Chapter Five

The voice on the phone belonged to my father.

My father, who had been dead for six years.

I stood in that empty seminar room with the phone pressed against my ear and I could not breathe. I knew that voice. I had heard it every morning before school, every night before bed, every time I screwed up or did something right. I had heard it stop. I had stood at a grave and watched them lower a coffin into the ground and I had not cried because I was seventeen and didn't know how yet.

"Ethan." The voice said my name again, patient, like it had all the time in the world. "I know this is a shock."

"You're dead," I said.

"That's a complicated answer." A pause. "What I am is complicated. But I am very much alive, and I've been watching you for a long time. I couldn't make contact before now. It wasn't safe."

Karl appeared in the doorway. His shift had mostly settled, but his eyes were still edged gold, and the cut above his brow had healed to a thin pink line. He read my face in one second and crossed the room in three steps.

"Who is it," he said. Not a question.

I couldn't answer him.

"Ethan." The voice again, warm, familiar, wrong. "The people I'm hiding from — they've found you now. The Rogue that came today was just the first. You need to leave campus tonight."

"Why should I trust anything you're saying?" My voice had found some steadiness. I was grateful for that.

"Because I know what you are." A brief quiet. "I know because I made you that way. The Lure ability didn't come from nowhere. It came from me. From what I am. And what I am is the reason they want you."

Karl's hand closed around my wrist.

I looked at him. His jaw was tight, but his eyes were steady. Asking me silently if I was okay.

I wasn't okay. I shook my head slightly.

"Where are you?" I asked the phone.

"Somewhere safe. For now." The voice shifted — lower, more urgent. "There's a man coming to find you. His name is Silas Holt. Do not go anywhere with him, Ethan. Do not let him touch you. He will seem reasonable and helpful and everything he says will make sense and none of it will be true."

"What does he want?"

"The same thing everyone wants from a Lure." A pause that felt heavy. "Control over something that can move people without them knowing it. You're a weapon, Ethan. You've always been one. The difference is who's holding you."

The line went dead.

I stood there for four seconds. Karl didn't let go of my wrist.

Adrian came through the door, phone already in his hand, and stopped when he saw my face.

"Who called," he said.

"My father." I watched Adrian's expression do something very controlled and careful. "He's apparently not dead."

The silence in that room lasted about two seconds before Karl said something in a language I didn't know, sharp and short like a curse, and Adrian turned away and made another call.

I sat down on the nearest desk because my legs had made a decision I hadn't approved.

My father. Six years. A funeral. A gravestone with his name on it that I had visited every birthday for three years until I stopped being able to make myself go.

Karl crouched in front of me. He had gotten a new shirt from somewhere — plain grey, too small across the shoulders. His gold eyes were back to dark brown, fully human, and he was looking at me the way someone looks at a person they're genuinely afraid is about to break.

"Don't look at me like that," I said.

"Like what."

"Like I'm fragile."

His mouth tightened. "I'm not looking at you like you're fragile. I'm looking at you like you just got the worst news I've ever watched anyone receive and you're still sitting upright, which means you're either fine or you're about to crash hard and I want to be paying attention when it happens."

I looked at him for a moment.

"He said someone's coming for me," I said. "Named Silas Holt."

Karl went very still.

"What." His voice had dropped to something flat and quiet.

"You know that name."

He stood up slowly. Turned to Adrian, who had finished his call and was watching us both.

"Silas Holt," Karl said.

Adrian's expression didn't change. But something behind his eyes did.

"How does your father know Silas Holt," Adrian said.

"I don't know. Who is he?"

Adrian and Karl looked at each other over my head in the way they had started doing — that wordless communication that I was already sick of — and then Adrian pulled a chair, sat across from me, and folded his hands.

"Silas Holt," he said, "is the reason I was assigned to this campus two years ago. He's been building something for a decade. A network of Lures — people like you — that he's been collecting." A pause. "Collecting is a generous word. Acquiring. By any means necessary."

"And my father—"

"If your father knows his name," Adrian said carefully, "then your father has been in that world long enough to know exactly how dangerous it is." His silver eyes held mine. "And if he faked his death to hide from it, and he's only making contact now — something has changed. Something pushed him to reach out."

"The Rogue," Karl said quietly.

Adrian nodded.

I looked between them. "You're telling me my father faked his death because of a man who collects people like me. And now that man knows where I am."

"Yes," Adrian said.

"And you've known about this for two years."

A beat. "I've known about Holt for two years. I didn't know about your father's connection until ten seconds ago."

I stood up.

I needed to move. Standing still felt impossible. I walked to the window, looked out at the tree line where an hour ago a Rogue had smiled at me with too many teeth, and I thought about six years of grief and a gravestone and a voice I had never expected to hear again.

"What do we do," I said.

Karl moved to stand beside me. Not touching. Just there.

"First," he said, "we get you somewhere that isn't campus."

"I have classes—"

"Ethan." His voice was quiet but absolute. "Holt sent one scout today. He'll send something worse tomorrow. You can miss Organic Chemistry."

I almost laughed. It surprised me.

Karl looked at me sideways, and there was something almost relieved in his expression, like my almost-laughing meant I was still in there.

"Pack a bag," Adrian said from behind us. "Both of you. We leave within the hour."

"Where?" I asked.

"Somewhere Holt doesn't know about yet." He stood, straightened his jacket. Back to the mask, fully in place. "I have a place."

Karl turned his head toward him and said, very quietly, "It better not be that cabin."

"It's the cabin."

"Adrian—"

"It's secure. It's off-grid. And it's the only property I own that Holt's people have never found." He moved toward the door. "One hour. Both of you."

He left.

Karl and I stood at the window in the quiet room and outside the trees stood dark and still like nothing had happened in them at all.

"Are you actually okay," Karl said.

"No," I said.

He nodded. Like that was the right answer.

"Good," he said. "Don't pretend you are. I'll know."

I turned to look at him.

"How will you know?"

He held my gaze for one long beat, and something crossed his face that he didn't bother hiding.

"I always know with you," he said. "I don't know why. I just do."

He pushed off from the window and headed for the door.

I stood there for another second, alone in the room, my father's voice still sitting in my chest like a stone.

Then I followed.