Page 32

Rosabelle

Chapter 32

He looks like he ran here.

His face is pinker than normal, his bronze hair windswept, his eyes bright and arresting. Every time I see him it becomes more difficult to see him.

When our eyes meet, I hold my breath.

His absence is beginning to leave an impression on me. I can already feel my nervous system quieting in his presence, the screams of the world stamping out into soft noise. I don’t like this feeling. I don’t like that I look forward to seeing him, that I’ve been waiting for him to come back, that I’ve almost finished counting the scatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

Seven.

“Rosabelle,” he says, shaking his head. “What did you—”

“I didn’t.”

He stills, staring at me. He looks from me to Agatha, then behind him, at Ian, who’s glowering.

“Okay. Well.” James exhales, shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks at the other two. “She says she didn’t do it. So unless you’ve got proof—”

Agatha and Ian explode.

I watch, unhearing, as they argue with him, blood rushing to my head. Time seems to draw out and bend, double back and blur. Why is he defending me? How does he know I’m not lying?

“Because,” he says to Agatha, his voice piercing my haze. His voice, I realize, always returns me to my body. “She’s not afraid of you. If she’d done it, she’d admit it.”

“How do you know that?” Ian and I ask at the same time.

James looks from me to Ian. “I don’t know,” he says, glancing at me again. “I can just tell.”

Ian studies me stonily as he considers this.

James exhales. “Hey, don’t forget to run those labs, okay?” He says this to Agatha. “I listed everything in my report. There was something off with that guy yesterday.”

“Let me be absolutely clear,” says Agatha, bristling. “Every one of our patients has been through a rigorous mental and physical vetting process, and Leon was no exception. There’s only ever been one exception, and she’s sitting right there.” Agatha narrows her eyes at me. “Leon has been known to have issues with lucidity in the past, but that is to be expected from someone with his challenging history, and he shows progress every day. I can assure you that there was no alcohol in his system—”

“I know what I saw,” James says with finality. “His eyes were unnaturally dilated. His speech was slightly slurred—”

“Maybe she drugged him,” says Ian.

“Ian,” Agatha cries, offended. “We run a tight ship around here. We would know if she’d brought drugs onto the premises—”

“Look,” James says, sounding suddenly tired, “until you have proof to support accusations against her, this is unproductive. She’s not the first person to lash out at another patient, and since we can’t prove that she was trying to kill Leon—”

“I was,” I say. “I was trying to kill him.”

“That isn’t helpful, Rosabelle,” he says, each word clipped.

“Let’s meet later,” he says to the others. “Ian, don’t you have a session right now?”

Ian glances at his watch and mutters an oath, and by the time he and Agatha trail out of the room—flashing me dirty looks—a soft chime rings several times.

James offers me a grim smile.

“Time to go, troublemaker,” he says. He keeps his face stern, but his eyes are light with private humor. “You have a midmorning session on radical gratitude to get to.”

“Okay,” I say. But I don’t move.

My heartbeat slows as I stare at him, my limbs softening. I feel liquid when I look at him for long enough, like I might come loose from my bones. I like it. I like this silence.

I feel safe in this silence.

“Why do you always look at me like that?” he says, the light fading from his eyes.

“Look at you like what?”

He holds my gaze, his chest lifting slightly as he breathes. I catch the movement in his throat, then linger on the column of his neck, the sharp line of his jaw. I drag my eyes up to his mouth—

He exhales suddenly, looks down. “Nothing,” he says. “Never mind.”

I like his hair.

It looks soft. It seems to glitter in the refracted light of the domed ceiling, touches of gold glinting among the brown.

I like his eyes.

His pupils have contracted in the morning glow, shades of blue now rendered with greater subtlety, lighter irises circled by a ring of dark. His lashes are long and thick and when he turns away from me I study the outline of his profile, the contained power in his body. He shifts his weight. He’s wearing a faded denim jacket with a fleece collar. There’s a bright, kite-shaped pin on the pocket.

“What are you thinking,” he says, looking away from me, “when you get quiet like that?”

“Nothing.”

He exhales a harsh laugh. “Sure. Okay.”

“Why is there a kite-shaped pin on your pocket?”

He turns to face me immediately, surprise coloring his expression. “You’re asking me a question?”

Heat, that familiar, horrible heat: I feel it burning on the crests of my cheeks. “No.”

“No?”

“No,” I say, this time with forced indifference. “I’m withdrawing my question.”

“No way,” he says, smiling now. “You’ve already spoken it into the world. You can’t take it back.”

“You don’t make the rules.”

“How about a deal?” he says. “If you start answering more of my questions, maybe I’ll answer some of yours.”

I shake my head, panic threatening.

I already have to live with the enormous mistake I made the other day, exposing myself and my inspection of him in a childish burst of anger. I’d been unbalanced by the sheer force of James’s attention, his easy smiles and laughter. No one but Clara ever smiles at me with sincerity. I’d been subjected to the dizzying power of his charm for hours by that point, and I was feeling frustrated and reactive. I spoke too much without thinking.

Never again.

I force myself to break away now, to gather up my journal and clear my mind before I say or do something irreparable—when I’m suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the moss between my toes. I realize I don’t know what they did with my shoes.

“They’re outside the door,” he says.

I look up like I’ve been slapped.

“Your shoes,” he says, unprompted. “They’re outside. In a little cubby with your name on it.”

“I didn’t say anything about wanting my shoes.”

“I know,” he says.

“How did you—”

“Because,” he says. “You just looked at your feet, and then looked around. I did the math. It’s not complicated.”

I’m looking at him and coming loose again. I have a new dream: I’d like to be neatly folded, set aside in a slant of light, and allowed to collect dust.

James, I realize, makes me feel like I can rest.

It’s a hysterical, dangerous thought. As if I might ever be allowed to untie these ropes, unlock these chains.

I’m going to go home.

I’m going to go home, collect Clara, try to avoid marrying Sebastian, and spend the rest of my life withering into ash. I was trained from childhood for life as an executioner. It was what my parents wanted for me; more than that, it was the only career path I was allowed. For as long as I can remember, every psychological evaluation and aptitude test agreed: the child appears to be dead inside.

There was something wrong with me, something broken, some meaningful reason why I never laughed the way other children did, never smiled at strangers. Why I never cried when they sliced me open over and over and over again, trying to feed my mind to a machine.

I would not be a scientist or a doctor. Not a mother or a soldier. I would grow up to be an efficient killer. An excellent asset to the regime. At the height of The Reestablishment’s power, I never imagined my skills would be so enthusiastically desired, but now that we lack the robust military of a bygone era, mercenaries are more important than ever. Spies, assassins, executioners. We’ve been forced to downsize our kill capacity, designing missions with surgical precision and efficiency.

This is all my life is worth. And I decided long ago to sacrifice my dead body so that Clara might live.

“By the way,” says James, interrupting my reverie. “If you’re going to pretend to go through the motions, you need to work on the details. You carry that notebook around but you never carry a pen. You’re not fooling anyone.”

I don’t know what prompts me to say it. I’m not sure I’m thinking at all when I say, softly—

“I’ve been fooling people all my life. You’re the only one paying attention.”