Perfect Lies. Кирстен Уайт

the couch that doubled as my bed. Win-win!”

      Am I supposed to hug her? Console her? (Annie would know what to do. Would have. Would have.) “Well, screw that. Let’s go dancing.”

      She frowns as though trying to hear something better, then shakes her head and jumps off the stool. “That, I can do.”

      My phone buzzes and I pull it out. Text from James. Stuck in meetings.

      Late dinner? I can eat twice if it means we can talk.

       Eating with my father. Sorry. Will make it up to you tomorrow.

      I narrow my eyes at the screen, tap tap tap tap on it. I need us to move, to do, to start this wheel spinning until it flies off its axis and destroys everything around us. I hold James’s face in my thoughts, imagine his arms around me. Imagine his voice whispering “patience” in my ear before I elbow him in the stomach because I hate it when he tells me that.

      I take a phone off the counter, where someone set it down to go get a refill.

      “Did you just steal that guy’s phone?” Pixie asks as we hunch our shoulders against the chill. She has her own phone out, looking for a nearby club.

      One can never have enough phones, I think at her. She gives me a secret smile in return.

       ANNIE

       Three Months Before

      

      I’VE BEEN VENTURING OUT MORE NOW THAT RAFAEL got me a white cane. Coming and going as I please is a luxury I intend to take advantage of. It’s strange—for so long I hated seeing the future because it didn’t belong to me. It belonged to Keane. Now I have my own future, and no idea what to do with it. Fia was always supposed to be with me. She’s not.

      I feel lost.

      As I trail my fingers along the hall wall I hear voices. I pause—both are hushed but clearly angry. Taking a few steps forward, I lean near a doorframe and listen.

      “—you know I’m right!” Cole.

      “I don’t! And you don’t know, either. I’m tired of arguing with you.” Sarah sounds exhausted.

      “What about Annie? There’s no reason for her to stay here. She can’t accomplish anything. She sees even less than you do, and she’s a huge target. She needs to be placed somewhere else.”

      I flinch at the tone of his voice. I didn’t think Cole liked me, but I had no idea he wanted me gone that much. Rafael decided not to set me up somewhere else with a real life and a new identity. He wanted me close.

      I was flattered, but lately I’ve realized I’m useless here. It makes me feel pathetic and small, but Cole’s right. There’s no reason for me to stay, other than to be protected.

      I’m tired of needing other people to protect me.

      “That’s not our call,” Sarah says.

      “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Why isn’t it our call? Why does he get to decide who stays and who goes?”

      “You start bankrolling this operation and you can have more say,” Sarah snaps. Something thuds to the ground, too small for a body, and then Cole swears.

      “What is this?”

      “Give it back.”

      “You’re taking these?”

      She sounds ashamed. “I haven’t started yet.”

      “This is insane, Sarah.”

      “How am I supposed to help if I can’t see enough? Rafael has a source on the inside that says Keane has all his Seers go on Adderall.”

      “He also has girls killed and thrown into the river. Is that our next step?”

      “Aren’t you the one who said we should do whatever we have to, whatever it takes to keep more girls out of his claws? Well, this is my whatever it takes.”

      Something small hits the other side of the wall I’m leaning against and I jump, turning and hurrying back to my room. The last thing I want is for Cole to catch me eavesdropping. I can only imagine what he’d say.

      I flop onto my bed, tormented by futures both seen and unseen. They feel just out of my grasp, as usual.

      “Fia,” I whisper to the empty room, “what should I do?”

      Then something changes. I’m still in the dark. It’s not a vision, it can’t be, I don’t see anything. But I’m not on my bed anymore. It has to be a vision.

      Someone reaches out and laces his fingers through mine and my world blossoms with color—inside the darkness. It’s color and light and life that I feel inside me instead of seeing outside. I’m wild with giddy joy, a warm heat flaring like something long dormant in my heart has finally been switched on.

      His fingers are not much longer than mine, his palm only a bit bigger, rough but warm, and the way our hands fit together …

      Holy crap. I’m in love.

      That’s when I feel my bed underneath me again and realize I’m back in the present.

      I had a vision where someone holds my hand and I know I’m in love with him. It’s the single most romantic thing I have ever experienced.

      And it wasn’t even real.

      But if I saw it—or felt it, really, because I’ve never had a vision where I was me like that, where I couldn’t see—then it has to happen, right? I rub the palm of my right hand with my left thumb, torn between elation and nerves. Love. I can live with the promise of love. I just wish I knew when. And who.

      And, with a sudden sharp ache, I wish more than anything I could tell Eden. It feels wrong to have something like this without her to whisper it to. For a moment I hate Fia for her choice. She not only took herself away from me, she made it impossible for me to ever see my best friend again.

      Someone is going to hold my hand, and I’m going to be thrilled. And no one I love will know.

       FIA

       Three Days Before

      

      “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?” PIXIE ASKS, FROWNING AT me over her drink. I got her a Shirley Temple. She didn’t find it nearly as funny as I do. Last night she managed to scam some alcohol, but not tonight.

      “Do what?” I eye the dance floor, annoyed she called me over. I am falling apart. I’ve barely even seen James since we got to New York. I need something, anything to distract me from the waiting. Visions of flames dance in my head, but I cannot light anything on fire yet.

      Dancing is the only thing to take the edge off. (I could get in a fight. That’s good, too. Pounding and moving and reacting, always reacting, no room for thought.)

      “How do you stop thinking like that?” Pixie asks. “When you’re dancing, everything shuts down. I’ve noticed you doing it a few times, like you’ve switched to autopilot and there aren’t any active thoughts in your brain.”

      “Isn’t that the point of dancing?”