Perfect Lies

James. I want James but he isn’t here and the longer I go without him, the more scared I get. The fear sets in so quickly now, always lurking, waiting to swallow me. I hate being scared, hate it, it makes me sick and I want to cut it out of me with a knife, leave it bleeding and dripping on the table, a quivering mass of weakness. Every time I dream of Annie, I can’t shake the scared. What if I chose wrong? What would that mean? A sudden image of gray eyes pops into my head. I wonder …

Dead dead dead dead. I snap my thoughts back into line. Dead. Adam’s dead, Annie’s dead, everyone’s dead. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I grin at Pixie. “Dance with me?”

Her dark eyebrows have disappeared under her blunt white bangs. “Sometimes you scare me.”

“That’s because you don’t really know me yet.” I hold out my hand to her. “When you really know me, I’ll scare you all the time.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out. James.

“What,” I answer, annoyed. I don’t want his voice on the phone, I want it in my ear.

“Has anyone ever told you how sexy you are when you dance?”

A hand comes around my waist and I grab the wrist, twist it, then turn to find myself right up against James, and everything is right again. I lean against him, tip my face toward him.

“Oh, hi,” I say.

“Oh, ouch,” he says.

I let go of his wrist. He laughs and puts his phone away. “I have a surprise for you.”

I can hear the smile in his voice, the sly quality it gets when he’s truly pleased with himself. I want to ask what it is, but audience, we have an audience.

I glance over at Pixie, who’s watching us with her arms folded. She looks like a cat, all clever eyes and inscrutable expressions.

Cats are annoying.

“Guess our night is over, then,” she says.

James smiles at her, but it is his cold smile. “You’ve been monopolizing my girlfriend’s time.”

I know in an instant that James doesn’t like her, doesn’t trust her. I’m torn between wanting to turn and leave with him and feeling oddly protective of my tiny, tired companion. I wonder what will happen if I decide Keane can’t trust her. I don’t want to think about it. “Go home,” I say to her. “You look like crap.”

She lets out a burst of bitter laughter, then looks up, scanning the crowd. “Do you know that guy?”

“Which guy?”

She shakes her head, eyes darting. “Can’t tell. Someone here is thinking your name like crazy.”

James looks wary, shoulders tensing protectively as his arms go tighter around my waist. He forgets that I can do more when he lets me go. Always at war, this need to have him close and push him away.

“Any of my shadows here?” I ask him, but even before he shakes his head I know that’s not it. There’s a whisper of caution running down the back of my neck, and I can’t tell if I’m in danger or if I should pursue this. One of those horrible in-between feelings I’m getting more and more, that are neither right nor wrong, that make me feel off and disconnected like I’m experiencing my own feelings through a bad phone connection.

I tap tap tap tap. What to do.

“All right.” I slip away from James and grab Pixie’s arm. She squeaks in protest. “I don’t feel like fighting tonight, and I really don’t want to have to protect both of you. Cab. Straight home.”

I drag her out, probably with more force than is strictly necessary but I’m unreasonably annoyed that I won’t get to dance with James. His car, some sleek black money monster, is parked at the curb, but I hold my hand up for a cab.

“I’ll be waiting,” James says, lips brushing the back of my neck and making me shiver.

I want to go straight to him, but I can’t. I like Pixie. I’m not going to let her get hurt tonight. Maybe she will get hurt later, maybe it will be my fault, but not tonight.

She rubs her arm where I grabbed her. “What do you do to the people you don’t like?”

I flash my teeth like knives in the dark. “Do you really want to know?”

She kicks my shin in a halfhearted pout. “You think different around him, you know.”

“Oh?” A cab pulls to the side and I open the door.

“Clearer. Happier. But scarier.” She gets in the cab before I can ask what she means. At least she’s safe. As far as I can tell.

James is waiting with my door open when I walk back to him. He has a scowl on his beautiful face, and I want to trace the line between his eyebrows with my finger.

“You need to finish up with her,” he says, pulling away from the curb with a screech. I hate being in the passenger seat. I belong behind the wheel, sliding into spaces between cars, speeding through the dark.

I slump in my seat, put my feet up on the polished wood of the dash, hoping to scratch or scuff it, knowing James won’t say anything if I do. I finally have him and he wants to talk about my waste-of-time assignment with Pixie? “I haven’t been able to decide. Tell your father if he’s so anxious for answers, he can ask me himself.”

“She’s too good. She could mess everything up for us, find out things we can’t let anyone know.”

“I barely know the things we know. She isn’t pulling anything out of my head. There’s nothing to pull! I’m still waiting!” I know it’s irrational—it will take time. We are laying the groundwork for his father to be arrested, for the company to implode. It can’t happen overnight.

But I just want it to be done. When it’s done, I can get Annie back. We can all leave this behind forever.

“We have to be patient.”

I want to rip out his hair. I want to grab the steering wheel and swerve into oncoming traffic.

I lean forward, clutching my knees to my chest, taking deep breaths. James puts his hand on the back of my neck, warm and steady, and the breathing gets easier.

“I know it’s hard,” he says, his voice so different when he’s being gentle. I don’t know whether I love it or hate it. It confuses me. Angry James I knew. Angry, distant James was easy to love because he was still safe. But this James that is mine feels dangerous.

I don’t ever get to keep the things that are mine.

He squeezes my shoulder. “I promise you, it will all be worth it. The things you’ve done—they haven’t been for nothing.”

I look out the window into the night, not dark here but lit with thousands of glaring eyes, watching everything always. All these things I’ve done. So many things. Please, please, they have to be for something. I’ll make them for something.

“How is your dad?” I ask, needing to get away from the horror movie of my life playing in my head.

“We’re not talking about him tonight. Tonight is about us.”

He pulls over and parks the car illegally, then gets out. I follow. We’re at a building I don’t recognize. It’s closed, dark, locked up for the night. He’s grinning, boyish in his anticipation.

“Well?”

“Do you remember the first time we met?”