“Kali?” Skylar’s voice was very small. “If this is about what I saw, when we were looking at those files—I won’t tell anyone. Ever. I mean, we all have our things, right? I talk too much, and I look like a third grader, and I’m only a little bit psychic.” She blew a wisp of white-blonde hair out of her face. “I don’t care if you’re a you-know-what.”
“A vampire?” I suggested. It was the first time I’d said the word out loud, but worrying about a thing like that seemed so stupid all of a sudden. It was just a word.
And that woman was just my mother.
“It’s not about that,” I told Skylar. “It’s …”
I couldn’t form the words, physically could not do it.
Skylar nodded. “It’s okay, Kali. I may not be significantly psychic, but I know that it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to work out, and you’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?”
The repetition of the word made me want to smile. Smiling made me want to puke. This wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay.
Moving on autopilot, I dug something out of my pocket. The cell phone I’d stolen from Davis’s office was in even worse shape now than it had been when I’d snapped it in two. The plastic casing was pulverized, assorted keys hanging off it like a loose tooth dangling by a single thread of gum. It looked like it had been run over by a semi.
I ran my thumb over the broken, jagged surface.
This phone looked how I felt.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that isn’t your phone,” Skylar said, hooking her thumbs through the pocket of her jeans. “Am I right?”
I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the broken, mangled frame. “It used to be Bethany’s dad’s. Now, it’s nothing.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I used to have a memory of my mother—smiling, soft.
Now I had nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
“Reid could probably pull some data off the phone,” Skylar said, a look of comic concentration on her elfin features. “He’s got guys. Lots of guys. One of them could reassemble the memory card, and then pull the incoming calls.”
“There were some numbers on there,” I said, like that mattered. Like anything mattered anymore. “Incoming calls.”
Quick as a whip, Skylar slipped her own cell phone out of her pocket and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Gen? It’s Skylar. Quick question—if you have a cell phone number, can you track the location a call was placed from?” Skylar paused. “Not you specifically, but like, somebody-you? With the right equipment?” Skylar fell into silence again, twirling a stray piece of blonde hair around her index finger. “Okay, and say I wanted to keep tabs on the person who was running the number. And say that this person totally wouldn’t expect me to be doing that, because he still thinks I’m five years old. Do you think …”
Skylar trailed off again and then beamed. “Excellent! Tell John Michael he’s never allowed to make fun of you for watching police procedurals again. See you in five.”
Skylar hit the key to end the call with more flourish than was purely necessary. “That was Genevieve,” she said needlessly. “She says that Reid and company should be able to track the incoming calls on this phone back to the locations from which they were placed even if they’re not listed. Same goes for the calls made from this number, so if Bethany’s dad has ever been to the facility where they’re keeping Zev, or if he’s ever gotten a call from them, we should be able to track it. Or technically, Reid should be able to track it, but Gen said she could loan me a couple of bugs, so we should be able to keep tabs on Reid.”
I tried to process Skylar’s babbles and came to an utterly ridiculous conclusion. “Are you actually suggesting we bug the FBI?”
Skylar held up her right hand, holding her index finger a centimeter or so above her thumb. “Just a little.”
“This is never going to work.”
“Kali, if I want pessimism and brooding foreheads, I’ll talk to Elliot. At least try to think positively.”
“Sure,” I said, forcing my fingers to let loose of their grip on the cell phone. “I guess it’s worth a try.”
I wanted to laugh hysterically—or possibly throw up. Zev was a lab rat, my mother was evil, and Skylar and I were discussing bugging the FBI.
“Yeah,” Skylar said, and she had the decency to sound a little sheepish. “It’s crazy. But sometimes, crazy is all you’ve got.”
She reached out to take the phone, and the moment her fingers touched mine, an odd gleam came into her eyes, like a candle bringing light to a jack-o’-lantern’s. For a moment, there was an unnatural silence between us, and I wondered what she’d seen.
“It’s going to get better.” Skylar’s voice was very quiet, very small. “But first, it’s going to get worse.” She played with the end of her T-shirt, avoiding my gaze. “And when it gets worse … well, just remember that it’s going to get better, okay?” She brought her eyes up to mine, and I felt like she needed something from me—acceptance maybe, or absolution.
“Sometimes, there aren’t any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard.” She blinked and then cleared her throat. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you really think about it, we’re all broken. That’s just what life does. It knocks you down and it breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don’t. You either do things on your terms, or you don’t.” She grabbed my hand, and I was surprised at the strength of her grip. “You let the bad things win, or you don’t.”
It would have been so easy to stay down, to deal myself out, to stop caring. There was a part of me that wanted to say that I’d been fighting since I was twelve, and look what it got me.
But I couldn’t. And even though I had no idea what Skylar had seen in our future, what she was holding back, the one thing I knew for sure was that she couldn’t, either.
Crazy, insane, impossible, broken—it didn’t matter. Some people were born to fight back.
Skylar squeezed my hand and then dropped it. “You know what the worst part is about being psychic?” she asked. In typical Skylar fashion, she didn’t wait for a response to continue. “You always know when it’s going to get worse. I get up in the morning and get ready for school, and I know that word is going to be written on my locker. I know that given half a chance, they’d write it on my face. Last year, when it first started, I knew—I knew it was going to go on and on and on; every day, every single day, it was just going to get worse. But you know what? Screw that, Kali. Whatever it is, whatever hurts so bad you can’t even unball your fists—you either let it break you, or you don’t.”
This was the first time I’d heard Skylar admit, even for a second, that she wasn’t invincible—that the things people said and did to her at school hurt. And maybe, compared to what I was going through, it should have seemed little and petty and so very high school, but it didn’t, because fighting, getting hurt, letting the baddies break my bones and tear my flesh—that was the easy part.
That had always been the easy part.
Letting people in, caring, wanting them to care about me—that was hard.
“That woman?” I said, my voice husky and low. “The one who was just here? I’m pretty sure she’s my mom.”
Skylar blinked. And then she blinked again. “Do you think she knows?” Skylar said finally. “That you’re involved in all of this? That you’re … you?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I care.” I brought the heel of my hand up to my face, wiped roughly at the tears as they fell from my bloodshot eyes. “If we’re going to illegally bug the FBI, we should probably get on that.”
I had fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes until my next shift. Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes to fight back—but until I knew where Zev was, there wasn’t anything else I could do.