The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📕

apart from the crowd. And when they catch me coming, they break into a run.

“Rose,” Alex gasps out. His face is bloodless. “She’s not with you?”

Just over their shoulders, I can see Sandy, her hands twisted, her eyes red. There’s a rush through my ears. I hardly hear my answer over it. “No one’s with me,” I say. “What happened?”

“Cassie’s—Cassie’s gone,” Felix says. “You were taking so long, we thought maybe she’d gone to get you, but—she never met up with Sandy at all. She’s not here.”

I turn back to the faint outline of Lethe Ridge. Maybe I missed her, back there in that labyrinth of houses, but—

It’s fine, Rose, Cassie said, before. Actually, I’m tired of waiting. And I think of that glimpse of her in the Flood. Walking alone.

“She never left town,” I say.

“Why the hell would she—”

The rush of blood to my ears drowns out the rest of the sentence. I have to go back. I have to get her. But I can feel it—the full force of the Flood, almost here. There’s not going to be enough time. Not if I can’t convince them to stop this.

I screw my eyes shut. Think, Rose. Try one more time.

And this once, I let myself think about the morning of Gaby’s funeral. Fully think about it. And I remember exactly what went through my mind, standing in that doorway. When she asked me to take that reading. When I took on her grief, and then I never put it down.

“I don’t want to,” I gasp, “but I have to.”

“What?” Alex says.

“That first night I spoke to the Flood,” I say. “I asked them why they were doing this. That’s what they were trying to tell me. I don’t want to, but I have to.” I take a steadying breath. “I have to go back.”

“I’m coming with you,” Alex says.

“Allie—” Felix starts. He gets just that far when Alex rounds on him.

“I’m going,” Alex grits out, “to town. And if you think you’re going to talk me out of it—”

“Alex.” Felix squeezes a sigh through his teeth. “I know.”

Alex, who’s halfway through a retort, all but freezes on the spot. “You do?”

“Wait here,” Felix says. As he turns and sprints to the blur of a police car, Alex watches him go, still tensed for the argument that didn’t come. I think he’s forgotten that I’m here.

Felix comes back with three long cylinders tucked under his arm. “Signal flares. We split up, cover more ground. Whoever finds Cassie fires one of these, and then we all get out.”

Something not quite readable passes across Alex’s face, but in the course of a moment, it hardens into resolve. He steps forward, raises himself onto his toes, and reaches out—past the flares and up to Felix’s collar, which he grabs and pulls. And then he kisses him.

It’s not a long kiss—we don’t have much time, after all. He draws back after a moment, smiling as Felix’s lips chase him a ways.

“Thank you,” Alex says. Then, sliding a flare out of Felix’s now-loose arm, he ducks into the passenger’s seat of Felix’s car.

I take my own flare as Felix stares slack-jawed after him. “Congratulations,” I say.

He tightens his grip on the last flare and turns, but not before I catch the rush of blood to his face.

I let them go ahead for a moment—just long enough to catch my breath, to hold the flare a little tighter in my hand. Behind me, the desert opens, long and vast and somehow as narrow as Flora’s doorway. Full of innumerable exits that I can’t—won’t—take.

I’m not sure I can do this.

But I have to. And this time, I want to.

So one more time, we climb into Felix’s car. And unnoticed by the crowd, we drive down the hill and toward the town. Back to Lotus Valley. And back to the Flood.

Twenty-Nine THE FLOOD

WE SPLIT UP at the gates of Lethe Ridge, leaving the car parked on the shoulder. I kiss both of them on the cheek before I go. Felix doubles back into the housing development, and Alex veers west, in the direction of city hall. And I head the other way, straight down Morningside Drive.

I don’t need to guess where I’m going. I’ve been able to feel it since we crossed into town. A tug at my ankles, like an undertow.

The sick green tinge of the sky has turned dark gray and unsettled, and it’s only getting darker as I go. No longer the color of an oncoming storm—the look, instead, of a storm that’s already here.

And I’m heading right into the middle of it.

Once I’m sure Felix and Alex are far behind me, I stop holding my shoulders so tightly together, stop clenching my fists into the fabric of my shirt. There’s no one else around. And I don’t particularly care if the Flood sees me shaking.

I pass empty houses and their scattered signs of recently departed life: doors open, luggage forgotten on curbs and driveways. I pass Theresa Gibson’s garage, still lit in a sea of shuttered storefronts. She’s in there probably. Waiting.

And as I pass, head farther down Morningside Drive, I see another sign of life. A massive, tangled web of shadows, stretched so wide and so far, I don’t even see Christie. Rudy’s just waiting. Ready for the fight we’ve been holding him back from these past three days.

He’s not rushing at me this time. The Flood isn’t following me anymore, after all. But I can feel him watching as I approach. Like he’s . . . considering me.

I take a long, slow breath. We’ve been operating, all this time, on the assumption that if given the opportunity to fight the Flood, he wouldn’t be able to resist. That he only knows one way to protect Christie.

But I think of their long drive back to Lotus Valley, of how she came to want for him to be something good. She said she didn’t know if they wanted the same