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  JUNE

  Chapter Four

  I stood at the glass dining room table in my apartment in front of the files Donna had provided, a beam of sunlight from the setting sun bisecting the papers. As soon as I opened the folder, I was drawn in, feeling a connection to my family so acutely it was as if they were in the room. Finances were my last tie to them. I enjoyed seeing Donna, but the price I paid was maintaining a link to my family that still felt too close for comfort. I missed my sister so much, I felt like I couldn’t acknowledge it or I wouldn’t be able to keep moving forward. It happened far less frequently, but there were still some mornings when I woke up and thought I was in the house on Scenic Drive. With Liv. With all of them.

  A text lit up my phone, bringing me back to the present.

  At the restaurant.

  Finally, it was dusk. Quarter to eight on an early summer night. I closed the file I’d been reading. I switched off the light over the dining table and looked out the living room windows from behind the gossamer drapes. I could still see the outline of Lady Bird Lake.

  From the brevity of John’s text, I could tell he was semi-annoyed by the complicated instructions I’d given him. Go to Lamberts. Take the underground tunnel across the street to the restaurant where we’re really going. Stay in the basement. They’ll show you to the private dining room in the wine cellar.

  I was annoyed myself. It was a beautiful night. I was tired of being cautious. I looked down at the strapless dress I wore. It was pretty. I actually felt pretty. All I wanted was to see my boyfriend and be outside without worrying.

  I decided to walk. What the hell? It was only a couple of blocks.

  The lobby was packed, the evening’s activities getting underway. I walked through the hotel like I had important business and then out onto the street. There had been no paparazzi. Outside, it felt earlier in the evening than it had indoors. The shine of the streetlights and the humidity made me feel part of the world again. I cut around a large group walking en masse to the Congress Bridge to see the bats take flight at dusk.

  There was a strange familiarity in the air. Flooded with an unexpected lightness and warmth, I slowed my pace and walked like someone enjoying the evening instead of someone on a mission. Just as I rounded a corner, I drew up short, almost running into a small group of three teenage boys at a standstill on the sidewalk.

  I stepped to the side and briefly looked over to see who the group was gathered around. The man’s face was blocked, but I glimpsed grimy clothing and rapid hands demonstrating a card trick.

  Oddly the street was very quiet, devoid of many pedestrians. Shaking off the feeling of discomfort, I crossed the street and entered into the stately, red-brick Victorian building, once a general store and now a historic landmark that still bore the name J. P. Schneider and Bros on the facade.

  “Hello,” I said politely to the hostess. When I began to explain that I had reservations in the “vault” across the street, I watched her burgeoning realization that I was a VIP.

  She led me downstairs, through the underground tunnel beneath the street that connected the main restaurant to the basement of the building that had once been the owner’s second store across the road. Of course, it was Donna who was in the know about the vault.

  “Thank you,” I said a second too late as she handed me off to the proper restaurant staff. I was too busy staring at John who was seated at one end of a long table with a distant, preoccupied look on his face.

  “Hey,” I said, curious what he was thinking about. John instantly hid his expression and gave me a smile.

  He stood to greet me. “You look pretty.”

  I was about to ask what was wrong when something prickled at the back of my neck. I whipped around and saw, behind the server, a bald man with a beard, in a black T-shirt and black trousers positioned with his iPhone held high. The scene seemed to freeze as if already caught in a picture. There was no sound or motion as the flash illuminated John and me in a surreal circle of light.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed.

  The man ran up the staircase located to the left of the cellar. To my surprise, the server got in my way, blocking the exit, pretending it wasn’t intentional.

  “Move,” I said, putting my hands on the server’s shoulders to push him to the side. “Goddammit.” I bolted up the staircase to catch the man, needing to grab his phone and that photo at all costs. I hurled off my shoes so I could run faster, sending them clattering down the stairs behind me.

  “Julia, what are you doing?” John yelled from behind me.

  All was serene when I arrived on the ground level of the restaurant above. Diners looked up as I stood, wild-eyed, scanning every inch of the space. Moving to the entrance, I whipped open the heavy door onto the sights and sounds of downtown.

  Across the street, in front of Lamberts, two men writhed on the pavement, the slighter figure pinning down a larger one while clenching a fistful of hair.

  Barefoot, I darted across the street, dodging the oncoming cars. Drawing closer, I recognized the dirty clothes of the person from the street. When I neared, he didn’t look at me. He simply extended one hand with the phone, like he knew I would eventually come and take it. I saw ghost images of tattoos on his arms that looked almost erased. Automatically, I reached for the phone, the object I’d been hunting, confused by how he knew what I’d wanted. As soon as my fingers touched it, I felt the electricity—that expansive, encapsulating energy. I knew before I knew.

  The photographer squirmed away from the loosened hold and took off, running full speed. The boy with the warm, gold-toned skin and the flawless face that looked familiar yet different set against dark hair, stood more slowly, almost reluctantly, refusing to meet my eyes. He began to lope down the street, away.

  I felt the swarm gathering.

  Standing by myself, I squinted into the sudden onslaught of what felt like a hundred flashes though there were only three photographers. It was nonstop, white lights blazing. Instinctively, I put up an arm to shade my eyes and tried to go deaf to the cruel things they began shouting.

  Where’s your father?

  How do you feel about living off stolen money?

  I glanced across the street. John was watching the melee and me, frozen in the headlights. Our eyes caught. I saw both how helpless and pissed off he felt before I snapped my gaze away. He was supposed to casually walk away if this happened. That was the prearranged plan.

  He would think I was crazy for chasing that man after I’d said the key was to ignore them—the gawkers, the paparazzi. But from the direction that man had aimed his phone and where he had been looking, I knew he had been more intent on capturing John’s image than mine.

  I turned my head to the right, narrowing my eyes to search for the boy now blended in to a group of pedestrians traveling away into the fold of the city. Like he could feel my longing and decided to throw me a crumb, he looked over his shoulder at me once, his blue eyes dancing.

  Angus.

  I headed straight for my hotel’s parking garage. Listening to the sound of my own shallow breathing, I waited in my current car—an old white Prius, the one car that had been left behind in my family’s underground garage on Scenic Drive, the garage that had once housed ten vehicles. John was sure to be expecting me at his house, but, when I had seen the mystery blanket in my backseat, I had waited to take off.

  My back door opened and shut.

  “Drive.”

  Hearing his voice for the first time in six months, my heart raced with joy and fear. Glancing in the mirror, I saw him flatten himself across the compact backseat, pulling the rough grey blanket over his filthy clothing.

  “Have you been sleeping in here?” I asked, incredulous. Since my part-time bodyguard, Stuart, mostly drove me, I hadn’t touched the car in months.

  “Go,” he said, his voice muffled.

  I heard my ow
n shaky inhale, a hyperventilating sound.

  “It’s okay. It’s just me,” he said.

  “I know.”

  At the first light, I fidgeted. It was dark, but I was terrified that once we were at a stop, paparazzi would see us and hold a camera to our window.

  I headed for the freeway. Once we were traveling at seventy miles per hour, I saw the grey mass rise up in back.

  “Jesus, Julia. You don’t have any gas,” Angus said in his familiar joking, cutting tone. I wanted to face him to make sure he was real. “Pull off after the airport. It’s quiet by McKinney Falls.”

  South of the airport, I picked an exit at random, finding my way onto a more rural road. I pulled over and stopped the car partway into a ditch of long, brown grass. I quickly turned the car off. Everything went dark and quiet. Angus got out, stretching his long legs.

  “Let’s walk.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  He started sauntering along the road, the night sky lightened by a bright moon. We traveled alongside the shrub-like trees that wouldn’t do much to shield us should any car approach.

  “Stop,” I finally said. Angus halted, twisting to face me.

  I launched myself at him, and we hugged.

  “I know,” he said, holding me tight across the shoulders, rocking me slightly back and forth.

  “Oh my God.” I breathed into his collar. After six months of separation, of not seeing my own kind, I allowed myself to sag into him for just a second, letting him support me.

  “You’re good. I’ve been watching you.” Never, ever in the past would we have been this demonstrative. But my guess was he’d been through as much as I had since the last time we’d seen each other.

  “Tell me what happened when you left the ER that night,” he said, referring to the last time I’d seen him, trapped and broken in a hospital bed.

  When I’d said good-bye to Angus that night, I’d believed I would never see him again. Novak had banned Angus and his parents from joining the rest of the Puris for Relocation because of Angus’s stunt, even though Lati, Angus’s dad, had been my father’s best friend. Safety in numbers and the preservation of the group were the main tenets of the Puris so the ultimate punishment was to be cut away. Angus’s family were left to evade the police on their own and to find a way to hide from the world.

  Angus should have never made a public scene, but he’d done it for me as much as for himself. He’d distracted my Puri friends from discovering my relationship with John.

  I stepped back, putting some distance between us. “I stayed behind. I snuck out the day they left Austin, and no one tried to stop me. After that, it was interviews with the police, the FBI, moving to the W. That’s it.”

  “And being in the news,” he commented wryly.

  “Yes. Lots of that.” My eyes raked over every inch of him.

  “I know. I look like shit,” he said. Angus was dirty and worn out, wearing stained jeans that were ripped with gaping holes at both knees, his grey T-shirt dotted with dark stains. His hair was dyed a flat, chocolate brown, his only other attempt to disguise himself besides the laser tattoo removal that was incomplete.

  “What were you doing out on the street with those stupid cards? You’re insane.”

  “It wasn’t working just waiting in your hotel garage,” Angus shrugged, one corner of his mouth tilting up in a half smile.

  “Tell me what happened to you. That night in the hospital.”

  Angus started walking again, crunching gravel beneath his feet, his gait loose. I had no choice but to impatiently follow. Tough roadside grasses switched at my bare legs.

  Angus’s voice became flat as if reporting events that had happened to someone else. “My dad paid a nurse to wheel me out the back door. A chauffeured car was waiting with my mom. We drove for almost twenty-four hours to Los Angeles. They’ve been guests on the estate of a wealthy inventor in Bel Air ever since—turns out that was my dad’s plan B. He knew there were these connoisseurs of the unusual out there. In exchange, my parents are asked to occasionally perform for guests, like exotic birds taken out of their cage.” His omission of detail made it clear everything was far worse than he let on and he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “That’s revolting. It’s also unsafe.”

  “My dad had to make a deal quickly.”

  “But you left LA,” I said.

  “I told them I had to find a better place for us. I wasn’t handing control of my life over to someone much dumber than Novak. Why’d you stay behind? For him?” Angus stopped. He lifted a hand and grazed my cheek with his fingertips as if I were precious and he wanted to make sure I was actually there.

  “Yes. And no, especially after I found out that Novak was lying to us. You were right—he wanted us to lose our abilities.”

  “He was your father. You couldn’t see it.” Angus shrugged generously.

  “Was he really that threatened by us?”

  “Definitely by you and me. His illegitimate half-Puri daughter shouldn’t have been more powerful than his full-blooded one.”

  “He was always priming Liz to be the next leader.”

  “And he just hated me.” Angus laughed at that memory.

  “I was so jealous of the other group. They were finally learning all the Puri secrets. But I actually believed in him. I really thought our time would come. Just later.” I was disgusted by Novak, disgusted by myself for having always chased his approval.

  “And here I thought you stayed for me,” Angus said lightly.

  I touched his arm apologetically. “At first I thought I would look for you right away. It’s been so much more of a circus than I imagined. I keep trying to quit my abilities, but I can’t seem to stop and there are so many eyes on me.” I shook my head. “I knew we would find each other, but I thought maybe it would be twenty years from now.”

  “What are we going to be doing twenty years from now, Julia? Hiding?”

  I understood. I knew he’d made a public spectacle because he’d been scared to go on Relocation—of the restrictions, of losing his ability to move freely—but now I heard disillusionment in his voice.

  “Not me,” I said adamantly. “I keep jumping through the FBI’s hoops, trying to earn citizenship in the regular world. I want to just live an ordinary life. I’ll stop using my abilities. I’ll figure it out.”

  Angus snorted. “That sounds miserable. And impossible. We’re different. At some point, you’re going to get caught.” Angus put his hands low on his hips, elbows jutting out at his sides. “That’s why I’ve come to get you out.”

  I almost smiled. Angus thought he was the hero who had arrived to save me.

  Angus continued, “This whole time, how have you not seen that Austin is the absolute worst place to be?” With a swift scorn that took me by surprise, he said, “You know you’re endangering all of us.”

  “What do you mean ‘us’?” I squinted at him.

  “Me, you, my family. Puris disappear. That’s what we do. Remember what Novak said to my dad at the hospital? He will be watching us, making sure we give nothing away about the Puris and where they’re hiding. Like you said, you can’t quit using your abilities. Here you are, in the spotlight, keeping the attention on him. How long until Novak intervenes?”

  I didn’t like this shaming, and I wanted it off of me. It was like I could physically feel it as it began to seep into my conscience. “I haven’t done anything. The FBI knows nothing.”

  “Novak doesn’t know that.” Then Angus paused dramatically, cocking his head. “You want him to find out what you’ve really been hiding?”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded, reassuring myself that I had examined all of my choices from every angle. That was all I did, every day.

  “You’re not as safe as you think you are. You know, your boy is radioactive.” He
started walking to the car.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, annoyed.

  “My dad told me about Novak’s mind-reading vision.” Angus was walking fast now to irritate me.

  “What about it?” I asked carefully, trailing just behind him.

  “Novak’s vision—that he’d be able to hear someone’s thoughts—someone not from the group but similar enough to us. That person was destined to come with us for Relocation, whether they wanted to or not. It’s a numbers game for us Puris. They were the new blood we needed since we’ve inbred to the point of extinction. Just another resource to bring below…”

  “Stop walking.” I yanked on Angus’s sleeve. We stopped right under a telephone wire that crossed the road, eerily thick with hundreds of still black birds that watched us.

  “I don’t like it out here,” Angus said, his ears pinning back.

  “Let’s go.”

  Back at the car Angus swiftly slid into the backseat again, slouching low. I stared straight ahead. My hand shook when I started the engine. Last winter, I’d confessed to Angus that I’d read John’s mind.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little coincidental that you read someone’s mind when Novak was on the lookout for that to happen?”

  “No,” I said, barely seeing the road in front of me as I pulled out of the grassy trough, streams of insects swarming in the beams of light.

  He waited for me to say something, but I stayed quiet.

  “So Liv was right about everything she said to us that night—about your boyfriend not flinching when I pushed him and how she rose from the dead when he touched her.”

  Denial seemed the safest thing. But Angus would see right through me.

  “He’s not like us.” I omitted the last thing that had happened six months ago—John’s maybe–vision of the group’s hiding place.

  “You stay, Novak’s going to find him.”

  My impulse was to scream at Angus to shut his mouth. Instead, I flippantly said, “There’s nothing for Novak to find.”