But I also knew that Joss was still out there somewhere. She was in trouble. And I knew I would do whatever it took to get to her and make sure she was safe.
Even if what I have to do is completely impossible.
I was swinging hard now, concentrating on that last thought and not the pain. My ankle caught the rail support and I held it there, catching my breath for a moment. Hand over hand, I moved closer to it, wrapping my leg around the support up to the knee. Moments later I was pulling myself back under the rail and onto the concrete floor.
Part of me wanted to lie there and rest, maybe cry for everything that happened. But mostly my brain was in hyper-drive, the need to find Joss overriding everything else. I looked at the bodies around me. No one left to threaten. Where could she be? She could be anywhere. How are you gonna find her?
Okay, slow down. You gotta think. Think like Joss would think. I tried to quiet all the voices in my head, to clear out all the images. And as I knelt on the floor, clearing my head, the image that stayed was one of me kneeling, with Marco holding me down, Tony with the glow of fire on his face, Trina holding out her hand to me. Behind her was the house, the house on fire where Joss was trapped and no longer screaming.
Then I knew where Joss was and what Trina was going to do.
Chapter 18
Joss
“Finally. I thought you were never going to wake up.”
My head was a swimming mass of pain. Thoughts flooded in as I looked around the dark room. Where am I? Where’s Dylan? I’m chained to a bed, have they—? I looked down at myself, and that’s when I realized I was blindfolded.
I tried to calm down and take stock. I was sitting up against a headboard. I could feel the wooden stiles against my back and a heavy, metal chain wrapped around my upper body several times. My feet weren’t bound, but my clothes were still in place and I felt okay. Nothing had happened.
Nothing happened. I wondered how long I was going to keep repeating that to myself before I believed it.
Focus.
Someone was moving, walking toward me. I pulled my knees in to my chest, ready to defend my self.
“Joss, I’m just going to take off the blindfold. You want to be able to see, don’t you?” I recognized Trina’s voice. “I want to talk to you and I feel stupid doing it with that blindfold Corey put on you, but if you’re going to kick me, forget about it.”
“I won’t.” My voice came out all hoarse. My throat was sore. It made me think I had done more screaming than I remembered. I stretched my legs out again in a show of good faith.
“If your head hurts, it’s probably because the idiot dropped you on the way up the stairs. You rolled all the way to the bottom and smacked your head on the newel post. That’s probably why it took you so long to come around, but you should have seen Corey’s face, he was so embarrassed.”
Oh, well, at least it amused you. My headache did feel different than usual. I wondered if I had a concussion.
Her weight came down on the foot of the bed and she started to crawl toward me. Hands wrapped around my ankles and then she was straddling me, her palms smoothing up my jeans. My body recoiled at her touch, caught between a fight response and my order to lie still so she’d take off the blindfold. I didn’t want to be blinded and helpless again, but oh God, I didn’t want to be touched. She sat on my knees, pushing them painfully into the bed in the direction they weren’t meant to bend, and squeezed my thighs hard with her hands.
“You’ve had a hard night, haven’t you Joss?” She loosened her grip on my legs, her palms rubbing over the spot like she was trying to soothe. My skin crawled, but I was trying not to show it. It’s just Trina. She can’t really hurt you. But what if Corey’s still here? What if Marco’s here? You need the blindfold off. Then you’ll have full control over your Talent. You’ll be able to see what’s coming. You can put up with some girl pawing at you for a minute if it means getting the hell out of here and finding Dylan.
Please let Dylan be okay.
“Did you ever have one of those dreams where you’re just so sure it’s real? And then even after you wake up it feels like you’re still in it? And you’re totally confused. Am I awake or asleep? Was that a dream or not?”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think she really expected an answer.
She laughed softly. “Like that time I was messing with Dylan’s dream, where he couldn’t rescue you—that’s a big theme with him, by the way. When I was done with him, Tony drove me over to your house. Then next thing we know, Dylan’s there at your window. I must have been doing good work that night. Tony said the way he shimmied right up that tree, it didn’t look like the first time he’d climbed up to your room. So who’s been a naughty girl, Joss?”
“Do you have any kind of point?”
“I was just thinking that tonight must be like that for you. Corey gave me the whole play by play of what went down at the mall. And I know how much you don’t like to be the center of attention. It would be cool, wouldn’t it, to know that it never happened? That you fell asleep in your bed and you stayed there? You never went downtown. Never had those boys hold you down and look at you. Touch you.”
“Shut up.” Tears were leaking out of my eyes, being soaked up by the blindfold before they could run down my face.
“Your mom feels like that, you know.”
“What did you do to my mom?”
“Not a lot, really. I had some time to kill while we were there, but mostly I just mucked around in her head to see what I could learn about you. She’s complicated. More than you, actually. But the simple part of it is that she already feels like she’s living a nightmare. She’s already seeing your dad’s latest breakdown over and over. Probably when she’s awake, too. Of course when she’s asleep it’s all mixed up with that other time when he beat her up. The common thread, from what I can see? It’s always your fault.”
“Are you going to take this blindfold off or am I just going to kick you in the face?”
Pain exploded in my cheek when she punched me, and the room went spinning out of control. I sucked in a breath and then just tightened up against a flurry of blows. Trina wasn’t much of a fighter. It was mostly right-handed, not too much power after the first one that took me by surprise. The beating hurt, but I knew she wasn’t doing much damage. She wound down quickly and sagged back on my lap.
“That was for Tony you fucking bitch.” It sounded like she was talking through her hands. She was crying.
I swallowed blood from where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek rather than antagonize her by spitting it at her. I pressed my hands into the bed, trying to still the spinning. “What happened?”
“What did you think was going to happen when you got those Syndicate people arrested? You think those three were the only people they had working for them in this town? They executed him! They got him alone and they shot him in the head.”
She was sobbing, bouncing slightly on my knees, shaking the bed. I couldn’t help but put myself in her place. I was thinking about how I didn’t know where Dylan was right now. How I was trying to keep that fact in the back of my mind so the fear of it didn’t tie me into knots. I couldn’t ask Trina because she would probably just lie to me. She’d say something horrible, I’d have to wonder if it was true or not, and I’d be worse off with it than I already was. And asking her about my boyfriend, who was still alive, might just set her off again. Who knew what she’d do?
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You really expect me to believe that? Tell me, Joss, were you sorry when you let Jeff put his hands all over me in that stairwell a couple months ago?”
“I—” I don’t know what I was going to say, but I had started to reply when she yanked the blindfold off. It wasn’t really bright in the room, but it took a second for me to adjust. The light was coming from a single lamp behind her in the far corner of the room. It was a bedroom with just a few pieces of furniture, no knick-knacks or anything. The lam
p was in the corner between the two exterior walls and there were sheets of plywood nailed over the windows. There was something familiar about the room, but I couldn’t quite place it. Then I realized I was turning my head too much to look around. Because there was black at the edges of my vision. Tunnel vision, dizziness, nausea, the different kind of headache…. Concussion. Just keep talking. “Yeah, I was. But it wasn’t real, was it?”
“When did you figure that out? Because I know you thought it was real at the time. I could see it on your face. And every time you looked at me for the next few weeks, when you thought I was ignoring you. Yeah, I think you were sorry.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Don’t think I liked it. It was totally gross. But I had just started seeing Tony and Marco was giving us a hard time. He didn’t trust me and Tony had asked me to make nice with him. Marco thought you were a Talent. Figured that’s why you act so weird all the time, keep to yourself. I figure that and you’re just a stuck-up bitch. But anyway, I agreed to let Jeff paw at me to see if you’d do anything to stop it. But you didn’t, did you?”
“I would have. If it had gone too far—”
“Too far? How much farther were you gonna let it go?”
My eyes filled again. She was right. It had already gone too far and I didn’t help her. Why are you crying about it now, when you know it wasn’t real?
“Joss, Joss, Joss. You’re such a freak, you know that? I don’t know why I ever wanted to be friends with you. But that’s the other reason I did it. Emily almost got us killed. You and your friend dragged me into that abandoned house and set it on fire! And then you had the nerve to be mad at me for telling the truth about it!”
“They sent her to State School! They took her away forever. You did that. Doesn’t that bother you at all?”
“Not as much as it bothered me to almost be burned alive.”
“Well considering the company you’ve been keeping, it’s hard to believe that bothered you so much.”
“Why, because I’m attracted to someone who can actually control their Talent? Someone with that much power who knows how to use it?” She covered her mouth with her hand, as though she realized she was mistakenly talking about Tony in the present tense. “You could have been there for me the way Tony was. You’ve known about your Talent for a long time. You’ve practiced with it. Don’t you think I could have used a friend like you when I realized what I could do?”
Why, did it scare you to find out you were like us? That you might be taken away the same way you had Emily taken away?
Maybe that was true. “You could have told me.”
“Yeah, sure. Like you wouldn’t have been running right off to report the girl who sold out your precious Emily.”
“I wouldn’t have. I would never do that.”
“Yeah, right. Well, as it happens, I didn’t need you. I got to be friends with Krista instead.”
I guess I’d realized Trina and Krista hung out together, but I didn’t really pay enough attention to who was friends with whom, you know? When Krista got taken away by NIAC, I’d been thinking about another Talent being taken, the implication to me and the other Talents in general. I never really thought about who her friends were.
“This is her house, you know. Her room.”
That’s why it looks familiar. I recognize parts of this room from pictures Marco had of Krista.
“After they took her,” Trina continued, “her parents just packed up what they needed and moved out. Left town. Most of their stuff’s gone now. Mom and I were here a lot, having yard sales for them, trying to get rid of it. Took a lot of stuff to the thrift store. Her parents didn’t want to bring much, you know, like they wanted to forget their whole life here. And her, too. I wonder if your parents will be like that after you’re gone.”
“Marco knew about Krista. He had pictures of her using her Talent. After she was taken, he tried to use them to blackmail—” I cut myself off.
“To blackmail Kat. I know about Kat’s Talent, Joss. I was there when Marco found out about it, remember?” She made a disgusted noise in her throat.
“How did Marco know about Krista?”
She shrugged negligently. “Maybe because I told Tony about her.”
“So Emily and Krista. They’re both on you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know if Marco was actually the one to turn her in, but maybe. So what? Look, I wanted to be with Tony. I needed to be with Tony. He was gonna be the one to take care of me. I had to give him something to show him he could trust me.”
“But you couldn’t trust him. Look what he—”
She slapped me. Hard. “Just shut up. You’re not allowed to talk about Tony. So he told Marco. Yeah, so what? They’re cousins. They talk about stuff. And maybe Marco did something with that, and maybe Krista got hurt. But I didn’t take those pictures and neither did Tony. I didn’t turn her in and neither did Tony. And it didn’t mean anything between us. It didn’t have anything to do with how we felt about each other.”
“Okay.”
She slapped me again. “And don’t give me that tone—like you’re talking me down off a ledge or something. Like you wouldn’t push me off if you had the chance. If it’s anyone’s fault I had to tell Tony about Krista, it’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yeah, yours. If you hadn’t turned your back on me, if you’d kept being my friend, then I would have had someone around who’d have my back. Someone strong enough to take on NIAC, keep me out of State School. I wouldn’t have had to go after Tony. Not that I didn’t love him. Not that I’d change anything I did. I’m just saying, if you’d been looking out for me like you should have, maybe everything would have been different. But you weren’t. Because you’ve spent the last dozen years hating me for something that totally wasn’t even my fault!”
“I haven’t. I’ve barely even thought about you.”
She slapped me again. And that was getting old. “What, is that supposed to make it better? Am I supposed to actually believe you? Am I supposed to believe that if you found out about my Talent you wouldn’t have been running off to get revenge? No fucking way. But I’m the one who’s gonna get revenge. Tony and I talked about this all the time. Since Krista’s been gone we’ve come up here a lot. We used to lie in this bed and talk about how we were gonna make you sorry for everything you did to me. It was actually his idea to recreate the fire here. Krista’s dad owns this whole subdivision and moved them into the first house. It’s perfect because there aren’t any neighbors yet. Things will be able to really get going before anyone notices there’s a house on fire. Tony was good at thinking of things like that. He was supposed to be here for that part. But thanks to you, he’s not. So it’s gonna be gasoline.”
I could smell it now, realized I’d been smelling it all along, but my injured brain had been refusing to process what it might mean. What she was saying now sunk in slower than it should have. I started to struggle against the chains. “Don’t,” was all I could say.
Maybe you could use the desk or the dresser to break the bed. If that doesn’t work, you could probably flip the bed and break it, get out of these chains. I reached out with my mind for the desk chair, ready to knock Trina to the floor. It wouldn’t budge.
“Don’t bother,” she said, following my eyes across the room. “It’s all nailed down. All the furniture in this room, boards nailed over the windows.”
It shouldn’t matter, I thought. So what if things are nailed down? That fire escape was bolted to the building. You can lift steel girders—you could flip cars if you wanted to. But not right now. Not with a head injury.
She was still talking. “There were still some books on the shelves, things like that, because the realtor said it made it look more homey, but I took all those things out. Anything you could hit me with. So just give it up. This is happening. Because it’s what you deserve.”
Why do people keep saying that to me? That’s what went through m
y head as she climbed off me. I was letting her get to me when I should be thinking of how to get out of this. I remembered that my legs were free and I could kick her, but it was too late. She was already too far away from me.
“Nice try. Bitch. Here’s how this is going to happen. Just so you know what to expect, because this is why I took the blindfold off. I’ve got gasoline poured downstairs near all the good entry points. And I’ve got a trail going so they’ll all catch when I throw this down on my way out.” She flicked a Zippo and waved it at me. “Tony gave me this. He said, ‘For when I’m not around to light your fire.’ He said cute stuff like that. I know he never thought he just wouldn’t be around anymore, but I’ve still got this, and he’d be happy knowing I used it to end you. Anyway, the fire is going to come up the stairs and into this room. I don’t think it’s going to spread too fast around the rest of the house. Tony and I talked about the fact that I want you to be able to see the flames coming for you. I want you to be around a while, like when we were kids, and I don’t want you to choke from smoke inhalation too fast. Without Tony to actually control the fire, I’ve had to rely on some quick Internet research to put this all together, but I think it’s gonna work out okay. Fast enough to end you before the fire department will get in to get you out, but slow enough that you’ll get…the experience I’m going for.”
“Trina, don’t do this. Look, I’m sorry about everything, okay? You’re right, we should have stuck together after Emily. I never should have turned my back on you.”
“And what? Are you about to tell me that we can change it all now? Now we can be friends again, if I’ll just stop the madness?”
“No.”
“Good. Thanks for not treating me like a moron and making the last words anyone ever hears you say something that stupid.”