“I was in the middle of something.”
“We’re dead. It’s over.”
I stop where I am; someone cusses me out as they almost walk into me but I don’t care. Pixie. Pixie betrayed us. It feels wrong, I should have felt it, should have known. I am broken.
James is still talking. “—my father agreed to a meeting. He says Rafael Marino contacted him, said he has a Seer who can force visions on demand. Rafael.” He swears, and I should be surprised but I’m not. Rafael is definitely Lerner, then. Pixie didn’t betray us.
I betrayed her.
Better sooner than later.
“But you two were working together,” I say as calmly as I can.
There’s a pause, a pause I can fill with James scrambling to decide what lie to fill this hole with. He can’t. There are too many holes, their edges are all meeting up, it’s too big now.
“Did Mae tell you that? She’s a liar, Fia. She’s trying to come between us. I hate Rafael, you know that. I should have killed him when I had the chance,” James says. “But it’s Sadie he’s got, it has to be.” The subject change is not lost on me. “He’s bringing her in, trying to make some sort of deal. The meeting is already set; my father called me to come back for it. If he gets her, it’s all over.”
I push someone to the side, force my way to where I can lean up against the streetlamp-lit exterior of a building. I close my eyes, try to feel it out, but I can’t feel anything. I’m dead inside. “We can work around it.”
“We can’t! There are too many things we’re already hiding. I know where Adam is.”
“Adam?” Gray eyes. Sweet and gentle Adam. Safe and hidden Adam. Safe and hidden like Annie. Both with Lerner, both with Rafael, who has been playing this whole thing for months while I’ve been running around mindlessly, not even knowing the game I was losing.
NOTHING I CAN CONTROL NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING.
James talks fast, and I can hear the rhythm in his voice from his pacing. “Adam was my big North Dakota surprise. He was working in a custom lab, set up by Rafael. Apparently Annie and Eden were living nearby, but he wouldn’t say where and I didn’t have time to find them. All your dead friends in one place. I tried to call Rafael and bargain, using Adam as leverage, but he wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t need him now that he has Sadie. I can only hide so many things before a Feeler or a Reader or a Seer catches us. And if Sadie comes in, we won’t be able to hide anything at all.”
I sink down the side of the wall, sit on the sidewalk. “What do we do?”
There’s a pause, a long pause, a pause I fill with wondering what Adam and James talk about. It would be funny, really, picturing them in a conversation any other time. They could talk about brains. Compare notes about whether I’m a good kisser. Rafael could join that conversation, too. Or maybe they’d just play video games.
“I have an idea,” James says, and everything in my head explodes with wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I am sick with it, lost to gravity, unmoored. I dig my toes into the concrete, try to curl them into the ground through my shoes.
“Fia, are you still there?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“We’re in this together. Forever. This is the only way we can do this. We’re close, we’re on the edge, we just need a little more time. A little more time and we’ll be done.”
James. My James. He is the only person I have left. Pixie said . . . Pixie lied. James is ending this, not starting it again. A little more time.
“And this is the only way to make sure Annie stays safe,” he adds. “My father can’t know she’s alive.”
“Yes,” I whisper again.
“You have to kill Sadie.”
The tapping in my skull is so loud I don’t know if I heard him right. “I have to kill Sadie,” I repeat.
“Yes. It’s the only way. Now that my father knows Sadie exists, he’ll never stop until he has her. And we already have the answer with what you did when Casey tried to kill him. Tomorrow, during the meeting. He trusts you, trusts your instincts. You kill Sadie, slip a weapon into her clothes, and then tell him you had the same feeling. You had a feeling that she was going to try to kill him. Tell him Rafael set it all up. It’ll be easy.”
“It’ll be easy.” I think I’m laughing. Am I laughing? Someone pauses, hovers above me, asks if I’m okay. I can’t look up, can’t stop laughing, can’t breathe.
“Go to the hotel. I’ll be home in two hours. Don’t talk to anyone, and stay away from the office.”
The tapping gets louder and I want to get out of my head, need to get out of my head. I picture a drill going through my skull, making a hole to release the pressure from the tapping the tap tap tap tapping the tap tap tap tapping that never stops.
“I can’t.” The words slam out of me, a desperate gasp. “I can’t, James.”
“You can. It’s to protect Annie. You’ve killed to protect Annie before. This is the same thing. If you don’t do this, the other deaths have no meaning. No reason.”
“Not like this . . . I didn’t walk into a room knowing I was about to kill an innocent girl. I didn’t want to, I never wanted to, I never planned to . . . James, I never planned to. I didn’t think. If I could go back, if I could undo them, if . . .”
Clarice’s dead eyes, soft Sarah’s brown eyes, they’ve never stopped staring at me, they’ll never stop staring at me. I chose that. I didn’t want to choose it, I didn’t think about it, but I chose it.
I can’t choose this, I can’t I can’t I can’t.
“You can’t go back. You can never go back. And this is the only way to go forward.”
“Please,” I say, and I am definitely not laughing I am crying, “Please don’t ask me to do this.”
There’s a long silence, and I think he’s crying with me. I want him to be. “Fia, love. You chose me. You chose us. That was the right choice. You make the choices you need to, because you are strong when no one else is. You make the hard choices.”
I nod. I chose him. If I chose him, he had to be the right choice. I wouldn’t love him if it weren’t right.
“This is the only way for us. You have to do this. For us, for my mother, for every girl my father has hurt. To save all the ones he will hurt. We’ll save them.”
To save them. To save Annie. To save Adam. To save James. Kill Sadie to save them.
“Okay,” a voice says, and I think it’s mine.
“Okay. Okay. We’ll be okay. Go home. I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’re going to be okay, Fia. I love you.”
“Okay.” I lower my phone and stare at the screen. It goes black, and I can see my reflection. It’s wrong. I stand, drop my phone on the sidewalk, grind my heel into it until it cracks. Better.
No other options. No other options. I drift along the streets, not thinking, not planning. We shouldn’t have talked about it as much as we did. I will plan nothing. I grab a phone out of the diaper bag of a woman trying to console a screaming toddler. I don’t know why until I’m dialing the number I have memorized from the card he gave me.
I need another option. Any other option. The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Rafael,” I say, closing my eyes against the sick swirl of wrong that leeches the color out of everything around me. There is no right choice, not for me, not now. Maybe there never was. “You said we wanted the same thing. What do we want?”
I can hear the slick triumphant smile in his voice. “We want to keep your sister safe.”
“And how do we do that?”
“By doing exactly what I tell you.”
I listen.
ANNIE
Seven Days Before
“PHONE FOR YOU,” SADIE CHIRPS THROUGH THE door. “It’s Eden.”
“I’m in the bathtub.”
“I promise not to look. I hate skin.”
I laugh, and she opens the door, putting the phone in my outstretched hand. The gloves she’s wearing are soft, but she’s got to be burning up in them al
l the time.
“You’re going to miss the winner of the cake decorating contest,” she says.
“Well, pay lots of attention so you can describe it to me in great detail when I get out.”
“Will do.” She closes the door behind herself, humming happily.
“Hey, Eden,” I say, cradling the phone against my ear, every part of me exhausted and worn down from the last two weeks of running.
“How you holding up?”
“Fine.”
“Liar. I don’t have to Feel you to know you’re crumbling.”
I lean my head against the back of the bath, running my fingers along the top of the water. “It’s fine. Really. We keep Sadie away from Keane, Fia doesn’t die. It’s that simple.”
“You can’t keep hotel hopping for the rest of your lives.”
I sink deeper, only my head above water. “I know. I know. But until I see something else, something that lets me know we’re past the danger zone . . .”
“Did you tell Sadie?”
“No. How am I supposed to tell her the reason we’re still running like crazy is because if she goes to Keane, my sister will murder her and then jump off a building? Besides, she seems like she’s doing well. I like her. She’s a sweet girl.”
“I think you should tell Rafael. He can help figure something out. He has no idea why you three aren’t stopping somewhere, and he’s genuinely worried about you.”
“Can we trust him?”
Eden hesitates. “He hates James and Mr. Keane. Maybe more than you do, even. He’s not going to do anything that will help them. You can’t fake that kind of hate.”
“I’ll think about it. I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up. I feel like I’m fraying apart at the edges. You know?”
“I know. I can hear it in your voice. Things will work out. I promise.”
“Liar,” I say, but I’m smiling.
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.” I hang up, let the phone drop over the side onto the stiff hotel mat. I replay the vision over and over, trying to find some detail, some hint that the time period it happened in is over. But the windows are too high, so I can’t see any trees for season clues. I don’t know what Fia’s hair looks like to compare it, or James’s. And Sadie looks the same as she did in my other visions.
Sadie doesn’t deserve this. The whole point of keeping her out of the school was to make sure she had a safe, happy life. Every night in a different cheap hotel with Cole and me, every day underwritten by a current of stress and strain . . . this is not protecting her. This is ruining her.
At least, unlike Adam and me, she’s not pretending to be dead. She’s emailed her mom a few times, let her know she’s alive and safe. I can hear the TV in the room, still blaring the cooking channel that Sadie finds everywhere we go. Of the three of us, she’s the most okay with this situation, when she should be the least okay with it.
I slip down until only my nose is above the water.
Something has to change.
When I stumble out of the bathroom, shivering from sitting numbly for so long in the freezing bath, I can hear the soft sounds of Sadie breathing in the farthest bed. I wonder what she’s seeing, what futures are playing out in front of her eyes. She’s whimpering in her sleep. She does most nights. She sees things while she’s dreaming—not as bad as when she touches someone, but bad enough that she stays awake as long as she can every night.
I walk until my calves bump against my bed, then lean forward to pull the blanket back.
My fingers touch skin. Cole must have fallen asleep, waiting for me to come out of the bathroom. I mean to pull my hand away but his stomach is soft, so soft, and warm enough that I flatten my palm instinctively against him. I can feel the waistband of his pants and the bottom of his shirt where it’s ridden up to expose this bare strip.
Things have been changing the last few days, stretching and shifting, until I could swear there was a sort of current between us. Now, touching him, it’s completely alive with electricity. And I know with sudden and perfect clarity that I want him.
I have never wanted so much with my fingers. I want to crawl them up his stomach, under his shirt, feel the muscled contours covered by skin that has no right to feel this way. Tender. Delicate. The idea of any part of Cole being delicate is so incongruous that it snaps him into a whole new light, a whole new way of seeing him.
The image in my head I’ve built of his face, hard angles and narrowed eyes, evaporates, replaced with . . . warmth and softness. I have no idea how to picture him anymore.
I don’t realize my hand is still on his abdomen until his own comes down on top of it. “Annie,” he says, voice thick with sleep, but it isn’t a question. It’s a statement.
I start to move my hand, embarrassed, but he grabs hold of my wrist, pulls it around his waist toward his back so that I have to climb on the bed or fall over it. “Annie,” he says, and now it sounds like a question, and I can feel the same question burning through me. He brings my hand up, brushes his lips across my wrist, and I crawl against him, my shoulder beneath his arm, my head in the curve of his neck and shoulder.
My own lips find his skin there, and I realize I want to feel him. I want to taste him, I want to know this strange new Cole, this warm and soft in the night Cole. I put my palm against his cheek and he leans his face into it, then shifts his body, arm wrapped around my waist pulling me on top of him.
“Annie,” he says, and this time it is a sigh that I seal with my lips against his. They’re full, almost hot against my own, and I can taste my name on them, taste how he sees me in the way his mouth moves across mine, lips gentle and searching. Then he rolls, flipping me onto my back beneath him, his chest and stomach and hips hovering just over mine, his lips so close to mine I can feel the air between us, charged like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks. I cannot stand it, cannot stand this tension, so I arch my back and wrap my hands behind his neck, pulling him down to me.
He makes no sense, this boy with velvet-soft skin, lips that promise nothing and everything and make me forget that anything exists except this space we’re in. A space that is getting smaller, tightening around us, wrapping us together in a puzzle of arms and legs that I don’t ever want to solve.
“Annie,” he says, and it’s a question again, aching and hopeful, and I don’t know the answer, I only know how I feel and how I want to keep feeling, so I pull him closer, and then—
Sadie screams.
Cole lets out a heavy breath, his weight on me no longer tense as he relaxes his muscles and drops, then rolls to the side.
“What?” I say, flustered, my heart racing. “What’s wrong, Sadie?”
She takes a gasping breath. “I saw it. I saw it. I’ve never seen myself older, and now I know why. I’m going to die. I’m already dead.” She dissolves into shuddering sobs and I sit on the edge of the bed, helpless, not wanting to go to her and accidentally touch her, make it worse.
“How?” I whisper.
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. You can’t help. I’m dead.”
I sink into myself, feeling useless. Then I sit up straighter. I’m not useless. I can take care of her. I will. “I can help. I know exactly how you feel. I’ve seen myself dead, too. Three years ago, I was supposed to be shot in the head. And I’m here with you.”
“Your sister changed it?”
“Yes.” I try to sound as hopeful and sure as I can. “She did. So we can change this.”
Sadie lies back down, the bed creaking beneath her. “Your sister is the one who makes it happen. Nothing is going to change. I’m going back to sleep.”
“Sadie, I—”
“Leave me alone.”
Cole’s hand comes down on my shoulder, and I follow him into the bathroom.
“We’re not fixing it, then,” he says.
“We might be—she didn’t tell us what she saw, maybe—”
“Annie.”
I put my h
ands over my face, then sit on the edge of the bath. “Okay. Okay. Obviously this isn’t working. We need to try something else. I think we need to tell Rafael, bring him in. He has resources. He could send Sadie out of the country, somewhere remote.”
“I don’t trust him not to take advantage of Sadie’s ability.”
“Neither do I. Not after the way he let Sarah fall apart. But he’s not going to let Keane get Sadie. He’ll get her somewhere safe.”
I wait for Cole to argue, but he sits on the floor next to my legs, then leans his head against them. It feels so open, so vulnerable it’s an actual pain in my chest. I rest my hand on his head, feel his hair, coarse with a hint of curl, between my fingers.
“If you think it’s best,” he says.
I try to laugh, but I can’t quite manage. “I have no idea what’s best. But I think it’s our only option.”
Rafael wastes no time. The next afternoon we meet him at a small airport.
“Annie, bella, I’ve missed you.” He kisses my cheeks and I try to smile but I can’t.
“Get her somewhere safe. Far, far away.”
“You’re sure, though, about what you saw—Fia was there, and so was Mr. Keane?”
“I’m sure. When I watch my sister die I pay attention.”
“Forgive me. Of course. I’ll take care of it; no one will be able to reach Sadie. There’s another plane waiting for you two. We have a safe house in North Dakota. Adam and Eden are there now, and I know they’d love to see you.”
“Thanks. For everything. Sadie?” I reach out and she moves forward. I pull her into a careful hug. “It’ll be okay. You’re going to be fine.”
“Thank you for caring enough to try. Good-bye, Annie.”
I’ve never heard such a final sounding good-bye.
“So are you guys doing it yet?” Eden asks, handing me the popcorn bowl. In the last seven days since we got here, I have eaten more popcorn than I thought was humanly possible. But at least Eden understands how to make a good pot of tea.
“Shut up,” I hiss. “Where is he? He might hear you!”
“Relax. He’s upstairs. But, man alive, that guy wants you. And the tension between you two is, like, wow. I have to keep taking cold showers so I don’t jump Adam to try and work some of it out of my system. You are really bad to be around for a Feeler, you know that?”