After the End

The liquid sunlight spills onto my feet and burns me as it slowly travels upward—up my legs—and climbs, inching toward my torso. The burning becomes severe, and I cry out, but I’m paralyzed and can’t move. Now the gold has spread across my chest and has seized me by the neck. I sputter, but I can’t inhale: it is strangling me.

Juneau’s expression has shifted from serenity to compassion. “Miles,” she says, though her lips don’t move. “You are one with the Yara.”

I am on fire. A golden statue alight, flames licking around me, melting the snow into puddles at my feet, heating Juneau’s face and reddening her nose and cheeks. She leans in closer until her lips are touching mine. And as she kisses me I disperse into a million tiny flames, sparks flying up into the cold winter air and diffusing once they hit the starry night sky.

I open my eyes and glance at the dashboard clock. Three a.m. I lie there stu

58

JUNEAU

LANDING IS TEN TIMES SCARIER THAN TAKEOFF. The ground grows closer and closer and we are going so fast, I am sure as soon as we touch ground the impact will rip off the bottom of the plane. Instead, with a sort of pulling tension, we land smoothly and taxi around large loops of runway as we slow. Finally we stop near a long black car that looks like it could easily fit twenty people inside.

Baldy slaps the handcuffs back on me, and I am shuffled quickly from the recycled air of the plane through the stifling hot oven of the runway and into the pine-scented frigid air inside the car. Although I spent most of the plane trip coming up with escape plans, my curiosity has gotten the best of me. Somehow, Miles’s dad knows something about my clan that I don’t. Or at least he thinks he does. And I’m determined to find out what he knows.

So I don’t give the men any trouble this time and climb willingly into the car. We spend most of the next hour sitting stationary on the road, with hundreds of other cars, inching forward from time to time. Again, I think of De

At last we reach a downtown area, which has the same forest of glass buildings as the other cities, all perched next to the sea. The car stops outside the tallest of these mirrored buildings. Baldy acts like he is helping me out of the car but actually uses the gesture to get a firm grip on my upper arm as he leads me over the simmering-hot sidewalk through the front doors.

I have seen these skyscrapers from the outside but, besides the Salt Lake City Library, which was small in comparison, have never been in one. I wasn’t even tempted to in Seattle. The giant glass plinths look more like tombstones than a space where people would work and live.

We walk through an immense cavern of an entryway into the tiny mirrored space of an elevator. I feel my stomach drop to my toes as we shoot to the highest levels of the building, moving as quickly upward as we would be if we were free-falling downward.

Lights flicker on a wall panel until the very last button, 73, lights up. A bell rings, and the doors open. My head swims, and although a man stands directly in front of us, waiting for us with hands clasped behind his back, all I can focus on is the window behind him. We are so high that the world is a tiny toyscape laid out in miniature as far as the eye can see. My legs refuse to hold me any longer. I sink down to the ground, my hands still cuffed behind me, and use every remaining bit of willpower not to throw up.

“What have you done to her?” the man says, and strong arms lift me and carry me through a door into an office. “She tried to run,” Baldy says as he deposits me onto a white leather couch and unlocks the handcuffs. Necktie runs to a shelf lined with bottles and pours one into a glass. I lift it to my mouth. Water. Just water. But it tastes so good, and is the only natural thing in the room besides a large treelike plant near the window. Oh gods, the window, I think, and my stomach churns.

“Leave us,” the man says, and Baldy and Necktie make a quick exit, pulling the door softly behind them like it’s made of spun sugar. The man scoots a chair close to the couch, and when our eyes meet, I see Miles in thirty years: still-thick but graying hair cut short and carefully combed, aquiline nose, and dark-green eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Why did you bring me here?” My throat is clenched so tightly, my words come out in a croak.

“I brought you here because you have some information that I need,” he says simply. His expression is solicitous. He doesn’t look like what I expected—I thought I’d find a tyrant. Someone willing to use torture to get what he wants. But this is just a middle-aged man in a business suit.

I glance around the room and see, to my horror, that there are no actual walls: We are surrounded by windows. The granite floor is strewn with intricately woven rugs, and tasteful furniture is positioned around the room to make it appear more like a living space than a place of business.

“I can’t . . . I can’t be this high up,” I say, clutching my stomach.

“Let me close the blinds,” he responds, and walking to a desk, picks up a little black box and clicks a few buttons on it. The windows automatically begin darkening, while the lights of the room become brighter until we are in an enclosed space and I can no longer see the frightening view outside.

I close my eyes and try to slow my breathing. After a moment, I open them and see that he’s sat back down in the chair in front of me. “My name is Murray Blackwell,” he says, leaning forward, his hands clasped together. He stares at my starburst. A muscle under his eye twitches, and his jaw clenches and unclenches. “And your name is . . . ,” he prods.

“I’m Juneau,” I say, and take another sip of the water. I have to decide how much I’m going to talk. His movements are graceful. But the more I watch him, the more I notice something in his eyes—something cold—that doesn’t match his body’s lithe gestures. He’s like a snake, smooth but poisonous.

He is dangerous, I think. I can’t trust him, but I’ll tell him as much as I need to find out what he’s after.

“Juneau . . . ,” he says like a question, and waits.

“Yes?” I ask. My brows knit in confusion. I don’t recognize his body language. He could be speaking Swahili for all I understand.

“Juneau what?” he asks.

I stare at him.

“Your last name,” he says finally.

I exhale. “Oh! Newhaven,” I respond. Everyone in the clan knows one another’s last names, but we never use them except in ceremonies, and I’ve never actually had someone ask mine.

“Juneau Newhaven, you are from . . . ,” he asks, and this time I respond automatically.

“Denali, Alaska.”

He nods, acknowledging the fact that I’m playing along with his Q&A.

“Good, good,” he says. And then leaning farther forward, so his elbows are on his knees, he asks softly, “That means, I suppose, that you know a man by the name of Whittier Graves?”

I gasp, not even trying to hide my surprise.

“Yes, you do know him,” he says with a jolly smile, like we’re sharing a joke. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been wanting to talk to him for the last few weeks, but it seems like he has disappeared. Along with the rest of your—what did he call it?—your clan.”

Facts start pinballing around in my head. This man knows of Whit. He knows about our clan, and where we live. He knows enough about me to have me followed.

Instead of launching my own questions, I wait quietly to hear what other details this man will give away.