by Clara Kensie
“This was just the first try, Tessa,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “I have lots of ideas. And there’s still a chance they’ll go to Nebraska to find Jillian’s boyfriend.”
I sat frozen, unable to take my gaze from the computer screen.
“Tessa.” Tristan caressed my cheek. “Clockwise. Did you hear me?”
“Play the video again,” I said. “From the beginning. I want to see them again.”
He dragged the cursor back to the beginning of the video, and played it again.
And again.
And again.
Chapter Five
Dinner that night was an extra-large half-pepperoni-half-veggie, delivered from Argento’s Pizzeria. Tristan and I had set the table. It was one of the first times in my life I’d ever done it. When I was living with my real family, my mother would simply float the plates and utensils over and have them set themselves. The beverage would take itself out of the fridge and pour itself into our glasses.
I missed that. I missed things flying around by themselves. Here at the Connellys’, everything just stayed wherever we put it.
Their yellow kitchen was clean but cluttered, like the rest of the house. Faded, years-old papers—report cards, flyers for community events, holiday and birthday cards—were stuck to the fridge with magnets. There was not a single cooking gadget in sight. They kept a stack of delivery and carryout menus on the counter, and the fridge and pantry were crammed with leftovers and snacks. A wooden plaque hanging on the wall declared, Please excuse the noise and mess, we are busy making happy memories.
My mother would have been appalled at the clutter and the prepackaged food. I was too, but I kind of liked that plaque. Objects didn’t fly around by themselves here, but the Connelly family was just as chaotic as mine had been, only in a different way. Happier. No undercurrent of fear and despair and hopelessness.
I picked the green peppers off my veggie pizza. “Any word about Jillian and Logan?” I asked Dennis. “Did they go to Nebraska to see her boyfriend?”
“If they had, Kellan would have called, honey.” He looked at Tristan and me over his glasses. “You two are still looking for them on your own, aren’t you?”
I hated lying, and besides, it was useless to lie to a telepath. I told him the truth. “Yes.”
Tristan chuckled and finished his pizza slice in one huge bite.
“I figured you would,” Dennis said with a sigh. “Just be careful, and don’t interfere with Kellan’s search.”
“Or your studies,” Deirdre added. “School starts tomorrow for both of you.”
After dinner, Dennis and Deirdre went to the family room to watch TV, while I found a broom and dustpan in the closet and swept the floor.
Tristan took the broom from my hand and led me to the living room. “Tessa, before you start school, there’s something you should know.”
Before he could tell me, though, his eyes grew wide and guilt crossed his face, seconds before the doorbell rang. “Too late,” he muttered.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
Ember, her purple hair sporting new blue streaks, dashed through the living room carrying a pink electric guitar. “My band’s coming over,” she said. “We have an extra practice tonight. We need to write an original song for Battle of the Bands.”
That’s right; Ember was in a band. Lyre. One of my very first visions, just a couple days ago, was of Ember playing that electric guitar. Maybe Logan, after we found him, could join her band. Even if they didn’t need a sax player, Logan could learn to play any instrument with a wave of his hand, courtesy of his hypercognition.
Ember answered the door, revealing a petite girl in a heavy winter coat and a black knit beret, her black hair tumbling from under it. I’d seen that girl in a vision this morning. She was the girl who was crying in the guest room. Melanie Brunswick.
Tessa, I wasn’t expecting her to come tonight, Tristan flashed to me. As she entered the house, he stood and tucked in his shirt. “Hey, Mel.”
“Hi,” she said. Timid, sweet. Hesitant. Just an inch or two taller than me, she kept her eyes on her Doc Martens as she took off her coat. “I, um, just came over for band practice.”
“You doing okay?” he asked.
She gave a little shrug. “Yeah.”
“Do you need anything? Your car’s working now? I asked Nathan to fix it a few weeks ago.”
“He did. Thanks.”
Chewing her lip, Ember surveyed the three of us. “Come on, Melanie. Let’s go to the basement.”
As if it were painful to do so, Melanie dragged her gaze to me, her violet eyes wide and wounded. “You’re Tessa?”
I’d been using my real name for three weeks now, but it still felt dangerous to hear it cross other people’s lips. “Yeah. Hi.”
“I thought you’d be...different. Taller, maybe.”
“Oh! Hey!” Ember clapped her hands. “Tessa, Melanie’s a seeker. Maybe she can help find your brother and sister.”
Tristan pushed his hands into his pockets. “I already thought of that,” he mumbled. “But Melanie finds lost things, not lost people.”
“I heard that your brother and sister are missing,” Melanie said. “I’m so sorry.”
Shocked at how much it hurt to hear those words said aloud—your brother and sister are missing—by someone I didn’t even know, I nodded and took Tristan’s arm. At that, a vision blasted into my mind, one that explained all the awkwardness in a single moment.
Or rather, in a single kiss.
Tristan kissing Melanie. Right here, in this room. Bending down and kissing her, putting his lips on hers. Melanie kissing him back.
I pulled my hand from Tristan’s arm like it burned. She’s your girlfriend?
That’s what I was about to tell you. She was my girlfriend. Now you are.
Of course Tristan had had a girlfriend before me. He was kind, and respectful, and supportive, and dependable. He had strong shoulders and deep blue eyes and sandy brown hair that turned gold in the sun. Tristan had probably had dozens of girlfriends before I’d come along.
Melanie said, “I wish I could help find your brother and sister, but all I can do is find things like lost jewelry or keys. My uncle’s in charge of their case. He’ll find them.”
Tristan stiffened, and I blinked. “Your uncle is John Kellan?”
She nodded. “Uncle Johnny.”
Did she know how Uncle Johnny had kidnapped me, how he’d held a gun to my head and made me witness my parents being shot? How he held a personal vendetta against my family because my parents had murdered his brother-in-law?
While I was in the Underground, a vengeful Kellan had told me that his sister was struggling to raise her daughter all alone. Melanie must be that daughter.
Which meant...
Oh no. Oh God, no. Horror crept up my throat on tentacles, and I stared at Tristan. My parents killed Melanie’s father?
Grimly, he confirmed it with a nod.
That’s why her last name was familiar. Timothy Brunswick was one of the recruiting agents who’d come to my house in Virginia eight years ago. His name was printed under his photograph in the evidence binder, along with all the other victims. He’d appeared in the fog while I was passed out at Union Station, and in my nightmare last night, his eyes hurt and glowering and dark and accusatory.
The fog whooshed in and I stumbled into an armchair, heart beating double-time, pumping blood, my parents’ killer blood, through my veins. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Tristan shouted for me to breathe. I pushed the fog away, but kept it close. “I’m so sorry,” I said again. I would never stop saying it. I should never stop saying it.
The doorbell rang again, and more of Ember’s band mates piled into the house. Ember pull
ed Melanie, her face deathly white, into the basement after them.
“Does she know?” I asked Tristan, my voice trembling. “Does she know it was my parents who...”
Tristan kicked at the coffee table. “Kellan told her.”
Another vision of Tristan kissing Melanie started to form, so I pushed myself up from the chair and stumbled into the kitchen. Melanie Brunswick. Tristan’s ex. Beautiful; much prettier than me. Kind and sympathetic: she wished that she could help find my siblings. And forgiving: she wished she could help, even though she knew my parents had murdered her father.
“How long were you with her?” I asked Tristan, who had followed me into the kitchen.
...A long time, he admitted silently.
How long?
“We were kids at first,” he said. “She’s a couple years younger than me. Your age. After our fathers were attacked...” He sighed. “My dad survived and hers didn’t. She was so sad. I kind of... I don’t know. She needed me, so I took care of her. As friends.”
“Then as you got older,” I finished for him, “it turned into more than friends.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’ve basically been with her since you were ten. Eight years.”
To hide my trembling hands, I slid them into the sleeves of the red hoodie I’d borrowed from him. “Did she ever wear this hoodie?”
He chuckled. “No.”
Can you do this with her? I asked. Talk to her like this?
No. He took my left hand from my sleeve and wiggled the thin band of pearls around my fourth finger. “I never gave her a promise ring, and I never had warning premonitions about her, either.”
What I really wanted to know, I couldn’t find the strength to say out loud. Were you in love with her?
“I thought it was love. But now I know what love really is.” He nuzzled my neck with his lips. It’s us. You and me. “She knew it was happening before I did. She said she could hear it in my voice when I called her from Twelve Lakes. I felt awful about it. I didn’t want to hurt her. But it would’ve hurt her more if we stayed together when I was in love with someone else. So we broke up. I love you, Tessa. Only you. Always you.”
I let Tristan kiss me. I believed him. He loved me. I could feel his love for me in every touch. See it in every glance. Hear it in every word.
I slid my arms around his neck and pressed close against him. So bold and strong, so daring and caring and brave. A true hero. He’d rescued me. Melanie had needed him, so he’d taken care of her. He’d rescued her, too.
He’d rescued Melanie, and then he’d fallen in love with her.
Then he rescued me. Now he loved me.
On the counter, its handle half covered by a magazine, a steak knife glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.
Was Tristan in love with me only because he’d rescued me?
I tried to extinguish the thought with fog, but it kept reigniting.
Chapter Six
I’d had the nightmare again last night. With another victim added to the mix.
The silver knife had glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed, as usual. But Melanie Brunswick’s father had been killed by that knife, and last night she’d joined him in the group of my parents’ victims. Her wide, wounded violet eyes blended with the others’ to become a single pair of vast, vengeful, venomous eyes, dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal. Demanding revenge. Demanding blood.
Tristan had stumbled in to the guest room to wake me, but now, hours later, the Nightmare Eyes still lingered, glowering at me from above.
I tried to shake them off. Today was my first day at Lilybrook High, and Tristan’s first day at Heron University. Jillian and Logan still hadn’t shown up at her boyfriend’s house in Nebraska, and until we had a new lead, there was nothing we could do but go to school anyway. Besides, Tristan’s career aspirations were to be an investigator at the APR, and then executive director, like his dad. He needed a college degree for that, and he’d already put off one semester while he was in Twelve Lakes. He was taking extra classes now to make up for it.
Car keys in hand, backpack slung over one shoulder, Tristan lingered in my doorway as I made my bed. “My buddy Nathan texted this morning,” he said. “He said he’d look out for you. He’s a senior. I don’t know if you’ll have any classes with him, but he’ll show you around. Look for him. Tall guy. Dreadlocks.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I was anxious to meet Tristan’s best friend.
“You sure you can keep the fog balanced?” he asked. “Lilybrook High is a small school, but it’s almost a hundred years old. Lots of history. Which means lots of visions.”
“I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry about me,” I said, knowing he would anyway.
“You have your phone?”
“Yep. Fully charged.”
Deirdre rushed up behind him in a flowered robe and with her hair still wrapped in a towel. She ran a preschool at the APR for the little psionic kids who hadn’t learned to control their abilities in public yet, and she was running very late. “Tristan, you should’ve left already. I don’t want you speeding or getting in an accident.”
“Mom, you know you don’t have to worry about that.” He tapped his temple. “Warning premonitions, remember? And I have plenty of time.”
Heron University was a little less than an hour away. Tristan had originally planned to live in the dorms on campus, but now that I was here, he would drive back and forth each day. Thank goodness. I did not want to live here without him. When I’d agreed to live at the Connellys’ house, it was to be with Tristan, not his parents. Dennis and Deirdre were kind and generous—much too kind and generous to a girl whose parents had tried to kill both Dennis and Tristan—but they were still relative strangers.
Deirdre turned to me. “Give me fifteen minutes, Tessa. I’ll drive you to school.”
“But you’re running late,” I said. “Ember told me that she walks. I’ll go with her.”
Her hands flittered to her throat. “Are—are you sure?”
“Yes.” She looked hurt, so to soften the blow, I added, “You bought me a whole bunch of school supplies and a brand new book bag. Everything I need. I’m all set. Thank you, Deirdre.”
Brows knit, she nodded, then whisked back to her bedroom.
“I know she’s trying too hard,” Tristan said, “but she wants you to feel welcome here.”
“I do,” I said. But the Nightmare Eyes glowered down on me, reminding me that one day, Deirdre was going to wake up to the fact that my parents had tried to kill her husband and her son. And then she would regret taking me into her home and her heart.
* * *
Lips still tingling from Tristan’s record-setting goodbye kiss, and stomach filled with orange juice and a slightly burned Pop-Tart prepared by Deirdre, I set off with Ember for Lilybrook High. I wore my new white coat and new mittens, a new pair of jeans, a new pair of sneakers, and Tristan’s old tennis hoodie. Tucked at the bottom of my new book bag were Jillian’s ballet shoe, protected in a baggie, and Logan’s sheet music, folded carefully in an envelope. I couldn’t seem to leave them behind.
Ember had gathered her purple-and-blue hair in a spiky ponytail high on her head and wore a raspberry-colored down jacket. This was the first time we’d been alone since our exchange in the bathroom the other day, and neither of us knew what to say. Piles of snow and massive, bare trees lined the streets as we walked the half-mile route to the high school. The Nightmare Eyes followed, tethered to me like a shadow. I looked behind me, certain I would see them hovering in the sky like a gray cloud.
Finally Ember spoke. “What are you looking at?”
I saw nothing except for a blue sky, a bright sun and white clouds. There were no hovering, hateful Nightmare Eyes. “Just looking around,” I answ
ered. “Getting to know the neighborhood.”
“Are you nervous for your first day?”
“Not really. I’m used to being the new kid. We moved a lot.”
“You must have a ton of friends all over the country.”
Bitterly, I shook my head. “It was too hard to make friends and lie to them, and then leave them when my family ran again. I couldn’t even tell them my real name.”
“Well, you should be okay at Lilybrook High,” she said. “You’re a lab rat. We all hang out together.” From one of the branches above, a little blackbird fluttered down to a pile of snow. Ember took off her mitten and wiggled her fingers at it.
“A lab rat?”
“A Lab Brat. Capital L, capital B.” She pulled something from her pocket—a baggie of birdseed. “The Agency for Psionic Research is also known as the Lab. So we’re Lab Brats. Get it?”
“Just being psionic makes me a Lab Brat?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“But do they know I’m...” I couldn’t bring myself to say the daughter of the Kitteridge Killers out loud. “...who I am?”
“I’m sure some of them know by now,” she said. “But you’re Tristan’s girlfriend. The Lab Brats will accept you.”
Just a few days ago, I didn’t even know I was psionic. And now, not only could I see the past with my retrocognition and communicate telepathically with my boyfriend, I had a group of instant friends.
Maybe, for the first time in eight years, school wouldn’t be so bad.
“The Lab Brats have to follow some special rules, though.” Ember crouched and poured some birdseed in her palm. “The neutrals think the APR is just a boring lab called the Northern Wisconsin Science Laboratory. We can’t let them know it’s specifically for psionic research. We also can’t let them know about our abilities, and we can’t use our powers against anyone or to cheat.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.” I’d still have to follow special rules and keep secrets like I had when I was living with my real family, but this time I’d be keeping those secrets along with a large group of friends. The Lab Brats. “It could even be fun.”