Redlisted (23 page)

What can they
do?

“Create
illusions. See and hear things far away. And alter their appearance—
but in a different way than Coventina’s children do. They
change the way others perceive them on a mental level, rather than
changing their bodies.”

What about
Tara?

“Children of
Coventina can do all kinds of things, all revolving around biology.
She’s a healer, of course. I don’t know what else. Maybe
she can mutate her body as well.”

Do you always
get the same powers as your benefactor?

“Not always.
But usually.”

I nod.

“Do you feel
ready to stand?”

I
think so,
I
tell him.
Help
me up.

He stands and
reaches an arm down to me. I grab it and pull myself up. I see stars,
then blackness. He grabs me by my shoulders.

“Sit down
for a second first,” he says, helping me onto the edge of the
bed.

I run my hands
through my hair and take deep breaths.

“I can carry
you downstairs,” he says.

No. I can walk.

Adam helps me up a
second time. Once I’m on my feet I don’t feel quite so
terrible, but I keep my hold on his arm as we walk through the
sitting room and the square antechamber to the stairwell. I shuffle
slowly down the stairs, keeping one hand on the railing.

Down in the
basement, Vincent, Tara, and Aya are standing near the base of the
stairwell. Behind their feet is a desiccated husk, a skin-and-bones
shadow wearing Gabriel’s clothing. A sense of ritualistic
fatalism hangs over the scene, the sense that this was the way things
were to be, that this is the only way things could have been.

“Bring her
to me,” Tara says, extending a hand. “Let me see her
wounds.” She looks like a completely different person. Her skin
has healed, her cheeks have filled, and she stands upright on two
feet.

I step forward on
my own and turn my head to let her see the bite.

“Can you
help her?” Adam asks.

She doesn’t
respond. She draws a gash along the palm of her hand with her pinky
fingernail. Blood springs to the surface; she uses it to draw a wide
swath across my throat.

A deep, warm
sensation penetrates all the way down to my esophagus, as if I’d
just swallowed tea, or soup, or blood. As quickly as Tara can erase
the cut in her palm, I can feel my own wound close. My pain fades
instantly along with the bite.

My heart flutters
with excitement. Did she heal my vocal cords as well?

“Is that
better?” she asks me.

I try to say
“yes”. A shapeless vowel sound emerges from my throat,
but my tongue can’t form it into a word. I nod, force myself to
smile, try to conceal my disappointment.

“Good,”
she says with a motherly smile.

Adam and I walk
back upstairs and into the sitting room. Now that I’m feeling
better, I realize that I’ve been walking around in only my
sports bra. I flush and cross my arms over my chest. I should get a
clean t-shirt, but I don’t want to go back into the back room
again, not after what happened.

“I’ll
get one,” Adam says, and slips through the door.

Moments later he
returns, carrying a grey shirt and the knife he pulled from Gabriel’s
back. He tosses the shirt to me. I pull it over my head.

What
are you doing with that?
I ask.

“We believe
Gabriel left to make a phone call,” he says, “and seeing
as we can no longer interrogate him...” He draws his finger
across the blade, wiping off some congealed blood.

I wrinkle my nose.
You’re
going to read the memories in his blood?

He nods. “Do
you want to see them? I can understand if you’d rather not.”

Yes. I do. I
want to see.

“Sit down,
then.”

I take a seat on
the couch. Adam places the tip of the bloody finger in his mouth and
sucks it clean. He places his other hand against my forehead.

“You’ll
start to see it in just a—“

“—
Adam
Radcliffe, Haruko Schuster, and some Thalian girl whose name I don’t
remember,” I tell Claire. “And a human.”

“Adam
Radcliffe and Haruko Schuster?” Her voice is high and strained.
“Are you sure?”

“Positive.
They gave me their names.”

“Describe
the human,” she says. I imagine her taking the memo pad from
her breast pocket and removing the cap of a cheap pen with her teeth.

“Thin.
White. Red hair. Not carrot-red, beet-red. Like the boss’.”

“Her height?
Build?”

“Hard to
say. I didn’t see her standing up. Didn’t get a good look
at her face, either.”

“Go back,
verify her—“ She says something that gets eaten by
static.

“Don’t
copy, Claire.”

“Go back,
verify her identity and kill her. She’s subject thirteen. She
must be.”

I inhale through
my nose.

“Do you read
me?” she asks.

“Claire, if
I kill her, they’ll kill me. Didn’t you hear me when I
said they had a Warden with them?”

“Schuster’s
young. Not much of a threat. And the boss thinks Radcliffe is a
joke.”

“What about
the Thalian?”

She laughs. “You
can’t seriously be concerned about some no-name poseur.”

“Still, it’s
three against one. Four if Vincent counts for anything.”

“He’s
a pacifist! Stop arguing with me. You have your orders!”

I choke down a
profanity-laced retort. “Why can’t you send someone from
the DC office or something? A team?”

“Not an
option. They’re otherwise indisposed.”

“With what?”

Claire takes a
moment to reply.

“I don’t
know.”

The vision fades,
leaving me staring at the back of my eyelids. I open my eyes,
blinking several times and touching my own arms in an attempt to
shake off the horribly disconcerting sensation of being Gabriel. It
was just a few moments, and a few relatively innocuous moments at
that, but I feel like they’re left on my skin, left in my
pores.

“Well, it
doesn’t sound like they’re sending backup,” Adam
says, massaging his forehead with both hands.

That’s
good, right?

He nods. “We’ll
still want to leave first thing after night falls, just to be sure.”

What about Tara
and Vincent?

“They have a
truck. They can leave if they want to. My guess is they won’t.”

So what now?

“We wait.”

I nod and try to
stifle a yawn.

“Go get some
rest,” Adam says.

I’d
rather not...

“You don’t
have to be alone. You can sleep on one of the cots. Or you can sleep
in here, on the couch.”

What about you?

“Either way
I won’t sleep. I don’t sleep.”

I look into the
room with the two cots.

“Go ahead.
You can leave the door open if you want.”

I nod, stand, and
retreat into the guest room. I collapse onto the rickety cot, pull my
knees to my chest, and fall asleep on top of the blankets with my
t-shirt and jeans on.

{Adam}

I excused myself
from the party before the next course came out. I had to get away
from Mirabel; listening to her thoughts was starting to fray the thin
threads that tethered me to sanity. I hid in my room, sitting alone
on the lounge, too nervous to sleep.

It was easy for me
to believe that Julian was a murderer. It’s what I had wanted
to believe in the first place, before I allowed him to convince me
otherwise, before I got complacent about staying at the estate and
started not to care.

But Mirabel
frightened me much more than Julian. Why did she have to be the only
one who was offering me a chance to escape?

///

Less than an hour
after fleeing the party, I heard a knock on the door to my suite. I
went to the door and opened it. It was Haruko.

“Can I come
in?” she asked. “I’ve got some paperwork you need
to fill out.” She was carrying a portfolio under her armpit, a
pen in one of her hands.

“Sure,”
I said, stepping aside. “Paperwork?”

“We need to
fill out your registry,” she said. “It shouldn’t
take more than a few minutes.”

I shut the door
behind her, led her into the office and offered her the desk chair.
She sat down and opened the portfolio, revealing pages worth of
official-looking documents. She skipped through several, flipping
them right side down onto the left side of the folder.

I glanced over her
shoulder. “What’s all this?”

“All
revenants in the United States are listed in a registry kept by the
Watchers of the Americas,” she said. “This is going to be
your entry. Julian and I already filled out most of it.” She
clicked the end of her pen. “I just need to ask you a few
questions, and then you’ll sign a few things, and that’s
that.”

I nodded.

“Date of
birth?”

“April
thirteenth, nineteen fifty-four.”

“Place of
birth?”

“Rochester,
New York.”

“Date of
death?”

“Uh...”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Didn’t Julian tell you?”

“I want to
confirm what he has written down.”

“It was
during the first week of June, this year. I don’t know what day
exactly.”

“I’m
sure what we have is close enough,” she said. “Cause of
death?”

I scratched the
back of my head. “Yeah, I, uh... I don’t remember.”

She frowned.

“Is that a
problem?” I asked.

“No, I can
look up the coroner’s report later.” She traced a line
down the sheet with her fingers. “Marital status?”

I sighed through
my nose. “Single.”

“Never
divorced or anything?”

“No.”

“Any kids?”

“No, none.”

“Do you have
any surviving family members?”

“Just my
brother...”

“What’s
his name?”

I frowned. Why did
she need to know that? “Jason Fletcher.”

“Was he the
executor of your estate?”

“I have no
idea.”

Haruko turned, a
crease forming between her eyebrows. She cocked her head to the side.
“Didn’t you have a will or anything?”

“Well, I
did...” I looked up at the ceiling, then down at my feet. “My
fiancée was supposed to be the executor.”

“God. I’m
sorry. I should have gathered that from what Julian said.” She
puffed air through her lips. “Well... let’s see. Can you
think of anyone else who might try to get in touch with you?”

“Everyone
thinks I’m dead,” I said.

“Have you
tried to get in touch with anyone?”

My mouth twitched.
I suspected that Aya knew about the phone call I’d made to
Elena. She could have told Julian about it, which meant Haruko could
know as well...