Deception So Dark Read online

  Tristan took my hand as we climbed the back stairwell to the second floor. “Brinda’s precognitive,” he said. “She’s the one who predicted where we would find your family. Remember that drawing of twelve lakes in the evidence binder?”

  I did. While trying to prove my parents were innocent, I had Tristan help me swipe the binder of evidence the APR had collected against them. That binder also contained notes from the APR’s psychics who’d predicted where my family would go. One note was a crayon drawing of twelve misshapen circles in blue, with wave symbols. Twelve Lakes.

  We stopped at a closed door covered with crayon scribbles and heart and butterfly stickers. A wooden plaque with the name BRINDA painted in pink block letters hung in the middle. “Brinda’s a little girl?” I asked.

  Tristan raised his finger to his lips. “Shh. In a way she is. No talking, though. She doesn’t like noise.” He brushed his hand on the door rather than knocking on it.

  The door opened a tiny crack, and from up high, an olive-brown eye peered out. Tristan grinned and wiggled his fingers.

  The door swung open wider, and a tall Indian woman with shiny black hair jumped up and down at the sight of him, clapping her hands but stopping just before they touched. Tristan held his arms open and she threw herself into them.

  An older gentleman, black hair peppered with gray, sat at a short table inside the room. Smiling, he raised his hand in greeting to us. His other hand held a red plastic beach pail filled with Crayolas.

  Brinda hugged me next, towering over me as she wrapped me in her arms. She is a child, I sensed as I timidly hugged her back. A child in a woman’s body. Eyes young and innocent, like she’d never been sad or scared in her life, and all she’d ever known was love and adoration and peace.

  How different from my life. How wonderful. I hugged her tighter.

  She’s forty years old, Tristan told me telepathically, but she never developed mentally past the age of four. She’s never spoken a word.

  Does she live in here? The silent room was set up like a playhouse. It even had a wooden play kitchen. Every surface—walls, table, floor—was covered with stickers and crayon marks.

  This is just her playroom. She has no idea she’s making predictions for the APR.

  Who’s that? I gestured to the man at the table.

  That’s her dad. He’s neutral. One of the few neutrals who knows about this place. They lived in New York until an APR sensor discovered her when she was five. Then they moved to Lilybrook.

  Brinda stared at me for a moment, head tilted, then she curled her fingers into a claw and swiped across her stomach. She pointed at me with her eyebrows raised.

  My hands fluttered to my belly. Yes, that’s me, I confirmed with a nod.

  Her eyes wide and sympathetic, she gestured for Tristan and me to sit at the table, and offered each of us a plastic teacup. We held them up so she could pour invisible tea from a pink plastic kettle. I pretended to take a sip.

  Put the ballet shoe and sheet music on the table, Tristan instructed. I did, and Brinda put her teacup down and grabbed the shoe.

  I cringed at her rough treatment of the shoe, and had to force myself not to speak as she bent it back and forth. Mr. Lakhani wagged his finger, and Brinda stopped, placing it on the table. She touched it gently, then looked at her dad for approval. He nodded.

  Brinda held out her palm, and he obediently reached into his pocket and presented her with a sticker. A red heart. She handed it to Tristan and pointed to the ceiling. With a silent chuckle, Tristan stood, and stuck it where she directed.

  Brinda turned back to the items on the table. The air in the silent room became still and heavy as her eyes dulled, her expression flat, emotionless. A mannequin.

  Mr. Lakhani slowly raised the pail of crayons. Brinda pulled out a red crayon, then, on a sheet of drawing paper from the stack on the table, drew an oblong rectangle and a square. With a black crayon, she drew four circles underneath it.

  Is that a truck? I asked Tristan. Like a red pickup truck?

  Looks like it, he replied. Maybe that’s what Jillian and Logan are driving. Or what they will drive in the future. We should check car dealerships.

  Yeah. There’s probably thousands of them, but someone’s bound to remember two teenagers buying a red pickup truck with cash.

  Brinda slid the drawing aside, then took another sheet. With a black crayon she scribbled a shapeless loop, then stabbed it with black dots.

  That kind of looks like the shape of the United States, Tristan said.

  I didn’t see it until he said it, but he was right. It did look like the U.S. What do the black dots mean?

  Maybe all the places they’re going to go?

  I hoped not. There were dozens of them.

  Brinda made a few more drawings, most of them shapes that could be cars or buildings. One page had two black curves that at first I thought were smiles, but when she added black lines sticking down from them, made them look like closed eyelids with eyelashes. Another was a circle on what could be a short pedestal.

  I know what that is. Tristan squeezed my hand excitedly. That’s a crystal ball. Maybe they’re going to visit a psychic.

  That makes sense, I said. We tried to ask that college professor for help. In Twelve Lakes, Jillian, Logan, and I had sought help by emailing a professor who taught parapsychology, hoping he was psychic, or at least knew others who were. That endeavor ended tragically when he died of a brain aneurysm—one that our mother had planted in him. But Jillian and Logan didn’t know that part of the story. It was entirely possible that they’d ask another psychic for help.

  The APR has a huge database of psychics around the country, Tristan said. I’ll get that list. We can ask them to be on the lookout for Jillian and Logan.

  Brinda’s next drawing was not as easy to interpret. It featured two brown rectangles, one vertical and one horizontal, with four lines sticking from the bottom of the horizontal one—legs? She added a small black circle inside the vertical rectangle. That could be a deer, I said, with one eye.

  Or a horse.

  A horse with one eye. What does that mean?

  Brinda dug deep in the pail, finally withdrawing a silver crayon. She drew a large square, then filled it in. The silver reflected the florescent light from the ceiling, so bright I had to blink against it. Her eyes on me, Brinda took the red crayon again, and slashed it across the silver square. She slashed it, again and again, angry red slashes, hard enough to tear through the paper.

  Tristan gripped my hand. What does that mean?

  I shook my head as Mr. Lakhani forcibly took the crayon from Brinda. She pouted for a moment, then slid the ripped-up paper across the table to me, and nodded.

  That drawing was a prediction about me.

  Through the slashes of red, the silver glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.

  Silently, Tristan stacked the papers. We’ll take these home to interpret them, he said. He took the drawing of the silver square and angry red slashes, but he hesitated first, like he didn’t want to touch it.

  Low, soft thuds on my ceiling woke me up early Saturday morning. A rustling. Mac whined from my floor. Then, from across the room, a low chuckle that could only belong to Tristan.

  “Tristan?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s still early. Go back to sleep if you can.”

  No problem there. My school days were spent keeping the fog balanced, avoiding Melanie’s hurt, betrayed gaze, and pretending Nathan’s glares and Winter’s smirks didn’t bother me. My evenings were spent half-doing homework, trying to interpret Brinda’s crayon drawings, and retreating from Deirdre’s nervous mothering. My darkest hours were spent biting back screams against the glowering, glaring, glimmering Nightmare Eyes. And every minute of every hour of every day was spent wondering where Jillian and Logan were.

  Tristan caressed my cheek and I drifted off again.

  Soon, though, he wok
e me up again with a murmur. “Happy birthday, Clockwise.” His lips brushed over my neck, my collarbone. “The girl with wildflower eyes. My girl with wildflower eyes.”

  Wildflower eyes still closed, I ran my hand over his scruffy jaw. My birthday. Seventeen. The first birthday in eight years that I didn’t think would be my last.

  The first birthday in my life that I wasn’t spending with my family.

  Did they even know it was my birthday? My mother knew, I was certain. She might even be hoping I’d come visit her in the Underground today, but I wasn’t ready to see her. My unconscious father definitely did not know it was my birthday. Jillian and Logan, wherever they were, would know. But they thought I was dead, murdered by Dennis Connelly, so they would be especially sad today.

  Today was my birthday. I was seventeen. And I did not have a family.

  God, I wanted my mom. I wanted my dad. The mom and dad I grew up with. The mom who braided my hair and taught me how to cook and called me Babydoll. The dad who helped me with my homework and called me Tessa Blessa.

  No. No. The mom and dad I grew up with were liars. Thieves. Killers. They destroyed lives. The atrocious things they did burned through my blood like a disease. Tainting me, marking me, scarring me. Branding me Killers’ Spawn. I hated them, and I never wanted to see them again.

  Tristan smoothed the hair from my forehead. “Okay, birthday girl, open your eyes.”

  The soft thuds against my ceiling were making me curious, so I shoved my ugly thoughts into the fog and pried open an eyelid. Silver balloons danced around the lavender streamers that hung all over my room. I smiled sleepily at Tristan. “You did this?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t easy,” he said. “You were so restless, and I didn’t want you to wake up and see me.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Lavender was the closest I could find to periwinkle.”

  “It’s perfect. I love it. Thank you.” One balloon had my name on it. TESSA. Each letter a different color: red, yellow, blue, green, purple. I was still not used to seeing my real name written on paper. To see it emblazoned on a balloon was something I’d never even imagined.

  The balloons swayed back and forth, up and down, around and around. Hypnotizing. The silver Mylar reflected in the mirror, making little prisms that danced on the walls.

  Silver, like the square on Brinda’s drawing.

  Silver, like the angry flashes of the Nightmare Eyes.

  Silver, like the ribbon from my Winterball dress that Kellan used to capture and blindfold me.

  Silver, like the knives my parents used to murder Timothy Brunswick and Kip Gallagher.

  I shoved those thoughts into the fog too. Today was my birthday, and my beautiful, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered boyfriend had woken me up with seventeen balloons and streamers almost in my favorite color and kisses.

  It was still early, and the house was quiet. Dennis and Deirdre were still asleep. I lifted my covers, inviting Tristan to crawl into bed with me. With a wicked grin, he slipped under the blanket. I grabbed him, kissed him hard, then kissed him again, harder. I couldn’t kiss him hard enough, or passionately enough. My love for him was a tangible thing, mountainous, colossal, and a kiss could not contain it.

  He slid his hand behind my head, but didn’t kiss me back. For a long moment he gazed at me and caressed my cheek with his thumb. “How is it possible,” he breathed, “for one person to be so beautiful?”

  Then he dove at me. My mouth, my neck. “Every part of you.” He peppered kisses along my collarbone, then below it. “Every inch. Beautiful.”

  The professional Borderline that he’d dictated when he was an agent and I was his target existed no more. His lips traveled lower and lower, down to my breasts, then even lower. He lifted my flannel pajama top and ran kisses across my stomach as if it hadn’t been defaced by five hideous scars, then his kisses traveled back, a centimeter at a time, all the way up to my lips.

  He suddenly flew from the bed, moments before there was a sharp rap on the door. “That’s enough, you two,” Deirdre’s stern voice called from the other side.

  Mortification spread through my cheeks, making them impossibly hot. The door swung open and Deirdre came in. She looked from me to Tristan, who was sprawled casually on the overstuffed chair and giving her an innocent shrug. She didn’t believe it for one moment. She gave me a final glance, and maybe there was terror on my face—my own mother would have gone ballistic and slammed things into walls, maybe even me—because in a slightly softer tone she said, “Happy birthday, Tessa. Come downstairs. We have presents for you.”

  When she left, Tristan grinned devilishly and tossed the tousled hair from his eyes, but I wanted to hide under the covers and never come out. “Your mother is going to kick me out of your house.”

  “She will not.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me from the bed. “Come on, Clockwise. Time for presents.”

  ❀

  Downstairs, more streamers in lavender, pink, and green twisted around the banisters and hung from the chandelier. A store-bought cake with white frosting, sprinkles, and Happy Birthday Tessa 17! in pink icing sat on the dining room table. “Breakfast birthday cake is our family tradition,” Tristan said.

  “Open your presents first,” Ember said, clapping. At her feet, Aria yipped and wagged her tail. Dennis and Deirdre piled presents around me. The only things I really wanted were Jillian and Logan, but the Connellys were trying so hard, I couldn’t help smiling.

  I kept waiting for one of them, or all of them, to remember that I was Killers’ Spawn.

  “The big one is from Dennis and me,” Deirdre said.

  The box was huge, actually. Dennis and Deirdre looked so pleased, so proud. I untied the green bow, tore the Snoopy and Woodstock wrapping. Lifted the flaps and peered inside.

  Silver flashed.

  No, not silver. Stainless steel pots and pans. Cookie sheets and mixing bowls. A whisk, a spatula, a timer, a food thermometer. Little jars of spices. Aluminum foil and parchment paper. Cookbooks. Flour, sugar, extra-virgin olive oil, a variety of specialty vinegars. And a cutlery set: Six knives with black handles and long silver blades.

  This time, the silver blinded me. The knives looked identical to the set in my family’s kitchen in Kitteridge, Virginia, the ones my parents used to stab Kip Gallagher and Timothy Brunswick.

  I blinked, and when I could see again, I saw that Deirdre’s smile had faded. “You don’t like it?” she asked. “Tristan said you like to cook.”

  “I, um…” I did like to cook. I used to cook dinner every night with my mother. But my mother was a killer. All those evenings we’d spent cooking together were a lie.

  “We can return everything and get something you like,” Deirdre said, her hands flittering to her throat. She looked like she was holding back tears.

  I didn’t want to make her cry, and it truly was a thoughtful gift, so I put a smile on my face. “The cooking stuff is great, Deirdre. Really. Thank you.”

  That seemed to make her feel better, because she smiled back.

  “Mine next,” Tristan said. He handed me a shoebox shape, semi-heavy, in periwinkle paper.

  I unwrapped it: Tubes of oil paint.

  He handed me more boxes, and I unwrapped them one by one: Brushes, from tiny to large. Then palettes, and paint cleaners, a drop cloth, and a dozen canvases in all sizes.

  “I set up an easel in the sunroom for you,” Tristan said.

  My parents had taken painting away from me. But I could do it now. I could paint. I could paint, and then I could hang my canvases on the wall, on every wall, for everyone to see. My parents couldn’t take painting away from me, ever again.

  Tristan understood that.

  “Thank you, Tristan.” My heart was so full of love for him I thought it would explode out of my rib cage. Thank you so much.

  He tucked me under his arm and held me tight.

  “My turn!” Ember sprang up. She darted from the room and returned, holding a sm
all wicker basket. Lining the basket was a fluffy cream-colored blanket.

  And curled up on the blanket was a tiny orange kitten.

  “She’s the runt of the litter,” Ember said. “Her mother rejected her.”

  She placed the basket on my lap. I couldn’t stop staring at the kitten. The runt of the litter. My brother and sister used to taunt me with that name because I was so small and didn’t have a psychic power.

  “Ember,” Dennis said, “I told you to stop bringing animals home from the shelter.”

  “You also keep telling me that Tessa’s a member of this family now and I need to make her feel welcome,” she said. “I have Lyric and Aria, and Tristan has Mac. So I’m giving Tessa a cat. She needs a pet of her own, too.”

  I wasn’t a member of this family. But I wanted this orange kitten. The runt of the litter. Tiny, parent-less, and taken in by the Connellys. We belonged together.

  The kitten yawned and rolled onto her side, her paws pink and curled. What was it like to sleep that soundly, to feel that safe and content? No dreams of silver knives and Nightmare Eyes for this little kitten.

  Ember continued to pout. “You know she’ll behave, Dad. I’ll make her the best-behaved kitten in the world. Please? You won’t be sorry. One day this kitten will save Tessa’s life. You’ll see.”

  Tristan laughed. “Dad, come on,” he said. “Look at Tessa. She loves that kitten already.”

  “Dennis,” Deirdre said, one eyebrow raised.

  “Please?” I begged.

  Dennis gave a sigh that was half exasperation and half laugh. “Fine.”

  Ember and I exchanged grins. The kitten was mine. “Thank you, Ember.” I rubbed the kitten’s chin, softly, so I wouldn’t wake her. She purred.

  “What are you going to name her?” Ember asked.

  She was light orange, and sweet and warm all curled up in her basket. Like orange marmalade on toast—Jillian’s favorite breakfast. “Marmalade,” I said. “She’s my little Marma-lady.”

  ❀

  While we were eating my birthday breakfast cake, the doorbell rang. Dennis went to answer the door and came back with an envelope in hand. “For you, Tessa.”