“How old are you?” I shouldn’t be hurt that he lied about his age, but I am. And also bothered that I hadn’t been able to tell he was lying. That’s bad.
“I’m nineteen.” (Ha! I was right. He’s not a liar.) “I just did everything faster. I moved here to finish up a research project on tracking and diagnosing brain disorders through a combination of chemical analysis and MRI mapping.”
I make a noncommittal noise. I have no idea what any of that means or why it makes him need to die. I need to focus on driving.
I almost pass out on the freeway on-ramp.
We pull over and I let Adam drive. I’ll figure out a place for him to hide in Chicago. I have to go home so they don’t suspect something is wrong. I don’t know the rest of what to do yet, but it consists of kidnapping Annie and then all of us running away together. (Stop thinking about it. No thinking.) Assuming they don’t already know what I am planning. I could be dead as soon as I get back. I hope Annie doesn’t see it, hasn’t seen it, won’t see it. I don’t want her to see it.
But if they kill her first, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can before I go down.
“Who are you?” Adam asks after a few minutes’ calm. I don’t usually like riding in the passenger seat, but today it feels nice. Adam gave me something from his first aid kit that has dulled the pain enough for me to handle it. It feels nice to be dulled. Dull, dull, dull. Usually I am sharp. Being sharp all the time is exhausting. I want to take all the rest of the pills from his case.
“I’m Fia. I told you.”
“I saw you back in that alley. You were crazy. You took out three guys, and you’re this small girl. You look so nice and so pretty”—he blushes and I smile, oh he is adorable I wish, I wish, I am not nice—“and I don’t understand what you were—what you are—any of this.”
He doesn’t understand. He can’t. “I have to do what they tell me to. I have no choices. As far as the alley, I happen to have very good instincts.” I yawn, pulling my legs up and resting my head against the seat. I am safe with Adam, for now.
“Three big guys with weapons. That’s more than very good instincts.”
“Okay,” I say, closing my eyelids because they are heavy, heavy, heavy. “I have perfect instincts. And my sister can see the future. And my boss’s secretary can read minds. And my ex-roommate can feel other people’s emotions.”
“Please don’t lie to me.” He sounds sad. I don’t ever want to make him sad.
I feel heavy and light at the same time and I just want to sleep. I’ll sleep. “Who said I was lying?” I mumble before letting go.
Everything hurts. I can’t tap tap tap my fingers because something happened to my left arm and it is nothing but pain now, bright, swimming pain. I crack my eyes open and—
Oh no. Oh no, oh no. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Adam. He’s sitting next to me, driving (I let him drive? Why did I let him drive?) and very much alive.
Annie, please be okay. I’ll figure this out and I’ll save Annie and Adam can be safe, too, because now that I remember I didn’t kill him, I also remember that I’m glad I didn’t kill him. It was the right choice. I’m not sure how it’ll end up being the right choice, just like north getting me shot was the right choice, but I know it’s the right choice.
I giggle. I can’t help it. My arm hurts so bad and I got shot and I’m riding toward James in a car with the boy I was supposed to kill but didn’t and my entire world is shot and I’m going to have to figure it out really fast or we’ll all be dead.
“You’re awake,” Adam, says, looking over at me with surprise in his soft gray eyes.
“You have pretty eyes. I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“Uh, yeah, me too.”
“I feel fuzzy.”
He shifts uncomfortably, eyes on the road. “I might have overdosed you. Just a little. I needed to think.”
Hmm. He drugged me. That’s interesting. I felt like I was safe with him. I still do. My instincts are totally cracked from years of misuse. Maybe I’m trying to kill myself? I’m not brave enough to try again in real life, but maybe my subconscious is braver than I am and it’s trying to do me in.
Oh! Adam has long eyelashes. Long arms. Long legs. Long fingers. Everything about him is long. Eden would make a dirty joke. I giggle imagining it.
Focus, focus, focus. “You drugged me.”
“I almost pulled over at three different hospitals. You’re bleeding through the bandaging.”
I look down at the black sleeve of his shirt; it’s wet. “Ruined your shirt. Sorry.” I giggle again. I haven’t giggled in years. Maybe I should let Adam overdose me more often. It’s nice.
“I’ll get a new one.”
“Why didn’t you pull over? Or call the cops?”
He’s quiet for a while, knuckles tight on the steering wheel. “Because I’ve been trying to figure it out. I believe you—about the hit—I probably wouldn’t if those other guys hadn’t showed up, but it’s all too weird to be fake. Plus I, uh, looked through your purse. Another knife in the lining, along with a few thousand dollars. Four different IDs. Is that picture of you and Annie?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
“She’s the one they’ll hurt if you mess up.”
“I already messed up. She’s the one they’ll hurt if I don’t fix this. Wait, how do you know her name?”
“You talked. I mean, when you were out. I asked you questions, and you answered them.”
I glare suspiciously at him. “You should know I lie all the time.” Most people lie with words; I lie with my whole body. I lie with my thoughts and my emotions; I lie with everything that makes me who I am. I’m the best liar in the whole entire world. I hope I lied to him, whatever he asked. “What did I say?”
“Have you really killed three people?”
Tap tap tap I need to tap tap tap I need to get out of this car. I can’t breathe. “Why didn’t you stop at a hospital?”
“I know why I’m in the middle of this.”
Why is he still talking to me? He should be scared, he should get away from me. “Oh?”
“My research. What I’ve been working on. I told you it was with MRI and tracking chemicals in the body to examine brain disorders, right? What I didn’t tell you is there’s a very specific focus. I’m mapping the brain functions of people who claim to have psychic abilities. It started as a focus inspired by this crazy aunt on my mom’s side, more to disprove it than anything else, but, well, there were patterns. Specific areas of the brain more active than others, certain chemical markers present. Only in women. So I was going to expand it—start gathering information on huge segments of the population to see if I could find the same patterns in women who don’t claim to be psychic.”
I close my eyes, rest my head against the window. If they had that information, if they could access medical records and find women without depending on sketchy news reports or rumors or the muddled visions of their Seers, they could find all of them. No one would be safe.
“They shouldn’t want to kill you,” I whisper. “You’re their dream come true.” And now I know I have to keep him hidden no matter what, because if Keane knew, if Keane got him . . .
“I’d really like to look at your brain,” Adam says.
I snort. “That has got to be the weirdest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I mean, in