She took a step forward, until the two of them were dangerously close. “You left me.”
“I had to go back.”
Nix hadn’t meant to tell her where he’d gone. He didn’t want to explain the files in his hands, didn’t want her to see firsthand evidence of the things that he’d done.
You are what you are. A killer.
“Back to The Society?” The anger drained out of Claire’s voice. Her face softened, and silently, Nix begged her not to look at him that way. Like she could fix him.
She’ll never understand. How could she?
“I went to the institute,” he said. “The building where I—”
Nix couldn’t say grew up, and he couldn’t say lived. He’d never felt as inhuman as he did in that moment, trying to explain his life to Claire.
“—where they kept me.” Nix could feel the memories hovering at the edge of his mind, and he prayed they’d stay there. He didn’t want Claire to see him like that. He didn’t want to risk the chance that, caught up in the throes of a flashback, he might lose control and hurt her.
“The institute is The Society’s headquarters.” Nix concentrated on facts over feelings, keeping the past at bay. “From the outside, it looks like a mansion, but the inside is state-of-the-art. There are laboratories dedicated to studying energy and metaphysical abnormalities. Libraries for keeping The Society’s histories. Training facilities for Sensors, so the ones who’ve been inducted into The Society can learn to use their powers.”
Training centers for Nobodies, so they can learn to kill.
“And you went back.” Claire was stuck on that one point, and Nix wondered where she’d thought he’d gone when she woke up that morning and he wasn’t there. “Why would you go back there?”
Nix’s gaze went involuntarily to the folders in his hand.
“What are those?” Claire asked.
Nix wasn’t used to masking his thoughts. Clearly, he needed to be more careful around her.
“I mean, obviously, those are folders, but what’s in them?”
You are what you are.
You’re a killer.
“It’s none of your business, Claire.” Nix gritted his teeth, his words sharp as fangs. “It doesn’t matter why I went back. It doesn’t matter what’s in these folders. All that matters is that The Society is still looking for you. You need to go back to the cabin.”
“I already told you that I’m not going anywhere with you. Not until you explain.”
Nix reached for her, and this time, he allowed himself to complete the action. His hand closed lightly over her arm. “I can’t protect you here.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be protected.” Her voice was softer now. He had to lean forward to hear it.
Shouldn’t lean forward.
“I need,” he said, the words sticking in his throat. “I need you to be safe. It’s not safe here. Please, Claire.”
“Tell me what’s in the folders, and I’ll go with you.”
She asked for the one thing he didn’t want to give her. He let go of her arm.
“You want to know what’s in these folders?” It was either tell her or touch her—and he couldn’t let himself travel back down that road. “I stole the files from Ione, the current head of The Society. They detail the people I killed. The Nulls.”
A week ago, he wouldn’t have referred to Nulls as people. But now—
“Do I have a folder?” Claire’s question cut off that train of thought.
“Ione gave me a dossier before she sent me after you, but it didn’t say anything about why The Society wants you dead. It just said that you were dangerous.”
Claire’s gaze traveled back down to the folders in his hand. “But you think there might be answers in there.”
She read him too easily, too well.
“I’m the one they want to kill,” Claire said. “I have a right to know.”
Nix wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. She had a right to know—what he was capable of, what he was.
“We could check.” Claire’s voice was soft and steady. “We could research your … targets. That might tell us what The Society is up to. Why they want to hurt me.”
They want you dead because they don’t want me to have you.
Nix knew, logically, that there might be another answer. That it could be about her as easily as about him.
“They shouldn’t care about either of us, either way.” He said the words before he’d fully processed the thought. To want to kill them, The Society would have to care. There would have to be something at stake.
Something bigger than two people who didn’t matter at all.
“I’ll look into my previous targets,” he told her, his words carrying the weight of a promise. “See if there are any anomalies. Figure out who’s involved and how to deal with them.”
Claire’s chin jutted out. “I’m helping.”
“You can’t—”
She cut him off, her eyes ablaze. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I’m tired of just letting things happen and then hoping for the best. If you just let things go on and on and on, the best doesn’t happen.”
Nix couldn’t keep himself from thinking that she was beautiful when she was angry.
She’ll never love you. How could she?
His fingers curled into fists at his sides.
“If you want me to come with you to the cabin, you’re going to let me help, Nix. If you try to leave again, I’ll follow. I’m not just going to sit around and wait for something bad to happen, because nothing good ever does.”
Nix realized then that she wasn’t bluffing. If he left her and she followed, she’d get hurt. But if he stayed, eventually, he’d hurt her. He destroyed everything he touched. He was only good for one thing.
You are what you are.
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine?” Claire asked suspiciously.
“If you come back with me to the cabin, if you let me protect you, if you do exactly as I tell you, I’ll let you help me investigate The Society.”
Before Claire could respond, Nix held up a hand.
“I have two conditions. One: what happened before can’t happen again.”
Lips on lips, bodies melding together. His hands—soaked with blood—touching her. His mouth—killer’s mouth—kissing hers.
“Last night can’t happen again, Claire,” he repeated. “Ever.”
She stopped breathing. He paused, waiting for her to start again, missing the sound.
“And two: when I say you’re done, you’re done. You want to know why The Society wants you dead. You want to protect yourself. Fine. But when it comes down to it, I’m the one who’s going in, and you’re going to hide.”
“Fine,” she said, matching him tone for tone. “I have a condition, too.”
Nix raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“You have to teach me to …” He could see her searching for the right word, one she’d heard him speak once before. “… fade.”
The word made him want to close the space between them. Run his hands through her hair. Teach her the only thing in the world that had ever been really, truly, exclusively his.
He met her eyes. “It’s a deal.”
13
“Less than shadow. Less than air.”
Claire let Nix’s voice wash over her body, ignoring the way the grass stuck to her legs in the summer heat and concentrating on the sound and shape of each individual word.
Nicer words than don’t touch me. Nicer than anything he’d said to her since they’d returned to the cabin. Since she’d dressed his wound. Since she’d realized what was inside those folders—and why he’d left.
“Less than shadow. Less than air,” she repeated. She expected her voice to sound older, lower—but it didn’t. She sounded like herself. Like a little kid, playing make-believe.
Like someone who couldn’t handle what those folders held.
“You have to concentrate.” Nix sounded peaceful, fluid, almos
t drunk. Completely unlike the boy draped in darkness, who’d come for her in town. “Let everything leak out. Every thought, every desire, every hope. You have no future, and no past. You have no name. You are nothing.”
Claire realized, suddenly, that he wasn’t talking to her. He was talking to himself. Telling himself that he was nothing. Believing it. A jolt of electricity ran up her spine. She could still see Nix, but she wondered what someone else would see, observing them from the edge of the woods.
Was Nix invisible?
In answer to her silent question, he stood. His feet barely touched the forest floor, like gravity was having difficulty getting a firm grasp on his long, lean frame. He reached out, and his hand passed straight through the closest tree.
Claire shivered. “Less than shadow,” she whispered. “Less than air.”
“Worthless. Empty. Nothing.”
Nix’s words came at her from every side, as if spoken by the forest itself. Becoming nothing, becoming everything—it was all the same.
It was beautiful.
His face looked almost incandescent, like the film of a bubble floating on the surface of water. He had no worries. No hopes. He wasn’t the Nix who’d left her. The one who’d come back bleeding.
He wasn’t anything, and Claire desperately wanted to be nothing, too.
“Why isn’t it working?” she asked. “What’s wrong with me?”
It figured that she’d be a bad Nobody. It took a special kind of lame to fail as much at being unimportant as the reverse.
“It’s starting,” Nix’s voice said from all sides of her body. “Whatever you’re thinking, keep thinking it.”
Less than shadow. Less than air. That wasn’t her mantra. That was his. She had her own ghosts, her own doubts.
I’m jealous of farts. As far as mantras went, it didn’t have a very enticing rhythm. It didn’t sound dangerous. It didn’t make her feel powerful. It made her feel like less. But maybe, to be more, you had to give up trying to be anything at all.
I’m not Claire.
I’m nothing.
I’m nobody.
I’m the pages in my yearbook. Meaningless. Forgettable. Generic. I’m the girl who’s never invited. Never noticed. When I’m drowning, no one saves me. When I speak, nobody listens.
I’m a Post-it note on my parents’ back door.
I’m the messages I leave on their cells.
I’m the middle of the middle. I’m Nobody.
The thoughts in her mind stilled until she wasn’t Claire. She didn’t have a name. She didn’t have a family. She had nothing.
And, God, it felt good.
Claire stood, surprised by how little effort it took. She walked on the balls of her feet, barely contacting the ground.
This was what it felt like to let go. To stop trying. Stop wanting.
Claire strode forward. Toward the trees. They were firm, solid, old. They’d been here for hundreds of years and would be here for years to come.
They couldn’t touch her.
Nothing could.
So she walked straight through them, and a song began to hum through her body. She belonged here.
“Claire? Can you hear me?”
That wasn’t her name. She wasn’t Claire. Not anymore. She was nothing. But still, she turned toward Nix. He was the one who had brought her here, to this wonderful alternate world where she could walk through trees and dance and never hurt again.
“Let’s stay this way,” she said, forgetting about The Society. About the body she was supposed to have and the people who wanted it dead. About Nix’s conditions and his secrets. “Let’s stay this way forever.”
Nix had never seen anything quite like Claire faded. If anything, she became brighter. More noticeable—to him, at least. The physical world seemed to disagree. She danced through the trees like some kind of pixie, a sprite taking impossible joy in a world that mere humans couldn’t see.
Everything Nix had been taught told him that to fade, you had to let go of emotion. You had to feel nothing. The second he met Claire’s eyes, he should have lost his grip on nothingness. The moment he heard her voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, he should have started gritting his teeth, trying not to care.
Seeing her should have stripped him of his powers. But it didn’t, because right now she was nothing, too. He was faded. She was faded. It was easy to think of nothing but Claire, to let her presence in the fade ground his.
In the real world, he resisted touching her, didn’t deserve to touch her, but here, now he didn’t have to hold back.
No such thing.
Faded, Nix should have been able to pass straight through her.
Faded, their fingertips shouldn’t have been able to touch.
Faded, he shouldn’t have been able to feel that touch all the way to the ends of his toes.
But he could, and the second they connected, everything changed. The rest of the world faded to gray, its sounds to silence. The wind stopped blowing; the leaves froze at the angles to which they’d been pushed. A bee paused just above a flower. Nix looked farther, harder at the rest of the world. Ants on logs. Birds midflight.
They were frozen.
Fading meant leaving the physical world behind. It meant being weightless and transparent, insubstantial, empty. But this—his fingers interwoven with hers, her fade connecting with his—they hadn’t just slipped out of the physical world.
They’d fallen out of time.
Claire noticed the world slowing down around her, but she shrugged it off. That world didn’t matter. She’d lived there long enough. It didn’t understand her—or Nix.
They were more. He was touching her, and she couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t. Couldn’t quite grasp the fact that back in town, he hadn’t wanted to. Couldn’t get a grip on anything that had happened in the fifteen years leading up to this moment.
“Let’s run.” Claire had always hated running, but she couldn’t just stand there, not when every barrier between her and things that lay just out of reach had been removed. She dropped her counterpart’s hand, knowing instinctively that this Nix would touch her again, that he would touch her, follow her, chase her.
The moment their fingers parted, the world shifted, a phantom wind blowing through Claire’s body as time sped up around them. She broke into a sprint, amazed at how easy it was to run when the world didn’t fight to slow you down. There were no obstacles. Her feet barely touched the ground before they left it again, and her lungs breathed a different kind of air.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Her feet stopped touching the ground. They stopped touching it at all. She was floating, flying, blurring. And everywhere, there was Nix. Through the trees. Through the woods. Out the other side.
A road, abandoned, stretched out before them. Faster, farther, higher, more.
If my parents could see me now—
The thought came from an older part of her brain. A part that didn’t belong here, in the sky, with Nix and the glorious nothing.
Cruelly, abruptly, Claire’s body solidified and she lost her grip on the thing that she had become.
I’m Nobody.
Nothing.
I don’t care what my parents think.
They don’t matter.
She thought those things, frantically, but the power and everything that came with it hovered out of reach, and Claire fell.
Faster.
Farther.
Lower.
And right before she hit the ground—the solid, ugly, unforgiving ground—Nix caught her. And the second after that, he lost his fade, too, and they both took entirely ungraceful nosedives into the dirt of the road.
“Ouch.”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He was above her in an instant, running his fingers over her ribs, her side, up and down her legs, checking for injuries.
“I’m fine. Just sore.”
“Lie still, Claire. Something could be broken.”
“You fell from higher. I shouldn’t have let you try it. I shouldn’t have let you go so high. I should have warned you—”
“That I had to let go of this world to stay in that one? It’s not rocket science.”
“It takes practice. Discipline. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“You caught me.”
Her words reminded him that he was touching her, and immediately, he stopped. Jumped to his feet. Backed away from her. “Two conditions, Claire, and the first one is that we can’t—” The words tore their way out of his mouth like something was clawing out his insides. “When you touch me …”
When I touch you, she thought, the words an echo of his. She stood up.
“We touched before,” she said, “when we were nothing.”
Nix shrugged off her words. “That was different.”
It wasn’t. Not to Claire. But she wasn’t about to say that, wasn’t about to set herself up for the inevitable rejection.
“When we touched in the fade,” she offered instead, “something happened.”
“Time stopped.” Nix said. “My hand touched yours, and everything else … just … stopped. That’s never happened before. It’s not even possible.”
Claire gave him a look. “You walk through walls, Nix. When we fade, we can fly. Impossible lost most of its credibility a while back.”
Claire wanted impossible. She wanted to let go. She wanted to bring Nix back to her in a world where condition one did not exist. And for once in her life, what Claire Ryan wanted, she was darn well going to get.
Eyes on his, she sank back to the ground. “Let’s do it again.”
14
She’s better at this than she should be. Nix couldn’t shake the thought. It had taken him years to learn how to fade on cue—years of waking up underground or underwater or with a knife at his chin. Fading took power. It took concentration. But for Claire, it was easy.
With Claire, it was easy. Fading, stopping time whenever his faded hands touched hers—it was as natural to Nix as inhaling and pushing the air back out of his lungs. Before, when he’d thought Claire was a Null, he’d brought her into his fade—but now she didn’t need him, and Nix was beginning to process the fact that there were things The Society hadn’t taught him.
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