Mind Games (Mind Games, #1)(34)

Just another future I’ve lost.

“You can’t see my hands,” Fia whispers. There’s a noise, almost too quiet to hear. A tiny tap-tap-tap, like she’s playing a beat on her leg.

I try to reach out for her fingers, but she snatches them away.

“You can’t see my hands, and you didn’t see her face. Remember that night we fought? Just before? You said you’d be okay without me. Did you mean it?”

“Fia, sweetheart, let’s don’t talk about that. That was a long time ago.”

She sighs. “I want to sleep now.”

I leave her alone. I’ll figure it out. I try to research post-traumatic stress disorder online, but nothing fits. I don’t know how to help her. Nothing I’m doing is working.

And the thing is, I can’t ever tell her, but she didn’t need to do what she did. Just knowing that they’d kill me if she didn’t do what they wanted her to would have changed things. Killing Clarice wasn’t the only option. If she had asked me, if she had just waited and talked about it, I’m sure I would have told her not to do it.

I think she knows. She picked the first way to stop that vision from ever happening. But she didn’t pick the only way. The other way would have been doing whatever it was they wanted her to. I hope it was worse than what she did. I really do. Because the option she chose is destroying her.

That night when I go to get her sleeping pill, the brand-new bottle is empty.

“Please,” I say. “Get off the couch. We haven’t been outside since you were sick.” Since you ate a bottle of sleeping pills. Since you tried to leave me in the only way you could. “Let’s go walk the grounds.” The school is a square with an open courtyard in the middle. They let us go out there. Maybe if I can get her in the sunshine, maybe if we can feel it and she can see it, maybe it will help.

“Eden can take you.”

“I don’t want to go with Eden.”

She doesn’t even answer. I don’t know what to do anymore. This is worse than when she was sedated, worse than anything, because there’s nothing to fight, nothing to rally against. She’s completely lost herself, and I don’t know how to bring her back.

Someone knocks and I shout for them to come in, hoping it’s Eden and I can get a break from this frustrating, mind-numbingly awful existence. But the clomp-clomp-clomp of heavy, confident steps and the scent of oranges and velvet night air flood my apartment.

“James?” Fia’s voice is incredulous.

“Apparently I am to be addressed as the Beautiful Boy with the Booze. But I take it Annabelle didn’t tell you I was back.”

Of course I didn’t tell her. I’ve heard all the girls talking about him. He flirts shamelessly with everyone. The Readers whisper that he thinks constantly about sex. Eden says he reeks of lust. I don’t want him in my rooms. I don’t want him around my baby sister.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “this time I didn’t find any bottles of whiskey to steal before visiting. Can I still come in?”

An exhalation. Was that a laugh? Not the hollow dead-girl laugh?

“I don’t care,” she says.

“Excellent.” I hear the couch’s leather creak. How close is he sitting to her? Is he touching her? I want him away from her. I wish I had been sitting on the couch next to her so I could block him, shield her from him.

“To what do we owe the honor?” I ask.

“I was bored. Running this school is dead dull.”

Fia’s voice is sharper than it’s been in weeks. “Since when do you work for your father?”

“Didn’t you hear? I own the school. Twenty-one now, and I’ve come into my mother’s idea of an inheritance. I would’ve preferred my own island, but there are perks to this.” There is a pause here; no one says anything; and I have never felt so blind as I do now, trying to imagine how he is looking at her when he says “perks.”

Finally James talks again. “Now, Fia. I’ve got a confession.” I stiffen, furious. He can’t call her that. He doesn’t deserve to use her nickname.

“Hmm?”

“The first night we met, when I told you my name, do you remember what you said?”

She doesn’t answer.

“You said, ‘I should bash your brains in right now.’ I apologize for assuming you were a liar and a flirt. I see now you were quite serious, and I must have offended you dearly.”

My jaw drops in horror. How could he? How could he joke about that? After what she did?

“I hereby vow to take any and all death threats at face value, unless you are, in fact, trying to flirt with me, in which case please threaten to bash my brains in while winking, like so.”

And then—

She laughs. She actually laughs, not like she did before we came here but like she did before things got really bad. It’s harder and has jagged edges, but it’s a laugh.

“I’ve gotta tell you, when I heard what happened, I thought my father would be more upset, but do you know what he said to me? ‘She should have seen it coming.’”

“That’s terrible!” I hiss.

Fia laughs louder. “Someone taught me how to get in trouble around a Seer.”

“And you are a star pupil. You surpassed even my record, which I used to be quite proud of. If we’re still keeping score, this puts you firmly in the lead and I owe you this drink.”