Call Forth the Waves Read Free

always exhausted and unable to relax enough to rest. No one knew if it was day or night outside. We didn’t even know how long we’d been there.
    “You can’t go out,” Jermay told me. “Anise said—”
    “I don’t care!”
    A small tremor shook the room.
    “Sorry,” I said. “But that’s going to keep happening unless I get out of here.”
    “They’re looking for you.”
    “ Nye was looking for me. The rest of them are licking their wounds. We’re under a tree . What are the chances that someone from the Commission will wander through these woods at the exact moment I step outside?”
    “About the same chance as you being possible,” Jermay said, more serious. “If you have a flare out in the open, someone could see it.”
    “Fine— compromise . I won’t go out, but I’m opening the door before I suffocate. If I don’t, I’m liable to literally blow the roof off of this place, and that would be a lot easier to see from a distance than one girl in a random stretch of trees.”
    “I don’t know, Penn . . .”
    “I’m going.” I was already getting up to leave.
    An alarm sounded.
    My room was suddenly awash in lights and noise.
    “Wha—” Jermay started to ask, but I shrugged. Unless Anise had wired me with motion sensors in my sleep, the alert had nothing to do with us.
    We hurried into the hall. Anise ran past us toward the main room and the entrance we’d used to access the Hollow when we first arrived.
    “Did either of you touch the outer door?” she asked.
    “Why?”
    “Did you touch the door?” she shouted.
    I’d never seen Anise lose her temper or composure. She was the one who kept the rest of us grounded. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
    “We didn’t touch anything,” Jermay said as Birch and Winnie joined us from the back. Klok stomped up the stairs from my father’s workroom. The trapdoor slammed open against the hall rug.
    “Check the sensors,” Anise ordered him. “Code Blackout. Turn everything off in case they’re skimming for energy signatures.”
    With entire cities going dark at night out of fear that the Medusae or another otherworldly race might see us, the Commission had developed ways to scan for illegal tech in areas where it was forbidden. All of my father’s work was cutting edge, specifically because it was made for the Commission to buy freedom for our family. Their equipment could pick it up, easy.
    Klok nodded and disappeared back into the floor. Two seconds later, the room dimmed to a candlelit glow.
    “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
    “The alert on the outer door. Someone’s coming in.”
    I reached for Jermay’s arm at the same time he reached for mine. We twined them together with our pinkies interlocked for luck. Maybe some of the old Penn was still in there, after all.
    A tiny invisible mass latched onto my other side so hard that I almost toppled over.
    “Birdie!” Anise shouted. “I need to see you, baby.”
    “I think I’ve got her,” I said.
    Birdie slipped her hand into mine, slowly bleeding into view without a sound. Her eyes were wide and staring, her whole body shaking. She was barefoot and in a pair of red-checkered pajamas she’d rummaged from one of my sisters’ closets.
    “Into the basement with Klok,” Anise ordered her.
    Birdie sprinted for the trapdoor, disappearing again as she went.
    Someone pounded on the outer door.
    The tunnel lights went out completely, robbing us of our view, and I backed up with Jermay, farther into the main room. There was only the one exit. We ran into Winnie and Birch so that the four of us formed a line. Standing together had given us an advantage before. Hopefully, there was still safety in numbers.
    “What if it’s someone from The Show?” Jermay asked. “It could be . . . couldn’t it?”
    The look Anise gave him over her shoulder wasn’t promising.
    “Whoever it is, I’ll tell them to leave and forget how they got here,” Winnie offered. She was The