And as I began to drift, one thought outweighed all the rest: I didn’t want to die. Not just because I was afraid of death. But because what was previously a pretty empty existence for me has finally begun to take on some meaning. And it’s all because of the girl lying next to me in the back of this pickup truck. Juneau.

I guess that means she’s saved me twice: from death and from myself. I’m in her debt. But this is one debt I’m going to enjoy repaying.

9

JUNEAU

WITHIN MINUTES, MILES DRIFTS OFF TO SLEEP. I wish I could lie back down, press myself close to him, and shut off all of my worry and fatigue for a few short hours. But I have a lot to do before he recovers. And once he does, we must be ready to leave.

Recovery from death-sleep varies from person to person. Everyone awakens paralyzed, but since I’ve helped Whit perform the Rite, I have seen people walking in as few as three days and as many as six. Which means I have no idea how long Miles will be incapacitated.

Although it would be pretty much impossible for Mr. Blackwell to find us here, Whit might be able to Read and Conjure his way straight to us. So my first step is to find out where he is, and in order to do that I’m going to need a fire.

I scan the bone-dry landscape, and spot a few lone trees against the moonlit horizon. I can’t tell how far away they are, and am hesitant to leave Miles here by himself. So I take him with me, driving a mile that would have been easy to walk. I make the ride as smooth as possible, even though I know I he won’t awake.

I worried that my bowie knife wouldn’t be sharp enough to cut through thick branches. But in the end, I don’t have to hack limbs off—I find a couple of smallish trees lying dead on the ground. They are brittle enough to break apart with my hands. Once I gather enough wood, I load it into the back of the truck, propping the branches across the truck bed from Miles so that he won’t get banged up in his sleep.

Back at the camp, I build a small fire—just big enough for my purpose. I sit down in front of it and slow my breathing, focusing on each heartbeat as I slip into the state I need to connect to the Yara.

My body actually shudders with the jolt of the connection, and energy fills me with what feels like a burning light. Now that I have stopped using totems to link to the Yara, my connections have been increasingly stronger. I try to ignore the power coursing through me and focus on the Reading. “Whittier Graves,” I say, and stare at the tip of the flames, just above the blaze. And, after a second or two, I see him.

Whit lies in a bed in a white room, his head and arms wrapped thick in bandages. Next to him is a rolling tray with a pitcher of water on it.

Whit was injured in the wreck, and is being kept in some type of medical clinic or hospital. Which means he’s not after me. For the moment.

My anger mounts as I watch him. He’s a traitor. Using me and my clan as a “field test” so that he could sell the drug—the powerful mix of herbs, powdered minerals, and blood that we use in the Rite—to the outside world.

I wonder how much the other elders knew of what Whit was doing. I am more convinced than ever that the elixir was the reason they hid us all in the Alaskan wilderness. It was because of the Amrit that they made up the story they told us about an apocalypse. They didn’t want us to leave. But why?

Maybe they wanted to hide the fact that they didn’t age from the outside world. But that could have gone undetected for years. Having studied clan history, I know the date that they gave us for the onset of World War III, 1984, coincided with the birth of the first child to clan elders. Did they hide because they discovered Amrit caused a visible mutation in their offspring? That seemed a little more plausible. But even so, isn’t it easier to hide a few children than entire families of well-connected scientists and theorists?

Maybe they needed the time to see how a second generation of Amrit users would fare. They wanted to make sure that the children’s mutations were limited to the gold starburst in our eyes. As for Whit, he must have decided that if the elixir didn’t prove to have more serious side effects, he would expose our secret . . . for a price.

I can’t imagine that my parents were in on Whit’s plans. I can’t imagine them bringing me into this world as a field test.

My parents loved me. And they loved the rest of the clan. They would never do something that would expose our people to harm. Especially if it was just to make a profit in the commercial world that they shunned.

As my thoughts return to the here and now, I see that Whit’s image has disappeared from the flames. I concentrate once more, picturing Miles’s father in my head. “Mr. Blackwell,” I say, and watch the flames. Nothing happens. I wonder if it only works with people I am close to. I never had to test this before—I knew all of my clan members as well as I knew myself.

I try my father, but only see the dark interior of an adobe hut. He must be asleep.

I try one more name. “Tallie,” I say, and up from the fire rises the image of a woman with long curly hair the same color as the flames. She sits with a book in her one-room cabin, before her own blazing hearth. And just beside her, peering into the flames as if he himself could Read, is a black raven, as big as a cat.

Poe. I can’t stop the smile that comes at the sight of him. I miss my huskies, Neruda and Beckett. They were such a fundamental part of my everyday life that I feel naked—exposed—without them. And although nothing can fill the hole that they left, I was a little less lonely the few days Poe was with me.