky,” she said. “You don’t have to come.”
“I’m coming.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
She hesitated a moment longer and then she brushed her hand across my cheek, a simple gesture that made my heart tighten. I loved her so much; I didn’t know how to put it into words, but I would never take her for granted again. If there was any way I could be there for her, I would never let her face another difficult moment by herself. Not only had she risked her own safety for me over and over… but she and I had both had enough of being alone in the world. Neither of us had parents. Neither of us had siblings. But we had each other.
When we entered the lobby, Prairie held her head high and pasted on her fake friendly smile. If I hadn’t known her so well, I would have thought she was just another pretty career woman, her face obscured by the sweep of glossy hair that fell over one eye.
At the desk she paused to sign the guest register.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said to the attendant, a bored-looking young woman with her finger marking her page in a book. “I’m Veronica. Here visiting my dad.”
“I’m just a temp,” the attendant said, stifling a yawn. “Everyone wanted off for the holiday.”
“Lucky them,” Prairie murmured as we walked away.
At Vincent’s door she quickly looked up and down the hall and then we slipped inside, and it was just as I’d remembered.
Vincent must have been handsome at one time. I’d tried imagining him the way Prairie described him-the football star, full of life, dancing with her at the high school prom. Vowing to be with her forever. Driving to the lake the night before he planned to buy her a promise ring.
The accident.
He wasn’t handsome anymore. The extraordinary efforts of the researchers had seen to that, preserving his tissues long after they should have crumbled to dust. At his bedside Prairie stiffened and made a small sound-a single choked sob-and then she put her hand on my arm and gently but firmly pushed me away.
“This will only take a minute,” she said, and her voice was steady.
I retreated to the corner of the room. The single lamp created shadows across the scene before me, but I saw Prairie take the small bag from her purse, prepare the syringe and slip the needle into the skin between his fingers.
He didn’t react. I didn’t know if it should have hurt; it didn’t matter. Moments passed, Prairie’s shoulders stiff and unmoving. The thing that had once been Vincent did not move; its eyes did not blink.
At last Prairie turned away from the bed, and I saw that tears streaked her smooth face.
“It’s done,” she said softly, and we left the room for the last time.
Back at the house she and Anna had a quick whispered conversation and then Anna hugged her. I didn’t know what had been in the syringe; I did know that Anna, with her nursing school training and access to the hospital pharmacy, must have given her something deadly and hard to detect. Not that I was worried; I was pretty sure that no one would question the death of a nursing home patient whose very existence was still a mystery to researchers after all these years.
Kaz came into the kitchen carrying Chub upside down. Chub was giggling so hard his cheeks had turned bright pink. Anna took the plastic off a platter sitting on the kitchen table and I saw that she had made almond rogaliki, my favorite, and decorated them with red, white and blue piped icing.
“And I have a treat,” she said, her eyes dancing with excitement.
She ushered us out into the backyard and took a long, narrow box from her apron. Sparklers. I’d never held one before. Each of us-me, Prairie and Chub, his hand firmly enclosed in Kaz’s large one-held a sparkler to the lighter Anna produced from another pocket, and I gasped when the long wands burst into magnificent showers of dancing light. We laughed as the tiny pinpricks of heat bounced off our skin, and we trailed our sparklers through the night, writing our names in the air and making giant swirls and spirals.
At last, the final sparkler fizzled out and we were left in the dark once again. But there was a bright moon above us, and I could see Kaz’s smile, the one he saved just for me. Far in the distance I heard the echoing boom of fireworks, but when Kaz wrapped his arms around me, all I heard was his heart beating, strong and sure.
Much later, I was the only one still awake in the little house. I was sharing a room with Chub, listening to him sigh and murmur in his dreams while I stared out the window at the same silvery moon.
I didn’t know the future. I didn’t know who I would be tomorrow, but I had made peace with who I had been until now. I couldn’t change the past that had brought me this far, but I knew where I was now, in this moment. I was with people who loved me, other Banished who had made the long journey over time and distance and bloodshed and battle and loss. I was safe, loved and cherished. And it was enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie Littlefield also writes crime fiction and urban fantasy for adults. Her first novel about Hailey Tarbell, Banished, is available from Delacorte Press. She lives with her family in Northern California. Visit her online at sophielittlefield.com.
