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  “Fox, I’m sorry,” I said.

  He clasped his right fist with his left hand.

  “Fox, it was my…my fault,” Sinna said. “I don’t know what came over me. I felt compelled—”

  Demi ripped the thick book she was holding, her beloved Martial Arts Bible, in two along the spine, and I flinched, fearing these book pieces would fly at my head.

  Fox took the remains of the book away from Demi. Threw them aside.

  “Okay, people,” he said, stamping each word loudly over the siren. “We’ll deal with this later. After the check-up. Because today is the day we’re leaving this hellhole, and so we’re going to do everything the way we agreed to do it while we’re not alone. Understood?”

  As we were nodding, he raised his voice even more, “Now, move it. Face the wall. Legs apart. Hands above your head. You know the drill.”

  I began scrambling out of Sinna’s lap, but apparently wasn’t moving fast enough for Fox because he lifted me by my waist, carried me to the designated wall, and placed me where I was supposed to stand. He also made sure that my feet were exactly a shoulder-length apart and that my hands were placed high enough on the chilly cement wall. Done with that, he stood by my side.

  The siren started to quiet—now it sounded like a weeping child.

  Fox’s arm brushed against mine.

  “Fox,” I whispered, “that kiss…it wasn’t just Sinna’s fault—”

  He covered my hand with his. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve already forgiven you.”

  “What?” Demi gasped, and I too couldn’t help but spin to face him.

  Fox bent down to match his six feet, three inches to my five. “Okay, I’ll be honest, I was insanely mad at you for a second, but then…I don’t know…my love for you is just so much stronger than any other feeling in me. As it should be, right? The miracle of love conquering all.” He chuckled to tell me he knew it was a platitude, but quickly stopped so I would also know he’d really meant it. “Kiss me. No, not on the lips. I don’t know if I can stop kissing you then.”

  I pecked him on the cheek, and he moved away because we were not supposed to be touching each other in the guards’ presence. I leaned my burning forehead against the cold wall. It hurt to think about my kissing Sinna and hurting Fox. And it was painful to recall the nightmare Sin had made for me because I realized Sin wouldn’t be able to submerge our guards into a vision, at least not today, for there were six of them, and he’d barely managed to create a nightmare for me alone. And there was absolutely nothing pleasant that I expected from this upcoming check-up. So I escaped into my mental library. It had as many books as our bookstore. I began with Gift Registry: Children’s Edition, a thick tome with pictures of giggling babies scattered over its cover, “Dear children, on March 5, 1953, a Soviet paranormal research lab Serdtce made an amazing discovery. The scientists there learned that every single human being had a talent hard-wired in his DNA. They—”

  “Ev,” Fox called out in a voice that told me he knew what I was doing, “don’t wander off. Not today.”

  Guiltily, I nodded, promised to be on my best behavior, and focused on the last tinkling notes of the alarm and on the guards’ loud stomping through the mall. All of our guards were gifted in godliness, which meant they could grow up to eight feet and twice their width in a blink of an eye. Not that they particularly needed any of that, in my opinion—those dicks were mountains of muscles to begin with.

  In a minute, I heard a key grinding against the steel innards of our lock. Two turns. Then a sharp click of the bolt retracting. I glanced through the eyes of a god out there in the mall and saw how two of his comrades, already grown to their divine proportions, pressed their shoulders against the behemoth of our door and began pushing. The door crawled an inch. The hinges shrilled and groaned, and the bottom of the steel slab grated against the floor. The gods cursed.

  When the door was half-open, they entered, six giants dressed in black polyester tracksuits stretched to the breaking point. Their handguns, ridiculously miniscule in their cabbage-sized fists, were pointed at our heads. No, I wasn’t looking at them through anyone’s eyes—I’d seen all of this enough times before—and my mind itched to slip back into the library, but I willed it to stay, because today, tonight, we were doing the craziest thing possible: we were trying to break out of here. Without having come into our gifts. Or in Sinna’s case, without having mastered his gift. I didn’t believe we had a chance in hell, but Fox had decided we would try, and so we were going to. And now, as per our escape plan—or rather Escape Plan, because the way Fox and Demi talked about it, even blind, I was practically able to see capital Es and Ps coming out of their mouths every time they’d said those words—anyway, according to the Plan, I had to chat up Rig, one of our guards who was also a vile animal that liked to hit me. The very thought of talking to him filled me with dread and disgust, but Fox coughed, and I forced my lips into the coquettish smile he had taught me. I raised my eyebrows to seem lighthearted, the way Demi had instructed me. From Fox’s sideways glance, I knew that instead of cute and carefree, I looked like I was suffering from a rabid toothache, but my muscles seized up. Well then, here goes.

  “Rig,” I said sweetly, making sure he could see at least half of my smile since I didn’t dare to turn around all the way, “how—”

  I stumbled in my speech, because a series of elephantine steps echoed through the mall. My arms dropped. Who on earth could be tromping out there when all of our guards were inside this store?

  “Keep your friggin’ arms up,” Rig growled at me.

  I flinched at being ordered around like a dog, but with a few guns aimed at me, I didn’t have much choice. I could follow his command slowly, though. Pausing every second, I was still lifting my arms when our door screeched again, crawling open a bit wider, and in marched four more gods. These ones were dressed way fancier than our regular guards—no tacky polyester tracksuits there, but expensive leather coats, crisp white shirts, and silk ties. One guy even had a hat, a black fedora, pushed deep onto his fleshy forehead. Their guns were not the usual Sig 220s either, but some special affairs, big and sleek, with triggers that were actually enlarged for gods’ massive fingers. To top it all, two of the newcomers had flamethrowers slung over their shoulders.

  My heart felt like a lump of ice that was too big for its niche in my chest. Had our guards somehow learned that we were going for a breakout tonight? Was this the reinforcement?

  Before I could freak out any more, two normal-sized people walked in on nearly silent feet. A man and a woman. Or, to be precise, the other way around: first, a middle-aged, medium-height woman and then a man walking strictly behind her back. Since I hadn’t seen many women here, I gawked at this one through Rig’s eyes. Fleshless and spindly, she reminded me of a dried-up butterfly, but a butterfly with the terrible past, for the woman’s face had no smile lines. Her dull brown hair flopped listlessly over her shoulders, her gray eyes stared into space, and her baggy, mud-colored pantsuit hung crumpled off her bony shoulders. In her pale fingers she clutched what constituted the only bright spot on her figure: a dazzlingly white plastic folder.

  I wondered what her gift was. It couldn’t be godliness—she was much too scrawny for that, and besides, her suit didn’t seem like it could stretch. And it wasn’t anything connected with grace or dance because she slouched. And there was no way she could be a color—if she were, I was sure she would have changed that drab hair color to something more interesting. Well, maybe her gift was holding something tightly, I joked to myself, because the woman was clasping that thick folder with more feeling than there was in the rest of her body. Which all of a sudden made me wonder if her indifference was just a pretence.

  Since I couldn’t infer anything else about the woman, I abandoned Rig’s eyes and found a different pair of peepers. These were aimed at her male companion, and when I saw him, I barely managed to choke off a shriek. Because it was Don Horgreth, the Permanent President of the Un
ited States and the man on whose orders I’d been locked in here for fifteen years. After a moment of breathless rage, I exhaled. Horgreth would pay for my suffering, and soon, but today—what was this jerk doing here?

  Standing behind the butterfly woman, Horgreth seemed to be casually waiting for someone to come or something to happen. His posture relaxed, even nonchalant, he rocked on the balls of his feet, now glancing at the ceiling, now at the tops of his gray loafers. He intertwined his plump, short fingers…very young fingers, by the way. And his face—I realized it only now—his face looked much too young for a guy in his forties. No, really, Horgreth looked like a smiley teenage model from a clothing ad, except that instead of faded jeans and a tight T-shirt, he was wearing a dark gray designer’s suit.

  After another minute of dallying and playing with his cufflinks shaped like severed hands, Horgreth stepped out from behind the woman. There was certainty, almost finality in his manner, as if whatever he’d waited for had arrived. “Turn around slowly,” he said in a low, raspy voice…finally something that seemed right for his age.

  I whirled to face him.

  “Didn’t you hear him, bitch? He said, ‘Slowly,’” Rig snapped, his open-palmed hand shooting toward my head, but stopping midway, maybe because the god wasn’t sure if Horgreth would approve of his hitting me.

  Fox, Demi, and Sinna did a shuffling about-face. Now they saw Horgreth too, and all of them managed to stay calm, I mean, more or less, because Demi did snarl quietly, and Fox’s hands curled into fists.

  Horgreth studied us with light-hearted disinterest. It was as though he’d much rather be somewhere else, and yet, for all his nonchalance, when his cursory gaze reached Fox’s right cheekbone, it stopped and hardened, as I’d feared it would, because there Fox had tattooed my name. I’d begged him not to. Everyone who joined Horgreth had to tattoo DH on their right cheekbones, and while Fox didn’t and, I knew, wouldn’t work for that firm, Horgreth expected that from all of us; hence, our cheekbones were his territory. But Fox had been adamant—he’d said he belonged to nobody but me—and now, upon reading Fox’s cheekbone, Horgreth transformed: his youth and cheer fell away, the pleasant roundness of his face melted, and instead it was the mug of an ageless and cruel shark.

  When Bones, one of our regular guards, saw Horgreth’s face, he shrank by at least a foot and dived into fibbing, “Sir, don’t think nothing. We found the tool the kid used. For the tat. We took it away. It’s all under control.”

  Rig gave a look of scorching hatred to Fox. “No, it ain’t. And we didn’t find what he used for the tat, not really. We just had our guesses. And besides, that brat can turn air into a weapon. He’s a sneaky one. We should waste ’im, we should.”

  Before such stupidity, Bones turned the color of raw egg white and crumpled the paper bag with our food for the day. Pop went something in there, and brown liquid—soup to all appearances—leaked out of every seam. Bones squatted to set the bag on the floor and didn’t get up again, probably fearing his legs would fold if he tried to.

  This small scene between Rig and Bones must have reminded Horgreth to keep his outward cool because he was all breeziness again. “My worst investment. Four kids who cost me a fortune, and not one of them come into their gift yet. What a waste!”

  The butterfly woman made a move to speak, but he gestured for her to stay silent.

  “Show me your wrists,” he rasped in our direction.

  Since I’d promised to behave, I truly meant to do what Horgreth had ordered, just not right away. Maybe I’d be the second to do it, or the third, and yet, one by one, Fox, Sin, and Demi turned their hands palms up and stretched them out and waited—and I still dawdled. Fox’s jaws clenched. His face started to look like a hilly landscape, and I gave up: I flipped my hands over.

  Fifteen years ago, right after we’d been brought into this mall, the traffickers had labeled us: name tattooed on one thigh, gift on the other. Later, for ease, they had done the same with our wrists, and now Horgreth was gliding along our line, reading our gifts out loud: “Nightmare, death, time.”

  He halted in front of me and read my wrist in a hoarse whisper, “Heart.” He squinted at me. “The deadliest talent of all. Being able to channel any feeling into any person anywhere in the world. Some say it’s not an absolute power. They say hearts can’t create worlds or raise the dead. Bullshit. It doesn’t matter what you can do as long as everyone believes you can do anything, my all-powerful one.” The man’s expression didn’t change, but his voice couldn’t hide his furious hunger, and I knew he really wanted to be here. But why? It wasn’t like I’d come into my gift. I couldn’t even sense other people’s feelings, much less channel anything.

  Horgreth leaned closer to me. “Or rather an almost absolute power. Do you know what can stop you, little heart?”

  “Yeah, sure. A taker,” I said. “But only for a few seconds.”

  “Which is indefinitely if that taker stays with you,” Horgreth corrected me, then asked casually, “What would you channel, little thing, if you knew how?”

  The question caught me off guard. Of course, for years I’d fantasized about what I would do to the gods and above all to Horgreth if I actually could impart feelings to people, but I’d never thought I would be asked that by Horgreth himself. And since I didn’t want to tell him the truth, I had to come up with a plausible lie right under his nose. I took a breath of our stale air and said what I thought he’d expected me to, “I would flood you with pain and keep you under till you went mad, and then I’d slit your throat with a knife I would take from one of your bodyguards, and then I’d leave this place.”

  Horgreth gave me a taut smile, but I couldn’t tell if he believed me. Well, if he was smart, he would know I’d lied. Because why would I need pain? It was useless. If I made everyone writhe in torment, there’d be no one to open the steel door for me, or to find me a car, or to drive that car where I needed to go. No, if I really could do any heart-bending, I would make those gods adore me—then they would do everything I wanted.

  By now, all of the guards were pointing their weapons at my head. One had even traded his gun for his flamethrower.

  Horgreth tilted his head in the woman’s direction. “Doctor Liddell, do you know how the boy got the tattoo on his cheek?”

  She gripped her folder with what seemed like desperation. “Not exactly, sir, no. But I believe he used a shard of a brick.”

  Horgreth scoffed. “And where did he get ink?”

  “I do not have this information, sir.” With that, she made a step backward, away from Horgreth and us and closer to the door. If Horgreth noticed this, he didn’t show it.

  “Hmm, quite a security I have here,” he muttered.

  “Sir!” Bones scrambled to his feet. “Sir, you needn’t worry. It’s all secure in here. The door weighs half a ton, and the lock can’t be picked. You must have a key. And we got dogs yesterday. Rottweilers. The best of the best. They’ll rip you up in a flash.”

  Horgreth exhaled a little more forcefully than before, and Bones swayed. “I mean not you specifically, sir. I mean the children and…” He trailed off, sweat pouring down his cheeks.

  Horgreth shrugged. “The dogs, the doors, and the idiots guarding it—none of that will be enough when this little girl starts channeling. Doctor Liddell, you said she was coming into her gift, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, I did,” the butterfly woman replied with a sudden firmness.

  “What—” I began, but Fox elbowed me to keep my mouth shut.

  “Doctor,” Horgreth commanded, “show me.”

  The woman opened her folder. “Mr. Rig…” She looked at the god by my side. “You’re Mr. Lewis C. Rig, correct?”

  The man scratched his cheek. “Yeah. So?”

  “Mr. Rig, you have been working here for the last five years. Is that correct?”

  The god glanced at Horgreth and must have decided to suck up to his boss. “Yeah, that’s right, lady. Great job. Great pay.
And it’s quiet here.”

  The woman nodded. “Yes, naturally, a man of twenty-eight wants nothing more than a quiet life. However, last week you were offered a position in the Secret Services of the United States. Your salary would have been doubled. You declined. Why?”

  The god wrinkled his bulbous nose. “Mmm…”

  Dr. Liddell didn’t wait. “Mr. Rig, I’m going to read to you the report you submitted for my perusal yesterday.”

  The man blinked. “Your what?”

  Ignoring the question, Dr. Liddell started reading the top sheet in her folder, “‘December 24. Thursday. Demi okay, Sin okay, Fox okay, Ever-Jezebel…’” She inhaled sharply. “‘Ever-Jezebel sulks. Wouldn’t talk to me. Just stares. Don’t know what she eats—the gal’s too skinny. And tired. Couldn’t stand up, that’s how tired she was. And it’s like that every day. Why’s she always tired? Got a scratch on her left foot and a long rip on her skirt. Wouldn’t tell me what happened. Asked her if Fox did it, but she just sits and tears those ruffles on her dress into ribbons. She…’ Well, it goes on for two more pages. What’s more, every single report I have received from Mr. Rig in the last month is preoccupied with this child.” She raised her eyes at the guard. “Mr. Rig, do you care to explain why I never hear about scratches on the other children’s feet? Or rips on their clothes?”

  Rig’s fingers coiled into hard fists. “That’s ’cause she flirts with me. I come in, and that viper tempts me. She stares at me with those creepy eyes of hers. Both are blue, but d’you see it? One light blue, and the other darkest-dark. No good girl, Doc, has eyes that different.”