“Don’t you hate that?” Kaylee says. “What is the point of having a phone if you never, ever answer the thing? Delia’s the worst. I’m convinced she’s just ignoring me.”
But I’ve moved on.
“We have to go to Bellwether,” I say.
“What? Why?”
“Because the Throne Room sent us this,” I say, holding up the wad of paper. “And it has information that ties Olivia to that lighthouse. And she was working with Damien.”
“Something I still have trouble believing,” she says. “But I thought we were waiting for stuff about Jake? I thought that’s what we”—air quotes around the
we—
“were praying for.”
I bite my lip, because if I’m really, truly, completely honest, that’s exactly why we have to go to Bellwether.
“Oh,” Kay says, sinking back, her eyes wide, her long lashes curling into her brows. “You think Jake’s at Bellwether, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to rein in the hyperactive hope, ―" class="tx"
J
ake watched as Damien tied Marco to a wooden chair. Damien was pretty adamant about wanting a metal one, but Olivia insisted it was the best she could come up with. Yellow with white daisies painted up its legs and on the chair back. Damien strapped him to it, using his zip ties and nylon rope. And duct tape, of course, around Marco’s chest. Irritated that he didn’t get what he asked for, Damien overcompensated by cinching the binds so tight they cut into Marco’s wrists and ankles. He woke screaming, thrashing against the binds, which only made them bleed more.
After that, Damien shoved the halo onto Jake’s head and then took five steps backward, like Jake was set to explode at any moment. But when he did nothing but close his eyes and sigh, Damien yanked the halo—and a handful of hair—from Jake’s head and shoved it onto Marco’s.
Here he arrived at something that seemed to please him more.
Marco whimpered when Damien came toward him with the thing, but he silenced when the halo was dropped into
place. For an hour Marco stared straight ahead, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Jake watched, nearly as transfixed as Damien. Occasionally Marco’s brow would crease or his eyes would close. Once he sobbed openly and twice he laughed. And then his head bobbed once, swung like a pendulum, and stilled against his chest.
Now Damien sits in the corner of the basement, spinning the halo on his finger.
Jake looks again at Marco. His chair is jammed in the corner of the room; his hands, like Jake’s, are tied behind his back. Every now and then a drop of blood falls to the floor. The healer in Jake has been doing everything he can to figure out a way to help.
Even with the metal chair wobbly from Damien’s temper tantrum, Jake hasn’t been able to work either his legs or arms free. Getting to Marco could be a problem. And then there’s Olivia.
What little light slips through the window has changed, adding brown shades to the gray, but Olivia’s perch under the stairs keeps her face in shadow. Jake can see her legs plainly enough—crossed at the ankles, her feet still bare. They’re strangely still. She drops her hands to her lap and with her right thumb she strokes the scars only to be replaced by 08p A on her forearm. Reading her is hard. Fear doesn’t shake her as easily as it shakes others. Jake would do anything to have Brielle’s sight right now.
He closes his eyes and conjures her crystal blues, her red lips. An ache crashes around his chest, heavy like a bowling ball. There’s no guarantee he’ll see her again. The thought gains momentum, making it hard to breathe, but Jake stares into her imagined face for a minute longer before he forces his eyes open. When he does, Damien’s gone. Or at least invisible.
He strains, finally locating Olivia’s eyes in the darkness under the stairs.
“Where’d he go?” Jake asks. “Damien. When will he be back?”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t answer him.
“Olivia?” His patience is thin, his fists balled, his voice insistent. “Olivia, it’s important. Where did—”
“Don’t ask me questions.”
The anxiety Jake’s been searching for on her person is finally evident in her words. Her hatred for Damien is obvious, but she’s shattered. Bound to him somehow. Not with zip ties or nylon rope like he and Marco are. It’s fear that keeps her here.
Jake presses his back against the seat. The binds against his wrists relax, and relief floods his injured arm. It’d be so easy to quit fighting. So painless to sit and wait, to accept whatever’s coming.
But physical pain’s never frightened Jake much. Other things terrify him, but not that.
“Marco?” he asks.
Marco’s chin still rests on his chest, his hair a shaggy mess blocking any view of his face, and the blood continues to drip. He’s hurting, and while Jake can deal with his own pain, he can hardly stand it on others. With a glance at Olivia and another one at his suffering friend, Jake decides.
He presses his toes into the floor and leans forward. The injured side of his body flares with pain, but he bites his cheek and takes two tiny steps toward Marco before his calves give out and his chair totters back.
“Okay, Marco. I’m going to walk my chair closer to yours, all right? If you can turn your chair away from me so I can”—he casts a glance at Olivia—“so I can see your hands, that would help.”
But Marco doesn’t move. Neither does Olivia.
“Okay. Well. We’ll deal with that when I get there.” Jake cracks his neck and shakes his own hair away from his face. He pushes the pain in his shoulder to the back of his mind and rolls onto his toes again. He leans forward and lifts the chair legs off the ground. Sweat breaks out on his upper lip as he moves toward Marco. He manages a few steps before the pain in his shoulder demands a break. He throws his head back, breathing in the musty air as the pain ebbs. Then he grit was made by the Creatornt1As his teeth and tries again. It’s several minutes before he gets to Marco’s side.
“Okay, Marco. I’m here,” Jake says. He’s drenched in cold sweat now, his hair matted against his face and neck, and still Marco ignores his presence, his effort to help.
And now Jake’s done all he can do. Marco’s hands are bound behind him; without some help from Marco, there’s no way Jake will be able to reach them.
“Marco, my man, can you turn your chair at all?”
Just the
drip
,
drip
,
drip
of blood falling to the ground.
Jake tips his chair a bit, knocking his shoulder against Marco’s. “Look, man, I know this sucks, but I can help. Really, I can. Look, the halo gave you nightmares, right? Visions? Okay. It gave me a totally different gift. I can . . . my hands . . . I can heal the cuts on your wrists, Marco. I can do it with a touch, but I need to be able to reach them.”
Marco’s sniffles taper off, but he doesn’t move.
“Come on, let me help. I need you better. I need you to
want
to get out of here. Let me help. Please.”
Marco’s face tilts up, but his eyes are glassy, and though they meet Jake’s, they’re focused on something beyond him. On
something beyond the room. Jake throws his weight against the wobbly chair, and his knees connect with Marco’s.
“Hey, listen to me. Whatever’s going on in that head of yours, snap out of it. Pay attention. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“He’s not here,” Olivia says, leaning into Marco’s face. “Not really.” Jake’s been so focused on Marco he didn’t hear her creep up behind him.
“Turn his chair for me,” Jake says. He doesn’t ask. He can see the compassion she feels for Marco. The tenderness. She doesn’t want to see him in pain.
She reaches out, but fear grabs hold of her hands and they tremble. Jake doesn’t care. He’s done giving in to fear.
“Turn his chair, Olivia. Turn him so his hands touch mine.”
She stands there, her shaking hands frozen in midair. “I didn’t know, Jake. I didn’t know he was going to take you.”
“I don’t care about any of that. Please. I can help Marco, and we can get out of here. All of us.”
Her head shakes violently now. “You don’t know what he did to me.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But I know Damien.”
“Not Damien,” she says. She kneads her hands together, her eyes locked on Jake">have to do anything.”D1A’s. He knows that look. Seen it many times. She wants to talk. To confess. She has horrible timing, but if he can get her talking, maybe he can help her too. “Javan. Henry’s Javan.”
Jake exhales slowly, keeps his voice calm. “He did that to your arm.”
She nods. “I was ten when I went to live with my grandfather. My vile, pedophilic grandfather. Javan said he could protect me from him.”
Jake knows this part because Brielle’s dreamed it, but it’s different hearing it from Olivia. It’s sadder, more real, when you consider that Elle’s nightmares were someone else’s reality.
“Did Javan keep his word?”
Another dip of her chin. “Henry never touched me.”
“And Javan . . . ,” Jake asks.
“Not like that,” Olivia says. “Never like that.” Her eyes look like Marco’s now. Glassy. Far away. “That wasn’t Javan’s way. I’m fairly certain I repulsed him. That everyone repulsed him.”
“What did he do to you, Olivia?”
Her mouth hangs open for a second, the bottom lip quivering. Despite the pain she’s obviously in, Jake can’t help but appreciate her show of emotion. It’s good to know the woman can still feel. She might not be as broken as he thought.
“He crawled inside my head.” Her hands fall to her sides, the seemingly ridiculous statement pulling her back to the room. “That sounds weird to you, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all,” Jake says. “I believe you.”
“Do you?” She moves closer now. “He never shut up. He told me whom to befriend, what to dream. He told me which classes to take and which men would pay big for favors. His sick, twisted voice taught me how to seal a deal. And you don’t walk away from situations like that . . . unscathed.”
“Unscathed?”
She wraps her arms across her chest. “I wasn’t quite twenty when Henry’s business associate took advantage.”
There are a lot of things Jake can help with. A lot of things he can fix, but this isn’t one of them. “Oh man, Liv. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Javan showed up, beat the guy senseless, but it was too late.”
“But you survived, and sometimes that’s—”
“I’ll never have babies, Jake. And it’s probably the only thing I ever really wanted. My mom was an obstetric nurse. I used to stare at all those little babies in the nursery and dream of the day I’d have my own was made by the Creatornt1A. Of the perfect life we’d have.” She unfolds herself, the flickering light casting a glow on the silver-blue lines cut into her forearm. “All these scars on my body, and the one that caused the most damage is hidden. Most people will never know how broken I am.”
“There’s always hope, Liv,” Jake says, his heart hurting worse than his arm.
Her smile is slanted. “Who’s dreaming now?”
Somewhere close, pipes squeal, and the rush of water quiets them both. Doors open and close on the main floor above them.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to hurry,” Jake says. “I just want to help Marco.”
She stares at him for a long time. “If you leave, he’ll hurt me.”
“He’s already hurt you, Liv. Look at your legs.” Jake works hard to keep the exasperation from his voice, but it’s not easy. They’ve got to move.
“No,” she says, turning so Jake can see the wounds on the backs of her legs. “These, I’ve had these for years.”
“But they’d healed.”
She shrugs. “Sort of. A gift from Javan. I worked hard to have these scars removed, but in the end it didn’t matter.”
The sentence confuses Jake. She was scar-free. How can that not matter? But it’s Marco who voices the question.
“Why?” he asks, his head lifted, his face a torrent of emotion. “Why didn’t it matter?”
She turns to face them, tears falling like stars from her lashes.
“I could still feel the burns. Not when I ran my fingers over the skin, but beneath. Deep inside I felt the pull of damaged flesh. I felt the stinging chill of an open wound. Sometimes I thought I could smell them burning.” She shakes her head. “Having them look healed was worse than when they were gaudy white scars. Far worse. I never should have let Javan
fix
me. So this,” she says, “this is nothing. You can just see what I’ve always felt. Wounds that never stop hurting.”
“What about your arm? What is that?” Marco again. His voice is thin, desperate.
And now Jake remembers. Marco’s seen a drawing of this, of Liv’s arm. In Ali’s journal. He must be all kinds of confused.
“Javan gave me these. As a reminder, he said.”
“A reminder of what?” Marco asks.
“He used me. He broke me, but he also kept Henry away. And that was all I ever wanted. I saw what Henry did. I would have let Javan drag all ten of his razor-sharp nails down my back to avoid that fate.” the mirrorowp0
Jake can’t help the repulsion he feels at that statement. She knew what Henry was? Saw what he did? And she just let it happen?
“Liv . . . ,” Marco says, his voice catching. “I would’ve helped. You know I would have.”