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  It was a copy of the documents I’d made Donna print for me. I hadn’t looked too closely at everything yet.

  “I was bored so I started looking through these file boxes. Not very safe there.”

  “Nice. So?”

  “Your mother’s name is listed here—Blackcomb. Novak sold her some property for cheap just before he left. Nice truckload of money you have, by the way.”

  I read the statement. Elizabeth Blackcomb had paid a small sum to a company called Edgewater. Donna had mentioned I was the owner of a small real estate firm by the name of Edgewater Holdings. From what I knew about real estate prices in California, the amount paid didn’t seem like fair market value.

  “That’s gross,” I said. “She and Novak have some sort of agreement.”

  “Looks like this is just south of San Francisco.”

  “Do you think he gave her this property as a gift?”

  “I’m sure. Don’t you think?”

  I sat down on the edge of my bed.

  “Maybe—”

  “What?” I demanded, impatient.

  “Maybe you should check out your mother.”

  “No.”

  Angus sat beside me. “Don’t you want to know who she is? Remember how my dad said Novak thought your mother was one of us at first? So there’s a precedent. I’m just saying. I’m curious.”

  “No.”

  “If you find out what happened between them, maybe that could help you. Outsider, Puri. Why didn’t it work? What if finding her would help John?”

  “It hasn’t come to that. Yet.”

  “Oh, I like how now you’ll consider it if it’s for him. What do you know about her? You’ve done research since you found out who she was, right?”

  “Let’s stop, okay?”

  “Why are you so resistant?”

  “Why do you think?” I demanded loudly. Up until this past year I’d believed my mother had been one of the Puris, someone who had been left behind at the last Relocation, for reasons I’d never know. But then the FBI agents who had been investigating my father had cornered me at school and told me the truth. That my biological mother was just a regular human. And I’d finally had to come to terms with why I’d always felt so different, and so excluded, from the rest of my family.

  Angus shrugged his shoulders. “You keep telling me that’s all you want. To be like normal humans. Why wouldn’t you look for your mother?”

  My excuses sounded lame to my own ears.

  “Come on, Julia. Let’s go to California.”

  AUGUST, two months later

  JOHN

  We should have stuck together. But we didn’t know any better. The tournaments were such a great excuse to be together.

  The sudden prospect of a summer apart was crushing. It was a lose-lose scenario—we couldn’t see each other and I was supposed to stop using any abilities. The very first day we were apart, I saw a kid at the motel get hurt when he did a backflip into the pool and hit his head on the side. I had the instinct to help before his parents came over but I stopped myself. That sucked…

  JULY

  Chapter Ten

  I had one last thing to do before I left Texas.

  Legally, the house was in limbo and not mine. But it was easy to let myself in. I entered the master code into the keypad on the front gates and walked downhill along the manicured driveway, noticing the groundskeeper had left the garden lights on during the day.

  I hadn’t been back since I’d visited with John less than forty-eight hours after my family had left, needing to see for myself that they were gone. I’d felt tense on the drive over, but now I didn’t sense any trace of the people who used to live here. It was just a house now. A giant, empty showpiece of a house.

  This was where I had lived my entire childhood—completely removed, as if on a different plane of existence from the rest of the population. I hadn’t even felt like part of the same world. I couldn’t remember what that was like anymore. It seemed like something out of a dark fairy tale or like it had happened to someone else.

  This was the last place I’d seen my sister. It was like visiting a gravesite. I chose to stay in the driveway, shaded by the lush green trees, listening to the silence except for the rustling of leaves in the hot summer wind. I was scared how intensely I might remember Liv if I went any closer or, worse, that I wouldn’t remember her at all.

  Angus was down the street in the idling car, blocks away from this place that could still have eyes on it, counting down the five minutes I’d asked for. I took a few steps backward, then turned and walked out the gates, away from the glass house.

  Bye, Liv.

  I walked alongside the greenery at the edge of the winding road, head down until a car slowed and drove up next to me. Angus never fully stopped and I effortlessly got in, closing the door as he accelerated.

  When we left the Austin city limits, I turned around one last time, watching my childhood become a blur in the distance.

  “Yo! Are you up?” Without waiting for an answer, Angus began blaring music, ready for me to come out of my shell.

  I was vaguely aware of the wide, grey highway lined with strip malls and office parks, a sea of color and cement flying past as we headed northwest. I rested my head against the window and kept my eyes closed.

  “I’m up.”

  “If you’re not going to talk this entire road trip…”

  “Sorry. I’m not feeling well.” That was an understatement. I felt like crap. Mentally and physically.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know that feeling when you stop doing the extrasensory stuff? At first you’re miserable and then it’s like your body gets mad?

  “Yep.”

  “My body is mad.”

  “Then why the fuck don’t you do something about it? You’re away from him. You can do whatever you want now. You’re free.”

  Angus seemed elated, happy to be hitting the road.

  “Ha. No.”

  “Why would you torture yourself? It’s not going to work,” Angus said bluntly. “We physically couldn’t stop using our abilities before. It nearly destroyed us when we’d try.”

  “Remember, I’m not exactly like you.” Even I could hear the hint of shame in my voice. “It’s too hard to live out here and have it.”

  “You are going to die of boredom.”

  “It’s better than living a double life.”

  “I’d rather live a double life. No, I’d rather be where all of our people are.”

  I looked over at him, surprised. “Are you serious? After everything you stood up for, now you’re saying you’d be okay with living in a vault under Novak’s thumb?”

  “Without Novak,” Angus mumbled in a low voice.

  “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  “You look like shit. Go back to sleep,” Angus said, like he wanted to change the subject. Then, he switched off the music and said in a softer voice, “Rest. You’re with me now.”

  It made me want to laugh. Angus said this as if he weren’t a fugitive, putting me in danger. But I knew what he meant. He was a Puri and I knew how he operated. He was the only person I could hand the reins to, and it felt so good to do it after so long. But I’d made him agree we would part ways when we arrived in California.

  I studied his profile for a second longer.

  “I’ll wake you up in Brownwood.”

  The name meant nothing to me. I didn’t know any of the towns we were zooming past. I’d flown privately everywhere and had no sense of how the state or the country felt when you traveled by car. It felt like we were dropping off the face of the earth, getting lost. The thought gave me some peace and I closed my eyes.

  I drifted in and out of sleep. Brownwood, Abilene, Sweetwater. Angus kept driving, not disturbing me even when I was awake
. It wasn’t like him to not talk.

  At one point, Angus stopped the car and mumbled about stretching his legs. I felt hot and cold at the same time, and I could barely raise my head. The headlights partially illuminated Angus in the distance, in a field of wind turbines, looking up at one. He suddenly leapt up, but, of course, it was too high off the ground. I wasn’t used to seeing him look like a stick figure, so small next to the giant structure. But then, not to be defeated, he walked backward a few paces before taking a running leap at it. This time, he clung onto the bottom blade, swinging his legs to push him and the windmill into motion. He dropped to the ground, having used his outrageous strength so he could presumably see the windmill in action close up and feel the thrill of the motion so near his body. This was what I thought I saw. It may have been part of a dream.

  It was dawn when I decided to stay awake for good.

  Angus watched as I straightened my legs and lifted my arms to stretch.

  “Hey. You feel better?”

  Miraculously, I did. “Yeah, actually. Feel my forehead. Do I feel hot? I think I had a fever.”

  “See? If you let go of this shit, you’re going to start getting sick like they do. And you can’t even go to a doctor.” He felt my forehead and then lay the back of his hand on my cheek. “You’re fine.”

  The air smelled crisp and felt dry. “Are we in the mountains?”

  “Yep. We’re getting pretty high in altitude. Welcome to New Mexico.”

  We’d left our home state for good while I’d been sleeping. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that it felt like a giant weight had lifted.

  “It’s beautiful.” Relief settled in as I surveyed the sudden natural beauty around me—the pine trees, the low green grass dotted with craggy boulders. I wanted to get out and explore. “You must be ready to stop.”

  “I could drive for days without stopping, you know that.” We both could. I would have thought I’d need food. I worried that maybe Angus’s presence was shifting my balance back to the Puri side.

  “I should check my messages and call John.”

  “You can disappear for twenty-four hours before your boyfriend starts to worry.”

  “I don’t like that he thinks I’m already in San Francisco.”

  “It’s safer that way. Holman, New Mexico. We’re making tracks,” Angus pointed with his chin to a passing sign.

  “Let’s get out to San Francisco as fast as we can, okay?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  I shifted in the seat and dug my new burner phone out of my bag. It lit up with voice mails. I’d retired my usual smartphone for the trip and set up call forwarding through a service that claimed the utmost discretion. My cheap plastic phone showed me that Donna was a missed call, and Rafa Kelly had called me directly at my personal cell number. He wasn’t supposed to do that. There were no calls from John.

  “What are you going to do once we get to the Bay Area?” I asked Angus. After the tumult of the past few days, I was only now thinking about where we were headed and the plan in front of me.

  “I’d like to stay close to you,” Angus said.

  “Angus.”

  “What? We’re better off together.”

  “I’m trying to make a clean start. You’re my best friend, but I can’t do it with you around. You know that.”

  “I’m only thinking of your happiness.”

  “And your own.”

  “And mine. We are always going to have more in common than you and he will. He’ll never know you like I do.”

  “No,” I said with finality.

  “What if you’re in love with the part of him that’s like us? When that’s gone, is he going to be enough for you?”

  “That’s why I fell in love with him. He’s not like us.”

  “You know you’re tampering with him the way Novak did with us, right?”

  “If you feel sorry for him, why are you helping me?” I snapped.

  “Because I don’t like John. I don’t want him around. Mostly, I don’t want Novak to win. I like that wherever he is, people finally doubt him and his stupid visions. I don’t want them to find out Novak is actually right.”

  “But then what happens if enough people doubt him?”

  “There’s a power vacuum. Novak gets overthrown. The family can decide for themselves what they want to do next.” Angus said it like he’d given this scenario serious thought.

  “Where do you want to stop?” I asked, steering the subject away from a futile fantasy.

  “Let’s get close to Taos at least. I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  JULY

  Chapter Eleven

  The shower spray felt like hot, stinging needles on my skin.

  The bathroom tile was a dusky, old-fashioned pink, the sink a marbled pink-and-white seashell. We were in a retro hotel, but one we’d paid for dearly from my stash of bills. Against all my arguments to stay outside of the city, Angus had positioned us in a mission-style revival hotel in historic downtown Taos.

  I’d left the shower gel I’d brought on a shelf above the sink—right next to the hotel soap. If I looked long enough and hard enough, I knew I could knock one over and roll the other toward me. It would be so easy.

  It felt like play-acting when I made myself manually shut off the water and soak the bath mat and the bathroom floor in order to use my hand to retrieve the shower gel. But I made myself do it. It was this kind of thing I was painstakingly having to get used to.

  The bathroom was small, hot, and steamy, and I would have preferred to get dressed in the cooler bedroom. Angus was out there though. I dried off and put on the fresh clothes I’d brought into the bathroom and wrapped my hair turban-style with a thin white hotel towel.

  “Your turn,” I said to Angus when I opened the bathroom door. He was stretched out on top of one of the queen-sized beds, a Native American print on the bedspread.

  Angus stared at me, looking at me from head to toe. I was wearing a pair of white shorts and a white tank top.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You reminded me of Liv for a second, wearing all that white.”

  We hadn’t spoken of her yet. By avoiding the subject, the specter of our friends and my sister had only gained strength and made it even harder to discuss now.

  Angus went first. “What did she say to you when you left?” he asked intently.

  I cleared my throat, hoping to keep any emotion from my voice. I told myself I was just reporting facts. I listened to myself say, “I waved through the window. I thought she was going to call for someone to tell them I was running, but then she just waved back.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Yeah.” My voice lowered involuntarily.

  “She will always be fine. She’s Novak’s princess. I’m sure they have the one thing he promised—total safety. Now they never need to worry about anyone finding out who they are.”

  “Yep.” I didn’t know if I wanted to continue the conversation and stood there, silent. After a moment, Angus leapt to his feet and walked toward me. I was at the threshold to the bathroom, trying not to think about my sister, and Angus put both hands at my waist to move me aside. The touch startled me, and we looked at each other, face-to-face, his light-blue eyes reminiscent of the entire family whose absence loomed over me.

  “Do you think about her?” I asked.

  “Of course. I think about the boys. I hope they’re happy. If not, I can’t even help them. They looked up to me as their leader and then I fucked that up.” Angus’s eyes seemed to pale. I’d never seen him cry, but I knew the lightening of the iris was one step before. He stopped himself and his eyes returned to their usual color. “Move over. I’ve got to shower.”

  I wandered to the window, pulling the curtain back to peer out. I felt like an outlaw, holed up.
I stared down onto a town plaza bordered by art galleries, boutiques of Native American jewelry and crafts, expensive restaurants housed in picturesque pueblos, and other buildings with Spanish colonial architecture.

  Once I heard Angus start the water, I quickly picked up my cell phone and listened to my messages for the first time in twenty-four hours. Rafa wanted me to call him but didn’t say why. Donna checked in with an update on some rentals. There were two more missed calls from Rafa. It was uncomfortable feeling insecure where John was concerned.

  Finally, the very last message was John Ford’s. “Hey. Call me.” His voice didn’t sound mad or affectionate. It was all-around neutral. I hated that.

  I looked to the bathroom door while I tried calling John, wanting Angus to stay put. The shower water was on, but Angus could still hear everything I had to say to John.

  John answered on the fourth ring with a business-like, “Hey.”

  “Hi!” I said, a tad over-brightly. At that moment, the sound of John’s gravelly voice was my favorite thing in the world.

  “Hold on.” It sounded like he was walking away from a group. A door closed. “Okay, now I’m good.”

  “Are you at the clay thing yet?”

  “Clay Court Championships? I am.” He sounded like he was congested. “Actually, I have to go in a sec. We’re headed out to the tournament.”

  “You okay? Do you have a cold?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He had to be feeling out of sorts, and I wanted to press him about whether he’d kept his agreement to stop using any abilities, but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t trust him.

  “I’m not fine,” I said. “I miss you.”

  “How’s the Bay Area?”

  “Everything sucks without you. I keep replaying in my mind that time we were lying on my floor, listening to Dire Straits on those new speakers.” I was smiling at the phone.