He shook his head. “Too risky.”
“Oh, right. Much more risky than chancing your head getting blown off. Where’s Teacup? Where’s Poundcake?”
He shook his head again. Who?
“The little girl who took off down the highway. The big kid who chased after her. You must have seen them.”
Now he nodded. “North.”
“Well, I know which direction they went . . .”
“Don’t go after them.”
That brought me up short. “What do you mean?”
“It isn’t safe.”
“Nowhere is safe, Evan.”
His eyes were rolling back in his head. He was passing out. “There’s Grace.”
“What did you say? Grace? As in ‘Amazing Grace’ or what? What’s that mean, ‘There’s grace’?”
“Grace,” he murmured, and then he slipped away.
34
I STAYED WITH HIM till dawn. Sitting with him like he sat with me in the old farmhouse. He brought me to that place against my will and then my will brought him to this place, and maybe that meant we sort of owned each other. Or owed each other. Anyway, no debt is ever fully repaid, not really, not the ones that really matter. You saved me, he said, and back then I didn’t understand what I had saved him from. That was before he told me the truth about who he was, and afterward I thought he meant I had saved him from that whole human genocide, mass-murderer thing. Now I was thinking he didn’t mean I saved him from anything, but for something. The tricky part, the unanswerable part, the part that scared the crap out of me, was what that something might be.
He moaned in his sleep. His fingers clawed at the covers. Delirious. Been there and done that, too, Evan. I took his hand. Burned and bruised and broken, and I had wondered what took him so long to find me? He must have crawled here. His hand was hot; his face shone with sweat. For the first time it occurred to me that Evan Walker might die—so soon, too, after rising from the dead.
“You’re going to live,” I told him. “You have to live. Promise, Evan. Promise me you’re going to live. Promise me.”
I slipped a little. Tried not to. Couldn’t help it:
“That’ll complete the circle, then we’re done; we’re both done, me and you. You shot me and I lived. I shot you and you live. See? That’s how it works. Ask anybody. Plus the fact that you’re Mr. Ten-Centuries-Old Superbeing destined to save us pitiful humans from the intergalactic swarm. That’s your job. What you were born to do. Or bred to. Whatever. You know, as plans to conquer the world go, yours has been pretty sucky. Almost a year into it and we’re still here, and who’s the one flat on his back like a bug with drool on his chin?”
Actually, he did have some drool on his chin. I dabbed it up with a corner of the blanket.
The door opened and big ol’ Poundcake stepped into the room. Then Dumbo, grinning from big ear to big ear, then Ben, and finally Sam. Finally as in no Teacup.
“How is he?” Ben asked.
“Burning up,” I answered. “Delirious. He keeps talking about grace.”
Ben frowned. “Like ‘Amazing Grace’?”
“Maybe saying grace, like before a meal,” Dumbo suggested. “He’s probably starving.”
Poundcake lumbered over to the window and stared down at the icy parking lot. I watched him Eeyore-walk across the room, then turned to Ben. “What happened?”
“He won’t say.”
“Then make him say. You’re the sarge, right?”
“I don’t think he can.”
“So Teacup’s vanished and we don’t know where or why.”