Perfect Lies

“Did she stab you, too?”

This time the laugh is easy and loud. “No, nothing so dramatic.”

“Good. She has a habit of doing that apparently.”

“She destroyed my knee,” Nathan grumbles from behind us. I’m not sure if I should apologize. I didn’t to Cole for his stab wound, so I opt not to.

“Any word from our charmingly violent Fia?” Rafael asks.

Sarah answers. “We have a phone she gave Annie, but there hasn’t been any contact.”

“Hmm. Here, sit, I’ll have Nathan get coffee.” Rafael takes my arm and guides me to a leather couch in a carpeted room. “You know your sister better than anyone. Do you have an idea what she might be planning?”

I shake my head, then lean back against the couch. For what feels like the millionth time I rack my brains, trying to think of anything Fia said or did, any indication she might have given me about what her plan was.

I want to be with her, to hear her. I don’t want my last memories of her to be the vision where I thought she killed me, or our tear-filled exchange under the arch.

And then I see her. It rushes in, slamming into my eyes. Fia, wearing a tank top and long, loose, patterned pants. Pajamas. The room is nearly dark, with a pool of warm yellow light drifting out from a single lamp. Fia walks toward it, then pauses, looks down.

At James. I’ve seen him before, and he hasn’t changed, though in sleep he looks far more peaceful than I could have imagined. He’s sprawled on the couch, glasses askew on his face.

She’s going to kill him, I think. I don’t want to see, don’t want to watch her do this, but I can’t avoid what the vision wants to show me.

She reaches down and gently pulls the glasses off his face, closing them and setting them on the floor. Then she leans over, brushes her lips against his forehead, and turns off the lamp.

With the sweetest, most content smile on her face I could ever have imagined.

Darkness reclaims my eyes, and for once I am grateful to be back where I belong, back where life makes sense. She smiled. Not the dead-girl, hollow smile I’d seen in visions past. She looked … whole. With him.

“Are you okay?” Cole asks.

“I saw her,” I whisper.

“Who?” I can feel Rafael leaning in close to me.

“Fia. She was with James.” I cover my face, sick to my stomach. Because now I finally realize, I finally get it.

Fia saved me. She set me free.

But she also abandoned me.

“Fia’s not coming.”

FIA (#ulink_78454da4-cd0d-500c-b97a-03f4b2811edf)

Four Days Before (#ulink_78454da4-cd0d-500c-b97a-03f4b2811edf)

I WAKE UP JUST BEFORE DAWN, AND I CAN’T—I can’t—I can’t—I can’t do this, I can’t feel this, I can’t be me right now. Clarice’s face, her ruined face, then blood on my sister’s hand. I thought I’d have the good dream tonight. Not this.

I stumble down the hall, into James’s room. Crawl into his bed. He wakes up with a start. He is not like me: his first instinct is not to fight but to pull me close. He holds me until I can breathe again.

“It’s okay.” His voice is soft and sweet with sleep as he strokes my hair. “It’s okay.” His arms keep me from shaking apart. Sleep is okay when James is anchoring me, and here, now, there are no lies between us.

Whatever else he is, James is my one safe place in the world.

“Where did you go last night?” James asks, leaning against the wall as I finish flinging clothes into my suitcase.

“Hmm?”

“You sneaked out last night. I woke up at four and you were gone again.”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m having an affair. With an accountant. He reads tax code aloud by candlelight; it drives me wild.”

“Fia.”

I shrug, shoving my clothes down so I can get the suitcase shut. I wonder if I should be sad to leave this city, if I’ll ever come back. I don’t care about taking anything with me. Nothing here is mine.

I remember the quilt on my bed when I was little. It was blue with white clouds, worn threadbare, warm but light enough to burrow under without feeling like I was suffocating. I remember the knotted rug by my parents’ bed, beneath a battered wood chest my mom kept our memory boxes in. (My mom, my mom, I don’t even remember what she sounded like anymore. She is a picture, a home movie clip, a ghost of a person in my memories that are so small they wouldn’t even fill the box anymore.)

“Are you going to answer me?”

I look up, startled that James is still here. No, I will not miss this city. A place is a place is a place. I don’t care. James and I together, that’s what matters. We’re on our way to destroy his father, dismantle Keane Enterprises, and then be free. I am sharp and ready. “You’re the one who told me it’s good to keep secrets.”

“Not from me.”

I grin, pointing a finger at him. “Especially from you.”

He sighs and rubs his forehead. “Anything illegal?”

“Me? Never.” I woke up and his arms weren’t around me anymore and he was asleep and so far away, and the emptiness was too big, too scary, the waiting too much, so I went running.

He walks into the room and sits on the couch, pulling me into his lap. “Just how many secrets are you keeping from me?”

“I’d tell you, but it’s a secret.” I lean my forehead against his, letting myself feel quiet, looking for the thing inside me that tells me what we’re doing is right. It’s been so hard to find since I gave up Annie. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. This is what everything has been for.”

“Of course. This is the biggest vote of confidence my dad has ever given me. We’re finally sliding into place.” His eyes get distant, and something nervous twists in the pit of my stomach.

“You’re having second thoughts.”

He shakes his head, focuses on me. “No. You and me, that’s the way it has to be. We do what we’re supposed to and no one will see what’s coming until it’s too late.”

I scratch a finger under his jaw, my nail catching on his stubble. “Not even us.”

“Not even us.”

“What do you mean, I can’t go in to see Mr. Keane?” I sing the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” in my head over and over again, because I can’t think about what I need to think about, which is not a what but a who. The girl behind the desk glares at me.

“He wants you to get a feel for the receptionist. She’s too good for the Feelers or other Readers to figure out,” James had said, looking past me as we rode the elevator up up up up to where he would disappear past locked doors to his father, leaving me behind.