the eggs. “Does it hurt to be neutralized?”
“No. It’s like blowing out a candle. In fact, your dad’s headaches will probably stop.”
That, at least, was a tiny bit comforting. But my mom’s PK was as much a part of her life as me, or air. She couldn’t survive without it, or want to.
Thank God Jillian and Logan weren’t here. My parents were right to send them away before driving up here. They wouldn’t want to live without their PK either.
The cell door opened again and I jolted, my fork clanging to the floor, and again I lowered the fog. A dark-skinned woman in a lab coat entered, a thick green binder in one arm. “Hello, Tessa. I’m Dr. Sheldon. Do you remember me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She was the one who’d put her palm on my forehead and looked inside my mind. She was gentle. Warm. “Can I see my mom and dad now?”
She tilted her head. “Sweetheart, do you understand why your parents are here?”
“No.” I didn’t understand anything anymore.
“I told her,” Tristan said. “But she won’t believe me.”
Dr. Sheldon clucked. “I wouldn’t want to believe something like that about my parents either.” She patted the binder. A series of letters and numbers was printed on the spine: CARS0520. “But we have evidence.”
So Dr. Sheldon was a liar too.
“Any news about Tessa’s brother and sister?” Tristan asked. “Did we find them yet?”
They were still looking for Jillian and Logan?
“Let’s see.” She opened the binder and flipped through the pages. “Their parents gave them all their cash before sending them away on foot. We have an agent watching the house in case they return, but so far no one knows where they are.”
“We’ll find them for you, Tessa,” Tristan said. “I promise.”
Impossible. Jillian and Logan were too smart to go back to our house. They knew better than to return to Twelve Lakes. With all our money, and without me to ruin everything, they could run forever.
“Poor kids,” Dr. Sheldon said. “They must be very frightened.”
Terrified, I was certain. Jillian was probably disguising her terror with anger. Logan was probably not bothering to hide it. But the important thing was they weren’t imprisoned in this horrid APR place, being neutralized. As long as they weren’t here, they would be okay.
Dr. Sheldon held up her palms. “Stand up for a minute. I need to examine you again.” She placed one hand on my forehead and one on the back of my neck, then closed her eyes.
I tried to think about nothing. Just empty space. Fog. As nice as she was, I didn’t want her inside my mind. Tristan was being nice too, and I couldn’t trust him.
After a few minutes, she took my chin in her hand, a frown on her face and alarm in her eyes. “I don’t know what it is that I’m seeing deep in that mind of yours, Tessa, but I don’t like it. You have me very worried. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here for a while.”
She made some notes in the file. “Completely neutral,” she muttered with a pitiful shake of her head, then closed the binder and tucked it in the crook of her arm. With a warning to Tristan to watch me carefully, she left, taking the binder with her.
* * *
Hearing all those awful lies about my parents and the guilt over causing all this misery to everyone I loved made me despise myself. Before Tristan could even offer a comforting word, I went into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. It was the only place I could go to escape from him.
I shed my clothes and stepped behind the shower curtain, then started the water. I washed myself again, scrubbing as hard as I had last night.
When I was five and Jillian was six, we were on a softball team. The Dragonflies. We were the best team in the league, and my sister was the star player, no surprise. She hit every ball. It wasn’t until I hit three home runs in a single game that our parents realized Jillian had been using her psychokinesis to control the ball the entire season. They made her stop. It wasn’t fair, they’d said. It wasn’t right.
My parents were ethical. Moral. Honest.
They had not blackmailed anyone. They had not murdered anyone. They had not lied to us this whole time.
They had not.
I ran my fingers over the scars on my belly.
Shattered glass.
No.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dressed in my gray prison uniform, I shuffled out to the cell. I stopped short at the sight of Melissa and Philip—no, Amy and Heath—standing with Tristan. Instantly on guard, I lowered the fog, just a bit. Amy and Heath had been in on Kellan’s plot the whole time. Any kindness they’d shown me in Twelve Lakes was fake.
“Oh, Sarah,” Amy said, wringing her hands. “We’re so sorry.”
“Her name is Tessa,” Tristan said.
“That’s right. Tessa.” She brushed my cheek and I flinched. “I just want to check your injuries.”
“I’m fine,” I said, stepping away.
“I won’t hurt you,” she said. “I’m a healer. And Heath’s a safeguard. He feels awful he couldn’t protect you from Kellan. We both do. He sent us away Friday night and said he didn’t need us anymore. Neither of us knew he was going to do what he did.”
Heath, sighing regretfully, shook his head.
“Heath’s a bodyguard?” I asked.
“Not just a bodyguard,” Tristan said, “A safeguard. He protects people from physical and psionic harm. That’s why your dad couldn’t see me with his remote vision.”
So Tristan wasn’t one of the five percent who were immune to my father’s mobile eye after all. No wonder Heath was always around.
Heath clapped Tristan on the back.
“Hey, man. Thanks,” Tristan said, shaking Heath’s left hand with an awkward laugh. The knuckles on his right hand were bruised and swollen.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Amy sighed. “We’ll leave you alone. We’re just glad you’re safe now, Sarah—I mean, Tessa.”
I didn’t reply, and they turned away. The door sealed shut behind them.
“That day, when I pushed you away from the falling tree?” Tristan said. “The tackle fractured your collarbone. Amy healed it.”
I remembered how she’d run her fingers over my collarbone as I’d sat on her kitchen table, and how the pain had disappeared. “Oh.”
“And
