The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

actually knew her?” She had died a long time ago.
    He nodded. “I knew her,” he said, running a hand over his
short beard. He was watching me closely, his face weary. “The Guardians haven’t
been as active lately,” he said. “There’s a reason for that. People my
age— Rosella’s age—learned not to cross
them. You young ones ought to learn from our mistakes. Don’t think the woods
are safe just because you don’t personally know anyone who ran into trouble out
there.”
    The scarred warden snorted. “ Out there . You don’t have to go into the woods to run into the
Guardians. Hey—turn around. Look at me.”
    I did as he said.
    “You’re old enough to remember Chet, aren’t you?”
    I did remember Chet. I’d only been eight or nine when he
died, but I remembered him because he had bullied some of the older children
who let me tag along after them. Once he’d locked Cline in the dark food
preservation cellar for fourteen hours, and another time, he’d stolen Meritt’s shoes. Meritt got put in
isolation for two days for not keeping up with his belongings.
    There were other incidents, too, and one morning the
butchers found Chet hanging from his feet in the slaughterhouse in a row of
cattle carcasses. He was fifteen.
    “Anyone could have done that,” I said diffidently. “Chet
wasn’t well liked.”
    “He wasn’t well-liked by the Guardians, that’s for sure.”
The scarred warden’s expression turned smug. “You want to know how I know it
was them?”
    Reluctantly, I nodded.
    “I saw them come in at the northwest gap just before dark
that night. Two of them.”
    I leaned forward. “What did they look?” I said. “Regular
people?”
    For a moment I thought he was going to refuse to tell me,
but apparently the desire to show off won out. “Could be, but I doubt it,” he
said. “They were bigger than normal. Faster, too. I lost them in the blackberry
fields, and I don’t lose regular people.”
    Behind me the other warden shifted. “First I’ve heard of
this,” he said mildly. “Did you report it?”
    “Sure. Got told to keep my head down and my mouth shut. Come
daylight, the kid was dead. Come evening, I’d been made a warden.”
    His pale eyes glinted as he turned back to me. “So like I
said, you’d best be careful, wandering around at night, talking as if the
commissioners are liars. The Watchers .”
    The shiver that ran through me wasn’t faked.
    The scarred warden smiled. “Where did you get lost?”
    The change in subject threw me off balance.
    “I  . . . I got turned around in the
orchard,” I said after a moment. “I came out of it where I wasn’t expecting to
be. Somewhere in the adult housing section. And then I knew it was getting
close to curfew, and so I ran, and I saw some old men and tried to ask where I
was but they were drunk and threw a bottle at me. Then I found you.”
    He was watching me with a funny gleam in his eye. I didn’t
know why. Everything I’d said made perfect sense, I thought. The orchard was
confusing, row upon row of ancient twisted apple trees, no landmarks to keep
things straight. Someone could easily get lost in there. Sure, it was well past
curfew, but I could easily have lost track of time when I was lost. And I’d
nicely accounted for the old men seeing me.
    The scarred warden tipped back in his chair, rocked gently
on the back legs.
    “Lost in the adult housing section,” he said, and smiled as
if he knew a secret joke.
    Behind me, the older warden got up without a word and left
the room.

Chapter 3
    I didn’t know what was going on.
    The scarred warden pulled out his cigarette and lit it
again. He didn’t say anything; he only smoked, and watched me, and rocked his
chair, and tapped ash off onto the metal table, and smoked some more.
    Again the smoke scratched at my throat. The room grew full
of hazy gray curls that were thickest up by the ceiling, moving like living
things groping blindly for a way out. There was a