“Calm down,” Stubble says. “My name is Cole. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“Put her down!”
“Adam, lower the gun. She’s the only one here who will hurt you.”
“Then why did you attack her?” Adam’s voice is shrill, tight with panic. My ribs, oh my ribs, they hurt.
“You’re not thinking straight,” Stubble—Cole—says. “She attacked us. We came in the alley to help you and she attacked us.”
“But you had a gun!” He waves it wildly.
“And she had a knife. She probably has more weapons in her purse. I need you to help me. Put the gun down carefully, and then reach into my jacket pocket. There’s a stun gun in there. It’s nonlethal, and I’ll use it only once to make sure this girl can’t hurt any of us, and then we’ll talk and no one else will get hurt. You have my word.”
I hate stun guns, I hate them so much. LET GO OF MY RIBS. I push my feet against the ground and slam my head up into his chin because he isn’t focused on me anymore. His arms loosen and it’s all I need. I throw myself back and twist and I’m free, my hand slipping into his pocket as I stumble away from him (oh my ribs, my ribs hurt).
But Cole doesn’t come for me; he rushes Adam and the gun. Cole has the gun now. I drop to the ground as the crack echoes through the alley and I roll toward him, stun gun out into his leg with a sound as bright as the charge, and then he is down but he won’t be for long, so I stand and jam the stun gun into his chest and he convulses and I don’t stop until his eyes roll back.
Adam—where is Adam—the gun went off! Where is Adam? He has to be okay. I look and he’s there, leaning against the wall, face white with horror. My eyes sweep his body. There is no blood, no blood anywhere, oh thank heavens he didn’t get shot.
“You’re okay,” I say, my shoulders slumping with relief. No, not relief yet, I turn and Sandy blond has a phone out, so I use the stun gun on him, too. He goes down faster than Cole. Dark hair is pale and vacant with shock, holding his leg, totally unaware of anything around him. He needs better training.
I pick my purse off the ground and drop the stun gun inside, then turn back to Adam. He’s staring at me funny. Well, why wouldn’t he be? I’ve shown him what my hands can do, and a small, worn-down part of me mourns that he won’t think he wants to hold them anymore. I feel like I’ve lost something, but that’s stupid. I lost it all a long time ago.
“I thought he shot you,” I say.
“Fia,” he says, his voice strangled. He’s not meeting my eyes, looking down instead. “He shot you.”
I look down, too, and he’s wrong, there are no holes in my body, but then I look to the left and my blue sleeve is soaked dark with blood and then burning (horrible ripping tearing burning) comes, focused where the bullet went through my upper arm but radiating out through my whole left side.
Well, crap.
EDEN PUTS HER HAND ON MY BACK TO LET ME KNOW where she is as she moves around me in the tiny kitchen. “Thanks for letting me crash last night. The paint smell should be better by now. Speaking of, we should do your place next. The walls are a shade I like to call blindingly depressing white.”
“Pick something pretty for me.”
“Of course. Also, how long are you going to stand there, smelling tea packets?”
“As long as it takes.”
“Oh!” She snaps her fingers. “We need to go to the Art Institute. Fia’s out of town, right? That means we can go today!”
I force a smile. I’d rather know where Fia is than be free to go on outings with Eden. But if it means getting out of this place . . . “I’ve been studying up on modernism. I think I have a lot to say.”
“I just wish you could see people’s faces when you finish waxing eloquent about the force of anger evident in the brushstrokes and then use your cane to walk away.”
“Ah, but if I could see their faces, it wouldn’t be funny. Stay for tea?”
“Nah, I’ve gotta go sit in on an interview for a new security guard. His name is Liam. That sounds potentially hot, right?”
“He’s forty, pockmarked, and pudgy, and will instantly fill the room with so much lust you won’t be able to breathe the whole time you’re in there.”
“Pessimist. Wait—did you actually see him?” She hesitates, then sees my grin and slaps me lightly on the arm. “Jerk. I’ll come over when I’m done and tell you how blisteringly sexy he turns out to be. Love you. Bye.” The door shuts softly behind her.
I hum, halfheartedly trying to force myself to see a vision of the guy, just on the off chance it’ll work. Now that Eden’s gone I don’t have to worry about hiding my emotions so that she doesn’t know how scared I am, but I’d rather think about something else anyway.
I hear the door and almost ask Eden if she forgot something, but no. It’s not her.
“Hello, James,” I say, taking the kettle off the stove as its shrill song pierces the air. I don’t want him here today. I’ve woken up every day this week with a stress headache. Now my own personal stress headache is here to visit.
“How do you always know it’s me?” The couch springs creak as he sits, and he’ll mess up my pillows, as usual. He always puts them back wrong.
“You walk like an elephant.”
“I do not.”
“A cocky elephant. And you smell like a boy. You’re filling up my whole room with boy smell, and just when I was about to enjoy my tea, too.” That’s not true. He smells like oranges and midnight. He could be a flavor of tea.
He laughs, and in his laugh I understand why he works so well with the rest of the women around here. I’m the only one immune to him; being literally blind to his charms comes in handy. Probably why he doesn’t like me. That and he knows I’m more important to Fia than he’ll ever be. Which makes him hate me and want her all the more.
“Why are you here?” I reach for my mug and set it on the table, then pull a packet out from the tea jar and bring it to my nose. Hmmm, oolong, sweet and green, with a dollop of honey. Still won’t combat the James smell. It’ll linger in here all day, making the muscles at the back of my neck tense up. Eden will rub it for me, but not as well as Fia used to. I’ll ask James if she can visit when she gets back.
And I’ll hate him because Fia can only come if he says so.
“Do you need any help?” he asks. I roll my eyes. I practiced for months when we were younger, Fia coaching me so I could get it just right. She was my mirror back then. Anyway, James isn’t here to help me. I won’t ask him again why he’s come. I’ll ignore it until he bursts.
I sit at the table with my hands wrapped around the mug as the tea steeps, calmly pretending that it doesn’t bother me that he’s here, that I’m not terrified they’ve figured out I lied to Keane.
“Did you know?” His voice is rough with barely concealed anger.
My stomach flutters with fear. He could be talking about something else. “Did I know what? You forget I’m not a Reader, James. Your thoughts, thankfully, are a complete mystery to me.”
“Did you know Fia would get sent on the hit?”
I let out a breath, lean back heavily into my chair. Oh, Fia, Fia, what have they done with you this time? “I never know anything,” I snarl. “How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know. I see. And the seeing with Fia is never, ever accurate, because she’s constantly shifting things in her own favor and everything changes around her all the time.”
“So you had no idea she’d get picked for this job.”
They don’t know that I lied. Which means I’m safe, but Fia isn’t. “Why would you send her? What purpose can it possibly serve? You know how fragile she is!”
One of the chairs smashes to the ground and I flinch. I didn’t hear him get up. He can move silently when he wants to, and it frightens me.
“You’re the one who said this Adam needed to be taken out.”
“And you sent Fia? How could you do that? I never said Fia needed to do it! I watch for threats to your f
ather’s best interests, like you told me to. Adam was a threat. A huge, massive, all-consuming threat. Don’t you think that merits more than a seventeen-year-old girl?” How could they? How could they send Fia? After what it did to her last time . . .”
“My father thought it was the perfect real-world test for Fia. You had to have seen this coming. Can you see how she’s going to be when she gets back? Do you have any idea whether or not she’s in danger?”
I can feel him leaning in, too close to my bubble. He is heat and energy and anger. This is what I understand about him that the other girls don’t. Everything about James underneath his looks is anger. Fia says you can lie with your thoughts and emotions, but only the surface ones. And I never see surface.
“Well, I know she doesn’t die.” I narrow my eyes, daring him to challenge me on that. Death was my first vision. My own death was the vision that nearly destroyed Fia before. It’s the reason we’re here, the reason Fia is Keane’s puppet. The reason she isn’t safe.
I will see a world in which she is safe if it’s the last thing I do. “You tell me the second you see something with Fia. If anything happens to her . . .”
I take a sip of my tea, pray he can’t see my hand trembling, and raise an eyebrow. “If anything happens to her, I’ll never have to see for you again because there will be nothing left in the world I care about.”
“You’re not the only one who cares about her.”
“Do your lies really work with the Readers and the Feelers? Because I’m just a lowly Seer, and I know you’re not even fooling yourself.”
His phone rings, and the elephant feet are back, stomping to the door. “Screw you, Annabelle.”
“No, but thank you for offering.” I smile darkly as he slams the door behind him. And then I lean my head on the table next to my mug and cry. Why did they send her? What did she do? How can I watch out for her on paths I can’t see?
FIA’S MAD. I CAN FEEL IT IN THE WAY HER FINGERS squeeze mine. She doesn’t usually take my hand unless I hold it out to her first; she knows it annoys me, that I can find my way well enough. Besides which, we’re sitting down. I don’t know what she’s freaking out about.
The school representative continues in his fluid voice. It sounds cultured and smart. It sounds like a future. “Annabelle will, of course, be on full scholarship. The Keane Foundation provides a generous living for all our students in world-class dormitories, everything on-site that they could need, and each girl gets one-on-one curriculum consulting to ensure the best possible education and secure the brightest career path imaginable. We believe that there are no disabilities, merely different abilities, and that our students have a core of strength untapped by traditional education.”
Aunt Ellen coos, flipping through brochures that sound thick and expensive. In truth, she’s probably just as relieved as I am that I’ll be out from under her roof. Inheriting two sad, strange girls from her half sister was never in her life plan. But . . . I can’t leave Fia. How could I leave Fia?
No. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Maybe Fia’s life will be easier if I’m not around. If she doesn’t have to worry about all the things I don’t see—and, worse, the things I do. Maybe a life without me is exactly what Fia needs.
And I could use a fresh start. I haven’t had a vision in months. Maybe it’s over. If I move away from people who know about me, maybe I can really be done with the seeing.
I don’t know if I want to be, though. Because without the visions, I don’t see anything at all. I still haven’t figured out if they make the darkness better or worse, but that doesn’t stop me from craving them.
The first one, the worst one, runs through my mind. Two years ago now. I was twelve, sitting on the couch. And then I was in a car somehow, my parents in the front seats, the radio on softly in the background with too much static—how was I in the car? What was going on? How could I see? I tried to open my mouth, to tell my parents I was there, I could see, I was seeing for the first time in eight years! But nothing happened. And then everything happened—there was a horrible noise of metal twisting and groaning, glass flying everywhere, the whole world turning and spinning and smashing the car.
And my parents.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in the darkness, screaming. My parents were gone, out on a date. Fia tried to calm me down, figure out what I was talking about. I freaked the babysitter out so much she called my parent’s cell for them to come right home. They never made it.
And the worst part of all, the part that haunts me the most, is wondering if seeing what I saw caused the accident.
Since then it’s happened a few more times—sight suddenly flooding my midnight world. Broken snatches of the future, the present, or I don’t even know. I don’t want to know. My eyes are worthless.
“Annie,” Fia whispers, startling me as our aunt talks with the man—John? Daniel? I’ve forgotten his name already. She whispers low enough that she knows only I’ll hear. “There’s something wrong with this. Something bad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s not—I can’t explain it. Don’t do it. This is wrong.”
“Excuse me, girls? Do you have a question?” I can hear his smile. It sounds like confidence. I wonder if he’s handsome. I think he is. I wonder if I’m beautiful. Fia says I am, but she is the best liar in the world.
“Yes, actually.” Fia answers him, her voice filled with fists. “I have a lot of questions. Aunt Ellen, can you wait outside?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she says, her voice pinched with disapproval. She’s worried Fia will mess this up for her, that the school will realize I’m not just blind, I’m also crazy, and then they won’t want me.
“No, it’s no problem,” Daniel/John answers. “I’m more than happy to answer Sofia’s questions privately. Why don’t you go meet with my assistant and get some of the preliminary forms filled out? That’s the one downside to all this—so much paperwork!” He laughs and my aunt pads out of the room, closing the door with a soft snick.
“So.” He sounds less professional and more amused. “What is it you have questions about?”
“This is a load of crap.”
“Fia!” I hiss.
“Why would you say that?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She sounds angry, frustrated with herself. “If I knew why, I’d tell you. Annie, please, listen to me. This is a bad idea. I feel sick. We should leave. We’ll be fine. The school can bring in more braille texts, and we’re doing okay, right? Together? We need to stay together. Please.”
I open my mouth to answer her—because now I feel sick, too, only I feel sick because I want to go to this school more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I have nothing here. I will only ever be the blind sister, the poor blind orphan. At a school like this, I could be Annie. I could figure out who Annie is besides the blindness. But I can’t leave Fia behind. Ever.
Before I say anything, John/Daniel speaks. “You feel sick about this? Can you describe the feeling?”
“No, I can’t describe the feeling,” she snaps. “All I know is that this is a bad idea and you’re a liar and I should keep Annie far, far away from you and your stupid school.”
He stands, and I can hear the smile slide back into his voice. “You’re twelve, correct? You know, Sofia, we like girls with independent spirits. I can see that you two are a package deal. How would you feel about joining your sister? And I should tell you that the Keane Foundation has a lot of ties in the medical community; we would immediately start researching to see if there is a way to reverse Annabelle’s retinopathy—the condition that caused her blindness.”
I squeeze Fia’s hand, my heart stopped. A school. A new chance. And maybe, just maybe, new eyes that would see only what they were supposed to. “Please, please, oh please, come with me. Please come with me. You felt sick about it because we were going to be separated, but now we won’t! It’s perfect.”
“It’s sti
ll wrong,” she whispers, but I don’t let go of her hand. I won’t. I already know I’ll win this, because she always lets me win, and we’ll go together, and our lives will really start.
I CHECK THE THREE MEN—ALL ARE DOWN. WE NEED to go now. “Come on.”
I walk toward the other end of the alley, but Adam doesn’t follow. “What just happened?” he asks.
“Please,” I say through gritted teeth. “We need to get out of here. One of those guys was calling someone and I can’t fight anyone else.”
Adam still hesitates. He looks at the men and then at me, over and over again, like he is trying to put together a complicated puzzle.
“Please,” I say again. “They’re going to kill you. They already shot me. Please.”
And then, his eyes wide with shock, he runs to catch up with me. He doesn’t walk right next to me, but rather a few feet away and behind, wary. He’s decided I’m his best option. I hope he’s right.
“We need to call the cops.”
“No, we can’t. You need to be dead, Adam.”
“I—what?”
“I don’t know what those guys wanted with you. But the guys I work for want you dead. And if you aren’t dead, they’ll keep coming after you, and they’ll kill the only person I love in the whole world to punish me for not doing what they told me to. So as far as anyone is concerned, you are dead.”
He stops again. Please stop stopping, Adam, we don’t have time for this. “So you really were going to kill me?” He’s reacting calmly—too calmly, he’s probably in shock. He regards me with a strange sort of analytical intelligence in his face. I am still a puzzle. A violent puzzle.
I want to grab my arm, I know I need to slow the bleeding, but it will hurt so much more if I touch it. “Yes. Well, no. I was sent here to kill you. But I wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Obviously. Which is why we are both in this mess now.” I take a deep breath (it hurts, even breathing hurts, I wish I would pass out but I don’t have time to) and look straight up into his eyes. “I work for very, very bad people. And I am going to do whatever I can to keep you safe from them. I need you to help me keep you alive, okay?”
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