The Invisible (7 page)

But they can’t actually think someone’s going to walk up to them and give them a suitcase full of cash . . . can they?

No, I realize. Of course not. They know that will never happen. The payday they’re talking about is the one Invisible is threatening to give the North Side if—
when
—nobody does the “assignment.” Not payday or a paycheck. Pay
back.

When I get to Ford’s apartment, the light in the living room is on. I tap softly on the window, and instantly the curtain is pulled back and I’m met with Ford’s face, his teeth glowing in the lamplight, smiling broadly. A thrilled shiver ripples through me—it’s great to see him up and around.

He buzzes me inside and I move down the hall toward the apartment, where he’s standing in the doorframe. His color isn’t so green anymore. Even in the hall fluorescents, I can see a pink in his cheeks that hasn’t been there for weeks. His posture is the one I remember from before the shooting, straight and tall, no longer stooped and slumped as it has been for too long.

“You look better.” I fight the rush of heat creeping from my chest to my face as I move to embrace him. “A lot better.”

Ford pulls me to him and squeezes, hard but not too hard. An electric jolt of want ripples through my body and I can’t resist leaning my head on his shoulder a minute, just breathing in the fact of him standing up, healthy at last. Then I pull away, though it’s clear he doesn’t want me to.

Don’t want him,
I command myself.
Just don’t. You need a friend, not complications. Not the pain of losing him when it doesn’t work out.

“I am. Much better, in fact.” Ford pulls me into the apartment and shuts the door behind us. “Jax decided to give me some kind of special blood she came up with. I went in yesterday morning. It’s working. Really well, actually. I started feeling better almost right after she gave me the transfusion.”

I nod, feigning utter ignorance. Inside I’m cheering for Jax, and congratulating myself for insisting she try something more.

We both stand in the living room, my hands in his, blinking at each other, grinning. “Special blood, huh? Must have been extra-special,” I joke.

“Glad you’re here,” he says. His voice cracks on
here
. “You put me in a good mood. You’ve always had that effect on me,” he adds shyly, looking down at our hands, our fingers still wound around each other. I pull my hands away, suddenly self-conscious about how close we’re standing. The part of my heart that’s still damaged after being conned so ruthlessly by Gavin jangles out a warning:
Proceed with caution.
But the rest of me doesn’t want to hear it. My fingers are thrumming, warm from Ford’s touch.

“I also put you into a coma, though.”

“No you didn’t.
He
did that.” Ford’s face darkens at the mention of Gavin. “If he hadn’t died the way he did, I’d be out hunting him down right now.”

I shake my head. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

“I would have done it anyway,” Ford says, his eyes shining in the low lamplight. “He was Bedlam river scum.”

“Anyway, he’s gone,” I remind him. “It’s just us now.”

Just us, alone in a room. I think of what Ford said when he was briefly conscious, just before he fell into the coma:
My whole life, I’ve been waiting
. . .

My feelings about Ford were buried under so many layers of panic and worry before, but with those stripped away, all that’s left is a fuzzy warmth in my midsection and a need to be close to him. I start to lean in, feel my eyelids sinking down as I give in to the spell of our attraction . . . but then the doorknob clicks behind Ford and little Sam comes out in her nightgown.

“I had a bad dream,” she says, rubbing sleep from her eyes, “that there were bad guys in here. I wanted to check.”

“Hey, munchkin,” Ford says, scooping her up in his arms and motioning for me to join him on the couch, Sam between us. Her hair smells like shampoo, still wet in two messy braids. “No bad guys here. Just us good guys.” He winks at me.

Settling into Ford’s lap, Sam grins up at me. “He loooves you, Anthem.”

“Easy there, tiger.” He rolls his eyes and grins at me, his neck flushing a deep red. “The kid’s been reading a lot of fairy tales.”

It’s okay
, I think but don’t say. Because I probably love him too.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

At four in the morning, the revelry on the South Side has died down. I whiz through the silent blocks of dilapidated row houses with trash swirling in the streets and driveways, not a soul around to see me, floating on a pillow of happiness about Ford being healthy again, the relief so drug-like that I’m not even paying attention to my surroundings. My legs are pumping as usual, but it takes so little effort now that my mind is free to wander, my thoughts disconnected from my body.

As I run, a bizarre image pops into my head: Ford meeting my parents. Everyone getting along. Would they see that we make sense, even if we are from different worlds?

I’m running down Hemlock toward Hyacinth Lane when a scream punctuates the silence. I slow down to a jog, and then freeze altogether, listening in the cold night. I hear the shattering of glass. Then another sound, a quiet
zzzz-zzzz
that starts and stops.

It’s coming from up ahead, the cul-de-sac devoted to the massive property everyone calls Marks Manor, because it’s the mayor’s mansion and Mayor Marks has been in office for so long.

When I reach it, the enormous house looks undisturbed from what little I can see beyond the sloping lawn and trees and fence. I flip my hood up, conscious of the possibility of cameras. But then there’s another scream, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. It came from inside the house.

For some reason, I look at my watch—4:21
A.M.

My fingers begin to pulse. My heart stutters painfully. The scream echoes in my ears—was it Martha?

I run toward the iron security fence surrounding the house and leap. I manage to grab onto the top of it, just to the right of the gate. Once my feet get purchase on the bars it’s easy to shimmy over the top. I drop down and land soundlessly on the grass, my heart whirring with panic as I pull my hood tighter around my head and sprint toward the house. If I keep moving fast, the cameras hopefully won’t be able to pick up my image.

The lawn has been spray-painted with a message. The paint is wet and purple on the soft blue-green grass.

This ridiculous and baseless threat brought to you by The Invisible.

My blood freezes in my veins as I recognize the words from the mayor’s speech. They’ve come for revenge.

I dart soundlessly to the side of the house until I reach the door. It swings open on its hinges.

My mouth goes dry as I run through the marble front room, sweeping staircases rising from either side. I take the one on the right, toward the residential rooms. I used to play here occasionally with Martha when my mother brought me with her to charity luncheons. The image of Martha as an eight year old, her room covered with horse-jumping ribbons, her braids askew as she bounced on her pink bedspread, swims into my mind.

I’m up the stairs in a second. I pause on the landing, then dart down the carpeted, dark hallway to my right. I don’t see the feral-looking boy of maybe nineteen until he barrels around the corner and nearly cuts me with a blade he holds in his hand.

I leap away from the blade and then I’m on top of him before he even sees me.

“Where is she?” I whisper, twisting his wrist until the blade, a small box cutter, thumps to the carpet. I scoop it up and hold it to his throat.

He smiles a vacant smile, his eyes scarily blank as he motions behind him. “In her room. With the others,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Take me there,” I growl, pressing the blade against his pimply neck.

“You’re too late,” he says.

He’s said it so calmly and clearly it makes me pause for a moment. Something is not right, but I can’t understand it yet. “Who do you work for?”

“You’ll see,” the boy says, squirming against me as I move him down the hall. “You’re very good at this. You should join us. He’d love to have you.”

“Never.” My hands shake with rage and apprehension and I pull the blade back a bit, afraid I’ll accidentally cut his jugular.

That’s when I hear the tiny muffled ping of a bullet with a silencer. Followed by a sickening thud. Followed by the sound of glass sliding open. A window.

I hurl the boy as hard as I can against the damask-covered wall, the hallway blurring as panic rocks through me.

He smashes face-first against the wall with a howl and the snap of bone. I don’t stay to see if he’s out cold.

I fly down the hallway, passing room after vacant room, all the doors flung open. The mayor’s suite is on the left. A huge bedroom flanked with a bathroom and dressing room on either side. I peek in for a second, my breath held, half-expecting to find the mayor and Belinda lying in their bed, murdered.

But the bed is empty. There’s no time to figure out where Manny and Belinda are. I leave the empty room and dart down the hall, listening, hearing nothing but the insane whirring of my chest, when I come to the only closed door. It’s carved mahogany. I frantically try to yank it open, desperate to get inside the room, suddenly certain it’s Martha’s. But the door is locked.

I start hurling my body at it, my hands shaking like crazy. I hear shouting that sounds like it’s coming from below, from the lawn.

I take a running start and slam my shoulder against the door. On the second try, I succeed, and the whole thing falls forward into the room, with the frame still around the door, having splintered away from the wall.

It’s Martha’s room. I remember it now, the way the walls are perfectly round because it’s located in the turret. It looks just the same as it did when we were ten. The curved walls, the ceiling that comes to a perfect, swooping point in the center. There are more horse show ribbons now, and more snapshots of Martha.

I move inside, stepping over the door I destroyed, my breath stoppered in my throat.

The lavender bedspread is pulled back. I see a tangle of white sheets. Nothing more.

My chest loosens. She is still alive. They’ve got her. I need to go after them.

But when I move toward the window I nearly step on her. Martha. On the floor. Crumpled where she stood. Her body folded, jackknifed unnaturally in two. Wearing a white camisole with small pink roses, matching cotton pants. Blood spattered all over both.

“Martha!” I cry.
Nononono.
I drop to my knees, a high-pitched sound coming out of my mouth that I can’t seem to control.

Surely this is fixable. A doctor. Technology. Look what they did for Ford.
All of these thoughts whisper through me as I pull my sleeves down over my hands, somehow having the presence of mind to remember I don’t want to leave fingerprints here.

I lift her shoulders, still warm, then put my hand over my mouth to hold in the scream. There is no fixing this. It is done and final. A hole in her forehead. So clean and small, but for all the blood.

I sit down on the floor, let her upper body fill my lap on the pink shag rug.

I cock my head toward the open window to Martha’s room, the white curtains billowing in the wind, listening. Whoever did this is already long gone. The faint tones of approaching sirens reach me, maybe ten blocks away now. A clatter of footsteps two floors below. A slamming door. The blank-faced boy from the hallway, I’m certain of it.

I look down at Martha. The curl of the cowlick in her bangs is still parted funny, the detail so utterly Martha that I can’t help but reach out and touch her hair. Her face frozen, ghost-white, streaked with a black half-mask of blood. The features are hers, but the shocked expression, the frozen eyes don’t look anything like who she was. Her upper body stretched across my thighs is already stiffening.

I move out from under her, letting her body slide to the pink shag carpet. I cough, and it’s like a deranged bark. I think of Martha’s parents. Are they still alive? Where are they?

I lay her down on the ground, horrified to leave her here like this. But the cops are on their way. I can’t be here when they arrive.

The sirens are getting closer as I race downstairs, grandfather clocks ticking loudly. I slip outside and look around the manicured grounds. There’s no movement aside from the Bedlam municipal flag flapping on a pole, the four stupid stars, in the stupid square formation, the blue half and the red half even on the diagonal plane. What were they supposed to represent? Prosperity and unity or something idiotic like that? Could two words possibly be more hollow than those?

I race toward the back fence, pulling my hood up and running even faster when I notice it’s lined with surveillance cameras, their red lights blinking. I flip my hood over my hair, and run with my hands shielding my face, so fast I hope I’m a blur, until I reach a willow tree near the fencing, using it to climb over.

Careful to face away from the cameras, I take off again, my heart thrashing against my ribs—the pain so real I’m afraid they’ll crack.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I pull the covers tight around my ears to mute the hissing sound that’s invaded my Dreamadine-assisted sleep. But the hissing becomes a monotone snarl and I unseal my eyes, which feel like they are full of glass shards. I emerge from under my blanket, check the glowing numbers on the bedside table clock—6:09 in the morning, and I fell asleep after five
A.M.
—to find the source of the electronic howling: My computer monitor is blaring black-and-white static, like an old TV.

A shiver passes through me so hard I convulse. Then I am perfectly still. Watching the static, bracing for more threats from the Invisible.

I don’t need to see it,
I realize, the drugged lid of sleep unfastening from my brain.
I can turn it off
. I stagger out of bed, my head spinning, and try to turn off my monitor. But the button does nothing. The static just grows brighter, louder.