Anathema (29 page)

The mayor’s jaw firms. “I see.”

“I’m glad you see. Oh, and in case you’re thinking of just having your pet anathemas kill me before I can do any of this? The video’s already been prepared. It’s ready to deploy whether or not I’m alive to do it.” I’m lying about this. Hopefully she doesn’t call me on it. I straighten up. “I hope we can be better friends after this, and by ‘being friends’, I mean: stop trying to kill me. Conrad and I just broke up for good, so you got what you wanted there.”

She says nothing.

I flash her a bright smile. “Have a good night, Ms. Alton.”

Then I leave her sitting there behind her massive desk, auburn hair in a smooth bun, her face like a stone effigy. I know she’s heard me.

My answer comes at school the next day. Amanda, Nancy, Lilah and I are hanging out on the front steps leading up to the lobby, drinking our morning lattes and enjoying the bright rays of sunshine. My eyes stray to Siobhan Park, slinking into the lobby of the school. She shoots us her usual glare before brushing through the door.

“Pathetic,” Amanda sings, not looking at her.

But I just feel sorry for her. I’ve met truly awful human beings, and Siobhan doesn’t even rate among them. She honestly sees me as the villain who ruined her entire high school experience. I can change this narrative for her with one gesture. I smile at Amanda and set my latte down. “I’ll be right back.”

I follow Siobhan into the lobby, and catch up to her right next to her locker.
 
“Siobhan.”

She looks over at me, scowling. “What do you want?”

I slap her.

Gasps and cries ring out around us. People quickly circle us, whispering excitedly. Siobhan cups her cheek, outrage blooming in her eyes, scarlet flushing over her face.

“I guess you feel really proud of yourself,” I say loudly.

“What are you talking about?” she snarls.

“Conrad told me all about his feelings for you when he dumped me. I hope you’ll be really happy together.” Then I whirl around and stalk back towards the door, but not before I catch the surprise and delight that washes over her face.

Conrad’s a good guy, and she’ll never take him back if she thinks of him as my cast-off. This way, she thinks she’s won him from me. Maybe this will be enough to finally relieve her of the need to triumph over me.

My eyes catch Conrad’s as I pass him walking into the lobby.

“Hey, Kat,” he says.

I smile at him. “Go see Siobhan.”

Just as I reach the doors, I glance back. Siobhan throws her arms around him, crashing her lips to his. I rejoin my friends right outside to hang out the last minutes before class begins. But Amanda is on her feet, staring out at something.

“Look. It’s him!”

For a moment, my heart skips a beat, my mind jumping to Alexander. But then I see Liam waiting by the fence, cars sailing past him into the school. He’s watching us, smoking a cigarette. He nods when our eyes meet.

Apprehension curls in my gut as I look between Amanda and her old crush. Amanda, with the worst taste in men imaginable. “He’s not a citizen,” I remind her.

“That still matters, anathema?” she says tartly.

“When it comes to a psychopath like Liam, it matters. Trust me.”

“He’s really an anathema.” She looks at him with a dazed smile. “I totally called it.” To my relief, the bell rings. Rather than approach him, she turns and files into the school with the other students.

I grab my latte and settle on the steps, raising my eyebrows at him challengingly. He’ll have to put out his cigarette and come to me. I’m not going to him. I still don’t feel safe around him.

Finally, he tosses his cigarette aside, shoves his hands into his pockets, and saunters across the parking lot.

“Ah, the memories,” he says as he approaches. “How is the old stomping ground?”

If Amanda could see him up close like this, she might not remember her old infatuation. He looks rough. Dirty. He stinks of smoke and he’s gaunt and leathery. His hair is greasy and unkempt. The only part of him that looks alive are his eyes, wild and snapping with the sort of manic energy that burns so bright, it can only burn out.

“Where’s Alexander?” I ask him.

“He disappeared into the night before we could even talk to him. Rather hurt my feelings.” He widens his eyes mock innocently. “It’s like he thought we were going to kill him.”

A cold feeling washes through me. He’s lying. The Wasters already killed Alexander, killed Noelle, didn’t they?

An edge creeps into my voice. “Where is he really, Liam?”

“My boss wants to offer you a deal—”

“No deal,” I cut in. “Not if they’re dead. You obviously killed them and you’re lying about it!”

Liam laughs. “I knew you’d react this way. I knew you’d assume the worst of me. It’s very unfair and hurtful, but…” He holds up a finger to forestall my objection, “That’s why I thought ahead. Of my own initiative, I sent out some of my crew to comb the town, track our stray anathema brother and sister down.” He holds out a slip of paper between two dirty finger nails. “They’ve been spotted hiding out at this bloke’s house. Keeping a low profile.”

I stare down at the address, and the name ‘Rusty Galliano’ makes the frantic tempo of my heart calm. Rusty. I know that name. That’s the night security guard who covered for Alexander. He’s taking care of them now. That’s… That’s sweet. A knot of dread in my chest begins to loosen.

“I don’t blame Metz for what he did,” Liam says. “Sometimes I chafe at falling in line, too, but we do what we must to survive in this world. My survival plan includes wreaking havoc on command. Really, I have to congratulate you for pulling your little Nancy Drew act off and figuring out our nasty secret all on your own. You truly are a clever girl.”

I fold up the paper in shaky hands “So what deal are you here to offer me? I just want to survive. I want Alexander and Noelle to live, too.”

“Our boss thinks you’re a potential liability, but killing you would obviously lead to more problems.” He waves off the idea lazily. “So I’m here with a peace offering. One that solves all our problems, I should think. In exchange for your silence, you get this.” He pulls a large yellow envelope from his jacket, and presses it into my hand.

I open it and pull out its contents.

There’s a passport with a snapshot of my face on it. A plane ticket to London that departs tomorrow. And…

An exit visa.

An actual exit visa. This had to cost a fortune.

I look up at Liam, my mouth dry. “This is… real?”

“Real. Though I don’t know why you’d want to return to the old country. It’s ever so much more exciting here.”

“How can you actually
prefer
living here?”

“What’s not to like? Any other country, I’d be rotting in prison for the rest of my life for my antics. Here, I get sunshine, fresh air, the occasional murder attempt, and excitement galore.”

“Excitement?” I sputter.

His eyes gleam. “There must be a tiny part of you that’s come alive since losing citizenship. Perhaps the fruit tastes sweeter and the grass looks greener and you see everything with that keen edge only people on the cusp of death truly experience. You can’t tell me this hasn’t been the slightest bit enlivening, the slightest smidgen – dare I say – ennobling?”

I gape at him. He’s a madman. “I wouldn’t know if I’m becoming more noble, Liam! Most of me is focused on trying not to become more
dead.”

“What were you before?” Liam points out. “Just a happy little girl in an average life destined for an average fate. Now your days are numbered, filled with life and death struggles with real villains, real dangers.” A crazed smile dances over his face, lighting his eyes with deranged glee. “You see, I love living like this. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’ve never intended to die old in my bed. I’ve always wanted to be a revolutionary manning the barricades, a warrior-poet-lover battling for a lost cause.”

“A warrior-poet-lover?” I say with a laugh.

He laughs, too. “Oh, my poetry is an abomination, I’ll admit that, but I’m quite adept at the other two. I’ll go out one day with a song in my heart, a sword through my chest and a smile on my lips. I will be utterly and completely alive until my very last breath, Katie Grant, you mark my words.”

His words stir something in me, even as I shake my head in furious denial. “You’re as crazy as Wolfman Savage.”

“Never denied that, love. I am one of the restless few who will never be content with the sedate and the serene. I want to leave a scorch mark with my very existence. But perhaps these words just ring of madness to you, so I’ll say farewell—and ask you to give my respects to Her Majesty.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and backs languidly from me, never taking his eyes from mine. “By the way, I should ask—that girl you were standing with. Amelia, I remember?”

“Amanda,” I correct, then wish I hadn’t.

He smiles at me sleazily. “She have a man?”

“Trust me,” I say sharply, not liking his interest in her, “you’re not her type.”

Liam just laughs and shakes his head as he turns away from me. “Lying minx.”

Amanda drives me to the security guard’s address in Shelter Valley after school.

“I’ll wait for you here,” Amanda says, distaste in her voice as she surveys the ramshackle street around us. It’s a step down from Cordoba Bay, solidly working class. This is the town being blamed for our massacre, the town that gets our excess crime, our toxic waste, even.

“Thanks,” I tell her.

She waits in the car, radio on, while I approach the door. I’m about to knock when I see a girl’s silhouette rippling beyond the curtains of a basement window. So I head down the creaky stairs, kneel next to the glass and tap on the window. The curtain jerks aside. Noelle’s eyes widen at the sight of me.

She holds up a finger, and then the front door pops open on its rusty hinges. “Come in!” she whispers, waving me in hastily.

I shuffle inside the dim house she and Alexander are obviously staying in. Their stuff is packed up in a pair of duffel bags. It doesn’t look like they plan to stay long.

“How’d you find us?” Noelle wonders.

“Liam gave me the address.”

She blows out a breath. “I knew the Wasters would track us down. I didn’t think it would happen so fast.”

“They’re not planning to hurt you guys.”

“Not until it’s convenient for them to get rid of us.” She folds her slim arms, her dark eyes wary. “We won’t hang around until they change their minds. We’re leaving town later tonight. You can come join if you want, but I don’t know why you would, Ms. Fantastic House, Fantastic Family and Fantastic Hazard Index.”

I smile. “Yeah, that’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?”

Her face softens. “You should wait around until Alexander gets back. He’ll want to say goodbye to you.”

I shift awkwardly. “If you think that’s okay.”

“He’ll
want
to.” She gestures me down into an overstuffed chair. I settle there, drawing my knees up to my chest, watching her rearrange their meager possessions in their bags.

“So are you guys going to Mexico?” I ask her.

“No. That’s what Alexander wants to do, but not me.” She surveys me under her fringe of dark hair. “I know if we leave the country, Alexander will never appeal his case and he’ll die an anathema. If we stay here, he might do it one day.” She swallows hard. “After I’m… If I die before him.”

I say nothing. From what I’ve gathered, Alexander won’t even think about getting citizenship back while his sister’s an anathema. But if she dies, he probably won’t contemplate it then, either. He’ll still blame himself. A lump rises in my throat.

There is no freeing him of the burden of guilt he feels over what’s happened to her. Even though he was a child when it happened, as innocent as she was, she’s his twin. His sister. He truly believes he should have known. He should have helped. Just as I told my mother there’s no saving me from myself, there’s no saving Alexander from himself, either.

Unless…

That’s when the idea occurs to me. I pull out the yellow envelope Liam gave me. A solution— and not just to my problems. For some reason, I find myself thinking of Liam’s strange words. His talk about these extreme circumstances being ennobling. I’m not like him. I don’t thirst for a fight, and I don’t want to scorch the world with my existence. But something he said calls to something within me nevertheless. I don’t want to move through this world sedately without leaving a mark, my eyes blinded to the wrongs and injustices around me.

Here is something I could do. Something truly, unquestionably right.

Maybe the something I was meant to do all along.

“Noelle.” I raise my eyes to hers, the realization of what lies ahead blooming over me. This. This is my choice. It is the only one I can make. “I want to give you something.”

It’s not until the following night that I see Alexander again. He appears outside my window late at the night, mostly because I left the ladder outside for him. Happiness washes over me at the sight of him. I shove the window open for him to climb inside.

“You shouldn’t leave a ladder—”

“Outside my room. I know. It’s like asking someone to kill me. Your sister pointed that out, too. I won’t do it again.”

Alexander closes the window behind him. He folds his arms, surveying me like he’s trying to figure me out. His gaze sweeps my room. It’s so strange seeing the anathema who’s ushered me through the most perilous phase of my life surrounded by the relics of my childhood.

“My sister’s gone. She left a note saying I should ask you about it.” His slanted black eyebrows give him a severe, searching look. Strange how I once associated him with danger when he’s become the greatest source of safety in my new world. “Where is she, Kat?”

“Well, if I’ve got the time right,” I glance at my nearby digital clock, “Noelle’s plane is just over the Atlantic now.”

He stares at me for a long moment, flabbergasted. Then, “What?”

I bite my lip, trying to think of how to explain this. “Alexander, I was given an exit visa. A passport. And I gave them to her. We cut her hair so she looks like me, and no one consults facial recognition programs in the international terminal. She’ll touch down in Heathrow soon. She’s going to be fine.”

He kneels down in front of me where I’ve settled on my bed, his eyes intent. “I don’t understand. How…?”

“Oh, I didn’t pay for it myself or anything. Mayor Alton gave it to me. She tried to bribe me. I guess she thought if she got me out of town, no one would be around to hold it over her head that she’s the leader of a huge group of anathemas.”

Alexander rocks back on his heels, raking a hand through his dark hair. “Wait, what? She’s the boss? How did you know this? How did this happen?”

I smile. “I’m actually pretty clever sometimes. I connected some pieces, then I talked to her and basically confirmed it.”

He opens and closes his mouth. “I don’t understand,” he says finally. “You had a way out, the mayor gave you a way out, and you gave it to my sister?”

“I gave it to both of you.” I grab his hand where it’s curled up on the edge of my bed. “She’s safe. You have to appeal your case now. You don’t have Noelle around as your excuse not to do it anymore.”

“Kat,” he says, gripping my hand so tightly between both of his, my fingers throb, “you can’t do this. I can’t let you throw away your own escape route.”

“It’s already done.”

“And what about you?” he demands.

“I can still get an Asylum Scholarship. And until then, I have something else planned.” I rise from my bed and step over towards my laptop.

I hit play on the video I just uploaded online. Alexander steps up behind me to gaze over my shoulder. It’s my face on the screen:
“My name is Kathryn Grant and I’m an anathema. I’m going to tell you all about what it’s like… being me.”

“This is dangerous,” Alexander warns me.

But I just gaze up at my Susan B. Anthony poster, hanging above the laptop. The words stand out to me, stark white against the black.

“Careful, cautious people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to… avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.”

They speak to me more than ever before. I am done being a careful, cautious person. I was done with that the day I stepped forward to help Noelle. Strange as it may seem, Wolfman Savage’s downfall gave me a voice, gave me a platform to be heard. Once upon a time, I began to change my view of anathemas because I met a girl who shattered my stereotypes of them.

Maybe I could do the same thing for other people.

No, I’m not Liam throwing myself blindly into this out of some romantic notion of living on the edge. I don’t want my mere existence to leave scorch marks. But I do want to change things. The thought that I could personally have a hand in improving this world makes every moment more significant somehow like there’s a greater purpose to my existence. Just by virtue of my reputation as the anathema seen as the downfall of Wolfman Savage, I can do something substantial here. My voice will be heard. I can’t throw that away by seeking refuge overseas. Not now.

“How many people really get a chance to help change the world?” I ask Alexander, turning to him. Our eyes are inches apart. “Maybe I don’t want safety. I don’t want to go to Europe. I don’t want to be a happy, carefree person with nothing to worry about. I’ve known for a while that I want my life to count for something. I didn’t ever plan for it to happen this way, but this is the way it is. I’m going to be a public voice for anathemas.”

He cups my cheek. “Even if it kills you?”

“Even then.”

“No. I won’t let you do this. Delete that video. Don’t post it.” He moves towards my computer.

I twine my fingers in the collar of his jacket and yank him back. “In case you haven’t noticed,” I say sharply, “it’s not your choice. The video’s already out there. It’s done.”

“Kathryn…” There’s exasperation in his voice. Worry. Tenderness.

And my new visibility will lend me more than just the means to be heard. If Mayor Alton tries to menace Alexander, I’ll be heard when I speak against her. If Alexander needs his case to draw attention, people will listen when I tell them about it. Notoriety is power. Wolfman Savage knew that. It was his undoing. It will be my strength.

Alexander reaches up to sweep my hair back from my face, his startling blue eyes holding mine. “If you’re going to do this, then I’m staying right by your side to protect you.”

I withdraw a step. “Only if you do it as a citizen. That’s my requirement.”

His eyes search mine. “I don’t understand you. I don’t know why you’ve risked yourself like this for my sister. For me.”

For a moment, my heart stings. He can’t imagine anything between us. He doesn’t even understand I might feel something for him.

“Why?” he says.

“Figure it out, Alexander.”

I turn away from him, but suddenly he catches me and pulls me back to him. For a moment we stand there, our eyes locked. And then the distance closes between us like the air has disappeared into a void, and the world becomes the warmth of his lips dipping down to touch mine.

Static leaps between us as his mouth moves over my own, the taste of his breath sweet. He cups the back of my neck, possessively, without gentleness, like I’m a tonic of life and he needs to drink me in to survive. Excitement crackles like electricity down my spine as his hot lips scorch mine. It’s never been like this with Conrad before, the world exploding in forked lighting, my nerve endings singing at his touch. A small sound of surprise escapes my lips and he smiles against my lips, kissing me leisurely, as though the entire night stretches before us without ending.

And perhaps it does.

Because this is the moment Alexander and I step together towards our uncertain, shared future. Perils await us tomorrow and the danger may never recede, but I am prepared for that and I know he is, too. On the glowing screen below us, the hit count on my video rises, a message flying out for the whole world to see.

I, Kathryn Grant, choose not to hide.

I will stand before the world and avow my sympathies to despised ideas and their advocates.

And I will bear the consequences.