Bad Bloods (18 page)

I caught his dark gaze in the rearview
mirror. “How are we supposed to fight this?”

I always knew bad bloods were a minority, but
I hadn’t realized how small we were. Now, I felt as if I barely
existed at all. The shine had outshone me. What Henderson was
thinking was beyond me. I’d get crushed by a population I couldn’t
comprehend.

Adelio’s eyes returned to the road as we
moved to another stoplight. “One person can outshine a thousand,
but you must be willing to shine.”

I scoffed. “Sounds like a cheap saying.”

“Nothing is cheap, Serena.”

My heart nearly stopped. Adelio knew my real
name. He knew everything. Of course he did. He was a part of this
lying life, like we all were, but to face it was another
battle.

“How—” I tore my eyes away from the world
around me. “How am I supposed to—uh—shine?”

Adelio shifted, and if I could have seen his
face, I imagined he would be smiling. Apparently, I had asked the
right question. “You’ve been away, studying for humanitarian
reasons.” I memorized every word like I had memorized the best ways
to avoid police on the streets. “Your parents thought you’d excel
in boarding school,” he paused, as if to consider the next part
carefully. “That’s where you met me.”

“You?” It took a moment to register his
words. “You were brought into this just for me?”

He didn’t nod, but his hands tightened on the
steering wheel. “As a personal assistant to both help you here and
to help you continue your studies in the future.” So the Hendersons
were planning on getting rid of me when it was all over. I wondered
if Daniel knew, and he was just counting on the fact that they
might let me stay anyway.

I swallowed my nerves. “And where exactly did
we meet?”

“South Africa.”

“Southern where?”

“South Africa,” he emphasized the last three
syllables. “Johannesburg to be exact.”

The place might as well have been in another
galaxy, a star I couldn’t even see in the Highlands’ sky. “I have
no idea where that is.”

“Nowhere near this country.”

I tried to imagine what else was out there,
but nothing came. My creativity died with insecurity. But this man
knew it. And many other men and women and children must have known
it. I wondered if they wondered about us, if there was someone in a
boarding school in Johannesburg who studied Vendona, maybe even a
bad blood. I hadn’t had time to consider any of it before today.
“What’s it like? The rest of the world?”

“I don’t know.”

“But—”

“I’m not from there, Sere—Stephanie.” His
accent changed, and he suddenly sounded like Mr. and Mrs.
Henderson. “But people believe what they want to.” My gut sank.
“Ignorance allows people to presume.”

Adelio was from Vendona. The accent was fake.
Even I had fallen for it.

“What part?” I didn’t have to clarify I was
asking him where in Vendona he was actually from.

“Western.”

And that was that. Or so I thought.

“My family,” he added the single word like it
was the most difficult word to speak in the world. “They were
killed by Logan’s party.”

“Bad bloods?” I guessed.

“Human.”

“I don’t understand—”

“They were protesting the ambush,” he
said.

Humans protesting for the bad bloods.

“This fight has been going on much longer
than you’ve been alive, Miss Serena.” His eyes caught mine in the
mirror again, but this time, they were harder, determined and
alert. “But you can end it.”

“I fear it’s already over.”

“It never is.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the car swung
to the left and I gripped my seat like his driving would toss me
out the closed window. I still wasn’t used to it, but what I saw on
the curb frightened me more. Cameras, hundreds of them, waited for
me.

“We’re here,” he said, clarifying what he
didn’t have to, and he turned around to face me head-on for the
first time all day. “Stephanie.” His fake accent even returned.
“You are not to say anything. Not a word. Don’t answer questions.
Don’t look at them. Smile. Nod. Walk straight for the door.”

The rules. They had them too. Their own rules
for survival. And now they were mine too.

I nodded, and he stepped out, opening my door
the very next second.

If I thought the Highlands was bright before,
I definitely thought it was now. It was a summer sun in the dead of
winter. It was blinding, and I was walking blind into a battle I
was ill-prepared for—a battle I was supposed to win—and I had to do
it all with a smile on my face.

I stepped out and used my only weapon. I
grinned.

***

I had seen the Henderson’s house once before
on television, but I had never seen footage of the inside. While
the outside was a tall, lean structure, the inside didn’t give any
hint of that. It seemed wider than the outside appeared. Even more
unfathomable was the amount of people walking in and out of the
innumerable rooms lined up in countless hallways and
staircases.

“The worst of it is over,” Adelio whispered
as he locked all twelve deadbolts on the front door, trapping them
out, keeping me in. It was only then that I realized my act as
Stephanie Henderson went far beyond one speech. Every worker in the
house thought I was the Henderson’s long-lost daughter, returning
from over a decade of schooling, but not a single worker actually
glanced my way.

They had to know. They had to know it was a
lie. Everyone did.

I swallowed.

“Stephanie!” Mrs. Henderson’s voice entered
the room before she did, and I was glad I recognized her voice
because her appearance had transformed overnight.

Her silver-blonde hair lay on her shoulders
in tight ringlets, almost childlike, and her face was makeup free.
She even wore pajamas, and when she hugged me, she smelled like
cinnamon. Like she was baking. She could’ve been anyone’s mother,
but I had to tell myself she was mine.

“Welcome home, my dear.” She touched my
cheeks, holding my face in her hands, and laid a kiss on my
forehead. I couldn’t even move.

Her wide smile was nothing like my
tight-lipped one. She flinched as if realizing for the first time I
was, in fact, not her daughter. I wondered how much it hurt to
pretend Stephanie was coming home when she wasn’t returning today.
Probably never.

“Well, then.” She turned toward the stairs.
“Why don’t we go talk in your room?” She was leading me without
admitting to leading me.

I fought myself from asking Adelio about
bags. There were none. I had nothing. While I half-expected they’d
at least give me a bag of clothes to pretend I was traveling, they
did nothing but hand me a singular outfit—an itchy white dress and
red coat, like blood on snow—and everything else was supposedly
waiting for me here. Apparently, people in the Highlands could
afford such luxuries.

“Your father is coming home soon for a late
dinner,” she said over her shoulder, and I noticed her earrings,
surprisingly worn, bouncing as she took each stair. “He’s excited
to see you.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. I
would’ve liked to speak to Jane, but the house was overwhelmingly
plain compared to the Highlands we drove through. I hadn’t seen a
single painting or statue or golden dish filled with candy—all the
types of things I’d heard people in the Highlands had. The worst of
it was the smell. It was as if the house had been doused in soap
and mint. It reminded me too much of Daniel—and thinking of Daniel
reminded me of the others.

When we reached the top of the stairs, the
bright lights of the entryway disappeared to another section of the
house I hadn’t seen before. From the floor to the ceiling, a long
white column stretched, covered in Christmas lights. I had nearly
forgotten about the holiday, but the lights were warm, leaving only
streaks of golden light streaming across the barren brown walls.
For being so colorful outside, the Henderson’s kept their house
pretty drab.

“Home sweet home,” Mrs. Henderson said as we
approached a red door. It reminded me of my parents’ front door.
The color was nearly the same, and it was the only color the
Henderson’s seemed to have in their house. It wasn’t until she
pushed the door open that I realized how wrong I was. The entire
room was red, a deep maroon color that could never be painted
over.

“Wow.”

Jane shot me a look. “It has been a while.”
Her words said everything she couldn’t. I had to stay in character.
“Let’s talk inside?”

I nodded and followed her in. When she shut
the door and locked it, my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t like
locks. I didn’t like how high we were in the house or how there was
only one window—that also seemed to be locked. My senses were
already searching for a place to escape.

Jane sat on the bed as if she had been
holding her breath all day. “There are no cameras in here.”

“Cameras?” I hadn’t even realized that could
be a possibility until she said it.

She nodded, but her eyes went to the closed
window, the one with black drapes across them. “All Vendona council
members have them, but we’re allowed our privacy in one room.”

One room. That was all the privacy they
had.

“We chose Stephanie’s a long time ago. Right
when she was born,” Jane’s voice faded off, and her fingers curled
against the light red duvet. Her nails were painted the same color.
“Everything was for her, really. Still is.”

She was dead. That much was clear. Even Mrs.
Henderson couldn’t believe her daughter was alive any longer. She’d
disappeared nine years ago, and while I knew many families held
onto hope forever, there was a reason Jane hadn’t.

“Was she—?”

I stopped myself. Asking if her missing
daughter was a bad blood was out of the question, but I had my
answer. It was the lost look in Jane’s eyes that gave it away. Jane
didn’t know. Neither did Alec. It was a mystery and that was the
worst part.

“We suspect as much,” she finally said,
standing up from the bed to cross the room. As she reached the desk
and opened a drawer, she spoke to me. “Sit down, my dear.”

It was an order, but it was a soft one.

I did as I was told, and she rejoined me,
sitting so close I would’ve thought we were lifelong friends. I
could still smell the cinnamon on her skin.

“Please, call me Jane,” she began, holding
the photo in her hand like she wasn’t sure how she could let it go.
“Stephanie always did. Even when she was small.”

With that, she held my hand and slipped the
photograph into my palm. Her fingertips dragged against the little
girl’s face tenderly, like the photo could shatter any moment.

Stephanie Mackenzie Henderson. She had her
mother’s hair and the shape of her father’s eyes. The smile was
unlike either one of theirs, and I knew why my smile had bothered
Jane. Even though the photo was eight years old, I could see our
resemblance. We had the same complexion and round cheeks and
dirty-blonde hair. We even had similar noses, small like our
smiles, and bony shoulders. If I had a photo of myself at eight, it
would’ve taken a mastermind to see the differences.

“Maybe,” Jane began, “maybe there is some
relation.”

My heart squeezed as Jane squeezed my hand.
“It’s rare for someone to be able to leave their city-state since
2041, and even before then, families generally stayed where they
were from,” she said it like it explained everything, but I didn’t
understand. Her head tilted. “Generations of Vendona’s people have
only been with one another.”

The Henderson’s great-grandparents could’ve
been mine.

I stared back at Stephanie Henderson, waiting
for answers, but all I saw was Catelyn—another girl who looked like
my twin. Perhaps our genes were just dominant. I had heard Robert
talk about them before. Maybe it was a sign of one bad blood
lineage.

I touched Stephanie’s face, wondering for the
first time what exactly happened to the little girl I didn’t even
know existed until recently. Vendona had swallowed her up
whole—bones and all.

“What was she like?”

“Stephanie,” she said her name, half as if
she was acknowledging me and half like she was talking about her
daughter. “She was always daydreaming. She never wanted to live in
the real world; she always seemed to be separated from other
children her age. They couldn’t understand her or her imagination.
She was always thinking outside of the box, breaking rules, and
only following what her heart told her was right.”

“She sounds,” I paused, “like an amazing
young girl.” She would’ve been eighteen if she were still here.

Jane’s eyes glossed over. “She was. Lively.
Spritely. A little fireball when she was mad. She loved mystery
books and secrets. She loved secrets most of all.”

And it was probably because she had kept the
biggest one.

I handed back the photo, practically forcing
it into Jane’s hands, and she took it like it was a soft exchange.
Forgiveness was her own kind of power—a human power I couldn’t
fathom—and through that, Jane turned everyone soft. My own insides
were melting with held back tears. She watched me like she
knew.

“Let’s get you ready for dinner,” she said,
deciding the next movements for me.

I stayed seated as she stood, crossed the
room, and moved the wall. Or, at least, I thought it was a wall. It
was actually a rotating closet, something I’d never even heard of,
and she skimmed it with simple ease. All grown-up clothes, like
Jane had stocked it for me—or for her daughter that would never
come home.

“What do you think of what you’re wearing
now?” she asked, never turning around.

I found my voice. “It’s itchy.” I even tugged
at the sleeves. “And I’d prefer a little—more.”

Jane shot a smile over her shoulder, and two
minutes later, she was tossing a long red dress at me. It was soft
and thick like velvet, and black curled around both sides, like it
would add curves to my almost-starved bones. I held it in my lap,
unsure of what to say. This would sell for a month’s worth of food
for my flock. But I was expected to wear it—and eat in it. I hoped
we’d be eating something other than chocolate bars tonight.