This has nothing to do with Aidan’s certainty that he must be right. It has everything to do with the fact that Aidan knows he might be wrong. Aidan didn’t want me to get too attached to my humanity—to my life—because he knew that I might have to give it up.
“Is this the real reason you didn’t want Nolan to come here?” All those times I asked Aidan why Nolan couldn’t be here—when I insisted that this work would be easier with my protector at my side—and Aidan told me this was work I had to do without my protector.
Whether or not Nolan was my protector had nothing to do with it. Aidan just didn’t want me spending time with the boy I cared for.
“You and Nolan would have bonded more deeply, working together here. It would only have made it harder for you.”
I shake my head. “Do you really believe there’s a way to make it easy?”
Aidan doesn’t answer.
A lump rises in my throat, as big as a boulder. “So you’ll kill me too, if you have to?” The words come out as little more than a whisper, but from the look on Aidan’s face, I know he hears me.
I take a few steps backward, blinking in the sunlight. This is like something out of a bad horror movie: the mad scientist lured the innocent girl into the desert, lulled her into a false sense of security, when secretly he had dastardly plans of his own.
The breeze whips my hair into my eyes, brushing away my tears.
“All this time, even when you told me you brought me here to protect me, you’ve also been prepared to kill me?” I wave my hands at the campus around us—the mansion behind me where Lucio is sitting alone, the trees swaying in the breeze, the lab in front of us, filled with spirits.
This is why Aidan was so upset when I helped Estella move on. It was proof that he was wrong about me. I’m not some kind of magic key, the missing piece he just needed to slide into place so spirits could move on by themselves.
“Your powers are different,” Aidan says finally. “Our experiments did change your abilities.”
“Just not the way you needed them to,” I supply. Aidan doesn’t argue. And now a new unasked and unanswered question hangs in the air between us:
Have you already made up your mind to do it?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Imprisoned
I thought this campus was a fortress to protect me. But maybe all along it was meant to imprison me.
There’s a knock at my door. “Go away, Aidan!” I shout.
“It’s not Aidan,” Lucio’s voice answers. He opens the door.
“I didn’t say you could come in.”
Lucio shrugs. “I know. But I thought you needed a friend. And I thought you might not admit it if I gave you the chance to answer.” He plops down on the unmade bed beside me, propping my pillows up behind him, stretching his strong legs out in front of him, folding his arms across his chest.
I can’t even remember if I’ve ever seen Nolan’s bare arms. How do I have such strong feelings for a person whose forearms I’ve never seen? Lucio is right. I need a friend. I’m just not so sure that he is my friend. Not anymore.
“Were you in on it too?” I ask.
“In on what?”
I stand up and start pacing again, as restless as a tiger in a cage. In on Aidan’s tricks to keep me from being with Nolan. In on keeping me here, on this campus, befriending me and distracting me, knowing all along that Aidan might do exactly what he claimed he was protecting me from.
“You keep walking like that, you’re going to drill a hole in the floor,” Lucio says.
I don’t smile, and I certainly don’t laugh. Doesn’t Lucio understand that being still is impossible right now? I don’t think I’ve ever had so much energy. I can’t stop my fingers from drumming against my thighs. My feet feel like they want to run away.
“I hate Aidan,” I whisper. Hate tastes sour and bitter and cold, like the time I accidentally drank vinegar.
Lucio gets off the bed and crosses the room, catching hold of me so I can’t pace anymore.
“You don’t hate him,” he insists.
I shake my head, tears slipping down my cheeks. Who knew anger could turn into sadness so quickly?
“I do.”
Aidan is just as bad as Helena. Worse! Helena may have wanted to eliminate me, but Aidan saved me only to control me, to hold me captive, to take me away from the people I love, to keep me at arm’s length just in case he needed to . . . I hate to even think it.
At least Helena was honest about what she was going to do to me.
At least Helena didn’t try to get me to care about her, knowing all along that she still might kill me.
I shake my head frantically. It doesn’t matter. Neither of them is really my parent. My only real parent is Kat. That fact has never felt more true than it does right now.
“Aidan loves you.” Lucio reaches up to hold my head so I stop shaking it. “In his way.”
“Well, then, that’s not a way I want to be loved.”
Lucio drops his hands. “It’s not so bad,” he says. I bite my lip. Aidan is the only person Lucio has left to love him.
“Haven’t you ever doubted him?” I ask finally. “Did you ever consider joining the others?”