Add to this whole fucked-up situation the fact that I apparently played the piano, and I felt like I’d just body swapped with someone.

The piano.

The thought pulled me to a stop. Suddenly, as if the memory had never been gone, I knew how I’d learned to play.

Connor. The head of the Altered program. He’d made me take lessons.

“You have no discipline,” he’d said. “And you lack focus.”

“And learning how to play the piano is supposed to teach me those things?”

Although I seriously wanted to know the answer to that question, my voice had been laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

But instead of an explanation, all I’d gotten was a yes.

I didn’t admit to it, but I actually liked playing the piano. And I was good at it.

Now that the memory had returned, I couldn’t wait to play again. And an irritating voice in the back of my head said, You can’t wait to kiss Elizabeth again, either.

I told that voice to shut it. I couldn’t get close to Elizabeth like that. No matter what.

28

ELIZABETH

THROUGH THE PARLOR WINDOW, I WATCHED Nick take off. I thought about calling after him but decided against it. He’d pushed me away. And in truth, he was right, to some degree. He wasn’t one of the good guys, in the sense that he wasn’t a normal guy who went to high school and played basketball with his friends in the afternoon and hung out at the lake at night.

Although he hadn’t told me his entire story yet, I got the sense that whatever he’d done for the Branch wasn’t good. After all, he’d been ordered to kill me that night in the forest.

Regardless, I felt drawn to him, and there was no way I could ignore that. No matter what his past was. It’d been only ten minutes since we’d kissed, and already I couldn’t wait another second longer to see him again. It was as if he were a block of iron and I were a magnet drifting closer and closer, waiting for the inevitable moment when our magnetic fields would connect and pull us together.

Once Nick was out of sight, I slumped onto the couch, hugging one of Aggie’s homemade throw pillows to my chest, my fingers distractedly tracing the cross-stitch pattern on the front panel.

Without meaning to, I replayed the kiss in my mind, analyzing every move Nick had made, wondering if there was some hint as to his true feelings in the way he’d placed his hand on the small of my back, or in the way he’d drawn his tongue across my lips.

A thrill of butterflies took flight in my stomach, and an unbidden smile spread across my face. I covered my mouth with a hand, as if to stop my grin from spreading too wide, wide enough to escape.

Sometime later—I’d lost track of how many times I relived the kiss—I heard my name muttered from a room down the hall and remembered, vaguely, that Dr. Sedwick was here.

I tossed the pillow to the couch and stood up, straining to hear more. The conversation was only a ghost of a sound, whispered too quietly for me to make out anything important.

On bare feet, I made my way to the hallway and crept along the far side to avoid the squeaky, well-trodden boards in the center. When I reached the hall bathroom, I slipped inside and pressed myself in the corner near the open door.

It was much easier to hear from my new vantage point.

“We’ve lost track of him,” Dr. Sedwick said. “And that makes me nervous.”

“He must know this town isn’t his anymore,” Aggie said.

Dr. Sedwick sighed. “I don’t like this, Agatha. I don’t like it at all.”

“Neither do I, but what else would you have us do?”

There was a moment of silence before Dr. Sedwick went on, avoiding answering the question. It had sounded rhetorical anyway.

“What about our other situation?”

A chair squeaked.

“Elizabeth is doing well,” Aggie said. “I would say the situation is as good as we can hope for.”

At the mention of my name, I held my breath, wanting to hear as much as I could. Unfortunately, the subject changed just as quickly as it’d started, and I wasn’t mentioned again.

“Did you send for the boy you spoke of?” Aggie asked.

“I did.”

“And?”

“He’s here. Another set of eyes is always a good thing.”

Aggie murmured something I couldn’t make out. The chair squeaked again, louder this time, like someone had left it to stand.

Panic started to form in the base of my throat. Every muscle in my body said to move. I squeezed out of the doorway and hurried into the kitchen. I banged a few dishes around in the sink so it would appear as though I’d been here all along, preoccupied with cleaning.

A moment later, Aggie and Dr. Sedwick emerged, smiling, as if they hadn’t just had a cryptic conversation in the den.

“Morning, Elizabeth,” Dr. Sedwick said. He was wearing a plain T-shirt, sunglasses hanging from the collar, and a pair of khaki shorts.

“Morning. I didn’t know you were here.” I grabbed a dish towel and pretended to dry my hands. “I hope you’re not here to pester me.”

He laughed, and Aggie ambled past him to the coffeepot. “No,” he said. “I just needed to talk with Aggie about the fund-raiser coming up.”

I tossed the towel over my shoulder. “I see. Can I get you something to drink?”

“No. No. I should be going. But I’ll see you on Thursday?”

“I’ll be there. It’s the highlight of my week.”