by Clara Kensie
Now, perhaps realizing I’d thickened the fog to keep him out of my head, he raised his palm. “Sorry, Tessa. I don’t listen in on my family’s thoughts unless I feel it’s necessary. I won’t do that to you again.”
“Tessa, you cannot ignore Tristan’s warnings.” Deirdre placed her hand on mine and gave it a tentative squeeze. “His premonitions are always on target, just like my dreams.”
Unlike Tristan’s premonitions that happened only minutes or seconds before the event, Deirdre had precognitive dreams about events that would happen days or even years in the future. She dreamed about Tristan bringing me to his home over two years ago, before she even knew who I was.
“I wish you’d have a dream that we found Jillian and Logan,” I said.
I wasn’t joking, but Deirdre gave a nervous little laugh. “Oh, honey. I wish so, too.”
I glanced around the Connellys’ family room. Stacks of magazines and papers on the coffee table. A collection of stuffed snowmen—a quick vision showed me that Deirdre over-decorated the house for each season and holiday—lined the hearth on either side of the fireplace, with a giant snowman propped in the corner. Scrapbooks and board games piled on an end table. A jumble of electronics on the desk: an eReader, a couple of iPads, a laptop. At least four remotes for the television and all its devices. A forgotten sweater slung over the armrest of the leather recliner. Knickknacks and mementos on every spare inch of shelf.
The Connellys’ house wasn’t dirty, but it was unorganized and cluttered. My mother would hate this place.
Deirdre rose and gave Tristan a kiss on his head. “Night, kids. Tessa, you can’t go around wearing Tristan and Ember’s clothes forever. We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”
“Be careful with that fog of yours,” Dennis said to me. He patted Tristan’s shoulder, then put his arm around Deirdre. As they left, she gave his cheek a peck.
My mom and dad were like that. Even in our family’s most stressful moments, they’d always been affectionate and tender with each other. But now, though they were incarcerated in the same Underground prison, they’d probably never even get to see each other again, let alone kiss.
As soon as we were alone, Tristan took my hand and played with the promise ring on my finger. A band of pearls set in gold, it was a replica of the ring from Anne of Green Gables, my favorite book. Tristan had given both the book and the ring to me in Twelve Lakes. The book was gone now, but I still had the ring, and I would never take it off.
“Kellan may be the best investigator,” he said, “but he doesn’t care about finding Jillian and Logan. I do. We’ll find them, Tessa. Us. You and me. But you need to let me keep you safe. No more ignoring my warnings, okay?”
I nodded, then leaned my head on his shoulder and breathed in his scent of soap and strength and safety. I looked around the Connellys’ family room, this room with worn crocheted afghans on the couches and a menagerie of childhood art projects on the mantle and framed photos of happy family moments on the wall. Moments my own family never had, and never would.
I wanted happy moments for Jillian and Logan. I wanted them to be safe, like I was now. I wanted them to be surrounded by love, like I was, right now.
“Clockwise. Wake up. You’re having another nightmare.”
Rigid muscles, burning lungs, staccato heartbeat, suppressed scream. My nightmare of sparkling silver knives and glowering black eyes faded as I tried to remember where I was.
My parents were in prison. My siblings were on the run. But I was in the guest bedroom of my boyfriend’s house, in Lilybrook, Wisconsin.
My muscles unwound, my lungs filled with air, and my heart rate pumped its way back to normal. I pried my eyelids open. The first orange-pink rays of the early morning sun shone through the windows, and Tristan was standing beside the bed in sweatpants and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt. Tousled hair, sleepy eyes, frowning with concern. “I thought you’d stop having nightmares now that you’re safe.”
Safe. I was safe. I blinked the last of the nightmare away. “Me too. But I’m fine now. Thanks.”
After a quick kiss, Tristan slipped back to his own room before his parents overheard and assumed he’d spent the night in here. They were already upset with us for going to Union Station.
Instead of going back to sleep, I sat up and checked on Jillian’s ballet shoe and Logan’s sheet music, just to make sure they were still there. They were right where I’d placed them last night: on the dresser in front of the giant mirror, where I could see them from any point in the room.
I hugged my knees to my chest. This guest room, painted a cheery celery-green, would be mine for as long as I stayed here. A thick white comforter with tiny yellow flowers on the bed, plump pillows inside soft cotton cases. A plush green area rug. An overstuffed easy chair under the window, next to a sturdy bookshelf with vases and framed photos and books of all genres, invited everyone to curl up and stay as long as they wanted. Cozy. Welcoming.
Visions of the other guests who’d slept in this room over the years pestered me to set them free. Curious, I raised the fog.
All of the guests who’d stayed in this room were young, friends of Tristan and his younger sister, Ember. A teenage boy with blond dreadlocks and a straight nose and an easy, deep laugh. A group of three middle school girls in pajamas, giggling and imitating a new dance move they’d seen on the VMAs.
One guest stood out from the rest. A girl with wavy black hair with thick bangs. Pale skin and big wistful eyes, so blue they were almost violet.
She’d cried here, in this room.
Melanie. That was her name. Melanie Brunswick. Her last name was familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t place it. She’d been here often, my visions showed me, from the time she was around eight until she was my age now, sixteen. Then her presence cut off abruptly, like someone had taken scissors to the visions and snipped her away.
When I felt that it was late enough, I slipped out of bed, tucked in the sheets and straightened the covers, then went to take a shower. The hall bathroom was shared by Tristan and Ember, but Ember took it over while Tristan was gone, and she’d completely girl-ified it. Bath rug, shower curtain, and waste basket in hot pink. Nail polishes, boxes of hair dye in pinks, purples, blues, and greens were tossed on the counter, along with headbands, lotions, and cosmetics.
I grabbed a couple of hot pink towels from the overstuffed linen closet and started the shower. Like the rest of the bathroom, the tub was cluttered with a hodgepodge of shampoos, conditioners, loofahs, and body soaps.
My mother would have been horrified by this bathroom. I disliked the mess too, but there was a sense of comfort to it. A hominess. A permanence. The Connellys could collect bottles of shampoo, and display family photos and art projects, and fill their closets with clothes and their bookshelves with books. The Connellys had no need to gather everything up at a moment’s notice to destroy all evidence of their existence before fleeing town.
I’d lived in thirteen houses over the past eight years, and none of them had felt like home.
I turned the water hotter and stepped under the stream. How long would this house be my home? How long before the Connellys stopped being so generous with the daughter of the people who’d tried to kill both Dennis and Tristan?
Something tiny glittered in the corner of the shower. Just enough to catch my eye.
A pink razor. Or rather, the silver blade of a pink razor.
It glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.
Glittered and glimmered.
Sparkled and glowed.
The steam from the shower grew thick, surrounding me in a cloud. Yet the blade continued to shine through the mist.
Glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.
A hollow knock at the bathroom door made me gasp. Startle. Blink. “Hey, Clockwise,” Tristan called from the hall. “You doing okay in there?”
Did he have a premonition? Was I about to press that razor blade to my wrist again, like I had in the Underground?
But I’d done that during one of the darkest moments of my life, when I was lost in the fog, lost in denial.
“Just checking to see if you need anything,” Tristan said from behind the door.
“I’m good.” My voice wobbled, so I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”
No. No premonition. If he’d had a premonition, he would have busted through the door like he had in the Underground. And his tone was light. He was just being Tristan, taking care of me.
Not wanting to look straight at it, I peeked at the razor peripherally.
Nothing. No shine. No glimmer or glow.
I was fine.
❀
After my shower, I used Ember’s hairbrush to comb through my hair. I’d worn her jeans for the past two days. I was grateful that Deirdre was taking me shopping for my own things today, but I didn’t know how I’d pay her back. I had no money. Any money my family had was never really ours, because my parents had stolen it all through blackmail.
In the bathroom’s linen closet, I found a rag and a bottle of bathroom cleaner. I also found, in the way back, an electric rotary shaver still in its original packaging. Perfect. I wouldn’t have to worry about that glittering, glimmering razor blade anymore. I tucked the rotary shaver neatly in the cabinet drawer, then straightened the clutter on the counter and cleaned the sink. Until I found a way to pay the Connellys back, cleaning was all I could do.
As I sprayed the mirror with Windex, something rough and wet scraped across my ankle. I yelped, and a white ball of fur darted from the bathroom.
“You don’t like cats?” a feminine voice said from the doorway. Ember, gathering her long purple hair into a bun and wearing fleece pajamas decorated with guitar-playing penguins.
“He just surprised me,” I said. “I’ve never had a cat.” Having a pet would have been impossible while my family was on the run. “But I’ve always wanted one.”
When Ember didn’t reply, just continued to stare at me warily, I added, “What’s your cat’s name?”
“Lyric,” she said, “And this is Aria.” With her big toe, painted lime green with a pink daisy, she pointed to the tiny brown dog panting next to her.
Aria yipped and wagged her tail so hard her entire back half wiggled. I laughed, then knelt to scratch her head. “She’s adorable.”
“Lyric!” Ember called. “Come back and say hello to Tessa.” Lyric slunk back in and sat at my feet, then meowed.
“He says you can pick him up,” Ember said.
“He says that?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
I picked up Lyric and, with the back of my finger, rubbed his chin.
Aria, perhaps tired from wagging her tail so hard, lay on the bath rug and closed her eyes. Ember’s eyes, however, were blue and narrowed as she leaned against the sink. Not unfriendly, just… guarded.
While Tristan and I were in the Underground, he told me that except for the physician and healers who’d examined me, and a handful of investigators and guards, no one knew the Kitteridge Killers were my parents. I hoped to keep it that way, but there was only one reason Ember would look at me like that. “You know, don’t you,” I said. “You know who I am. Who my parents are.”
“My mom and dad just told me,” she said.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Not yet. It’s supposed to be confidential. But it’s kind of hard to keep a secret in this town. Psychics everywhere.”
“I’m sorry.” The words pushed themselves from my mouth. “About my parents. For what they did to your dad. For attacking him. For giving him a heart attack.”
She said nothing.
Because what could she say? “It’s okay?” or, “No big deal?” It wasn’t okay. It was a big deal. She almost lost her father because of my parents. An apology could never make up for that. Nothing I said or did could ever make up for that.
My blood burned with shame.
Finally, Ember spoke. “Your parents also tried to kill my brother. Twice.”
My parents had tried to kill Tristan twice. Three weeks ago, before they knew I’d been kidnapped and was being held as bait, they planned for my mother to give Tristan a brain aneurysm via her psychokinesis. And just the other day, during my mother’s Underground escape attempt, she tried to slice him open with a slash of her clawed hand through the air. The same way she’d sliced me open eight years ago.
Ember left without another word, taking Aria and Lyric with her. My burning shame kicked up to a boil.
❀
Between Deirdre’s nervous attempts at mothering me and Tristan’s hypervigilance to keep me from losing control of the fog, I felt so smothered that I could barely breathe at the mall that day. I spent most of my time concentrating on balancing the fog, keeping away the visions of all the customers who’d shopped there in the past—nowhere close to the number of people who’d passed through Union Station, but enough to make me dizzy and weak. Through Herculean effort, I managed to keep the fog balanced, and Tristan didn’t have a single warning premonition about me the entire day.
When we got back, there was a note on the kitchen table. A sheet of plain computer paper folded into thirds. My name was on it.
Tessa
I blinked, still not used to seeing my real name in print after using aliases for so many years.
“That’s my mother’s handwriting,” I said.
“A guard dropped it off for you this afternoon,” Dennis said as he grabbed a box of Cheez-Its from the pantry.
Tristan frowned. “She’s allowed to contact Tessa? After everything she did to her?”
My hands fluttered to my belly.
“I think she’s trying to redeem herself,” Dennis said. He tossed an orange cracker in his mouth, exactly the way Tristan would.
There was no redemption for what my mother had done. I plucked the note from the table. A vision appeared of my mother crying as she wrote it, but I doused it with fog. When Dennis wasn’t watching, I stuffed the note in the garbage can.
Upstairs, with Mac at his side, Tristan lounged on my bed, programming my new cell phone, while I sorted through my new jeans and sweaters. Deirdre had expressed that I should choose trendier clothes, brighter clothes, clothes like Ember would wear. But after so many years of needing to be invisible, I felt uncomfortable in anything that would draw attention to myself. The only clothes I truly liked were my new running outfits. January in northern Wisconsin was too cold for running outside, but as soon as spring came, I fully intended to start jogging again.
Would Jillian and Logan still be missing in the spring?
Too awful to consider, I tucked that question away in a cloud of fog.
Most of my new clothes I folded into the dresser or hung in the closet. The rest I tucked into my new getaway bag, which I would store in the trunk of Tristan’s car. I had a blue denim getaway bag for the past eight years. This one was a polyester yellow, but it served a similar purpose: I needed to be ready to leave at any moment. Not to escape from Dennis Connelly, but to go get Jillian and Logan.
Deirdre had also insisted on buying me cosmetics and hair supplies, although I rarely wore makeup and I usually left my hair down and loose, or up in a ponytail for jogging. I left those items in the bag and stored them in a dresser drawer.
As I straightened Jillian’s ballet shoe and Logan’s sheet music on the dresser in front of the mirror, Tristan’s cell phone dinged. “Finally,” he said. “I’ve been texting my buddy Nathan all day, but he hasn’t replied yet. I want you to meet him.”
“You didn’t tell him about my parents, did you?” After Ember’s wary reception, I didn’t want Tristan’s friends to know who I was.
“Not yet. But he’s my best friend, and you’re my girlfriend. He won’t care who your parents are. I mean, he’ll be shocked at first, but he won’t hold it against you. No one will.” He checked his phone. “It’s not Nathan, but this is even better.”
“What is it?”
He grinned with pride, brightening
from the inside out. “Something you need to see. Come on, it’s easier on my computer.” He led me down the hall to his bedroom. I looked around while he sat at his desk and opened his laptop. Tristan’s bedroom in Twelve Lakes was temporary and therefore undecorated, but this one, his real room, had personality. Walls painted navy blue, displaying posters of classic rock bands and autographed sports memorabilia. A shelf cluttered with trophies from his tennis, cross-country, and skiing competitions. Yearbooks from elementary, middle, and high school. A sloppily made bed. Speakers on his desk. A globe. Paperbacks, mostly legal thrillers and crime procedurals. Battered ACT and SAT study guides. A model airplane. I lifted the fog to see a vision of him making it from a kit with his dad, when he was nine years old.
It smelled like him in here. Soap and strength and masculinity. I loved this room.
“So what do you want to show me?” I asked.
“One of the guys at the APR is a cyberpath. Craig Schultz. He can intuitively interface with computers,” he said. “I called him this morning and asked him to hack into the Amtrak computers to see if Jillian and Logan went there when they got off the commuter train at Union Station.”
“And?”
“And…watch.” He gestured to his laptop. A black and white image appeared of a long ticket booth, stretching wall to wall, with multiple windows for making purchases. Ticket agents stood in three of the windows. A pair of teenagers, weary and disheveled, approached an agent.
“That’s them!” I cried. “That’s Jillian and Logan.”
“It’s the security footage,” Tristan said. “You were right, Tessa. They went to Amtrak.”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take my eyes off the laptop. I wanted to hug it to my chest. I wanted to reach in and pull Jillian and Logan out of the computer.
“They bought tickets,” I said, watching the grainy image of Logan slipping two tickets into his pocket. “Where to?”
“Craig said they bought tickets to New Orleans,” Tristan said, reading the email on his phone. “Probably because it was the first train scheduled to leave.”
