Sister Assassin (14 page)

“HOW CAN SOMEONE WHO SPENDS SO MUCH TIME IN
the sun still have such pasty skin?” I roll my eyes at Eden. “It's called porcelain. And sunscreen is my best friend.” I love this soft white chair. I love this huge, smooth boat. I love the ocean. I love the wind and the waves and the spray. There is nothing out here. There is nothing to do. And since there is nothing out here and nothing to do and only James or Eden or the small, deliberately anonymous crew to talk to, there is nothing to make me feel sick and wrong.

Or at least only a little bit. Because there is still the tap tap tap. It never quite goes away. And the wrong feeling, too, but now it's a gentle hum and I can pretend like it isn't there. Pretending is another way of lying, and I am so good at both.

“Girls,” James says, coming from the main cabin onto the deck where Eden is writing a letter to Annie and I am doing nothing, because nothing, nothing, nothing is my favorite. “Are you ready for an adventure?”

I sit up. Eden does, too, casually shifting in her bikini, stretching her legs. I wonder what she feels from him. I don't like it. I wonder if she feels that I don't like it from me. I decide to feel nothing, instead. “An adventure?”

“I think we've had enough of the open ocean and tiny islands. Time to begin the official study abroad section of your schooling. Or, really, time to club our way through Europe.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Clubbing? Really? Do I strike you as the dancing type?”

“You strike me as exactly the dancing type. You just don't know it yet.”

Eden jumps up, stretches her arms over her head, the tiny jewel piercing her navel winking an invitation in the sunshine. “Sounds good to me. As long as this adventure includes shopping, too?” She smiles hopefully. James nods and she turns to me and does a ridiculous, exaggerated victory shimmy.

I roll my eyes and snort. She's funny and beautiful. I wonder if we would have been friends in another world.

“See? Is that so hard?” Eden grins smugly and walks inside, and my accidental smile turns into a scowl.

“Did we have to bring her?”

James throws himself on the lounge chair next to me, putting an arm over his face to shade it from the sun. “Yes, we did.”

“Why? She's obnoxious.”

“Because,” he says, reaching over and taking my hand from where my fingers are doing the tap tap tap on my thigh. “You tried to kill yourself, remember? So Eden had to tag along to make sure you didn't get that bad again.”

I start to pull my hand back so I can cross my arms, but he keeps it in his, making a show of examining my fingernails. His fingers trace the inside of my wrist and something flares up inside me and, oh, I am so glad Eden is not here anymore.

James is the only person I can handle touching or looking at my hands. He knows everything they did. He doesn't care.

“Plus I am terrible at girl talk, and without Annie I figured you'd need someone.”

This time I do yank my hand back. I hate that he brought up Annie. Because the thing about Annie is, I miss her, I do, I worry about her, but . . .

I also don't.

Being away from her for the first time in years is a huge relief. And I know she's safe because they have her and as long as they have her, they have me and for whatever reason they still want me. So Annie is safe. And she's alone and locked in that horrible prison of a school, and I am a terrible, terrible person for leaving her there.

But I don't have to look at her and know what I've done. I don't have to listen to her voice get gentle and soft and pierce right to the core of me and remind me, always remind me, of everything I've lost and taken. Of everything I still have to lose.

I know that Annie loves me no matter what, that she will always love me, and it is the very hardest thing of all to deal with. I do not want to be loved.

“At least you didn't bring a Reader. I hate them.”

He laughs. “Me, too. You know the trick to Readers, though?”

“I swear in my head over and over again.”

“That's a good one, but they get used to it pretty fast. If you can't focus on pissing them off, then always have a really obnoxious song going in the background of your brain. And if you need to make them feel so uncomfortable they stop listening, think about sex.”

“Sex?”

“Sex.” He is so beautiful I want to crawl across my chair and onto his and have him give me specifics to think about. But he is and has always been and will always be wrong, and I can't ignore that.

Can I?

“Should you really be giving me tips on how to bypass the people your father has spying on me?”

He smiles, and it's his sharp smile that I think he only uses with me. “You're my star pupil, remember? Just because you have to do what he wants you to doesn't mean you can't keep parts of yourself secret. It's about balance, Fia. Balance and patience and time.”

“You've never struck me as the patient type.”

He leans back, puts his arms behind his head, and closes his eyes. “Like I said. Secrets.”

 

James was right. I love dancing. I love it so much I almost don't crave the alcohol being passed all around me, the drugs I see people taking. I almost don't wonder how much better the dancing would be if I took something. When I'm really dancing, when I'm in the middle of a crowd in the dark with the pulsing lights and pounding beats, I can lose myself in a way that's easy to get back from.

I love it.

We're somewhere in Germany. I don't know where; I don't care. Eden goes out most days and sightsees. I sleep in our obscenely expensive hotel suites and wait for the clubs. James has meetings, makes sure I eat enough, and prods me to do the occasional “assignment” (learning how to operate pretty much any common tech platform, for instance), and then we go dance.

I send Annie postcards that Eden buys for me, since it doesn't matter what they look like anyway, and pretend like I'm the one visiting mountains and castles and historic squares. Annie will like that. I hate that someone else has to read them to her, though. I hope it isn't Ms. Robertson.

“You aren't going to get ready?” Eden asks, eyeing me as she puts on another coat of lip gloss.

“Shoes. Skirt. Top. Ready.”

“I mean, let's do something with your hair. Put it up. Twist it. And you could rock more makeup. You're not really selling it.”

“What am I supposed to be selling?”

“Guys are pretty hot for you at these; I can feel them out for you, if you want.”

“Do I strike you as particularly lusty?” I lay my emotions open, imagine them washing over her. I am the ocean we lived on for two months. I am empty. I am nothing.

“Stop it. You're so creepy.” She stalks out of the room, muttering about missing Annie, and I smile.

 

Later I'm in the middle of the floor, lost, when someone takes my arm. I open my eyes, surprised to see James grinning at me. I'm shocked. He's never come to dance with me before. I move closer to him, excited, but he shakes his head and pulls me away toward the bar.

“I've got a game for you.”

“A game?” I don't want to play a game. I want to dance. I want to dance with James. He's always finding little reasons to touch me—a hand at the small of my back, a flimsy excuse to take my hand in his and look at it—but he's never done more. I want more. I don't know what I want from him, exactly, just that I always want more.

“Do you see that guy over there at the bar?” He points to a barrel-chested man, midtwenties, nice clothes designed to show off how nice they are.

“Yes.”

“Steal his phone, bring it to me, and then get it back to him without him noticing.”

“That is the worst game I've ever heard of.”

“I want to see if you can do it. I need five minutes with his phone. And then I'll dance with you.” He smiles, his best, broadest, biggest manipulator of a smile. He doesn't use that smile on me. Until now.

“What makes you think I want you to dance with me?” I turn, angry angry angry. Fine. He wants a phone? I'll get him a phone. I pull back against the
wrong
buzz, disconnect from it, focus on this. Phone. I need that phone.

My hips take on a life of their own as I weave through the room. I pretend I am walking on the boat (I loved the boat) and let my memories sway the room for my alcohol-free brain.

“Josef, there you are!” I laugh and wrap my arms around from him behind, let them wander like a drunk girlfriend's might. “Have you been hiding from me?”

He turns (mean eyes, he has mean eyes, but his eyes aren't mean toward me right now) and smiles, bemused.

I take a drunken step backward, let my mouth form an O. “You aren't Josef.” I giggle. It grates on my ears; it is a horrible sound.

“No.” He smiles and I shrug.

“Too bad. You're cuter than he is.” And then I do my hipssway-because-I-am-drunk-and-think-I'm-sexy walk, and I know it will be no problem to come back when James is done and stand too close to not-Josef's side and slip back the phone I have in my hand.

It isn't. The whole thing is done in under seven minutes.

James beams at me when I walk back to him, so proud of my skills. I realize with a sinking click that I will earn my way the rest of this trip, exactly like Eden. It is not a vacation after all, not about making me better, not about James actually caring. Just more games, this time in the real world.

James holds out his hand. His black button-up shirt is undone at the throat. Even his throat is handsome, and I want to run my finger down it, down to the hollow at his collarbone. “Ready to dance?”

“Like I said. What makes you think I want to dance with
you
?” I turn and push my way back into the sea of bodies and try to lose myself. Alone.

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME
I'
VE VISITED FIA'S NEW
apartment, the place she's lived since she got home. But she never really came back to me. Just like I knew she wouldn't when I let her leave with James.

They've never let me visit here. Fia has to come to me, and only when they say she can. She's unpredictable, and I'm their insurance policy. They won't risk her snatching me and running off. I can't even leave the school building when Fia is in town; it's only when they have her elsewhere doing who knows what that Eden can take me out. With an escort, of course.

They didn't count on Fia being the one to disappear alone. I know she's scared, but I wonder . . . maybe she's better off.

I climb out of the car, Eden waiting to put my hand on the crook of her arm.

“She'll be okay,” Eden says. “You'll find her.”

“Soon,” James adds, and his is less a comfort and more a threat.

I hate him.

If I were Fia, if I were anyone else, I could get away from him now, run to someplace new, be free. But that's a lie. Because even if I could see, I couldn't leave without Fia. And if I ran, I'd do it knowing I would never really be safe, that no matter where I was, if I was still alive, Keane would somehow find me. My thoughts would never be safe. Not even my future would be my own.

He'll do whatever it takes to find Fia. If I do find her, it will be to save her from captivity and deliver her right back to it. Maybe we'll never get away. Our delusional plans not to plan will never work. We will never have an opening. There is nowhere for us in the whole world that Keane can't reach out to and drag us back from.

The world grows quieter as we pass through a door, sealing us into climate-controlled warmth and away from the mad, windy rush of the city. We go silently up stairs and James unlocks a door. I walk into an apartment with a hardwood floor. The air smells and tastes clean. Lifeless. But there's a hint of stale perfume somewhere that I can't place. Fia would never wear it.

“What does it look like?” I ask. I want to know where Fia has been living. I wish I could have visited her here. Lived with her here. “How did she decorate it?” I hate depending on someone else to tell me.

James answers. “She didn't. She said it was all the same to her.”

“Where's her room?” In all honesty I have no idea if this will help me see her, but I had to feel like I was doing something other than sitting around, starving myself, trying to have a vision. Surrounded by her here, where she was the most, might help. I can force the visions sometimes, but it isn't easy, and usually it's only a snatch.

“Walk straight forward. You'll go through a short hallway. The door's open.”

“You want me to come with?” Eden asks, but I shake my head. I'm glad James doesn't try to escort me there, either. I wish he weren't here at all. I hate that he knows her apartment, that he knows the Fia who lives here and I don't. I trace a hand along the wall, past the doorframe, into her room.

And this feels better, because it smells like Fia. It smells like spice and energy and vanilla. I take another step forward and trip on a pair of shoes in the middle of the room.

There's my Fia, too.

I shuffle carefully now, wading through clothes discarded on the floor, until I bump into the bed. The blankets are shoved and twisted around the end; I crawl on and push my face into her pillow. Fia, where are you? I miss your tapping fingers and your crazy laugh and all the things about you that I don't know.

I'm sorry I wanted you to be who you were before. I know you can't be her anymore. Come back to me and I'll help you figure out who to be now. Come back to me and I'll stop trying to fix anything and I'll just be your sister. I smash my face farther into her pillow, the pressure against my eyes creating a false sensation of light.

No, not false.

I'm seeing. I don't move, don't even dare to breathe. Fia. I want to see Fia. Show me Fia.

I see a man in a suit; he's older, his hair shot through with gray. He's at an imposing desk, with windows behind him. Outside is so white with snow the light is overwhelming. The room is strange—the walls curve, there are no corners. It's circular. On the floor the carpet has a design of some sort of bird, and there are flags, too, displayed prominently. I notice the same bird carved into the desk, and on one of the flags.

The man stands and holds out his hand, smiling. Another man, blandly handsome in an equally nice suit, takes it.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” The first man walks over to a pair of plush couches, obviously at ease.

The second man sits across from him. “Of course, Mr. President. How is Lauren? I saw her on the way in.”

The president laughs. “Best staffer we've ever had. Thanks again.”

I want to throw up.

Because I know the second man's voice. For all his paranoia about not being seen, Keane neglected to take into account my memory for voices. Keane. It's Mr. Keane. He is flesh and blood, after all, not a monster behind his voice. And he is friends with the president.

Suddenly the images shift, swirl. I am dizzy with motion sickness, and if I weren't lying down, I would have fallen. Adam? It is. He's outside, walking.

Fia is with him.

He says something. I can't hear him because it's too windy, but Fia laughs. Really laughs. Not her James laugh, not her hollow-girl laugh. An actual laugh. And Adam looks at her in a way that is tender and hopeful and happy and innocent. I cannot imagine this is a way anyone who knows her looks at my sister.

Fia smiles.

They buy hot dogs from a street stand, and walk without purpose—Fia always has a purpose—while Adam talks so animatedly that he sends relish flying through the air and then blushes and apologizes. I don't know where they are, I can't figure it out. There's a strange silver semicircle dominating the sky behind them, and it's green and clean around it.

They sit on a bench. I suddenly feel as though I am eavesdropping on something I shouldn't, that I am invading my sister's privacy. Adam angles closer to her, his knees bouncing with nervous energy. She listens to him with her head tilted, but her eyes look faraway. He reaches out slowly and puts one of his hands over hers.

She stares at their hands like she can't understand what is happening. I expect her to pull back, to start tapping on her leg in the way she can't help. She doesn't. And then she smiles, and her smile breaks my heart because I can see in it that her heart is broken, too, but maybe it can be fixed here.

I open my eyes to my own familiar blackness.

“Did you see her?” James asks.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Where is she?”

I could tell him. I could describe it. The strange silver arch was huge. Surely it's distinctive enough to get a location from. I don't know when they'll be there, but they will, soon. Fia will be there, and we could get her back.

But if we don't, I think she might actually have a chance at being happy.

But if we don't, Keane has made it perfectly clear how much value my life has to him.

I sit up straight. For once in my life I have the chance to protect and take care of my sister. She gave up everything to do the same for me. I can give it up for her, too.

“She's in a cell somewhere. I have no idea. It looked permanent.”

“Doris?”

I freeze, my heart stops. How could I not have heard Ms. Robertson come in? The perfume. She was already here. She was here all along. She can't know. She can't have heard.

“She's lying. She knows where Fia is. There was something about . . . what was it? Silver, huge, up in the sky but on the ground, too . . .”

I will not think of it. A song. I need a song. Fia sings songs. I will not think of it; I cannot think of it; I will not think of it.

“A pillar,” James says. “A statue. A skyscraper. A blimp.”

Don't say it, I think, don't say it.

“A sculpture. An airplane. An arch.”

My mind snaps; I don't think the word but it's enough. Doris lets out a derisive laugh. “That's it. She didn't want you to say that one. A huge silver arch.”

“St. Louis. I need ten men. We'll leave immediately.”

“Want me to put any Seers on it?”

“No use. Annabelle's the only one who can see Fia well, and she's already done her job. Thank you, Doris. That will be all.”

“I'll go order dinner,” Eden says softly, squeezing my shoulder. “You feel like Thai? We'll do manicures, and tomorrow . . .” Her voice breaks a little. I know she hates Fia, but she feels what I feel. She knows. “Things will be better. See you at home.”

I hear them leave, numb with despair. My own traitor thoughts have destroyed my sister.

“You should have just told me,” James says. “You make it so hard.”

“Please, James. Please. I saw her. And she was happy. Or she could be, at least. She was out, away from all this. You say you care about her. Let her stay out.”

“What about you? You know what it means if she doesn't come back.”

“It doesn't matter. She deserves a chance. Please don't take it away from her.”

There's a pause. It's long, too long. Then he says softly, thoughtfully, “How do you know she was happy?”

“She laughed. Really laughed. And she let him hold her hand.”

“Him?” His voice is hard. I sink back into the bed. I have done it again. I have said the wrong thing and lost whatever chance I had. “She was with a guy? Who was he?”

“Please. Let her go. We can both let her go.”

He snarls. “None of us gets out, Annie. We are all too steeped in blood for that.” And then, when I am flinching for his next battery of words, he surprises me by sounding sad. “You said Adam Denting was bigger than you and Fia. So is what I'm doing. And I can't let her go.”

I remember what Fia told me, about who the real Keane behind the school was. “What would your mother say?”

“That's just it. Nothing. Because she got out and left the rest of us here to deal with this mess. Now get up. I'm taking you back.”

I will never get away, and Fia will always be dragged in because of me.