Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (140 page)

Skylar trailed off again and then beamed. “Excellent! Tell John Michael he’s never allowed to make fun of you for watching police procedurals again. See you in five.”

Skylar hit the key to end the call with more flourish than was purely necessary. “That was Genevieve,” she said needlessly. “She says that Reid and company should be able to track the incoming calls on this phone back to the locations from which they were placed even if they’re not listed. Same goes for the calls made from this number, so if Bethany’s dad has ever been to the facility where they’re keeping Zev, or if he’s ever gotten a call from them, we should be able to track it. Or technically,
Reid
should be able to track it, but Gen said she could loan me a couple of bugs, so we should be able to keep tabs on Reid.”

I tried to process Skylar’s babbles and came to an utterly ridiculous conclusion. “Are you actually suggesting we bug the FBI?”

Skylar held up her right hand, holding her index finger a centimeter or so above her thumb. “Just a little.”

“This is never going to work.”

“Kali, if I want pessimism and brooding foreheads, I’ll talk to Elliot. At least try to think positively.”

“Sure,” I said, forcing my fingers to let loose of their grip on the cell phone. “I guess it’s worth a try.”

I wanted to laugh hysterically—or possibly throw up. Zev was a lab rat, my mother was evil, and Skylar and I were discussing bugging the FBI.

“Yeah,” Skylar said, and she had the decency to sound a little sheepish. “It’s crazy. But sometimes, crazy is all you’ve got.”

She reached out to take the phone, and the moment her fingers touched mine, an odd gleam came into her eyes, like a candle bringing light to a jack-o’-lantern’s. For a moment, there was an unnatural silence between us, and I wondered what she’d seen.

“It’s going to get better.” Skylar’s voice was very quiet, very small. “But first, it’s going to get worse.” She played with the end of her T-shirt, avoiding my gaze. “And when it gets worse … well, just remember that it’s going to get better, okay?” She brought her eyes up to mine, and I felt like she needed something from me—acceptance maybe, or absolution.

“Sometimes, there aren’t any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard.” She blinked and then cleared her throat. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you really think about it, we’re all broken. That’s just what life does. It knocks you down and it breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don’t. You either do things on your terms, or you don’t.” She grabbed my hand, and I was surprised at the strength of her grip. “You let the bad things win, or you don’t.”

It would have been so easy to stay down, to deal myself out, to stop caring. There was a part of me that wanted to say that I’d been fighting since I was twelve, and look what it got me.

But I couldn’t. And even though I had no idea what Skylar had seen in our future, what she was holding back, the one thing I knew for sure was that she couldn’t, either.

Crazy, insane, impossible, broken—it didn’t matter. Some people were born to fight back.

Skylar squeezed my hand and then dropped it. “You know what the worst part is about being psychic?” she asked. In typical Skylar fashion, she didn’t wait for a response to continue. “You always know when it’s going to get worse. I get up in the morning and get ready for school, and I know
that word
is going to be written on my locker. I know that given half a chance, they’d write it on my face. Last year, when it first started, I knew—I
knew
it was going to go on and on and on; every day, every single day, it was just going to get worse. But you know what? Screw that, Kali. Whatever it is, whatever hurts so bad you can’t even unball your fists—you either let it break you, or you don’t.”

This was the first time I’d heard Skylar admit, even for a second, that she wasn’t invincible—that the things people said and did to her at school hurt. And maybe, compared to what I was going through, it should have seemed little and petty and so very high school, but it didn’t, because fighting, getting hurt, letting the baddies break my bones and tear my flesh—that was the easy part.

That had always been the easy part.

Letting people in, caring, wanting them to care about me—that was hard.

“That woman?” I said, my voice husky and low. “The one who was just here? I’m pretty sure she’s my mom.”

Skylar blinked. And then she blinked again. “Do you think
she knows?” Skylar said finally. “That you’re involved in all of this? That you’re … you?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I care.” I brought the heel of my hand up to my face, wiped roughly at the tears as they fell from my bloodshot eyes. “If we’re going to illegally bug the FBI, we should probably get on that.”

I had fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes until my next shift. Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes to fight back—but until I knew where Zev was, there wasn’t anything else I could do.

Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes
.

I wasn’t going to waste even one second thinking about Rena Malik.

Skylar’s house was half the size of Bethany’s, but even from the outside, there was something distinctly comfortable about it, something comforting. There was a basketball hoop in the driveway and a scattering of brightly colored leaves on the lawn. In the summer, the beds were probably full of flowers, and there was a slope to the driveway that looked like it had been handcrafted for snow days and sledding.

A worn, wooden fence sectioned off the backyard, and the second Skylar stepped out of my (stolen) car, she made a beeline for the gate.

I paused at the curb and hesitated. Under my feet, there was a line of handprints, pressed into the cement like a Hollywood star. Tiny handprints and chubby ones, gangly and nearly full grown.

It may as well have been a line in the sand, a barbed-wire fence at a border crossing.

You don’t belong here
, it seemed to say.
Family and happy memories and home—those things aren’t for you
.

“You coming?” Skylar called.

From somewhere in the distance, darkness beckoned. If I
ran long enough, looked hard enough, I could follow the trail. I could hit the outskirts of town and find something to hunt. I could let the hunter take over and turn off all feelings, emotions, longing.

I could feed.

But instead, I stepped over the line of handprints and followed Skylar into the backyard, trying with every step not to think about all of the things I’d never had, would never have. I tried not to think about the bits and pieces of memory I’d held on to my entire life: my mother’s face, the way she’d held me, the way she smelled.

Not for me. Lies
.

If Skylar sensed my thoughts, she had the decency not to comment on them and instead just hooked an arm through mine. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go make trouble.”

“You know,” I replied, half joking and half not, “that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Skylar smiled and shrugged. “Not for long.” With eyes alight with mischief, she pulled a key chain out of her pocket with her free hand. “Remember,” she said. “Let me do the talking.”

She didn’t even need to ask. I’d broken my share of laws, but none of them had involved facing off against
people
. They certainly hadn’t involved giving an FBI agent a key chain in which we’d planted a listening device that one of Skylar’s friends had just happened to have on hand.

“Don’t you think he’s going to be a little suspicious that we’re giving him a mangled SIM Card
and
a ‘Number One Brother’ key chain?” I asked Skylar as the two of us closed in on the back door to her house.

“Definitely,” Skylar agreed. “That’s why I altered the key chain on the way over.”

I took a closer look at it and realized that in addition to hiding the listening device, she’d also edited the slogan on the key chain.

“Number Four Brother?” I asked dryly. “Isn’t that kind of insulting?”

Skylar smiled angelically. “He won’t suspect a thing.”

The inside of the Haydens’ house was even smaller than it had looked from the outside. The walls were lined with school pictures, and there was music blaring from the kitchen.

“My mom’s cooking,” Skylar explained. “She requires a sound track.”

I tried not to feel a twinge at how easy it was for her to say those two little words
—my mom
—but I only succeeded partway.

Concentrate on something else
, I told myself.
Anything else
.

And that was when I heard it: the steady, solid beating of Skylar’s heart.

Thirsty
.

The thing inside me needed blood. This time, Zev didn’t say a single word to talk me down.

Thump. Thump. Thump
.

Skylar’s blood smelled like strawberries. Now I wasn’t thinking about family or betrayal or anything other than the fact that it had been hours since the basilisk blood, hours of hunting and healing and—

“Heya, Reid. Have you met Kali?”

Skylar said the words like she genuinely thought there was a chance that her oldest brother
had
met me before, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she was completely guileless.

Apparently, Reid knew her better than that, too.

“We haven’t met,” he told me, ignoring his sister and bringing the full force of a miss-nothing stare to bear on my face. “But I believe I’m acquainted with some friends of yours.”

I tried to read in between the lines of his words. Beside me, Skylar helpfully made zombie motions, her head lolled to the side and her arms held out like claws.

“Right,” I said, at a complete loss for words. “The zombies. In case you didn’t notice, we didn’t exactly part on friendly terms.”

The strength of Reid’s stare never wavered, never lessened. “You don’t say.”

I took a moment to study him, even though there was a part of my mind that was still locked on to the rhythm of Skylar’s heartbeat, the smell of her blood. While Skylar and Elliot were blond, Reid’s hair—buzzed close to his scalp—had a reddish tint to it. He was a full head taller than me—wiry, but strong. And beyond the smile, the expression on his face was … blank. Completely blank.

Clearly, he was reserving judgment. On me. On the zombies. Or maybe he was just hoping I’d crack and spill out the whole story, from start to finish.

I looked down and away. Somehow, after meeting Elliot and Vaughn, I’d expected Reid to be more talkative. I hadn’t
expected him to treat me like I was a suspect—or a criminal.

Even though I was.

Beside me, Skylar rolled her eyes. “He’s this way with everyone,” she told me. “You’d be getting the Death Stare Third Degree even if you’d just come over for dinner—which, by the way, should probably be ready soon.”

Reminded of Skylar’s presence, Reid fixed her with the same implacable stare he’d given me. “Are you okay?” he asked, clearly a man of few words.

She nodded. “Peachy keen.”

His stone-hard face softened, just a little. Then he turned back to me. I braced myself, but all he did was repeat the question he’d asked Skylar. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, sure that if I spoke, the words would sound like a lie.

“We brought you something,” Skylar said, before Reid could ask me anything else. “It’s the SIM card from Bethany’s dad’s phone. Or at least, it’s what’s left of the SIM card.”

Reid folded his arms over his chest. “Do I want to know how you got it?”

Skylar glanced at me.

Reid cast his eyes heavenward. “I’ll take that as a no.”

Skylar must have noticed her brother’s exasperation, but she expertly ignored it. “Do you think you might be able to pull something useful off the card?”

Reid gave her A Look, capital A, capital L.

“Hey, we’re the ones who—” Skylar didn’t even get to finish that sentence. Reid bent down to her level, Look still in place.

“You’re the ones who did what exactly?”

Skylar did a passing job of looking like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “Vaughn probably told you everything, anyway,” she grumbled, sounding all of five years old.