Mali wobbled her head—her version of a nod. “There are three ways to shield your thoughts,” she explained. “The first takes many years to learn. It is similar to a form of meditation. You must divide your mind into two streams of thought.” She pointed outside, where the ocean was crashing against the beach. “Observe the ocean. The water is warm above and cold below. The mind is the same. Let the Kindred read what is above but not in the deep. Think hard about something—the song on the jukebox—but let your true thoughts sink below. The Kindred can tell that you are hiding something, but they cannot break through.”
“That’s it?” Lucky said.
Mali wobbled her head again. “It takes me seven years to learn this.”
Cora and Lucky exchanged a look. She shrugged and practiced concentrating on the records flipping in the jukebox. Then she tried to split her thoughts to also focus on Lucky’s leather jacket. But within seconds, she’d lost all thoughts of the record, and her headache only worsened. She tried again, but her thoughts jumped from one to the other, never both simultaneously, and the effort made her restless mind throb.
She rubbed her eyes. “What are the other ways?”
“The Kindred cannot perceive your mind unless they also have a calm mind. If they are uncloaked, they cannot read anything. But it is very difficult to make them uncloak. They practice cloaking since they are very young.”
“Then what’s the third way?”
Mali pinched Cora’s arm. She yelped and jerked her arm back.
“Pain,” Mali said. “It is so strong that it hides other thoughts.”
Cora clutched the angry red spot forming on her arm. “You’ve been pinching yourself this whole time. I thought you were just crazy.”
Mali’s head wobbled in her equivalent of a shrug. She held out her hand flat. “Now. Our agreement.”
Cora forced herself not to flinch away from Mali’s scarred fingers. It went against her every instinct to hand over a piece of herself, with her DNA, to a girl who was so cozy with their captors. “What are you going to do with it?”
Mali’s face was very serious, and then her lips dipped into a smile—just for a second—and she looked young and friendly for once.
“I see why you are his favorite,” Mali said, ignoring her question. “I think at first it is just the color of your hair but it is more. You are determined. You have a sharp mind. That cannot help but intrigue him.”
“Intrigue . . . who?” Lucky asked.
A shiver ran down Cora’s back. She knew exactly who Mali was talking about. In her dream, he’d been an angel. The most beautiful face she’d ever seen, a body more powerful even than Leon’s. So powerful it was terrifying.
Cora’s hand unconsciously drifted to the tangled blond strands around her shoulders. The jukebox song kept playing, over and over. Lucky looked between Cora and the black window like he was missing something.
“Wait,” he said. “You mean the Caretaker? Is that why you get more tokens than the rest of us—you’re his favorite?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Cora yanked on her hair, ripping a dozen strands. She hissed at the sting of pain but passed the hair to Mali, who examined it, then carefully deposited it in the upper pocket of Rolf’s military jacket.
“You can just . . . go ahead and keep that jacket,” Rolf said from across the room.
Mali sauntered to the doorway like nothing had happened. Cora repeated Mali’s words to herself: three ways to block their thoughts. Through meditation, through pain, and when the Kindred were uncloaked. In the black window, a single shadow moved slowly to the left. Cora pressed a hand against her throbbing scalp. It hurt so badly that whoever was watching now wouldn’t hear a thing inside her head.
She stood on tiptoes to whisper in Lucky’s ear.
“I don’t care how much Mali knows about them. I don’t trust her. And I want out of here before we figure out why they’ve really taken us. So we need to find the exit. Starting in the grasslands, right now.”
WHEN CORA HAD BEEN fourteen, her parents had taken her and Charlie to the Serengeti on a safari to see rhinos lazing in the sun and giraffes bending to drink from a watering hole. Now, as she and Lucky gazed out over the grasslands rippling with waist-high grass, goose bumps rose on her arms. It was beautiful, and desolate, and monotonous, just as the Serengeti had been. A near-perfect reproduction in miniature. The only difference was, now she and Lucky were the animals being watched.
“Sometimes I forget it’s all fake,” Lucky said.
There was a slight catch to his voice. Cora felt it too—that there was something so wrong, but also beautiful, about each habitat. As much as she might have hated the Kindred, she couldn’t deny that they were masters at what they did.
“Over there.” She pointed toward a hill. A few scattered trees dotted the landscape, along with a long, low building that looked like a rural Kenyan school.
They started through the tall grass. The wind was strong, coming in waves like the seas. As it bent the grass, it made a hollow sound, like whistling. It made Cora think of a song she’d once written, about how the fences at Fox Run, their gated community, hadn’t been that different from the ones at Bay Pines. Even the names weren’t that different: both were named after the wildlife that had been destroyed for the buildings to be built.
The school door didn’t open when Lucky tugged on it. While he circled the building, Cora examined a few uneven bricks, the first imperfections she’d seen.