After Sykes died, Proposition 42 had never even made it out of committee. Nix took that to mean that The Society must have really wanted Sykes dead, because they’d been willing to make sacrifices to see it done. Nix may have been ignorant. He may have been gullible and stupid and slow, but even he could see that Proposition 42 had never been about protecting the common man.
It had been about protecting The Society.
With its pet senator positioned at the head of the oversight subcommittee, The Society would have been in perfect position to derail any potential investigations into its activities. Maybe the higher-ups had a bigger plan—government funding for their research? World domination?—who knew?
Nix had never thought about it—the fact that The Society might have to work to stay secret, the fact that the people who called the shots might have something more to hide than killing Nulls. A week ago, Nix would have sworn that he knew every inch of the institute, every purpose The Society worked toward, every tragedy they hoped to avoid. But now Nix had to admit that he’d missed things. That Ione and her little foot soldiers had managed to keep their secrets, even when they hadn’t known he was standing in the shadows, listening to them speak.
“Did you find out what you needed to know?” Claire’s voice was tentative and hoarse. Nix wanted to go to her. He wanted to tell her that he’d never meant to take any of this out on her. He wanted to apologize again, but knew it wouldn’t help.
“I found what I needed to know. You could have found it faster.” The words were an admission that she wasn’t just nicer than he was, or more moral, or right. She was smarter, too.
“You ready to go?” She didn’t acknowledge his words. He didn’t expect her to, but the puffiness around her eyes told him that they weren’t enough.
He needed to make it up to her. Even if there were things he’d done that could never be made up. That meant he had to make up for the little things more.
So he told her everything he’d learned about Proposition 42. About the fact that when he’d died, Sykes had been in the process of stalling the vote—which still didn’t explain why The Society wanted him dead, other than the fact that he wasn’t getting the job done fast enough.
Nix watched Claire take in the information, waited for a spark of interest, and was rewarded when it flickered to life in the creases of her face. And then his eyes trailed downward, and he noticed the small mountain of books she held in her arms.
She followed his gaze, bit her bottom lip, and shrugged. “It’s a library.” She paused. “Books.”
He moved forward to ease her load a little, but she just hugged her bounty harder. “I’ve got it,” she said.
“You might not be ready to take objects with you to the fade,” he said.
“I take my clothes with me.”
That was a point he’d never considered. “We fade when we stop trying to be someone and embrace being nothing. You can take a physical object, like a shirt”—Or a gun. Or a needle. Or knives—“with you, if you consider that object an extension of yourself. It’s easier with clothes.”
He waited to see if she would surrender the books, but she didn’t.
“I can imagine these books are part of my body. I can imagine anything. I’m good at that.”
Nix heard the things she wasn’t saying—about how she’d gotten so good at playing games in her mind, pretending the world was the way she wanted it to be instead of the way it was.
“We should go,” he said, wishing she would let him help her, knowing she wouldn’t. “It’ll be dawn soon.”
And if The Society wanted you dead before, he added silently, I’m betting we’re both pretty high on its hit list now.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Claire closed her eyes. Nix listened as her breathing slowed. And then he followed her—and her fourteen pilfered library books—into the fade.
17
Faded, Claire flew. She didn’t think. She didn’t cast a single glance over her shoulder. She just let go and flew, back the way they’d came. Down streets. Past the cemetery. Over forest, over fields.
I am silence. I am power. I am more.
All she wanted was to go home and go to sleep.
Claire kept a muzzle on the thought, refusing to give it meaning and hanging tight to her fade.
I WANT TO GO—
She arrived back at the cabin just in time, and gave in to the rush of unspoken words in her head, letting the thought suck her body back into the physical world. The books in her arms—weightless a moment before—grew suddenly heavy, and Claire almost fell over sideways as their weight threw hers off center.
It wasn’t until she’d regained her balance and crossed the threshold of the cabin door that she realized: even though her mind had been thinking home, her body had been thinking here. This cabin, the forest.
She’d lived in the same house her entire life, and after two days, this isolated cabin and the woods surrounding it felt like home. If Claire had let herself think about it, that probably would have been depressing. So she didn’t think about it. Instead, she took her books and walked over to the far side of the cabin. Lined them up, just under the window. Tried to get them to stand up straight, but failed and ended up stacking them, one on top of another instead.
It wasn’t the same as having a shelf, but it was better than letting them fling themselves out on the dusty cabin floor. Not wanting to turn and face Nix, she ran her fingers across the spines of the books.
Earlier that week, she’d done almost the exact same thing with other books. Except at that point, she hadn’t known what she was or what it meant or why she never seemed to be good enough for anyone else. And now she knew.
Lot of good that does me.
This was why she needed to go to sleep. She wasn’t doing anyone any good this way. Nix needed her. He was probably the only person in the entire world who really needed her, and she couldn’t shake the sting of his sending her away.
Or maybe she just couldn’t shake off the horrible feeling of helplessness that reared its head every time she looked at him.
I want to make this better for him, and he won’t let me. I want to help and he doesn’t want it.
She wanted to kiss him. To be with him. To take some measure of his pain into her own body. But some hurts were too big, and next to Nix’s, she was nothing.
I’ll sleep on it. I’ll go to bed, and I’ll wake up, and I’ll be better.