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I back up a few steps, hoping that I’m not in the middle of some hallway, and increasingly annoyed with Angry Guy for abandoning me here.
“Sorry, sir,” a woman says over Angry Guy’s continued hushed conversation. “You can’t use your phone in the library. Please step outside.”
“I’m done,” he snaps.
I hunch my shoulders and shove my hands into my pockets, hoping they’re not both looking at me. I wish I were wearing my sunglasses. Where are you, Fia? Hurry up so you can explain what’s going on and what we’re doing next.
“Here,” he says right next to me, making me jump. “Here.” The second time he says it a little softer and I finally clue in and hold out my hand. He gives the cell back, and I stick it in my pocket. Then . . . nothing. He says nothing.
“So. Umm.” I wait for him to fill the silence.
“They’re coming.”
“Fia’s meeting us here?”
“No. Fia is not meeting us here.” His words have a strange quality, like they’re being forced through clenched teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I say, glaring because I’m not sorry, I’m frustrated. “I’m not up to speed on what’s going on, and I’d really like to be clued in.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“But you’re helping Fia.”
“I am not helping Fia.”
My heart thuds fearfully in my chest. “But . . . I thought . . . I mean, you were part of it. You picked me up.” Oh, no. Oh, no. I gave him the phone. For all I know, he was delivering a threat or a ransom demand. All Fia did was give me the phone, which was meant to connect me with Adam. Not whoever this is. Tears brim in my eyes.
No. Think like Fia. What would Fia do?
Besides stab the guy.
“I’ll scream,” I say, standing straighter and facing him. “You shouldn’t have brought me to a public place. Leave now or I’ll scream.” I pull the phone back out of my pocket and feel for bumps on the buttons, hoping the call feature will be prominent and that it saved Adam’s number. “I won’t be leverage, not for you or anyone else.”
He swears, then grabs my fingers. I nearly shout until I realize he’s pressing my index finger onto a button. I hear a number dialing.
“Crazy must run in your family,” he says.
“You do know Fia!” I blurt, then bite my lip. He exhales in a silent laugh at my immediate association of crazy with my own sister.
“She stabbed me in the leg.” Well, guess I was right about what Fia would do. “Then I shot her. Then I helped bring her in, against my better judgment, and let her see what we do. And then I followed her after she attacked me and ran. I got to watch as she murdered an innocent girl because I didn’t stop her.”
I hear Adam saying “Hello?” but don’t put the phone up to my ear. This guy’s anger makes no sense. If he’s with Lerner, and that’s where Fia wants me, why is he so mad?
“But she didn’t. Murder me, I mean. I’m still alive.” Obviously.
“Not for the minute it took between watching you fall and finding your pulse.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I mean it. I wasn’t thinking about what it must have been like for him. “If it makes you feel any better, I thought I was dead, too.”
“Why would that make me feel better?”
The sliding of glass doors precedes Adam’s voice. “Cole! And you must be Annie?”
Hearing Adam in person is different from on the phone. I’m flooded with memories of the visions I’ve had of him—the one where I saw girl after girl with abilities being brought into the light and then disappearing into darkness, while Adam’s name bounced around my skull, ricocheting painfully. And the other one, later, where I saw his face. I am meeting a guy whose name and voice I can put a face to. Other than James and his father, that has never happened to me.
It’s too much, all of it. I don’t know how to feel, what to think. I’m not with my sister, who I thought was going to kill me today. Instead, I’m with the guy I tried to have killed. The guy who spells disaster for hundreds of girls like me. The guy whose voice is kind and whose gentle face I will forever be able to see.
