Joss. Joss, honey …”
The words were gentle yet persistent as they wove into a deep sleep that was trying to drag me back under its lulling oblivion.
“You need to wake up.”
A hand landed on my shoulder, shaking me awake just as I registered the source of the voice.
It was my dad’s. No,Reece’s. No, that wasn’t right either. Judah’s.Jude.
I should call himJudas, perhaps the most notorious traitor in all of history—and a fitting nickname for this asshole.
“Honey, you overslept again. You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get up and get moving right now.”
His weight lifted from the bed—my bed, so familiar in feel and scent—as he rose. Completely emotionally spent after hours of scouring the files our faux parents had kept on us since before our conceptions, I’d fallen asleep in Hunt’s sleepover room, next to my friends…
Not here. Not in this house. And not in this bed.
Thus the cloying grogginess that hung heavy in my muscles and head had nothing to do with a possible few too many beers, and everything to do with the lying, scheming scumbags we were forced to share houses with.
Our faux parents must have drugged us—again—then transported us to our own beds—also again—where they were back to pretending nothing untoward had happened. As if good parents in wholesome, quaint neighborhoods like our Periwinkle Hill drugged their kids and pretended their lives were completely differentallllll the time.
I half expected the song “I Got You, Babe” to begin blaring through my alarm, marking the start of yet anotherGroundhog Dayloop we couldn’t escape.
Another weight shifted on the bed and Bobo’s wet nose pressed to the crook of my neck, snuffling. For my sweet pittie, I opened my eyes and smiled.
“Hey there, boy,” I cooed down at him, my voice a telling rasp.
How many times had they drugged us with who knew what? We were apparently some kind of immortals, sure—crazy as crazy got, but the concept was growing on me—and we had superior healing, my friends especially—but that was no justification for exacting such a heavy toll on our bodies on a regular basis.
It was all just so majorly fucked-up.
I leaned over Bobo, kissing his head and scratching behind his ears and under his chin, two of his main favorite spots. “You’re such a good boy, aren’t you?”
Bobo’s tail wagged in eager agreement, even though he was theoretically supposed to sleep in his bed at the foot of mine instead of next to me. Lately I hadn’t been able to resist the comfort of having him beside me. There was a very short list of people whom I could count on never to betray me, and he was one of them—dog or not.
My breath hitched. As the effects of whatever drug receded, I grew more alert. Which meant my thoughts speared toward Griffin. Did this morning’s bait and switch have something to do with him? Had he finished … regenerating?
I disguised my sharp inhale with noisy kisses for my dog and glanced up atJudasleaning casually against my threshold. His hair was damp, his cheeks flushed, suggesting he’d recently returned from his morning run—in time to wake his pretend daughter from her pretend sleep, of course.
None of us had ever accused our parents of not giving their all to this charade. Had the hypnosis not glitched and failed to properly “reboot” us, I didn’t even want to consider how long it might have taken us to discover what was really going on. There was that terrifying chance that we might have never caught on, at least not to the full scope of the deception.
Maybe it was true that our parents hadn’t started out with the intention of deceiving us, but they’d been embodying their communal lie for so long that they were pros at it. We hadn’t stood a chance.
“Don’t dilly-dally,”Judassaid. “Griffin will be here to pick you up soon.”
My heart thudded. Bobo stopped licking my arm to jerk his head up, canting it to one side, observing me, as if he sensed the change in me.
“And you’ll probably want extra time with him before classes today.”Judas’s expression drooped. Sympathy brimmed in his eyes as he sighed and pushed a hand through his damp hair. “You remember what day today is, right?”
This fucking bullshit again?
“Yeah, I do. The day Mitzi abandoned Griff and Orson.”
I was quick to stuff my face into Bobo’s fur to hide my disgust. Griffin had never had a mom. They’d made one up just to add some tragedy to his backstory.
“That’s right,” he said. “Griffin will need all your support today.”
Play the game, Joss.
