Fox Forever (Jenna Fox Chronicles 3)

“Right. The stairs and the cats.” She stands, suddenly in a hurry to leave. “I understand too well. I won’t say a word.”

I stand to walk her out. “No, don’t get up,” she says. “Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother, Raine.” I grab her hand so she can’t leave without me walking her to the door.

Hap is already out and walking down the stairs ahead of her. She pulls her hand away from mine and pauses in the doorway. “It was nice of your mother to let me in. Tell her I said good-bye.”

My mother? “Oh. Sure.” I realize she means Jenna.

“She’s very young looking.”

My mind races, wondering how she could mistake Jenna for my mom, but I try to find a reasonable explanation for it. “Yeah, a lot of people say that. She’s had some work done.”

“I figured as much. But I can tell she’s a good mother. I always notice things like that. She has that air about her.”

Jenna? A motherly air? “You picked up a lot in just a few seconds.”

Her eyes narrow. “Yes. I did.”

I watch her walk down the stairway. Hap waits at the bottom watching both of us. When she’s halfway down I call to her, “Raine, one other thing—how did you figure out where I live? I never told you.”

She answers without looking back. “Hap told me.”

Facing Plan B

It’s already tomorrow. I watch the dim light that skirts the edges of my window shade grow brighter. I stared at my ceiling for half the night, trying to force my body to heal, trying to make it hurry. It seems like for the past year that’s all I’ve been doing. Trying to hurry.

It’s an irony that isn’t lost on me. I had too much time for so long, years, decades, even centuries when there was no hurrying, when time crept by so torturously slowly that I begged for an end to it all, and now it seems there’s never enough time. Hurry to get away from Gatsbro, hurry to warn Jenna, hurry to find Kara, hurry to li

ve life, hurry to catch up. And now hurry because time is running out.

I roll to my side to get up and wince, my breath caught in my chest. I push up with my left arm, because my right is still too weak to use. I shuffle to the mirror. The outside is looking better, but the inside still feels like hell. Hurry. I hobble out to the kitchen, my bones and muscles feeling stiffer than the day before. Am I getting worse?

Jenna is surprised to see me up so early. She’s even more surprised when I pour myself a cup of coffee. “Lots of changes in just a short time,” she says.

I try to straighten out my right arm. “Too many changes.”

We ease into the morning slowly and once I’ve finished my first cup of coffee I begin telling her about Raine, explaining how I found out who she really is, and the kind of life she lives now with the Secretary.

“And she has no idea who her real parents are?”

“None. All she knows is that the Secretary saved her from some unknown Non-pacts who threw her in the trash.”

“And no idea who you are either.”

I shake my head.

Jenna sighs. “Poor girl. And I thought my life was a mess when I was her age.”

“She thought you were my mother. Can you believe that? She said you had a motherly ‘air’ about you.”

“Locke, I do have a motherly air. I’m a mother, after all.”

“I don’t see any air.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re not looking.”

She leaves to get the salves that Xavier brought during the night and begins preparing them at the kitchen counter. Whatever she used on me last time worked like a miracle, and I remember how Kara’s bloody blisters disappeared almost overnight. She dabs it on my lip and face and then changes the bandages, noting how much I’ve healed on the outside already. “Your BioPerfect is definitely more advanced than any Bio Gel I’ve ever seen. Some of the smaller cuts are already gone. But this might speed the others along.”