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  “Reid,” I said again, this time reaching for him.

  “Concentrate, Josie.”

  Since he refused to acknowledge my concerns, I replayed what he’d said and focused my attention on the room’s layout. No way in hell would I let his efforts be wasted.

  He moved behind the podium and turned to me.

  “Now, act like I’m the VP. You are going to walk from behind the curtain and step up to me.”

  “Hey, you two!” Santos called from the back of the fake room.

  I waved to Santos as he weaved through the tables to the stage.

  “Josie Harper,” Reid said in an announcer voice.

  I did as Reid instructed and stopped in front of him.

  “You’ll need to come in closer.” I shuffled my feet forward to where I could smell his signature scent. Dear Loki.

  His dark hair fell into his eyes as he shifted his arms. “He’ll hand you the certificate with his left hand, and you’ll accept on the opposite side of the document. Then, with your right hand, you’ll shake his hand and slip the vial into his palm. You’ll pause for a photograph as you shake hands, making the exchange behind the award. Let’s try it.”

  “Hold up,” Santos said. He heaved himself onto the stage from the floor. “If you’re practicing the handoff, show me where I’m supposed to be.”

  Reid pointed to the back corner. “The first table you passed by. Just got confirmation from Mr. Mac that you’ll be sitting with Mrs. Harper.”

  Santos bobbed his head in understanding. “Right on.”

  “You set up the cameras on the buildings surrounding the Oceanside Hotel?” Reid asked.

  “Not yet,” Santos said. “You know that hotel backs up to a mangrove swamp, right? There’s a manmade beach behind the hotel, but on either side, it’s bracketed by preserves.”

  “You like to paddleboard,” Reid said.

  Santos seemed to consider that for a moment. “Working in a little fun in the sun—I like where your mind’s at.”

  His roll-with-the-punches positivity reminded me of Hannah. The two of them really would be great together. All pom-poms and popcorn and Zen.

  In a blink, he wore board shorts, sunglasses, and a white tee. Santos glanced down at himself. “Thanks, boss.”

  “Enjoy the beach,” Reid said.

  Santos slipped through the door at the back of the fake room, and the stage became brighter, pulling my attention up. More lights turned on, beaming overhead.

  Reid followed my line of sight. “It will be bright and hot onstage. Okay, let’s do it again at a normal pace.” An empty vial appeared in my right hand.

  “Okay.” Stepping in to Reid, I reached my left hand toward his hand, where a rectangular paper appeared. I clasped the edge of the document and slipped my hand into his, the vial between our hands. Pleased with the easy exchange, I peeked up to gage Reid’s reaction.

  A tiny amount of blood trickled from his nose.

  He’d been pushing himself too hard, too fast—all for me. He was deteriorating before my eyes. I couldn’t let him do this to himself. I cared about him.

  Our eyes locked.

  I Pushed a tissue into my left hand, replacing the fake award, and lifted it toward his face.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Just…” My right hand still in his, I tightened my hold and pulled him toward me. The space between us closed, and he bent his head to mine. I wiped the blood away.

  His gaze ping-ponged around my face, finally settling on my eyes. I pushed onto my toes and ever so lightly pressed my lips to his. He didn’t recoil, but he didn’t kiss me back, either. His lips were like cotton candy—soft and sweet.

  Flat-footed, I said, “Thank you…for this.”

  He slowly straightened to his full height. “Welcome.” The word came out gruff.

  I didn’t want to care about him. I didn’t want to attach emotion to the people involved in this situation, especially Reid. It would complicate things. Oculi life was already complicated enough.

  Funny—complicated things usually intrigued me the most.

  Reid

  “C

  ’mon.” I jumped off the stage and offered my hand to Josie to help her down. As soon as her hand was in mine, she Retracted the rest of the practice room, and we stood in the middle of the warehouse.

  “What was that for?”

  “One,” she said, “because I can use the practice. And, two, because you’re doing too much Pushing and Retracting. This is going to hurt you. You have to let me do more…”

  I backed to the living room area, her still advancing. “Are you seriously mad at me?”

  “Yes, I’m mad. You were bleeding. You shouldn’t have Pushed that elaborate stage in the first place.”

  The backs of my legs hit the couch, and I sat. She plopped down on the couch next to me. I couldn’t stop studying her lips that had just been on mine. I didn’t want to like it, her little kiss, but I did, because I liked her. I had for a long time. But it was different now. I couldn’t like her—I just needed to teach her and protect her.

  Her hand reached toward me, slow enough that I could’ve withdrawn or swiped it away. But I didn’t. She lifted the sleeve of my shirt and traced over the black lines of my tattoo with her index finger. “What’s it mean?”

  I watched her finger trail over my skin, as light and cool as a summer breeze, but it was like an electric shock I felt in my chest. “It’s called a Dragon’s Eye,” I said. “It combines the triangle’s meaning of threat with the letter Y, which means a choice of good and evil.” I traced the inverted triangle with my own finger, then the Y that connected the points of the triangle. “As a whole, it stands for the balance of love, power, and wisdom. It’s a symbol of protection.”

  Josie switched her focus to fiddling with a hole in her jeans. “If I gave it to you, why don’t you just get rid of it? Retract it?”

  “One, people have seen it on me. Two, I like what it symbolizes. Three, Nick was my friend. It makes me feel closer to him.” I didn’t tell her that I’d kept it for her.

  She stared at me.

  I hoped I was doing the right thing by telling her. I twisted toward her, and the inches between us shrunk. “The time he spent at the Hub…was with me. He and I trained together. Learned together. That’s one of the reasons why your mom called me. I knew Nick. I know your family, uh, situation.”

  Josie’s facial expressions didn’t change. I thought for sure she’d be cursing me by now. Finally, she said, “I know. I’m glad my mom called you. You were my brother’s best friend, Cal. I know how close the two of you were. I remember you.”

  It was the first time she’d called me by my given name. But Cal—the person I had been—was dead.

  “Josie, I—”

  Her hand skimmed over my tattoo, and my stomach clenched from her touch. I watched her ease closer, getting a better look at the ink on my upper arm, and she turned her face to mine. Her flushed cheeks begged to be touched. The air between us was heavy, making it impossible to breathe. My lungs burned, struggling to pull in oxygen.

  I saw the questions in Josie’s eyes, and, for once, they didn’t pertain to anything Oculi. Tucking her foot farther under her, she shifted higher. It was an intentional movement, one I couldn’t ignore if I wanted to. She’d purposely made a decision to move closer.

  A war broke out between my head and body. I wanted to breathe her in, drink her up, feel her against me. Every cell in my body whispered her name. My brain knew better, though. If I acted on my feelings, it would make things difficult; it would change things between us. I couldn’t put my wants above the Resistance, above the mission, above the greater good.

  I wanted to answer the questions she held in her eyes, to confirm her hunches, to let her know how I felt about her. I wanted to press my lips to hers, but I couldn’t.

  I wouldn’t.

  Needing to put distance between her body and mine, I stood up. “Good job on the handoff. Let’s
get you home.”

  17.

  Josie

  R

  eid’s abrupt change of mood played heavily on my mind. I knew he’d been right there with me. I’d traced the tattoo on his arm, and his eyes had darkened, his pupils widening until only a ring of blue outlined the black. His breathing had changed, and I’d counted the accelerated pulse in his neck. Then he’d pulled away.

  So why did he stop?

  Was it something I did? Something I’d said?

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  It was like an annoying game-show buzzer sounded in my head.

  I didn’t like when people poked and prodded at my past, or when they asked me about topics I didn’t want to discuss. Nobody really brought up Nick. Since we’d moved shortly after his death, I didn’t think many people in Oceanside even knew that I’d had an older brother. But questions about my dad—yeah, those still caught me off guard.

  And then I’d gone and called Reid Cal, reminding him of the life he’d left behind. Bringing back all the memories of him leaving everyone he knew and loved just to draw attention away from my family and me.

  For both of our sakes, I needed to concentrate on the mission. Neither of us could afford distractions. Neither of us needed reminding of the pasts we couldn’t change.

  I burst through the door into the kitchen, my entire body tingling from adrenaline and mixed emotions. “Mom,” I yelled. Every day marked a day closer to the award ceremony. Every day could be my last. I didn’t want to waste that time fighting or arguing with her.

  Eli ran down the stairs, his brows pulled up in concern. Mom followed behind him, not quite as fast. She glanced at my face, saw that I was upset, and said, “Go back up and play with Jeremy, Eli.”

  Eli, now standing in front of me, turned and gave Mom puppy dog eyes. “But Mom. Josie is sooooo much better than Jeremy at Marvel Legos on Xbox.” He approached me again. “Come on, J. You can be part of the Fantastic Four with us.”

  I squatted to his eye level. “I’ll play later.” And I would. Time was fleeting.

  “Wait right here.” He dashed up the stairs, and I started unloading the dishwasher while Mom went through a stack of mail. Normal household things. Planck things. Back in record time, Eli held out a Lego to me. “Put it in your back pocket. When you sit on it, you’ll remember to come play.” His feet thudded up the stairs again before I had a chance to say anything.

  I glanced down to the Lego. Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman. That was a pretty good pairing—she and I shared the gift of force fields. Warmth spread throughout my chest. “Love you, bud,” I yelled up the stairs.

  “Shut up, fart breath!” Oh, yeah. That wasn’t cool for me to say in front of a friend.

  I would play with him after I talked to Mom. I stuck the Invisible Woman Lego in my back pocket. Invisibility was one superpower I’d welcome now that all this Oculi crap hit the fan.

  “Mom, I…” I didn’t know how to apologize for my moodiness or how to go about clearing the air between us.

  Mom opened the freezer behind me. “Ice cream?” She was trying to make some peace since our last talk, when I’d gone all Hulk smash.

  “Yeah.”

  She scooped two bowls of butter pecan. I knew I’d vowed to stick to the present, to focus on the upcoming exchange, but my thoughts kept tripping back to Nick. Talking about him with Reid made me feel like my brother was still alive, like at any moment he might strut through the door, laughing, larger than life. Knowing that could never happen…

  We never talked about it, after the accident. About the actual accident.

  And, really, my brother was an Oculi. He’d trained and fought and had been able to manipulate the world with his mind. If he’d been trapped in a car, he wouldn’t have freaked out like me. Nick was too smart, too strong. He would’ve Pushed or Retracted a solution.

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  The spoon fell from my hand and clanged to the table.

  “It wasn’t an accident that killed Nick.”

  My mom pushed her bowl of ice cream aside. She didn’t contradict me. But I watched her closely, the muscle moving in her jaw, the way the lines around her mouth shifted, like she was biting back words or deciding what she should or should not say.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I said.

  She sighed. “Nick started his training when he turned seventeen, much like you’re doing now, only he worked with your dad instead of a trainer,” she began. “He excelled in every aspect, far beyond our expectations. Due to the inoculations, like you, he was more advanced than the average Anomaly. And we felt he needed to train in the Denver Hub.”

  “Like there’s anything average about an Anomaly in the first place.”

  She murmured her agreement. “After several months, we realized his abilities were far superior to anyone else’s…in the world.”

  Mom stopped for a moment and stared into nothing. Eli’s laughter broke the silence and prompted Mom to talk again. “Reid, who was training with Nick at the Hub, contacted your dad and me because he was concerned. Nick was illustrating odd behaviors, acting out of character. He became short-tempered, violent, paranoid. Then he started disappearing from the Hub, missing training sessions. He kept his whereabouts secret, then eventually shared with Reid that he didn’t think the Resistance had their priorities straight. The Resistance’s first priority is humanity, so something was really off. Nick left the Hub one day and didn’t return. Your dad went after him, knowing he’d gone to L.A.”

  No. I was growing uncomfortably warm. “The Consortium,” I whispered.

  Mom gave an affirming sound. “The world had not seen an Anomaly of his magnitude before. If he joined the Consortium, it would’ve catapulted us into a war before we were ready. We—the Resistance and humanity—needed him to go to the Hub to train, to test, to know his abilities and limitations. He could’ve been instrumental in the Resistance taking down the Consortium.”

  I followed Mom’s train of thought. I could’ve been wrong, but, from what I knew of war, they would need strong leaders to organize, manage, and head them into combat. “He could have been a leader.”

  Mom continued to play with her melting ice cream, nodding at me. “Your dad found Nick and tried to bring him back, but he was talking gibberish, going on about things not being as they seemed, people who weren’t who they said they were. There was an…altercation.”

  Sweat covered my back, and the aftertaste of the ice cream soured in my mouth. I’d waited two years to hear more about Nick, but now I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  The green in Mom’s eyes shone through her tears. “Nick hurt many and killed others. He fought alongside the Consortium, Josie. He betrayed us. Everything your father and I stood for. Everything the Resistance had been created to protect.”

  “No. I don’t believe it.”

  Mom’s voice cracked, and she covered her mouth for a moment before composing herself enough to continue. “It was a mini-massacre. Nick did end up going over a bridge in a car after being shot in the chest. If the gunshot hadn’t killed him, the drowning did.”

  The kitchen walls seemed to shrink in on me, and the air was too thin. I no longer felt my stomach. Who cared about a stomach when I couldn’t breathe?

  I refocused on my mom, sitting before me like a statue. She wiped her eyes before any tears had a chance to fall. The tears didn’t count if they didn’t fall, she’d told me in the past.

  My dad had watched his son go rogue. He’d watched his son’s execution—played a part in it, if he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself. Oh God, could he have done that? No. No.

  The question I needed to ask burned my tongue as I held it in. “Why did he go crazy?” I nervously swirled the melted ice cream in my bowl, my hands needing to move.

  “In a very small percentage of Oculi, the powers…corrupt the mind. Not every person is equipped to handle the magnitude of his or her abilities. Pushing and Retracting—they contradict the doctrines that we are conditione
d to believe.”

  What? The concept of being an Anomaly was so crazy that it drove my brother to switch sides and kill a slew of people? When Reid first described Oculi abilities, he’d mentioned that toward the end of an Oculi’s energy reserve, as the abilities diminished, so too could cognitive function, resulting in neurological degeneration or death. But that wasn’t what my mom was describing here. She was explaining how a small percentage “went crazy” in their prime.

  “I’ve been conducting studies,” she went on. Of course she had; Mom was a scientist, first and foremost. “Using Oculi abilities may disrupt brain function in the frontal lobes of the brain, triggering the changes in personality and inciting adverse behaviors—”

  “He’s my brother, not some experiment!”

  Mom’s shrewd gaze absorbed my every action. Shit, did she think I’d go rogue, too? My outbursts wouldn’t exactly inspire her to think otherwise.

  The knowledge—no, the fear—was in her eyes. She did.

  “That won’t happen to you,” she said in a brusque voice. As much to reassure herself as to reassure me, it seemed.

  Everything around me slowed. The drum of my heart. The tick of the clock on the kitchen wall. The blink of my mother’s eyes. The sliver of hope I had clung to, the hope that this would turn out all right somehow, shattered to the floor of my soul.

  Something hit my leg. Mom’s cane. “Josie,” she snapped.

  I met her gaze.

  “You can’t let this cripple you. Just because it happened to your brother doesn’t mean it will happen to you. Your phenotypes are not the same. Your genotypes are not the same. You have different personalities, different coping mechanisms…”