Illusive (20 page)

His smile is sad. “I’ve spent my whole life on the run. Is it weird I’d want to talk to someone else?”

She remembers the panic room in Endicott and shivers. The thought of being so enclosed, so trapped, makes her skin itch.

“How do you know I won’t sell you out?” she asks. “You don’t know anything about me.”

When Ciere glances at Alan, something in his face has changed. It’s a subtle difference, and Ciere couldn’t pinpoint it if she tried. He says, “I know enough.”

“What do you know?”

Alan’s gaze slides down to her lap. “Your eyes never stop moving. You’re always looking to the doors, to the windows. Your fingers twitch and your legs bounce.”

Ciere stops bouncing her leg.

He continues, “You make yourself small. You hunch, you keep to walls and corners. You’re always looking for escape routes. You’re used to being hunted. You’ve trained yourself to
run.” He takes a breath. “Your family is gone. The government is responsible.”

She wants to ask him how he knows that—how he managed to voice her secrets without knowing a single thing about her. She feels as if his words have peeled away her skin and he’s staring into her insides, reading her life story in her bones.

“How…?” she says, unable to continue.

“Because,” he says, “my aunt always acted the exact same way.” He leans forward a little, staring at his knees. “She spent her whole life in fear after my family was killed. She must’ve had fifty different aliases—I think you’ve come across some of them. Pandora Marton. Marie Louis. She never went by her real name if she could help it.” His gaze slides back to her. “Ciere.” He says the name carefully, testing it out.

Ciere’s brain feels like it’s jammed. Her mouth opens, and she thinks she’s going to say something about how she is nothing like Richelle Fiacre, but what comes out of her mouth is “The government didn’t kill your family.” She can’t say the last part aloud; it’s too horrible:
Your father did.

“Are you sure?”

She’s not—not really. Not when she thinks about it.

She opens her mouth to ask another question, when a loud knocking makes her jump. Her heart leaps into her throat, and it’s then she realizes how calm she’s been for the last ten minutes. She hasn’t thought about the heavy walls or cement
floor since she sat down next to Alan. But now all the fear comes flooding back and her mouth is bitter and sticky.

The door cracks open and Devon pokes his head inside.

“Hey, Anastasia, you seen Ciere? She’s not in her room and I’ve been tapping out messages for the last…” Devon’s voice trails into silence, and he steps fully into the room. He stands there, hand still on the doorknob.

Ciere is suddenly hyperaware of the fact she’s sitting on Alan’s bed. During their conversation, she ended up right next to him, his leg inches from hers, and she realizes that from where Devon is standing, he can’t see even those few inches.

Devon’s confusion dries up. “Oh,” he says stiffly. “Didn’t realize you had company.”

“Anastasia?” Alan repeats, bewildered.

“I needed a lantern,” Ciere says. “He was keeping a lantern. Here. In his room.”

“Riiiight.” Devon stretches the word out. “You know, I’ve got a whole pile of the things under my bed. All you had to do was knock.”

“Good to know,” Alan says. If he’s at all affected by the sudden tension in the room, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. Ciere wishes she could do the same, but Devon’s gaze is a weight she can’t shake off.

“All right,” Devon says, and his accent seems to thicken. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He vanishes through the door,
pulling it shut behind him with a loud clang. The silence he leaves behind is riddled with unspoken questions.

Ciere rises to her feet, lantern in hand. “So, yeah. Um, thanks for the lantern, Alan. I’ll get out of your way.” Before he can say anything, she hastens to the door. She’s halfway through it before a hand falls on hers and she twists around in surprise.

Alan is looking at her. Truly looking at her. It’s the first time she’s seen him straight on. His face is even, symmetrical, and his eyes a startling shade of black. With his coppery skin and sharp jaw, he’s… striking.

When his eyes meet hers, a hot flush spreads through her chest and neck. She feels pinned by those eyes, more visible than she has ever been. The instinct to draw upon her immunity—to disappear—is nearly impossible to resist. It’s only when she realizes that Alan must be fighting the same urge to turn away that she lifts her chin and refuses to break eye contact. There’s new strength in the set of his jaw and shoulders and it’s the first time she’s truly thought of him as something other than the last Fiacre.

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

The corners of his mouth lift. “Good night,” he says before shutting his door.

Feeling unaccountably shaken by the encounter, Ciere
turns away from the door. But then she catches a flicker of movement as Devon slips silently into his room and firmly shuts the door behind him. He must have seen everything. Ciere stands in the hallway, lit lantern in her hands, frozen in mid-step. She wavers, torn between the two closed doors. Swallowing, she turns on her heel and trudges into her own room.

Breakfast doesn’t go well. Magnus offers up a friendly smile, but he’s the only one. Kit is too busy flipping pancakes, and Devon won’t look at her. He sits at the bar, mutilating a pancake with a fork, twirling it around and around a pool of syrup until the whole thing is a sticky brown mess. She tries to catch his eye and fails.

“Morning,” Magnus says cheerfully, and hands Ciere a glass of orange juice. She takes it and slides onto the stool next to Devon. He’s mashing his pancake with the side of his knife.

“Where’s Anastasia?” he says, without looking up from his plate.

This is ridiculous. Devon’s acting like he walked in on her and Alan playing strip poker. And even then, it wouldn’t be any of his business. “Still in the basement.” Her temper flares and she can’t hold back the words. “So you can stop acting like an ass.”

The look Devon gives her is full of false innocence. It
crumbles under her glare. “I just think you shouldn’t get attached to Anastasia, all right?” He takes a sip of his orange juice. “Remember who his family was.”

She resists the urge to slap the glass out of his hand. “I’m not getting attached,” she hisses.

Devon slides her a skeptical look. “The last time you had that look on your face, you were dragging a puppy out of an alley.”

“He’s a person,” says Ciere, “and he can’t help who his dad was. I mean, look at your family.” The words slip out far too easily.

Devon sets his glass down a little too hard.

Ciere opens her mouth to apologize, but before she can come up with a suitably indignant response, a chime rings through the house.

No one moves.

“Someone’s at the gate,” Kit says as he pours another swirl of batter onto the hot skillet. “Ciere, if it’s your mob friends, please invite them in for coffee. Just because they’re blackmailing you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be polite.”

“Then what?” says Ciere, her limbs suddenly gone cold with fear.

Kit reaches for a spatula. “Then I pay them and we forget this ever happened.”

Ciere slides off her stool and walks toward the door on legs
she can’t really feel. Of course she’s the one to get the door. She’s the person who ticked Guntram off—she should be the one to face him.

But she’s forgotten there is one other full-time occupant of the house. Lizaveta has already buzzed their guest through the gate and is pulling open the front door when Ciere trudges into the foyer.

An unfamiliar man stands on the doorstep.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” the man says with an apologetic smile. “My car—it won’t start.” He points his thumb at a black car parked on the curb. “I left the lights on and I need a jump.” He’s dressed in a rumpled suit and he’s attractive in a clean-cut sort of way.

Lizaveta appears to be thinking, and she lingers in the doorway for a second, her bony hand gripping the door. “Come in,” she says. “I will get Copperfield.” She turns her heavy-lidded glare on Ciere and adds, “Take him to the living room,” as if Ciere wouldn’t understand basic courtesy if it bit her in the ass.

Ciere scowls at Liz. “This way,” she says to the man, and stomps through the hall into the living room. When she turns to tell him it’ll only be a second, something makes her pause.

This man walks with the grace of someone who is completely comfortable with his own body; his eyes move ceaselessly; his suit fits him too well to hide the bulge under his left
shoulder; but most of all, she notices that he walks into the house with no fear. Where a normal person would hesitate in the foyer, this man treats the house like conquered territory.

Crooks know fear. Most will argue the fact, but crooked life is choked with it. Crooks go places they shouldn’t, do things they aren’t allowed to, take property they have no right to, and sell things they don’t own. No matter how good the crook, there is always that undercurrent of fear.

This man has no fear.

He’s not a criminal. Which means he isn’t working for Guntram.

“Sorry,” Ciere says with false brightness. “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Eduardo Carson,” the man says as he settles on the couch. His mouth twitches like it can barely contain his smile.

W
hen Ciere was eleven, she caused her mother’s death.

It was an accident, but she cannot forgive herself.

It was a rare sunny day in early summer. Ciere and her mother needed to buy the common necessities: gas, fertilizer, toilet paper, and so on. Ciere spent the entire morning pestering her mother, saying she was old enough to come along; she wanted to see the town; she’d help push the cart; she’d do anything—

“All right,” her mother said fondly, exasperated. “You can come. But best behavior, all right?”

It was a big deal; the two of them lived so far from large cities that even the small local town seemed impossibly big to Ciere. They grew most of their own food, and Ciere’s mother only ventured into town for the most necessary supplies. Ciere was usually left home with strict instructions not to
play with anything sharp or flammable. But this time, Ciere was allowed to tag along. She was old enough to handle the responsibility, her mother told her.

The grocery store was their first stop—even Ciere’s mom couldn’t grow things like sugar or flour. Ciere was given the grocery list and told to read off the items while her mom pushed the cart. The second stop was at a gas station to fill up their car and extra containers for their generator. The third and final stop was a hardware store. It smelled like leather and metal, and everything seemed polished.

When they arrived at the gardening section, her mother paused to let Ciere pick out seeds for their summer garden. Ciere sorted through paper packets, eyeing the pictures of the colorful blooms and organizing them by color. Her mother found a large bushy plant and heaved it into the cart.

“It’s lavender,” her mother said, seeing Ciere’s confusion. “Come here, I’ll show you.” She found a gardening book on a shelf and began flipping through its glossy pages. When she located the right picture, she held it out. The picture she pointed to was of a bushy plant with long purple blooms.

“We can use it to make our clothes smell good,” her mother said, replacing the book on its shelf. She pinched a sprig from the lavender plant and offered it to Ciere. “Smell this.”

Ciere took the sprig—it didn’t have any flowers yet, so it wasn’t as pretty as the photo. She sniffed. The plant smelled
somehow smoky, clean, and sweet all at the same time. “Weird,” she said.

Her mother laughed. “Trust me. You’ll sleep better when your sheets are lavender scented.” She took Ciere’s hand and led her from the plants.

The store was mostly empty, and there wasn’t a line at the register. The cashier was a young woman with pale skin and reddish brown hair pulled into a ponytail. When she saw Ciere, she smiled vaguely. “Going to plant that?” she said, and Ciere realized she still held the sprig of lavender.

Ciere smiled and held up the plant. “Yup.”

“It’ll look nice when it’s all full grown and blooming,” the cashier said. She was using a syrupy voice, the way adults sometimes speak to children, and it annoyed Ciere. She wasn’t a kid. She knew the flowers would be pretty. Just to prove it, she held up the sprig and focused on it.

Her illusion coiled around the stem, making the tip appear in full bloom. Tiny purple flowers materialized as if from nowhere, until it looked like the photo from the gardening book.

It was effortless and gorgeous, and Ciere grinned in triumph.

The cashier gasped. Ciere looked up at her, expecting to see amusement in her mother’s eyes.

But the cashier appeared frozen, her mouth agape. A sound rose in her throat. She looked… scared.

Ciere was so startled by the woman’s reaction that her illusion shattered.

The next thing Ciere knew, she was grabbed by her mother and hustled out of the store so quickly that she didn’t have a chance to complain or squirm. Air blew past as the automatic doors breezed open and her mother hurried through them. She didn’t quite run, but her steps were quick and jerky. Ciere found herself swung up over her mother’s shoulder, and she stared backward. The automatic doors were making a valiant effort to close, but kept jerking to a halt as they sensed the oblivious cashier standing between them, gaping after Ciere.

They never went back for their supplies. Ciere’s mother drove straight home, her mouth a grim line and fingers gripping the steering wheel hard.

“You can’t do that,” her mom said, her voice tight. “Not everyone can do what you can, and showing off will only get you noticed. It’s dangerous. Don’t let anyone see what you are, understand?”

That was the first time Ciere understood that her immunity wasn’t to be shared with others.

It was a lesson learned too late. That cashier must have managed to catch a glimpse of their license plate, and the reward for turning in an illusionist was too lucrative to pass up.

One week later, a SWAT team showed up.