“No.” He smiles and I shrug.
“Too bad. You’re cuter than he is.” And then I do my hips-sway-because-I-am-drunk-and-think-I’m-sexy walk, and I know it will be no problem to come back when James is done and stand too close to not-Josef’s side and slip back the phone I have in my hand.
It isn’t. The whole thing is done in under seven minutes.
James beams at me when I walk back to him, so proud of my skills. I realize with a sinking click that I will earn my way the rest of this trip, exactly like Eden. It is not a vacation after all, not about making me better, not about James actually caring. Just more games, this time in the real world.
James holds out his hand. His black button-up shirt is undone at the throat. Even his throat is handsome, and I want to run my finger down it, down to the hollow at his collarbone. “Ready to dance?”
“Like I said. What makes you think I want to dance with you?” I turn and push my way back into the sea of bodies and try to lose myself. Alone.
ANNIE
Tuesday Afternoon
THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I’VE VISITED FIA’S NEW apartment, the place she’s lived since she got home. But she never really came back to me. Just like I knew she wouldn’t when I let her leave with James.
They’ve never let me visit here. Fia has to come to me, and only when they say she can. She’s unpredictable, and I’m their insurance policy. They won’t risk her snatching me and running off. I can’t even leave the school building when Fia is in town; it’s only when they have her elsewhere doing who knows what that Eden can take me out. With an escort, of course.
They didn’t count on Fia being the one to disappear alone. I know she’s scared, but I wonder…maybe she’s better off.
I climb out of the car, Eden waiting to put my hand on the crook of her arm.
“She’ll be okay,” Eden says. “You’ll find her.”
“Soon,” James adds, and his is less a comfort and more a threat.
I hate him.
If I were Fia, if I were anyone else, I could get away from him now, run to someplace new, be free. But that’s a lie. Because even if I could see, I couldn’t leave without Fia. And if I ran, I’d do it knowing I would never really be safe, that no matter where I was, if I was still alive, Keane would somehow find me. My thoughts would never be safe. Not even my future would be my own.
He’ll do whatever it takes to find Fia. If I do find her, it will be to save her from captivity and deliver her right back to it. Maybe we’ll never get away. Our delusional plans not to plan will never work. We will never have an opening. There is nowhere for us in the whole world that Keane can’t reach out to and drag us back from.
The world grows quieter as we pass through a door, sealing us into climate-controlled warmth and away from the mad, windy rush of the city. We go silently up stairs and James unlocks a door. I walk into an apartment with a hardwood floor. The air smells and tastes clean. Lifeless. But there’s a hint of stale perfume somewhere that I can’t place. Fia would never wear it.
“What does it look like?” I ask. I want to know where Fia has been living. I wish I could have visited her here. Lived with her here. “How did she decorate it?” I hate depending on someone else to tell me.
James answers. “She didn’t. She said it was all the same to her.”
“Where’s her room?” In all honesty I have no idea if this will help me see her, but I had to feel like I was doing something other than sitting around, starving myself, trying to have a vision. Surrounded by her here, where she was the most, might help. I can force the visions sometimes, but it isn’t easy, and usually it’s only a snatch.
“Walk straight forward. You’ll go through a short hallway. The door’s open.”
“You want me to come with?” Eden asks, but I shake my head. I’m glad James doesn’t try to escort me there, either. I wish he weren’t here at all. I hate that he knows her apartment, that he knows the Fia who lives here and I don’t. I trace a hand along the wall, past the doorframe, into her room.
And this feels better, because it smells like Fia. It smells like spice and energy and vanilla. I take another step forward and trip on a pair of shoes in the middle of the room.
There’s my Fia, too.
I shuffle carefully now, wading through clothes discarded on the floor, until I bump into the bed. The blankets are shoved and twisted around the end; I crawl on and push my face into her pillow. Fia, where are you? I miss your tapping fingers and your crazy laugh and all the things about you that I don’t know.
I’m sorry I wanted you to be who you were before. I know you can’t be her anymore. Come back to me and I’ll help you figure out who to be now. Come back to me and I’ll stop trying to fix anything and I’ll just be your sister. I smash my face farther into her pillow, the pressure against my eyes creating a false sensation of light.