James is staring back at me. He knows he’s handsome. He uses it to his advantage constantly. Is it bad that I like that about him? I miss him so much. I miss how easy it was, being his.
“James,” I say, mimicking his tone, then stand and stumble over to the couch, throwing myself across it. Dr. Grant stitched me up all nice, then James brought me home and actually let me take something. They never let me take anything. (It’ll mess with my abilities, they say. You’ll take too many again, they don’t say.) “I would like some more drugs, please.”
“I think no.”
“Why not? Come on. I earned it. Besides, I’m about to start my period, and you know how PMSing messes with everything.” I beam at him, but he doesn’t so much as squirm.
“I seem to recall Clarice saying you were actually at your best then—you just couldn’t focus your intuition on what we needed you to do, only on what you wanted to do.”
“Yes, well, I seem to recall Clarice being dead.”
“Fia,” he says, and it’s like a sigh. He sits on the other end of the couch and puts my feet across his lap. I shouldn’t let him touch me. I don’t, usually, because he is a liar and I promised Annie, I promised her so long ago. I broke that promise in Europe, I wanted to break it completely, but I learned better.
But Annie.
Annie.
Annie wanted me to kill Adam.
She wanted me to close gray eyes and put long, soft, sure fingers under the ground. How could she want him dead? Did she want me to do it? How could she set me up for that?
I don’t know her at all. All these years, all these things I’ve done, all these things I’ve become to keep her happy, to keep her safe. I don’t know her. I tap tap tap Annie’s betrayal onto my leg.
“Listen,” James says, and he’s rubbing my feet. His hands engulf them—he’s tall, so tall, and stronger than me by far. Right now he could take me in a fight, I think. Maybe not. He wears contacts. I could use that to my advantage.
His fingers linger at my ankle. I haven’t let him touch me since I made him bring me back to Chicago. I think it’s actually affecting him. Maybe there are a lot of other things I could use to my advantage against James. “What am I supposed to listen to?” I turn and look up at him through my eyelashes.
“You need to calm down. Quit antagonizing the other women. It makes my job a lot harder.”
“Oh, poor dear. You have a hard job? I can’t imagine.”
He yanks my pinky toe. “I think you have a very good imagination. They complain to my father, and then my father suspects I’m not doing a good job managing here.” His voice gets tight. Daddy issues. I wish I had daddy issues. Though I suppose I have issues with his daddy. “And if I’m not your manager, I can’t help you anymore.”
I sit up and pull my feet away from him. I look straight in his eyes. I do not look away and I do not let him look away. “I got shot and I killed someone. Do you have any idea—” I let my voice break. It’s not hard. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? What it does to me? How are you helping me?”
“I want to. I’m trying to. But, see, that,” he says, cupping the side of my face with his warm hand. “Why can’t you let them see that? That’s a perfectly acceptable reaction. That’s a reaction they can report without getting us in trouble. That’s a reaction that gets you trusted in this system.”
I shove his hand away and stand. “I’d hate for you to get in any trouble.” I put my hands on my hips. “I want something to help me sleep.”
His phone rings and when he looks at the screen, his face shifts, gets harder and further away. Must be Daddy Dearest. He answers it.
No, no, no. This could take all night. How can I ever get to sleep now? I grab my own phone and call Annie, walking back into the hall, away from James. Annie answers. I need to talk to her, need her to explain.
But she can’t right now, not without revealing that I didn’t kill Adam. They’re always listening.
“Fia? How are you feeling? Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m peachy! Never been better. I wanted to talk to you about something you said earlier.”
There’s a long pause, as she tries to feel out whether or not she can talk around it without giving us away. “You mean my vision?”
“Yup. Your vision.”
Another long silence. “I don’t think you should go dancing, is all. It’ll make sense later, I promise. Please trust me. When I can explain, it will make sense.”
I grit my teeth, adding the pain in my jaw to the pain in my head and my arm and my heart. “Sure. Everything does. Later. Too late, actually. You know, I don’t think you understand what you’re asking of me. Do you have any idea what you’re asking of me?”