Falls the Shadow (18 page)

“Stay away from me,” I warn.

Her eyes light up with a terrible sort of excitement. “All these years we've pretended,” she says, voice smooth as silk, “pretended that things were the same, that you and I were so
dear
to each other. So close. Just like sisters should be.” She moves around the bed toward me, her steps quick and quiet. Like a tiger stalking its prey. “Sister, sister, sister,” she sings. “Does it bother you, when they call me that?”

No. Tell her no
.

Why can't I tell her no?

I feel around behind me, searching the nightstand she's backed me up against for some kind of weapon. There's nothing but the dusty lamp. On the table on the far side of the room, I can see the glint of guns in the moonlight, but there's no way I'll be able to get around her and get to them before she stops me.

“Because you know I'm not your sister,” she says. “I've seen the way you avert your eyes when people talk about me. I've seen the way your lip curls in disgust when they tell you we look so much alike.”

“That's not true.”

God, I wish it wasn't true.

“You're not the actress you think you are,” she says. “But it's okay. Because I'm a little disgusted with the masquerade myself—which is why I think maybe I should end it.”

My hand finds the narrow part of the lamp base, and I grip it as tightly as I can.

“Because maybe you're not my sister either,” she continues. “Maybe my sister is sleeping, safe and sound at Huxley. And all I have to do—”

I swing. The lamp hits her in the side of her head and shatters, pieces of ceramic showering the floor. I drop what's left of it and jump to the bed, bounce off it, and land hard on the other side, sending a jarring pain shooting up into my knees. Violet lets out an enraged scream that I'm surprised doesn't wake Seth—even as drugged up as he is—and dives after me.

I try to twist out of the way, but I'm not fast enough; she slams into me and sends me spinning into the wall. My head hits hard enough to leave a dent, and sends little flecks of plaster raining around me. Blood trickles down from the reopened cut beneath my eye; I lift a shaky hand to try to wipe it away and turn around to find myself face to face with Violet.

She doesn't touch me. Doesn't speak. She's just
there
, with barely a breath of space between us, and she's just watching me with that familiar frenzy of a smile on her face.

But then her eyes drift to the cut. To the blood drying against my cheek. To my shaking fingers. That smile twitches a little, and she slowly lifts a hand and presses it to the back of her head. Something like pain spasms across her face.

“You were six,” she says suddenly. “You were six, and Mother told you not to climb on the slide like that, but you did it anyway.”

At first I think I must have hit my head harder than I realized, because I can't pull any sort of significance from her words. But then I see the way she's still watching the blood winding its way down my face; our eyes meet, and I slowly start to understand, to relive the same memory that this moment must be reminding her of.

“You fell off,” she says.

“And hit my head on a rock.” There was blood everywhere then, just like now. I ended up needing ten stitches.

“And you blamed me for pushing you.” She takes a step back, talking more to herself now. “But I never touched you.”

“I didn't blame
you
.” My voice is sharper than I intended; the exhaustion, the confusion, the pain—I'm tired of all of it. I just want this conversation to be over. I want to go back to sleep, and to wake up and find that everything that's happened today was only a nightmare. “It wasn't you,” I say, quieter. “That memory doesn't belong to you.”

“But I have it all the same.” Her eyes are vacant, staring at me and straight through me at the same time. “No matter how many times they try taking it away, it keeps coming back.” She's whispering now, and her lips are trembling in a way that almost makes me think she might cry. Except I don't think I've ever seen this Violet cry before—I'm not sure she even knows how. The thought of it happening stuns me into a silence that stretches at least a full minute before she interrupts it.

“Samantha wasn't supposed to die,” she mumbles. “Not that night.”

Her voice was so quiet that I'm almost sure I've misheard her. And she refuses to repeat it. To explain herself any better, no matter how many times I ask or beg or plead. Soon I can sense tension coiling up around her again, frustrated aggression that I'm afraid may snap into action if I keep pushing her. I press slowly back against the wall, as far away from her as I can get without making any sudden motions. Maybe if I just wait. Maybe if I just let her calm down again . . .

Except then I hear him.

Jaxon. Calling my name.

The corner of Violet's mouth quirks. “Take care, then, little sister,” she says. Without looking back, she turns and bolts into the hallway.

I grab the nearest gun and take off after her.

I'm never going to catch her, I know. I won't beat her
to Jaxon. I can only hope I get there in time again. That I can somehow stop her again. But all too soon my body is screaming at me, reminding me of how much blood I've lost today, and how deep the cuts in my arms and face are. Wind rushes into those cuts as I run, and the burning it sends through my skin is almost as unbearable as the fire in my lungs; all the adrenaline in the world couldn't make me oblivious to that. I don't know how I keep my legs moving. I just do. I pump them harder and harder, until I lose the feeling in my feet, until I've run up and down so many hallways that they all start to look the same, and I'm sure that this place is a maze built to torture and confuse me.

I take a sharp left, and I see Jaxon walking toward me, see the way his eyes widen at the sight of me. I'm going too fast to keep from slamming into him. We fall back, and both our guns and the bags of whatever he'd been carrying go tumbling over the floor.

“Catelyn? What are you—”

I throw myself over my gun, draw it, and climb to my knees. I don't trust myself to stand all the way up. Now that I've stopped moving, the pain threatens to overwhelm. Everything has started to spin and stir viciously around me. But I have to focus. She's here somewhere, she's close, I can feel it—

“Why were you yelling like that?” I pant, swiveling in every direction, the gun leveled and ready.
“What is wrong with you?”

“I don't know,” Jaxon says. “I got turned around. All
these rooms look the same. Plus I didn't want to sneak up on you guys and freak anyone out, and I—”

“Where is she? Did she come by here? Is she—”

“Where is who? Your sister? What's going on?” He appears beside me, his own weapon back at his side, and I turn so he can't see the bloody side of my face. When he speaks again, it's in that same cold voice he used by the pool—the one that makes me afraid for Violet even now. Even after what she did. “Catelyn? I swear, if she tried to hurt you again—”

“She didn't,” I say quickly. Why am I still protecting her? Am I really that stupid? “No, I mean, we fought, but then she ran off, and I thought . . . I just thought . . .”

I thought she was coming after him. I thought I was going to be too late. That's exactly what she wanted me to think. She could have found Jaxon before I did, I know. She probably could have killed him just as easily, too. As easily as she could have killed Samantha. As easily as she could have killed me in the room. But she didn't.

Why?

I want to think it's because she still feels something for me. That she hasn't forgotten all of the times I've stood up for her. Or how I've tried so hard to look at her and see only my sister, and not my sister's replacement.

More likely, though, it's because there's no fun in killing us now. Why not drag it out and make me squirm with fear and confusion? This Violet has always loved a show, after all. And right now? She's messing with me. She has to be. For all I know, she's watching from someplace
nearby, someplace safe, and waiting with that mischievous smile on her face.

She probably thinks this is hilarious.

“You fought in the room, you mean?” Jaxon's words are heavy with dread, and I can guess his next question before he even asks it: “What about Seth? Where is he?”

“He's fine.” Okay, maybe “fine” isn't the best choice of words here—but he could be worse. And I'm afraid that if I tell Jaxon what Violet did, there's a good chance he'll take that gun in his hand and go after her, no questions asked. I don't want it to come to that. Not as long as I can help it.

I expect him to press me for more details, but his phone rings before he can, the shrill noise making me jump.

I don't ask him who's calling. But when I glance back at him and watch him silence it without answering, I can't help but wonder: Is any of what Violet said true? Am I a fool for still being with him? For wanting to trust him? He said he wanted to find out the truth about what happened to Samantha that night—but what if he already knows the truth and he's only trying to keep me and everyone else from figuring it out? Is that his mother calling again, giving him more orders?

“We should go back.” I want to ask him all of those things, but I can't. Not right here, not right now. If Violet's watching me, I don't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing the fear and confusion she's caused.

Because I do know one thing for sure now: I'm not playing her games anymore.

“I was gone for like
thirty minutes,” Jaxon says, voice still full of disbelief as he picks up Seth and lays him on the bed. I don't say anything; I just watch silently as he pulls the sheet up around Seth's shoulders, and a strange longing fills my gut.

Before the old Violet decided she wanted to be an astronaut, she used to tell everyone who would listen that she was going to be a doctor. She would make me pretend to be her patient, tuck me into bed the way Jaxon is doing now and take my temperature, treat my invisible wounds with bandages and hand sanitizer that she swiped from Mother's purse. I never really liked that game; the bandages hurt to pull off, the sanitizer stung my eyes, and I didn't like all of the gruesome diseases she would diagnose me with.

But it was still a lot better than the game we're playing now.

Jaxon goes on, “She was out cold. As many tranq darts as Seth pumped into her . . . she should have been dead to the world for twenty-four hours at least.”

“She's not like us,” I remind him. Saying it out loud twists my longing into something even more painfully fierce.

She's not the old Violet. She never will be. Why can't I just accept that?

I force myself back to what I was doing, and cringe as I press the alcohol-soaked gauze to the cut on my cheek. Medical supplies—that's what Jaxon had been carrying, and the only place he claims to have gone was an abandoned clinic a few miles into town; he went to raid it for whatever remained in its storage closets. Bandages, gauze, alcohol—all of it's spread out on the dresser in front of me now; there are even a couple bottles of painkillers. They're way past the expiration date stamped on the lid, and they probably won't work, but I swallow a couple anyway as Jaxon walks back to me. He picks up a wad of gauze and douses it in the alcohol.

“May I?” he asks, his fingertips resting light against my arm. “That cut along your cheek . . . it doesn't look so good.”

“Knock yourself out,” I say.

He works quickly and carefully, dabbing at the cut and apologizing every time I suck in a deep breath in response to the stinging pain. It's not until he starts to push strands of hair aside, trying to get to a cut along the side of my neck, that it occurs to me how uncomfortably close his fingertips are to the scar Huxley left back there. My body tenses automatically.

“Does that hurt?” he asks, hesitating.

I don't say anything. I just reach up, take his hand, and pull it down. I have every intention of letting go of it then, but somehow our fingers end up loosely intertwined. I didn't
realize my hands were shaking so bad until I felt them against the stillness of his.

“There's a number over an older scar back there,” he says suddenly. “That's the one from Huxley, isn't it? From where they linked you to your clone?”

I freeze.

“I saw it when you were unconscious by the pool,” he adds quickly, sounding almost embarrassed. “I mean, I wasn't looking for it or anything, but there was all that blood, and I was trying to clean it up and make sure there weren't any more cuts . . . and I couldn't help but notice it. Sorry. I was curious.”

I flatten my hair over the back of my neck, trying to hide it even now. Even though he knows it's there, I still don't want him to look at it. I don't want him to look at me and see a number. I don't want him to think about my clone. I just want to be Cate right now. Not origin Cate. And I just want Violet to be Violet, not clone-Violet, and I want to forget about the CCA and Huxley and all this mess between them that we've gotten caught up in.

But Jaxon's still watching me, still waiting for me to answer him.

I guess we're way past the point of pretending that none of this is happening.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he says, “about half of the stuff my mom's told me about Huxley—about whether all if it's true or not. The whole mind-uploading thing, especially. It sounds too crazy. And it doesn't seem right, does it? For them to have such free access to your thoughts and
stuff like that. I mean, your . . . your clone, her brain is essentially just a computer that all that stuff goes to, right? Doesn't that weird you out at all?”