The Darkest Star

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  Hearing him say these things, talk about decisions I’d supposedly made as this … this Nadia girl was beyond unnerving.

  “Jason knew I was coming after him. So he came to me first. He bartered for his life. He offered to heal you, but I had to stay away. I had some big issues with Jason, as he did with me, but it was more than that. The cure came with a deal.…” A muscle began to tick along his jaw. “I would have to give you up. Walk away from you, from the only real friend I had, from the only person I’d ever truly trusted. The only person I ever…” Trailing off, he shook his head. “I made the deal. I would walk away and I would stay away if you were safe. I agreed. You agreed to it, but you … didn’t know you wouldn’t remember me or anything. I knew if I told you that, you wouldn’t do it.”

  I moved backward and then shook my head again, not wanting to hear what he was saying but knowing I couldn’t stop him.

  “I agreed to their terms, but I stayed close to make sure you were okay and that nothing strange was happening to you.”

  “And yet you still left me with people you didn’t even trust?”

  Luc flinched—actually flinched. “Like I said, I was desperate, but that wasn’t part of the original agreement.”

  “What was supposed to happen to me once they wiped my memory and healed me?” I laughed harshly.

  “You were supposed to be placed with a family, but as I left the house the day you woke up from the fever, the esteemed Jason Dasher tried to renege on the deal. He attempted to kill me.”

  My breath caught as the trembling throughout my body picked up. “Did you … Did you kill him?”

  His jaw hardened. “That’s what some think. I might’ve even let people believe it, but I didn’t.”

  I couldn’t look away from him. My mind leapt to the conclusion. “Are you saying…?”

  “Sylvia killed him. She was there when he tried to do me in. She took him out. That’s why I let you stay with her.”

  Holy crap.

  “This is too much.” Lifting my hands halfway, I stopped, because I had no idea what I was doing with them.

  “Sylvia promised me that she would give you a good life, that no matter what happened, she would keep you safe, and she did. I made that deal and she honored it. I know, because I never really left. I always knew you were okay.”

  “You … kept tabs on me?”

  Luc didn’t deny it.

  “Christ.” I gasped, unable to even comprehend it. “This just keeps getting worse.”

  A muscle flexed along his jaw. A long moment passed. “If I had to do it all over, I would. Without a fucking doubt, I would do it again, because the only other option would be that you wouldn’t be standing in front of me—pissed off, but breathing. Alive and so damn beautiful that it sometimes kills me a little each time I look at you.”

  I stared at him, and even though every part of my being wanted to deny what he was saying, what I’d learned today, I saw the truth in his tense expression. I saw it in the way he dragged in a heavy breath, and I saw it when I talked to her. To Mom. The truth had been in her tears.

  I sagged, leaning against the wall. My skin felt stretched too thin. Oh God, this was true. This was real, but … “I’m not her anymore.” Tears clogged my throat. “I’m not Nadia. My name is Evie.”

  His gaze met mine. “I know. She’s gone,” he said again. “And you are here.”

  I … I couldn’t deal with this.

  I had to get out of there. I needed time. I needed space. My body trembling, I pushed off the wall and walked to the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure you’ll find out, right?” I looked over my shoulder at him. “You’ll have someone follow me. I just don’t want it to be you. I want you … I want you to stay away from me.” I turned and opened the door. “I wish … I wish I never came to this club.”

  27

  I didn’t go home.

  I didn’t go to the park.

  I drove and drove until I couldn’t concentrate any longer. Even though my life was hot mess express at the moment, I really didn’t want to accidentally take out a family of four. I pulled into a shopping center and turned off the car. I let my head fall back against the seat.

  Yesterday I’d been worried about some kind of psychotic Origin out to kill me, and today my entire life had imploded.

  I stared at the ceiling. “How is this possible?”

  None of it sounded like it could be, but why would she lie and why would Luc lie? What did they have to gain by telling me that my entire life was one big fat façade?

  They wouldn’t.

  A huge part of me knew that it was the truth. There was nothing to gain by the lies. Nothing.

  When I’d felt like the world was on the verge of imploding, I hadn’t realized it was my world that had been hours away from self-destructing.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “My name is Evelyn. My name is…”

  I couldn’t remember what it was like to be a kid. In the quiet, I searched and searched my memories. There were glimpses of running and laughing, the scent of wet soil and the sound of rushing water, but nothing concrete. How had I not noticed that before? Could it be as simple as what Luc had said? That I hadn’t noticed, because I simply hadn’t thought to?

  Sounded unreal, but it wasn’t like I’d spent time each day reminiscing about the good old days or something.

  My phone rang, jarring in the silence.

  I reached into my bag and pulled the phone out. Heidi. I started to answer the call but stopped. Luc could’ve told Emery what had happened. Or it could just be that I wasn’t in class and Heidi had snuck out into the hall to call me. Either way, she was too close to Luc.

  Too close to everything.

  I silenced the phone and then saw there were several missed calls and texts. One from her. Several from Zoe and Heidi. A text from James. I dropped my phone back into the bag. Did Heidi know what Luc had told me? It was possible. He could’ve told Emery and she could’ve confided in Heidi.

  The back of my throat burned as I lowered my head to the steering wheel. I fought back tears as I closed my hands into fists, pulling my elbows into my stomach. The movement didn’t even hurt my arm.

  My arm that had been broken less than twenty-four hours ago.

  I would do it again, because the only other option would be that you wouldn’t be standing in front of me.

  “Oh God,” I whispered, a sob racking my body, but I didn’t let the tears fall. I refused to.

  My phone rang again. Cursing, I grabbed it and was a second from pitching it through a window, but saw that it was Zoe. I stared at the picture of us. We were making duck faces in our selfie.

  She had nothing to do with this or Luc.

  I answered, croaking out, “Hello?”

  “Evie! God.” Her voice was hushed. “Where are you?”

  I glanced out the window. “I’m outside of a Target. Where are you?”

  “I’m hiding in the bathroom at school, calling you. Is there a reason why you’re there and not at school?” she asked. “Your mom called Heidi this morning, asking if you came to school.”

  Mom.

  “We waited until lunch to see if you would show up, but when you didn’t and then didn’t answer any of our calls, we started to get really freaked,” she said. “You know, considering how classmates are disappearing left and right.”

  I should have thought about that.

  “Especially since I heard someone say some guy jumped you in the parking lot after school. Heidi said that wasn’t true, but I’m not so sure.”

  “That’s not true.” I didn’t want her to worry. “I’m fine.”

  There was a beat of silence. “If you’re fine, why aren’t you at school?”

  I pushed my hair back. “Mom and I—We got into this huge fight this morning. I just couldn’t go to school.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  I pres
sed my lips together as I blinked back hot tears. “Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “It’s nothing. Look, I haven’t eaten. I’m going to grab something at Target.”

  “Wait—I can leave school and come meet you.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’m okay.”

  “Evie—”

  I winced at the sound of my name. “I’m fine. Seriously. Go back to class. I’ll text you later.”

  Not giving her a chance to argue, I hung up the phone. I sat there for a couple of moments, and then a sudden, shattering thought occurred to me.

  Who the hell is Evelyn Dasher then?

  Better yet, did she even exist?

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later I walked back into my house. It was empty and quiet. Her car was gone. Wasn’t exactly surprised. Knowing her, she was probably at work.

  I stopped in the middle of the living room. Actually, I didn’t know her. At all. I just knew what she let me see, which was a lie.

  I picked up the wooden candleholder, the really nice gray-and-white one that I still hadn’t taken a picture of. I walked over to the office doors and slammed the heavy base through the square window by the lock. Glass shattered, pinging off the floor.

  The sound was frighteningly satisfying.

  Reaching inside the gap, I unlocked the door. It swung open with a rush of cold air. I stepped into the room, seeing it for the first time.

  Looked like any normal office. Built-in bookshelves lined with medical tomes. A neat, dark cherry oak desk with a desktop computer sitting next to a large desk calendar. There were bins—organizing bins everywhere, under the window seat and on the bookshelves.

  I stalked toward the nearest one, a gray cloth bin under the window seat. Bending down, I picked it up and peeled the lid off, dumping the contents onto the floor. Receipts fluttered. Hundreds of them. I grabbed the next bin and it was heavier. I turned it upside down, and envelopes fell out, along with a black handgun.

  The gun thumped off the floor.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, leaving the gun where it fell. I stepped over it and got to work. Every bin came down. Every single one, and there was nothing—not a damn thing in any of them who told me who Evelyn Dasher was or if she ever existed.

  Not until I pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk, which took using a hammer I’d found in the garage and prying it open. In the process, wood splintered, and I really didn’t care.

  A photo album.

  I found myself staring down at a freaking photo album.

  There supposedly hadn’t been any that had survived the invasion. That was what I’d been told. That was what I’d believed to be the truth. Surprise, surprise. That was also a damn lie.

  I dropped the hammer onto the floor and then snatched up the photo album and carried it over to the window. I sat down and yelped. I stood and ripped the cushion back.

  Another shotgun.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” I picked it up and propped it against the wall. Then I sat back down. “Geez.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I cracked open the photo album and there, right on the first page, was a photo of my mom and who I knew immediately to be Jason Dasher. They were younger, probably in their twenties. He was in a full military uniform with awards and shiny things on his breast and shoulder. She wore a pretty white dress and had flowers in her hair.

  She wasn’t wearing contacts.

  Her eyes were as blue as they’d been this morning.

  Hands shaking, I flipped the glossy pages. There were more pictures of them, in places that appeared to be far from here. Tropical, I was guessing, based on the palm trees. There were a few of her in what appeared to be army greens. Candid snapshots taken of them both, and it was evident that there had been a relationship between them. I didn’t know how many pictures I’d flipped past before I saw her.

  Evelyn Dasher was real.

  It was the three of them.

  Jason and Sylvia Dasher stood behind a girl who had to be about nine or ten, give or take a year or so. Both had their hands on her shoulders. Peeling back the clear film, I pulled the picture out.

  She had a cherub face—round with big cheeks. Freckles like me. Long blond hair. Brown eyes.

  “Holy Christ,” I whispered. She looked like me. That was like climbing the Mount Everest of messed up and sticking a freak flag on the top of it.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  Was this why the door to her office was always locked?

  I put the picture aside and kept turning the pages. There were more pictures—a birthday party with a cake. There was a number eight candle in the middle of it. There were first-day-of-school pictures—photos with her in a frilly blue dress and black shoes. In between the pages, there were blank sheets—sheets where there had to have been photos once, because perfect square white marks stood out in stark contrast against the faded yellow of the rest of the page.

  I came upon another birthday picture. She had this little cone-shaped hat on and she was smiling so brightly at the camera. There was another cake, and the man crouched next to her was him: the man whose face I couldn’t remember, whose voice I couldn’t hear. But that wasn’t the part of the picture that was an undeniable stab to the chest.

  Behind her, hanging from the ceiling, was a sparkling banner. It had unicorns on either side of the words—words that spelled out HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EVELYN.

  Evelyn.

  That wasn’t me.

  She looked like me, like we could be cousins, but that wasn’t me.

  All these photos, and none of you as a kid.

  Luc had said that to me. Luc had said so much. My hand trembled as the picture blurred. How was I supposed to … How was I supposed to process this?

  How was I supposed to understand this?

  That I was holding a picture of Evelyn Dasher and she wasn’t … wasn’t me.

  28

  “Here.” James thrust a red cup in front of my face. “Looks like you could use this.”

  Catching the strong scent of alcohol, I frowned. “What’s in this?”

  “Just try it.” James plopped down on a lounge chair, stretching his legs out. “Trust me. Whatever you got going on right now that you absolutely refuse to talk about, this will definitely take your mind off of it.”

  My mind was off of it, because I just wasn’t going to deal with it at this moment. Nope. I was Captain Nope at the moment.

  I’d left the photo album and that picture of the three of them on the window seat and walked out of the house. By then, school was over and I called the one person who I was rarely tempted to confide in.

  James.

  I’d forgotten all about Coop’s party until James told me to meet him there.

  So here I was, sitting by a pool like my entire life hadn’t blown up this morning, pretending I hadn’t seen Grayson in my rearview mirror as I parked. I ignored him and he ignored me. Perfect.

  I had no idea what I was going to do tonight, but I didn’t want to go home. I peeked at James. He’d probably let me stay at his place, sneak me in right under his parents’ noses.

  But that would be kind of weird.

  Hearing the laughter and shouts and the steady thump of music coming from inside the house was also kind of weird after everything that had happened.

  I took a drink and immediately regretted it. Fire poured down my throat and hit my nearly empty stomach.

  “What’s in this drink?” I asked again, flapping one hand in front of my face.

  James chuckled as water splashed over the pool patio, drawing my attention. It didn’t feel warm enough to swim, but that hadn’t stopped anyone. Neither did the lack of bathing suits. I was seeing waaay more than I ever needed to.

  I sat beside his legs, to stay out of the reach of the cold water.

  “A little of this and a little of that.”

  I frowned. “It tastes like gasoline—gasoline on fire.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Pressing
my lips together, I shook my head and then leaned over his legs, placing my cup on the table. “It’s bad.”

  “You’re such a lightweight.” He knocked his foot against my hip. “Drink up.”

  “Nah. I think I’ll pass.” I folded my arms in my lap. “I’m driving.”

  “You could always crash here,” he suggested. “Half the people here will.”

  I shook my head as my gaze crawled back to the pool. I saw April standing on the other side, her arms across her chest as her mouth appeared to be moving a mile a minute. A small group surrounded her, obviously enraptured by whatever hateful crap she was spewing.

  I dragged my gaze from her, to those in the pool. So many smiling faces. It was almost like Colleen and Amanda hadn’t died. Okay. Maybe that wasn’t fair.

  Or maybe they were just having fun, letting loose to remind themselves that they were very much still alive. My gaze dropped to the cup, but whatever the hell devil mix that drink was wasn’t going to prove that I was alive—that I was real and not a fraud. If I drank, it would probably make it worse.

  What was I going to do?

  Could I go home and go to bed, wake up tomorrow and pretend everything was okay? How could I?

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” James replied.

  I exhaled roughly. “What would you do if you found out you weren’t really James?”

  “What?” He laughed.

  It sounded stupid. “Never mind.”

  He stared at me a moment and then sat up. “Like if I found out I was adopted or something?”

  Yeah, no. That was not what I was going for, because this was nothing like finding out you were adopted. I would’ve been cool with that. Shocked. But cool. I lifted a shoulder.

  “That’s not what you’re asking.” He dropped his feet to the patio next to mine. “You mean if I found out I wasn’t me?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered.