Page 15 of Victorious

“You have to stay,” she told him. “I’ll be right back,” she added, zipping up her coat. Dol gave her a look that would pass for suspicion on a human face.

As she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, the breeze kicked up, winter air grazing her skin.

But Sydney barely flinched. The truth was, she was always cold. Had been since the morning she and Serena fell through the ice on the lake, nine years before. The doctors had spent a week trying to get her body temperature back up, to no avail.

She’d long ago learned to live with the chill.

Dol tried to follow, but she blocked his way, bending till they were eye to eye. She ran a hand along his side, the way she had that night, when she found his body in the alley. Even now, she swore she could feel the thread that ran between them.

“Stay,” she said firmly, and maybe it was the hold she had on him, the fact she’d reached into the cold dark realm of death itself and dragged him back, and thus he was indebted from his fur to the marrow of his bones. That—or maybe it was just her tone.

Either way, the dog whined softly, but he stayed put.

Syd smiled and patted his giant head. “Good boy.”

His tail thumped rhythmically against the wooden floor as she closed the door between them and took off down the steps, heading not for the road Mitch had taken, but the line of trees behind the house.

The woods carved a half circle around the property, separating the cabin from the town of Herald. It was a heavy buffer, miles of trees that would take more than an hour to cross on foot.

But Sydney wasn’t walking.

She found what she was looking for behind a fallen trunk and beneath a patina of frost, grabbed the black handlebar, and hauled it up. The bike rose from the brush with a low metal groan.

She’d found the thing abandoned in the woods, half buried in a thicket. It was more rust than metal, the frame so big she had to stand on a rock just to get her leg over. But the chain was intact, and the tires held air, and a few moments later, she was sailing down the path, the time ticking on her watch, and the little red cabin vanishing from sight.

The Newtown Public Library sat on the outskirts of the next town over.

Neither Newtown nor Herald was particularly large, so the residents shared the place, if not the name. Thanks to a recent donation, it had good heat, a large collection of stacks, and a full suite of computers against the back wall. Sydney would have preferred not to have her back to the room, but beggars couldn’t be choosers when they needed internet.

She half jumped, half tipped off the bike when she arrived, left the metal carcass leaning up against a wall—no one in their right mind was going to steal it—and went in, tugging off her gloves.

It was a risk, of course, showing her face, but so was Mitch heading into town like clockwork every week for groceries and whatever else they needed, while she was supposed to stay locked up in the cabin like a dirty little secret.

She knew it wasn’t like that—knew he was just trying to protect her. Mitch was always going to stand out, looking like he did. But add a child-sized blonde with pale skin and ice-blue eyes, and they stood out more.

She was grateful, for everything he did. Every sacrifice he made. He could have left, like Victor did, and he hadn’t. But it didn’t change the fact that after nearly a decade on the road or on the run, Sydney was so goddamn sick of hiding.

Maybe it was knowing Eli Ever—the only man who’d truly frightened her—was dead.

Or maybe it was just the fact they’d spent the last three years bouncing from place to place so EON wouldn’t find them, trading motels for lock-and-leaves for no-contact short-term rentals, living a life of leave-no-trace. Mitch sweeping their footsteps from the world every time he got so much as a bad feeling.

Three years of holding their breath, waiting for boogeymen in tactical gear to jump out and grab her while Dol’s fur slowly went white, and wrinkles showed up around Mitch’s eyes, and Syd didn’t say more than a dozen words to anyone her real age.

But that was the thing.

In all that time, EON never came.

And sure, Syd was aging slower than everyone else, but she felt the time passing just the same, and lately, more and more she’d felt the sudden terrible urge to find a crowded place, and shout her name, just to see what happened. Because she was starting to think nothing would.

So, yeah.

Sydney was willing to take her chances on a library at the edge of a town in the middle of nowhere.

One of the librarians, Martha, glanced up and smiled, nodding toward the terminals.

Syd liked Martha. Her gray hair was always tinted blue, and she never asked questions, and sometimes she even let Syd duck into the staff room to steal a cup of tea and a cookie.

Mitch had his weekly routine, and she had hers.