Strangers of the Night: Touched by Passion / Passion in Disguise / Unexpected Passion. Megan Hart

       Prologue

      Collins Creek

      Jed doesn’t like the sound of the babies crying. He can hear them even from the other building, wailing inside his head. He’s too big to be one of them anymore. No more diapers. No more crib. No more giant room that always smells faintly of milk and poo. Now he has his own big bed in the dorm with the other kids, and although he misses his mothers, he knows better than to give in to tears. If you cry here in the dorm, you get a beating.

      Instead, he clenches his fists tight at his sides and stares up at the ceiling. His cot is hard and lumpy. The blanket scratches his chin if he pulls it up too high, so he tucks it around his belly. The other kids are sleeping, but Jed can’t seem to manage. There’s too much noise, too much going on. If he gets up now, he could go to the monitor, who will give him some medicine to sleep, but it makes his head feel fuzzy and his belly hurt. He tries to fall asleep on his own.

      Tomorrow is dedication day.

      The fathers have been watching them all since they were babies in the nursery. They already know which ones are special. Who will be dedicated, who will be sent away.

      This is Jed’s first dedication time, but he’s heard the other kids talking even when they’re not supposed to. Everyone’s scared about what happens when you’re sent away. The rumor is that you get put into the big fireplace in the barn and made into smoke, and Jed believes it. He’s been able to “feel” everyone at the farm for as long as he can remember. The kids who get taken away after each dedication, well...he doesn’t feel them anymore.

      Before he’s even had time to sleep, the lights overhead come on. The other kids shift and squeal, crying out in excitement and fear when the doors to the dorm boom open and the fathers are there in their black robes, their white masks. It’s supposed to make them all equal, but it doesn’t matter to Jed that they all look the same. They all feel different.

      The kids are up and in a line, marching into the hallway. One by one, they go into the meeting room. None of them come out. They won’t know until later who’s still left, though of course, Jed will know before everyone else. That’s what he tells the fathers waiting for him in the meeting room when they ask him. He tells them who he can still feel. Who he cannot. They stare at him from behind their white masks, nodding when he points to each and names them.

      They feel happy, and that makes Jed feel happy, too. He won’t be burned up into smoke. He gets the special pudding for dessert that makes the world spin around in many colors. He gets to go back to the dorm and his lumpy bed, where he can only lie on his back, laughing and laughing at the funny way everything grows and shrinks.

      He’s still laughing when the doors bang open again. More men in black. No white masks. Guns. They kick over the beds, the monitor’s desk. They shout. Most of them feel angry, though one or two feel more scared than anything else, and none of them feel nice.

      They take all of the children.

      Jed never sees Collins Creek again.