Nobody (20 page)

“They do that?”

Nix didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“Maybe that’s why they wanted you to kill me.”

“To test my loyalty?” Nix spat out the last word.

“I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that I couldn’t take the kinds of orders they gave you.”

It figured that Nix thought this was his fault and she thought it was hers. Claire guessed that maybe that was a Nobody’s lot in life. She barely even noticed the tremor that passed through Nix’s hands until it was too late.

He was upset about having killed people, and she’d just rubbed it in his face that when he’d told her to kill, she’d said no.

Go to bed. You’ll feel better tomorrow. You’ll do better tomorrow
.

“I’m going to go to bed.” Claire’s voice was so tiny that
she could hardly hear it, but Nix didn’t seem to have any trouble sorting out her words.

“I’m sorry.”

He was still apologizing. For sending her away. For making her cry.

“It’s okay,” Claire said, willing him to believe it—and willing herself to believe it, too. “You … there was a lot going on today. You didn’t mean it. Or maybe you did. It’s okay. I’ll be …”

I swear to God, if you say it one more time …

“… okay.”

He nodded, but Claire saw the indecision flicker across his face. Like he was thinking about saying something else.

“You can have the couch,” she offered. The look he gave her in return was nothing short of incredulous—with a side of disgust.

“Or I could take the couch,” she amended her previous statement. He nodded.

The last time they’d slept in close proximity to each other had been in the woods. On a bed of grass. Limbs so tangled that she almost couldn’t tell where her body ended and his began.

“Good night, Claire.”

She sighed and tried to manage a smile for him. “Good night, Nix.”

Nix couldn’t sleep. They’d gotten back to the cabin late. It was almost dawn now, and he still couldn’t sleep.

Couldn’t close his eyes without seeing a slideshow of everything he’d ever done. Every life he’d taken. Every syringe he’d emptied. Every hole he’d put in a stranger’s chest.

Eleven. From the psychopath in the bathtub to Sykes, there’d been eleven.

And interspersed with every one of those images was one of Claire. Smiling in her sleep. Laughing. Crying because of things he’d said to her.

I made her cry
.

In his mind, that sin bled into all of his others. She slept, and he kept watch. The way he had when he’d thought she was a Null.

Claire is curled into a ball. Claire is shifting onto one side. Claire is breathing out of her mouth
.

She was sad. He’d made her sad. And maybe that was easier to think about than the other thing. The thing he’d almost done to her.

The thing he’d done to others.

Wyler
.

Nix stood up. He had to move, to get away, but he couldn’t leave Claire. He had to watch her. He had to keep her safe, because she was right. The Society probably hadn’t put her life on the line in some kind of elaborate test of his loyalty. If they’d never sent him after her, he
never would have questioned that each name they slipped under his door belonged to someone who deserved to die.

By giving him her name, they’d taken a risk. Why?

Maybe they weren’t lying when they designated Code Omega. Maybe they do think she’s dangerous
.

Nix smiled wryly, and the motion hurt him, like his lips were going to slice straight through his face. Claire
was
dangerous, because she made him want things he wasn’t supposed to want.

Because after fewer than twenty-four hours’ practice, she could fade on cue and take a plethora of objects with her.

Because when the two of them touched in the fade, time literally stopped.

Because she’d never believed him about Nulls. Because even if someone was a Null, even if they were the worst kind of monster, Claire wouldn’t want them dead. She wouldn’t kill them without proof.

She’d ask questions, and she was good at asking the right ones.

Claire was powerful. Claire was smart. She was beautiful, and to The Society, she was a threat.

They only want the ones who don’t ask questions. The ones who will kill and kill and kill and feel good about it
.

Nix couldn’t make himself forget the rush. The adrenaline. The pride and the nausea and the fierce, indescribable, godlike feeling of watching life flicker and fade into nothing.

I liked it
.

I hated it, and I liked it, and I did it
. I
did
.

Nix saw his targets’ ghosts like they were standing there in front of him. Wyler and Sykes and God knows how many of the others. And then there were the bodies, the ones he’d found when he’d entered some of his marks’ homes. His marks’ victims, still alive and screaming for help from the basement.

And, God, he couldn’t regret killing the people who’d put them there.

If they’d only ever sent me after Nulls, I’d be okay
.

But they hadn’t. And he wasn’t. And he couldn’t stop seeing Claire’s face everywhere, even though the real Claire was only a few feet away. Even though he could have reached out and touched her, if he’d wanted to.

I have to do something. I have to
.

Since he couldn’t breathe life back into a decomposing body, Nix concentrated on the things that could be fixed.

I hurt Claire’s feelings. I made her sad
.

He couldn’t bear to let himself touch her. Couldn’t hold her. Couldn’t wipe away her tears. But he could do something to make her smile, to show that sorry wasn’t just a word.

Nix walked slowly over to the far side of the cabin. To the books she’d placed, just so on the floor. The ones she’d tried to line up and had settled for stacking.

It wasn’t much.

It wasn’t enough.

But he could do it for her.

Claire woke to the sound of quiet, muted cursing. Rolling over onto her side, she peeked out from under her blanket and saw Nix … speaking very vehemently to a piece of lumber. He had a knife in one hand and he was digging it into the wood, notching it, carving out a … what?

Claire had no idea what he was doing. As silently as she could, she propped herself up on one arm, to get a better view. This time, she saw more wood; he must have gotten it from the pile outside.

The pile under the porch, where she’d stashed his weapons two days earlier. Claire’s throat tightened. Her heart jumped into it.

I guess he found the weapons
.

That explained where Nix had gotten the knife, but it didn’t explain what he was doing. He’d carved one end of the plank down to a cube shape, a thick tab that stuck out from the end of the board. A second, identical board sat to his left, and Nix turned his attention to a third, digging his knife in, carving a square-shaped hole.

Claire’s heartbeat slowed, and the rush of adrenaline she’d felt the moment she’d seen the knife in Nix’s hand began to fade. He wasn’t hunting anything. He wasn’t
hurting anything. He was building … something. She wasn’t sure what.

Careful not to draw his attention to herself, she lay back down, resting her head on her arms. He’d be upset if he knew that he’d woken her up, and even though she had no idea what time it was—her days and nights were completely turned around—Claire got the distinct feeling that whatever he was doing, Nix had hoped to finish it before she woke up.

I’m not supposed to be watching him
.

It seemed right that she was, though. Like turnaround was fair play, because he was always watching her. And in the little motions—the turn of a knife, the appraisal of the boards’ positions, the way he fit them together, sliding the tabs into the holes—Claire saw a beautiful, soothing rhythm. Like this was the closest Nix could come to dancing outside the fade.

Time passed. Nix kept working. Claire kept watching. And then he finished. He stepped back, and Claire saw a shelf. A very uneven, unsteady, three-board shelf that sat on the floor, its purpose unclear until Nix crouched back down next to it, and one by one, moved the books she’d stolen from the library into place.

A bookshelf
.

He hadn’t slept all night, all day. Instead, he’d stayed up and with a hunting knife and rotting old wood, he’d built her a bookshelf.

As he put the last book in place with careful, tender hands, Claire sat up on her knees, the blanket balled in her fist.

He built me a bookshelf
.

She forgot to breathe. So by the time he turned around, in addition to being frozen in place, she was a little bit dizzy.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” he said, putting his hands into his pockets, averting his gaze.

Claire finally remembered how to inhale. “You built me a bookshelf,” she said, because those were the only words—the sum total of words that she had.

“You like books,” Nix said, still not looking directly at her. “They shouldn’t have to sit on the floor.”

“You built me a bookshelf.”

“It’s not a very good one.”

“But you
built me a bookshelf
—and what do you mean it’s not a very good one?” Claire felt rather like someone had insulted her firstborn child. “It’s perfect.”

It was crooked, and the wood was rough, and the books weren’t really much higher off the floor than they’d been before,
and it was perfect
.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry. At the library.” He brought his eyes back to meet hers, slowly, as if he was reserving the right at any point to jerk his gaze away.

“I love it.”

“The crying?” Nix asked, his brow wrinkling.

“No. The bookshelf.”

He knows I like books. He saw me try to stand them up. He wanted to make me happy. So he built me a bookshelf
.

Now remembering to breathe wasn’t as much of a challenge as forcing her tightening chest to let her do so.

In.

And out.

In.

And out.

“Thank you, Nix. No one’s ever made me anything before.” She should have just stuck with
you made me a bookshelf
, because no other words really seemed to do it justice.

“You’re welcome. Claire.”

There was something in the way he spaced the words that told her he’d debated whether or not he should say her name.

Whether or not he deserved to say it.

Beautiful, broken boy. He built me a bookshelf. He can barely bring himself to say my name
.

“You look tired,” she said. “You didn’t sleep at all.”

It wasn’t a question, and he shrugged in response.

“You need to sleep.” Claire couldn’t chase away his ghosts. She couldn’t change his past. She couldn’t do any of the things she’d hoped that, after a good night’s sleep, would magically just come. But she could take care of him.

Make him sleep.

Do a little something that counted big.

She slid over on the couch and gestured that he should join her. He took a step backward, and for the first time, she didn’t, even subconsciously, take it as an insult. Instead, she slipped off the couch, so that he could sit down without worrying about touching her.

“I slept. Your turn.”

After three seconds, or four, he acceded. Walked over to the couch. Sat down. “I don’t sleep,” he said, talking to himself as much as to her. “Not anymore.”

Claire wondered what—or who—he saw when he closed his eyes. “You don’t have to close your eyes. Just lie back.”

Nix did as he was told, and Claire, still feeling like there was a land mine in her stomach, like she might explode with bookshelf joy and awe at any moment, walked over to her present. Knelt down next to it. And picked a book up off the shelf. And then she sat down across the room from Nix, a mountain of space between them, and she read.

About the little prince and a rose with thorns and a wild fox that explained to the little prince what it meant to be tamed. She kept reading, the familiar words the closest thing she could manage to a lullaby.

Nix’s eyes opened wide as he realized what she was doing, and he listened raptly, as if no one had ever read him a story, as she expected no one had. And slowly, Nix’s body relaxed. His eyes closed.