We woke up energized the next morning, even after only five hours of sleep, eager to get on the road and see what secrets Ha Ha Tonka held. The park was only an hour away, but we stopped at a gas station to fill up the car before getting on the highway. While Eddie took care of refueling, I headed inside the station to make sure Ms. Terwilliger and I had more coffee for the road. As I was approaching the door, I came to a screeching halt when I saw someone familiar inside.
My dad.
He was standing at the counter, taking money out of his wallet. His body was angled away from me, so he couldn’t see me on the other side of the glass door. Yesterday’s conversation came back to me, and I suddenly wondered if this really was all some Alchemist plot to catch me.
For a moment, I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t react. Despite the awkwardness of my living situation at the Moroi Court this last month, there was no question that it was a million times better than what I’d faced in re-education. I’d thought that I’d been able to put that awful experience behind me, but as I stood there, staring at my dad’s back, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. For all I knew, fifty Alchemists were about to spring out from all directions, dragging me back to a tiny dark room and sentencing me to a lifetime of physical and psychological torture.
Move, Sydney, move! some part of my brain shouted at me.
But I couldn’t. All I kept thinking about was how the Alchemists had overwhelmed me before, and that was with Eddie by my side. What chance did I stand here, all by myself?
MOVE, I told myself again. Stop feeling helpless!
That spurred me to action. I began breathing again and slowly backed away, not wanting to do anything that might catch attention in his periphery. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I spun around and prepared to make a mad dash back to the car.
Instead, I ran into my sister Zoe.
She’d been walking toward the gas station, and my panic shot back up as I looked at her. Then, as I studied her expression of complete shock, I realized something: I was the last person she’d expected to see here. This wasn’t some sort of elaborate trap. At least, it hadn’t been until I walked into it.
“Zoe,” I squeaked. “What are you doing here?”
Her eyes were impossibly wide as she attempted her own recovery. “We’re on our way to the St. Louis facility. I’m starting an internship there.”
Last I knew, she’d been in Salt Lake City with my dad, and I couldn’t help but pull up a mental road map. This wasn’t a direct route between the two places. “Why didn’t you take I-70?” I demanded suspiciously.
“There was construction and—” She shook her head, almost angrily. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be stashed away with the Moroi!” Increasing my astonishment, she grabbed my sleeve and began steering me farther from the station. “You have to get out of here!”
Cue more astonishment. “Are you . . . helping me?”
Before she could answer, I heard Eddie’s voice. “Sydney?”
It was all he said, but as Zoe and I turned around, I could see the apprehension and battle readiness all over him. He stayed where he was but looked as though he could instantly leap up and throw Zoe against the building if she tried to hurt me. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that, because no matter what had happened between us, no matter how much she’d betrayed me, she was still my sister. I still loved her.
“Is it true?” she whispered. “Did they really torture you in re-education?”
I nodded and cast another anxious glance at the gas station. “In more ways than you can imagine.”
She blanched but drew a resolved breath. “Then get out of here. Hurry—before he comes out. Both of you.”
I was stunned at this complete reversal in her behavior, but Eddie didn’t need to be told twice. He took hold of my arm and nearly dragged me to the car. “We’re going—now,” he ordered.
I caught one last glimpse of Zoe before Eddie shoved me in the car, where Ms. Terwilliger sat waiting for us. A thousand emotions played over Zoe’s face as we peeled out, but I could only interpret a few. Sadness. Longing. As we quickly got back on the road, I found myself shaking. Eddie was driving and kept anxiously checking the rearview mirror.
“No sign of pursuit,” he said. “She must not have been able to see which direction we went to tell him.”
I slowly shook my head. “No . . . she didn’t tell him at all. She helped us.”
“Sydney,” said Eddie, in a stern-but-trying-to-sound-kind voice, “she’s the one who turned you in the first time! The one who started that whole re-education nightmare.”
“I know, but . . .”
I thought back to Zoe’s face just now, looking so serious and upset about the notion of me being tortured. I thought back also to the day Adrian and I had first arrived at Court, when we’d been hauled in front of the queen and found a group of Alchemists already waiting there to try to get me back. My father and Ian, another Alchemist we knew, had spoken plenty about the wrongness of what I’d done and how I needed to be removed from the Moroi. Zoe had stayed silent, her face stricken, and I’d been too overwhelmed to think much about what she might be feeling. I’d assumed she’d been too outraged by my marriage to speak—not to mention the fact that my dad didn’t really let anyone else get a word in edgewise.
Now I suddenly realized there might have been something I’d missed altogether: regret.
“I really think she was trying to help,” I insisted, knowing how crazy the words sounded—especially to Eddie. He’d been there the night I was taken, the night she’d betrayed me. “Something’s changed.”
He didn’t contradict me but was still on edge. “I wonder if we should change our plans, in case they start scouting the area for us.”
“No,” I said firmly, feeling more and more confident of my suspicions. “She’s not going to turn us in. Unless you see active signs of someone coming after us, we’re pushing on to Ha Ha Tonka.”
I was reeling as the drive continued, still in awe at this new revelation that Zoe might be having doubts—if not about the Alchemists, then at least about what had been done to me. Once I recovered from my initial shock, I found myself feeling an emotion I hadn’t felt about her in a very long time: hope.
Clouds were thinning out when we reached Ha Ha Tonka State Park, and the early morning temperatures were already promising a sweltering day ahead. We parked and stopped by the visitors’ center, clustering around a map of the park. Although there were extensive grounds and trails, we decided the ruins of the massive stone building—which even the park referred to as the “castle”—were the place to start, seeing as that’s what our clue directly connected to.