False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(43)

“Didn’t you?” I counter.

That same sly grin. A gesture at where Mana-ma’s corpse had been. “Do you really think I actually escaped the Hearth? It’s always here.” She taps her temple, and then considers me. “Maybe it’s still in you, too.”

My breath hitches. I don’t want to talk about the Hearth. “Tila’s in prison. She’s been accused of murder.”

That penetrates through her Zeal-fog. “Out there?”

“Yes. Real murder. I’m trying to prove she didn’t do it.”

I have to cling to the hope that she didn’t do it, even if the crime scene recreation left so little room for doubt.

“So why come here?” Mia asks.

“She … wrote your name at the crime scene. She led me straight to you. You tell me why, because I have no idea.”

She shrugs, the scalpel flashing in the light. “Don’t know.”

Even in this twisted dream world, I know she’s lying. I can’t read her as well as Tila, but we still lived with her for years. I heard her, thrashing in the dark, on the other side of our bedroom wall, unable to forget the Hearth when she closed her eyes. She never told us about her dreams, tried to hide them as long as she could as we adjusted to our new, separate lives. It was because of Mia that Tila and I became halfway productive members of society just before she ceased to be one herself.

“Bullshit,” I say.

She cocks her head, but she’s unnerved. Her eyes dart to the side, the tip of her tongue snaking over her dry lips.

“Why did she really send me to you?” I ask. Outside the strange rain grows heavier, thrumming against the window. A flash of green lightning casts Mia in a sickly glow, making her look for a moment like the drug addict she is in the real world.

The black oil bubbles and rises, molding into a new figure.

It’s Tila.

She’s wearing her favorite dress, green like the otherworldly lightning outside, or snake scales. She looks at me and holds out her arm.

“T,” she calls. I can feel the steady thump of my mechanical heart beneath my metal breastbone.

“This isn’t mine.” Mia’s voice is harsh. “You’re affecting my dream world now. With your own memories and fears.”

“How? I don’t feel like I’m doing anything.” Shared people aren’t meant to be able to change the dreamscape much at all if someone has plugged in first. If it’s someone else’s dream, Zealscapes are meant to be like reading a script, or watching a film on a wallscreen, except with more sensory detail. I didn’t concentrate, like I did to have Mia pull the scalpel away. I’ve never experienced anything like this.

“Fuck if I know. I never share my dreams. I’m always here on my own.” She’s shifty, though, her shoulders hunched. She’s keeping something back. Mia holds out the scalpel. “Take this. Maybe you have to exorcise her.”

I can feel her fear spiraling from her, belying her blasé words. She doesn’t like that I’ve changed her dream, much as she didn’t like it when I caused her to pull the scalpel out of the Mana-ma apparition.

My fingers close around the blade, but I don’t harm Tila. How could I? How could Mia think that I would, even hopped up full of Zeal?

“Tell me why Tila sent me to you,” I say.

Mia rocks back on her heels, shaking her head. “Get rid of her first. You’re ruining it. This isn’t my dream!” Her last word rises to a shriek, the whole room tingeing red with her anger.

The anger infects me. It pulses through me, as insistent and inevitable as my mechanical heartbeat. Mia’s not giving me what I want. I need answers.

Tila’s apparition gazes at me impassively. I ignore it. The irrational anger bursts and I rush Mia instead, knocking her down. She feels almost insubstantial beneath my hands, as if I see her healthy self but feel the wasted version of her that’s plugged into the Chair. I hold the cold scalpel to her throat. Mia swallows, and the blade nicks her neck, a small trickle of blood running down the column of her throat to pool at the hollow of her clavicle.

“Tell me, or I’ll make both your dreams and your reality a living nightmare. I’m working with people who can make life very difficult for you.” It’s a half-bluff, but it’s the only card I have.

“You’re working with them, too?” she gasps. I press the scalpel slightly harder and she winces. I don’t understand how pain translates to her inert body on the gurney, but she’s scared, and that’s enough.

“Working with who?”

“The Ratel.”

“You’re working with them?” I ask, incredulous.

“N-no!” Her wide eyes dart to Tila’s apparition. “Her.”

“You think Tila was working with them? Tell me!” The anger still pulses through me, a roiling, dangerous thing. Have I ever been this furious?

“I didn’t mean to tell him,” Mia whispers. “I didn’t want to.”

“Tell who what?”

“About Tila. It’s my fault.” She begins to gasp, almost choking in the intensity of her sobs. I feel a twinge of pity for her, for who she used to be, but I squash it down as low as it’ll go. I press the scalpel slightly harder.

“Tila found something out, and I got scared and told him. He’d never have known. All for a steady supply of Verve. I f*cking hate myself. I can never escape him. Never escape. Never.” After that she can’t say anything more, sobbing so much that she hiccups. The drug is also taking a stronger hold, the lucidity fading. Her back arches and her eyes roll up in her head.