The Other Side Read Online Free PDF Page A

bed.”
    â€œWhat’s your name?”
    â€œKim Cosgrove.”
    â€œAnd I am?”
    â€œSarah Cosgrove.” She smiles over her book. “My sister. Always.”
    I ruffle her ever-unkempt hair. “Yes. Sisters forever. I’ll be back in a second.”
    When I’m out of the crate, I retrieve the hypodermic needle. My hand drifts to the scar on my arm where my best friend, Trish, once injected me with a tracer. It’s the only reason we escaped Georgetown. The only reason Baby’s alive right now.
    Oren and his legion of cold-blooded insurgents and colder-blooded Greens won’t kill her, not in the bullets-and-chainsaws, Georgetown sort of way. But they will in a deeper way, in a way Georgetown killed part of me.
    I can’t allow that. I refuse to allow them, or anybody, to hurt her or Allie ever again.
    No, Melissa, Baby says, blue eyes focused on the needle clutched in my hand. She skitters away, shooting a narrow stream of ice at the space in front of me.
    â€œI can’t lose you.” I step around the frozen puddle. “If we become separated, we need to know where you are.”
    I know you’re mad at me. I’ll behave better.
    â€œI’m not mad.”
    She darts past me to the back of the cave, sheltering behind an uninterested Grackel. You can’t make me.
    â€œWe don’t have time for this, Arabelle,” Allie says. She stomps from the crate, shoots me a glare, then marches over to Baby and waggles a finger under her nose. “What if you get lost? We won’t know how to find you.”
    Baby snorts thin slivers of ice over her. Allie brushes the shards from her hair and kicks the Silver in the shin. It couldn’t possibly hurt, but Baby yowls.
    Based on their changing expressions and the occasional physical exchange, they must be continuing their conversation in private. Baby’s no longer focused on me. I tiptoe my way into her blind spot and thrust the needle into her flank. It takes all my strength to break through her scales, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
    â€œFine. Be lost,” Allie says. She folds her arms across her chest but can’t suppress a grin as she stalks, with comic exaggeration, into the crate.
    Baby shifts her attention to me. We decided. No needles.
    â€œNope.” I show her my empty hands. “I’ll make you a deal. You promise to listen to Grackel out there, everythingshe says, and I won’t ever bring up a needle again.”
    She leans down until her snout’s an inch from my face. Kiss on it.
    I gladly do, then wipe the frost from my lips and return to the crate.
    I close the wall door, press my palm to the adjacent handprint scanner, and enter the numeric passcode Preston made me memorize. The magnetic lock engages; a strip of LED lights powers up along the rim of the ceiling, and an electronic map flickers to life along the back wall.
    â€œYou did a good job with Baby,” I tell Allie as I secure Colin to the bed with buckled straps.
    â€œYou should have told me what you were going to do. Sisters don’t have secrets. Don’t be like him.”
    â€œYou’re right, but you can’t shoot people just because they upset you.”
    â€œIt was like the Georgetown vultures who came in at night sometimes while we were sleeping,” Allie says. “Sneaking up on Baby. I thought he was going to hurt us, yes, yes.”
    Her words make me think of Lorena and Whiskey Jim and how we did whatever was necessary to survive. And how some of us didn’t.
    â€œThat’s over,” I say, as much for myself as her. I retrieve her book of poems from the floor. “Find one you think I’d like.”
    Allie takes it and buckles into a jump seat.
    I grab the overhead hand railing. “Ready when you are, Randon.”
    The screech of talons on metal ripples through the crate. We rock back and forth slightly, lift up a bit, and move forward. Slow at first,