took her hand. “You can’t be with your brother and sister if you’re dead, Tessa.”
From atop the fridge, Marmalade mewed.
I stared at the Connellys, and they stared back at me. Deirdre: hurt and resentful. Dennis: decisive and stern. Tristan: distressed and determined.
Tristan and Dennis were almost killed because of me. I owed it to them to stay alive.
And despite the shame that crawled around inside me like a disease, despite my tainted blood, despite being Killers’ Spawn...I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live to see my brother and sister again. I wanted to give them happy, stable, peaceful lives.
I couldn’t give Jillian and Logan happy, stable, peaceful lives if I bled to death inside a little house with silver walls. I needed to live.
For the past eight years, I’d fled from town to town to stay alive. And now, to stay alive, I needed to stay put. I could not change my past, but I could change my future.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “I’ll stay in Lilybrook.”
* * *
As I stood at the mirror in the guest bedroom and brushed my hair for school, Tristan came up behind me. He put his hands on my hips and drew me against him. “I have to leave for class, but I want to let you know that you don’t have to worry about a thing,” he said. “Nothing’s changed except you can’t leave Lilybrook. You’ll still get Jillian and Logan back.”
“What do you think it means, though?” I asked. “A silver room?”
“My mom’s dreams can be symbolic. She dreamed that you had wildflower eyes, remember? You do have wildflower eyes, but not literally. The silver room can be anything. I think the silver is your fog. Maybe it means that instead of lifting it too high, you bring it down too low and pass out again, like you did in the Underground.”
“Hmm. That could be. But the red? The blood?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You’ll hit your head on something when you pass out? You’ll get hit by a car?” He shuddered.
“What if it means someone’s going to kill me?”
“Don’t even talk that way. Who would want to kill you?”
I met his gaze in the mirror. “Nathan.”
A muscle pulsed angrily in his jaw. “I told him to leave you alone. Has he threatened you?”
“No. He hasn’t even spoken to me. But he still hates me. He’s in my nightmares. His eyes become part of the Nightmare Eyes.”
Tristan considered it, then shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with Nathan, but he wouldn’t hurt you. He’s a safeguard, Tessa. He protects people. I’ll call him on my way to class this morning and talk to him again. Besides, my mom’s dream will only happen if you leave Lilybrook. And you’re not going to do that. You are going to stay here, where it’s safe. I will bring Jillian and Logan to you.”
I studied Tristan’s face in the mirror. He looked tired, but his jaw was set. He’d failed to keep me safe in Twelve Lakes, and he was determined to make up for that in Lilybrook.
His phone dinged and he swiped the screen. “It’s another psychic responding to my email,” he said. “He owns a metaphysical shop in New Mexico. He even has a crystal ball, just like in Brinda’s drawing. He said he’ll keep an eye out for Jillian and Logan and call me right away if they show up.”
He wrapped his arms around me. “See, Clockwise? I’m getting lots of responses like this. Everything will be fine.”
I turned so I faced him and brought him in close, inhaling his scent of soap and strength and masculinity. The tighter he held me, the more my lungs opened up. Even the Nightmare Eyes dimmed a bit. I needed to stay here, in Lilybrook, in Tristan’s arms.
I couldn’t leave Lilybrook to look for my siblings, so Lilybrook would have to be my headquarters. Command Central. The mission: Find Jillian and Logan. Tristan and Aaron were my soldiers. From my post, I would oversee their investigations and help in every way I could.
Miss Bennett, the enthusiastic geometry teacher, jabbered away while scribbling angles and formulas on the whiteboard. The dry-erase markers squeaked, their acerbic scent permeating the room and making me slightly nauseated. The colorful triangles, squares and circles reminded me of Brinda’s crayon drawings. Chin propped in hand, I pretended to be copying the shapes and formulas into my notebook, but actually, I was writing a note.
The Connellys believed I was happily going about my life while imprisoned in Lilybrook because of Deirdre’s dream of a little silver-walled house that filled up with my blood, and had left the responsibility of finding my siblings to Tristan and Aaron. But I wasn’t happily going about my life. For the past three days, I’d been trying to contact my sister. Psionically.
I knew I couldn’t contact her telepathically—I could only do that with Tristan, and only when we were close. But when my family lived in Twelve Lakes, Jillian had been trying to develop remote vision, the same psionic ability our father had. Or at least, the psionic ability our dad used to have, before the APR neutralized him. Jillian had made some progress before her terrible headaches and bloody noses had driven her to quit—headaches and bloody noses that were manufactured by our mother so Jillian wouldn’t discover our parents’ murderous secrets.
Maybe now that our imprisoned, neutralized mother could no longer give her those headaches, Jillian could develop her mobile eye again.
Jillian thought I was dead, so she wouldn’t purposely send out her mobile eye to find me. But maybe if she thought of me, she would see me in Lilybrook. Alive. Safe.
Chances were slim. Almost zero. But I had to try.
As Miss Bennett scrawled formulas on the whiteboard, I continued my letter to Jillian.
I’d filled almost a page, willing Jillian to see it through my eyes, when the sound of my name brought me back to the classroom. I looked up from the notebook to see Miss Bennett, marker in hand, looking at me expectantly.
“Oh. Um... could you repeat the question, please?” I stammered.
“What is the formula for the surface area of a pyramid?” she repeated, not patiently.
I turned to my notebook to find the page with that formula, and saw that I hadn’t written a long letter to Jillian after all. After a few lines I’d stopped writing words, and instead had drawn a pair of circles, filled in solid black.
My Nightmare Eyes.
“You should know that formula by now, Tessa,” Miss Bennett said.
“I...” I sputtered, staring at the Nightmare Eyes on my
