“Exactly.” I run my good hand through my hair and tell him about breaking into Judge Phillip’s and seeing the void, and the way it made the memories unreadable. I tell him about Eric and Sako following me. I tell him what Roland said about evidence, and that I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’m being set up.
“You have to tell the Archive,” he says.
“I know.” I know. But tell them what? I know how ludicrous it all sounds. I can see the skepticism in Wesley’s eyes, and he’s far more forgiving than Agatha will be. I can’t just walk in there and announce they have another traitor in their midst. Not after what happened with Owen and Carmen. I need to talk to Roland, but I’ll have to get past Agatha first. I know I can’t keep ignoring the summonses, but after everything I’ve put my parents through, I can’t just disappear. I think about sending Wesley to the Archive on my behalf, but the last thing I want to do is get him tangled up in this, especially now that Agatha’s involved. Besides, we’re not really partners. Wesley’s not supposed to be helping me.
He looks at me hard. “You didn’t feel like mentioning any of this last night?”
I pick at a fraying bit of tape on my hand. “It wouldn’t translate well to text,” I say. “And I was a little busy.”
He reaches out and takes my wrapped hand and runs his fingers lightly over the tape. “What happened, Mac?”
I pull away and roll up my left sleeve for him to see the bandage. I unwrap it so he can see the fourteen little red X’s beneath.
“Who did this to you?” he growls.
I wish that were an easier question to answer. I take a breath and hold it for several long seconds before finally saying, “I did.”
Confusion flickers across Wesley’s face, followed by worry. I go to push my sleeve back down, but he catches my hand and draws my arm closer. His fingers hover over the cut. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I explain. “It started as a dream. Owen was… He was the one with the knife, and then I…” Wesley pulls me into a hug. He holds me so tight it hurts, so tight his noise pounds through my head, but I don’t pull away.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I whisper into his shirt.
Wes pulls back just enough to look at me. “Tell me how I can help.”
Go away, I think. Stay away from me and whatever bad is circling. But I know him well enough to know that he won’t. “For one, you could ask Amber not to tell the whole school I got arrested.”
“It doesn’t count as an arrest unless they book you,” echoes Wes, adding, “She won’t tell anyone.”
“She told you.”
“Because she knows I…” He trails off.
“You what?”
“She knows I care,” says Wes. “About you. By the way, you look like hell. Have you slept at all since…”
I rub my eyes. “I can’t.”
“You can’t stay awake forever, Mac.”
“I know…but I’m scared.” Words Da taught me never to say. He thought saying it was halfway to surrendering. Now the confession hangs between us. The room settles and thickens, and I can feel the cracks in my armor as it loosens around me.
Wes pushes up from the table. He pours himself a cup of coffee and rests against the counter.
“Okay,” he says. “If you’re determined to stay awake, I can help. But this”—he gestures down at the spread of precalc and lit theory on the table—“isn’t going to do.” He digs the physiology book out from the bottom of the pile and flashes me a mischievous smile. “Here we go.”
By the time Dad gets back, Wes has managed to cover himself in an impressive number of Post-it notes, each labeling a muscle (I don’t have the heart to tell him we’re studying blood flow right now). Dad takes one look at him and almost smiles. And when it takes Wes half a dozen tries to affix a yellow sticker to the place between his shoulders, I end up laughing until my chest hurts, and for a while I forget how much trouble I’m in and how tired I am and how much my arm hurts.
I make it to dusk, but even with Wesley’s company, I’m starting to fade. Mom is back home and making no attempt to hide the fact that she’s hovering. Every time I yawn, she tells me I should go to bed. Tells me I need to sleep. But I can’t. I know Dallas said I had to confront my problems, but I just don’t have the strength to face another nightmare right now. Especially now that I know I’m capable of doing actual damage to myself. And maybe to others. I would rather be exhausted and awake than a danger and asleep, so I brush off her concern and crack open a soda. It’s halfway to my lips when she catches my hand, filling my head with her high, worried static as she pries the can away and replaces it with a glass of water.
I sigh and take a long sip. She passes the soda to Wes, who makes the mistake of yawning as he takes it.
“You should head home,” Mom tells him. “It’s getting late, and I’m sure your father is wondering where you are.”
“I doubt that,” he says under his breath, then adds, “He knows I’m over here.”
“Mom,” I say, finishing the glass of water, “he’s helping me study.”
“Does he know you’re here here?” she presses, ignoring me. “Or does he think you’re upstairs with Jill?”
Wesley’s brow furrows. “Frankly, I don’t think he cares.”
“Parents always care,” she snaps.
“Honey,” says Dad, looking up from a book.
They’re talking, all three of them, but the words begin to run together in my ears. I’m just thinking about how strange it is when my vision slides out of focus.
The room sways, and I grip the counter.
“Mac?” Wes’s voice reaches me. “Are you okay?”
I nod and set the glass down; or at least I mean to, but the countertop’s not where I thought it was, and the glass goes crashing to the floor. It shatters. The sound is far away. At first I think I’m about to have another blackout, but those happen fast, and this is slow like syrup.
“What have you done?” Wes snaps, but I don’t think he’s talking to me.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. The world sways even in darkness.
“The doctor said she needed to—”
Everything else is far away.
“Allison,” growls Dad. I drag my eyes open. “How could you—”
And then my legs go out from under me, and I feel Wesley’s arms and his noise wrap around me before the world goes black.
NINETEEN
AT FIRST, everything is dark and still.
Dark and still, but not peaceful.
The world is somehow empty and heavy at the same time, the nothing weighing me down, pinning my arms and legs. And then, little by little, the details begin to come back, to descend, rise up, wrap around me.
The open air.
My racing heart.
And Owen’s voice.
“There’s nowhere to run.”
Just like that, the darkness thins from absolute black into night, the nothingness into the Coronado roof. I am racing through the maze of gargoyles, and I can hear Owen behind me, the sound of his steps and the grind of metal on stone as he drags his blade along the statues. The roof stretches to every side, forever and ever, the gargoyles everywhere, and I am running.