Deception So Dark

by Clara Kensie

I pointed into the sunny, snowy yard, where my siblings had been running in the dark night just moments ago. “I heard Logan say it. In a vision.”

  Tristan squinted into the wind, down the road. “It makes sense. The train depot’s only a mile from here in the town square.”

  I twirled, the frigid air becoming refreshing and crisp. “We can find them. Us. You and me. With my retrocognition. We’ll follow their path. They’re three weeks ahead of us, but by now they should have settled somewhere, living under new names. It might take us a few days, but we’ll catch up to them.”

  “I promised my parents that we’d be back in Lilybrook in time for dinner tonight,” Tristan said. But his protest had no strength; he was already convinced. Kellan had fired Tristan from his job as a junior agent, but finding Jillian and Logan on his own would prove to the APR that he would be a good investigator after all.

  Finding Jillian and Logan would make up for failing me.

  He lit up from the inside out: first his eyes, then his smile. “Union Station, here we come.”

  I laughed, and the wind carried it away with the snowflakes. As early as tomorrow, next week at the latest, Jillian and Logan could return with us to Lilybrook. No more lies. No more aliases. No more paralyzing fear that each day would be our last. Just happy, stable, peaceful, normal lives.

  Finding Jillian and Logan was my top priority, and therefore it was Tristan’s. We didn’t need the APR. We had my power of retrocognition and Tristan’s warning premonitions. We had each other.

  Together, we would find my siblings.

  Tristan drove us straight down the road, just over a mile, to the little train depot in Twelve Lakes’ town square. Today was a Saturday, and the faded schedule mounted on the door informed us the next train was arriving at one o’clock, only five minutes from now. We’d made it just in time. From here, it would take almost an hour and a half to get to Union Station.

  Too cold to wait outside, we entered the tiny depot. A wall of plate glass windows faced out toward the train tracks. One window had been replaced by plywood, slightly dimming the interior. Only one other person was in the depot, a college-aged girl in a red wool coat and brown fur-trimmed boots, sitting on a bench and scrolling through her cell phone. On her way to see a friend, perhaps, or to meet a guy for a date. Just a normal girl, with a normal life, with normal problems. Certainly not a girl whose parents had used their powers of remote vision and psychokinesis to blackmail and murder people.

  The normal girl gave Tristan and me a disinterested glance, then returned to her phone.

  Tristan sent a quick text to his parents to tell them what we were doing. Too anxious to wait patiently for the train, I paced the perimeter of the depot.

  Five minutes until the train arrived. Then another ninety to Union Station. How much farther away could Jillian and Logan get in that amount of time?

  Ninety-five minutes too far.

  But they had been here, at this train station in Twelve Lakes, just three weeks ago. If I lifted the fog, I should be able to see them. Maybe they’d made a plan and decided where to go after Union Station.

  Concentrating, keeping my breath even and steady, adjusting the fog increments at a time, I filtered through the histories of all the passengers who’d been here in the past—

  “I see them!” I cried. Wispy, flickering in and out and surrounded by fog, but it was definitely them. Huddled together on the wooden bench in the far shadowed corner. Sneakers wet from their mile-long trek through the snowy night. Snow dusting their hair and shoulders. Logan on guard, gaze darting from door to each corner and back to the door. Jillian crying into her hands and shivering from cold.

  Shh, Tristan said silently, with a nod at the girl in the red coat before pulling me to sit next to him. What do you see? What are they saying?

  I returned my focus to the bench in the corner, then lifted the fog a bit more to reveal Jillian heaving a great sob, the plate glass window shattering behind her, and Logan admonishing her to control her PK. Then the images flickered and faded away, disappearing like vapor.

  Jillian was so scared that she broke the window, I told Tristan. But now the visions are gone.

  At least we’re on their trail, he said as the train whistle blew outside. We’ll pick it up again at Union Station.

  ❀

  Shadowed, chilly, echoey. Dirty, gray, and underground. Chicago’s massive Union Station platform was much too similar to the Underground prison of the APR. I’d lived in an Underground cell for three weeks, hiding the truth about my parents’ crimes in the fog, insisting that Dennis Connelly was the real killer, insisting that Tristan had only pretended to love me so he could help capture my family. Until yesterday. That was the day my retrocognition, suppressed by the fog my entire life, finally gave me all the proof I’d ever need, or want, that I had been wrong.

  Tristan kept me close under his arm as we walked down the platform, then through the concourse and up to the lively and noisy Great Hall. From gloomy and dim to bright and bustling in an instant. I had to squint against the sunlight streaming from the windows and reflecting off the shiny marble floors.

  Businessmen and women rushed past, some shouting into cell phones. Mothers tugged their children behind them and pushed screaming toddlers in strollers. Everyone hurrying, chatting. “So many people,” I breathed.

  Tristan called my name, but I could barely hear him over the crowd. It was just so loud in here. So many people, and the number grew by the second. Women wearing pillbox hats. Men with narrow ties. Teens wearing fringed vests.

  “Tessa!”

  A rowdy group of guys in blue Cubs jerseys pushed past on their way to a game, hooting and high-fiving each other.

  Bring in the fog, Clockwise.

  Hearing Tristan’s nickname for me, the first word he’d ever spoken to me, snapped me back, and I brought in the fog.

  The loud shut off like someone had pressed a mute button.

  The slick floor of the station shone like glass. There were a few dozen people in winter coats waiting on benches and hustling to the escalators or out the doors, but compared to how crowded it was just a few seconds ago, the enormous station was now almost empty.

  Those Cubs fans were not on their way to a game. It was January. It wasn’t even baseball season.

  I blinked up at Tristan. “All those people. They were just visions. The fog lifted and I didn’t even know it.”

  “You’re still learning to control it,” he said. “But we have to go.”

  “Why? I haven’t even started looking for Jillian and Logan.”

  He tapped his head—a warning premonition. “You’re going to lose control and pass out.” He started to turn around, pulling me with him.

  I shook his arm off me. “But I’m good now. I have the fog back under control.”

  “Not for long. I’m still seeing it happen.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, Tessa, you won’t. It’s going to happen unless I get you out of here.” He tapped his head again. He believed I was going to pass out, and there was no convincing him otherwise.

  “Then I’ll find them before I pass out,” I said. “How long do I have?”

  Tristan frowned, anxiety and doubt chasing each other behind his eyes. “You have one minute before we go back to the train. Sixty seconds.”

  I nodded as visions began solidifying, although I hadn’t lifted the fog yet. Carefully, cautiously, I raised it. Jillian and Logan could have gone in any direction from here. I concentrated on finding them, peering through the dense crowd. Even standing on my tiptoes, I was too short to see above anyone. So many people had been in Union Station that a sense of any individual, even my own brother and sister, had become impossible to distinguish.

  “I don’t see them, Tristan.”

  “Then don’t look,” he said, his voice echoing from far away. “Think. Quickly. We’re at Union Station, downtown Chicago. What do you think Jillian and Logan would do next? Would they stay and
hide somewhere in the city, or would they go somewhere else?”

  I tried to think. I wanted so badly for Jillian and Logan to be here, in Chicago. So close. Just one city to look in, instead of a whole country. A whole planet. But I knew they’d never stay in Chicago or anywhere near Twelve Lakes. They believed a killer was after them—they’d run as far as they could get. “I’m sure they left the city.”

  “Okay, good. We can eliminate all the local routes and concentrate on transportation that leaves Chicago.” Guiding me through the fog, he rushed me over to a map of Union Station mounted on the wall. “There’s an Amtrak station in this building, and a Greyhound station a few blocks away. Or they could have taken a city bus to the airport. Which one would they pick?”

  Dizzy, woozy, heart pounding in my ears, I labored to keep the fog close. Visions of all the people who had ever been in this station were threatening to break free. My mind was swimming in a sea of fog, in an ocean of visions.

  “Time to go,” Tristan said. He took my arm, but I shook him off. With a huge effort, I pushed the visions away. The exertion made me weak, but the visions were gone again.

  “No. I’m still feeling fine,” I said. “I can do this.”

  With an impatient sigh, Tristan took my arm again, but only to support me rather than to take me away. “Bus, train, or plane, Tessa?”

  I took a deep breath and licked my lips. My mouth was so dry. I had to think, but the thick fog made it difficult. I forced myself to focus. Bus, train, or plane.

  My family had never taken a plane while we were on the run because security was so tight. We paid cash for everything so we didn’t have to use credit cards or show identification, and that was impossible when purchasing a plane ticket. I was positive they didn’t go to the airport. That left buses or trains.

  Buses made lots of stops. It would be easy for Jillian and Logan to get off at any of the stops if they felt threatened or unsafe. But it would also be easy for someone to get on. They would wonder if every man boarding the bus at every stop was Dennis Connelly, or someone working for him.

  Jillian and Logan had lots of money. Bags of cash. They could easily afford two tickets on an Amtrak train. A cross-country train wouldn’t make as many stops as a cross-country bus, but it would be easier to hide on a train. Trains had dining cars. They’d have food. Trains had private sleeper cars. Privacy meant safety.

  But they could also have walked out of the station and onto the streets, and taken a cab somewhere. Or walked to a used car lot and bought a car. Or bought a car from someone who was selling it privately. They didn’t have licenses, but that wouldn’t stop them from driving.

  Too many options. It would take hours, days, to track each one, and I only had seconds to leave before Tristan’s premonition happened. If I picked the wrong option…

  “A train,” I heard myself say from far away. It was only a guess, a wish, a hope. “They might have taken the train somewhere. We have to go to the Amtrak station.”

  “The Amtrak lobby is all the way across this huge build—” Tristan said, then his eyes opened wide. “It’s going to happen, now, if we don’t leave.”

  I took a few shaky steps. I had to get to the Amtrak lobby before the visions came back, and they were already pushing their way out of the fog. The effort to contain them was making me weak, making my heart pound, closing up my throat. I forced myself to keep walking. “I just need another minute.”

  Breath gaspy. Legs shaky. Head dizzy. I stumbled into Tristan, then forced myself upright again.

  “Tessa, stop!” he demanded. “We have to go. Now.”

  “Help me get there,” I said. “If I close my eyes, maybe I can keep the visions away.”

  I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. Whirling around me were people and names and facts and stories I didn’t want to know or need to know but I did know, I knew it all, and everything spiraled deeper and deeper and I couldn’t think couldn’t breathe—

  The visions blasted through the fog like an explosion.

  Millions of visions. Surrounding me. Burying me. Suffocating me. Solid, unbreakable, impenetrable. I crumpled to the floor with a stifled scream—never ever ever scream—clutching my head, certain the visions would force my skull to burst.

  The fog. The fog, the fog, I need the fog, where is the fog? I called it but it wouldn’t come. It wouldn’t come it wouldn’t come. I called it, reached for it, tried to grab it and pull it in but my fingers just slipped through it.

  Tristan the visions they won’t let me go so many visions hundreds thousands millions billions—

  ❀

  The long silver knife pivots on its point, the blade reflecting the light. It glitters and glimmers, sparkles and glows.

  A binder, thick and heavy with paper, opens with a screech. On each page is a photo of my parents’ victims. The pages turn themselves, each page featuring a different victim, and another, and another. Endless pages, endless victims.

  My parents are their killers, and the blood that pumps through my veins is my parents’ blood. Tainted blood. Tarnished blood. Killers’ blood.

  From the pages of the binder, the victims stare at me. Accuse me. Loathe me. Despise me. Their eyes morph, meld, blend together, and become a single pair of eyes, dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal. Infinite black, forever black, impossible black, glowering at me with vengeful fury.

  They want revenge. They want me to atone. They want me to bleed. They want me to pay with my tainted, tarnished blood.

  The eyes grow, bigger and darker, rumbling and growling, louder and louder, then with a thunderous roar they explode, detonate, flashing silver, bright and blinding.

  And the knife glitters and glimmers, sparkles and glows, and slices through the air.

  ❀

  I woke up on the cold shiny floor of Union Station to Tristan squeezing my hand. “She gets panic attacks,” he half-lied to an emotionless EMT as she checked my pulse. He scraped his free hand through his hair. “I couldn’t stop it from happening in time.” Under his breath, he swore at himself.

  Like a soft gray blanket, fog had settled over everything.

  Murmuring with shock and pity, a crowd had gathered around me. A crowd of real people. People of the present, not of the past.

  They stared down at me, their eyes wide with curiosity and soft with sympathy. Except for a hunched-over old man with a cane. He glowered at me with grief and shame, despair and rage, his eyes dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal.

  I blinked, and his eyes lightened, becoming a watery, unfocused blue.

  “Grandpa, this way,” cooed the young woman next to him, who then gently took his arm and led him away.

  I tried to raise the fog again, just a tiny bit, but it wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t see a single vision of the millions of people who’d been here in the past. The visions were gone.

  Which meant Jillian and Logan were gone, too. I’d lost their trail.

  Tristan and I would have to go back to Lilybrook without them.

  Pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, Tristan’s father, Dennis, paced back and forth in the Connellys’ family room. His mom, Deirdre, sat next to me on the couch, her curtain of frizzy copper hair not quite hiding her disapproving expression.

  Tristan sat on my other side, elbows on his knees. “So that’s what happened,” he said. It had taken us almost an hour to explain the day’s events to his parents, and now he hung his head in disappointment.

  Dennis was disappointed too—in Tristan. “You took a girl with a brand new psionic ability to Union Station in Chicago. Union Station. That place has got to be a hundred years old. Millions of people have passed through it. She’s retrocognitive, Tristan, and she hasn’t learned to control it yet. You can’t bring her to a place like Union Station.”

  Dennis Connelly. The man my family had run from for eight years. The man I’d believed was trying to kill us, to slice us open right down the middle. The man who had invaded m
y nightmares every single night. The man whose name I’d refused to say aloud.

  But the whole time, he had only been trying to rescue me.

  Now, under my breath, I whispered, “Dennis Connelly.” Just because I could. Dennis Connelly had no power over me anymore.

  Now he was just Dennis. Tristan’s father. And I was living in his home, which meant he was responsible for my welfare. He spent eight years of his life trying to bring me to safety; no wonder he was so upset with Tristan and me tonight.

  “Didn’t you think something like this would happen?” he asked.

  “I knew it would happen,” Tristan said. “I should have taken her out of there the second I had that premonition.” Mac, his gigantic golden-furred mutt, whined and put his chin on Tristan’s knee.

  “Please don’t be mad at Tristan, Dennis,” I said. “He warned me. I ignored him.”

  Dennis scrubbed his balding head. “Tessa, I understand how important it is to find your brother and sister,” he said. “The APR does too. That’s why John Kellan is on the case.”

  Tristan’s hands curled into fists.

  “Kellan may not be our favorite person,” Dennis said, “but he is the best investigator in the agency. And remember, Jillian and Logan may be frightened, but there’s not really a killer after them. No one is going to hurt them.”

  True. My siblings were safer than they’d ever been, now that our mother wasn’t around to use her psychokinesis to give anyone heart attacks or brain aneurysms, or fly anyone into a wall, or slice anyone open from a hundred feet away with a swipe of her clawed hand.

  My hands fluttered to my belly. My parents told me that Dennis Connelly had sliced me open that day eight years ago. Now the five twisted scars stretching from my sternum to my pelvis were a permanent reminder of my parents’ lies and deception.

  At Dennis’s concerned frown, I thickened the fog in an attempt to block my thoughts from him. Tristan and I could communicate telepathically, but only to each other, and only if we pushed. Dennis was a true telepath and could hear anyone’s thoughts at any time.