Текст книги "Never Fade "

Автор книги: Alexandra Bracken

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

He must have already been out looking for us. We met him on the path, just as it curved into the campsite. The kid was a mess of sleepy eyes and rumpled clothes; his brain must not have fully warmed up yet, because he hadn’t thought to put on a coat or shoes despite the frigid temperature.

“What?” he cried, looking between us. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t even believe you,” Liam rasped. “What the hell kind of game are you playing here?”

Chubs blinked. “What are you…?”

“I know everything!” Liam stalked over to him, still breathing hard from the climb back up the trail. “How long were you planning on keeping this from me? The League. Really? Jesus—you’re supposed to be the smart one! You made a deal with them?”

“Oh.” Chubs rubbed a hand over the tufts of his dark hair and blew out a long, exasperated sigh. I had about three seconds to deflect Liam’s anger back on me before Chubs said something he’d really regret.

“Yes, that!” Liam charged up into the campsite, stalking over to the smothered fire. He wouldn’t let me get close enough to so much as share his breathing space.

“Will you please listen to me?” I asked. “It was all my idea—all of it. Your brother sent us to find the flash drive, and in the process we found your friend. We agreed that if we helped him find you, we wouldn’t turn any information about you over to the League. And we’d help you get to California to find Zu.”

At first I assumed the wide-eyed look Chubs flashed my way was because he’d been shocked at my ability to turn out one lie after another. But some part of me must have known, even as I said it, that I’d picked the wrong nail to hammer home.

“And you know that how?” Liam demanded. “And you know her how, exactly?”

I swallowed, wrapping my arms around my center, my mind spinning through excuses, each one worse than the next.

“Answer me!”

I flinched. “I just…have heard stories—from Chubs, I mean.”

Liam spun toward Chubs, his face burning with anger and disbelief. “What else did you tell her?”

“Nothing! Lee, you have to calm down—please, sit down. Listen.”

“I can’t believe you! Don’t you realize they have ways of tracking her down? Do you want them to take her in? Zu—we promised that we’d—I thought—”

“He didn’t tell me anything about her, other than you were traveling together for a while,” I said calmly. Liam had been protective of all of us in different ways, but Zu had been a special case.

“Stay out of this, Green!” He was still wholly focused on Chubs. “What else did you tell her? What else did she get out of you?”

I jerked back, one single word throwing me off balance.

“What did you just call her?” Chubs interrupted. Of course he had caught it, too.

“What? I’m not allowed to use her name now?” he demanded. The look on his face was ripe with derision. “What do you want me to call you? What clever codename did the League think up for you? Pumpkin? Tiger? Tangerine?”

“You called me Green,” I said.

“No I didn’t,” he said. “Why the hell would I call you that? I know what you are.”

“You did,” Chubs insisted. “You called her Green. You really don’t remember?”

My heart shattered the ice around it, slamming against my rib cage, beating harder with every minute of silence that followed. The anger had left him quickly, replaced by confusion that bloomed into an open, barefaced fear as he looked between us.

“It’s okay,” I said, holding up my hands in a weak attempt to placate him, “it’s fine. You can call me whatever you want; it really doesn’t matter.…”

“Are you messing with him? Are you forcing him to play nice with you?” Liam asked. His face was flushed, and it almost seemed like his anger was edging into anxiety. He was looking at his friend and seeing a stranger.

I couldn’t keep up with his flip-flopping moods, and I suddenly wondered if it was even worth the energy to try. The memory of what had happened when he’d found me down by the falls evaporated like mist in the sunlight. Maybe I had imagined it altogether.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Chubs said. “After what happened at East River? Do I need to remind you that while Clancy Gray turned you into his little poodle, he couldn’t even touch me?”

“I don’t… What?” Liam’s breath exploded out of him. “What are you talking about?”

Oh, I thought, damn.

When I had gone in and pulled myself out of Liam’s memories, I’d had to…tweak a few of them, otherwise they wouldn’t have made sense. The night we tried leaving East River had been one of them, because the whole terrifying episode had been sparked by my letting my guard down and trusting Clancy when I shouldn’t have. I was a crucial part of that story.

But now—what had I slipped into its place? Had I just erased that night completely? My mind was spinning, trying to dig up what images I had pushed into that vacant space, but everything was black, and black, and black.

Chubs turned to look at me with a glare that could have incinerated a mountain.

“What are you looking at her for?” Liam exploded. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here, and with them!”

“We were trying to find you!” Chubs said. “All of us just wanted to help you!”

“Oh, for f**k’s sake,” came Vida’s shrill voice from inside the tent. “Can you two shut the hell up and just go back to spooning? We don’t need to hear this same shitty argument for the tenth f**king time before five A.M.!”

Jude made a very valiant effort to shush her, but the damage was done.

“You—you—I can’t—” Chubs sputtered, too furious to form an actual sentence. “Come out here. Right now!”

“Come and get me, big boy,” she sang back. “I know I don’t have the parts you like, but we can always make it work.”

“Oh, like a functioning brain?” he shouted.

“Chubs!” I snapped. He knew what she was like—he was only playing into her hands. “Vida, please come out. You too, Jude.”

She exited the tent with a blanket wrapped around her like a queen’s flowing robe. The effect was soured by the fact her fading blue hair was sticking straight up on either side of her head like horns. Jude didn’t look much better—I don’t know that I had ever seen such dark rings under his eyes. He slouched out after her in his EMT jacket, taking a seat on the opposite side of the fire pit.

“I’m not gonna change my mind, so don’t even start spinning your little yarn about how great the League is, how wonderful the agents are,” Liam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell Cole to go screw himself. I don’t need him—or you—to take care of me!”

“Says the kid who was two steps away from death’s grasping fingers when we found him,” Vida said, rolling her eyes. “You’re f**king welcome, by the way.”

“I promise that we don’t have any other motivation beside getting the flash drive and seeing our end of the deal through,” I told him, watching his chest heave with the effort to get enough air in. It was easier to talk to him like he was a stranger. And as pale, as thin, as unshaven and dirty as he was, it wasn’t hard to imagine him as one.

This is not Liam, I thought. Something’s wrong.

“Is that a fact?” Liam said coldly. “I didn’t ask for any of this, and the last thing I’d ever want is to be babysat by someone like you.”

It took me a second longer than the others to realize that last zinger was for me.

“Hey!” Jude cut in. “We’re just trying to help. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

“Lee, you’re being dramatic,” Chubs began.

“And you—God, it’s like you get a new pair of glasses, a car, and some tech and you think you’re Rambo in the jungle. I never thought you would play along with this.”

“If he trusts us,” Jude tried again, “why can’t you?”

“The League?” Liam let out a single bark of laughter. “Are you all really that stupid?”

He held up a hand to silence whatever Vida was about to say. “They talk about rehabilitation and do nothing but hold kids hostage. They talk about training kids to defend themselves, and then turn around and send them off to be killed. Either we’re in camps, or we’re with the League, or we’re on the run, and it’s not even a choice. You wanna know what I want? A choice. Just one. And this is me making it. You might be okay heading back into the arms of those murderers, but I’m staying the hell away from them. From you.”

With that, he shouldered past Chubs and me and started heading back down the same path to the falls. Chubs glanced sideways at me, but I kept my eyes on Liam as I lowered myself down onto the stump, rubbing absently at the row of stitches on my lower back.

“You really think he wants me going after him this time?” I asked.

Chubs sighed, rubbing his hands briskly over his arms, and followed his friend down the trail. Neither of them got far; if I stood on my toes, I could see where Liam stood, leaning heavily against a tree. At first, it looked like Chubs was keeping a careful distance, not wanting to provoke Liam’s temper again. But he must have said something, apologized, because in the next moment, Chubs was standing close to him, one hand on Liam’s back, the other pointing back in our direction.

“I can’t believe he said all that bullshit,” Vida groused. “This kid has more mood swings than a toddler’s birthday party.”

“I didn’t realize he hated us that much.…” Jude said.

“He doesn’t hate you,” I promised, still watching the boys. “He hates the League. He thinks we’re better off without them—that we don’t need them.”

“Well, he needed us,” Vida said, “right around the time when he was drowning in his own mucus.”

Jude was quiet, even as he watched me watch the others. When I glanced back to ask him what was wrong, he only looked away and busied himself with digging Chubs’s coat out of the tent. I forced myself to sit on one of the tree stumps around the fire pit, my entire brain throbbing in time with my pulse.

It was ten more minutes before Chubs and Liam made their way back over to us. Chubs was still shaking his head, clearly frustrated. Liam kept his own face down, avoiding all of us. The biting wind or embarrassment had turned the tips of his ears red. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets as he shuffled forward, past us, toward the tent.

“He agreed to stay for now,” Chubs said. “He does want to go to California to find Zu, but he doesn’t want any of you to be able to tail us—we’ll probably have to split up before we hit state lines.”

“That kid’s a few colors short of a rainbow, isn’t he?” Vida said, rolling her eyes. Jude huddled in close to the two of them, passing the coat over to a grateful, shivering Chubs. “Be sure to send us a postcard when you get your asses caught and hauled back into a camp.”

“I’ll keep working on him,” Chubs promised. “He just needs to cool down.”

“I know,” I said. “Thank you.”

But I knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

TWENTY-THREE

NATURAL FALLS STATE PARK was located in Oklahoma, in what most considered the highlands of the Ozarks—right up in the northeast corner of the state, where it was really freaking cold in December. Chubs gave me a brief tour of the campsite as we made our way back to the others. A few picnic tables here and there, RV parking, a number of hiking trails that looped around one another. The only thing that really mattered was that the campsite was deserted.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked, tossing another branch on the growing fire.

“I’m fine. I just want to know what happened.”

I scooted, giving him half of the stump so he wouldn’t have to sit in the snow, and threw one end of the blanket over his shoulder, drawing him in close. He still smelled faintly of laundry detergent and hand sanitizer, only now I could pick up earthy scents, too—the kind that gave away just how many nights he’d slept on the ground without a shower in between. The poor kid probably felt like he was dying.

“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath.

They knew, right away, that something was wrong when Olivia’s half of the team came back alone. She and her group of ten had made it back mostly unscathed, with as many supplies as they could carry over the water. Brett didn’t appear for another two hours, struggling through the soaking parking lot with Jude still draped over his shoulder. His team hadn’t fared so well—only five of them had made it back, and I wasn’t included in that total.

“I showed Olivia how to give the kids the medicine the right way, dosed Lee, and then we carried him out to the car. We spent most of the night driving around, trying to pick up an Internet signal to download an update from the skip-tracer network. We all were so sure the PSFs had grabbed you.”

“Almost,” I whispered, but didn’t think he could hear me.

Even before they found a connection to hook into, Cate had sent a message through the Chatter. It turned out that when you got snapped by a profiler, the device the PSF snapped in my face, it not only brought your listing up for the PSF or skip tracer’s viewing pleasure. It also automatically updated that same listing with time and location stamps on both the PSF and skip-tracer networks.

That’s how Rob knew to look in that area, I thought.

“But how did you know to look for Rob in the first place?”

“We didn’t at first. He was under a fake name.” Chubs glanced down at where his fingers were laced together. “He updated the skip-tracer network to say that you were recovered. Once that happened, I could look up his profile—see what car he’d registered and the license plate. We weren’t too far from the area, but I’m still amazed we kept it together long enough to find you. After we found you we came here—we’ve been camped out for almost four days.”

“Thanks,” I said after a small stretch of silence, “for not giving up on me.”

“You seriously thought we would?” he asked. “That we wouldn’t have done everything and anything we could to find you?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “It’s just…” Maybe it would have been better if you had let them take me. The buzz in my ears drowned out the world, and I felt the first touch of panic creep back in. “If he’s this unhappy with us around, it might be for the best to split up.”

“No. It doesn’t make sense,” Chubs said. “I can’t keep up with his moods. He was freaking out when we found you—it was a full-on meltdown. I’ve never seen him like that before. Maybe some part of him figured out you guys were League before you told him…that’s the only thing I can think of that would explain why he’s acting like this. The Liam I knew wouldn’t have wanted to abandon a bunch of kids if he thought we all could get along—I mean, you’re proof of that. But it’s like, ever since he started feeling better, he’s been jumpy. Irritable.”

“He has no reason to trust us,” I said. “I understand why.”

“Look, I’m not going to choose,” Chubs said. “I can’t let him go on his own again, but I’m not going to leave you, either. So you have to find a way to make this work, got it? You have to get him to trust you. Wait—why are you shaking your head?”

“I meant what I told him,” I said. “It wasn’t the full truth, but it’s the best I can do. I’m going to help you guys get wherever it is you decide you want to go, then head back to Cole to finish this.”

Chubs’s grip on me tightened, but it was the shock and hurt and fear he let off that choked me up while I struggled to speak.

“You know…you know how important this is. I feel like if I’m not there to make sure it happens, if I don’t see for myself what caused this”—I motioned between us—“I’ll never forgive myself. If I can’t…if I can’t be around Liam anymore, I can at least do that for him. That was his dream, remember?”

“No,” he whispered, “I can’t do this again—it can’t be the way it was with Zu, the way it was the last six months. I know it’s selfish, but I have to know you’re safe, and you’ll never be safe with them. At least think about that, okay? Give me a chance to change your mind, too.”

No, I thought, giving him a weak, reassuring smile. Even if Liam didn’t look at me with such hate in his eyes, even if he had kissed me down by the falls, none of it would have mattered. I wasn’t the blank slate I’d been when Liam, Chubs, and Zu found me. I had done things I was ashamed of then, sure, but now I’d gone to a place I couldn’t come back from, and there was too much light in them to drag them there with me.

“We’ll see,” I said, squeezing his fingers, “we’ll see.”

Despite the fact he had no maps and no way of downloading any kind of update from the skip-tracer network to navigate us, Chubs still pushed to have us move out of the park as quickly as we could. We’d have one more night to rest, then start driving west again first thing in the morning.

I doubted it was because he was in any hurry to get to California. Chubs had reached his absolute breaking point for being able to handle this kind of cold—both physically and on an emotional level. I wasn’t sure what Vida was going to do if she got one more lecture about hypothermia, but I imagined it probably involved holding Chubs, the fire pit, and one well-aimed push. She hadn’t figured out that it wasn’t himself that he was worried about.

The cold weather was wreaking havoc on Liam’s lungs. He was huffing, and puffing, and hacking, and coughing every time he tried to increase his pace above a hobble. Instead of trying to gather the scattered supplies, he crouched down next to Jude and helped him stoke the fire, debating whether Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. was a better album than Born to Run.

Finished with that, they went to the backseat of the SUV to fish out more layers to pile on. Without a second thought to it, Liam reached down for his old leather jacket and slipped it on over the thinner dark gray one.

“But that’s—” Jude started to protest. I shook my head sharply in his direction and ducked away before Liam could turn and see what caused him to clam up. I made it a point to give him space after that, going right when he’d go left, always keeping the fire between us. By the time Jude started hinting strongly he needed to be fed dinner, Liam seemed to have relaxed. Enough, at least, to crack a smile when Chubs tripped and went down with a squawk, sending the food rations in his arms flying.

“I was wondering what happened to this stuff,” I said as I helped him gather up the foil packets again.

“We had to leave most of it behind,” Chubs said as we made our way back to where the others were hunkered down around the fire pit. “It was mostly what we could stuff in our pockets. It’s been enough—okay, who wants what?”

“I’ll take one of the Chinese fig bars if you see one,” Jude said.

“The French trail mix,” Vida said. “Silver packet.”

“Did anyone ever figure out where this stuff came from?” I asked. “Or why it was just there, going to waste?”

“We decided to chalk that one up to the president being a sneaky ass**le and the rest of the world not sucking half as badly as we thought it did,” Vida said. “The end.”

All along, President Gray had been insistent in his weekly addresses that Americans were pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and taking care of themselves and their countrymen. He made it a point, time and time again, to nail the United Nations for the economic sanctions they put on the country. No one did business with us, so we would have to do business with one another. No one would send in financial relief, so the few people who hadn’t lost the bulk of their fortunes when the markets crashed were the ones who would have to donate. Americans would help Americans.

The United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany—they just do not understand the American way, he once said. They weren’t affected by IAAN; they didn’t feel the razor’s edge of our pain. I watched him on one of the TVs in the atrium, back at HQ, his face looking older and grayer than it had just a week before. It looked like he was sitting in the old Oval Office, but Nico had pointed out the glow around the edge of the image, which pointed to the use of some kind of green screen. For a guy with endless opportunities for protection, he hadn’t been back in DC since the first bombings—he just moved from one Manhattan high-rise to the next.

They do not understand that certain sacrifices must be made in times like these, Gray had continued. That we can rise above it, given time and dedication. We are Americans, and we will do it our own way, as we have always done.… And it was like the longer he talked, the more words he used, the less they came to mean anything. It was an endless stream of ideas that were as flat as his voice. All they did these days was spin, and spin, and spin us around in circles until we were too dizzy to listen to what they were really saying.

“What about you?” I asked Liam. “Hungry?”

Time and silence and obvious embarrassment about his earlier breakdown had softened Liam just a tiny bit—first toward Jude, who, despite everything Liam had flung his way earlier, was watching Liam the way a kid might gawk at his favorite baseball player. Then toward Vida, whose charming personality didn’t let anyone ignore her for long. I could see he was still angry with Chubs, but even that was draining away now that the initial shock had faded. I was glad Vida and Jude were getting a glimpse of who he really was—without the strange, battered armor he’d sewn himself into.

“Yeah…whatever is fine.” He didn’t glance up from the small black booklet in his right hand.

I reclaimed my seat next to Chubs, letting him fuss over me without hearing a word of what he was saying. To my right, Jude was building a miniature snowman, using the M&M’s from his own trail mix to make its grin—though it was lopsided enough to look more demented than cute. He was humming a soft, breathy version of some Springsteen song.

“Joseph Lister?” Liam said suddenly, cutting through the silence. “Really? Him?”

Chubs stiffened beside me. “That man was a hero. He pioneered research on the origins of infections and sterilization.”

Liam stared hard at the faux leather cover of Chubs’s skip-tracer ID, carefully choosing his next words. “You couldn’t have chosen something cooler? Someone who is maybe not an old dead white guy?”

“His work led to the reduction of postoperative infections and safer surgical practices,” Chubs insisted. “Who would you have picked? Captain America?”

“Steve Rogers is a perfectly legit name.” Liam passed the ID back to him. “This is all…very Boba Fett of you. I’m not sure what to say, Chubsie.”

Say it’s okay, I thought, remembering the fear in Chubs’s voice when he’d confessed about turning that kid in. Tell him you understand that he had to do this, even if you don’t.

“What?” Chubs scoffed, his voice just that tiny bit too light. “For once, you’re speechless?”

“No, I’m just…” Liam cleared his throat. “Grateful, I guess. That you came looking for me and you had to do…this. I know it wasn’t…I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

“Just shut up and start sucking each other’s faces already,” Vida grumbled, leaning awkwardly against the stump. She would never admit it aloud, but I knew the burns on her back were eating her alive with pain. “I’m trying to make up for the sleep I lost when you started screeching at each other like cats in heat.”

“Miss Vida,” Liam said, “has anyone ever told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?”

She glared at him. “Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?”

“That is physically impossible,” Chubs groused. “He’d be—”

“Actually,” Liam began, “Cole once did try to—What?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chubs said, “apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue.”

“I’m going to guess you probably don’t want to hear about the time he pushed my head through the neighbor’s fence.…”

“Was there a lot of blood?” Vida asked, suddenly interested. “Did you lose an ear?”

Liam held his hands up next to his ears, indicating both were still firmly attached to his skull.

“Then, no,” she said. “No one wants to hear your boring-ass story.”

Night settled in quickly overhead. I tracked the movement of the sun through the trees overhead. The faint orange glow swept across the forest’s snowy floor until it finally faded away into a sleepy gray, and the cold forced us back inside the tent.

Vida lay on her back, holding the Chatter up in the air, moving it around to find that exact right position to catch a signal. She’d been trying to send an ALL CLEAR // OBJECTIVE ACCOMPLISHED in response to the ten REPORT STATUS messages that had been waiting for us when she turned it on a few days before. If Cate was half as anxious as Vida was to make contact, I had a feeling there’d be ten more messages waiting once the device reconnected with the Chatter network.

“Nothing?” I asked.

She let it fall onto her chest with an annoyed sigh and shook her head.

“Maybe once we get out of the mountains,” I said, but she didn’t seem comforted by the thought. Vida squinted at me from across the dark tent.

“Since when did you start drinking from the half-full glass?”

I grunted, pressing my face back down against my arms at the next sharp stab of pain in my back.

“Does this hurt?” Chubs asked. He kept one hand flat on my shoulder blades to keep me down while the other poked and prodded at my stitches.

I managed another grunt in response.

“I’m going to disinfect it again,” Chubs warned.

“Super.”

We settled into a quiet little calm that was at odds with the billowing winds outside. Once he was finished with me, Chubs picked up a book, White Fang, and settled down on his sleeping bag to read. I stayed on my stomach, trying to force myself to sleep.

Jude reappeared at the tent entrance with the flashlights he’d been sent to find in the car. His curly hair was coated in a thick layer of snow that he then decided to shake out all over us. It was the first grin I’d seen him crack in…days? Weeks? But when he caught my eye, Jude looked away, sitting next to Liam to resume their game of war.

The longer it stayed silent between us, the more overwhelming the awkwardness became. Vida was starting to get that dangerous gleam in her eye, too: a smile that got progressively more wicked the longer she stared at the side of Chubs’s head.

“So a thought crossed my mind,” Liam said suddenly.

“That must have been a lonely journey,” Chubs said, flipping the page of his book.

Liam rolled his eyes. “It’s getting late, and I was just thinking that we should take turns on watch. Set up shifts. That sound good?”

I nodded.

“Young Jude here and I can take the first one,” Liam said. “Ruby and Chubs the second, and Vida can bring up the rear.”

I thought about protesting the lineup, but Liam looked like he was ready for a challenge and I just didn’t have it in me.

I faded in and out of sleep all night, twisting and turning against the blankets serving as bedding in the tent. I was awake to hear Liam tell Jude, in quiet tones, about some horror flick he’d watched religiously as a kid.

The blankets rustled as they shuffled back over to the bedding. Jude had all but dropped to his knees between Chubs and me in exhaustion, patting us on the shoulders until we were both awake and sitting up. He let out a blissful sigh as he curled up under the blankets. But Liam was slower in his approach, almost hesitant. I felt his eyes fix on me the way you feel a beam of sunlight cut through a window. Warm. Focused.

I got up as he slid under the other end of the blanket, positioning himself as far away from me as he could without giving up the warmth or comfort of the fleece padding under us.

To stay busy and keep our blood flowing, Chubs and I did a quick walk around the camp, glad to have the wind and snow die down, if only for a few minutes.

“Is that where you drove in?” I asked, pointing to a trail that seemed wider than the others.

Chubs nodded. “It winds around and connects to a highway. This section of it was closed off, I think, because there’s no one to plow the roads. I’m hoping the snow starts melting tomorrow, otherwise I have no idea how we’re going to drive out of here.”

A few hours later, just shy of dawn, it was Vida’s turn. She stood up in the tent, physically trying to shake the sleep off her, before stumbling out into the cold morning. I stared at the tiny sliver of space between Chubs and Liam and promptly turned on my heel, following her back outside.

Vida broke the intense gaze she’d fixed across the clearing when I sat down next to her, but she didn’t seem surprised.

“I slept too long in the car,” I lied, warming my stiff hands near the fire. “I’m just not tired.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Want to tell me what’s really on your mind?”

“Why?” I asked. “You actually care?”

“If it has to do with Prince Charming, then, no, not really,” Vida said, leaning back. “But if it has to do with you ditching out with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass and leaving me and Judith to finish out the Op, I want to hear about it.”

I shook my head. “Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Really?” Now Vida actually did sound surprised. “Then what was all that whispering between you and Grannie?”

“He asked me to go with them,” I admitted, “but I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Vida asked.

“Can’t,” I whispered. “Won’t. What does it matter?”

Vida sat up straighter at that. “What’s going on with you?”

I shrugged, rubbing my fingers along the worn edge of the blanket I’d wrapped around myself.

“You’ve been acting like a spooked cat since we picked you up.…” I saw her mind working behind her dark eyes, narrowing as she made the connection.

I’m not sure why it was easier to tell Vida this, or why I wanted to, when I hadn’t been able to speak a word of it to Chubs. Maybe it was because I knew she already had such a low opinion of me that it didn’t matter either way if it made her hate me that much more.

“I went too far,” I said. “With Knox, the kids at that warehouse—with Rob.”

“How?” she asked. “You mean the fact that you don’t have to touch people to use your brain voodoo?”

“It’s complicated,” I mumbled. “It won’t make sense to you.”

“Why? Because you think I’m stupid?” Vida kicked at my foot. “Give me an answer, straight, and if my little-bitty brain has questions, I can ask them.”

“That’s not—” I stopped myself. I needed to stop fighting with her over every damn thing. “It’s just…you’re okay with your abilities, right? Okay as you can be, I mean,” I corrected, seeing her sharp look. “But I hate what I can do. I hate it every day, every minute. And it’s better now that I have a grip on it, but before…” Every minute had been a waking nightmare. I had lived life second to second, holding my breath, waiting for the inevitable slip that would ruin everything again. “It’s not right, okay? I know it isn’t. I don’t like how it feels to compel people to do things, especially when I know it’s the opposite of what they would normally do. I don’t like seeing their memories or their thoughts or the things they wanted to keep to themselves.”