Perfect Lies (17 page)

I laugh. “You’ll get no argument on that point. I’m so, so glad you are here.”

“Me, too. But they’re going to start wondering why you need so much help in the bathroom. I’ll head back and volunteer to stick with Adam and Rafael. Rafael thinks I’m very attractive—which I am, obviously—so he won’t have an issue with it.”

“Wait, when you said you were going to try to feel out Rafael better, did you mean emotionally, or did you mean literally?”

Her laugh is downright evil as she closes the door and leaves me in the bathroom.

Already missing her, I follow a few minutes later.

“I go with Annie and Sadie,” Cole says.

“I think you’ve earned a vacation,” Rafael says. “After what happened to Sarah. I know how close you two were. Nathan can get Annie and Sadie to a safe house.”

“No!” My response is too strong and too fast, but I can’t help it. “No offense, Nathan, but I don’t like you.”

“Why would that offend me?” he asks, voice dark.

“I’d rather be with Cole. Is that okay, Sadie?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Is it?”

“She’s nodding,” Eden says. “Sweetie, you’ve got to remember to say yes or no. Okay. I feel like we should have a team cheer or something.” She pulls me into a hug and I squeeze her as tight as I can.

“Take care of yourself,” she says.

“You, too.”

Adam gives me a quick hug, and then Rafael gives me a much less quick hug. “Are you sure?” he whispers against my ear.

“I’m sure. I owe it to Sadie.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Let’s get going,” Cole says. He takes my elbow and the three of us walk out of the room.

I try to broach the subject as casually as I can while Cole is out buying food and supplies. “Hey, Sadie, you want the first shower?” It’s been a week since we left Rafael and co., and we’ve been traveling in a random pattern, never deciding beforehand where we’ll go. Cole wants to give us a few weeks of unpredictability before we settle at a safe house.

Sadie has not showered once.

I’ve tried to draw her out into conversation to no avail. She’s like traveling with a ghost. A ghost with BO.

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have my gloves.”

I frown. “You need gloves for the shower?”

“I can’t touch myself.”

“I’m sorry. I really don’t understand.”

“When I touch myself, I see things. It hurts. I don’t want to see them. I had shower gloves at home, so I wasn’t touching my own skin. It’s not as bad as when I touch other people, but it’s still too much.”

I sit on the bed across from her. “Wait, you see things when you touch people?”

“Yes.”

“So when I touched your face …”

“She killed you.” Sadie moves closer, her voice getting more intense. “She killed you—I saw it. And then that other girl, the one who looks like you, killed her. The things I see, they never change. Never. So how come you’re not dead?”

I smile sadly. “That other girl? She’s my sister. Fia has a way of changing things. She can’t help it. Nothing’s ever set in stone where Fia’s concerned.”

“So your visions …”

I shrug. “They aren’t always right. Sometimes I see them wrong. Sometimes they change.”

“It’s not fate, then. What you see.” Hope lightens her voice, just a bit.

“I don’t think so. And I’ll get you some shower mitts. When you need things, please ask. If anyone understands weird requests, it’s us.”

She’s quiet, and then she hurriedly says, “I’m nodding. Thank you.”

When Cole returns, Sadie’s made a list for him, and he goes right back out. By the time he’s finished it’s late, but the shower is running and I collapse on the bed, relieved. “Oh, thank goodness. Being in a car with her was horrible. Poor little thing.”

Cole sighs, and I feel the bed shift as he sits next to me. “Every time she touches anyone? Including herself?”

“Yup. Sucks to be her.”

His breathing slows, gets even, and I think he’s falling asleep. I take a pillow and start sliding off the bed, but his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. “I’ll take the floor,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’m sorry for so much more. I know how stressed out I make you. And—” My throat catches. “I’m so sorry about Sarah. I can’t help feeling like it was my fault. Please don’t tell me it wasn’t.”

Cole’s voice comes out softer than I’ve ever heard it. There’s no edge, none of the sharp steel and stone I know in it. “I’m sorry about her, too. But it wasn’t your fault.”

He lets go of my wrist and moves to the floor. Lying on the bed, I have a sudden, overwhelming urge to crawl off and curl up next to him. It hits me how much I’ve come to depend on him, but it’s different than it was with Fia. I feel like depending on him makes me stronger, not more helpless.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and the words hang on the air between us. It’s not enough, but I can’t figure out how to voice anything else.

By the time Sadie comes out I’m half asleep, but the scent of shampoo and soap makes me smile as I drift off.

I’m woken as light bursts behind my eyes.

In the vision, Sadie is on a black leather couch in a window-lined room. There’s a glass door open to a balcony overlooking a skyscraper-filled skyline. She’s curled into the corner of the couch, legs tucked protectively in front of her chest. Her face is empty as she stares at the floor.

A heavy door opens and two people enter the room. One, carefully handsome James, something tight and frightened around his eyes but not showing in his broad smile.

The other is Phillip Keane.

And then a third person comes in and my heart twists to see Fia, my Fia, but something is wrong with her. She looks from Sadie to Phillip Keane and back again, slides along the wall next to the door. James gives her a sharp, expectant expression.

The line of her eyes shifts them into a shape I don’t recognize.

Something is very,
very
wrong with Fia.

Phillip Keane smiles his soulless robot smile, and says, “Hello, Sadie.”

Fia spasms once, twice, as though she can’t quite move. Then she pushes Phillip Keane out of the way, jumps in front of Sadie, and stabs her in the chest.

Sadie looks down, her eyes sad but not surprised.

“She was going to—” Fia stands up straight, drops the knife. “She was going to—kill— she was going to kill …” Fia looks back at James, her blue eyes pleading and impossibly sad, and then something in them dies. Fia’s expression drops away and she drifts to the balcony.

“Fia?” James says, his voice tight with panic.

Fia climbs onto the stone railing and jumps off.

I DON’T CALL JAMES UNTIL I’M OUT ON THE SIDEWALK,
weaving through the masses of people, losing my security tail without much effort.

“Why didn’t you answer?” He sounds panicked.

“I was in the middle of something.”

“We’re dead. It’s over.”

I stop where I am; someone cusses me out as they almost walk into me but I don’t care. Pixie. Pixie betrayed us. It feels wrong, I should have felt it, should have known. I am broken.

James is still talking. “—my father agreed to a meeting. He says Rafael Marino contacted him, said he has a Seer who can force visions on demand.
Rafael
.” He swears, and I should be surprised but I’m not. Rafael is definitely Lerner, then. Pixie didn’t betray us.

I betrayed her.

Better sooner than later.

“But you two were working together,” I say as calmly as I can.

There’s a pause, a pause I can fill with James scrambling to decide what lie to fill this hole with. He can’t. There are too many holes, their edges are all meeting up, it’s too big now.

“Did Mae tell you that? She’s a liar, Fia. She’s trying to come between us. I hate Rafael, you know that. I should have killed him when I had the chance,” James says. “But it’s Sadie he’s got, it has to be.” The subject change is not lost on me. “He’s bringing her in, trying to make some sort of deal. The meeting is already set; my father called me to come back for it. If he gets her, it’s all over.”

I push someone to the side, force my way to where I can lean up against the streetlamp-lit exterior of a building. I close my eyes, try to feel it out, but I can’t feel anything. I’m dead inside. “We can work around it.”

“We can’t! There are too many things we’re already hiding. I know where Adam is.”

“Adam?” Gray eyes. Sweet and gentle Adam. Safe and hidden Adam. Safe and hidden like Annie. Both with Lerner, both with Rafael, who has been playing this whole thing for months while I’ve been running around mindlessly, not even knowing the game I was losing.

NOTHING I CAN CONTROL NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING.

James talks fast, and I can hear the rhythm in his voice from his pacing. “Adam was my big North Dakota surprise. He was working in a custom lab, set up by Rafael. Apparently Annie and Eden were living nearby, but he wouldn’t say where and I didn’t have time to find them. All your dead friends in one place. I tried to call Rafael and bargain, using Adam as leverage, but he wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t need him now that he has Sadie. I can only hide so many things before a Feeler or a Reader or a Seer catches us. And if Sadie comes in, we won’t be able to hide anything at all.”

I sink down the side of the wall, sit on the sidewalk. “What do we do?”

There’s a pause, a long pause, a pause I fill with wondering what Adam and James talk about. It would be funny, really, picturing them in a conversation any other time. They could talk about brains. Compare notes about whether I’m a good kisser. Rafael could join that conversation, too. Or maybe they’d just play video games.

“I have an idea,” James says, and everything in my head explodes with wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I am sick with it, lost to gravity, unmoored. I dig my toes into the concrete, try to curl them into the ground through my shoes.

“Fia, are you still there?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“We’re in this together. Forever. This is the only way we can do this. We’re close, we’re on the edge, we just need a little more time. A little more time and we’ll be done.”

James. My James. He is the only person I have left. Pixie said … Pixie lied. James is ending this, not starting it again. A little more time.

“And this is the only way to make sure Annie stays safe,” he adds. “My father can’t know she’s alive.”

“Yes,” I whisper again.

“You have to kill Sadie.”

The tapping in my skull is so loud I don’t know if I heard him right. “I have to kill Sadie,” I repeat.

“Yes. It’s the only way. Now that my father knows Sadie exists, he’ll never stop until he has her. And we already have the answer with what you did when Casey tried to kill him. Tomorrow, during the meeting. He trusts you, trusts your instincts. You kill Sadie, slip a weapon into her clothes, and then tell him you had the same feeling. You had a feeling that she was going to try to kill him. Tell him Rafael set it all up. It’ll be easy.”

“It’ll be easy.” I think I’m laughing. Am I laughing? Someone pauses, hovers above me, asks if I’m okay. I can’t look up, can’t stop laughing, can’t breathe.

“Go to the hotel. I’ll be home in two hours. Don’t talk to
anyone
, and stay away from the office.”

The tapping gets louder and I want to get out of my head, need to get out of my head. I picture a drill going through my skull, making a hole to release the pressure from the tapping the tap tap tap tapping the tap tap tap tapping that never stops.

“I can’t.” The words slam out of me, a desperate gasp. “I can’t, James.”

“You can. It’s to protect Annie. You’ve killed to protect Annie before. This is the same thing. If you don’t do this, the other deaths have no meaning. No reason.”

“Not like this … I didn’t walk into a room knowing I was about to kill an innocent girl. I didn’t want to, I never wanted to, I never planned to … James, I never planned to. I didn’t think. If I could go back, if I could undo them, if …”

Clarice’s dead eyes, soft Sarah’s brown eyes, they’ve never stopped staring at me, they’ll never stop staring at me. I chose that. I didn’t want to choose it, I didn’t think about it, but I chose it.

I can’t choose this, I can’t I can’t I can’t.

“You can’t go back. You can never go back. And this is the only way to go forward.”

“Please,” I say, and I am definitely not laughing I am crying, “Please don’t ask me to do this.”

There’s a long silence, and I think he’s crying with me. I want him to be. “Fia, love. You chose me. You chose us. That was the right choice. You make the choices you need to, because you are strong when no one else is. You make the hard choices.”

I nod. I chose him. If I chose him, he had to be the right choice. I wouldn’t love him if it weren’t right.

“This is the only way for us. You have to do this. For us, for my mother, for every girl my father has hurt. To save all the ones he will hurt. We’ll save them.”

To save them. To save Annie. To save Adam. To save James. Kill Sadie to save them.

“Okay,” a voice says, and I think it’s mine.

“Okay. Okay. We’ll be okay. Go home. I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’re going to be okay, Fia. I love you.”