Vengeful

by V. E. Schwab

  “Hungry, sleepyhead?” she asked softly, rubbing him between the ears. He gave a relieved huff and turned, nosing open the door. Sydney followed him out into the apartment. It was a rental, the eleventh one they’d stayed in, the fifth city. It was a nice place—they were always nice places. They’d been on the road—on the run—for nearly six months, and she still walked around holding her breath, half expecting Victor to send her away. After all, he never said Sydney could stay with them, after. He had simply never told her to leave, and she had never asked to go.

  Mitch was in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.

  “Hey, kid,” he said. Mitch was the only one who got to call her that. “You want food?”

  He was already dividing the eggs onto two plates, three for him and one for her (but she always got half the bacon).

  She plucked a strip from her plate, split it with Dol, and looked around the rented apartment.

  She wasn’t homesick, exactly.

  Sydney didn’t miss her parents. She knew she should feel bad about that, but the fact of the matter was, she felt like she’d lost them way before she disappeared—her first memories were of packed suitcases and long-term sitters, her last were of two parent-shaped shadows leaving her behind in the hospital after the accident.

  What she had now felt more like a family than her mother and father ever had.

  “Where’s Victor?”

  “Oh . . .” Mitch had that look on his face, that carefully blank look that adults got when they were trying to convince you everything was fine. They always assumed that if they didn’t tell you a thing, you wouldn’t know it. But that wasn’t true.

  Serena used to say that she could tell when someone was lying, because all those unsaid things hung in the air, making it heavy, like the pressure before a storm.

  Sydney might not know the full scope of Victor’s lie, but the wrongness was still there, taking up space.

  “He just stepped out for a walk,” said Mitch. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  Sydney knew Mitch was lying too.

  He pushed his empty plate aside.

  “Okay,” he said, producing his deck of cards. “Draw.”

  It was a game they’d been playing since the first few days after Merit, when the need to keep a low profile clashed with the urge to go out, and Victor’s absences meant Syd and Mitch spent a lot of time together (and the good-natured ex-con obviously had no idea what to do with a thirteen-year-old who could resurrect the dead).

  “What would you be doing,” he’d asked, “if you were . . .” He let the question trail off.

  Sydney knew he was thinking home but she said, “Back in Brighton? I’d probably be in school.”

  “Did you like school?”

  Sydney shrugged. “I liked learning.”

  Mitch brightened at that. “Me too. But I never got to stay in one place long. Foster care and all. So I didn’t care much about school . . . but you don’t need that to learn. I could teach you . . .”

  “Really?”

  Mitch colored a little. “Well, there’s lots I don’t know. But maybe we could learn together.” That’s when he drew the deck from his pocket. “How about this—hearts will be literature. Clubs is science. Diamonds is history. Spades is math. That should give us a good start.”

  “And face cards?” asked Syd.

  Mitch flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Face cards, we go outside.”

  Now Sydney held her breath and pulled a card from the center, hoping for a king or queen.

  She got a six of clubs.

  “Better luck next time,” said Mitch, pulling his laptop over. “Okay, let’s see what kind of experiments we can do in this kitchen . . .”

  They were halfway through creating a homemade lava lamp when the door swung open, and Victor walked in. He looked tired, his face tight, as if he were in pain. She felt the air go heavy on her shoulders.

  “You hungry?” asked Mitch, but Victor waved him away and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. He took up his tablet and began absently swiping through. Mitch set a cup of black coffee at his elbow.

  Sydney perched on the counter and studied Victor.

  Whenever she’d resurrected an animal, or a person, she’d done it by visualizing a thread, something floating in the darkness. She pictured grabbing that thread and pulling it toward her, drawing them back into the light. But when it was done, she never really let go of the thread. Didn’t know how, really. So she could feel it now when Victor was home, and when he was out pacing the city, could feel it still, no matter how far he went, as if his energy, his stress, vibrated up the invisible rope until the tremor reached her.

  And so, even without the heavy air, the way Mitch looked at Victor, the way Victor didn’t look at her, she knew that something was not right.

  “What is it, Sydney?” he asked without looking up.

  Tell me the truth, she thought. Just tell me the truth.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

  Victor’s cold blue eyes drifted up, meeting hers.

  His mouth twitched into a smile, the way it did when he was lying. “Never better.”

  XIII

  THREE YEARS AGO

  CAPITAL CITY

  SYDNEY wove around the base of the tree, sunlight dappling her skin.

  She’d drawn a face card—the queen of diamonds—but the weather was so nice she would have played the spade Victor had slipped her just to get out of the apartment.

  Victor.

  Behind her eyes, Sydney saw him buckling against the door, saw him fighting back a scream as his body curled on the floor. There had been pain, too, a jolt of something straight through her chest, and then darkness, but that part didn’t haunt her.

  Victor haunted her. His pain haunted her. His dying haunted her.

  Because it was Sydney’s fault.

  He had been counting on her, and she’d let him down.

  She’d brought him back wrong.

  Broken.

  That was the secret. The lie.

  “It feels like dying.”

  Sydney kept her eyes on the mossy ground as she paced. If anyone looked her way, they would probably assume she was searching for flowers, but it was late spring, the time when baby birds flung themselves out of the nest and hoped to fly. Not all of them made it. And Sydney was always searching for things to revive. Subjects to practice on.

  Sydney already knew how to reach inside a body and pull it back to life. But what if the thing had been dead for a long time? What if the body wasn’t all there? How much did there have to be, for her to find the thread? How little?

  Dol snuffled in the grass nearby, and across the field Mitch leaned back against a slope, a battered paperback open on one knee, a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose.

  They were in Capital City, as hilly as Fulton had been flat, a place with as many parks as skyscrapers.

  She liked it here. Wished they could stay. Knew they wouldn’t.

  They were only here because Victor was searching for someone. Another EO. Someone who could fix what she’d broken.

  Something cracked under Syd’s foot.

  She looked down and saw the crumpled body of a young finch. The bird had been there awhile, long enough for its small body to sink into the moss. Long enough for the feathers to fall away and a wing to come detached, the brittle bones shattering like an eggshell under her shoe.

  Syd sank to her knees, crouching over the tiny corpse.

  It was one thing, she’d learned, to breathe life back into a body. Another thing entirely to rebuild the body itself. You only got one chance—Sydney had learned that the hard way, threads unraveling, bones crumbling to ash under her touch—but the only way to get stronger was to practice. And Sydney wanted to get stronger—she needed to get stronger—so she curled her fingers gently over the bird’s remains, and closed her eyes, and reached.

  Cold rippled through her as she searched the darkness for a thread, a filament, a wisp
of light. It was there somewhere, so faint she couldn’t see it, not yet. She had to go by feel instead. Her lungs ached, but she kept reaching, knew she was almost, almost—

  Sydney felt the bird twitch under her palm.

  Flutter, like a pulse.

  And then—

  Sydney’s eyes flew open, a faint plume of cold brushing her lips as the bird was rising on unsteady wings. Buffeting itself up into the branches of the tree.

  Syd rocked back on her heels and let out a shaky breath.

  “Well, that was quite a trick.”

  Her head snapped up, and for a second—just a second—she found herself staring at a ghost. White-blond hair, and ice blue eyes, a dazzling smile set into a heart-shaped face.

  But it wasn’t Serena.

  Up close, the girl had higher cheeks than her sister, a broader chin, eyes that danced with a mischievous light. Dol’s lip curled a little, flashing teeth, but when the stranger held out her hand, the dog sniffed it cautiously, and then calmed.

  “Good boy,” said the girl who wasn’t Serena. There was a lilt in her voice, a kind of music. Her eyes flicked up to Sydney. “Did I scare you?”

  “No,” she managed, her throat constricting. “You just looked—like someone else.”

  The stranger flashed her a wistful grin. “Someone nice, I hope.” She pointed up to the branches. “I saw what you did there, with the bird.”

  Sydney’s heart quickened. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The girl laughed, a light, airy sound. And then she crossed behind the trunk of the tree. When she reappeared on the other side, she was someone else. Only a second had passed, a step, but the blond girl was gone, and Sydney found herself staring into Mitch’s familiar face.

  “It’s a big world, kiddo,” he said. “You’re not the only one with talents.”

  She knew it wasn’t really him. Not just because the real Mitch was still reading across the field, but because of the accent that ran beneath his voice, even now.

  The stranger took a step toward Sydney, and as she did, her body changed again. Mitch disappeared, replaced by a lanky young woman in a peasant skirt, her loose blond curls pulled up in a messy bun.

  The girl looked down at herself. “This one’s my favorite,” she said, half to herself.

  “How did you do that?” asked Syd.

  The stranger raised a brow. “I didn’t do anything,” she said, echoing Syd’s words. And then she broke into a smile. “See? Isn’t it silly to lie when we both know the truth?”

  Sydney swallowed. “You’re an EO.”

  “EO?”

  “ExtraOrdinary. That’s what they call—us.”

  The girl mused. “ExtraOrdinary. I like that.” She looked down, and chirped in delight. “Here,” she said, retrieving a tiny bird’s skull from the grass. “You’ve seen my trick. Show me yours again.”

  Sydney took the skull, which was no bigger than a ring. It was unbroken, unblemished—but not enough.

  “I can’t,” she said, handing it back. “There’s too much missing.”

  “Syd?” called Mitch.

  The stranger drew a folded bookmark from her back pocket, and a pen from her curls. She scribbled something down the side, and held it out.

  “In case you ever need a friend.” She leaned in close. “Girls like us got to stick together,” she added with a wink.

  Mitch called Sydney’s name again.

  “Better go,” said the stranger. “Wouldn’t want the big guy to worry.” She ran her fingers over Dol’s muzzle. “You look after our girl,” she told the dog.

  “See ya,” said Syd.

  “You bet.”

  Mitch was waiting for her across the field. “Who were you talking to?” he asked.

  Sydney shrugged. “Just some girl,” she said, realizing she hadn’t asked for a name. She glanced over her shoulder, and saw the stranger still leaning back against the tree, holding the little white skull up to the light.

  That night, Sydney put the number in her phone.

  The next, she sent the girl a text.

  I forgot to tell you. My name is Sydney.

  She held her breath and waited.

  The reply came a few seconds later.

  Nice to meet you, Sydney, it said.

  I’m June.

  XIV

  FOUR WEEKS AGO

  HALLOWAY

  SYD was helping Mitch clear the cake when she felt the phone buzz in her back pocket.

  She excused herself, slipped into her room and shut the door behind her before reading the text.

  June: Happy birthday, Syd xoxo

  She felt herself smile.

  June: Get anything good?

  Syd sent her a photo of the bomber jacket.

  Syd: Doesn’t fit.

  June: Good thing vintage never goes out of style ;)

  Sydney turned toward the closet mirror, studying her reflection.

  Eighteen.

  Officially an adult, even if she didn’t look it.

  She considered the boots. The blue hair. The bomber jacket—it really was too big for her. How long before it fit? Ten years? Twenty?

  Victor thought Sydney’s aging—the lack of it—had something to do with the way she’d died, the icy water that froze her limbs and stopped her pulse. All this time, and her vitals were still slow, her skin still cold to the touch. Everyone else was changing—Victor getting leaner and harder by the year, the lines around Mitch’s eyes, Dol’s muzzle edging white.

  Only Sydney seemed to stay the same.

  And Eli, she thought, a chill running through her. But he was gone. And she had to stop summoning him, stop inviting him into her head.

  Syd sank onto the edge of the bed.

  Syd: Where are you?

  June: Just got to Merit.

  Sydney’s pulse quickened.

  Syd: Really? How long are you staying?

  June: On a job. Just passing through.

  Syd: I wish I could be there with you.

  June: You could be ;)

  But they both knew it wasn’t that simple.

  Sydney wouldn’t leave Victor, and as far as Victor was concerned Merit—and all of its skeletons—belonged in the past.

  XV

  TWO YEARS AGO

  SOUTH BROUGHTON

  THE dead mouse lay on Sydney’s desk, curled atop a floral dish towel.

  A cat had obviously gotten to it—there were bits and pieces missing, leaving the rodent more than half, but less than whole. It was late summer, and Syd had the window propped up to keep the smell from gathering.

  Dol had his chin resting on the window frame, sniffing the air on the fire escape while she worked. More than once, she’d resurrected a small animal, only to have it race away from her fingers and out into the apartment, burying itself under a sofa or behind a cupboard. More than once, Mitch had been summoned to help extricate it. Victor had noticed her practicing, even encouraged it, but he had one rule: she couldn’t keep any of the animals she brought back. They were to be set free. Or disposed of. (Dol, of course, was the sole exception.)

  Down the hall, a door opened, closed, and the dog’s ears perked.

  Victor was back.

  Sydney held her breath and listened, hoping to glean good news from the tone of his voice, or Mitch’s reaction. But within seconds she could tell—another dead end.

  Her chest tightened, and she turned her attention back to the dead mouse, cupping her palms over the tiny furred corpse. Her backpack sat on the bed beside the desk, the small red tin resting on top. Sydney’s gaze flicked toward it, the action almost superstitious—like throwing salt over your shoulder, or knocking on wood—and then she closed her eyes, and reached. Past the body, to the darkness, searching for the thread. With every passing second, the cold climbed her fingers, spread past her wrists and up toward her elbows.

  And then, at last, the thread brushing her fingers, a twitch against her palm.

  Syd gasped, and blinked, and the mous
e was whole, was alive, was scurrying out of her hands and across the desk.

  She lunged and caught the small rodent, setting it on the fire escape and closing the window before it could follow her back in. She turned toward the hall, excited to tell Victor and Mitch about the feat, small as it was.

  But halfway there, Syd slowed, stopped, held back by something in Mitch’s voice.

  “. . . is it really necessary?”

  “It’s a calculation,” answered Victor coldly. There was a pause. The sound of ice shifting in a glass. “You think I enjoy killing people?”

  “No . . . I don’t know . . . I think sometimes you make the easiest choice instead of the right one.”

  A low, derisive snort. “If you’re still hung up on what happened with Serena . . .”

  Sydney’s breath caught on the name. A name no one had uttered in almost three years.

  “There could have been another way,” said Mitch.

  “There wasn’t,” growled Victor, “and you know it, even if you want to pretend you don’t.”

  Sydney pressed her hand over her mouth.

  “Make me the villain of that night, Mitch. Wash your hands of any blame. But don’t act like Serena Clarke was merely a victim or even a casualty of circumstance. She was an enemy, a weapon, and killing her wasn’t just smart, or easy—it was right.”

  Victor’s steps sounded on the hardwood as he came down the hall.

  Syd scrambled back into her room. She went to the window and threw it open, stepping out onto the fire escape. She leaned her elbows on the metal rail, tried to pretend she was looking dreamily out at the city instead of making fists so tight her fingers ached.

  But Victor didn’t even slow down as he passed Sydney’s door.

  She sank to her knees when he was gone, bowing her head against the bars.

  A memory washed over her, of that night. Of Serena’s voice in her ear, telling her not to run, of the way Sydney’s mind had gone smooth, her limbs soft under the order. Of the cold parking garage, and the gun against her head. Of the long pause, and then her sister’s order—to go. To find somewhere safe. Somewhere, which had once been some-one. Victor.