Perfect Lies

by Kiersten White

  Ten minutes later we’re both panting. He has me by the hair; I grab at his hand.

  “Ignore it,” he says. “You can afford to lose hair. Focus on getting away.”

  I slam my elbow back, hitting his ribs, then twist under his hand, my hair ripping at my scalp and making my eyes tear. I bring my knee up to hit him in the stomach, but I miss.

  “Good! Really good!”

  “What are you doing?” Adam sounds horrified. Cole and I freeze, his hand still wrapped up in my hair, my hands around his other wrist. I was about to bite him.

  Oh kill me. Why would Adam show up now?

  Cole disentangles his hand, and his voice comes out far calmer than mine would. “We’re practicing.”

  “Practicing what? Annie, you’re crying, are you okay? What did he do?” Adam’s arm comes around my shoulders, and I hurriedly wipe under my eyes.

  “No, I’m not crying, my eyes are watering. From the hair. It’s okay. I’m learning self-defense.”

  “She’s not going to get in any fights!”

  Cole’s voice is the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Better to know.”

  “She doesn’t need to know! What is wrong with you? She’s blind!”

  His words whip across my face and my spine stiffens. I know I’m blind, obviously, but hearing him put it like that, the way someone would say She’s a child! wriggles under my skin.

  “She’s not your responsibility,” Cole says.

  “She is! Fia gave me the number to call. Fia trusted me with the most important person in her whole life. I’m not going to let anything happen to Annie! You shot Fia. You don’t care about what she would want.”

  “Why should I? Fia’s not here.”

  “But she will be.”

  I back away from their voices, then raise my hand. “Umm, hey. Can I have an opinion on this?” I turn toward Adam. Is this how he sees me? I want to pretend like he’s protecting me because I’m precious, not because he thinks I’m defective. “I’ve spent most of my life feeling helpless. Being made to feel helpless. I’m done feeling like that.”

  “But you’ll never need to know this stuff,” Adam says, and he sounds so sad I forgive him.

  I walk forward and hold my arms out, wait for him to meet me, and then put my arm around his waist. “None of us wants to be part of this, but we’re all here. Besides, it’s kind of fun. And now I can do this. Look! Over in the corner!” I point wildly, then put my foot behind Adam’s leg and throw my shoulder against his stomach, tripping him. I fall on top of him, then roll off, laughing. “See how good I’m getting?”

  “Brilliant,” Cole says, his voice dark.

  Adam lets out a winded oof.

  I sit up, still laughing, gasping for breath between giggles.

  “Come on. We have another half hour to go.” Cole nudges me with his foot, and I grab his ankle, holding on for dear life as he tries to get loose. “Seriously, Annie, we’re not done.”

  I lunge forward and wrap my arms around his knees, push against them until he loses his balance and crashes to the ground.

  “I win!” I cackle, flopping onto my back.

  It’d feel more like a victory if Adam’s voice saying “She’s blind!” wasn’t echoing in my head, making me feel small and helpless.

  His words are still there that afternoon as I sit alone in my room while Cole and Adam talk business. I miss Fia so much it’s like I’ve lost another sense, one I didn’t know I had until it was gone. She would know what to do. She would tell me.

  And that’s exactly my problem. I’ve had enough of waiting for other people. I tap out two pills and swallow them, then lie back on my bed and wait.

  After a couple of hours someone knocks softly on my door. “Come in,” I call. I feel weird. But not super weird. And maybe I only feel weird because I’m waiting to feel weird. I don’t know.

  “Hey,” Adam says. “It’s been a while. How are things?”

  I laugh. “You know, same old, same old. Attacked by people from my past with guns. Ran from their bodies. Got stuck in this house to hide some more. You?”

  I feel him sit on the edge of the bed. “It’s been okay. Having a lab again makes me feel a little normal. Been running tests on Sarah and a few other girls. Actually, that’s why I’m here. Rafael wanted me to get some scans of your brain activity.”

  I sit up, frowning. “You’re researching?”

  “Pretty much picking up where I left off, but it’s nice because I’m not operating blind anymore. Err. I know what I’m looking at, now, I mean.”

  “Be careful. I—you could do a lot of damage.” I bite my lip, hesitating. Nope. No more hedging. “I knew about you before we met.”

  “What did Fia tell you?” He sounds so bashfully pleased with the thought that Fia talked about him, it makes what I’m saying feel even worse.

  “Actually, I knew about you first. From a vision. It was women, a bunch of women, who could Read and See and Feel. They were coming into focus and then disappearing. It wasn’t a happy vision. It was a bad one. And your name was there the whole time.”

  “Annie, I would never hurt anyone.” He’s upset, and he stands up from the bed, starts pacing. “You have to believe that.”

  “Of course I believe that! But right now it’s so hit-and-miss finding girls like me. If someone, the wrong someone, got hold of what you’re doing, if they could track abilities on a broad scale, none of these girls would be safe.”

  “I know. We’ll be careful. I’d die before I let Keane get my research. I understand if you don’t want to—”

  He pauses, and then I hear the distinct rattle of a medicine bottle being picked up. “What’s this?”

  “A prescription. I wanted to see if it’d help me have more visions.”

  “Adderall?”

  “It increases brain function.”

  “I know what it is. It’s essentially legalized speed. How long have you been taking it?”

  “Just today.” I frown. He’s annoying me. I don’t want to talk about this. I want to go for a walk. I should go for a walk. I stand and try to leave, but he grabs my arm.

  “Wait. I’ve seen visions happening on an MRI with Sarah. They’re seizures. Or at least they act almost the same way. And I’m pretty sure this type of medicine can trigger seizures if you’re already prone to them.”

  “Or trigger visions.”

  “Let me look up the side effects, okay? I wish you had talked to me before taking them.”

  “I took them a couple hours ago. Obviously nothing is happening.” I jerk my arm away and walk out of my room. I don’t know this house well yet, and I miss the top stair, almost falling.

  “Whoa,” Cole says, catching me around the waist. “What’s going on?”

  “Going for a walk! Or a run. I haven’t ever been for a run.”

  Adam talks behind me. “She took something.”

  Another rattle as the bottle is tossed from Adam to Cole. Cole swears loudly. “Did Rafael give these to you?”

  “I asked for them.”

  “I’m going to kill him. Get Sarah on the phone right now.”

  I open my mouth to argue but it’s hot, it’s so hot in here, and I feel like I’m already running, like the world is spinning under my feet faster than it used to, and then there is light

  so much light

  and it comes at me and comes at me and doesn’t stop

  FIA

  Twenty-eight Hours Before

  I WAKE UP TREMBLING AND CRYING. I KILLED THEM. I killed them again. I always kill them.

  James’s arms come around me, hold me close, hold me together. He holds me together.

  If it weren’t for his arms, I don’t know what I’d do.

  “Nobody actually lives in North Dakota,” I say, drinking coffee even though it’s early enough I should go back to bed. I’m sitting on the floor next to the couch. Hotel furniture is creepy.

  I texted Pixie that I was safe, but fell asleep waiting for James to g
et back. I don’t want to fall asleep again, not if James is leaving.

  I can’t think about Rafael, about what I found out tonight. Or I can. I forget that thoughts are safe around James. Thoughts never feel safe anymore. But—oh, what did I do? What did I do, giving Annie to Lerner?

  “Have you ever met someone from North Dakota?” I ask, trying to distract myself.

  James laughs, neatly folding a pair of slacks before setting them in his luggage. “No, I haven’t.”

  “No one has. That’s because it’s not a real place.”

  “I’ll be gone two days, tops.”

  I stand and run my fingers along his clothes, each placed perfectly in the luggage. “Why do you have to go?”

  “Because, pet, it’s important.”

  I pick up his slacks, wrinkle them into a ball, and shove them back in. “I’m not your pet.”

  “Fia.” He puts his arms around my waist, pulls me close, kisses my forehead with his lips pulled back into a smile. “You don’t get it. He trusts me. He trusts you. This is it. Any hesitation he had about us is gone after what you did. Just play it safe and do whatever anyone tells you to. And if anyone asks, you don’t know where I am and you’re annoyed because I never tell you enough about what’s going on.”

  “Gee, that will be hard to fake.” I glare at him, and he looks hurt. He does it to protect me—in case things go wrong, in case he messes up, he hopes maybe I’ll get out okay. But sometimes I wonder, if he spends all his time at work thinking that he doesn’t really care about me, that I’m just a tool he’s crafted . . .

  How many lies can a brain tell itself before they become truths?

  I soften my look and his shoulders relax from the tension nearly always written there. “We’re close,” he says. “Closer than we’ve ever been.”

  Close. Closer. Rafael’s words bounce around in my skull, making my head hurt. I hate that he has space in my skull now. I don’t believe him about James—I don’t—but I can’t stop thinking it. Does Rafael have Annie, or does he just know she’s alive? If he’s Lerner, and Lerner are the good guys, is Rafael a good guy?

  No.

  James is my good. “Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what we’re going to do. Tell me what getting closer to your father has brought us. I want a timeline.”

  He strokes my back. “Remember our deal? We don’t talk about it. We don’t think about it. We don’t plan it.”

  “Of course I remember,” I snarl. I have been not thinking and not planning and not not not not for so long I don’t know if I could think and plan anymore if my life depended on it.

  “It’s important.” The line appears between his eyebrows, and I smooth it away with my thumb. He is so beautiful, this fierce, manipulative, calculating boy of mine. He is a liar. I chose him, I love him, I couldn’t love him if it wasn’t right. He takes care of me. He saves me from myself.

  “Have you ditched the Reader yet?”

  I shrug, dropping my hand. I thought about killing her tonight. I saved her, instead. “I like her.”

  “You can’t afford to like her. What if you thought the wrong thing? What if you thought about Annie?”

  I rub my own forehead, tap tap tap tap against it. “I am so sick of hearing about Annie.”

  “Where else did you hear about her?” His voice is sharp and tight with suspicion. He does not suspect enough. Never enough about me.

  I should tell him about Rafael. If I trusted him, I would ask him about Rafael. I would bring him in on this problem, and I would let him help me fix it. Instead I smile. “In my head, all the time, I have to sing the I killed Annie song. It’s a very repetitive tune.”

  Sometimes I forget it’s not true. Sometimes, like tonight, I wake up and see the blood on her hand, and I can’t remember whether or not I actually killed her. It scares me more than anything.

  Maybe I did kill her.

  No. I know I didn’t. I saved her. I killed for her.

  “Do you have any way of contacting her?”

  “Nope.” Annie is mine. My secret. My sister. Mine. I add this to the secrets I keep from James. I don’t even know why I keep the ones I do, why I hide the things I do. I can’t stop.

  He slams his suitcase shut, zips it up. “Did you really have to leave her with Lerner?”

  I roll my eyes. “The foster care system denied my application.” It was right to leave her there. I know it was. I remember what it felt like. I have to trust that, or I’ll lose my mind.

  Well, lose it more.

  He picks up his bag and leans in to kiss me, but I turn my face away. “Did I do the right thing?” I whisper.

  He drops the bag, pulls me into his arms, tries to get me to look at him. “You always do. Which thing are we talking about?”

  I am talking about so many things. So many things. I look him in the eyes, try to see myself reflected back, but I can’t. There’s nothing there. “Your father would have died. I stopped it.”

  The lines around his eyes tighten, and without moving he’s gotten farther away from me.

  “Doesn’t he deserve to die?” I ask.

  He closes his eyes and then leans his head against mine. “I don’t know, Fia. When I realized what would have happened, I . . . was relieved. I was glad he wasn’t dead. Maybe I should want him dead, but I don’t. I want to destroy him, I want him ruined and behind bars, but I can’t want him dead. He’s all I have left.”

  I drop my hands as his words echo through me. He looks up, a heartbeat too late, and shakes his head. “No, no, I didn’t mean that. I mean he’s all the family I have left. Like Annie. Would it matter to you if Annie did the worst thing in the world, if she took away everything you loved, if she was a terrible person? Would you want her dead?”

  “No.” The word drops from my lips, but it has no soul, no passion behind it. Do I want Phillip Keane dead? Would I ever do that to James?

  Well, obviously not. I saved the monster’s life. “What happens to the woman?” I ask.

  James clears his throat, checks his pockets for his keys or his cell phone. I know before he opens his mouth he will lie to me. “I’m not sure.”

  My brain is exploding with all the wrongs clashing against each other—she’ll die, or she’s dead, or she’s been dead for months, she just didn’t know it yet. And it’s my fault. I traded Phillip Keane’s life for hers.

  But then James kisses me and his lips are soft and warm and they push it away, they push everything away, as always.

  We are both of us made of the things we have lost. I want to find those things together. “Tell me about your mother,” I whisper.

  He freezes against me, then with a sigh that travels through his whole body, he sits on the couch, pulling me onto his lap.

  “She told the worst jokes in the world. She loved a good pun.”

  “No such thing.”

  His smile is the saddest I’ve ever seen. “She was a terrible cook. Burned everything.”

  “Did she love your father?” How could a woman who could see the future—who could know what was coming—fall in love with a man like Phillip Keane?

  James leans his head back, closes his eyes. There is something painfully innocent about the curve of his thick, dark lashes against his face. “She told me only people we love the most can destroy us, because no one else has that kind of power.”

  “So she knew.”

  He nods. “She knew. Do you know what else she always said?” He’s quiet and still for so long I wonder if he’s fallen asleep. Then, his voice barely above a whisper, he says, “She’d hold me close and say, ‘James, my darling boy, you are going to break my heart.’ And I’d promise I wouldn’t, and she’d look at me and I could see in her face that she knew. She knew I would. And when I got older, it made me so mad that I did exactly what she said. She gave me the same power she gave my father, and we destroyed her.”

  I bury my face in the space between his neck and shoulder, breathe him in, wish my cursed instincts could tell me what
to say to him, how to pull him back to me. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Nothing ever is.” His laugh rattles something broken free in his chest, a bitter exhalation of weight that I cannot carry for him.

  If we are defined by what we have lost, James and I will never really be found.

  I wink at the security guard, then put on my best bored mood for the Feeler in the corner of the room. She’s here to monitor me while I do stock-picking duties. Can’t feel anything I want to feel. Not about James, not about Rafael, not about Annie. What else is new.

  I’m three floors beneath Pixie. Three floors beneath Phillip Keane.

  Humming to myself, I sit down at a desk and flip through the Dow and NASDAQ. I pick at random, whatever strikes my fancy. Sell this. Buy that. Tra-la-la-la. They are all imaginary numbers anyway. They don’t give me account information and computers here, not like James gives me. So I can’t change things, can’t hide things. Oh well.

  I finish, stretching my arms above my head and yawning. Saved the boss’s life yesterday. What to do today? Maybe I’ll rescue a deposed Middle Eastern dictator. Who knows what my instincts will decide is right!

  The Feeler sets a stack of folders on my desk, watching me way too intently. “More stocks?” I ask. I am not curious, but I don’t need to feel curious for this. I still feel bored. And hungry. “Can empaths feel when I’m hungry?”

  She doesn’t look amused. Maybe because her hair is pulled back into a ponytail so tight, the corners of her hazel eyes are tugged out. I’m glad I can’t feel what her scalp must feel like. Feelers have the worst skills of all.

  Or maybe Pixie does. I don’t want to know what everyone thinks of me.

  Or maybe James’s mom did. If the people I love are going to destroy me, at least I don’t have to live with it every day until it happens.

  The Feeler snaps her fingers in front of my face. My eyes meet hers and I don’t bother hiding the violent feelings that flare up. “Mr. Keane wants you to go over these old notes. You aren’t the only one working on them.” She says that last like a threat and I’m confused by her hostility. And then I wonder.

  “You didn’t happen to know Clarice, did you?”