Seer

by Ashley Maker

  “You’re not Kade.”

  Mathias doesn’t react. “Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Palmer. Now, if you will please come with me, I can take you to him.”

  “What, no chloroform this time?”

  One corner of his mouth lifts. “I apologize for what I had to do, but certain precautions were necessary.” He turns and walks out of the cell. Observation room. Whatever.

  Quelling the urge to run, I follow him into a long stretch of hallway so stark it reminds me of a hospital. Our feet stamp lightly on the white tile floor. The place is as creepy as the set of a horror movie. I dart glances at the doors we pass. Some have barred windows, and some don’t. I hate to imagine what—or even who—is behind any of them.

  “So, you trust me to see this place now?” I ask, trying—and dismally failing—to dispel the anxiety coursing through me over not knowing what’s about to happen. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll uncover a secret or something?”

  “Trust is earned, not given. As to the other, no, I am not afraid.”

  Mathias pushes open a door at the far end of the hallway to a stairwell and keeps walking. I have to practically jog up the stairs to keep up with him. Another hallway with lots of doors, though this one is much more normal, with hardwood floors and wallpaper that’s reminiscent of a hotel or office building. The doors flash by in my peripheral vision. We’re moving too quickly for me to get a good look at any of them. Curse Mathias and his stupid long legs.

  He opens yet another door, and my steps stagger and falter to a grinding halt as my senses are flooded with wood, stone, and glass.

  Everywhere I look, there are huge, rustic, cinnamon-colored logs. Hand-hewn panels line the walls with support beams stretching from floor to ceiling. Reddish-brown stone and cream paint are interspersed between, breaking only for an enormous crackling fireplace and a wall of windows looking out at an expanse of pine trees and snow-capped mountains. Daylight filters in through the vast panes of glass, splashing onto rich-colored rugs on the hardwood floors and dappling across the plush, red-brown leather couches arranged in sitting areas around the open space.

  Where am I, some kind of hunting lodge?

  No evidence of taxidermied animals, antlers, or fur rugs, though. The décor is plush, classic, and warm, the kind that almost demands hot chocolate and a good book to read by the fire. I tilt my head back. An austere web of rafters is braced from one side of the immense ceiling to the other, the logs so huge there’s no way I could get my arms around them. Suspended down the middle are gigantic iron chandeliers that must look spectacular when they’re lit. The whole room smells like fire and a hint of smoke and the inside of Mom’s old cedar chest.

  Mathias clears his throat and I startle. He walks toward a door-sized stone archway on the other side of the massive lobby. I hurry after him, losing count of the rooms we pass and the series of turns I couldn’t remember if I tried. By the time he leads me into a small office, I have a stitch in my side. I’m so out of shape from not getting to run while living with Chris that it’s embarrassing, and I’m more than ready to sit down.

  For once, my wish is granted. Mathias ushers me to a cushioned chair facing a desk in the middle of the room. He stands by the door while I catch my breath and look around at the mahogany desk, the stocked bookshelf behind it, and the heavily draped windows to my left. Nothing in the room gives the slightest indication where I am.

  I purse my lips and am debating whether or not Mathias will flip out if I go look through the window when the door swings open. My eyes snap upward, meeting the gaze of the guy standing in the doorway. Time seems to stop. I feel my lips part as I stare at him, and instinctively I know, I just know, that he’s Kade. When my lungs start to burn, I inhale a shuddering breath and tear my gaze away. My heart has gone into a jittery, pounding overdrive, and I don’t know why.

  I mean, yeah, he’s pretty hot. He has a mess of spiky dark hair, the kind that’s a little longer and pushed back at the front, and I have an impulse to run my hands through it. Actually, he’s not just hot—he’s almost ridiculously gorgeous. But that’s not the reason I feel like my heart is going to crack a rib in a frantic effort to get out of my chest. It was the way his hazel eyes met mine, like we’d collided and the wind got knocked out of me. I glance again, noticing his angular jaw and the way his top lip is almost as full as his bottom one.

  “A word, Karen?” Mathias says, and the two of them step outside the room.

  I take the opportunity to kick myself. Figuratively, of course. By the time the door opens again and Kade walks in alone, I’m fairly composed, except for the fact that my face and ears are burning. At least I took time to fix myself up. I don’t look like an ogre in the face of his blinding hotness.

  Wait. No. Who cares how gorgeous he is? I mentally kick myself again as he walks over and settles into the chair across the desk from me. What I say here, right now, to him, could determine if Mathias puts me back in the cell…or maybe even if they kill me.

  He clears his throat, and I finally look up and meet his eyes. The first shock is gone, but my skin still flushes, the blood heating up in my veins, aided by my sprinting heart.

  I blurt out the first thing I can think of. “Why does he keep calling you Karen? I thought your name was Kade?”

  Leaning forward, he picks up a pen, then grabs a stack of Post-it notes and starts writing. When he’s done, he pushes it across the desk and leans back again. I edge forward to look at it.

  Kade Kieran

  “It’s my last name, pronounced kind of like Karen.” His voice, the same low rumble I heard through the mirror, sends chills down my spine.

  I ignore the feeling.

  “All right, Kade Kieran.” I cross my arms and sit up straight. “Why am I here, and what do you need to know?”

  He smiles a slow, lazy sort of smile and says, “I need you to tell me about yourself, Clarice Palmer.”

  My back slumps a little, and I wrinkle my nose at him. “Clarice? Don’t call me that. Only my mom calls me by my full name, and she’s” —I stop myself from actually saying the words. That she really could be dead. I swallow against the knot lodged in my throat.

  “It’s okay,” he says softly. “I understand how you feel.”

  “Please.” I glare at him. “Did they tell you to say that? Offer sympathy to the girl with the dead mom?”

  His eyes narrow. “No, they didn’t. Believe it or not, you’re not the only person who’s ever lost a parent.”

  “Oh.” My voice falls on the word, and I look at my feet. I’m such an idiot sometimes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t even mad at you, I just…”

  “It’s easier to be angry.”

  “Yeah,” I say, meeting his eyes.

  They look pained when he says, “I really do understand. I lost my family when I was twelve.”

  All the air in my lungs sort of seeps out. He didn’t only lose a parent; he lost a family. When he was just a little kid, too. If it hurts this much only losing one, I can’t imagine what he must have felt. He’s not looking at me like everybody else has, either, like I’m someone to be pitied. His face is sympathetic, and there’s this look of understanding. It’s kind of a, I know it hurts, and it sucks, but you’re not the only one kind of look, and it surprises me when it makes me feel a little better.

  “Tell me about her. If you want to.”

  Because he gave me the choice, I do. Everything just pours out. How she never came home one night, how I waited and waited until I fell asleep on the couch with the phone in my hand. I tell him how I called the cops when I woke up the next morning, and how freaked out I was. Even though I don’t know Kade, I tell him all the things I could never talk about with Chris. It’s so nice finally having someone to talk to—someone who isn’t drunk or yelling at me anyway—that once I start, I can’t stop, even though everything after Mom’s disappearance is a blur. The missing person’s report, the weeks spent waiting, the memorial service everyone thought would help me move on, and h
ow they sent me to live with my long-lost dad.

  “His name’s Chris,” I say. “I was there for a little while. And then Mathias showed up, and I was stupid enough to go with him.”

  “It sounds like you don’t like your dad.”

  “I don’t.” A familiar hard feeling settles in my chest. “I wanted to at first, but then…well, it didn’t take long to realize why my mom left him. He’s not a nice drunk, if you know what I mean. Kind of goes off the deep end.”

  Kade gets a thunderstruck look on his face, like I’ve told him something mind blowing. “You think your mom left with you when you were a baby because your dad drinks?”

  I give him a funny look. “I just said that.”

  He leans closer. “Is that what she told you?”

  “She never told me. I mean, I think she was going to. She always said she’d tell me when I was older, but then she…she’s gone.”

  “So you know nothing about why your mom left?”

  I look at him skeptically. “No, I don’t know exactly why she did it, but I think it was to keep me away from my dad. Have I mentioned that he’s crazy? Like insane crazy?”

  He gets another one of those epiphany looks. “Right. Why do you think he’s crazy?”

  “Well, you should hear the things he says, especially when he’s drunk. Certifiable stuff about ‘Dark Ones’ that are going to come and kill us all, especially him and me. And government conspiracies, and this place underground, and…” I trail off. He is way too attentive right now. The way he’s looking at me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he started taking notes on the Post-it pad. “So, yeah, pretty crazy, huh?”

  I’m starting to get an awful feeling something isn’t right, the same one I got when Mathias went all psycho-babbly in the SUV. I bite my lip, desperately wanting Kade to agree my dad’s crazy.

  Instead, he says, “But he never told you what he is? What you are?”

  My next words are haltingly slow. “I wasn’t with him that long.”

  Kade nods and stands. He pulls a little black walkie talkie out of his pocket and pushes a button on it. He puts it to his mouth and speaks in a hushed tone, but I still hear the words. “I got it all. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “Nicely done, Kieran,” a voice—Mathias, it sounds like—crackles out. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  The blood drains from my face. When he turns back to me, I can’t keep the accusatory tone out of my voice. “You recorded everything I said? I thought we were just talking.”

  Kade’s expression is unreadable, and I can’t tell if he sounds sorry or not when he says, “I had orders.”

  “Orders? They ordered you to gain, and then betray, my trust?” My face burns with embarrassment when I realize everything I’d said—how I’d poured my heart out about my mom—would be heard by strangers.

  “You don’t understand,” he says. “We had to know how much you knew. If your mother corrupted you—”

  My jaw drops and I snap it shut.

  Kade closes his eyes and lets out a breath. “Clare—”

  “Tell me one thing. Are your parents really dead or was that lie just part of your orders, too?”

  Kade stiffens. “I didn’t lie to you about my family.”

  There’s a hurt look on his face that almost makes me feel bad. But it doesn’t stop the pain and anger from coming through when I say, “Well, why don’t you tell me all about them then? In fact, let’s record it and let Mathias listen to that, too. No, better yet, don’t talk to me. I have nothing else to say to you.”

  He gives me an exasperated look, but doesn’t say anything else, and for a second time that day, a wish of mine is granted. We sit in silence—awkward, angry silence—while we wait for Mathias. Over and over, I remind myself Kade is nothing more than a stranger to me, and by the time Mathias shows up, I’ve made up my mind that I want nothing more to do with him.

  After all, he’s one of them.

  6

  “I miss her so much.”

  My voice cracks on the recording, and I cringe for what feels like the billionth time since Mathias pushed play on the conversation I had with Kade. Why is he making me listen? The headmaster glances at me—again—as if looking for some kind of reaction. My stomach is knotted so tight I feel like I might throw up.

  “What happened?” The shuffling sound of Kade reaching out to touch my hand.

  “Sometimes I feel like it’s my fault. I wanted take-out from a place that didn’t deliver, and she wanted to stay in. But she went for me. And—”

  Oh, somebody please kill me so I don’t have to listen to this anymore.

  “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

  A pause where our eyes met.

  “And she never came back.”

  Having to listen to myself is like nails on a chalkboard. Why did I tell Kade any of that? I don’t know him at all, and yet there I went, spilling my guts to him when he’s so clearly in line with Mathias and the rest of these psychos.

  In fact, he’s standing by the door, leaning against it with crossed arms, probably congratulating himself for being such a good little narc.

  The whole thing makes me sick.

  I glare at Kade, making sure he gets a good look at how much I loathe him. This is his fault. That was meant to be private. He raises an eyebrow but says nothing. I shift in my seat, turning away to look at the draped window.

  A few more painful minutes of conversation pass before the recording rustles to an end. The following silence presses in. I clench and twist the hem of my blue sweater where Mathias can’t see. He speaks first.

  “You’re a bit of a problem for me, Miss Palmer.” He sets the black recorder down on the desk. “You see, both of your parents went to school here, so I can’t turn you away without a good reason. However, the fact of the matter is I don’t truly know, nor can I verify, the events of your past, and I don’t like that. Others aren’t going to like it either.”

  The front of the sweater ripples from the slight tremble of my hands, but I don’t know what else to do with them. “What else could you possibly want to know about me? Haven’t you got enough already?”

  His eyes narrow. He takes out a fancy, blue-edged paper from a manila envelope and places it on the desk, tapping the page twice until I look.

  My mind blanks.

  CERTIFICATE OF DEATH is typed in bold black letters at the very top.

  I glance at Mathias, who is watching more intently than ever, before focusing on the paper again. Is he serious? Is this real? It looks official enough with the watermarked paper and stamps. I scan the certificate again and again, but no matter how many times I do, my name is still there—it’s right there—next to the part labeled Decedent. The upper right side says I died in the month of April. Only two months before I turned a year old. The exact same age I was when Mom left Chris. My gaze travels over to the bottom left side. The Cause of Death says Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

  Mathias yanks the paper away before I can read anything else.

  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  A chill edges down my spine. At first, I can’t say anything. I don’t even know what to think. He just told me I’m supposed to be dead. Does that mean I used to be dead? Well, sort of. Legally? I put an elbow on the desk and lean my head against my hand. What does this mean?

  What did Mom do?

  I shake my head and sit back. No. She wouldn’t have done something so drastic and never told me about it. Mathias must be trying to scare me. The whole certificate is probably a fraud. People don’t fake their infant daughter’s death. Mom wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t like Chris.

  Chris. Snatches of remembered conversations tease at the corner of my thoughts, but none stand out more than the one from last night.

  “I went after you. For over ten years I looked for you! I only stopped because I thought you were dead.”

  No, no, no. This can’t be true. It just can’t.

  Mathias shuffles the Death Certificate
back into the manila envelope. Our eyes meet, and he says, “You seem very much alive for a dead girl, Miss Palmer. I want to know why you’re suddenly here now. The timing is too convenient. You’re young enough to still be admitted as a special circumstance, but also old enough you could already be trained and capable of inflicting tremendous damage.”

  Who on earth does he think I am? He effectively dropped a mountain-sized bomb on my head, and now he’s making me out to be the bad guy?

  “You think I’m here to inflict damage?” The chair presses against my back. “I’m only here because you invited me, and I was stupid enough to come, okay? End of story.”

  He nods, but frown lines remain firmly etched around the corners of his mouth and between his eyes. “I must commend you, if you’re an implant. You’re playing your part remarkably well—”

  Part? What part?

  “—perhaps a little too well. I find it hard to believe your mother told you nothing of our existence, of what we are, even if you are innocent.”

  Air leaves my nostrils in a quick, disgusted snort. “My mom wasn’t crazy like you people.”

  The corner of Mathias’ mouth tilts up in a sort of smirk-grimace. “Very well. I’ll play along, Miss Palmer. Have you begun the expertus change?”

  And he’s back to the weird words. “How am I supposed to answer that when I don’t even know what it is?”

  He waves a hand as if what I said wasn’t important. “I take that to mean nothing unusual has happened to you recently?” Hah. Biggest understatement of my life. “No strange physical abilities?”

  “A lot of psychotic people have recently come into my life. Does that count?”

  He smiles. A real smile that’s slightly crooked on one side instead of some condescending smirk. The soft sound of a throaty chuckle behind me almost makes me look over my shoulder. But forget Kade. And forget Mathias, too.

  “What about the Experior serum?” Mathias asks, a frown reattached onto his face. “Did your mother or father ever tell you about that?”

  I sigh. The onslaught of a growing headache pounds at my temples and behind both eyes, making my vision fuzz out a little. I place the heels of my hands on each side of my head and push in hard. “No. I mean, yes. I don’t know. Chris said something about it, but he’d been drinking, and I thought he’d lost it again.”