Kitabı oku: «Perfect Lies»
KIERSTEN WHITE
PERFECT LIES
For Noah
My past, present, and future
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Fia: Every Day
Annie: Four Months Before
Fia: Five Days Before
Annie: Three and a Half Months Before
Fia: Four Days Before
Annie: Three Months Before
Fia: Three Days Before
Annie: Two and a Half Months Before
Fia: Two Days Before
Annie: Two and a Half Months Before
Fia: Thirty-six Hours Before
Annie: Nine Weeks Before
Fia: Thirty-two Hours Before
Annie: Six Weeks Before
Fia: Twenty-eight Hours Before
Annie: Six Weeks Before
Fia: Nineteen Hours Before
Annie: Five Weeks Before
Fia: Eighteen Hours Before
Annie: Four Weeks Before
Fia: Twelve Hours Before
Annie: Twenty-eight Days Before
Fia: Eleven Hours Before
Annie: Seven Days Before
Fia: Nine Hours Before
Annie: Fourteen Hours Before
Fia: Six Minutes Before
Annie: Ten Minutes Before
Fia: Two Minutes Before
Annie: After
Fia: After
Acknowledgments
Also by Kiersten White
Copyright
About the Publisher
FIA
Every Day
ANNIE.
Annie.
Annie.
Annie.
I can’t think about her, not ever. It isn’t safe.
But when I’m asleep, no one can listen to my thoughts. I’m still afraid to sleep—too many ghosts peering creeping condemning. Sometimes though, the good times, I get Annie.
It’s always the same.
Phillip Keane is gone, his webs destroyed, everything smoking and charred in beautiful ruins around me. We’re safe. It’s over.
But my hands are red, they’re still so red I can’t look at them, can’t see them, can’t breathe.
And then Annie is there. She’s too young. I know she doesn’t look like that anymore, but her face is open and innocent and clean. She wraps her hands around mine, so that I can’t see the red anymore. We’re together, and when we’re together, all these things I’ve done, they don’t matter anymore because they were worth it.
If I were Annie, I’d know whether this was a real future. All I know is it’s the only one I want, the thing that keeps me going.
I will make that future happen.
ANNIE
Four Months Before
SHE DIDN’T KILL ME.
I was ready for the knife. I’d made my peace with whatever Fia needed to do to be okay. But … she didn’t kill me. I try to keep my breathing shallow and hidden, try not to flex my fingers over the phone, though I want to.
Fia didn’t kill me!
She must have come up with something else, some way out of this. I knew she would. I knew she would fix everything, I knew she would find a way to our future.
Two minutes ago I knew she was going to kill me.
After all this time, I can See and know everything, and still know nothing at all.
How long am I going to have to lie on the ground? Is she coming back yet? My hip aches where it rests against the concrete, and people must be staring. I can hear them around me, footsteps, voices. Someone has to have noticed.
I hear the thud of hurried footfalls, then feel someone kneel next to me and let off a string of whispered profanity, soft and sad like a prayer.
A warm finger brushes against my neck fearfully, then puts firm pressure over my pulse. This time he swears loudly in surprise and … anger? He’s mad that I’m not dead? “Are you okay?” he asks.
Hoping, trusting that this is part of Fia’s plan, I move my lips as little as possible. “Shh,” I whisper. “I’m dead.”
There’s a pause, and then arms go under my knees and behind my shoulders. I try to keep my body limp as I’m lifted into the air and cradled against a chest. I let my head and arms loll, still cradling the phone in the hand that’s wedged between my body and his. I’m embarrassed about how hard I must be to hold, but I’m not breaking Fia’s request until she tells me otherwise.
I need you to be dead.
I’ll be dead, Fia.
“It’s okay. My sister’s epileptic. She’ll be fine,” I hear him say. I wonder who he is, where he’s taking me with such a determined, slightly uneven limping stride.
He carries me for what feels like way too long, the warm sun playing on my skin cut through with an occasional breeze. Then I feel the whoosh of artificial air as we enter a building.
Without a word he lowers me to the floor. I rub my neck where it’s cramping from hanging in a weird position.
“Where are we? When is Fia getting here? What’s the plan?” I lean forward expectantly.
“You tell me,” he snaps.
I flinch away from his tone. Fia’s cell phone rings and I fumble, unsure what button to push. With a huff he takes the phone from my fingers, then shoves it back.
“Fia?” I’m trembling and out of sorts beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I got up this morning expecting to die. Now I’m somewhere I don’t know, with someone I don’t know, and all I have is a phone.
“Who is this?” a soft, male voice asks. A voice I instantly recognize from one of my visions.
“Adam?”
“Yes?”
I put a hand to my mouth. Adam. I’m on the phone with Adam, the guy I personally arranged to have killed. The guy Fia spared. The guy who, according to my vision, is now in cahoots with the Lerner group. Fia delivered me to Lerner, the same group that drugged and kidnapped her. After shooting her in an alley.
Fia has perfect instincts, I remind myself. I shouldn’t have an easier time believing that she’d kill me than I have believing that she knows what she’s doing handing me over to these people.
“Umm, hey.” How does one start a conversation with a guy she tried to have murdered? “This is Annie? Fia’s sister?”
“Oh.” There’s a pause, and then he says, “Oh! It’s Annie. Fia has Annie!”
A soft voice, a woman’s, murmurs in the background on his end. “Where are you?” Adam asks, brimming with happy excitement, unlike my angry companion. “We’ll come get you two!”
I lower the phone and talk in the general direction of the guy who carried me here. “Where are we? They want to come get us.”
“Give me the phone.”
I hold it out and feel it once again snatched from my fingers. His voice gets quieter as he walks away but retains its low intensity. I stand, trying not to feel awkward, wondering where we are. The doors open and someone walks past with a quiet “Excuse me.”
I back up a few steps, hoping that I’m not in the middle of some hallway, and increasingly annoyed with Angry Guy for abandoning me here.
“Sorry, sir,” a woman says over Angry Guy’s continued hushed conversation. “You can’t use your phone in the library. Please step outside.”
“I’m done,” he snaps.
I hunch my shoulders and shove my hands into my pockets, hoping they’re not both looking at me. I wish I were wearing my sunglasses. Where are you, Fia? Hurry up so you can explain what’s going on and what we’re doing next.
“Here,” he says right next to me, making me jump. “Here.” The second time he says it a little softer and I finally clue in and hold out my hand. He gives the cell back, and I stick it in my pocket. Then … nothing. He says nothing.
“So. Umm.” I wait for him to fill the silence.
“They’re coming.”
“Fia’s meeting us here?”
“No. Fia is not meeting us here.” His words have a strange quality, like they’re being forced through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I say, glaring because I’m not sorry, I’m frustrated. “I’m not up to speed on what’s going on, and I’d really like to be clued in.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“But you’re helping Fia.”
“I am not helping Fia.”
My heart thuds fearfully in my chest. “But … I thought … I mean, you were part of it. You picked me up.” Oh, no. Oh, no. I gave him the phone. For all I know, he was delivering a threat or a ransom demand. All Fia did was give me the phone, which was meant to connect me with Adam. Not whoever this is. Tears brim in my eyes.
No. Think like Fia. What would Fia do?
Besides stab the guy.
“I’ll scream,” I say, standing straighter and facing him. “You shouldn’t have brought me to a public place. Leave now or I’ll scream.” I pull the phone back out of my pocket and feel for bumps on the buttons, hoping the call feature will be prominent and that it saved Adam’s number. “I won’t be leverage, not for you or anyone else.”
He swears, then grabs my fingers. I nearly shout until I realize he’s pressing my index finger onto a button. I hear a number dialing.
“Crazy must run in your family,” he says.
“You do know Fia!” I blurt, then bite my lip. He exhales in a silent laugh at my immediate association of crazy with my own sister.
“She stabbed me in the leg.” Well, guess I was right about what Fia would do. “Then I shot her. Then I helped bring her in, against my better judgment, and let her see what we do. And then I followed her after she attacked me and ran. I got to watch as she murdered an innocent girl because I didn’t stop her.”
I hear Adam saying “Hello?” but don’t put the phone up to my ear. This guy’s anger makes no sense. If he’s with Lerner, and that’s where Fia wants me, why is he so mad?
“But she didn’t. Murder me, I mean. I’m still alive.” Obviously.
“Not for the minute it took between watching you fall and finding your pulse.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I mean it. I wasn’t thinking about what it must have been like for him. “If it makes you feel any better, I thought I was dead, too.”
“Why would that make me feel better?”
The sliding of glass doors precedes Adam’s voice. “Cole! And you must be Annie?”
Hearing Adam in person is different from on the phone. I’m flooded with memories of the visions I’ve had of him—the one where I saw girl after girl with abilities being brought into the light and then disappearing into darkness, while Adam’s name bounced around my skull, ricocheting painfully. And the other one, later, where I saw his face. I am meeting a guy whose name and voice I can put a face to. Other than James and his father, that has never happened to me.
It’s too much, all of it. I don’t know how to feel, what to think. I’m not with my sister, who I thought was going to kill me today. Instead, I’m with the guy I tried to have killed. The guy who spells disaster for hundreds of girls like me. The guy whose voice is kind and whose gentle face I will forever be able to see.
An arm comes around my shoulder and I jump.
“It’s okay,” a woman says. “You’re safe.”
“Where’s Fia?” Adam asks.
“How do you all not know?” I ask. “I thought she had a plan. You are the plan. Right?”
“She didn’t tell us anything,” the woman says. “Do you have any idea what she’ll do next?”
I shake my head. Fia’s future is always a mystery to me.
FIA
Five Days Before
“MISS FIA, YOUR SHOULDER—” THE SECURITY GUARD says, eyes wide.
Ignoring him, I skip inside, the opulent, open lobby of the school swallowing me whole. James turns a corner, his suit all well-tailored lines of professionalism, sleek and slippery and mature. I hate it when he wears a suit. When he wears a suit he is Mr. Keane. His easy smile freezes before it can touch his eyes. He’s scared for me.
It’s adorable.
“What happened?” he asks. Ms. Robertson (I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her) is behind him, a sheaf of papers clutched to her starched chest.
I shrug—it hurts—then flop onto one of the leather couches. I’ll get blood on it. I’ve poured a lot of blood into this school, but it’s still thirsty, it’s always thirsty.
“Ran into an old friend. And his knife. Why do so many of my old friends have knives?”
Ms. Robertson stomps toward me, glaring at my arm like it’s personally offensive. “My office. We’ll see if we can patch you up without stitches. Who did this?”
I smile at her. Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris!
She glares at James. “Make her stop.”
James raises an eyebrow at me. “Fia?”
“What? All I said was hello. It’s polite to say hello. Hello, Doris.”
Huffing, she leaves and I stand, slightly woozy, to follow her. “Who was it?” James whispers.
“Dmitri. Russian mobster? He was mad that I stole millions of dollars from him. Silly man, doesn’t he know money is imaginary?” It’s paper that turns into numbers on screens. It’s there, then it’s gone. I put it places, I take it out, I move it somewhere else. Imaginary. Most things are imaginary, when you think about it.
Sometimes I think I’m imaginary.
“Dmitri,” he growls, nodding. “If I had been there …”
“I still would have fought him and won, but then I would have had to worry about you, too.”
James gives me a wry half smile. “At least let me pretend I can defend you sometimes.”
I pat his cheek. “You’re so cute when you’re delusional.”
“And you’re sexy when you’re on a post-fight high.” His eyes search mine, more serious than his tone would indicate, and I know he’s looking to see whether or not I’m falling apart. He doesn’t need to.
I’m better than I was a month ago. A week ago, even. It was bad, but James held me together. He whispered dark, secret things to me and helped me escape myself with promises of flames and freedom. I narrow my eyes but smile, to let him know I know what he’s looking for and that he won’t find it.
“Don’t tell Doris about Dmitri. I’ll be there in a minute.” James brushes a kiss along the top of my head. I lean into him, breathing in, wanting to lose myself there, needing to lose myself there. “Where were Johnson and Davis?” he asks.
I take a step back. “How am I supposed to know? It’s not my fault if my shadows can’t stay attached to me. Call Wendy Darling. Maybe she can sew them to the bottoms of my feet.”
He swears, pulling out his phone. “They’re there to protect you.”
“Do I look like I need protection?” I hold out my hands, one with streaks of blood on it, and give him my best crazy crazy crazy crazy grin. “You know, I like Dmitri. I crippled him, but I like him.”
Whoever he’s calling picks up and he starts yelling about doing a job and consequences and cleaning up messes. I wonder if the Russian guy is the mess or if I am. There’s a smear of blood on James’s suit jacket from where I hugged him, and I think it looks nice there, like it belongs.
I leave him and make my way to Ms. Robertson’s office. She’s already got a massive medical kit out on her desk and I sit, peeling off my shirt. It’s hot in here, the heater in the corner working too hard, drying out the air and making everything feel small and scratchy.
“What did you do this time?” she asks through gritted teeth, fingers surprisingly gentle as she cleans the wound on my shoulder.
“Someone took my parking space.”
“You don’t have a car.”
“That doesn’t mean I should let someone take my parking space now, does it?”
She tears off strips of medical tape, lining them up to pull the edges of the cut closed. “Why don’t you tell me who did this?”
Do you really want to get into my head? I think. It’s not a friendly place. You’ll regret it.
She sneers. “Are you going to kill me?”
I twist away from her, ripping open a package of gauze and slapping it over my arm. “Is there a reason I should?”
“I don’t know. Was there a reason you killed Eden?”
I tap tap tap tap against the table, then use my teeth to tear off enough tape to keep the gauze in place. I hated Eden. I hated her. I can’t think about it, can’t think about what happened, won’t think about what happened. “She deserved it.” I look at Ms. Robertson with the full force of my baby-blue eyes. “Do you deserve it?” They’ll let me, I think at her. They’ll let me do whatever I want, and we both know it.
“And your sister? She deserved it, too?”
I explode out of my chair, inches away from Ms. Robertson’s face, which is no longer sneering. “She was in my way.” Ms. Robertson is standing between me and the door, and I look pointedly at it. “You are in my way.”
She moves.
As I walk past, her voice shakes with anger or fear (I can’t tell, I’m not Eden, Eden Eden why’d she bring up Eden?) as she says, “And Clarice?”
I pause, my hand on the doorway. “I just didn’t like her.” Letting my mind go blank, not thinking anything at all, I turn and smile pleasantly at Ms. Robertson.
In the hall I nearly bump into a girl. She does a double take. “Fia? What happened? Where’s your shirt?”
I glance down, my black bra in stark contrast to my pale torso, then laugh. “I knew I was forgetting something!” I try so hard not to remember their names, so very very hard, but I can’t sleep because I see their faces. Mandy. Twelve. From New Orleans.
I wash myself clean of guilt, of pain, of fear, of emotion. I am the ocean. I am empty. I am nothing. Mandy lets out a little sigh of relief. She loves being around me. Silly Mandy.
“I cut my shoulder and there was blood on my shirt. I was going to find another one.”
“You can borrow one of mine!” She holds out her hand, smiling shyly. I take it and let her lead me to her room, and I do not feel anything, not a thing, not a thing about this life or this girl or working in the school that I will burn to the ground.
When it gets to be too much, I picture the flames, imagine their heat. The noise they’ll make as they devour everything Phillip Keane has built. It’s better than the ocean for calming, and if any Readers look at me funny, I add marshmallows to my thoughts and am just a girl in want of a campfire.
I am a girl in want of complete destruction. But I am patient.
James finds me thirty minutes later, lying on my stomach on the floor of the main dorm common room, looking at fashion magazines with a gaggle of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds around me. They all jockey for position, each trying to slide in next to me, be close to me, be near me, because these girls know nothing.
They know nothing.
I think happy thoughts and feel happy things and I do not let myself near the swirling black edges of the hole that is my soul when I look at them.
I try not to spin. In third grade we did an experiment where we rubbed a needle on a magnet, then dropped it onto water. The surface tension let it rest on top of the water, and the magnet sent the needle spinning.
I used to be a compass, trained on the true north of protecting Annie. Without her I lost my north.
But James is my north now. The flames are my north now. Our dark secrets are my north now.
I tap tap tap tap on the magazine. Annie. Annie. Annie. Annie.
Don’t think about Annie.
James holds out his hand to help me up and I take it, squeezing harder than I need to, willing it to be my anchor. This is what I chose, and I always choose right. James saved me. He’ll always save me.
“Are you leaving already?” Mandy asks, a whine creeping into her voice. “You never stay!”
“That’s my fault,” James says, giving the girls his winningest lie of a smile. “I’ve got to take Fia to New York.”
“New York?” I ask.
His smile goes deeper, sharper. “My father wants us working there. With him.”
I don’t know what to do with this sudden flood of uncontrolled emotion. Finally. Finally. All the things I’ve done, all this blood and betrayal and wrong will be made right. We have a plan (don’t think about the plan, never think about the plan). It will happen now.
It is happening.
James pulls me close, his arm around my waist holding me up. I am dizzy with anticipation. The beginning of the end.
“Will you come visit us?” Mandy asks. “You said the school will always be your home.”
I try to smile, but my eyes dart around the room, tracing the contours of the walls, my finger tap tap tap tapping on my leg. Always.
“Take me away,” I whisper to James, and he does.
ANNIE
Three and a Half Months Before
I PULL THE PHONE OUT OF MY POCKET, TAP IT ON THE table. The noise reminds me of Fia. Who hasn’t called. It’s been two weeks.
Two.
A throat clears. “Hey, Annie.” Adam always announces himself when he enters the room. I appreciate it.
“Can I sit?”
I nod and feel the motel couch give under his weight. Without a word I hand the phone to him. He’s been as anxious about getting word from Fia as I have; he’s the one who tracked down a charger so the cell wouldn’t die.
“No missed calls or texts,” he says, stating the obvious.
“Who’s ready for some lunch?” Sarah chirps, bringing with her the scent of grease. My stomach turns uneasily. I hate myself as soon as I think it, but I really miss the Keane school chefs. I also miss my own cell phone, with raised buttons so I could use it without help. And my white cane that folded neatly into a purse. And my braille display for my laptop.
And … I miss knowing where I am. Being stuck in the school for so many years has turned me into an unwilling agoraphobe. I spent all that time either knowing the exact confines of my space or out with someone I trusted completely. Being untethered is kind of terrifying.
I miss Eden.
“Where to today?” I ask, needing distraction. We’re all staying in a suite in some motel outside Denver. Our travel pattern deliberately makes no sense. Cole decides on the spot where we’re going, and we never stay anywhere for long or plan more than a few hours in advance. Sarah says it’s the best way to avoid anyone on the lookout for us, though she seems confident no Seer is going to have an eye out for me.
I’m dead, after all. So is Adam.
“Do you want me to cut your food for you?” Adam offers, and I shake my head. He’s constantly trying to help me. I wondered at first if maybe he had a crush on me, but it doesn’t feel like that.
Then again, how would I know? This is the most I’ve been around guys close to my age since I went to the school.
“I have good news,” Sarah says. “I haven’t seen anything. I think we’re safe to go to home base.”
“Finally,” Adam says, his voice desperate with relief. I bite my lip guiltily. He lost his parents, his schooling, his apparently brilliant future. And it’s my fault. I put him on Keane’s radar.
Cole surprises me by talking. Once again I didn’t realize he was in the room. “Settles that, then. We’ll go to the California house and make reintegration plans for our two corpses.”
“Actually, we’re headed to Georgia.”
Cole’s voice is suddenly cold. “Why Georgia? I don’t see any reason to involve them further.”
“We need help, Cole. We can’t do this on our own.”
“We’ve been doing fine.”
“Did you even hear what Annie was telling us? He has women in the White House! This is so much bigger than we can fight, and if working with Rafael is what we need, then—”
“You don’t know enough about him.”
“I haven’t seen anything that makes me worried.”
“You don’t see everything.”
A door slams. Judging by Sarah’s sigh, I assume Cole is gone. “What was that about?” I ask.
Sarah sounds falsely bright. “Nothing. Cole likes being independent. Lerner has always been a really loosely connected network, to keep us safer. But we’re starting to organize and get funding, and it makes him nervous. I’ll go pack your things and we’ll head out!”
“I’m already packed,” Adam says. Sarah leaves, but he stays on the couch next to me. “So much research data all around me, and I can’t do a thing to study it. I need to work before I go crazy.”
“You can’t!” I blush, embarrassed at my outburst. “I mean, you can’t keep pursuing it, right? That’s how they found you.” I’m how they found him, but the vision still swirls in my head, unsettling me.
He sounds thoughtful. “Sarah thinks we can manage it. And she feels like it’s really important, like it might finally give us an advantage against Keane.”
My thoughts are scattered, my nerves frayed. What if it did? What if that’s what my vision meant? That we’d find the women and then help them disappear? Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong. It wouldn’t be the first vision I was wrong about.
Probably won’t be the last, either.
The car slams to a stop, my seat belt digging into my collarbone. “What is he doing here?” Cole snaps.
“Who?” Sarah asks. “Oh. I didn’t know he was coming.”
The car eases forward and then stops again. I hear doors open, so I unbuckle my seat belt and climb out, kicking my foot to find the curb.
“Cole,” a man calls from nearby. He sounds older than Cole and Adam. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Nathan,” Cole says, his voice icy. “Why are you here?”
“Permanent security detail with the boss.”
“Right.” Cole’s voice is edged with tension and anger. He must have a headache all the time if he carries as much tension in his neck as he does in his voice. “The boss. Great.”
Sarah takes my arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers in my ear. “Cole’s just PMSing.”
I snort, instantly more at ease. I don’t think Cole will stick around any longer than he has to, which is a bit of a relief. He stresses me out.
“Come on in,” Nathan says as we walk up three steps. “And who is this?”
I don’t like the shift in tone of Nathan’s voice that indicates he’s talking about me. It’s as though he’s no longer addressing an equal but a child or a plaything.
“None of your business,” Cole snaps.
I frown in his direction. I don’t need him defending me, but I’m surprised that he’d sound so … protective on my behalf.
We walk past Nathan, who wears a spicy aftershave that clears out my sinuses. I instantly decide I don’t trust men who wear too much cologne. What is he covering up?
The air shifts as we enter the house, less heavy with humidity and cooler. “Rafael!” Sarah says, sounding happy.
“Sarah! So good to see you again. And this must be Adam, which makes you Annie.” The speaker has a soft, musical accent that makes it harder for me to get much from his tone. It also makes me wish I could see his face, because his voice is very, very hot. A cheek brushes mine and I start, surprised, as he kisses the air next to my face.
He backs away, laughing. “I hate shaking hands. Don’t look so frightened, Adam, I promise not to kiss you. Where are you from, Annie?”
I smile nervously. “Colorado, originally. Lately of Chicago. I’m dead, though. Just for the record.”
“Naturally.” Rafael sounds amused, and I want him to like me so I can hear him talk more. “So you’re Fia’s sister.”
The way he states it gives me pause. “Do you know her?”
He laughs again, a laugh that holds secrets. “We’ve met, yes.”
“Did she stab you, too?”
This time the laugh is easy and loud. “No, nothing so dramatic.”
“Good. She has a habit of doing that apparently.”
“She destroyed my knee,” Nathan grumbles from behind us. I’m not sure if I should apologize. I didn’t to Cole for his stab wound, so I opt not to.
“Any word from our charmingly violent Fia?” Rafael asks.
Sarah answers. “We have a phone she gave Annie, but there hasn’t been any contact.”
“Hmm. Here, sit, I’ll have Nathan get coffee.” Rafael takes my arm and guides me to a leather couch in a carpeted room. “You know your sister better than anyone. Do you have an idea what she might be planning?”
I shake my head, then lean back against the couch. For what feels like the millionth time I rack my brains, trying to think of anything Fia said or did, any indication she might have given me about what her plan was.
I want to be with her, to hear her. I don’t want my last memories of her to be the vision where I thought she killed me, or our tear-filled exchange under the arch.
And then I see her. It rushes in, slamming into my eyes. Fia, wearing a tank top and long, loose, patterned pants. Pajamas. The room is nearly dark, with a pool of warm yellow light drifting out from a single lamp. Fia walks toward it, then pauses, looks down.
At James. I’ve seen him before, and he hasn’t changed, though in sleep he looks far more peaceful than I could have imagined. He’s sprawled on the couch, glasses askew on his face.
She’s going to kill him, I think. I don’t want to see, don’t want to watch her do this, but I can’t avoid what the vision wants to show me.
She reaches down and gently pulls the glasses off his face, closing them and setting them on the floor. Then she leans over, brushes her lips against his forehead, and turns off the lamp.
With the sweetest, most content smile on her face I could ever have imagined.
Darkness reclaims my eyes, and for once I am grateful to be back where I belong, back where life makes sense. She smiled. Not the dead-girl, hollow smile I’d seen in visions past. She looked … whole. With him.
“Are you okay?” Cole asks.
“I saw her,” I whisper.
“Who?” I can feel Rafael leaning in close to me.
“Fia. She was with James.” I cover my face, sick to my stomach. Because now I finally realize, I finally get it.
Fia saved me. She set me free.
But she also abandoned me.
“Fia’s not coming.”
FIA
Four Days Before
I WAKE UP JUST BEFORE DAWN, AND I CAN’T—I can’t—I can’t—I can’t do this, I can’t feel this, I can’t be me right now. Clarice’s face, her ruined face, then blood on my sister’s hand. I thought I’d have the good dream tonight. Not this.
I stumble down the hall, into James’s room. Crawl into his bed. He wakes up with a start. He is not like me: his first instinct is not to fight but to pull me close. He holds me until I can breathe again.
“It’s okay.” His voice is soft and sweet with sleep as he strokes my hair. “It’s okay.” His arms keep me from shaking apart. Sleep is okay when James is anchoring me, and here, now, there are no lies between us.
Whatever else he is, James is my one safe place in the world.
“Where did you go last night?” James asks, leaning against the wall as I finish flinging clothes into my suitcase.
“Hmm?”
“You sneaked out last night. I woke up at four and you were gone again.”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m having an affair. With an accountant. He reads tax code aloud by candlelight; it drives me wild.”
“Fia.”
I shrug, shoving my clothes down so I can get the suitcase shut. I wonder if I should be sad to leave this city, if I’ll ever come back. I don’t care about taking anything with me. Nothing here is mine.
I remember the quilt on my bed when I was little. It was blue with white clouds, worn threadbare, warm but light enough to burrow under without feeling like I was suffocating. I remember the knotted rug by my parents’ bed, beneath a battered wood chest my mom kept our memory boxes in. (My mom, my mom, I don’t even remember what she sounded like anymore. She is a picture, a home movie clip, a ghost of a person in my memories that are so small they wouldn’t even fill the box anymore.)
“Are you going to answer me?”
I look up, startled that James is still here. No, I will not miss this city. A place is a place is a place. I don’t care. James and I together, that’s what matters. We’re on our way to destroy his father, dismantle Keane Enterprises, and then be free. I am sharp and ready. “You’re the one who told me it’s good to keep secrets.”
“Not from me.”
I grin, pointing a finger at him. “Especially from you.”
He sighs and rubs his forehead. “Anything illegal?”
“Me? Never.” I woke up and his arms weren’t around me anymore and he was asleep and so far away, and the emptiness was too big, too scary, the waiting too much, so I went running.
He walks into the room and sits on the couch, pulling me into his lap. “Just how many secrets are you keeping from me?”
“I’d tell you, but it’s a secret.” I lean my forehead against his, letting myself feel quiet, looking for the thing inside me that tells me what we’re doing is right. It’s been so hard to find since I gave up Annie. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. This is what everything has been for.”
“Of course. This is the biggest vote of confidence my dad has ever given me. We’re finally sliding into place.” His eyes get distant, and something nervous twists in the pit of my stomach.
“You’re having second thoughts.”
He shakes his head, focuses on me. “No. You and me, that’s the way it has to be. We do what we’re supposed to and no one will see what’s coming until it’s too late.”
I scratch a finger under his jaw, my nail catching on his stubble. “Not even us.”
“Not even us.”
“What do you mean, I can’t go in to see Mr. Keane?” I sing the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” in my head over and over again, because I can’t think about what I need to think about, which is not a what but a who. The girl behind the desk glares at me.
“He wants you to get a feel for the receptionist. She’s too good for the Feelers or other Readers to figure out,” James had said, looking past me as we rode the elevator up up up up to where he would disappear past locked doors to his father, leaving me behind.
Babysitting.
I’m babysitting a freaking Reader.
She pops her gum, bored. “You aren’t cleared to go back to the offices.”
Hey, I think. On a scale of one to ten, how fond are you of an intact spinal cord?
Her eyes widen and I laugh. “Just kidding. Probably you should stay out of my head. It’s not a friendly place.”
“Clearly.” She has short hair, bleached white, with choppy bangs hanging over her kohl-rimmed eyes. From the looks of her she’s maybe sixteen, pixie features and tiny frame; her feet hang a few inches above the floor. She’s wearing metal almost everywhere metal can go—ears, nose, fingers, wrists, even studs on her black heels. It doesn’t compensate for how small she is. Fragile. Fingers like twigs, equally snappable.
“Aren’t you a little young to be Keane’s personal assistant?” I ask, leaning against the rosewood desk she’s slouching at.
She doesn’t break eye contact. “Aren’t you a little psychotic to be Keane’s employee?”
I like her. The pixie is going to be my friend. I know it like I know I’m not going to see Mr. Keane today. I will be her friend, while plotting to either betray her if she’s untrustworthy for the company, or be betrayed by her if I slip up and she sees thoughts she shouldn’t.
Best friends.
“When is James getting out of his meeting?”
“Quit thinking of me as a pixie. It pisses me off.”
Magic magic pixie dust! Tinker Bell! Tiny pixies with sharp teeth, stealing children and horses! I start humming the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” under my breath.
“You really are as obnoxious as everyone thinks you are.” She sighs heavily, slides off her chair, and walks around the desk. Even in four-inch heels she barely comes up to my chin. “Let’s go get dinner.”
I let my eyes travel down the hall behind her. Mr. Keane is there somewhere. Mr. Keane who—nope not gonna think about it, not gonna think about anything at all. I can be patient. Pixies. Pixie haircuts. Pixie sticks. Drumsticks. Music. Dancing. I want to go dancing! Ache for it.
“You know what?” she says. “I changed my mind. Go ahead and snap my neck. It’s gotta be better than listening to you free-associate to try and scramble me.”
I laugh and wrap my arm through hers, steering her past the security guard and toward the gleaming elevators. “Your mistake is in assuming my brain doesn’t work like this all the time.”
We ride down the elevator in relative silence, except when Pixie asks me to please think the lyrics to a song she wouldn’t mind having stuck in her head. I settle on Queen in my head and pizza for dinner.
“So,” I say around a thin and drooping slice. “Turns out I do miss something about Chicago. What the crap is this crust?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m a vegan.”
I reach out and tug the collar of her leather jacket. “And this cow died of natural causes?”
She shrugs defensively. “My grandma gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. It was hers. The cows would have been dead of old age by now, anyway. Besides, eggs are disgusting, and have you ever actually thought about what dairy is? You are eating the product of liquid squirted from the nipples of a cow.”
“Mmmm …” I stick my tongue out to catch a stray strand of goopy cheese. Pixie rolls her eyes, and I free-associate cow nipples in my thoughts to entertain her and keep my brain safe as I sit back and look out the window at the busy sidewalk. It’s dark and bitterly cold, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone out there. New York is more claustrophobic than Chicago, the buildings tall and looming so that you can’t see anything beyond your street. This afternoon as I prowled the city, waiting for James to text me that it was time to go in, I passed the Empire State Building without even noticing until I almost knocked down a tourist.
How come Pixie is here? Why isn’t she in the school?
“My name isn’t Pixie. And it’s because I’m too good for the school, you idiot. When they interviewed me for a scholarship, I started asking them about the Keane Foundation and what on earth Feelers were and assured them that I was more than qualified for whatever they had in mind. Then they put me up against their best Readers—”
“Did you get Doris?”
“Yes! Kill me now, her thoughts were like being trapped in an airless room with nothing but smooth jazz.”
I cackle. “So, what, they gave you independent study?”
“Pretty much. Said I could cut my teeth at the front desk of Keane’s main office, since I was too young to place somewhere big.”
“And your family …”
Her eyes get tight and she snaps her head to look outside. Not in a tragic, I’ve-been-ripped-away-from-them way. I tap tap tap tap a finger on the counter. She wants to be here, I can tell. Hmm. I will tread carefully. Super careful.
Ha ha ha ha, as if.
She clears her throat. “I lived with my grandma until she died when I was thirteen. Then I got saddled with my dad who’d sooner raise hunting dogs than a teenage daughter. So.” She claps her hands together, smile too wide and eyes too bright. “I get to come to the great big city and do great big things, and he gets to take the sheets off the couch that doubled as my bed. Win-win!”
Am I supposed to hug her? Console her? (Annie would know what to do. Would have. Would have.) “Well, screw that. Let’s go dancing.”
She frowns as though trying to hear something better, then shakes her head and jumps off the stool. “That, I can do.”
My phone buzzes and I pull it out. Text from James. Stuck in meetings.
Late dinner? I can eat twice if it means we can talk.
Eating with my father. Sorry. Will make it up to you tomorrow.
I narrow my eyes at the screen, tap tap tap tap on it. I need us to move, to do, to start this wheel spinning until it flies off its axis and destroys everything around us. I hold James’s face in my thoughts, imagine his arms around me. Imagine his voice whispering “patience” in my ear before I elbow him in the stomach because I hate it when he tells me that.
I take a phone off the counter, where someone set it down to go get a refill.
“Did you just steal that guy’s phone?” Pixie asks as we hunch our shoulders against the chill. She has her own phone out, looking for a nearby club.
One can never have enough phones, I think at her. She gives me a secret smile in return.
ANNIE
Three Months Before
I’VE BEEN VENTURING OUT MORE NOW THAT RAFAEL got me a white cane. Coming and going as I please is a luxury I intend to take advantage of. It’s strange—for so long I hated seeing the future because it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to Keane. Now I have my own future, and no idea what to do with it. Fia was always supposed to be with me. She’s not.
I feel lost.
As I trail my fingers along the hall wall I hear voices. I pause—both are hushed but clearly angry. Taking a few steps forward, I lean near a doorframe and listen.
“—you know I’m right!” Cole.
“I don’t! And you don’t know, either. I’m tired of arguing with you.” Sarah sounds exhausted.
“What about Annie? There’s no reason for her to stay here. She can’t accomplish anything. She sees even less than you do, and she’s a huge target. She needs to be placed somewhere else.”
I flinch at the tone of his voice. I didn’t think Cole liked me, but I had no idea he wanted me gone that much. Rafael decided not to set me up somewhere else with a real life and a new identity. He wanted me close.
I was flattered, but lately I’ve realized I’m useless here. It makes me feel pathetic and small, but Cole’s right. There’s no reason for me to stay, other than to be protected.
I’m tired of needing other people to protect me.
“That’s not our call,” Sarah says.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Why isn’t it our call? Why does he get to decide who stays and who goes?”
“You start bankrolling this operation and you can have more say,” Sarah snaps. Something thuds to the ground, too small for a body, and then Cole swears.
“What is this?”
“Give it back.”
“You’re taking these?”
She sounds ashamed. “I haven’t started yet.”
“This is insane, Sarah.”
“How am I supposed to help if I can’t see enough? Rafael has a source on the inside that says Keane has all his Seers go on Adderall.”
“He also has girls killed and thrown into the river. Is that our next step?”
“Aren’t you the one who said we should do whatever we have to, whatever it takes to keep more girls out of his claws? Well, this is my whatever it takes.”
Something small hits the other side of the wall I’m leaning against and I jump, turning and hurrying back to my room. The last thing I want is for Cole to catch me eavesdropping. I can only imagine what he’d say.
I flop onto my bed, tormented by futures both seen and unseen. They feel just out of my grasp, as usual.
“Fia,” I whisper to the empty room, “what should I do?”
Then something changes. I’m still in the dark. It’s not a vision, it can’t be, I don’t see anything. But I’m not on my bed anymore. It has to be a vision.
Someone reaches out and laces his fingers through mine and my world blossoms with color—inside the darkness. It’s color and light and life that I feel inside me instead of seeing outside. I’m wild with giddy joy, a warm heat flaring like something long dormant in my heart has finally been switched on.
His fingers are not much longer than mine, his palm only a bit bigger, rough but warm, and the way our hands fit together …
Holy crap. I’m in love.
That’s when I feel my bed underneath me again and realize I’m back in the present.
I had a vision where someone holds my hand and I know I’m in love with him. It’s the single most romantic thing I have ever experienced.
And it wasn’t even real.
But if I saw it—or felt it, really, because I’ve never had a vision where I was me like that, where I couldn’t see—then it has to happen, right? I rub the palm of my right hand with my left thumb, torn between elation and nerves. Love. I can live with the promise of love. I just wish I knew when. And who.
And, with a sudden sharp ache, I wish more than anything I could tell Eden. It feels wrong to have something like this without her to whisper it to. For a moment I hate Fia for her choice. She not only took herself away from me, she made it impossible for me to ever see my best friend again.
Someone is going to hold my hand, and I’m going to be thrilled. And no one I love will know.
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