Chapter 81 81

Chapter 81 81
Kaelen's POV:
The motel was fifteen minutes from Annabeth's house, and we made it in twelve because Marcus drove like someone who'd spent years learning exactly how fast you could go before cops noticed. I followed his taillights through the empty streets of Emberdale, past the closed shops and the dark campus and the place where Annabeth and I had lunch on our first date, which felt like something that had happened to someone else in a different life.
Annabeth was quiet in the passenger seat. Her bag was in the back and she had her feet up on the dashboard, she was nervous. I didn't tell her to put them down.
The Route 7 Motel was the kind of place that looked exactly how it sounded. One story, twelve rooms, a flickering sign that said VACANCY in orange neon with the V half dead. The parking lot had three cars in it, none of them suspicious, just sad. A rusted Corolla, a pickup with a cracked windshield, and a minivan with a bumper sticker that said MY KID IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT SOMEWHERE I COULDN'T READ BECAUSE IT WAS DARK.
Marcus pulled into a spot near the exit, engine still running. I parked two doors down from room 9, which was where Marlen and Lucian had been for the past six days. Six days of cable TV and vending machine Doritos and waiting for me to call and say everything was fine.
I turned off the car but didn't get out.
"You okay?" Annabeth asked.
"Yeah. Just..." I looked at the door of room 9. The curtains were drawn but I could see the blue flicker of the TV through the gap at the bottom. "Every time I do this, every time I show up and tell them we're leaving again, Marlen's face does this thing. She doesn't cry, she doesn't argue, she just... goes blank. Like she's shutting something off inside her so she can function. And I hate it. I hate that she learned how to do that."
Annabeth put her hand on my arm. Didn't say anything. Sometimes that was better.
"I'll be right back," I said, and got out.
The air was cold, proper late-November cold that bit through my jacket even though my body temperature ran higher than human. I could hear the highway from here, trucks passing on Route 7, that low constant rumble that probably kept Lucian up at night because he was a light sleeper and I should've thought about that when I picked this motel but I'd been too busy trying not to get killed at the Meridian Hotel to think about my little brother's sleep schedule.
I knocked. Three times, then two. Our pattern, the one we'd had since the first time we ran, so they'd know it was me and not someone else.
The lock clicked almost immediately. Marlen opened the door and she looked exactly the way I expected. Hair in a ponytail and wearing the same hoodie she'd been wearing for probably three days straight. Her go-bag was on the bed behind her, zipped and ready. Lucian's too, next to his on the other bed.
She'd packed before I even called. Of course she had.
"Hey, Mar."
She looked at my face for about two seconds, reading everything she needed to know the way she always did, and stepped aside to let me in.
The room was small and smelled like microwave popcorn and that weird chemical cleanliness that motels have, like they'd sprayed disinfectant over dirt and called it good enough. Two beds, a TV bolted to the dresser, a bathroom with a door that didn't close all the way. Lucian was sitting cross-legged on the far bed with his phone in his hand.
"Kael," he said, and his voice did that thing where it tried to sound casual and missed by a mile. He was scared. Trying not to be, trying to be brave and fifteen and cool about it, but I could see his leg bouncing under him and the way he kept glancing at the door like something might come through it.
"Hey, buddy. You ready?"
"Been ready since four. Marlen made me pack like the second you called." He held up his phone. "She also made me delete my browser history, which, rude."
"It's operational security," Marlen said flatly. "Your search history had the motel address in it from when you were looking up pizza delivery."
"I was hungry!"
"You're always hungry."
Normal. They were doing the normal thing, the bickering thing, the thing that meant they were terrified and coping the only way they knew how. I'd seen it a hundred times. The worse things got, the more they sniped at each other about stupid stuff, because arguing about pizza delivery was easier than thinking about what was actually happening.
"Okay, listen." I sat on the edge of Marlen's bed. "Marcus is outside in his car. Annabeth is in mine. We're driving three hours north to a property Marcus owns, totally off the grid. We're going to be there for... a while."
"How long is a while?" Lucian asked.
"I don't know yet."
Marlen didn't ask how long. She'd stopped asking that question years ago.
"Is there wifi?" Lucian said.
"Probably not."
"Cell service?"
"I don't know."
"So I'm going to be stuck in the woods with no internet. For an indefinite amount of time. During the season finale of like three shows."
"Lucian."
"I'm just saying. The timing could've been better."
I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry and I ended up doing neither. Marlen was watching me from across the room with those eyes that were too old for thirteen, the ones that made my chest hurt every single time.
"Are you going to introduce us to Marcus before we get in the car?" she asked. "Or are we just supposed to follow a stranger into the woods?"
"He'll stay in his car until you're comfortable. You can meet him when you're ready."
"I'm ready now." She said it the way she said everything, direct, no hesitation. "If you trust him with our lives, I want to look him in the face."
Lucian stood up and shoved his phone in his pocket. "Same. I mean, I'm kinda curious about a real red dragon. Is it true they can—"
"Lucian, don't ask him if he can do tricks. He's not a dog."
"I wasn't going to ask if he can do tricks, I was going to ask if it's true their fire is hotter than ours."
"That's the same thing."
"It's SCIENCE, Marlen."
I grabbed both their bags. Marlen took hers back from me because she carried her own stuff, always had, wouldn't let anyone do it for her. Lucian let me carry his because he was already putting on his jacket and trying to find his second sneaker which was under the bed for some reason.
"Wait." Lucian looked at the room. The microwave popcorn bags in the trash, the stack of playing cards on the nightstand from whatever game they'd been playing to pass the time, the dent in the pillow where he'd been lying. "Should we, like... clean up?"
"Leave it," I said. "We're not coming back."
Something crossed his face. Quick, there and gone, like a cloud passing over the sun. Then he nodded and walked out the door and I followed him and Marlen followed me and we left room 9 of the Route 7 Motel behind us like all the other rooms in all the other towns.
Marcus's car was still running by the exit. His window was down now, his elbow resting on the frame, and when we came out he turned his head and looked at us. At them, specifically. Two blonde kids with go-bags and thrift store possessions and five years of running written all over their faces.
Marlen walked straight to his car. Not hesitating, not looking at me for permission. She stopped at the driver's window and looked Marcus dead in the eyes.
She was small, Marcus could've crushed her with one hand. Everyone who met Marlen could've crushed her with one hand, and none of them ever tried twice because there was something in those blue-green eyes that said I will survive you.
"I'm Marlen," she said. "You're Marcus."
"Yes."
"Kaelen trusts you. That's the only reason I'm getting in a car right now." She didn't blink. "If anything happens to my brothers, I'll find a way to make you regret it. I don't care what kind of dragon you are."
Silence. Marcus looked at her for a long moment and something changed in his expression. Not softening exactly, because Marcus didn't soften. More like... recognition. Like he was seeing something familiar.
"Understood," he said.
And that was it. That was Marlen meeting Marcus. No handshake, no pleasantries, no easing into it. Just a threat and an acknowledgment, which honestly was more warmth than Marlen showed most people.
Lucian waved from behind his sister. "Hey. I'm Lucian. Is it true red dragon fire is hotter than golden?"
"Significantly," Marcus said.
"Cool. Like, literally. Well, not literally. The opposite of literally. You know what I mean."
Marcus's mouth did something that might've been the beginning of a smile but died before it got there. "Get in the car," he said, but it didn't come out harsh. Just tired. The tired of a man who'd spent eighteen years alone and was now suddenly responsible for a group that included a fifteen-year-old who made bad puns.
We loaded the bags into my car. Annabeth got out to help and there was this moment in the parking lot where she and Marlen looked at each other, really looked, for the first time since everything had gone to shit. Marlen's expression was careful, guarded, but not hostile. Annabeth gave her a small nod, the kind that said I know this is complicated and I'm not going to pretend it isn't.
Marlen nodded back. That was enough. For now that was more than enough.
Everyone got in. Lucian and Marlen in the backseat of my car, Annabeth in the front. Marcus pulled out first, headlights cutting through the dark parking lot, and I followed.
In my rearview mirror the motel sign flickered, VACANCY VACANCY VACANCY, and then we turned onto Route 7 and it was gone.
Soon Emberdale would be gone too.