Page 5 of Blade

But before I can say another word, she starts to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

She unfolds her legs and her arms and leans forward on the edge of the couch, motioning for me to do the same. Our faces meet over the coffee table, where I’ve returned the file that holds the horrific facts of the murder. She’s so close, I can smell her bubble gum lip gloss.

Then she says, in a whisper, what she wants me to know.

“It’s not safe here.”

And before I can make sense of this, she speaks again.

“It’s not safe here, and it’s all your fault.”

Chapter Two

Ana

Before—Day One at The Palace

Ana had been violently ill the night before she left for The Palace. High fever, vomiting. Curled up in her bed, in the same room, in the same house where she’d lived her entire life, she told herself this would be gone by morning.

Her brother, Tim, was sitting on her floor, cross-legged, shoving her clothes into a duffel bag with more effort than the task required. A demonstration of his annoyance at having to help.

“Maybe you don’t want to go,” he said. “Maybe it’s your subconscious trying to warn you.”

Tim could be a total dick. Getting a stomach bug the night before she moved to The Palace was a coincidence.

He didn’t have a single clue about her skating. How good she was—how good she had to be for Dawn Sumner to agree to coach her. He talked about it like it was summer camp. Like she’d be making arts and crafts, carving woodblocks, canoeing, telling dumb stories around a campfire.

Ana didn’t kill time. She used every day, every hour, as a chance to get stronger, faster, smarter. To train her muscles so they wouldremember what to do when she sent an order. One command, and her body could execute a spin, a jump, an intricate footwork pass.

Tim couldn’t even throw a Frisbee.

Connie and Carl were next to appear, stopping at the door to observe the chaos. Connie was still in her work clothes after a late house showing—pencil skirt, heels, blouse, and scarf. Always a scarf. As she was constantly saying, it put buyers at ease when their eyes caught asplash of color, especially now that she’d cut her hair so short.

“Jesus. What a mess,” her father said. He was in the same tracksuit from earlier that day when he’d left work to fetch Ana from school, feed her crackers and Gatorade, and empty the garbage pail.

The room had been pulled apart—every item of clothing from every drawer in piles needing to be sorted and folded and then either put into a trunk or duffel bag, or returned to the drawers. Shoes, coats, hats, bike helmet, and snow gear, and of course, the dresses, joggers, leggings, sweaters, pullovers, socks, tights—enough for six hours a day, six days a week.

Connie seemed frozen by the chaos. “How are we going to get this done?”

Carl waved her off. “She doesn’t have to go tomorrow. I can drive her on Saturday.”

But then Connie swung around to face him. “No! I can’t go Saturday, and I need to take her,” she said, and with conviction that caught Ana by surprise. Her mother had been complaining about all the driving for months. That was the whole reason they’d finally agreed to let Ana try out for Dawn Sumner. It was that, or quit skating, they’d told her. As if quitting was an option.

Making the Olympics had been Ana’s dream from before she could remember. After she got the feel of the blade in the center of each foot, and when the blades became a part of her body, and she discovered she could just go and go until the wind made her eyes water and lifted her ponytail in the air—she knew she wanted to spend every second she could with her feet in those boots.

It wasn’t her fault that the rinks were so far away.

Connie carefully dropped to her knees beside Tim and began sorting through the piles. Carl joined her, resting his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“It has to be me,” Connie said.

And then Carl nodded. “Okay. We’ll get it done.”

In the morning, Connie drove Ana 289 miles to the remote village of Echo. Today’s scarf was shades of blue and orange, and it was neatly tied around Connie’s head. A splash of color, ready to conquer the world.

Ana leaned against the closed window, sipping a liter of Gatorade through a straw.