The lies come fluidly. “She always said I’d flunk my evaluations, you know? And when she got an eight, she went on about it for days. Well, you know what? I scored higher than she did, and my pair is better, and my wedding will be better too.” I lean a little closer, drop my voice to a whisper. “I want her to be there. I want her to see it.”
Tanya studies me closely for a minute. Then, slowly, her mouth hitches into a smile. “I knew a woman like that,” she says. “You’d think God’s garden grew under her feet.” She turns her attention to her computer screen. “What’d you say her name was again?”
“Cassandra. Cassandra O’Donnell.”
Tanya’s nails click exaggeratedly against the keyboard. Then she shakes her head and frowns. “Sorry. No one listed by that name.”
My stomach does a weird turn. “Are you sure? I mean, you’ve spelled it correctly and everything?”
She swivels the computer screen around to face me. “Got over four hundred O’Donnells. Not one Cassandra.”
“What about Cassie?” I’m fighting a bad feeling—a feeling I have no name for. Impossible. Even if she were dead, she would show up in the system. The CORE keeps records of everyone, living or dead, for the past sixty years.
She readjusts the screen and click-click-clicks again, then shakes her head. “Uh-uh. Sorry. Maybe you got the wrong spelling?”
“Maybe.” I try to smile, but my mouth won’t obey. It doesn’t make any sense. How does a person disappear? A thought occurs to me: Maybe she was invalidated. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Maybe her cure didn’t work, maybe she caught the deliria, maybe she escaped to the Wilds.
That would fit. That would be a reason for Fred to divorce her.
“…work out in the end.”
I blink. Tanya has been speaking. She stares at me patiently, obviously expecting a reply. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”
“I said that I wouldn’t worry too much about it. These things have a way of working out. Everyone gets what’s right for them in the end.” She laughs loudly. “The gears of God don’t turn unless all the pieces fit right. Know what I mean? And you got your right fit, and she’ll get hers.”
“Thanks,” I say. I can hear her laughing again as I cross back toward the revolving doors; the sound follows me out onto the street, rings faintly in my head even when I am several blocks away.
Lena
The sky doesn’t set so much as break apart. The horizon is brick-colored. The rest of the sky is streaked with shock-red tendrils.
The river has slowed to a bare trickle. Fights break out over water. Pippa warns us not to leave her circle, and posts guards around its periphery. Summer has already split. Either Pippa doesn’t know where she has gone, or won’t share her plans with us.
In the end, Pippa decides that smaller is better: The fewer people we involve, the less chance of a screwup. The best fighters—Tack, Raven, Dani, and Hunter—will be responsible for the main action: getting to the dam, wherever it is, and taking it down. Lu insists on going with them and so does Julian, and even though neither one is a trained fighter, Raven relents.
I could kill her.
“We’ll need guards, too,” she says. “Lookouts. Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back safely.”
Alex, Pippa, Coral, and one of Pippa’s crew, nicknamed Beast—I can only assume because of his tangle of wild black hair and the dark beard that obscures his mouth—will form one diversionary force. Somehow I get roped into heading up the second one. Bram will be my support.
“I wanted to stay with Julian,” I tell Tack. I don’t feel comfortable complaining directly to Pippa.
“Yeah? Well, I wanted bacon and eggs this morning,” he says, without glancing up. He’s rolling a cigarette.
“After all I did for you,” I say, “you still treat me like a child.”
“Only when you act like one,” he says sharply, and I remember a fight I had with Alex once, a lifetime ago, after I had first discovered that my mom had been imprisoned in the Crypts my whole life. I haven’t thought about that moment, and Alex’s sudden outburst, in forever. That was just before he told me he loved me for the first time. That was just before I said it back.
I feel suddenly disoriented and have to squeeze my nails into my palms until I feel a brief shock of pain. I don’t understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.
“Look, Lena.” Now Tack raises his head. “We’re asking you to do this because we trust you. You’re a leader. We need you.”
I’m so startled by the sincerity of his tone, I can’t think of a response. In my old life, I was never a leader. Hana was the leader. I got to follow along. “When does it end?” I say finally.
“I don’t know,” Tack says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him admit to not knowing something. He tries to roll up his cigarette, but his hands are shaking. He has to stop, and try again. “Maybe it doesn’t.” Finally he gives up and throws the cigarette down in disgust. For a moment we stand there in silence.