by Hilary Duff
An old man more vital than his age; a child sophisticated beyond her years.
Did Amelia and her family drink the Elixir? It seemed to fit, but it didn’t explain everything. The Elixir kept people young, but it didn’t give them superpowers. Unlike this family, Sage couldn’t pop in and out of existence. If he could, I’d have seen it happen—it’s a power he’d have found helpful many times between when I found him in Brazil and lost him in Japan.
Yet there was no doubt these people were connected to Sage somehow. They knew all about him . . . or they wanted me to believe they did.
Amelia’s mother had said I should think of them as guardian angels. She wanted me to believe they were on my side. If they were, why would they want to keep me away from Sage? What did they know that I didn’t?
Roosevelt slowed to a walk. We were back at the stables. He took a slight stagger-step, and I put my hand on his neck, hot and coated in sweat. I felt terrible; I hadn’t meant to push him so hard.
“Wow,” Nico marveled as he and Rayna walked toward me, “you sure put Roosevelt through his paces.”
Nico was my mother’s latest hire, one of a battalion of staff members who had converged on our home in the past several weeks. I hated the extra scrutiny of so many fresh pairs of eyes, but I suppose I’d brought it on myself. Part of the deal with Mom and Dad letting me pursue a photojournalism career at a young age was that I’d let them know where I was at all times . . . something I neglected to do when I took off for Japan with Ben and Sage. Mom found out when she heard some of her young staffers gossiping about pictures of Ben and me that had been snapped by gawkers in Shibuya and posted on the web.
That was bad enough. It only got worse when she received a frantic call from Piri, our housekeeper, screaming that I’d come home with a gunshot wound to the leg. Mom raced home in a panic, and nearly lost her mind when neither Ben nor I could offer her a decent explanation for what happened.
Mom decided the whole incident was a direct result of my continuing struggle with Dad’s death. Though she’d thought therapy would help me, she was now positive that I was acting out because she hadn’t been available to me. I swore that wasn’t it, but she went ahead and relocated her entire office from Capitol Hill to our home. As the junior senator from the great state of Connecticut, she had to spend a certain amount of time in D.C., but the Weston family fortune made chartered flights a simple solution.
Once, I’d have been thrilled to have my mom change her life for me, but right now I wanted time alone to think. Instead I was surrounded by chaos. And even though Mom was in the same house, she was so busy, I barely got to see her . . . just her huge, constantly moving and buzzing staff, including Nico. He was brought in to help Rayna’s mom, Wanda, a.k.a. our “Equine Professional.” Wanda was unstoppable, but with Mom home and riding more, she needed the extra help.
Rayna couldn’t be happier. She was my best friend from birth, and I was used to her falling head over heels within seconds of meeting someone, but her instant obsession with buff, blond Nico might have set a record even for her. Despite her mom’s job, Rayna had never been particularly horse-oriented, but the day she saw Nico, she put together an entire wardrobe of jeans, button-down plaid shirts, cowboy boots, and hats so she could “blend in” at the stables.
It took Rayna no time to work her way into Nico’s confidence, and everything he told her, she then passed on to me. As a result, I knew far more about him than I was interested in knowing, including his age (twenty-one), home state (Montana), family structure (four younger siblings and a deceased father), economic status (poor—especially since he sent 90 percent of each paycheck home to his family), and plans for the future (continue his mom-mandated furlough to see the country and expand his horizons before going back home to the ranch).
As I dismounted from Roosevelt, Nico took the reins and led him into the stable. I felt like I owed him an explanation for returning the horse in such a state, so I followed. “Sorry,” I said. “I think he’s a little overheated.”
“He’s not the only one,” Rayna lilted in my ear. When I turned to her, she pointed to Nico and threw her head back, then fanned herself as she mouthed “OMG.”
I smiled and rolled my eyes. Rayna had been in near despair because after weeks of her most concentrated flirting, Nico hadn’t touched her except to help her up after she tripped and fell. A fall that, of course, was orchestrated for that very outcome.
“He’s okay,” Nico said. He had already untacked Roosevelt and was reaching for the hose. “He likes to go long and hard.”
From anyone else this would be a blatant—and pretty cheesy—double entendre, but Nico looked oblivious. That fit with what Rayna said about him, that he was “adorably innocent.” I didn’t buy it, but Rayna said I was letting recent events make me overly suspicious, and cloud my otherwise open nature. I reminded her I didn’t have an otherwise open nature, but she liked the theory and was sticking with it, so I let it go.
“Clea, did you get that Camila Dexter song I e-mailed you?” Rayna asked loudly enough to be heard over the running water. “It’s been going through my head like crazy.”
“The new one?” Nico asked. “I love that song.”
Of course he did. And of course Rayna knew it before she asked. Camila Dexter was a country singer, and neither Rayna nor I ever listened to country music, nor e-mailed songs to each other, but already she and Nico were in a deep discussion about the track, so this was my perfect exit.
Alone again, I was free to think about Amelia and her family.
Family.
Was there even a chance they could be Sage’s family?
I had never seen his family in my dreams of Olivia, the woman I was when Sage and I first met. I supposed it was possible they could be ghosts of family members. If so, it would explain the blinking in and out of existence. But then why did they claim to be looking out for me? Why would they tell me to give up on Sage?
I put my hand on the doorknob of my house and cringed as I prepared to enter. I couldn’t believe I was pining for the days when Piri’s bizarre Hungarian superstitions were the only things I dreaded. They used to make me crazy, but at least I could slip past her and have the house to myself. These days I barely had the space to breathe. I was lucky to even have this quiet moment outside—when dignitaries were in town, we had Secret Service members flanking the front door.
The wall of sound smacked me the second I walked in. As I made my way to the kitchen to grab a snack, I passed several aides walking with great purpose, carrying who-knew-what to whoknew-where as they talked a mile a minute into their earpiece phones.
One in particular stopped in her tracks when she saw me. Suzanne.
“Clea!” she cried, and wrapped me in a huge Chanel-scented hug. She was several inches taller than me to begin with—add in her five-inch heels, and the hug had the effect of pushing me face-first into her C-cups.
Just when I thought I might smother, she pulled away and held me at arm’s length, scrutinizing me with her makeup-counter, lacquered face. I’m a healthy person—I eat right, I exercise. . . . I’m in good shape. But Suzanne’s long frame, tucked into her button-front, silk fitted shirt and pencil skirt, made me feel three people wide.
“We’ve missed you this morning!” she said.
“We” meant Suzanne and my mother, and it made me crazy that this woman felt perfectly at ease speaking for the both of them. Like Nico, Suzanne was one of Mom’s recent hires—a right-hand aide here in the “Connecticut office.” Mom liked the idea of someone local taking the job, and Suzanne had been an aide for Hartford’s Mayor Josephson since graduating Yale with an honors degree in poli-sci the year before. Ed Josephson was in his eighties and an inveterate lecher. The buzz was she’d walked into the interview and “accidentally” spilled a sip of her bottled water down her cleavage. By the time she’d finished blotting it dry, the interview was over. She had the job.
In a strange way, I’d have been less disgusted
by that story if Suzanne was unqualified, and using the mayor’s sleaziness to her advantage. But she was qualified. Mom raved about her, and when I watched her in action, I understood why. Suzanne was brilliant at handling people, and she could go toe-to-toe with anyone on any hot-button issue and leave them reeling. She didn’t need to act like a Playmate to win a job. The fact that she did it anyway turned my stomach.
Suzanne, however, felt no such shame about her former job. It had been a prime position for someone her age, and she worked both it and her Ivy League education (summa cum laude!) into conversations as often as possible.
“The senator thought you might be around after breakfast, but now she’s on a string of calls that’ll go all day. She’s hoping her one-thirty will end in time for her to have a proper lunch, but it’s with Mayor Josephson, so it won’t happen. Believe me, I would know—I was there when he spoke to the president, and even he couldn’t get the mayor to hang up.”
The senator. One more galling thing about Suzanne—she wouldn’t say “your mother.” It was always “the senator.” The title that tied my mom to her top aide, not to me.
I realized Suzanne was staring at me, expecting some kind of reaction to her close encounter with the leader of the free world.
“Wow. Well, I won’t count on her for lunch then. Thanks.”
I slipped past Suzanne and made my way into the kitchen, where Piri was struggling to stir a wooden spoon around a giant pot—one of several that steamed and bubbled over every burner on the stove. I peeked in.
“That smells amazing, Piri. What is it, oatmeal?”
“Horse food,” Piri groused.
“I read on the Internet that horses respond exceptionally well to homemade treats,” Suzanne said, following me into the kitchen, “and the senator adored the idea. This recipe has oats, apples, carrots, salt, sugar, molasses, and water: Easy as pie!”
“Easy for you,” Piri muttered.
“What?” Suzanne asked.
Piri smiled and nodded. “Easy.”
But when Suzanne turned away again, Piri made a face and did something with her hands. I couldn’t be positive, but I was almost certain she’d just flipped Suzanne the Hungarian bird.
I walked into the pantry and rummaged around for a snack I could easily take to my room. I was eager to get to my computer and scrutinize the pictures I’d taken.
“So,” Suzanne called inside, “do you have dinner plans?”
“Depends,” said a voice I recognized immediately. “What are you offering?”
From deep inside the pantry I couldn’t see Ben, but I knew it was him. For a moment I considered staying where I was. We used to be close, but Ben and I had been avoiding each other for a long time, and right now I didn’t have the patience to handle the awkward stares and stammers I knew I’d get if he had to deal with me.
“Ben!” Suzanne said. “Hi! I was just, um—well—”
Was she stammering? Suzanne didn’t stammer; she was far too on her game for that. I came out of the pantry to see. I took a deep breath first, rallying patience for the moment Ben saw me.
I needn’t have bothered. Ben was slouched in the doorway, gazing at Suzanne with a teasing smile on his face. I was in his field of vision, but he didn’t even glance my way. I might have expected that—that he’d make a point of trying to avoid my eyes, all the while sweating and stammering and making it clear that the whole thing was a world of effort—but this wasn’t like that at all. He wasn’t working at not looking at me; he just wasn’t. For a second I suspected it wasn’t even Ben. The sweater he wore was much more casual than his usual button-down oxford, and his hair . . . I swear it was tamed with product.
Stranger than anything superficial was his body language. Even leaning against the doorjamb he seemed to hold himself taller than he had before, and his smile radiated confidence. And was it possible he had gotten stronger and more filled out over the past several weeks?
I pushed farther out of the pantry for a better view.
“Ah, I misunderstood,” Ben said to Suzanne. He pushed off the door and glided to the kitchen island, where he grabbed an apple from a fruit bowl. He was close enough that I could stretch xout my arm and touch him if I wanted to, but I wasn’t even on his radar. “Tell you what,” he continued, “ I’ll offer then: Dinner tonight?”
Suzanne’s grin spread wider than her skinny face. “I’d love it. I don’t know how late I’m working, though. . . .”
“Call me when you’re done. I’ll pick you up.”
“Great!” Suzanne chirped. “Should I bring the cribbage board?”
Really? They were playing cribbage? Until that moment I thought I was Ben’s sole cribbage partner. He’d taught me the game, and the two of us played marathon sessions.
Of course, that was back when we were close. Before he realized he had feelings for me. Before I nearly felt the same way. Before I met Sage and the entire center of my world shifted. And before I learned that in our own way, Ben and I were just as connected as Sage and me. Our connection wasn’t based on love but on death. In lifetime after lifetime, Ben’s jealousy destroyed me. It happened in this lifetime too—it was Ben’s fault Sage had been captured.
Was Ben interested in Suzanne now? And if they fell for each other, would that be enough to break the crazy cycle of tragedy he, Sage, and I had been playing out again and again?
“He’s special, isn’t he?”
The honey-sweet voice whispered into my ear, but when I whipped around there was no one there.
“Is something different about him?”
The lilting voice was in my other ear now. It was familiar, I realized, as the blood drained from my face. It was the woman I’d seen at the memorial—Amelia’s mother.
“He’d be good to you. Not like Sage.” She gave a long sigh—a rush of sweet air I seemed to feel inside my head. “Poor Clea. If only you knew. . . .”
Was the chestnut-haired woman really there with me? Could I talk to her?
If I could, it wasn’t going to happen in a room full of people. I darted up to my room and shut the door behind me.
“It’s a terrible shame,” the voice continued, “but the sad truth is just because someone says he loves you, you can’t trust it’s the case. You don’t want to believe me, but you’ll see.”
“Tell me where he is,” I said to the empty room. “That’s all I want to know.”
“I’ll show you,” she said. “You’ll see. Good-bye for now, Clea.”
“Wait!”
But I could feel the difference in the room; the woman was gone.
What was she? Why was she just a voice in my head, when before I had seen her in front of me? Why had she come alone this time, and not with her family? And what kind of creature could both blink in and out of existence, and speak inside someone’s mind?
I smiled and paced as adrenaline surged through me. It was a strange reaction to my bizarre day—I supposed a saner response would be fear. But for the first time since Sage was ripped away from me, I had a lead, no matter how inexplicable.
Now I just had to follow it.
two
* * *
I spied on Mother while she was talking inside Clea’s head.
I had to. Keeping Clea and Sage together was the only way I could stop my family from doing something so horrible, it could destroy the whole entire world.
It sounded dramatic, I knew—it was the kind of thing I used to say when I was mortal, and Mother would laugh and tell me to stop exaggerating.
I wasn’t exaggerating now. What Mother, Father, and Grandfather planned to do was unthinkable. If they’d been in their right minds, they never would have considered it.
But they weren’t in their right minds. Not anymore.
“I’ll show you,” Mother said to Clea. “You’ll see. Good-bye for now, Clea.”
I had a feeling I knew exactly what Mother would show Clea, but I’d have to watch and make sure. More spying. In the meantime, I had to
run away quickly. If Mother knew I was watching her, she’d be furious. She was already suspicious of me, and it didn’t help that when we were all in the field, Clea acted like I might be on her side. It was my own fault, but now I’d have to be extra careful.
I ran away before Mother realized I’d been watching.
I guess that’s not really accurate. You can’t run when you don’t have legs. And you can’t watch when you don’t have eyes. The problem is, there aren’t really words to describe how we live, and how we do what we do, since there’s never been anyone else like us. We’re pure consciousness . . . or pure psychic ability, I suppose you could call it.
We weren’t always that way, though. Thousands of years ago we lived a normal life—back in what today is called ancient Greece, though there was nothing “ancient” about it to us at the time. We all lived together: me, Mother, Father, and Grandfather. I loved Grandfather, but I didn’t see him very often. He was a well-respected teacher and philosopher, and he traveled a lot, speaking to groups or just learning about the world. I had never been outside our village, and I thought his life sounded magical. I wanted to join him on his trips, but he said they were no place for children.
Since I couldn’t go with him, I was even more excited to hear his stories whenever he came back. He told his best story after a trip to Ethiopia. He had gone with a group of explorers but got separated from them after they arrived. Completely lost in an uninhabited no-man’s-land, he watched the sky, hoping to find direction in the flight pattern of passing birds. He eventually saw a small lark and followed it for a while . . . until it was attacked by a hawk. Grandfather had become attached to the lark after following it for so long. When the hawk dropped it, Grandfather kept his eye on the little bird, and ran to see where it would drop. He had a crazy idea he might be able to save it.
The lark fell into a small puddle of strange-looking liquid. Grandfather got a good look before it hit the water and knew there was no way he’d ever be able to do anything for it. The bird was mangled beyond recognition. It splashed into the puddle, and Grandfather bowed his head in a moment of respect.