Sister Assassin (7 page)

“DRUGS, DRUGS, PLEASE GIVE ME DRUGS.” I MAKE A
face at my pale reflection. My arm hurts. My head hurts. I don't understand anything that's happened today. Annie put the hit on Adam. She's
helping
Keane. Why? And thanks to Keane's rules, I can't visit her or even call her without being spied on. How could she do this to me? To us? She
used
me.

My arm hurts.

My life hurts.

“Drugs, drugs, drugs, I want some drugs,” I sing, dancing out of the bathroom and into my living room. It's a beautiful apartment, Lincoln Park, impeccably furnished. James picked it for me when we got back from Europe and they decided it was dangerous for me to have easy access to Annie. One too many stray thoughts of grabbing her and running. Stupid Readers.

So she stays at the school and I get “freedom” that is as much a prison as Annie's secure hall because they know I'll never leave her.

As long as I do exactly what I am told I am perfectly free.

“Drugs, James, drugs, drugs—” I stop short, almost tripping, and let my anger (always on simmer, I keep it on simmer just for this) explode. “What are
they
doing here?”

Ms. Robertson and Eden are sitting on my couch—
my couch
—and James is by the window on his phone. Anger, anger, anger, Eden is already squirming, looking like she's going to be sick. I turn to Ms. Robertson and mentally list every dirty, foul, obscene word I've ever heard or read. I start screaming them in my head, letting them bounce around inside my skull, the whole place a vast echo chamber of filth and bile and words, words, words.

Then, because her severe mouth is a single straight line but she hasn't gotten truly angry yet, I smile, bare all my teeth at her, and think three simple words:
Andy, Ashley, Ally
. She gasps in horror and rushes from the couch straight at me, grabbing both my arms (my arm, my arm, pain pain pain) and slamming me into the wall.

“How do you know their names? How?”

Andy, Ashley, Ally. Andy, Ashley, Ally. ANDY, ASHLEY, ALLY.

“STOP IT!” she screams, and I sigh in relief as James pulls her off me. Oh, my arm; spots dance in front of my eyes, but it's worth it.

Ms. Robertson is screaming at James and he's talking, trying to calm her down. I sink along the wall to the floor and laugh. I knew it was a good idea to pick up her cell phone when she left it out on her desk the other day. I didn't even have to sing pop songs, and my thoughts are safe.

“If she doesn't have anything to hide, then why does she do that? You don't know what it's like, having to listen in on her thoughts! She's a monster!”

“
Rawr
,” I say.

James walks her to the door. “I think everyone could use a break. Doris, thank you so much for your efforts, and I promise your family is safe and she doesn't know where they are and even if she did”—he cuts a sharp glance my direction with his warm brown beautiful eyes—“she would never hurt them. She's just disoriented and in pain. It'll pass.”

“I doubt that.” She opens the door. “Give my love to the kids,” I shout as the door closes, and I've never seen that shade of red on a face. It's quite lovely, actually, I should aim for it more often.

Eden stands. Oh, Eden, why haven't you gotten out of here yet? You could go, you could be free—why are you still working with them? They have nothing on you.

“She's calming down,” she says, “but her arm hurts a lot and she's very confused and angry. The last one goes without saying. She's not going to kill herself, though. Can I leave now? I have a headache.”

James nods and I see the way she leans toward him, the hand she casually puts on his arm, before pulling herself back and walking carefully to the door. She is aware of how her hips look in those jeans—she wants him to want her. I wonder if he still does. I send a big burst of anger in her direction as a parting gift. I hate her.

“Fia,” James says, raising an eyebrow. His hair is somewhere between blond and brown, golden really, backlit by the last rays of sun sneaking through my huge picture window, and he is glowing and so very, very handsome. I'm glad Ms. Robertson is gone because I'm thinking things about James I don't want her to hear. About tracing the broad line of his shoulders and his arms, about the way he walks. The curve of his lips. I'm thinking about running my hand down his stomach. He knows what my hands do, he knows about them. He'd still let me, I bet.

I wonder if Adam would let me touch him with my horrible hands, if he knew, if he really knew. I told him I killed people, but I don't think he understands what that means. He can't. If he could, he wouldn't be Adam. Calm and steady and sweet. I wonder where he is, if he's okay.

Don't think about it. Thoughts aren't safe, ever.

James is staring back at me. He knows he's handsome. He uses it to his advantage constantly. Is it bad that I like that about him? I miss him so much. I miss how easy it was, being his.

“James,” I say, mimicking his tone, then stand and stumble over to the couch, throwing myself across it. Dr. Grant stitched me up all nice, then James brought me home and actually let me take something. They never let me take anything. (It'll mess with my abilities, they say. You'll take too many again, they don't say.) “I would like some more drugs, please.”

“I think no.”

“Why not? Come on. I earned it. Besides, I'm about to start my period, and you know how PMSing messes with everything.” I beam at him, but he doesn't so much as squirm.

“I seem to recall Clarice saying you were actually at your best then—you just couldn't focus your intuition on what we needed you to do, only on what you wanted to do.”

“Yes, well, I seem to recall Clarice being dead.”

“Fia,” he says, and it's like a sigh. He sits on the other end of the couch and puts my feet across his lap. I shouldn't let him touch me. I don't, usually, because he is a liar and I promised Annie, I promised her so long ago. I broke that promise in Europe, I wanted to break it completely, but I learned better.

But Annie.

Annie.

Annie wanted me to kill Adam.

She wanted me to close gray eyes and put long, soft, sure fingers under the ground. How could she want him dead? Did she want
me
to do it? How could she set me up for that?

I don't know her at all. All these years, all these things I've done, all these things I've become to keep her happy, to keep her safe. I don't know her. I tap tap tap Annie's betrayal onto my leg.

“Listen,” James says, and he's rubbing my feet. His hands engulf them—he's tall, so tall, and stronger than me by far. Right now he could take me in a fight, I think. Maybe not. He wears contacts. I could use that to my advantage.

His fingers linger at my ankle. I haven't let him touch me since I made him bring me back to Chicago. I think it's actually affecting him. Maybe there are a lot of other things I could use to my advantage against James. “What am I supposed to listen to?” I turn and look up at him through my eyelashes.

“You need to calm down. Quit antagonizing the other women. It makes my job a lot harder.”

“Oh, poor dear. You have a hard job? I can't imagine.”

He yanks my pinky toe. “I think you have a very good imagination. They complain to my father, and then my father suspects I'm not doing a good job managing here.” His voice gets tight. Daddy issues. I wish I had daddy issues. Though I suppose I have issues with
his
daddy. “And if I'm not your manager, I can't help you anymore.”

I sit up and pull my feet away from him. I look straight in his eyes. I do not look away and I do not let him look away. “I got shot and I killed someone. Do you have any idea—” I let my voice break. It's not hard. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? What it does to me? How are you
helping
me?”

“I want to. I'm trying to. But, see, that,” he says, cupping the side of my face with his warm hand. “Why can't you let them see that? That's a perfectly acceptable reaction. That's a reaction they can report without getting us in trouble. That's a reaction that gets you trusted in this system.”

I shove his hand away and stand. “I'd hate for you to get in any trouble.” I put my hands on my hips. “I want something to help me sleep.”

His phone rings and when he looks at the screen, his face shifts, gets harder and further away. Must be Daddy Dearest. He answers it.

No, no, no. This could take all night. How can I ever get to sleep now? I grab my own phone and call Annie, walking back into the hall, away from James. Annie answers. I need to talk to her, need her to explain.

But she can't right now, not without revealing that I didn't kill Adam. They're always listening.

“Fia? How are you feeling? Are you okay?”

“Oh, I'm peachy! Never been better. I wanted to talk to you about something you said earlier.”

There's a long pause, as she tries to feel out whether or not she can talk around it without giving us away. “You mean my vision?”

“Yup. Your vision.”

Another long silence. “I don't think you should go dancing, is all. It'll make sense later, I promise. Please trust me. When I can explain, it will make sense.”

I grit my teeth, adding the pain in my jaw to the pain in my head and my arm and my heart. “Sure. Everything does. Later. Too late, actually. You know, I don't think you understand what you're asking of me. Do you have
any idea
what you're asking of me?”

“Please, Fia. Please. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't want it to happen to you. We'll talk about it. I promise.”

“No. It's fine. Fine, fine, fine. Everyone uses me, everyone bosses me around. Guess you finally caught on.” I remember what we're allegedly talking about for whoever is listening. “But the funny thing is, I wouldn't even have considered going dancing tonight if you hadn't brought it up. What's that term? Self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“That's not funny.”

“I think it's hilarious. Let me know if I have to kill anyone tomorrow, okay? Bye!” I end the call, then throw my phone against the wall. She's—I can't process this. I can't deal with it. If she's the one who wanted the hit, she would have had to convince Keane that Adam needed to die. Why? Why would she? Even if she didn't make me go, she's still the reason I had to.

She has to remember. She can't have forgotten what it was like before Clarice. What it's been like ever since. But no. She used me, just like Keane, just like everyone else. And I screwed up, again, always, and now she's in danger and she didn't want me to not kill him. How could she be disappointed in me for making the right choice for the first time in years?

Annie. Annie. Annabelle. Anna
hell
. I stomp into my room and pull all the clothes out of my closet, throwing them behind me, until I find the perfect strapless black dress. It'd probably be more accurate to call it a dressless black strap. I laugh.

I wish Annie could have heard that joke.

Sharp red stilettos. I don't know why I need the sharp ones, but they're right for tonight. I can't do my hair one-handed; it's falling in waves down my back. Twist a strand back from my face. Dark eye makeup to better match my Cameron Underhill ID. Cameron is twenty-two.

I'm twenty-two tonight.

The only thing ruining the effect is the bandage on my left arm (it joins my other faint scars), but nothing to be done there. Shot is shot is shot. No room for a knife in this dress. I lean back and ponder. Don't need one tonight.

I slink down the hall into the main room.

James is standing by the window, the sun now set, his beautiful, strong, all-American-boy face creased and pinched. “We need to be more careful. This type of work isn't good for her. It risks everything I've built up the last two years. Why don't we have her back on stocks and trading and espionage? She's perfect there. This—” he pauses, only for a second but I know his dad will see the weakness there “—assassination work messes her up. She won't be useful for months in this state of mind.”