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“How does lying to the world about them being alive protect you? You could have been emancipated and—” Slade shuts up and curses.
“What am I missing?” Jagger looks at Slade before frowning at me.
“There is no way I would have been granted emancipation, not after everything that happened. The most likely place I would have ended up was a psychiatric facility. I might have had the money, but they would have found me mentally unstable. Their way, I still had the protection and possible threat of their names and having their lawyer as my guardian stopped people from asking too many questions.”
“Fuck, what a mess. How come you didn’t tell the truth when you turned eighteen?” Zig asks.
“Because,” I say, like it’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But from the looks on their faces, I’m guessing not. “Because I needed to be able to hide away. I didn’t want to become front-page news again. Then, after a while, it just didn’t matter. I went along with it because it was easier. But after everything that happened at Apex… I don’t know. I guess I was sick of hiding, of having no control over my life, and I finally found my backbone.”
“You always had a backbone. You were like a hissing kitten when you first arrived. The world might have beat you down a little, but you were always stronger than you realized,” Slade tells me, smoothing my hair from my face. And I smile up at him. Then I remember the kids, and my smile drops.
“What happened with the kids? Was everyone okay?”
“Everyone’s fine. Scared, but they’ll be happy to know you’re going to be okay,” Jagger replies.
I turn my head to look at Zig and reach for his hand. “I put all this in motion, and I didn’t even know. If I had stayed away, she never would have been at risk.”
“You don’t know that. It could have still happened. Salem will always be at risk. You made the best decision with the information you had. I don’t know how you and Salem navigate the fucked up shit you have to at the best of times. I know these gifts might make you seem like a superhero, but you’re still just human and doing the best you can.”
“You always thought I was the one who would hurt her, and you were—”
His finger covers my mouth. “Nope. You are not responsible for what happened. You are not the villain of this story. You are the hero. And if you never showed up that day, you never would have crossed paths with Slade and Jagger.”
I blow out a breath and nod because I know he’s right. Besides, I can’t change the past.
A knock at the door has us all looking that way as Ev pops his head in. When he sees that I’m awake, he smiles widely and walks over, revealing James behind him. Zig moves out of the way so Ev can give me a gentle hug. Then Ev steps back so James can wrap his arms around me.
“You are so fucking grounded,” he chokes out, making me laugh and ripping a hiss of pain from me.
“Shit, sorry, honey. You scared the fucking life out of me, though.”
“It scared me too,” I admit as he kisses my head and stands back up.
I look at him and Ev and brace myself. “Salem told me the man who did this wasn’t Penn Travis. So, who the hell was he?”
“His name is Dean McKinney. He’s a former Black Ops soldier who went MIA eighteen years ago. He was officially declared dead nine years later.” Ev sighs, leaning against the end of the bed.
“I don’t understand. He was the man who stopped me from killing myself after the shooting. He was the man who came to my house and sparked a vision— Fuck. The vision was never about Salem. It was about him. I thought I had it because Penn—Dean—was connected to Salem. But that’s not it. I had the vision because he was the killer.”
“Would-be killer. You changed the outcome, Astrid. You changed everything,” James reminds me.
Then I remember him seeing the vision that I did. “Salem said it wasn’t Penn’s gift—seeing my vision the way he did. She thought it might have been a part of my gift. But I don’t think that’s it. What if this Dean person is gifted too?”
“Gifted how?” Zig is all business now. “You think he manipulated what you saw?”
“No. Maybe. His face, when he saw what I did, wasn’t one of horror but of determination. He definitely used me to draw her out. He must have known where she was all along. She was just much harder to get to at Apex.” I think about what happened in the maze and compare it to my vision.
“My vision wasn’t the clearest. It’s not unusual, but this time it was because it was manipulated. My focus when I saw it was on the victim. She was dressed all in black, something I forgot all about, probably because she started the night as a friggin’ pumpkin. The attacker was dressed in black too. I thought it was a mask, but he wasn’t wearing one in the maze, so I think he blurred what I saw somehow. Bastard clearly has much better control over his gift than I do. I remember watching Salem die.” Tears fall down my cheeks.
“You never mentioned how, now that I think about it,” Zig says, and when I look at him, he at least has the decency to look sheepish. “Right.”
He coughs. “What do you remember?”
“I remember the sword. I saw it swing, and then Salem’s stomach was red.” I cover my mouth with my hand, feeling sick.
“Shh. Easy, baby. You’re okay. Salem is okay,” Slade says, running his hand up and down my arm.
“Where is this Dean asshole?”
