What can I do to prepare myself for the confrontation? He’ll look at me, but the look will be empty. The girl who drank coffee with him at the battered table by the window, the girl who fell in love with him when every odd was against her—she won’t exist in his eyes.
How do I cope with being invisible to the one person I thought would always see me?
****
The space between us in a canyon too wide to jump, too uneven to bridge. I press myself against the passenger window. Jack leans left, wedges his body between the steering wheel and door, but the distance doesn’t seem like enough. Or maybe there’s too much of it. I won’t be the one to mend the gap. Not me. I threw myself onto a tightrope, reached out to him as the strand frayed, but he cut the cord and watched me fall into what could’ve been something beautiful.
“General Augustus is changing routes.” I tuck my hair into a cloche hat and lean a few inches off my cliff to have a better few of the GPS tracker. “He just turned onto Piedmont Avenue.”
Jack swerves the Duesenberg Model-J into a connecting lane, presses the accelerator, and watches the speedometer rise. He glances at me quickly, as if to hide the cobalt flash, to make sure I believe I’m more invisible to him than air. But he did look. Because he wanted to see me. And sooner or later, he’ll also have to speak more than a few words.
“Why’d you decide not to do the transfusions together?” I tighten my seatbelt as we weave through the constipated flow, past Purebloods in their on-ground vehicles who appear unbothered by the traffic and our aggressive driving. “You didn’t even respond to my letters. We’re supposed to be friends and … you haven’t treated me like a friend.”
“Adjust the scope. Set the zero at one hundred yards.” Jack shoves his sniper rifle into my lap. “If the general thinks we’re following him, things could get messy.” He slams his foot on the brake when a food truck pulls out in front of us—I slingshot forward. Pain blasts through my skull. A red flash saturates my vision and then bubbles into a swarm of floaters when I unstick my forehead from the dashboard.
“Target is three hundred yards ahead. We’ll have visual once we turn the next corner.” He grabs my shoulder and holds me in place as the car makes a sliding turn onto Tenth Street. His fingers linger, hesitate. They lift from my skin, lower, and then return to the wheel. “General Augustus’s Bugatti Royale Victoria is three cars in front of us. He usually travels with an armed protection unit.”
“Well, I’m a decent shot. Perk of growing up in a military family.” I adjust the rifle’s scope and snap a refilled magazine into my handgun. “No touching each other, remember?”
“You’re the one without a spine. I thought it’d be nice to protect that brain of yours.” Jack reaches into the middle console and removes a scarf, a vintage baseball cap, and a pair of sunglasses. “Here. My car’s windows are tinted, but if we get close enough, they might see us.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.” I tie the scarf around my face and inhale heat.
He rolls his eyes. “We are agents. This isn’t a friendship slumber party where we … play Truth or Dare and paint each other’s nails. I’m not your friend here, Julie.”
“True. We’re not friends. I don’t think we can be friends.”
Jack flinches. His glance is longer this time, more severe. “Why?”
“I’m sure you know the answer.”
He nods because saying the memories of who we were before everything crumbled won’t affect a digressed relationship would be like claiming Earth is the center of the universe even though science has proven otherwise. “Crap.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The driver made eye contact with me. He knows we’re following them. They won’t lead us to the generator now.” Jack curses. “I’ll have to dump this car and find a new one.”
“Are the plates registered to you?”
“No.” He sighs and decreases speed. “The Purebloods’ military intelligence is top-notch. I’ve been analyzing their department intel for the past week. Their protocol is flawless. If they sense their assignment is in danger, they switch routes, plans, everything. They’re like government-issued computer software, constantly regenerating passwords and firewalls to prevent hackers.”
Skyscrapers line the street and cage the atmosphere in a narrow, blue block. A tunnel—that’s what this place has become—without a light at its end. Maybe there isn’t an end to this madness at all, only deeper holes and weeks spent trying to forget about the darkness.
The general’s motorcar spirals in the road’s center, whipping itself in an illegal U-turn. Cars swerve. Tires squeal—I might’ve squealed, too. Windows roll into their cuticles, and Scavs appear in the empty spaces with guns aimed in our direction. A puff of smoke lifts from the asphalt as the Bugatti Royale Victoria charges at us with bullets flying from its interior.
“Holy crap. Go back. Go back.” I duck my head when bullets shatter the windshield and flood the air with shards. Glass. Bullets. Cars moving fast enough to disintegrate a small animal in a cloud of pink mist. Yeah, there’s no way I’ll walk away from this alive.
“Stay down.” Jack shifts the car into reverse and speeds backward through the maze of forward-moving traffic. I scream as the vehicle spins a complete one-eighty and lurches into motion. Jack drives against the stream of vehicles. A taxi tears off a rearview mirror. A transit bus rams against the hood and causes the automobile to fishtail. He jerks the wheel, catapulting us over the median and into the neighboring lane.
Pain shoots up my neck—dang it, I must have whiplash. “Are those mobsters still following us?” I grip the middle console and peer through the rear window. “Yep.”
“Now’s the time to use that sniper rifle, Julie.” He smears the sweat from his brow and gazes at me with eyes wide, pupils dilated. “Take them out.”
I swallow a mouthful of stomach acid and roll down the passenger window. Wind whips through the automobile, tosses my hair into a frenzy. Okay. Kill to survive. Simple concept. Easy to apply.
“Aim for their heads.”
“Yeah, yeah I know.” I unbuckle my seatbelt and swing the lightweight rifle into my arms and then lean out of the car with the adjusted scope pressed to my right eye. Horns blare—they strengthen in sound and fade as cars shoot past. Bullets whizz around me like mosquitoes or gnats.
“Fire,” Jack shouts.
“I want a clean shot.”
“You won’t get a clean shot. Fire the damn gun, Julie.”
I place my finger on the trigger—Charlie slumped into a puddle of his own brain matter. I blast the general’s windshield and execute his driver—people survived because of me, because I killed someone who would’ve killed me first. The vehicle swerves for a moment but stabilizes when another Pureblood climbs into the front seat—self-defense is different from murder, isn’t it?
A milk truck skims past, scrapes the car with its rearview mirror. Jack yanks me into the passenger seat seconds before my face becomes a smear on the trailer.
“Where’s my gun? Did you drop it?” he yells once I’ve uncurled from a fetal ball.
“Maybe. That truck must’ve knocked it from my hands.” I buckle up and scan the congested highway for signs of the rifle. “Don’t whine. Just … drive faster.”
“This thing can’t go much faster.” He shoves his foot onto the gas pedal and propels our vehicle down a narrow side road lined with older buildings and factories. “So…”
“What?”
“There’s, like, a bump up ahead.”
“A bump?”
“Uh, yeah.” He shrugs and wipes his mouth. “You might want to grip the door handle.” His voice is squeaky—why is his voice squeaky?
The road comes to an abrupt halt only yards ahead of us. It drops ten feet into a concrete ravine.
“No, Jack.” I brace my knees against the dashboard, grip the door with one hand, and entwine my other arm around the seat’s headrest. “You aren’t.”
“Yep. Sure am.” He pumps the gas one last time and drives us off the cliff.
Pause. Slow it down. Frame by frame. Let me witness my final seconds, that is, if I’m about to die. I’d like to remember that gravity didn’t hold Jack and me before we crashed into cement, we lifted off our chairs, and his slate-gray tie flopped in front of him like a bib. I’d like to remember these moments, because after months of hurting myself to save others, I should die with something, anything.
We plummet into the ravine. Airbags explode. Blackness strikes like a viper. I close my eyes to ringing and pain, and open them to a clear sky and trash-piled alley.
“You’re okay.” Jack unravels the scarf from my face. Blood trickles from his nose. Puke stains his white shirt. “We’re safe. The general and his thugs didn’t follow us.”
“How far did you drag me?” I moan. My entire body aches, stings, and throbs.
“Not far.” He plops onto the asphalt. His arms tremble—I want to steady them. “We shouldn’t stay here for much longer. The Feds will search the area soon.”
“Then tell me before we leave and disappear from each other’s lives.” I drag myself to where he sits. “Why didn’t you come visit? What made you decide to cut me from your mission?”
“You really don’t know?” Jack massages his neck and looks at me in a way that says I see you. He frowns, but his dimples smile. “Julie, it would’ve been too hard.”
“Hard? Druid Hills isn’t far from your apartment. I could’ve met you…”
“Gosh, no.” He leans close to me and sighs, not out of frustration but something else. “Dad gave me an order and … I knew if I touched you … I wouldn’t be able to stop.”
Chapter Twenty
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
Adolf Hitler
Jack tilts back his seat. I brace myself against the headrest and coil my arms around him, melt against his chest. He eases his lips against the side of my neck and then kisses me. Not a cordial peck before saying goodbye, not some middle school first-base action. This is an oh-my-goodness-I-never-thought-it’d-be-this-good kind of kiss.
“Margo serves dinner in a few minutes. I should probably…”
“No. Stay.” He combs his hands around my waist, up my back, and through my hair. His mouth stretches into a grin. “I still love you, you know?”
“I love you, too.” Heat swells within me until I can no longer breathe. I cup his smooth face in my hands and kiss him again. He’s here, beneath me, between my fingers. “But I should go before she gets suspicious. We’ve been parked out here for a while.”
“They don’t ask questions.” He leans forward, pressing my back against the wheel. His eyes connect with mine and create a tension within me, like someone squeezing my heart. “Dad was right.”
“About what?”
“Touching you is dangerous.” He laughs and kisses my chin. “Go now before I take you captive.”
“Oh, you’re planning to kidnap me? I’m pretty sure there’s a law against that.”
“Eh, I’ve broken worse laws.” Jack unlocks the doors. He lifts a sweater from the passenger seat and wraps it around my shoulders. “I’ll come do the transfusion with you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.” I blink away a rush of tears and give him a tight hug to absorb the dimensions of his chest and the warmth escaping through the weave of his shirt. He has no idea—I thought about him every time I took a shower because being naked and stuck under a flow of water didn’t offer many distractions, I wondered over and over if I’d exaggerated our relationship into some brilliant love story when all along it was nothing more than a weird bond between two lonely people.
There were some days I begged God to reveal what Jack thought about me, write it on the walls, make the truth so obvious, I’d have to accept it.
“See you tomorrow.” I kiss his bottom lip and scramble out of the car. Air on the verge of freezing hits me like a wall as I scurry up the boarding house’s cobblestone path—it makes my skin burn with a need for Jack’s skin, his heat, closeness.
Charis blocks my path when I enter the foyer. She folds her arms and furrows her pristine brow. “You are late to dinner, Julie. Margo is displeased.”
Good. Let her be displeased. Food means nothing compared to the hot make-out session I just had with my boyfriend, at least, I’m pretty sure he’s my boyfriend again.
“She has my sincerest apologies.” I slide off Jack’s sweater and move to the staircase. The soft weave smells of him—Old Spice deodorant, evergreens, espresso. I hold it against my cheek like a rebel or daredevil. No touching. But we touched. Like we did that night in the Overhang. When I got splinters in my back. “I shall join you all for the meal once I place my effects upstairs.”
“We left the District at the same time. I have been here for quite a while.” Charis follows me up the stairs. Her heels tap the hardwood in a pursuing patter. “Where have you been?”
“With my brother.”
“You are lying,” she says in a tone loud enough to freeze me in place.
“Perhaps you are mistaken.” I clutch my knotted stomach and pinch my quivering lips. How could I have been so stupid? I broke the rules. Disobeyed an order. Surrendered my safety to the enemy. Suspicion is a death sentence. Lies come back to bite.
“No. I saw you in the car.” She saunters toward me like an executioner ready to swing an axe. Her face is blank, a scorched oasis. “The way you were kissing him … it was most improper.”
Tears and sweat sting my eyes. I slump against a doorframe. Options—what are my options? I could try to escape before she contacts the Feds. I could kill her—no, I won’t kill her.
She smiles and grips my shoulders in what might be considered a hug. “Why did you not inform me of your suitor? We are friends, are we not?”
“Uh, yeah.” I sigh and laugh as if she’s discovered a secret affair, not two spies violating their cover identities in the front seat of a car. “My relationship with the gentleman is volatile at the moment. I planned to inform you once the courtship is secure.” Good lie. Believable.
“How wonderful.” Charis follows me into my bedroom and plops into an overstuffed chair. She smooths her skirt out of habit. “I have yet to see two Purebloods so … engaged with one another. Conduct between lovers must be quite different in the suburbs than here in the City.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emotions are not a part of our lifestyle. To be frank, I have not witnessed two people demonstrate feelings beyond the frame of amiable relations.”
“Do Purebloods not fall in love?”
She blushes. “I doubt there is such a thing.”
“What do you feel, then?” I shouldn’t have asked the question because it divides me from her, sets us apart when we’re supposed to be one in the same, but the curious part of me needs an answer, to understand what drives the Purebloods’ invasion. If they do not love, they cannot hate. And without hatred, they couldn’t have destroyed billions of lives.
She flips open a book of poetry and squirms in the chair. Her eyes spark with something close to sorrow or angst. “I am not certain. I do not have a word in mind.”
“But you have emotions?”
“Yes … I think I do … because of the injections. Do you not receive the vaccines?”
“No.” I sit on the windowsill and rub Jack’s sweater between my hands. A knot twists my stomach, makes me crumble forward in pain. “These injections … do they give you feelings?”
Charis cups her crimson cheeks and flashes a smile. “I feel what they wish me to feel, Julie.”
Voices rise from the floorboards. Male voices. Shouts. The stomp of feet on the staircase. No, this can’t be happening. I have at least two weeks of life left, not two minutes.
I squeeze my eyelids shut and choke on air. The room becomes a smear of color, cream and poppy red swirled into a hallucinogenic kaleidoscope. “Charis, d
id you tell anyone about my boyfriend?”
She shakes her head and glances at the closed door. “Did Margo invite guests to dinner?”
“They won’t stay for long.” I grab my radio and gun from beneath the mattress and then stumble to the frosted pane. It lifts without protest and floods the room with a frigid breeze.
“Julie, what is happening? Why do you have a weapon?”
My heart drums within me so fast, my brain aches. I slide on Jack’s sweater before draping my tingling legs into midair. Run—there isn’t another option. Time—the Scavs will be here soon. I can’t let them take me. I know too much about the Vestige. If I’m captured, the resistance will be silenced.
Ada barges into the room, panting. “There are soldiers downstairs, Julie. They are here for you.” She runs across the space to hug me. “They wish to transport you to prison.”
I kiss her head and motion to the dark gap beneath the bed. “You and Charis must hide. The soldiers will hurt you if they find out you let me escape.”
“What have you done?” Charis yells. “Why do they wish to imprison you?”
“I’m human.” The truth is sweet, like cotton candy or lavender lattes. I’ve missed the taste of it. “If they catch me, they will kill me. Prison … is a lie.”
The girls stare at me as if I’m a ghost, the monster in their closet that’s been revealed to be a pile of clothes. Maybe the same concept applies to all of us—we are told who and what to fear.
“We shall pray you survive the night,” Charis whispers. “Go now. Time is not on your side.” She leads Ada to the wardrobe and together, they hide behind it.
A shiver trickles through me when I wedge my feet into the ivy-covered lattice. I claw at the tangles of foliage, press myself against the building’s side. Okay. All I have to do is climb to the ground. Easy. Jon used to take me rock climbing on the days Mom and Dad locked themselves in their bedroom. This isn’t much different, right?
The Vestige Page 24