by Sophie Davis
Then another realization hit me, bringing with it a fresh wave of guilt. Erik was reading my thoughts. He knew my heart was aching over Donavon, that the tears I refused to cry were for another guy.
Not only am I a crappy guardian, I’m crappy girlfriend.
My mental barriers fell in place as Erik reached for me, his expression and his mind unreadable. His arm curled around my shoulders. I leaned into his embrace and felt a little more in control.
“Talia?” Kip’s voice brought me from my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I hate to ask, but I really need to eat something.”
Kip’s expression was heartbreaking. It was as though he, like Erik, knew I was nearing a breaking point. “Anything you have is good. I’m not a picky eater.”
I nodded and forced a smile. “I’ll take care of it.”
Erik and I left in search of sustenance, neither of us speaking until we reached the kitchen. I went straight for the pantry, finding only fuzzy bread and shriveled, greenish fruit that might have been oranges once upon a time.
Strong hands settled on my shoulders. Lips brushed my ear.
“I’m here for you,” Erik whispered, hands moving down my arms to thread his fingers with mine. He wrapped me in his comforting embrace and dropped his mental shields.
“It’s okay to be upset,” he told me.
Was he talking about Donavon or Victoria or Kenly? Or was it a general sentiment? I didn’t know, so I left my own shields in place. Opening only a narrow channel—a trick I’d learned while in prison on Vault—I allowed a thought out while keeping the rest hidden from Erik.
“So much has happened,” I sent finally.
“I know.” Erik bent and rested his head on my shoulder. “Victoria had her faults, but she was a good woman. I miss her, too.” Without looking, I knew his eyes were wet.
We’d both lost someone important to us, someone who had shaped our lives in more ways than I could count. But it wasn’t just the loss of life that cut to my core. Without Victoria, who would run UNITED? Who would deal with these so-called Privileged?
Turning around to face him, I locked eyes with Erik. As much as I wanted, needed, time to mourn my losses, there was still something that needed our attention. Someone.
“Gracia,” I sent.
“Gracia,” Erik repeated aloud.
Chapter Two
Erik
The McDonough house was one sprawling level with a typical kitchen, living area, and dining room. There were also four not-so-typical bedroom suites. With seven people including our prisoner, space was tight. Options for a makeshift cell were limited, but the paranoia of Danbury McDonough and his wife helped with that—the master suite only opened with a blood lock. Luckily, it hadn’t been reprogrammed after Tals switched her allegiance away from TOXIC and the McDonoughs.
Talia slid her right forefinger into an opening beneath the lock-screen, wincing when the needle pricked her skin. My girlfriend’s mental barriers were still in place, but emotions weren’t as easy to shield as thoughts. Tals’ were all over the place.
“Maybe I should talk to Gracia alone?” I suggested as the security system verified Talia’s identity and the door slid open.
She stepped into the suite’s sitting room, waiting for me to follow. When the door snapped shut, she rounded on me.
“I’m fine. I can do this,” Tals snapped. Anger darkened her eyes to the color of an overripe eggplant.
Sliding my expression into neutral, I kept my tone as impassive as my features. “I know you can,” I replied simply. “But just because you can, that doesn’t mean you should.”
Tals’ temper flared, and the feelings radiated from her like a scorching sun. It burned white-hot for several seconds before diminishing to a more manageable simmer. Tears gathered in her eyes, though she blinked them back quickly.
My brain searched for the right thing to say. I wanted to comfort her, to take away some of the pain that refused to stay down no matter how hard she tried. I refrained. Tals didn’t appreciate empty platitudes, and that was all I had to offer at the moment. Victoria Walburton was the latest casualty of our war, but she wouldn’t be the last. More would die. Likely, it would be many more.
Closing her eyes and rubbing her temples, Tals breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth several times. The temperature in the room dropped noticeably as she fought to control her stormy emotions. I felt the raw heartache inside her scab over.
When she reopened her eyes, Tals mind and expression were blank. This steely-nerved version of my girlfriend was the scariest, almost more mechanical than human.
“Ready?” she asked, already walking to the bathroom door.
Her steps faltered. Talia pitched to the side. She groped at the empty air as though searching for something to steady herself. My heart plummeted, and I raced to her side.
“Tals!” I cried, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her upright.
She dropped her head against my chest like the weight of it had become unbearable.
“It’s starting,” she whispered. “The attack is starting.”
I squeezed Tals tightly—her ribs too sharp beneath the baggy pullover from her old closet—and glared at the bathroom door. Gracia was locked on the other side. If the clone girl had answers, I’d rip them from inside her. I’d do whatever it took to find out, to spare my girlfriend from future loss and heartbreak.
Tals shrugged out of my embrace and scrubbed at her face with her hands.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with,” she muttered.
The bathroom lock also required a blood sacrifice, which seemed like overkill in a house located on a secure military base. “Verified” flashed on the sensor, and the door opened with a soft click. Bright lights powered on automatically inside the bathroom, and I met violet eyes that were identical to the ones I dreamt about every night.
There was nothing of Talia—of my Tals—in those eyes, though.
Gracia Beaumont lay at an awkward angle in the oversized white porcelain bathtub. Her wrists and ankles were bound, and one of the former director’s power ties was wedged in her mouth. The gag was purely for my benefit; there weren’t any neighboring houses and the school had been closed since UNITED defeated TOXIC. With one shitty thing happening after another, and more horror on the horizon, I had no interest in listening to Gracia whine and complain. Despite my best efforts, I could only focus on one thing at a time.
With a quick flick of my mind, I yanked the tape off and wrenched the gag free. Gracia howled as tears pooled in her eyes. She tried to wipe them away with her shoulder but only managed to knock her forehead on the side of the tub. Crimson flushed the clone’s cheeks.
“Did you know the Isle of Exile was going to be attacked?” Talia demanded. She took slow steps toward Gracia, stopping at the foot of the tub. Hands on her hips, Tals straightened to her full five-foot height.
“You don’t scare me,” Gracia sneered. Admittedly, it was a decent imitation of Tals’ don’t-screw-with-me expression.
“Are the Privileged responsible for the attack?” I pressed. Folding my arms over my chest, I leveled a hard glare on Gracia. She didn’t reply, and I repeated the question with emphasis on each word.
From a distance, Gracia was a dead ringer for Tals. Even up close, it would have been difficult for most people to tell the two apart. The doctors who’d programmed the parameters for Gracia’s facial reorg did their homework—from the slightly upturned tip of Tals’ nose to the cluster of freckles over the dent in her chin, even the smallest details were included.
“Agent Kelley asked you a question,” Talia barked.
“Agent Kelley?” Gracia repeated with a snort. Her laughter sounded forced and unnatural.
The clone’s smug smile was one I’d seen more times than I could count. It was freaky to imagine Gracia studying photos and vids to learn the mannerisms, but she’d obviously practiced my girlfriend’s expressions and gestures. Sti
ll, there was something hollow about the impression. Despite the uncanny valley of physical resemblance, the clone was simply…lesser.
It was obvious that Gracia hadn’t been nearly as committed to honing and strengthening her talents. Tals’ demeanor wouldn’t have been so impossible to emulate if she had; Talia’s powers backed up her swagger in a way that Gracia could never match. Shooting a glance at Talia, her back rigid and hands clenched tightly, I knew I’d always recognize the difference between an imposter and the real thing.
Turning back to the cheap imitation, I glared. “Yes, Agent Kelley. Is my name funny to you?”
The girl in the bathtub rolled her eyes. Okay, Gracia had mastered Talia’s flippant attitude. Even tied up, she managed a toss of her chestnut curls.
“What’s funny is that you two believe you’re in control here,” Gracia spat. “What’s funny is that you both think you’re something special.”
Struggling to sit up, the clone cracked her elbow on the side of the tub. The fire in her eyes lessened as she bit back a groan.
Tals snorted. “That was funny.”
Gracia’s nostrils flared. Her lips twitched, like her thoughts were on the tip of her tongue. The clone decided against giving voice to them. Her features smoothed, and she tried to hide her reaction behind a blank mask. As if that would work with two mind manipulators around. Only exceptional Talents could block either of us when we wanted to know what was happening in someone’s head. With little effort, I homed in on the clone’s emotional radar.
When we’d first arrived at the McDonough house, Gracia had been consumed with fear and little else, which was understandable. We’d just seen our friend’s dead body, Gracia worked for the enemy, and we were looking for revenge. Only an illiterate, agoraphobic Luddite had the luxury of believing they’d survive that encounter with Tals and me.
Yet, unless Gracia was a better manipulator than I gave her credit for, humiliation had trumped fear at some point. There was also a heavy dose of shame on the side. The depths of those emotions were unnerving.
Talia and I locked eyes. She’d clearly been wondering the same thing.
“Is she seriously not scared right now?” Tals sent uncertainly. “Shouldn’t she be a little more worried about getting out of this alive?”
“Maybe she’s projecting,” I replied. “Trying to throw us off.”
“Are the Privileged behind the attack on the Isle of Exile?” I said aloud.
It was the third time I’d repeated the question, so my irritation wasn’t fake this time. My father was already on a hover from the islands to the school with Alex, and it wasn’t a long flight. We didn’t have time for Gracia’s bullshit. I wasn’t in the mood for pithy spars and just wanted the interrogation over with; Gracia had to be somewhere far away when the hover arrived. And secure, somewhere she couldn’t hurt anyone or impersonate my girlfriend while doing heinous things. Having her in the same house as so many of our friends was already making me edgy.
“Did the Privileged attack the Isle?” Talia added a sprinkle of compulsion behind the question to speed things along.
Since Gracia had been asked several times already, her mind was primed for the manipulation. The answer fluttered to the surface before Gracia could contain it, a single word mixed in with nasty names she longed to lob my way.
Yes.
“No surprise there,” Tals sent to me, never averting her gaze from Gracia.
“I have nothing to say,” the doppelganger insisted, her voice tremoring the slightest bit. Seizing the minute crack, I focused on Gracia.
The stretches of silence between Talia and me unnerved her. More than she would admit, even to herself.
Our mental manipulation powers were common knowledge among clandestine organizations, so it was safe to assume Gracia knew what was happening when we fell silent. Whenever we stopped speaking to her, we were speaking to one another mentally. And she didn’t like it.
The quiet stretched, until Gracia began to squirm visibly.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I intoned, smirking.
Gracia’s cold smile was a pale shadow of the one Talia often wore.
“My mind is like hers,” the clone said, nodding to my girlfriend. “You can’t get in if I don’t want you there.”
Crossing my arms, I leaned against the sink and waited to see how deep she’d dig her smug little grave. Her violet gaze fixed on me, and satisfaction wafted from Gracia like cheap perfume.
“Like you haven’t noticed you can’t get in?” the clone added, doing her best to point to her head with bound hands.
“She doesn’t know you already were,” Tals sent, tilting her chin to one side.
I shook my head once. “I was just reading her thoughts, not digging through them.”
“I usually know when people are reading my thoughts,” she countered, her eyes searching mine. One of Talia’s dark eyebrows raised. “Don’t you feel it when you’re mimicking my powers? Or, I guess whenever, since you have your own mind powers now.”
Talia didn’t make a secret of it when she was reading my thoughts, so I had to stop and consider the question. Was there a feeling I hadn’t noticed? I almost always knew when Talia was reading my thoughts. Boundaries weren’t really a thing when mind-reading was as ingrained in a person as breathing. She often peeked at people’s thoughts without meaning to, which I’d only fully understood after my own telepathic capabilities developed.
Would I know if a random mind reader was in the area scanning my thoughts? I wondered.
“She knows we’re trying to read her mind,” Tals continued, connecting the dots for me. “She said as much. Gracia has my powers and at least some of my personality traits. She knows it’s the first thing I’d do.”
“So, she’s on high alert for mental intrusions…,” I added.
“Exactly. So why can’t she feel you inside her head?”
It was a good question, and I didn’t have an answer. We’d agreed not to invade Gracia’s mind immediately, not until we had a better sense of who she was and where she came from. After all, it was the first thing the enemy would expect us to do. An exact physical replica of Talia could not have any good purpose.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Why does Gracia believe she’s capable of blocking the strongest natural-born Mind Manipulator in decades? Why does she believe every word she says, yet her actions demonstrate a lack of self-confidence?”
“I don’t know…I hadn’t thought about it, but that is really weird,” Tals agreed as I studied Gracia through a different lens.
“I’ve been trained to withstand torture,” Gracia offered. The lie was merely to break the silence, which was raising her blood pressure with each passing second.
I cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Someone’s altered her mind I think,” Tals sent.
“What do you mean ‘altered’?” I replied.
Indignation floated from the bathtub like smoke from a cauldron, and Gracia’s thoughts projected loudly.
“My name is Natalia Lyons. My parents were Katerina and Francis Lyons. My parents were traitors. My parents were executed. My name is Natalia Lyons….”
I covered the distance between Tals and me in three long strides. Though I started to put my arms around her, I decided against it. Instead, I settled for resting my hand on her shoulder. Posture rigid, Tals relaxed slightly under my touch.
“My name is Natalia Lyons. I went to the McDonough School for the Talented. I am a Mind Manipulator with telekinetic capabilities. My name is Natalia Lyons….”
Tals was so still, I worried she might crumble if I squeezed her. Hearing her parents’ names spoken in the mind of a doppelganger was freaky as hell for me. It had to be exponentially worse for my girlfriend. Tentatively, I reached for her mind. What really bothered Talia was the spin on the Lyons’ deaths—Katerina and Francis Lyons had not been traitors, nor had they been “executed.”
TOXIC had murdered Tals’
parents.
Why is Tals’ clone programmed with alternative history? I wondered. For whose benefit?
Gracia didn’t have any natural talents, at least not that I could feel. Without those, the clone was likely an expendable cog in the overall machine of the Privileged. So why had someone uploaded lies to Gracia’s mind?
“What are the Privileged?” Tals asked. Her expressionless tone should’ve made the sweat on Gracia’s forehead freeze, but the girl was preoccupied with the thought loop in her head and barely seemed to notice.
My name is Natalia Lyons. I was a Hunter for TOXIC. I betrayed my adoptive family. I know it was a mistake. My name is Natalia Lyons….
“Who are the Privileged?” Tals repeated, narrowing her gaze while keeping her tone flat.
My name is Natalia Lyons. My parents were traitors. My name is Natalia Lyons….
“Who is in charge of the Privileged?” Tals tried.
My name is Natalia Lyons. My name is Natalia Lyons. The Dame is…. Gracia’s train of thought stopped abruptly.
“The Dame?” I sent to Tals. “Mean anything to you?”
She didn’t respond right away, but a name popped inside my head: Gretchen. Deep down, Tals and I had both suspected Danbury’s wife might be involved since learning of the Privileged. It was the only answer that made sense. Nightshade’s client wasn’t a new player; the game they were playing was too advanced. The puppet master had to be an old player with a score to settle.
Gracia’s awkward yet triumphant laughter drew my attention back to her.
“People worship you because your powers are supposedly so incredible,” the girl said with loud, forced mirth. “And yet, you can’t even read my thoughts. You two are frauds.” Gracia’s violet eyes fixed on Talia.
For the first time, I felt a trickle of my girlfriend in the doppelganger.
“The Dame promised me that I would be you, only better,” Gracia continued. “I’ll admit, I had my doubts at first. With all I’ve read on transference, the best result one can hope for is that the recipient is as strong as her source. But it seems I am the exception to the rule. I am stronger than you.” She concluded the villainous speech with a challenging look, as if daring us to prove her wrong.