The Cage (The Cage #1)(51)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Lucky tossed the coin to Rolf, who caught it triumphantly. He’d always wanted a friend as cool as Lucky. Soon, once Lucky got over his grief, he’d have a girlfriend and a best friend.

They tromped home through the snow, and he and Nok paused to make a snowman that looked like the Caretaker. Then they returned to town and goaded Lucky into pulling out the guitar. The town square was summery warm. Nok stripped off her snow-soaked dress and jumped in the stream in her underwear, while Lucky played an old country song he said his granddad had taught him. Rolf mentally laid out a new plan for the farm. Asparagus officinalis by the barn and Phaseolus vulgaris beans along the fence. Under his leadership, they wouldn’t even need the diner. Maybe next year the Kindred would let him design all the gardens.

Nok didn’t bother to get dressed after her swim and laid out on the grass to dry in her underwear. Christ, but she was beautiful. Her long limbs gleamed in the sunlight. She tapped her toes in time with Lucky’s music.

“I love a guy who can play guitar,” she said dreamily, rolling over in the grass.

Lucky grinned back, and Rolf sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers started tapping, and he forgot about the Asparagus officinalis and Phaseolus vulgaris. Why was she looking at Lucky so adoringly? Rolf had been the one who won the guitar. He was the one keeping them alive. Nok let out another peal of laughter from some joke Lucky had made, and red flared into Rolf’s cheeks. His eye started twitching.

He stood abruptly and headed for the house.

“Where are you going?” Nok called.

He got his pillowcase of tokens from their bedroom, then pushed through the saloon-style toy store doors, slamming tokens into the counter. He got the painting kit so Nok could draw the birds she missed. The Curious George book set so he could read to her every night. He stuffed all the toys, along with handfuls of candy, into the pillowcase. He carried everything back to the town square and emptied it on the grass.

“What’s all this?” Nok dug through the toys with wide eyes. “It looks like Christmas!”

“Yes, Norwegian style. The gnomes have decided you’ve been very good boys and girls,” Rolf said, emptying the rest of the pillowcase. “It’s time for a celebration.”

Nok tore through the presents, showing Mali the best ones and explaining what they were for. Rolf smiled until Lucky silenced the guitar with a hand on the strings.

“A celebration of what?” Lucky’s voice had an edge.

Rolf glanced at Nok, letting his gaze slide to her bare back, her bare legs. A celebration of her. A celebration of the Kindred. A celebration of having everything he had ever wanted. “A celebration of making it to the twenty-one day mark and still being here.”

A shadow passed over Lucky’s face. “We aren’t all still here.”

Rolf paused. He should have picked his words more carefully. Lucky still thought the Caretaker had taken Cora, but Rolf knew that logically, she had to still be there.

“We’ve all lost people we love.” Rolf tried to keep his voice diplomatic.

Nok found the painting set and started setting out the pots of rainbow colors in the grass. She selected a fat brush and dipped it into the green.

“The way you two are acting,” Lucky said testily, watching her, “playing around while Earth is gone, makes it seem like you don’t even care.” When they didn’t answer, he went back to plucking on the guitar, sunk into a dark mood.

Oblivious to their argument, Nok drew a flower on the back of her hand, a purple lollipop sticking out of her mouth.

Why should she grieve? Rolf wondered. All she’d lost on Earth were parents who’d sold her into indentured servitude, and an apartment full of sickly thin girls, and a talent manager who might as well have been a whorehouse madam. He didn’t have much to grieve, either: his parents had never been affectionate; always pushing him to work harder, isolating him from kids his age. The only people in his life he’d interacted with had been a steady stream of bullies: Karl Crenshaw and the cricket bat. The schoolmates who made fun of his glasses. A professor who had forced him into public speaking.

They’re all gone now, Rolf consoled himself. He picked up a lollipop from the pile and spun it lazily in his mouth.

“Hey, Mali,” Nok said. “Take off your jacket. I want to paint on you, yeah?”

A branch snapped near the side of the movie theater, and Rolf spun on his heels. Was it Cora and Leon, spying on them? He’d never trusted that lumbering Neanderthal. Nothing had delighted Rolf more than when he’d banished himself to the jungle.

Rolf took a step closer to Nok, protectively. Mali had shrugged out of the military jacket, and Nok was using her body as a canvas, drawing bright blue swirls all over her arms. Empty chocolate wrappers surrounded them. Nok’s lips were stained bright purple from lollipops.

“You too, Rolf,” Nok said. “Take off your shirt. I’ll paint you next.”

He cast one look back toward the jungle behind the movie theater, searching for the moving shape of a tattooed Maori or a small blond girl, but the leaves were quiet now.

He sat in the grass and pulled his shirt over his head, and closed his eyes. Rolf would be a canvas if she wanted him to be. He’d be anything for her. He’d be everything for her.

Nok dotted his nose with paint, and he fell just a little bit more in love with her.

36

Cora

CORA COULDN’T STOP SHAKING as Cassian led her down the dank burrows back to the austere upper levels. The shock of seeing the menageries had lulled her into silence. Caged kids. Missing fingers. Drugged eyes. Cora’s chest knotted with longing for this whole nightmare to be over. She wanted to play in the backyard with Sadie. She wanted to pick up where she left off, be back in Charlie’s Jeep, scrawling lyrics.

Home is the place you never know . . .

Until there is no more home . . .

Cassian’s head cocked toward hers; it was usually difficult to gauge where exactly he was looking, but this time she felt the heat of his gaze. “I thought showing you this alternative would make you content in your environment. Yet in your head, you are only more determined to return to Earth.”

Cora nodded.

“Cora, your home . . .” He stopped. “Never mind.”

They walked in more silence, Cassian’s hand balling into a fist and releasing. There was something he wasn’t telling her, but no matter how she searched his dark eyes, she couldn’t see into his head.

A door slid open, revealing the star-lit medical room. Cassian held out a hand to stop her. “This is your home now. You must accept that.” He removed her shackles mechanically. While he readied the rematerialization apparatus, she leaned against the examination table, running a fingernail over her lips. The pull of home was too strong to give up on. She glanced at the doorway that had closed behind them.