“I need to go out.”

She laughs. “Look at you. How far do you think you’d get before passing out?”

“I’m feeling better.”

“Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes. “Whatever it is, it can wait until—”

We hear a knock at the door. My heart goes into overdrive. For once I hope it’s Carver and he’s pestering me again. But he wouldn’t knock. He’d just walk right in.

“That must be Xavier,” Jenna says. “I gave him a list of supplies.” She’s already headed toward the door.

I limp after her. “Jenna, stop. It might be—”

But she’s already swinging it open.

Visitors

I watch the sharp intake of Jenna’s breath as she looks at Raine. It tells me everything I already suspected. Raine is the mirror image of Karden. Probably all the way down to the obstinate tilt of her head.

“Hello, I’m Raine Branson,” she says. “I’m here to see Locke. Is he available?”

Maybe even the timbre and cadence of her voice is the same.

Jenna blinks and takes another deep breath, trying to regain her composure. I wish there had been the time to tell her the truth about who Raine is. I watch Jenna’s face, almost seeing the gears of her mind turn as she puts each piece together, and I pray she doesn’t blurt out the name Rebecca. She clears her throat. “I’m not sure if—”

“Yes. I’m here.” I know I should have ducked back into my bedroom before she saw me. I should have sent her away. I should have at least put on a shirt before I called out. But I didn’t. The shakiness of her voice made all the shoulds disappear. I don’t understand what Raine does to me—she makes me become someone else—someone who takes chances that I shouldn’t. Jenna swings the door wider and Raine sees me standing in the bedroom doorway.

Her lips part and she looks like she’s trying to suppress any reaction at all in front of Jenna but then she walks right past her over to me. “My God, Locke, what happened to you?”

“I—” I glance at Jenna, who shrugs and has no words to help me out. “I took a tumble. Down the stairs.”

“But all the scratches, the cuts, the…”

The gashes. She stares at my bare chest. “There were cats involved. And glass I was carrying. Top of the stairs. It was dark. Late. Three cats I think. Feral.” I keep piling on explanations, hoping one of them will stick.

Jenna begins to close the door, and a large golden arm reaches out to stop her. Hap enters the doorway. “You may not shut the door unless Miss Branson is on this side of it with me.”

“Sorry,” Raine says. “I forgot. May he come in too? I had to bring him.”

I look at Hap. He looks at me. At least we have one thing in common—mutual distrust. “Sure,” I answer.

Jenna lets Hap pass and she shuts the door. “I’ll leave you two to talk. I have some things to take care of in the other room.” She pauses as she passes me. “Left out a few details?” she whispers, and then adds, “I won’t be far if you need anything.” She obviously has her doubts about Hap too.

As soon as Jenna’s gone, Raine puts her hand on my chest, touching the small raised lines, and gingerly moves to the thicker more tender ones that Jenna has woven back together.

Her hand drops to her side. “You lied to me.”

I can’t deny it. I hobble to the sofa and she follows. I’ve lied to her on so many levels, I don’t even know for sure which lie she’s talking about. We both sit, though it takes considerably longer for me to ease myself down than it does Raine.

I look back at Hap, who hasn’t moved from his post by the door, but whose eyes haven’t veered a centimeter from me. He looks like he’s ready to finish me off. “What about him?”

She sighs. “Hap, privacy, please. Voices off.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s not really necessary. But yes, that’s it.”

She waits for an explanation but I’m not sure which one she wants to know. I hate lying to her. Everyone has—for years. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I want to be so much more to her. “What do you want to know?” I ask.

“Is it really that hard to figure out? The truth. Your mother wasn’t having one of her bouts. You hurt yourself. Why did you make up a story? There’s no shame in taking a tumble—unless that’s not what really happened.” She scrutinizes my chest again. Glass, cats, and stairs? There’s suspicion in her eyes.

For her sake, I know I have to make this good, plus I’m not entirely sure Hap isn’t listening in. “I did take a tumble, Raine. That’s the truth. I was stupid and careless. I’m embarrassed about it. Don’t tell anyone. Please.” And then I go into a long explanation, pausing at all the right moments, looking away at all the right moments, using all the tricks I learned from Kara about being convincing, telling her how my father ridicules me for being careless, for not paying attention, if he got a whiff from the Collective about me missing meetings and why, well, I didn’t want him to know, and neither did my mother, because arguments between us don’t go well. They go very badly in fact. My father is strict and expects perfection—one reason my mother and I are both glad to be away from him for a while. I pile lie upon lie until I’ve painted a mirror image of her relationship with her own father, until her face goes from disturbed to sympathetic, and I hate myself when I’m done.