Ashes, Ashes Read Online Free PDF Page A

sniffing around the tree. A couple of them had plopped down and begun licking themselves. They looked almost friendly, except that whenever she or the boy shifted just a little bit on the branch, they leapt to their feet and started growling and snarling again. Farther out in the brush she could see more shadowy sentinels waiting for her to make a break for it. How long would they wait for a meal? How soon before they’d give up and try for a mouse in a burrow or a rat on the garbage heaps? How long before she could climb down and go home? The boy was still looking at her, almost as if he could tell what she was thinking. The smirk was back. She dropped her eyes, busied herself with tightening the bandanna around her left hand. It was wet with new blood. She’d left a bright smear on the bark on her way up.
    Clasping his hands to his chest and adopting a high-pitched voice, he said, “Oh, thank you, Aidan, for saving me from that pack of vicious dogs! That was so great of you to hang out of the tree like that and risk your life or possibly a serious accident for a complete stranger!” She scowled, wondering if she could jump off the far side of the tree, avoid the dogs, and get the heck out of there. She looked down at the new hole torn in the knee of her jeans.
    “Thanks,” she said, after a long moment. “I’m Lucy.” Her voice sounded raspy, and she was aware of how dry her throat was. “Do you have any water?”
    He shook his head. “Didn’t plan on being here that long. Just came out to relax. See what I could see …” He stared at her and she wondered if her hair was bushing out.
    “Are you scouting?” Lucy asked. She knew, of course, that there were others out there, loners like herself, but most people kept to their safe places and didn’t wander. She saw campfires sometimes, heard voices from a long way off, but Aidan was the first person she’d seen in a while. As far as she was concerned, the streets belonged to the S’ans—survivors of the plague who were horribly scarred and sick in the brain.
    He shook his head. The sarcastic curl was back in the corner of his mouth, and she decided it was just something he couldn’t help, but it didn’t exactly make her warm to him.
    She looked at him properly. As far as she could tell, he carried no collecting bags, no blade, not even a big stick.
    “What do you mean?” she said. “You’re not scouting?” Lucy straightened up; her fingers felt for her knife again. “Are you a spy?” she blurted out. “Are you spying on me?” Her greatest fear was that someone would force her back to the shelter.
    Aidan’s eyes flicked to her face and then away again. He stared at his hands. She waited for him to say something. He cleared his throat. “Not spying,” he said. “But I’ve seen you before.”
    She remembered the disquieting feeling that she was being watched and waved the knife in front of his face. “You’ve been following me.”
    He looked up. “No!” he said, as if horrified. She set her teeth.
    “Your camp is visible from here if you know where to look. That’s all. I noticed …” Now it was his cheeks that reddened. He stopped in mid-sentence, then shrugged his shoulders up and down and said in a louder voice, which set the dogs below whining and snapping, “It’s lucky for you that I was here; otherwise you’d be dog meat. You ran to this tree. I didn’t make you come here.”
    That was true enough. She eyed him, fingering her blade. “Sort of creepy, though,” she muttered. “So what were you doing here, then?” she asked, lifting her chin and staring hard at him. “Are you just … hanging out?” The words felt odd on her lips.
    “Yeah,” he said easily. “I guess you could call it that. I just like to climb trees, and the view from here is pretty much three hundred and sixty degrees.” He gestured wildly with one outstretched arm. Just watching the sweep of his hand made Lucy feel dizzy again, and she clutched at