“Argh!” Darcy screeched in frustration, shoving me backward. I toppled over a chair, landing hard on my back. “Maybe fun is overrated. You die first.” She bared her teeth at me, and I realized she was tensing to leap.
“By the way, Darcy,” I said hurriedly, and she paused instinctively. I don’t care how many years you’ve spent killing people—human beings have an innate reflex to let each other have a last word before death. Killing someone in the middle of the sentence leaves a disturbing lack of closure. I know this from experience. “You know he’s setting you up to be the patsy, right?”
It was a shot in the dark, but Darcy’s resolve flickered, the coiled tension in her body momentarily loosening. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded. “You don’t know anything about him.”
Him. I snorted derisively, pushing the bluff. “Maven does.”
She stepped closer, glaring. “What? What does Maven know?”
We were maybe two feet apart at this point, with Quinn’s motionless body behind her. I had to try to do whatever I’d done before that got her off me. I stared into her eyes again, but nothing happened. Before, Darcy had been the one to open the connection between us; I had no idea how to do it myself.
A memory flashed through my mind. Sam and I were about six, playing with a long cardboard tube left over from a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. We stood at either end of the tube, each with an eye raised to it like it was a spyglass, giggling as we “spied” each other. I remembered the way Sam’s eye had looked through that tube; like there was nothing else in the world, just Sam centered in a small circle of light at the end of a long tunnel of darkness.
I pictured two cardboard tubes, put them against my eyes, and looked straight into Darcy’s. Something stirred along the sides of my vision.
Then nothing happened.
“You don’t know anything,” Darcy said smugly, her fists uncurling. She bared her teeth again, tensing to strike.
No, Lex, Sam’s voice said in my head, you couldn’t put the tube right up against your eye, or it’d be too dark. You had to leave a little space to let the light in.
I visualized the tubes again, now with a little bit of space between us. The space served as a buffer, letting me stay who I was, out of Darcy’s head. The tingling started along the sides of my vision again and I pushed harder, concentrating on the connection.
Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, Darcy’s face slackened, her lips parting as her jaw dropped open the tiniest bit. Excitement swirled through me so quickly that I almost lost the connection. I had her. Thanks, Sam.
Wait, now what? What the hell was I doing?
“Touch your nose,” I said softly. It was the first thing that popped into my head. Darcy’s right index finger came up and rested on the tip of the nose I’d broken a couple of days ago.
“Good,” I said. Whatever I was doing made her follow directions, but could I use it like a lie detector? “Tell me what you were planning to do with Charlotte Wheaton,” I commanded, feeling sweat break out on my forehead. The connection was difficult to maintain, like holding yourself halfway through a pull-up.
“Our senior was bringing her to the merchant,” Darcy answered tonelessly. “Then the merchant was supposed to get her to her new . . . parents.”
The way she said “parents,” as though it was the closest term she knew to describe something awful, made my blood go cold. “Your senior?” I repeated in confusion. “Like your boss?”
That must not have been the right wording, because Darcy blinked several times, and I felt my control slipping. Gasping with the effort, I blurted, “Tell me who told you to take Charlotte Wheaton!”
I pushed as hard as I could on the connection, and Darcy began, “Our orders . . .”
And then the tip of a wooden stake popped out of her chest. The link between us broke, and I felt myself tumbling through the cardboard tubes into darkness.
Chapter 15
I woke up in the car, the lights of Boulder flashing intermittently over my face.
I sat up fast, looking around. I was in the passenger seat of Quinn’s Toyota. My neck was stiff from where it had been leaning awkwardly against the door, and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Quinn was driving, his face grim.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You fainted.”
“I did not,” I said crossly. “Fainting is for preteen girls and those really weird goats. I do not faint.”
For the first time Quinn looked over at me, his eyes rolling. “Okay, then. You abruptly lost consciousness, without any outside force affecting you in any way.”
“That’s better.” I arched my back, trying to stretch the kinks in my neck. “What happened? Where’s Darcy?”
Quinn jerked his head to indicate something over his right shoulder. “She’s in the back.”
I twisted in my seat, seeing a too-small bundle underneath a shabby gray blanket. I leaned over and lifted a corner of the cloth.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Quinn began, but it was too late. I saw the corpse, wrapped in two layers of clear plastic.
“Oh, wow,” I said softly. We were still in the city, and there was just enough light from the streetlamps for me to study Darcy’s body. It still had the blonde hair and the bloodied black jacket, which was somehow a whole lot creepier than if she’d been dressed in trailing bandages like a movie mummy. Because that’s what the rest of Darcy’s body looked like. It was desiccated to the point that I couldn’t even tell if there was any skin left on it, or if I was looking at a skeleton.