Mind Games (Mind Games, #1)(40)

“Soon,” James adds, and his is less a comfort and more a threat.

I hate him.

If I were Fia, if I were anyone else, I could get away from him now, run to someplace new, be free. But that’s a lie. Because even if I could see, I couldn’t leave without Fia. And if I ran, I’d do it knowing I would never really be safe, that no matter where I was, if I was still alive, Keane would somehow find me. My thoughts would never be safe. Not even my future would be my own.

He’ll do whatever it takes to find Fia. If I do find her, it will be to save her from captivity and deliver her right back to it. Maybe we’ll never get away. Our delusional plans not to plan will never work. We will never have an opening. There is nowhere for us in the whole world that Keane can’t reach out to and drag us back from.

The world grows quieter as we pass through a door, sealing us into climate-controlled warmth and away from the mad, windy rush of the city. We go silently up stairs and James unlocks a door. I walk into an apartment with a hardwood floor. The air smells and tastes clean. Lifeless. But there’s a hint of stale perfume somewhere that I can’t place. Fia would never wear it.

“What does it look like?” I ask. I want to know where Fia has been living. I wish I could have visited her here. Lived with her here. “How did she decorate it?” I hate depending on someone else to tell me.

James answers. “She didn’t. She said it was all the same to her.”

“Where’s her room?” In all honesty I have no idea if this will help me see her, but I had to feel like I was doing something other than sitting around, starving myself, trying to have a vision. Surrounded by her here, where she was the most, might help. I can force the visions sometimes, but it isn’t easy, and usually it’s only a snatch.

“Walk straight forward. You’ll go through a short hallway. The door’s open.”

“You want me to come with?” Eden asks, but I shake my head. I’m glad James doesn’t try to escort me there, either. I wish he weren’t here at all. I hate that he knows her apartment, that he knows the Fia who lives here and I don’t. I trace a hand along the wall, past the doorframe, into her room.

And this feels better, because it smells like Fia. It smells like spice and energy and vanilla. I take another step forward and trip on a pair of shoes in the middle of the room.

There’s my Fia, too.

I shuffle carefully now, wading through clothes discarded on the floor, until I bump into the bed. The blankets are shoved and twisted around the end; I crawl on and push my face into her pillow. Fia, where are you? I miss your tapping fingers and your crazy laugh and all the things about you that I don’t know.

I’m sorry I wanted you to be who you were before. I know you can’t be her anymore. Come back to me and I’ll help you figure out who to be now. Come back to me and I’ll stop trying to fix anything and I’ll just be your sister. I smash my face farther into her pillow, the pressure against my eyes creating a false sensation of light.

No, not false.

I’m seeing. I don’t move, don’t even dare to breathe. Fia. I want to see Fia. Show me Fia.

I see a man in a suit; he’s older, his hair shot through with gray. He’s at an imposing desk, with windows behind him. Outside is so white with snow the light is overwhelming. The room is strange—the walls curve, there are no corners. It’s circular. On the floor the carpet has a design of some sort of bird, and there are flags, too, displayed prominently. I notice the same bird carved into the desk, and on one of the flags.

The man stands and holds out his hand, smiling. Another man, blandly handsome in an equally nice suit, takes it.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” The first man walks over to a pair of plush couches, obviously at ease.

The second man sits across from him. “Of course, Mr. President. How is Lauren? I saw her on the way in.”

The president laughs. “Best staffer we’ve ever had. Thanks again.”

I want to throw up.

Because I know the second man’s voice. For all his paranoia about not being seen, Keane neglected to take into account my memory for voices. Keane. It’s Mr. Keane. He is flesh and blood, after all, not a monster behind his voice. And he is friends with the president.

Suddenly the images shift, swirl. I am dizzy with motion sickness, and if I weren’t lying down, I would have fallen. Adam? It is. He’s outside, walking.

Fia is with him.

He says something. I can’t hear him because it’s too windy, but Fia laughs. Really laughs. Not her James laugh, not her hollow-girl laugh. An actual laugh. And Adam looks at her in a way that is tender and hopeful and happy and innocent. I cannot imagine this is a way anyone who knows her looks at my sister.

Fia smiles.

They buy hot dogs from a street stand, and walk without purpose—Fia always has a purpose—while Adam talks so animatedly that he sends relish flying through the air and then blushes and apologizes. I don’t know where they are, I can’t figure it out. There’s a strange silver semicircle dominating the sky behind them, and it’s green and clean around it.

They sit on a bench. I suddenly feel as though I am eavesdropping on something I shouldn’t, that I am invading my sister’s privacy. Adam angles closer to her, his knees bouncing with nervous energy. She listens to him with her head tilted, but her eyes look faraway. He reaches out slowly and puts one of his hands over hers.