Page 53 of Mud

No IDD Headquarters anywhere.

“I need you to listen to me, Rora,” Cassie said, grabbingmy face in her hands. “I can’t take you farther than this. The Uber is right there. You just need to give them an address, and they’ll take you, okay? I’ve put money in your pocket. Use it.”

Her eyes, though. Her eyes were wide and full of tears and concern andsorry. So much sorry it made me sick.

Why are you so sorry for me? I made it out of Headquarters, Cassie. You took me out!

Except I didn’t really have the balls to say it because I suspected I already knew the answer.

“Okay,” I said instead, and my voice came out so breathless. And the more of my body I felt, the more I realized that the pain was still there, and my leg felt about ready to fall off me. So, so weak.

“You remember where you’re going right?”Ouch,that hurt even more than my leg. “Give the driver your address and he’ll take you, okay? Just lay low. Hide for a little while.”

She was so stressed she was shaking.

“Just help me…help me get to the car,” I managed to choke out, and Cassie eagerly did. Putting my arm around her shoulders, she supported my weight easily and pulled me all the way to the Uber without a word.

And I got it. No hard feelings. If anybody found out that she’d snuck me out of Headquarters in the trunk of her car, it would be bad. She could lose her job—or even end up in prison. That she’d gotten me all the way here was more than enough. I would forever be thankful.

“Rora,” Cassie said when she sat me down on the backseat of the Uber, her cold hands on my face again.

“Yeah?” I looked up at her, about to tell her that I had the address and I would be okay. I’d be just fine for however longit took me to get to wherever I was going, even if I didn’t really know where that was yet.

But then a single tear slipped from Cassie’s eye—and it fell straight into the pieces of my heart.

“I’m sorry, Rora.”

It was so final. The word, her voice, the look in her eyes, that tear—so fucking final. Like she knew she would never see me again. Like she knew that it was over for me, that I was as good as dead.

“I know,” was the best I could manage.

Everything was a blur—when she helped me get my leg into the car, closed the door, and the driver took us forward.

“Where to?” he said—a young man, possibly just in his twenties, looking at me through his rearview mirror, pretending not to be afraid, but he was terrified. I guess I’d have been, too, if I had to pick someone up in the middle of nowhere, and they were bleeding and sweaty and dirty—visually a mess to behold.

My lips opened and closed like a fish out of water, and I kept trying to turn to look out the back window, to look at Cassie. At everything she represented—my old life. Everything I knew. Everything I was.

Everything I am not anymore.

I couldn’t—my body refused to cooperate.

“Where to, lady?” the driver insisted, louder this time. Like he wanted to prove to himself that he wasnotafraid of me, regardless of the strangeness of this situation.

My eyes closed and I was thrown back into the past as if by magic.

If you’re ever alone or in need of something, anything at all, go to the blue house behind the hill. I’ll find you there eventually.

It was the first place I should have gone when I receivedthat text. I shouldn’t have fucking bothered when I knew my end was here.

But if I was going to die tonight, it would not be at the hands of the IDD.

Might as well look the man I loved in the eyes as he took the life from me. In the beginning the idea had terrified me, but now, after almost dying at the hands of Iridians, catfairies, my grandmother—I decided that was the best way to go.

“And where is the blue house behind the hill?” I’d asked then, running my fingers through his short hair, satin smooth and messy at the same time.

“In a small town called Darville, just outside east Baltimore. It’ll be easy to find, I promise.”

I had thought about Darville a lot in the past two years, though I never had the balls to go see if it was even real. I thought about the hill and the blue house and the boy who lived there every day.

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