Falls the Shadow (20 page)

“Vividly.”

“The music room,” I think aloud, and I'm instantly back there; back to the scent of instrument polish and the lingering cloud of floral perfume that our teacher always left in her wake.

“You thought you were alone that day, didn't you?” he asks.

“Of course. That was the only reason I was singing.” The rest of the class was at lunch, but I wasn't hungry; so I'd wandered into the room the older students sometimes used for recording. There was all that fancy equipment, and the walls were covered in soundproofing foam. It felt so . . .
professional
. And for a moment, I forgot the disapproving looks my mother always gave me when I would sing, and I just closed my eyes and belted out the first song that came into my head.

When I opened my eyes, Jaxon was standing in the doorway of the room.

“That day . . . I'd never been so mortified in my life.”

“I tried to apologize,” he says, “but you ran away. You didn't even look back.”

“And you spent the rest of that semester trying to get me to sing again.” The whole thing seems kind of silly now that I say it out loud.

“Because you were better than anyone else I'd ever heard. You still are. Whenever I hear that song now—which I swear is all the time, because my mom plays it constantly—I hear you singing it. I don't even remember the lyrics, just your voice.”

I'm staring at him again. I can't help it. His gaze, meanwhile, is distant and lost in thought.

“There was something in your voice that day that's never let me go,” he says after a minute. “Something that's there when you perform in all those plays, too. And that's why I . . .” He twists around and rests his elbows on the edge of the bed. “I mean, there were other places I could have gone when I was blowing off my duties as an office assistant. But I knew you'd be there in the auditorium. And I'd watch you performing, and I'd get the same feeling I had the first time I heard you sing. That feeling I'm still trying to figure out.” His eyes meet mine again. They're less anxious now. “So if you don't want to believe me about my first reason,” he says, “there's another for you. That's the other part of why I'm here.”

“I was only pretending when I was on that stage,” I say, and suddenly all the nervousness is gone, replaced by a swift and strange sort of sadness. Because I hate to break this to him, but he's followed a fraud. His infatuation isn't with me; it's
with the person I become when I put on whatever costume the play calls for.

“No one can pretend that good,” he says.

“I can.”

I can tell he still doesn't believe me. And it's frustrating—because I don't know how to make him understand how incredibly wrong he is.

Because he
is
wrong.

Isn't he?

It's then that I realize I can't even answer myself. I was wrong about who Violet was; who says I haven't been wrong about myself all this time too? How did this conversation even become about me, anyway? This wasn't supposed to be about me. I don't like talking about myself, and I don't like the thought of someone else knowing me better than I know myself. Especially when that someone else is Jaxon, considering I still don't know what to think about him.

I know what I
want
to think, though, don't I? I have to admit that. I want to think he's on my side. Though I'm not sure if that's because he truly is, or if it's because he's so dangerously persuasive and I'm so incredibly tired. Or maybe it's simply that, after what's happened with Violet, I'm just about desperate enough to hope anybody is still on my side. I don't know. Sometimes it would be nice to have even a tenth of that relentless confidence he seems to have about us.

I grab the pillow at my feet and toss it behind my head, intent on going to sleep and putting an end to this
conversation before it becomes any more confusing. When I start to turn away, though, he grabs my wrist. I keep my focus on the pillow. I can feel his eyes on me, waiting for me to turn and look at him. But I don't know which face he'd see, or if it's even the right one anymore, so I don't move.

“Let go,” I say.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I answered your question from earlier,” he says. “Now I have one for you.”

“What?”

“You found Violet. So where are you planning to go now? What are you going to do?”

I almost breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow, I find it easier to talk about my crazy sister than about whatever is going on between Jaxon and me. Though my answers are just as inconclusive about her as they are about him.

“I don't know.” I try to pull out of his grasp; I think he sees the pain it causes me—the way my entire sore, broken body cringes with the movement—because he's quick to let go then. But he still stays close, his body leaning into the mattress and sinking me toward him. “But if you don't want to follow me around anymore, I understand,” I say. “Especially after . . . after what my sister did to you.”

“After what she did to
me?
Are you serious? What about what she did to
you
, Cate?” He takes my arm again, much more gently this time, and tries to meet my eyes. I do my best to avoid his. “Please don't tell me you're thinking about going after her.”

I'd be lying if I told him the thought hadn't crossed my mind. It's not like we can just carry on as if none of the past few days happened; my sister and I are going to have to meet again. That seems inevitable. And I'd rather be the one tracking her down. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for her to sneak up on me. If she's going to try to turn this into a game for her own personal amusement, then fine—but I at least want to be the one making the rules.

“I think it's time for a plan B,” Jaxon is saying. “Even if she knows what happened to Samantha, do you really think she's going to tell you? You tried to talk to her, and she tried to
kill
you in response. Remember that? She doesn't really seem like the divulging type.”

“Except she did tell me.” I regret the words the second they leave my mouth, because I can't elaborate on them. I can't bring up that she
did
mention Jaxon's name, even though he's already guessed as much; it will only lead us back to our argument from earlier. I don't want to go there again. I want to believe what he's told me and leave it at that. And the only other thing Violet said was that Samantha wasn't supposed to die that night, but I don't know what she meant by it, either, so I'd rather keep that to myself too. Maybe I'm just afraid of what Jaxon would make of these things—that he might see something incriminating in her words, some sort of proof that I'm trying desperately to overlook.

All I really know is that he's watching me expectantly now, so I have no choice but to follow up with something.
I manage a stuttered, “I mean she
started
to tell me,” which only earns me an exasperated look from him, since I guess we both know that all I'm doing is grasping for answers I don't really have.

Because whether it was supposed to happen or not, Samantha is still dead, and everything still points to it being Violet's fault.

“She tried to kill you,” Jaxon repeats in a perfectly monotone voice.

“If she'd wanted to kill me, she would have.” I realize how insane it sounds—to still be making excuses for her right now—but for some reason I can't make myself take it back.

Maybe because she
didn't
kill either of us, even though I know she could have. Easily. I keep thinking about that, and how that's the other part of the equation I can't make sense of. However violent and out of control she seemed tonight, my sister was still in there. She still had her memories of us, and the second she saw the blood on my cheek, she stopped.

It makes it seem like she's the one in control. Like maybe she hasn't been brainwashed by them at all. Not completely.

But that would mean it was actually Violet who let Samantha Voss bleed to death on those railroad tracks. The girl who is supposed to be my sister. Not some zombie being controlled by Huxley. If she can walk away and leave me and Jaxon alive, then she could have done the same thing with Samantha, right? If she was really there that night, she could have saved her, even.

Except she didn't.

I don't understand any of it. All I know is that the more I think about it, the more I want to scream. The more I want to track her down right this second and do whatever it takes to stop her from hurting anyone else—even though I'm afraid to think about what, exactly, that's going to mean.

“How do you know she won't kill us both next time, though?” Jaxon asks.

“I don't.” The words are numb, lifeless. It's not on purpose; I think I'm just feeling so many different things at once that they've all mixed into one bland blob of emotion—like when you mix all the different paints together and get that awful brown color.

“I think you should stay away from her.” There's something in his voice that breaks through the blandness of my thoughts; something violent, almost. And when I turn my head and meet his eyes, I see aggression shimmering there, just beneath the surface. “And if she knows what's good for her,” he says, “she'll stay away from me—and from you and Seth—too.”

Out of all the emotions inside me, anger is the one that fights its way to the surface. It's not really anger at Jaxon, I know; but my voice is still seething when I say, “You do realize that's my sister you're threatening, right?”

“No she's not, Cate. She's not the Violet you want her to be, and you can't keep protecting her like this.”

Not the Violet you want her to be.

That's exactly what I thought earlier, wasn't it? That
this Violet was some sort of impersonator, a memory thief masquerading around in a part that she was playing all wrong. So why can't I stand to hear Jaxon say the same thing? It's like a kind of unwritten law, I think—that you can be as pissed off at your family as you want, but the second someone else has anything bad to say about them, you're suddenly ready to forgive even the most heinous crimes they might have committed.

Because other people don't get it. They don't know all of the good parts of Violet. They don't realize that she's as much a victim in all of this as anyone else; it's not like she
asked
to be Huxley's creation.

“I'm not protecting her,” I say, “I'm only trying to—”

He's just watching me now and shaking his head in disbelief. It's irritating.

“You have no idea what it's like,” I snap. “You have no idea what we've been through, so just . . . just stop acting like you do, all right?”

“Fine.” For a moment I think that's going to be the end of it. But then he fixes me with a very serious look and says, “But I do know what she did to you, don't I?” That violence from before hovers at the edge of his voice, and suddenly his face looks like it did when I opened my eyes beside the pool; pale and sick, like we're reliving that moment here and now. “And I just . . . I just don't think any answers we want to find are worth you getting killed over. That's all I'm trying to say.”

He stands up and wanders away from me then, his hands clasped behind his head and his chest rising and falling in
attempts at deep calming breaths. Back and forth, back and forth he paces, and with every step he takes, arguing with him seems less important. At least for now. Because now there's no denying how genuinely worried he looks. The violence in his eyes grows a little fainter every second, uncertainty and fear taking its place. And at least in this moment, it's hard to believe that we're not on the same side. It's hard not to think that he's right about at least some of the things he said. I did find out the truth about my sister, didn't I? She's dangerous. After what she's done to all of us, I can't deny that. It would be stupid to deny that.

But there are still questions that need answering. Questions like who's in control of all this, and how do I make it stop? There has to be a way to make this stop.

Jaxon glances at Seth's unconscious body; his eyes don't linger, but I see it. And I see that uncertainty flicker across his face again. I know what he must be thinking. Seth is only here because he asked him to come. If anything happened to Seth, something tells me Jaxon would never forgive himself.

And I don't want anything to happen to either of them. So maybe we should just go our separate ways now? They should go back. It would be safer for them to go back to the CCA headquarters, and my next meeting with Violet would probably go a lot smoother if I didn't have to worry about keeping her from attacking them, too. It makes sense.

So I don't know why I find myself hesitating to speak, silently watching Jaxon lean against the dresser and turn
his gun over and over in his hands, pretending to study it.

When I decided to leave the city, I had every intention of going alone. I never wanted them to come—and even now, I don't completely trust them. So why is it so hard to even think about telling them to leave? It would mean finding my own way back, and fending for myself from here on out. But I could handle that. Maybe what I can't handle is the feeling from earlier: knowing Violet and I aren't on the same side anymore, and that losing Jaxon and Seth would mean the only one left is me.

Thinking about that sends a wrenching loneliness twisting through my insides; I'm suddenly desperate for something familiar to hold on to, and I think of my parents—because I can still go home, right? Eventually. If no one else is on my side, I at least need to believe that much.

I arch up so I can reach into my back pocket and grab my phone. I know it's a waste of time, though—since it was in this same pocket when I went for my unplanned swim earlier, and Seth ended up retrieving it from the bottom of the shallow end of the pool. It didn't turn on earlier, and it doesn't now. I'm not sure why I was expecting anything different.