Where Foundlings Hide

Chapter 23

I leave the laboratories alone, telling Parker that I need a walk to clear my head, but when I reach the street of tall, Tudor houses, a shadow falls across my path.

"Are you mind-stalking me now?" I ask.

Caleb grabs me by the hand and pulls me into a secluded side street. He leans in to me, pressing my back against the wall behind me. "Mind-stalking?" He laughs.

"Listening in on my thoughts," I say irritably. "Or were you just hanging around in the hope that I would walk by?"

He raises an eyebrow. "I had no idea you were so vain."

"What do you want, Caleb?"

"I just wanted to check how your appointment with Parker went."

"Why don't you check your surveillance system, or just pluck the memory out of my mind, save me having to speak." I try to step around him, but he plants his hands on the wall at either side of my head, trapping me in the middle.

"What's up with you?"

"I never get a moment alone," I say. "There's always someone around, or someone watching me."

"Don't be like that," he says. "We want you to feel welcome, you're not under surveillance while you're here."

"Great," I say sarcastically. "But what about when I return home? How do you think I'll feel knowing that your eyes are on me all of the time?"

"Will that be such a bad thing?" He grazes my jaw with his lips, but I plant my hands firmly against his chest and push him away. "Yes it will."

He looks confused. "I thought...I mean; why would you want to go home?"

"Because my friends are there and I still need to finish school. Anyway, I have to go back at some point, I'm not Displacian, remember?"

"Keep your voice down," Caleb glances over his shoulder, but the street is quiet except for the whisper of the wind. "You could stay, Roma won't make you go back and Ivy would love it if you lived here permanently. You could visit your friends whenever you like, once it's safe."

I shake my head. "No, Displacia isn't my home. There are too many secrets here."

Caleb's brow furrows. "We've told you everything we know."

"Oh really," I say disbelievingly. "What about the connection between Lana and me. Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that I was taken from an orphanage to protect Lana, and I just happen to have these special abilities? And what about Lana's parents, why doesn't anyone talk about them?"

Caleb sighs. "Her father was evil, the worst kind of Displacian. No one likes talking about him, especially not Roma and Ivy."

"And what about Lana? Surely someone with her powers wouldn't just fall off a cliff like that."

"But she did," Caleb says. "When the Foundling children were taken to Earth, their powers were suppressed, Ivy said Lana's only resurfaced just before she died. She wouldn't know how to use them."

"I just can't help feeling like there's more to it," I say, shaking my head irritably. "Something that I'm missing."

Caleb's stares at me, his expression conflicted. He casts a furtive glance up and down the street and then leans closer. "Look, if I knew something that I thought would help you, I'd tell you. You can't go asking about Lana's father, or the war, but if you're up for some light, bedtime reading, you could try the library."

"The library?" I cast my mind back to the bright room where Roma first told me all about Displacia, where Ivy broke the news that Lana wasn't my sister.