I start running again, afraid that if I don’t, I really might hit him. Or dissolve in tears. Neither option will lead to anything good. I’m out of control and I don’t like it. My feet pound the sidewalk, the rhythm familiar. I cling to that familiarity, letting it ground me. I think that if I don’t hold on to something, my sanity will slip away.
Richelle’s dead. I want to know how and why. I want to know how it’s even possible. Those are the questions I need to ask, along with dozens of others. I need to do it in a way that doesn’t break the rules Luka alluded to. And since Jackson’s so fond of nonanswers, I need to do it in a way that’ll get me what I want. I center my thoughts, using every trick Dr. Andrews, my grief counselor, taught me. Breathing. Visualization. Distraction.
“Plotting my demise?” Jackson asks, turning his head toward me for a second as we run.
“Something like that.”
“I’m not good at this, Miki.”
“At what?”
“Explaining.”
My laugh is short and hard and dark. “No shit.” I feel a little bad as soon as I say it. He’s trying. Sort of. I should meet him halfway.
“Does it break the rules if I say her name?”
“It breaks the rules for me to be here at all. But there are breaks”—he pauses—“and there are breaks.”
We run side by side, keeping a steady pace. After a few minutes, I ask, “Who makes the rules?”
“Let’s just say . . . they’re decided by committee.”
He said something like that before, when I asked him who decided on the name for the con.
“Are you on that committee?”
He makes a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “No.”
He slows to a walk, and I slow with him.
“What happens if we break the rules?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t know or because he doesn’t want me to know. Whatever the consequences are, they worry Luka enough that he won’t even talk to me. Or not. Maybe there are no consequences; maybe it’s just an amorphous threat that’s holding Luka hostage. I’m not brave enough—or maybe it’s that I’m not foolish enough—to take the risk. So I come at things from a different angle. I keep my comment generic and say, “She’s dead.”
Jackson nods. I take that as a sign that I can safely continue.
“For seven months.” Every syllable is laced with my pain and confusion.
Jackson nods again.
“So I fought beside—”
“Tsss,” Jackson hisses through his teeth. A warning. So apparently there are lines I have to be careful not to cross. No talk of fighting. Probably avoiding the mention of weapons or aliens is a plan.
“So I met . . . what? Her ghost?” I ask.
“No,” he says. He stops. I stop. We’re at the park, which is surprisingly empty for a sunny Sunday afternoon. He walks over to the swings and leans back against a wooden post, watching me. He’s long and lean, his black running gear outlining the muscles of his limbs.
Angry with myself for noticing, I look away. The last thing I need to do is to think of Jackson Tate as anything other than a source of information.
“You catch on quick,” Jackson says.
“What does that mean?” My gaze shoots to his, except it doesn’t because his eyes are hidden. I wish I could see them. I wish I could tell if he’s looking straight at me or avoiding my eyes. My mom always used to say, if wishes were pennies . . .
“It means what I said. That you catch on quick. I notice that you aren’t mentioning specifics.”
“Does it matter?” I glance around at the empty park. “Who’s listening?”
His smile is tight and dangerous. “Who knows? That’s the point. That’s the danger. They could be anywhere.”
He’s talking about the Drau. Dread knots in my belly as I realize what his words mean: the Drau aren’t confined to the game. They could be here, in my world, my real world. I glance around the empty park. “Are you trying to scare me?”
“No. I’m trying to answer your questions.”
I give him the thumbs-up. “And doing a great job, too.” I slump down onto a swing, dragging my feet on the ground as I surge forward and back. “Why are you here, really?”
“You called Luka.”
“Yeah, I called Luka. To talk to him. What exactly does that have to do with you?” I pause, considering, and then feel the heat of mortification in my cheeks. “He called you? He asked you to come see me because I’m this crazy girl who won’t stop calling him?”
Jackson laughs. The sound is low and a little rusty, like he doesn’t laugh often. I feel that laugh somewhere inside me, like butterflies. “Not because you’re the crazy girl. He called to tell me he was going to break the rules and meet you.”
That’s a big deal. Even though I ended up here with Jackson, the fact that Luka was willing to break the rules for me feels like he was offering me a gift. “Why would he call to tell you that?”
Jackson’s shoulder lifts in an easy shrug. “Either he wanted my blessing or he wanted me to talk him out of it.”
“Which route did you decide to go with?”
“Neither. I headed him off at the pass. Got to you before he could.”
“Why?”