I was dressed chest to ankles in black silk. Emerald-green rhinestones and black lace accented the strapless bodice, showing a little more skin than I would have liked. Feathers and the same emerald stones and lace decorated my hand-held mask and the wristlet that hung on my gloved arm.
Students danced. Some hung out by the punch. By the looks on some of the lowerclassmen’s faces, the punch was spiked. Not surprising, since many of the adults had been so preoccupied as of late.
I continued to scan the crowd as I skirted the outer edge of the party, holding my mask to my face. I spotted Briana over by the band. Though the room was rather dark, it was easy to make out Briana, dressed in cardinal red. Feathers adorned the bodice of both her dress and her mask, which was also red—a bold statement for someone with hair the color of shimmering copper.
To her right and by the windows were Georgia, Fred, Lin, and Dia. Seth had talked each of them into attending Wellington’s Halloween masquerade in the hope that they would reconsider enrolling at the school. But at the moment, they didn’t appear happy to be there.
Georgia stood with her arms crossed like a protective shield. Instead of wearing a mask, paint decorated her cheeks and swirled around her eyes in shades of white and canary yellow, a stark contrast to her dark skin. Her eyes were accented with gold metallic shadow so thick that I could see it from across the ballroom.
Dia had straightened her red hair—setting her apart from her twin clone, Briana—and was dressed in a tightly fitted, silver dress. Both Fred and Lin wore simple tuxes, but in true Fred fashion, his bow tie and accessories matched Georgia’s canary yellow, as did his gold, shimmery eyes.
Lin angled toward Dia. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. He looked so much like Jack that my heart suddenly felt too big for my chest as I watched the intimacy between them. Dia nodded as he kissed her temple.
I gave my head a little shake. I had to focus on what was important. Dia and Lin were still recovering from what Sandra and Dr. John DeWeese did to them. And I planned to use their anger to learn more about Sandra’s operation.
School would officially be different on Monday, and I needed as many of the clones as possible to stay at Wellington. Seth Whitmeyer, Sandra’s brother, would be teaching the students here when he wasn’t fulfilling his obligations as a neurologist at the University of Kentucky Hospital. He planned to help each of us come to terms with who and what we were, and he hoped to fill in many of the blanks we all had.
I was pretty certain I needed the other clones more than I needed Seth. Dia and Lin were sure to have knowledge Seth didn’t possess. I had Dad’s journals, which I hoped would clue us in to what he had discovered before he was killed. And every day I was more and more amazed at the amount of knowledge that Jonas and Jack had hidden from me. My objective, currently, was to discover where Sandra’s operation was now located, and I would do whatever I had to do to find out where Sandra Whitmeyer and John DeWeese were hiding.
I craned my neck as I again spotted the familiar girl masked in lace. She glided through a crowd of dancers with grace and maturity, leading me to believe she was an upperclassman, yet I couldn’t figure out who she was. Her short height made it difficult to keep her in my sight. I took a step forward, determined to identify her, when an arm circled my waist and pulled me backward.
“Why are you hiding back here?” Jonas’s voice came out in a breathy whisper. The muscles in my waist and back tensed. He slithered in and around my mind.
“You can poke around inside my head all you want. You’ll find nothing.” I turned in his arms, attempting to wriggle from his hold, but he just gripped me tighter. “And I wasn’t hiding, I was scoping out the party. People-watching.” I shrugged, while glancing over my shoulder for the mystery girl.
Jonas loosened his grasp, but remained close, and to prove I wasn’t affected by him, I didn’t move. The band was loud, and he leaned into my ear to speak. “Okay, then. Tell me this. Why are you avoiding Jack?”
“Why do you care?” I wasn’t avoiding Jack. I had called him to tell him I would meet him at the party. He hadn’t answered.
Jonas pulled back and looked into my eyes, but kept his face close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath and smell spearmint. “Don’t play games with me, Lexi. We’ve all been through too much for you to close up like this and shut everybody out.”
“I’m not shutting—”
“Save it. Want to tell me about the package you got in the mail today?”
I stood straighter and took a step backward, fiddling with my gloves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was planning to tell him before the night was out, but I was waiting to see what else Sandra threw at me first—what other “gift” she was sending.
I glanced across the room. As I did, I spotted Addison standing by herself and staring out the windows at something below.
Addison was one of our newest students. Like a sister to Jack and fresh out of a coma, Addison seemed to know more about her supernatural ability to disappear than any of the rest of us knew about our own powers.
“I saw you.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and tugged, forcing me to look at him. “You opened a large envelope and pulled a small object and a note from it. I kept my promise not to invade your thoughts, but I sensed every one of your emotions while you processed what you read. And some of those thoughts were aimed at me. I felt fear; and an anger I hadn’t seen from you since the day you came back from your hot date with Jack two weeks ago. You know, after seeing your mom.”
I stared into his pleading brown eyes. There was an unmistakable attraction there. I shifted on my feet, but I didn’t dare look away. “Your mother sent me a present—a thumb drive.”
Jonas’s jaw hardened and he rolled his shoulders. “What was on it?”
“I don’t know.” Not exactly, anyway. “Said you would know the password once I received the second part of my gift.”
“What gift?” He made a quick scan of the room while unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. I’d hit a nerve.
“Don’t know that either. Said I’d get it tonight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I didn’t. Why does this make you jittery?”
Jonas’s gaze narrowed as we continued our staring battle. He looked away first and released his hold on me. He rubbed both hands across his face. A low growl erupted from somewhere deep inside his chest. “You are so frustrating, you know that?”
“I do.” But I didn’t care.
“What do you think this ‘gift’ is?” Jonas seemed to accept my careless shrug that was anything but careless. “Then we’ll just have to be patient. Something tells me Sandra won’t make us wait long.” He backed up slightly. “Where is Jack, anyway?”
“I haven’t seen him.” Though I was surprised he hadn’t found me yet. A twinge of worry sparked in the pit of my stomach. After lifting my mask to my face again, I turned and stood beside Jonas so that I could watch the crowd. The loud, fast-paced music had slowed.
“Well, his loss. Let’s dance.” Jonas grabbed my free hand and pulled me toward the dance floor. With the slightest resistance from me, Jonas entered my head. Please don’t pull away.
There’s more, I said.
He stopped and faced me. I reached into my wristlet and pulled out the note from Sandra. After he read it, he raised his head, and for a minute, I thought I witnessed an ounce of sympathy in the way his cheeks fell. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to dance with you.”
He led me into the middle of the crowd of slow dancers and spun me into him. His hand slid to the small of my back, burning through the thin fabric of my dress. I stared into his eyes through my Venetian mask. Reaching up, he took my hand that held the mask and guided it around his neck, then linked his fingers with my other hand.
“This doesn’t feel very brother-sisterly.” I tried to lighten the mood. Jonas had once tried to convince me that h
e would try to see me as a sister, seeing as he was born from Sandra’s womb and I was born of Sandra’s DNA.
Grinning, he leaned in, his mouth right next to my ear. “Like I’ve explained before, there isn’t an ounce of relation in our genetic code, and I don’t consider your witch of a DNA donor my mother. So we’re safe.”
We most definitely were not safe. “What about Jack? Your best friend.” I countered. “And Briana? What’s going on between the two of you?”
The muscles in his neck and shoulders tightened. He suddenly guided me in a twirl. When I came back to him, not even a molecule of air separated us. He didn’t answer my questions, but I saw the regret in his hardened jaw.
There was no question that my relationship with Jonas had always had a strange edge. I wondered if we would have dated if I had met him first. A relationship between Jonas and me would have been riddled with epic fights, I had no doubt. And it would have ended soon after I’d met Jack.
And now, a woman filled with so much ugliness and hate, who had caused so much suffering to the people I loved, was threatening the bond between Jack and me. The hate in my heart for her was too much at times. Pushing back from Jonas, I reached my hand to massage the spot on my chest, willing the pressure on my heart to release.
Jonas cupped my cheek. “Hey… you okay?”
I managed a nod.
“I’m sorry I pushed. I go too far with you sometimes.” He went too far most times. I didn’t know if it had to do with Sandra’s past manipulation—when Sandra controlled Jonas through the tracker at the base of his skull—or if it was simply Jonas’s personality. “But maybe you should listen to Sandra and break up with Jack.”
I stiffened in his arms.
“Just distance yourself from him until we know what she has planned. Or what’s on the video. Do you think Jack’s going to be excited that the man who raised him—with whom he shares identical DNA—was the one to murder your dad?”
A big part of me knew Jonas was right. But I couldn’t hurt Jack. And until I knew what Sandra meant by her threat, I would continue to fear what she could do.
“Hi, Jonas, Lexi.”
Jonas’s head lifted slightly at the sound of Briana’s voice behind me. He stared over my shoulder, and the taut muscles in his cheeks seemed to relax.
I turned. “Hi, Bree.” Unlike mine, her mask was attached to her head with a satin ribbon, but there was no mistaking her red, wavy locks. “You’ve done an amazing job with the party,” I told her. “And now, you should enjoy yourself. Here…” I pulled Jonas’s hand forward and forced it to link with hers. “…dance with Jonas.”
We aren’t done here, Jonas mindspoke.
We never are.
Don’t go far, he warned. I’ve got a bad feeling about whatever it is Sandra’s got planned.
“Thanks, Lexi.” Briana smiled, oblivious to our mental conversation. “Oh, and happy birthday.”
My eyes widened, then darted to Jonas’s. I had kept my birthday a secret, and Briana knew I didn’t want others to know.
“It’s your birthday?” Why didn’t you tell me?
“It’s just another day.”
Chapter Three
“What are you staring at?” I asked Addison as I approached her from behind. She wore a short sapphire dress with a glittery and sequined bodice and full mesh skirt. Her black hair hung in loose strands down her back. From behind, she looked like any other Wellington student, tall for her young age of eight. But when she twirled around in ballet flats and faced me, I was reminded by her youthful face that she wasn’t even old enough to attend Wellington.
“Jack. He’s in the courtyard.”
“By himself?”
She shook her head, fear in her eyes. I took two hesitant steps closer to the window and peered down. Sure enough, Jack was there. With the same mysterious girl with scarlet lips and red-streaked hair that I saw earlier but didn’t recognize.
They were standing close together; Jack’s back was to me. Lace still covered half the girl’s face. “Do you know who she is?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“That’s not what I asked.” When Addison said nothing, I turned slowly to find her hands shaking, tears in her eyes. “Addi? What is it? Who is she?”
“Jack has been having me track your whereabouts lately. I’m sorry—it’s just that he’s been worried. Anyway, he asked me to find you about ten minutes ago. I told him you were walking toward the courtyard, coming from the dorms. And then I saw you dancing with Jonas.”
“What are you saying?” I grabbed both of Addison’s shoulders, the realization dawning on me. “Who is that down there with Jack?”
Her eyes looked frightened. “I thought it was you.”
I released her. Stumbling back, I pressed a hand to my stomach, the taste of bile rising to my throat. “Me? Why would you think that was me?”
But I already knew the answer. This was my present from Sandra.
“I should have predicted this,” I said. We’d already seen duplicates of Jack, Briana, and Jonas. Why not me? I turned back to the window, trying to get a better look at a second human clone of the infamous Sandra Whitmeyer.
A thousand thoughts ran through my head. Where had this girl been living? Did Jonas know she existed? Did Jack think he was staring at me?
I swallowed hard against the burning sensation at the back of my throat, then faced Addison again. “Tell no one. You hear me? Not even Jack. I will take care of this.” If he didn’t already know.
~~~~~
I nearly fell as I ran down the stairs and flew out the door. High heels were not my thing, but they went with the costume.
The temperature had fallen over the last hour. Cool air pinched my cheeks, and I could see my breath. Steam rose from the fountain I stumbled toward.
I slowed at the entrance to the courtyard and looked up at the windows where the Halloween party continued. Addison no longer stood there. The muffled sound of music drowned out all other sounds.
Jack was at the opposite side of the courtyard with his back to me. A large stone fountain separated us, and between the fountain and his tall frame, I was blocked from seeing the mystery clone in front of him.
One by one, I slipped my heels off and threw them into the dormant rose bushes to my right. I padded quietly across the brick sidewalk and ducked behind a line of tall boxwoods. I hoped the dark color of my gown and the barrier of the shrubs would hide me from Jack and my clone.
As I got closer, Jack’s voice rose above the music of the dance.
“You’ve shut me out completely for two weeks. I thought we had finally gotten somewhere after our run today, but now you’re back to avoiding me. Enough’s enough, Lex.”
My heart thudded in my chest. For a moment, I forgot it wasn’t me he was speaking to. The clone was standing with her back to Jack. If she faced him, surely he would recognize her for the fraud she was. I directed a thought to only her. Turn around. Face Jack.
She did as I ordered. But when she did, a smile stretched across her face. A genuine smile. Anyone else looking at the two of them would think it was Jack and me, taking a romantic moment alone, away from the party. I had to stop this. My mind raced with how to confront this stranger.
“I’m sorry I’ve avoided you,” she said. “You just made me so angry. But I’m ready to put it all behind us. Let’s start over, okay?”
She sounded exactly like me. She looked exactly like me, except for the dark red streaks painted through her hair. Of course she did. I wanted to scream in frustration. Did Jack think I had just magically colored my hair in the three hours since he last saw me? I wanted to march over and jerk that lace mask off her face. Surely something was different about her. Jack knew me better than anyone. He would figure out that this fraud was just pretending to be me.
I tried to move, but couldn’t. A part of me wanted to just storm forward and confront her, but another, calmer part of me realized that I needed to know more about this clone b
efore exposing her. So I watched. I watched in horror as Jack moved closer to her—close enough to smell her scent. Didn’t he know my scent?
“I would love that.” He brushed his fingers along the side of her face; she leaned into his touch. “We can fix this,” he said. “I know we can. I didn’t keep your mom’s reappearance a secret to hurt you. You know that now, right?”
The girl nodded. Jack stroked her cheek with his thumb. Was her skin the same texture as mine? I would know the feel of Jack’s face with my eyes closed. The way his brows furrowed when I ran my fingers along his forehead. The way a dimple formed when he smiled, but only on the right side.
I focused hard on the girl’s head, bringing the image of her brain before me. I could see that her brain was firing at a rapid pace, in small golden bursts, and most of the activity seemed to be originating from one place. I squinted my eyes, zooming in.
That’s when I found it. This girl had a tracker.
I dropped the image and focused once again on the couple before me. Was this clone being controlled? Had she been sent to hurt Jack? My pulse was racing out of control.
Jack framed her face with both of his hands. He tilted his head and leaned in just slightly. He was going to kiss her. I had to do something.
Did he not know I would never wear that horrid shade of red lipstick?
Jonas! Go to the window overlooking the courtyard. Now!
I’m busy.
You’re not too busy for this.
Fine. I’m at the win— Jonas stopped mid-word. You called me to the window to watch Jack kiss you. That’s low, even for you.
I turned and looked up at the window. That’s not me, you idiot.
Even my mindspeak came out through gritted teeth.
Jonas’s eyes darted from Jack and the clone to where I stood behind a large bush, then back to the clone. Who is that? Oh, my… Is that who I think it is?
Mindsurge (Mindspeak Book 3) Page 2