“Are you going to answer me?”
I look up, startled that James is still here. No, I will not miss this city. A place is a place is a place. I don’t care. James and I together, that’s what matters. We’re on our way to destroy his father, dismantle Keane Enterprises, and then be free. I am sharp and ready. “You’re the one who told me it’s good to keep secrets.”
“Not from me.”
I grin, pointing a finger at him. “Especially from you.”
He sighs and rubs his forehead. “Anything illegal?”
“Me? Never.” I woke up and his arms weren’t around me anymore and he was asleep and so far away, and the emptiness was too big, too scary, the waiting too much, so I went running.
He walks into the room and sits on the couch, pulling me into his lap. “Just how many secrets are you keeping from me?”
“I’d tell you, but it’s a secret.” I lean my forehead against his, letting myself feel quiet, looking for the thing inside me that tells me what we’re doing is right. It’s been so hard to find since I gave up Annie. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. This is what everything has been for.”
“Of course. This is the biggest vote of confidence my dad has ever given me. We’re finally sliding into place.” His eyes get distant, and something nervous twists in the pit of my stomach.
“You’re having second thoughts.”
He shakes his head, focuses on me. “No. You and me, that’s the way it has to be. We do what we’re supposed to and no one will see what’s coming until it’s too late.”
I scratch a finger under his jaw, my nail catching on his stubble. “Not even us.”
“Not even us.”
“What do you mean, I can’t go in to see Mr. Keane?” I sing the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” in my head over and over again, because I can’t think about what I need to think about, which is not a what but a who. The girl behind the desk glares at me.
“He wants you to get a feel for the receptionist. She’s too good for the Feelers or other Readers to figure out,” James had said, looking past me as we rode the elevator up up up up to where he would disappear past locked doors to his father, leaving me behind.
Babysitting.
I’m babysitting a freaking Reader.
She pops her gum, bored. “You aren’t cleared to go back to the offices.”
Hey, I think. On a scale of one to ten, how fond are you of an intact spinal cord?
Her eyes widen and I laugh. “Just kidding. Probably you should stay out of my head. It’s not a friendly place.”
“Clearly.” She has short hair, bleached white, with choppy bangs hanging over her kohl-rimmed eyes. From the looks of her she’s maybe sixteen, pixie features and tiny frame; her feet hang a few inches above the floor. She’s wearing metal almost everywhere metal can go—ears, nose, fingers, wrists, even studs on her black heels. It doesn’t compensate for how small she is. Fragile. Fingers like twigs, equally snappable.
“Aren’t you a little young to be Keane’s personal assistant?” I ask, leaning against the rosewood desk she’s slouching at.
She doesn’t break eye contact. “Aren’t you a little psychotic to be Keane’s employee?”
I like her. The pixie is going to be my friend. I know it like I know I’m not going to see Mr. Keane today. I will be her friend, while plotting to either betray her if she’s untrustworthy for the company, or be betrayed by her if I slip up and she sees thoughts she shouldn’t.
Best friends.
“When is James getting out of his meeting?”
“Quit thinking of me as a pixie. It pisses me off.”
Magic magic pixie dust! Tinker Bell! Tiny pixies with sharp teeth, stealing children and horses! I start humming the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” under my breath.
“You really are as obnoxious as everyone thinks you are.” She sighs heavily, slides off her chair, and walks around the desk. Even in four-inch heels she barely comes up to my chin. “Let’s go get dinner.”
I let my eyes travel down the hall behind her. Mr. Keane is there somewhere. Mr. Keane who—nope not gonna think about it, not gonna think about anything at all. I can be patient. Pixies. Pixie haircuts. Pixie sticks. Drumsticks. Music. Dancing. I want to go dancing! Ache for it.
“You know what?” she says. “I changed my mind. Go ahead and snap my neck. It’s gotta be better than listening to you free-associate to try and scramble me.”
I laugh and wrap my arm through hers, steering her past the security guard and toward the gleaming elevators. “Your mistake is in assuming my brain doesn’t work like this all the time.”
We ride down the elevator in relative silence, except when Pixie asks me to please think the lyrics to a song she wouldn’t mind having stuck in her head. I settle on Queen in my head and pizza for dinner.
“So,” I say around a thin and drooping slice. “Turns out I do miss something about Chicago. What the crap is this crust?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m a vegan.”
I reach out and tug the collar of her leather jacket. “And this cow died of natural causes?”
She shrugs defensively. “My grandma gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday. It was hers. The cows would have been dead of old age by now, anyway. Besides, eggs are disgusting, and have you ever actually thought about what dairy is? You are eating the product of liquid squirted from the nipples of a cow.”
“Mmmm …” I stick my tongue out to catch a stray strand of goopy cheese. Pixie rolls her eyes, and I free-associate cow nipples in my thoughts to entertain her and keep my brain safe as I sit back and look out the window at the busy sidewalk. It’s dark and bitterly cold, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone out there. New York is more claustrophobic than Chicago, the buildings tall and looming so that you can’t see anything beyond your street. This afternoon as I prowled the city, waiting for James to text me that it was time to go in, I passed the Empire State Building without even noticing until I almost knocked down a tourist.
How come Pixie is here? Why isn’t she in the school?
“My name isn’t Pixie. And it’s because I’m too good for the school, you idiot. When they interviewed me for a scholarship, I started asking them about the Keane Foundation and what on earth Feelers were and assured them that I was more than qualified for whatever they had in mind. Then they put me up against their best Readers—”
“Did you get Doris?”
“Yes! Kill me now, her thoughts were like being trapped in an airless room with nothing but smooth jazz.”
I cackle. “So, what, they gave you independent study?”
“Pretty much. Said I could cut my teeth at the front desk of Keane’s main office, since I was too young to place somewhere big.”
“And your family …”
Her eyes get tight and she snaps her head to look outside. Not in a tragic, I’ve-been-ripped-away-from-them way. I tap tap tap tap a finger on the counter. She wants to be here, I can tell. Hmm. I will tread carefully. Super careful.
Ha ha ha ha, as if.
She clears her throat. “I lived with my grandma until she died when I was thirteen. Then I got saddled with my dad