Gideon

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"She's dead." Lily's voice echoes like she's inside a tin barrel.

"She's not dead." Cecelia sounds angry.

"She rolled over their car and broke the windshield." Lily again.

Who rolled over the car?

"Give her some room. I think she's waking." That's Mitchell and I instinctively turn my face toward where his voice is coming from.

"Someone called the cops. We have to go." Benjamin's voice is tinny too.

"Kat. Katherine. Open your eyes."

I want to do what Mitchell asks. I really do, but my eyelids aren't cooperating. "Kat, we have to get out of here. We have to get Gideon."

Gideon? Why do we have to get him? Where did he go?

I'm able to blink and then finally pry my eyes open. Four blurry faces at varying heights hover above me.

"She's awake. Get her up." Benjamin straightens. He seems so far above me, looking down. It's like an abstract painting.

"Give her a minute." Mitchell cups the back of my head while pulling my shoulders up. The world tilts.

"Hate to say it, but we're out of time." Lawrence's voice flutters loud and soft in volume.

I'm lifted to my feet and squeezed between Fletcher and Mitchell. My head lolls forward where I see the pavement move under our feet. Mine barely touch anything like I'm flying until my knees are lifted and I'm rolled into the back of our carpeted hippie van.

I push up on my hands, but my head's pressed back down into a lap. The van purrs, racing down the street. The tires bounce along the road.

Cecelia's light fingers brush over my temple. "Just stay down, let me see to this. Geez, you're tougher than you look. You bounced off that SUV and got off with minor cuts."

I feel where she's wiping some sort of cloth at my hairline. It's wet and bumpy and smells like antiseptic. "Yeah, you're bleeding. Let me at least pick the gravel out."

"I bounced off a car?" That glassy fogged-up dull gray is seeping back behind the colors in the van.

"Yeah, genius." Mitchell's tone is soft. "Most people jump out of the way instead of trying to leap over speeding cars."

"She shoved Gideon out of the way." Lily's voice is wet and weepy.

Gideon.

I spring upward, wincing at the dance team having a party inside my skull. Cecelia and Mitchell reach out to steady me. Their palms are warm on my cool skin.

Was Gideon hit? I look across the faces in the van. Everyone's in the back, except for Nicholas who's driving, turning worried looks back at us. "Where's Gideon? Is he—"

"No," Mitchell's quick to reassure me. "He didn't get hit." His eyes flick downward, because he really doesn't want to tell me, but I already know.

"Helena."

"She took him. I'm sorry. I tried..."

"We have to get him back." My heart is pumping so fast it could probably outpace the van. "You know what they'll do to him." Why take him at all? Because they want his body back. It's perfect even if the soul inside is not obedient.

Fear gathers in the pit of my stomach. Do they have to be at the lab to do that or can they extract his soul out in the field? When they take our souls originally, the dying bodies are discarded, but they want to keep Gideon's body.

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