Vicious (Vicious #1)

“Then do tell me,” said Eli through gritted teeth. “What is?”

“He’s been identified as Barry Lynch. You … that is, he’s … he’s supposed to be dead.”

A long pause.

“I’m on my way,” said Eli. “Is that all?”

“Not quite. He’s making a scene. Shouting for you specifically. Should we shoot him?”

Eli closed his eyes as he reached his car. “No. Don’t kill him until I get there.” Eli hung up.

He opened the door and climbed in, hitting speed dial. A girl’s voice answered, but he cut her off.

“We have a problem. Barry’s back.”

“I’m watching it on the news. I thought you—”

“Yes, I killed him, Serena. He was very dead.”

“Then how—”

“How is he robbing a bank at Fifth and Harbor?” Eli snapped, gunning the car. “How is he suddenly not dead? That’s a good question. Who could possibly have resurrected Lynch?”

There was a long quiet on the other end of the phone, before Serena answered. “You told me you killed her.”

Eli gripped the wheel. “I thought I did.” He had hoped, anyway.

“The way you killed Barry?”

“I may have been more certain about Lynch than I was about Sydney. Barry was definitely, undeniably dead.”

“You told me you followed her. You told me you finished—”

“We’ll talk about this later,” he said. “I have to go kill Barry Lynch. Again.”

*

SERENA let the phone slip through her fingers. It landed on the bed with a soft thud as she turned back to the hotel television, where the robbery coverage continued. Even though the action was happening within the bank, and the cameras were stuck on the street behind a thick border of yellow tape, the scene was causing quite a stir. After all, it had been in all the papers, the robbery last week at Smith & Lauder. The civilian hero had come out of the firefight unscathed. The robber had come out in a body bag.

No surprise that the public was disconcerted, then, to find the robber alive and well enough to rob another bank. His name ran in ticker-tape fashion along the bottom of the screen, the bold-lettered scrawl announcing Barry Lynch Alive Barry Lynch Alive Barry Lynch Alive …

And that meant Sydney was alive. Serena had no doubt that the strange and disquieting feat had somehow been her sister’s work.

She took a sip of too-hot coffee, and winced faintly when it burned her throat, but didn’t stop. She clung to the fact that inanimate objects weren’t subject to her power. They didn’t have minds or feelings. She couldn’t will the coffee not to burn her, couldn’t will knives not to cut her. The people holding the things were hers, but not the things themselves. She took another sip, eyes wandering back to the television where a photo of the previously deceased EO now filled the right half of the screen.

But why had Sydney done it?

Eli had promised Serena that her sister was dead. She’d warned him not to lie, and he’d looked her in the eyes and told her that he’d shot Sydney. And that hadn’t been a lie exactly, had it? She’d been standing right there when he pulled the trigger. Her jaw clenched. Eli was getting better at fighting back, finding little loopholes in her power. Redirections, omissions, evasions, delays. Not that she didn’t appreciate the small defiance—she did—but the thought of Sydney, alive and hurt and in the city, made it hard to breathe.

It was never supposed to go like this.

Serena closed her eyes, and the field and the body and her sister’s frightened face filled her vision. Sydney had done her best to look brave that day, but she couldn’t hide the fear, not from Serena, who knew every line on her sister’s face, who’d perched on the edge of her sister’s bed so many nights, smoothing those lines one by one with her thumb in the dark. Serena should never have turned back, never called her sister’s name. It had been a reflex, an echo of life before. She’d reminded herself over and over that the girl in the field wasn’t her sister, not really. Serena knew the girl who looked like Sydney wasn’t Sydney, the same way she knew that she wasn’t Serena. But it didn’t seem to matter the moment right before Eli pulled the trigger; Sydney had looked small and frightened and so very alive and Serena had forgotten that she wasn’t.

Her eyes drifted open, only to settle on the still-streaming headline—Barry Lynch Alive Barry Lynch Alive Barry Lynch Alive—before she snapped the TV off.