Mind Games (Mind Games, #1)(39)

I love it.

We’re somewhere in Germany. I don’t know where; I don’t care. Eden goes out most days and sightsees. I sleep in our obscenely expensive hotel suites and wait for the clubs. James has meetings, makes sure I eat enough, and prods me to do the occasional “assignment” (learning how to operate pretty much any common tech platform, for instance), and then we go dance.

I send Annie postcards that Eden buys for me, since it doesn’t matter what they look like anyway, and pretend like I’m the one visiting mountains and castles and historic squares. Annie will like that. I hate that someone else has to read them to her, though. I hope it isn’t Ms. Robertson.

“You aren’t going to get ready?” Eden asks, eyeing me as she puts on another coat of lip gloss.

“Shoes. Skirt. Top. Ready.”

“I mean, let’s do something with your hair. Put it up. Twist it. And you could rock more makeup. You’re not really selling it.”

“What am I supposed to be selling?”

“Guys are pretty hot for you at these; I can feel them out for you, if you want.”

“Do I strike you as particularly lusty?” I lay my emotions open, imagine them washing over her. I am the ocean we lived on for two months. I am empty. I am nothing.

“Stop it. You’re so creepy.” She stalks out of the room, muttering about missing Annie, and I smile.

Later I’m in the middle of the floor, lost, when someone takes my arm. I open my eyes, surprised to see James grinning at me. I’m shocked. He’s never come to dance with me before. I move closer to him, excited, but he shakes his head and pulls me away toward the bar.

“I’ve got a game for you.”

“A game?” I don’t want to play a game. I want to dance. I want to dance with James. He’s always finding little reasons to touch me—a hand at the small of my back, a flimsy excuse to take my hand in his and look at it—but he’s never done more. I want more. I don’t know what I want from him, exactly, just that I always want more.

“Do you see that guy over there at the bar?” He points to a barrel-chested man, midtwenties, nice clothes designed to show off how nice they are.

“Yes.”

“Steal his phone, bring it to me, and then get it back to him without him noticing.”

“That is the worst game I’ve ever heard of.”

“I want to see if you can do it. I need five minutes with his phone. And then I’ll dance with you.” He smiles, his best, broadest, biggest manipulator of a smile. He doesn’t use that smile on me. Until now.

“What makes you think I want you to dance with me?” I turn, angry angry angry. Fine. He wants a phone? I’ll get him a phone. I pull back against the wrong buzz, disconnect from it, focus on this. Phone. I need that phone.

My hips take on a life of their own as I weave through the room. I pretend I am walking on the boat (I loved the boat) and let my memories sway the room for my alcohol-free brain.

“Josef, there you are!” I laugh and wrap my arms around from him behind, let them wander like a drunk girlfriend’s might. “Have you been hiding from me?”

He turns (mean eyes, he has mean eyes, but his eyes aren’t mean toward me right now) and smiles, bemused.

I take a drunken step backward, let my mouth form an O. “You aren’t Josef.” I giggle. It grates on my ears; it is a horrible sound.

“No.” He smiles and I shrug.

“Too bad. You’re cuter than he is.” And then I do my hips-sway-because-I-am-drunk-and-think-I’m-sexy walk, and I know it will be no problem to come back when James is done and stand too close to not-Josef’s side and slip back the phone I have in my hand.

It isn’t. The whole thing is done in under seven minutes.

James beams at me when I walk back to him, so proud of my skills. I realize with a sinking click that I will earn my way the rest of this trip, exactly like Eden. It is not a vacation after all, not about making me better, not about James actually caring. Just more games, this time in the real world.

James holds out his hand. His black button-up shirt is undone at the throat. Even his throat is handsome, and I want to run my finger down it, down to the hollow at his collarbone. “Ready to dance?”

“Like I said. What makes you think I want to dance with you?” I turn and push my way back into the sea of bodies and try to lose myself. Alone.





ANNIE

Tuesday Afternoon


THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I’VE VISITED FIA’S NEW apartment, the place she’s lived since she got home. But she never really came back to me. Just like I knew she wouldn’t when I let her leave with James.

They’ve never let me visit here. Fia has to come to me, and only when they say she can. She’s unpredictable, and I’m their insurance policy. They won’t risk her snatching me and running off. I can’t even leave the school building when Fia is in town; it’s only when they have her elsewhere doing who knows what that Eden can take me out. With an escort, of course.

They didn’t count on Fia being the one to disappear alone. I know she’s scared, but I wonder…maybe she’s better off.

I climb out of the car, Eden waiting to put my hand on the crook of her arm.

“She’ll be okay,” Eden says. “You’ll find her.”