Sister Assassin (10 page)

I BRIEFLY CONSIDER STOPPING AT A LIBRARY TO CHECK
for an email from Adam, but it doesn't feel right. Besides which, I don't want to. I don't want to think about Adam and the way he looked at me, the way I saw him decide to trust me. I don't want to think about how normal and safe it made me feel when he was driving. I don't want to think about things like normal and safe, things I can't have.

I don't want to do anything tonight, nothing at all, but spin and pulse and pound. My fingers cannot tap tap tap when I am dancing. Annie can't betray me while I'm dancing. James can't use me. I can't hear my own thoughts. I haven't been dancing in four months, not since we left Greece, and I ache for it.

I run a few blocks south, then cut in to the city. Not sure where I'm going. I never plan ahead. Learned my lesson about that a long time ago. Thank you, beautiful James.

There, ahead of me, a line snaking around a sidewalk. The unmistakable thumping hum of bass that will push right through me. Perfect. I look up and choke on a laugh. The place is called Vision.

Of course it is.

It's too early for such a long line. Must be a celebrity DJ or something. I slip into my stilettos and walk straight up to the front. There, third person. A guy with carefully sculpted hair, even more carefully sculpted arms and pecs, a shirt picked especially to showcase them. Here with two friends, no girls.

“Hi,” I say, reaching over the velvet rope to trace my hand along the edge of his shoulder. Oh, my hands, my hands make me shudder, but he doesn't shudder. “I hate lines.” I smile at him, and I know that I am beautiful and beauty is a tool. It will get me what I want, and what I want is the front of this line.

“Hey.” His eyes travel the length of my legs.

“Good thing I'm meeting you guys here so I don't have to wait in line, right?”

He smiles. His teeth are so white they would glow under a black light. “Good thing.”

I duck under the rope and he puts his arm around my shoulder (don't touch my shoulder, it hurts), and I could break his arm, I know how to twist it just so to pop-pop-pop it right out of the socket, but he seems nice enough and that would get in the way of dancing.

He even pays my cover charge, the darling boy. Good thing, because I don't have cash after I gave it all to Adam and I don't want a card pinging my location. We walk in and I can't hear his voice, which is another good thing. He shouldn't have a voice. A body is fine, he is allowed to have a body. I need other bodies to dance around me so I can get lost.

This club is like any other club anywhere in the world. There's a waterfall and fire pit and several floors, but none of that matters as long as there is a dance floor and music. I push through to where it is the thickest, where it is the loudest, where you can feel the music in your teeth, where it overpowers your heartbeat, where it takes over. I don't want my own heartbeat tonight. I want it to pulse and pump outside of me.

Everything is spinning out of control. First Adam (I wonder where he is—no, I don't, don't think about Adam, it's not safe to think about him). Then Annie. I can't keep the threads I'm supposed to follow together, I can't pull them and yank them to what I want them to be, I can't follow what I'm supposed to do.

I have no idea.

I used to be so good at knowing exactly how to do what was best for Annie and me, but I have no idea who
me
is anymore, and Annie, why would she want me to kill him? If I don't know who we are, how can I know our track?

I start moving. Swaying. Finding the music, losing myself.

“DRINK?”

I turn, surprised to see my line boy still behind me. He stopped existing for me as soon as I got what I wanted. “I don't—” I don't drink. Annie made me promise not to, and I haven't, not a drop, not a single drop since that first time. Not even the year we were apart. Annie also promised to take care of me. Then she sent me out to kill someone.

“ABSOLUTELY!” I shout. He smiles and he thinks it's predatory, and if I were another girl, I would-should-could be worried. I am the predator in any situation. I am not worried.

I close my eyes and sway, let the music wash out everything else, let it give me the dull I look for everywhere, let it pound the very thoughts from my brain. My only job right now, the only thing I have to do, is move.

So I move.

I move slow. I move fast. I move faster. My shoulder burns and I can't raise that arm much, but I don't care, can't care. I am rhythm and bass and drums and beats and I don't care what the song is, I just move.

Something breaks through, breaks me out, and I'm livid. I turn to find the boy from the line. He's shouting something. I don't care what he has to say. He leans closer and shouts again.

“YOU'RE CRAZY SEXY OUT HERE.”

I raise an eyebrow. “One part of that description is correct.”

“WHAT?”

He's holding two glasses. I grab one. The way he watches it, I know he put something extra in it. All the better. I tip my head back and bring the glass up and—

“STOP.” Someone grabs my arm, the drink splashes me. It smells sharp and sour and sweet all at the same time, and now there's that much less of it to drink. I scowl up to see James.

“He put something in it,” James yells.

I roll my eyes. “Of course he did.” I turn to the line boy, but, oh dear, he's on the ground, clutching a bleeding nose. I shake my head and tsk at James. “That's no way to make friends!”

“We're leaving.”

He still has my arm, my uninjured one, and he's pulling me toward the door. I spin away from his grasp and back into the bodies, turning and beckoning him with a grin. He shakes his head.

I raise both arms in the air (it hurts but I don't care), bring them up through my hair, let my hips catch the beat. Look at James through my eyelashes. I have never let James dance with me before, not once, but I might die tomorrow and Annie used me and I can never be with someone like Adam, so I don't care tonight.

He bites his lip. He follows me.

He puts his hands on my hips and I keep my arms in the air and there is the beat, the beat, the beat, and the music. And there is his body next to mine, and it isn't just a body, it's
his
body.

I wanted this so many times. Too many times. I never let myself have it. After a song or three or seven, James pulls me closer. “We should get you home.”

“You should buy me a drink!”

“You aren't supposed to drink.”

“Thanks, Annie! I'm also not supposed to do this.” I put my hands on his chest (my hands he knows all about and he doesn't push me away), and stretch up, take his earlobe between my teeth.

“Fia,” he says, and I don't know if he's scolding me or moaning.

“Buy me a drink.” I bite his ear harder. I feel like I'm in control tonight. I feel like
I
am the one using
him
tonight. I feel good. Or as good as I ever do.

He leans his face into mine—his cheek has a hint of stubble, it's rough, I want to run my mouth along it—then bends down, lets his lips touch my neck, trace it ever so lightly.

He grabs my hand and pulls me out of the crowd, toward the bar. He's angry, with himself or with me I can't tell, but I'm getting my way so I don't care. “Since we're breaking all the rules anyway.”

“That's the spirit!”

“Annie will kill me.”

“No, she'll just have me do it.”

He squints suspiciously at me, but I smile and twirl away to get to the drinks faster.

“Only one,” he says.

I open my blue eyes wide. I am the picture of innocent earnestness. “Absolutely.”

 

I can't dance anymore. The lights are spinning and the floor is spinning. How did they install a spinning floor? It's amazing. The whole world spins, spins, spins from the balcony where we're sitting. I try to tap, but I can't find my leg with my finger, and I laugh. I'm even free from my three taps.

“You know why I don't want to be with you?” James's eyes are as glassy as they were the first time we met.

“Because I'm too young for you? Because you're an evil, manipulative monster and I know it?”

He smiles, and his smile has that edge I know, that sharp edge I recognize. It sings to my own sharp soul. “You knowing makes me want you more. And you aren't young. You haven't been young since you were fourteen.”

I smile back. “Fine, then. Because I'm psychotic and I kill people?”

“Nope.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Because my dad wants us together.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. He suggested it when we left on the yacht. Wanted you to fall in love with me as another way to tie you to us.”

I laugh. “Wasn't he worried I'd kill you in your sleep or something?”

“I don't think he'd actually care.”

“Oh, poor James.” I scoot across the dark velvet of the love seat, scoot right onto James's lap, wrap my arms around his neck. “Why do you
care if he cares? Your dad is
evil
.” Is it the money? Can he not live without bottomless funds? Or does he actually believe in this shadowy network of power his dad is building? I need to know. I let myself ignore it for so long, but the why is killing me. The why of James working for his father. The why of how I can feel like this for him even though he is part of what did this to me.

He looks at my lips, leans in closer. I don't need to know the why anymore. I don't care. I'll care again tomorrow, but now? I close my eyes, waiting, waiting, wanting his lips on mine.

He pecks my nose instead, then laughs. I open my eyes and glare.

“My dad
is
evil. But I'm a Keane. It's my duty to care. I owe it to my mother.”

“So, are you finally living up to Daddy Dearest's dearest wishes? Are you going to
seduce
me, James Keane?”

He pulls me in closer. “I've only stayed away from you this long because he wanted me to do the opposite. I can't let him win, can I?”

“I won't tell if you don't.”

“But what about the Readers?”

“Oh, them? I think ‘I'm boinking the boss's son!' at them every chance I get. But only the ones who are in love with you.”

“You are evil.” But he looks at me like I'm not.

I know it's wrong.

He's a Keane.

He isn't his father, but he will be.

He's almost as good a liar as I am, and I am too drunk to sift through what he's said.

It's wrong, wrong, wrong.

But his hands are on my neck and in my hair and tracing my collarbone and it is wrong but it feels right, it feels like falling and I know the impact at the bottom will probably kill me, but I don't care anymore.

“I've wanted to kiss you since that first night in the school. I've wanted to kiss you every single day since then.” He shifts me even closer. We are touching, touching everywhere and it's wrong it's wrong it's wrong but right right now and I close my eyes and his lips are even better at the dulling than the drinks or the music. His lips light me on fire and dull everything else and I lose myself in them, and I am so happy and relieved to be lost I could cry.

 

We stumble out onto the street, wrapped around each other, and I am light-headed and my feet can't trace a straight line, and I can't feel anything.

Right or wrong or even my hands.

It's glorious.

I laugh.

James nuzzles his face into the top of my head, breathing in my hair. “You're amazing, you know that? I think I love you.”

I push him into the wall, grab his shirt in my fists, kiss him hard. Pull away. He is such a liar. “You don't love me, you idiot. No one does. No one should.”

“That's not true. I do love you. I'm just trying so hard not to. It would ruin everything. But you don't make it easy, you know?”