Illusive (23 page)

C
iere’s seen death before—on HDE screens, in television and movies. Movie deaths are silent, clean, and instantaneous. She’s heard someone die—and it was nearly the same as the movies promised. But she’s never intimately witnessed a death. Not until this moment.

Carson’s death isn’t silent, isn’t clean, and isn’t instantaneous.

He stands there for an eternity, his eyes so wide that she can see the whites rimming his irises. The knife has slid deeply into his throat, and she imagines the tip protruding, jutting out amid the short, bristly hairs that trail down the back of his head.

She hears the softest of breaths leave Carson’s mouth, a quiet exhalation of air that is meant to be spent on a vocalized cry.

Magnus pulls the knife free, and Carson falls. All Ciere
registers is a flash of brilliant red, a splatter hitting the counter, and then the sound of Carson collapsing to the floor. Then he is gone from her sight, blocked by the bar.

It would be a relief not being able to see him, but she can still
hear
him. He’s struggling to draw breath—struggling and failing. It reminds her of the time Kit had bronchitis and spent a week racked with coughing fits that tore up his throat and made him double over with pain. She wants to clamp her hands over her ears. She wants to block out those horrible noises.

There is one mercy—Carson’s death isn’t silent, isn’t clean, and isn’t instantaneous. But it is quick.

The sounds fade, and after about half a minute, they vanish completely.

The silence is somehow even worse. Ciere can hear her own labored breathing, and each inhalation feels like the worst crime she’s ever committed. She is stealing oxygen that belongs in someone else’s lungs.

Magnus doesn’t move. He stares down at the floor, presumably at Carson, the knife held loosely in his hand. The look on Magnus’s face is utterly still and emotionless, as if he is gazing at a floor tile that is out of place.

All at once, Ciere needs to check, to see Carson for herself. She needs to know if he is actually dead, if—

“No.” Kit appears in front of her, and Ciere realizes that her feet moved without her conscious permission. She tries to
dodge around him, but he moves with her. He seems to be trying to block her view with his body.

“I…” Ciere says, and her voice is so broken she barely recognizes it. “I need to—”

“No,” Kit says sharply, and his hands are on her shoulders and he’s fighting with her, struggling against her flailing fists. “No, Ciere!” He grips both her wrists and keeps at it, herding her backward until she is through the door, into Kit’s study, and there are walls between her and the kitchen. She finds herself tumbling backward into the leather love seat.

“You stay here,” Kit says, and then he adds over his shoulder to Devon, standing behind him and looking unsteady but fully awake, “Both of you, just stay put.”

Ciere wants to move. She can’t sit on this love seat. There is something she needs to remember, something she needs to do—

“Alan,” she says, and Devon’s head snaps up. “He’s locked in the basement. Car—Carson…” She stumbles over the name and doesn’t know how to continue.

Devon’s lips part, as if he is going to speak, but no sound emerges. He must have seen the body, and even he can’t think of anything to say. He gives her a quick nod and leaves the room.

A few minutes later, he returns with Alan in tow. Devon hesitates at the door as if unsure of what to do, but Alan strides inside. He sinks onto the love seat, and she sees blood leaking from a cut over his eyebrow. He must have been trying to free
himself. Before she can say anything, he brings a hand to her chin and his fingertips ghost over her jaw.

“He didn’t hurt you?” Alan says.

“No. But he got you good.” Before she can stop herself, Ciere’s fingertips brush his brow. Part of her wishes she was the type of person to pass out, to simply leave this consciousness behind and wake up several hours later—when the blood has been cleaned up and the body removed—but she feels horribly awake. She hears footsteps in the hall and looks up, her fingers gone still on Alan’s forehead.

Lizaveta shuffles into view; she pauses by the open door. She sees Alan, Ciere, and Devon, and she doesn’t look surprised. “Good,” she says, in that heavily accented way of hers. “Children do not need to see.”

It’s then Ciere realizes that Liz doesn’t have her usual broom. In her knobby, liver-spotted hands she holds a mop.

Well, looks like the question of whether or not Liz knows about Kit’s line of work has been answered
, she thinks.

For a second, she’s sure there is another laugh bubbling up her throat. But then the bitter taste of acid floods her mouth, and she scurries into the bathroom, falls to her knees, and vomits into the bathtub.

Kit comes for them about an hour later. He is wearing fresh clothes—strangely casual clothes. Jeans and a T-shirt look
odd on him. Ciere straightens; she has been sitting on the bathroom floor, her forehead pressed to the cool porcelain of the toilet. She takes one look at Kit’s outfit, and says, “We’re leaving?” It’s the only thing that Kit would dress down for. They are going underground.

“Get your things,” Kit says shortly. He turns his attention to the boys. “You, too. Both of you. It’s too risky to stay around here.” He reaches down, grasps Ciere by the arm, and helps her to her feet.

Packing is easy. Ciere retrieves her old Hello Kitty backpack and checks the contents—new cell phones, clothes, bottled water, flashlight, a tiny first-aid kit, balaclava, Swiss Army knife, backup lock-picking kit, duct tape, some protein bars, counterfeit ID, and about three hundred in cash.

That sprig of lavender—the one she cast an illusion on when she was eleven—is sealed in a sandwich bag and tucked into the bottom of her backpack. It is brown, faded, crumbling, but there is still the faintest sweet fragrance. Ciere found the sprig in her backpack when she was living on the street. Her mother must have packed it without Ciere’s knowledge, and she has never had the heart to remove it. It’s a reminder of who she is. Of what she can do. It’s a reminder she has to hide all of that.

Sitting on the bed is a crumpled sheet of paper. She turns it over, thinking at first that it is Devon’s copy of the will, but then she sees the falcon letterhead.

Her whole body is wound tight, and she feels like she might snap under the pressure. This is just one more thing she can’t deal with right now.

As she trudges downstairs, she catches a glimpse of a bucket resting on the hardwood floor. The water is dirty, rust colored, and Ciere’s stomach rolls over. She’s flaunted her exploits, bragged about her crimes, but she’s never done anything like this. She’s not used to the sight and smell of death, or the knowledge that if she looks into the trash can, she’ll see paper towels stained red.

He deserved it. He was a fed. He was going to turn us all in.

But another part of her whispers:
He had a daughter.

She finds herself rubbing her throat, touching the places where Carson’s skin met hers, and her fingertips find the beat of her own pulse and linger on the throb of her carotid artery.

“It was quick,” says a quiet voice, and Ciere whirls around. Alan stands behind her, his backpack slung over one shoulder. His expression is something between understanding and pity.

“What?” says Ciere.

Alan’s gaze drops to the bucket. “That man’s death. I heard Copperfield say that his throat was cut—he would’ve only been conscious for a few seconds.”

“So you’re saying that makes it all right?” She’s not sure
why, but Alan’s words set her on even more on edge. “If it was quick? You think that makes it better?”

Alan reaches out, and it’s only then that Ciere realizes her hand is still clasped around her neck. He gently pries her fingers free, briefly squeezing before letting go.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Everything you’re feeling, everything you’re thinking—I get it.”

“How do you know?”

His gaze remains fixed on the bucket. “This isn’t the first time someone’s killed for me.”

“You all ready?” Kit asks briskly, striding into the room. He has his own go-bags: two military-grade duffel bags, the contents much the same as Ciere’s backpack—only his contain more food and specialized equipment.

Ciere realizes they all have bags that are easy to grab and swing over a shoulder—all except Devon. His luggage is the roller type with the plastic handle.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

Kit checks his watch. “There’s a place about forty miles from here—by the Schuylkill River. It’s out of sight. It’ll take a bit of work, but we’ll manage.”

Devon’s brow furrows. “Okay, we’re running from the feds and you want to go camping?”

Ciere understands. “We’re going to dump h—
the
body.” The word “his” sticks in her throat. “In the river.”

“Well, we can’t leave it here, for obvious reasons,” Kit says. “We’ve already wrapped and loaded it into our car. We’re going to break into two groups—Devon, you are going to drive the fed’s car. Ciere and Alan will ride with you. Magnus and I will take my car. You’ll follow us to the dump site, where we’ll torch the car. From there, we go to a bolt-hole and stick it out for a few weeks. If nothing happens, we’ll assume that the fed was right and no one will know where to look for him.” He rattles off the instructions like they’re planning a trip to the grocery store.

Alan clears his throat. “How exactly did the agent escape?”

It’s a good question, and for a moment Ciere is thrown by the fact she herself didn’t think of it. In the chaos of Carson’s getaway and subsequent death, she hadn’t realized that he must have escaped his handcuffs somehow.

Kit’s face freezes. It’s eerie how still he goes, and it reminds Ciere of when he held the gun on Carson. It’s the same deathly calm. “He fell on his side. The metal chair must have cracked in the fall and he worked himself free.”

But Carson’s chair didn’t fall by itself; Kit kicked it out from under him in a fit of rage.

Your fault
, Ciere wants to whisper, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “What about Liz?”

Kit casts a look toward the kitchen. “She will be staying here to keep an eye on things.”

“But,” Devon protests, “she’s a helpless old lady, and you want to leave her where some feds might come looking?”

“She will be fine,” says Kit. “She’s not as helpless as she looks.” He takes a second to glance at every person in the room, his gaze resting on each of them in turn. “Let’s move.”

Devon lets out a wordless grumble and heads for the garage. Alan follows. Ciere takes a step after them. Then she pauses and glances over her shoulder. Magnus still hasn’t moved from his place on the couch. Ciere hasn’t seen him speak since killing Carson. It’s then that the fed’s words return to her:
People don’t experience that kind of trauma and come out whole.
But in the end it was Magnus himself who wielded the knife.

“He had a daughter,” Magnus says finally.

“And we have a Fiacre.” Kit leans over him. “We couldn’t let the agent go, not with that kind of information. You know how the UAI would react. What you did was necessary.”

Magnus blinks slowly, like it’s an effort. “He’s dead. I don’t care how necessary it was—it’s not right.”

Kit hesitates, turning away and striding to the door. “I know,” he says. “But I can live with it. And so can you.”

Only after Kit has vanished does Magnus cover his face with a hand. He must think he’s alone; he lets out a shuddering breath and his shoulders begin to shake.

T
he fed’s car is disturbingly normal. There’s a fancy radio with a CB, but other than that, the car could have belonged to anyone. Interestingly enough, Ciere finds a tag inside the car that marks it as belonging to a police department in Endicott. It must be borrowed.

The ashtray is full, and when Devon takes a sharp turn, some of the ashes spill over and drift onto the floor. The scent of stale smoke and something spicy—old cologne, maybe—clings to the leather seats. The door handle is worn down by years of use, and Ciere’s fingers stroke the smooth surface.

Alan sits in the backseat, his legs crossed under him and eyes closed. Either asleep or meditating. Devon seems too intent on following Kit’s car to bother with conversation, and Ciere cannot imagine touching the radio. Probably the last
person to use the radio was Carson, and somehow the thought of fiddling with the same buttons that he handled makes her nauseous.

Devon’s phone goes off again: it’s the second time that morning, and the familiar
ding a ling ling, a ling ling ling
is beginning to grate on her nerves. She feels jumpy enough as it is.

At least the body isn’t in this car. She’s not sure she could handle that.

Before they drove off, Kit gave Ciere and Devon a few last-minute instructions. If Kit and Magnus were to be stopped, if anything were to happen, Devon was to keep driving. “If we get pulled over,” Kit said, “don’t stop. Don’t even look at us. There’s no time to disconnect that car’s GPS, so don’t draw attention to yourselves. Don’t speed, don’t go too slow. Just stay on the highway. Wait for us at the coordinates. If we do not show up within two hours, assume the worst.” His eyes moved to Ciere, and she felt the weight of the responsibility he was unloading on her. “If that occurs, Ciere is in charge. She knows whom to contact and where to go.

“You hear me?” Kit said firmly. “No matter what happens, you keep driving.”

Ciere tries to turn her mind away from the memory and focuses on the landscape. The greenery whips past them: trees bursting with fresh leaves, wildflowers blooming along the road, and—

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something flash red and blue.

Her head whips around, and she feels her breath catching, her fingers gone rigid around the armrest. A cop car is creeping up on their right, driving on the shoulder of the road, its lights bright and spinning.

“Eyes ahead,” Devon mutters. “Eyes ahead, eyes ahead.” It sounds like a mantra, like a chant meant to protect. It rings hollow in Ciere’s ears.

The cop car is now even with them, and Ciere cannot help but glance at them, waiting to see the inevitable stare, the gesture for them to pull over, to hear the demands of the cops wanting to know why three kids are driving an undercover cop car.

But the cop’s eyes are fastened on something in the distance, and he doesn’t so much as look at them. The cop speeds past. For another second, Ciere is sure the car is going to swerve in front of Kit’s sedan and force it to the side of the road, but it continues on. Its lights blur from red to blue and back again, and the car screams toward the horizon like an angry hornet.

“Not us,” Devon says tightly. “Not after us.”

Ciere knows he’s right. That cop must be off on some other mission. Catching some other crooks. Taking down some other criminal empire.

But her heart won’t stop pounding.

The drive takes over an hour. They pull off the main highway
onto a rural road and pass fields that must have once been used for farming. Now the fields are dusty and dry, left untended. Kit takes a right onto a road that Ciere doesn’t see until his car vanishes into the trees. Devon follows, and the
bumpbump
of driving on gravel jostles Ciere in her seat. Kit takes a left, and then there is a thick wall of foliage between them and the road. Kit’s car comes to a halt, and Devon pulls the car up behind it.

Ciere pushes her door open and scurries outside with a feeling of relief. The air is fresher here than in the city. The sounds of the nearby river soothe her nerves. Even the canopy of trees is reassuring—it’s another layer of protection.

“The hard part is done,” Kit says matter-of-factly, pulling Ciere out of her thoughts. “We’re here. Now all that’s left are details.” He snaps his fingers at something beyond Ciere. “You boys, gather all of Carson’s personal belongings. Search the car for anything that could be used to ID him. We’ll toss that into the river before we burn the car.” He unlocks his trunk. It eases open slowly, and Ciere averts her gaze. She doesn’t want to see who—
what
—lies within the trunk. “After that, we’ll run.”

“What about Guntram?” Ciere says, stepping forward. “I’m supposed to pay him today. We can’t run as long as he’s tracking me.”

Kit’s frown deepens. “I’ll deal with him,” he says, and his voice is as flat as when he interrogated Carson.

Devon and Alan are already at work inside the fed’s car.
The doors are all open and they’re crawling around inside, saying things like “Found a lighter,” and “Bloody hell, how long has this donut hole been here?” and “Mind removing your elbow from my side, Ana?”

Ciere tries to keep her eyes down. She doesn’t want to see Kit and Magnus heave the body toward the river. She doesn’t want to see them weigh the garbage bag with rocks. She doesn’t want to hear the sound of their grunts and straining as they carry the heavy load to the water. She doesn’t want to witness Carson before he sinks beneath the gray surface of the river.

As soon as they shuffle awkwardly out of sight, Devon stops working. He doesn’t speak at first, apparently judging how long it will take for the adults to be out of earshot.

“I guess this is something else I can add to that ‘What I Did over My Summer’ paper we’re always required to write,” he quips. “I mean, what professor doesn’t want to hear about their students dumping bodies?”

Ciere lets out a snort. Good to see that no matter how dire the situation might be, Devon’s sarcasm will always prevail.

“You wouldn’t,” Alan says, looking perplexed.

“He’s kidding,” she says, patting Alan’s arm.

Devon’s smirk never falters. “Yeah, that would require me to
write
an essay. Seriously, Ana, you never heard of sarcasm?”

“His name is Alan,” Ciere says. “And lay off him.”

Devon looks on the verge of another insult when a familiar
ringtone goes off again.
Ding a ling ling, a ling ling ling.
Devon redirects his glare at the phone—it’s sitting on the gravel road amid Carson’s possessions. It must have fallen from Devon’s pocket.

“You know,” Ciere says, “I think your dad’s figured out you’re not in Hemsedal.”

Devon goes back to shuffling through Carson’s things, tossing them into several piles. It looks like he’s sorting them according to Kit’s directions; they’ll either be burned or tossed into the river. A small canister of gasoline rests against the tire of Kit’s car, presumably to speed along the burning process. Ciere fetches it, along with two of the lighters that Kit keeps in the glove compartment. Might as well get this over with as soon as possible.

Ding a ling ling, a ling ling ling.

Alan looks politely puzzled. “Why is your phone ringing a bad thing?”

“Hiding from my family,” Devon says shortly. He glares at the phone; it is lying only a few feet from where he kneels. It rings again and then goes silent. “He hasn’t left a voice mail yet, which means he’s saving all his rage for me.”

“Why not just answer?” Alan suggests.

Devon heaves a sigh. “None of your business, Ana.”

“Would you stop calling him that?” Ciere snaps. The constant ringing of the phone is grating.

Devon’s patience unravels. “I will call him whatever I damn well please.”

And then the phone goes off again.
Ding a ling ling, a ling ling ling…

Devon
snaps
.

He lunges for the phone and snatches it up, his face twisted into an expression of reckless fury. He flicks the phone open and brings it to his ear. Apparently, he’s decided to go on the offensive, because he doesn’t give his father the time he needs to launch into a lecture.

“Yeah, hello. Hiya, Dad,” Devon says with manic cheer. “All right. Fine. I’ll admit it. Dad, we’re not in Norway. I’m with my mates in Philadelphia. Got that?
Phil-a-del-phi-a
.”

Still grinning in that slightly deranged way, he holds the phone out, and his thumb strokes over the button marked
SPEAKERPHONE
. He probably wants to prove to the entire world that he’s finally standing up to his father.

When the phone’s speaker crackles, Ciere expects to hear the furious voice of Mr. Lyre. But the voice that speaks is gravelly. Unfamiliar.

“Who is this?” the voice says slowly. “And where the hell is Carson?”

Everything freezes, goes still and quiet. Ciere’s heart just
stops
for a moment—and in that moment she understands
what just happened. She whirls on the spot and throws a desperate, searching look at Devon’s luggage. And there it is.

Devon’s cell phone, identical to the one that Carson used, is sitting on top of his luggage. Untouched. It wasn’t Devon’s phone that rang.

Which means that—

“Whoever this is,” that unfamiliar voice says, “you should know that we’re currently tracking the location of his police car. There will be a squad to your location shortly. If you have injured Agent Carson in any way—”

—that isn’t Devon’s phone. It’s Carson’s.

“Turn it off!” Ciere says, her voice ragged with terror. “Turn it off!”

Devon snaps back to life. The phone tumbles from his grasp, hitting the gravel. Before anyone can move, his heel slams onto the phone again and again. It looks like he is trying to kill an insect that startled him.

When he steps backward, the phone is little more than a mess of plastic and metal. Devon’s breathing comes in harsh pants, and he turns toward Ciere, a beseeching look in his eyes. He wants her to tell him that it’s all right. It’s just a stupid mistake. One that any of them might have made.

She can’t give him that reassurance. Sounds seem far off, and she feels that odd disconnect again. She stares at the
remnants of Carson’s phone. The feds won’t be able to track that, not anymore. It is too broken. But they could easily track the car.

“They’re coming,” Alan says. His voice is oddly inflectionless, as if he expected this.

He doesn’t add what Ciere knows. The police will come, and they will all be arrested. She considers the canister of gasoline and imagines setting fire to the car, watching the blaze consume it. But even if they destroy the car, chances are they’ve already been tracked to this location.

Devon seems to be at a loss, his long arms dangling at his sides. “What—what do we do?”

Ciere’s instincts kick in. The old words leap to the forefront of her mind:
Don’t let anyone see what you are, understand?
She wants to comply. She wants to wrap herself in her surroundings, to take the images of the trees dappled with sunlight and shadow, and blend in so seamlessly that no one will find her. She wants to run, to leave this all behind. She wants someone else to take the fall. She cannot go to jail. She cannot face a firing squad. She will not work for the same organization that killed her mother. And if the feds catch her, those will be her only options.

“Get Kit,” she says, turning to face Devon. He hesitates. “Get Kit!” she repeats shrilly. This time, he obeys and rushes into the forest.

When she turns to face him, Ciere sees Alan staring at the car. “They’ll come for me,” he says. “But not here.” It’s like he’s already accepted that fact, like it’s a foregone conclusion. Then his eyes flick to her, meeting her gaze. A spark goes through her, a blaze of adrenaline that has little to do with their situation. Then his gaze snaps to the car, and he moves toward it, fresh determination in his face.

It takes her a second to understand. He’s running. But not away from danger—toward.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Her voice trembles slightly, heavy with the words she isn’t saying.

“I take this car and they’ll follow,” says Alan, and there’s something she’s never seen in him before: iron. “You can run. All of you—this isn’t your fight. You can be free.”

There’s so much wrong with that statement. Her mouth feels slow, and the seconds are slipping by too quickly. She’s spent six years running, and she’s never found freedom. There’s no such thing as freedom. There are only places to hide, things to steal, and a life she’s not sure she even wants anymore. A day ago, she probably would’ve taken Alan up on his offer. Let him take the fall while she grabbed her friends and ran. But now—now she’s not so sure.

She tries to think of a way to say all of this, but what comes out of her mouth is, “Can you even drive?”

A grimace passes over Alan’s face. “Theoretically, yes.”

“So in reality, no?”

She’s moving before she’s truly conscious of the fact. She tosses the gasoline canister and her backpack into the backseat, throwing herself behind the steering wheel. “What are you doing?” Alan says, aghast.

“What does it look like?” She snaps her seat belt into place.

“You don’t have to do this.” The look on his face a mixture of incredulity and wonder.

“Shut up and get in the car,” she snaps.

He’s already sliding into the passenger seat. “Just so you know,” he says, “that’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

She laughs, but her throat is so tight that she nearly chokes on it.

Out of her rearview mirror, she sees Devon emerge from the forest. He pauses, frozen for a half second, his mouth dropping open. He makes for the car, his long legs eating up the distance. Ciere reacts automatically, hitting the door-lock button. She hears the resounding click as Devon tries to yank the back door open. When that fails, he lunges at her door, fingers clawing at the half-open window. “What are you doing?”

She twists the key in the ignition. The engine kicks to life, but Devon doesn’t back off, and she can’t drive away with him clinging to the car.