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I look at our hands again and I know my hand doesn’t fit in his like it should. Someone else’s will. Someone else whose hands aren’t impossibly broken. Someone else whose soul isn’t impossibly broken.
But I want to pretend to be her.
I take my hand out of Adam’s, smile at him, and I don’t know if the smile is a lie or not. “I’m going to walk around for a little while. To think. I’ll meet you back at the building, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, and his eyes, his mouth, his words are hope.
As soon as he is gone I pull out the phone and dial Annie. It rings and rings and I tap tap tap and no one answers. I dial James. It rings and he picks up.
“Who is this?”
“Is Annie okay?”
He swears, and it makes me feel homesick. “Fia? Where are you? We know you’re in St. Louis. Give me a location.”
“Is Annie okay?”
“She’s fine. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
“Bring her with you.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to do anything unless I can see that she’s with you and she’s safe. If I see you here and she’s not with you, I’ll disappear forever. You know I can.”
“Fia, please.”
“Please nothing. Do you know what they’re offering me? They’re offering me me. Free. Whatever, whoever I want to be.”
He is quiet and I wonder what his face looks like right now, whether he can still feel my lips on his like I can feel his on mine. “You can’t have that.”
“I could.”
“No, you can’t. You don’t get to choose that. I need you.”
“You use me.”
“I—yes. I use you. I need to use you. I can’t let you go; I can’t do this by myself.”
“I think we both know you are never by yourself.” The words come out stinging and petty and I hate hate hate the jealousy ringing in my voice.
“That’s not what I mean. I need your help. You aren’t like whoever these people are. You can’t just get out, pretend like none of this happened, pretend like you aren’t so far gone you can’t ever go back.”
“I won’t help your father anymore,” I say, and I know it’s true.
“I’m not asking you to help my father. I’m asking you to help me. Why do you think I’ve trained you to lie, to cheat the Readers and the Feelers and the Seers? Do you really think I am working for my father, the man who destroyed my mother? The man who destroyed you? Is that what you think of me?” He sounds hurt.
“I don’t know what to think of you.” I close my eyes, squeeze them shut, try to clear my head. I have too many feelings for and about James. “I could help people here. They’re going against your father. I could help them.”
“They’re barely scratching at the farthest parts of his reach. They know nothing about what’s going on. Do you really want to help?”
I wish he were here so I could see him to know if he’s lying. But he’s right about Sarah and Lerner, I know he is. She’s too happy, too calm. She doesn’t understand anything about what’s really going on. She hasn’t seen anything. “Yes. I really want to help.”
“Then help me destroy my father from the inside. You’re the only one who can. I’ve been building toward this for years. Years. I need you, Fia. I can’t plan things, I can’t decide things because if I do, one of his Seers might see. But they can’t see you. I’ve wanted to tell you so many times, when you’d ask me why I was working for him. It killed me that you think I’m like him. I want you to—I want you. I always have. But I couldn’t be sure, couldn’t know if you’d agree. For this to work, no one can know. They can never suspect I am anything but loyal and that you are totally mine.”
I look out at the trees, at the perfect blue of the sky. I am untethered. I am on my own track. I am no one’s.
No. I am still Annie’s. I will always be Annie’s. And as long as she is out there, she isn’t safe, and as long as she isn’t safe I can do nothing but protect her. I will always be tied to that path, to those choices, to those instincts. Even if I get her away, even if Lerner can somehow help us, Keane won’t stop looking for me. Annie will always be in danger because she will always be the only way to control me.
