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  “A man by the name of Bobby Axelrod visited me.”

  Kaira, Bri, and I exchanged a look.

  “Bobby Axelrod visited you?” I asked.

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” Grandma Tashi gave me a sour look.

  “What did he say?” Kaira asked.

  “He said,” Grandma Tashi closed her eyes. “He’s illusioned. It’s illusioned.” She opened her eyes. “He repeated those words over and over again.”

  “What does that mean?” Bri asked.

  “I’m not an interpreter,” Grandma Tashi snapped. “I’m just a Medium.”

  He’s illusioned. It’s illusioned.

  Bat’s chance in hell we’d ever unravel that cryptic message.

  “He also said the next murder would also be an illusion.”

  “Um, okay,” Kaira said.

  I could tell Kaira wanted to say something sarcastic, but at the look her grandmother gave her, she wisely kept her mouth shut.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Grandma Tashi turned the full weight of her glare on me. “Penelope stopped by for a visit. She was crying and begging you to leave her alone. Poor girl keeps re-living her murder. I don’t think she’ll find any peace while her killer walks the streets of our city.”

  That sick feeling twisted my gut again, and it had nothing to do with the way Grandma Tashi and Desiree were staring at me with accusation in their eyes. Penelope thought I was the one who had taken her life. She was scared and in some kind of dead people-limbo, and there was nothing I could do to help her.

  “We’ve been over this, Grandma,” Kaira said, her voice steel. “Gray didn’t murder her.”

  “Did you ever even ask him if he did it?” Desiree piped up. “I mean, not that he’d tell you the truth, but I just think it’s in-sane that you haven’t asked him to his face.”

  “Alright, that’s enough.” Ma waved her wooden spoon in the air like she was brandishing a weapon. There was a furious look on her kind face. “This is backyard talk, not kitchen talk.”

  For a few seconds, no one moved.

  “What are you waiting for?” Onions flew off the spoon. “You can continue this ugly conversation in the backyard where it belongs. Now, scat!”

  Everyone, including Grandma Tashi, got up from the table and headed for the glass doors that led out into the tiny backyard.

  “G-Baby, come here and give me a hand with these veggies.”

  I hesitated. If Grandma had anything else to say about the dead, I wanted to hear it. But I didn’t dare to cross Ma when she was in a mood like this. Reluctantly, I hung back as the others filed outside.

  Ma gave me a knife and about a thousand peeled carrots, gesturing for me to get to work.

  I almost cut my finger off more than once because my attention kept straying to the argument that seemed to be heating up outside. Kaira was facing off against Grandma Tashi and Desiree. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could tell they were shouting. Bri and Cora stood next to Kaira, looking uncomfortable.

  I felt another layer of guilt add itself to the mountain I’d already accumulated.

  “I’m sorry your family is fighting because of me,” I told Ma.

  “I’ve always thought of you as one of our family, G-Baby. You know that.”

  I nodded.

  “Yours might be the name on every Mag’s lips, but this simmering anger…this distrust…comes from a time long before you were even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes.” She stopped stirring her onions and looked out the glass windows. “Desiree’s scared. And when people get scared, they have a tendency to listen to the loudest voice, even if that voice is dead wrong.”

  Valencia Stark.

  “I’m afraid what you’re seeing here is just a little slice of what’s happening with Mags everywhere,” Ma continued. “If these murders keep up much longer, Boston won’t be any different from the rest of the country.”

  “I’m going to fix this,” I vowed. “I just wish I wasn’t the reason why Kai and Grandma Tashi are fighting.”

  “Kaira thinks you’re worth fighting for. When it comes to the people she cares about most, she’s the most loyal person in the world.”

  “Loyal.” I heard the twinge of bitterness in my voice, and winced. “I just meant—”

  Ma gave me a penetrating look and then sighed. “I know what you meant.”

  I stopped cutting carrots. “You do?”

  A panicked look passed over Ma’s face. Her gaze shifted from me to the backyard.

  “Ma?” I asked, my pulse starting to race for no reason I could name.

  “Nothing, G-Baby. Forget I said anything.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” My voice came out rougher and more demanding than I meant it to. “Please,” I said more softly.

  “Lord, I’ve held my tongue for three years. But I can’t stay silent when my babies are hurting.”

  I didn’t breathe for fear I’d somehow make Ma change her mind about whatever she was about to tell me.

  “Tell me one thing first,” Ma said, putting down her spoon and turning to give me her full attention. “Are you still in love with her?”

  My knife clattered onto the cutting board.

  Before I could form even a single word, Ma let out a heavy sigh. “That’s what I thought.”

  “How long have you known?” I whispered.

  “Since Thanksgiving, the year Kaira turned eighteen,” Ma replied. “My Aunt Mimi was on the phone, and I came looking for Kaira. I saw you kissing under the crabapple tree.” Her lip quirked in what might have been either amusement or disgust. “And it wasn’t no chaste kiss, neither.”

  My face heated. I remembered that Thanksgiving, although not that specific kiss. Kai and I had just started having sex, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

  “Kai never told me you knew,” I managed.

  More lies. More betrayal from someone I should have been able to trust without question.

  “At the time, Kaira didn’t know I knew. I figured you were just two teenagers being teenagers, and that you’d both move on soon enough. Maybe if I’d stepped in sooner, things mighta turned out different.”

  Sadness and regret pooled in Ma’s dark eyes.

  “What do you mean?” I forced out the words.

  “You know I raised Kaira to make her own choices and own the consequences of those choices, just like your daddy taught you.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “It was after Kaira’s Test, before I knew she had decided to go unMarked. You had just gotten into the BSMU. She came home in the middle of the school day. With the way she was crying, I was sure there’d been a school shooting or something. She looked…broken. It ripped my heart right out.”

  I tried to swallow around the knot in my throat.

  “She told me what she’d done to your daddy. She was crying so hard I could barely understand a word she was saying, but she said it was the only way to give you back your future.”

  “What?”

  My knees had turned to gelatin. I could barely make sense of any of what Ma was saying.

  “I think Kaira wanted to give you a life she knew you couldn’t have if you kept on loving her. In her mind, doing something that would make you hate her was the only way to let you have that life.”

  “That makes no sense.” I gripped the side of the counter until my knuckles went bloodless.

  “You were made for big things, G-Baby, and once you started to climb the ranks in the Alliance like we all knew you would, you’d become a public figure. You weren’t going to be able to have a big career and Kaira. Eventually, you would have had to choose. I think Kaira was trying to take the burden of that decision away from you and put it on her own shoulders.”

  “No,” I said, because it was the only word that would come.

  “A piece of her heart died after that. I don’t think I’ve seen a real smile on my daughter’s face since.” Ma brushed away her own tears that had
started to fall. “Of course, she had to bury all those feelings deep inside where no one but her Ma would see them.” She stared out the window. “Kaira cried herself to sleep every night for months.”

  I was shaking my head. I remembered Kaira’s dry-eyed, determined expression when she told me what she’d done. I remembered the way she let me walk out the door without a single apology or explanation. She’d just let me go.

  I couldn’t imagine her crying herself to sleep over me. I couldn’t stand it…the thought of her, lying alone in the dark, with the same gut-wrenching pain that woke me gasping in the middle of the night. I couldn’t imagine both of us, apart and defenseless against the pain of losing each other. It was enough to drive me insane.

  “I ain’t saying what she did was right or wrong,” Ma continued. “But she did it outta love for you, G.”

  At that moment, the glass doors opened and the rest of the Hansley clan came back inside.

  “Smith called,” Bri told me. “Valencia left the police station. She’s on the move.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Bri and Kaira were talking about Valencia, but my mind was in too much of a fog for me to contribute.

  When we got back to the house, it was a hive of activity. Michael and Yutika were helping Smith to pack his electronics into the van. A.J. and Bri were watching the tablet that showed Valencia’s blinking tracker dot.

  “Valencia stopped by her house to scurry around like a hamster in a ball, and now she’s headed out to meet Big Bad Boss,” A.J. said, filling us in. “At least, that’s where we assume she’s going. We’re out of here in t-minus five seconds.”

  Kaira put the trays of food Ma had given us down on the counter and grabbed the van’s keys from the hook by the door.

  “Hold on,” I said, speaking for the first time since we’d left Ma’s.

  When Yutika came back into the house, I said, “I need a car.” It came out so gruff, I added, “Please.”

  “Sure,” Yutika said, pulling out her sketch pad out of her back pocket.

  Kaira raised an eyebrow at me.

  “What kind do you want?” Yutika asked, flipping open her pad.

  “Anything that drives,” I said.

  When Kaira headed for the van, I grabbed her elbow and pulled her away from the others. “We need to talk. Alone.” It came out as a growl.

  As soon as Yutika was finished with the drawing and a sleek gray sedan was idling outside, I gestured to Kaira, making it clear that was where we were headed.

  “We’ll follow you,” I told the others, who gave me a curious look but didn’t ask any questions.

  Kaira didn’t ask what was going on, either. Instead, she just put in her earpiece and told Smith, “Update me if there’s anything we need to know.”

  “Valencia’s on Western Ave heading toward 90,” Bri said, her gaze fixed on the tablet as the others piled into the van.

  I waited until Kaira illusioned me before going out the door and heading for the car.

  “You’re driving,” I told Kaira. I didn’t want to have to pay attention to anything except for her.

  “Bossy,” she muttered as she headed around to the driver’s side.

  Kaira stayed silent as I stared out the window and wrestled with everything in my head. Every so often, Smith’s voice would come across our earpieces, announcing a turn Valencia had taken. When we got onto 90 heading west into the suburbs, I finally spoke.

  “Turn it off,” I told her, motioning to her microphone. I did the same for my own.

  Kaira did as I asked, and then she glanced at me. “Are you going to tell me what’s put that look on your face?”

  “Ma told me.”

  Kaira’s face paled. “What?”

  In the window’s reflection, I saw my illusion flicker before she got her emotions under control. Her surprise turned to anger in a heartbeat.

  “She promised she’d never say anything. Why did she tell you?”

  “The better question is why didn’t you?”

  “That would have defeated the point,” Kaira snapped.

  “And what was the point?” My anger rose to match hers.

  “To give you what you needed.”

  I ground my teeth. “So, you’re trying to tell me that my dad almost killing himself was what I needed?”

  “I told you, I had no idea he’d do that,” Kaira said. She reached up to brush her hair back, and I saw her hand was trembling. “I swear to you, if I had thought it would turn out like that, I would have found another way.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I just wanted them to do a small investigation—not enough to hurt his career, just enough to make you mad enough at me to—”

  “Never talk to you again?” I demanded. “I’m not some insane stalker, Kai. If you wanted to break up, you could have just told me you wanted to break up instead of going all psycho Illusionist in my dad’s office.”

  “Don’t you get it, Gray? I didn’t want to break up with you! And if I lied to your face, you would have seen right through me.” She wiped away the tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Then why lie at all? What gave you the right to make some arbitrary decision about my…our…future?”

  “Remember that article the Globe published about you when we graduated high school?”

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. Vaguely?”

  “Director Remwald’s Successor Identified at Age 18,” she said.

  I nodded, remembering the bolded title of the news article. “So what? It wasn’t some kind of premonition. It was a slow news week.”

  Kaira shook her head. “You taped it on your wall. That’s when I knew. It was what you wanted. It was what you deserved, and you’d never have it if you stayed with me.”

  I was speechless.

  “Don’t you remember the fights we used to have about the Alliance?” Kaira continued. “You believe in everything they stand for, and I—”

  “I believed in us,” I said, my voice cracking. “This isn’t about the Alliance. It’s about what you did to my dad—”

  “It is about the Alliance!” More silent tears tracked down Kaira’s cheek. She swiped them away with a furious motion. “Stop being ignorant for two seconds and use your brain, Gray. Don’t you get it? Your job was going to be to persecute people like me. Being with me was a complete contradiction to everything you believe. It would have destroyed you.”

  I raked a hand through my hair. “Even if it did, that was a decision for us to make together. You had no right to go do something completely insane in some misguided effort to save me.”

  “It was the only way,” she said. “Either you would have picked me and given up on your dreams, or you would have chosen the Alliance and been destroyed with guilt for breaking my heart. Both decisions would have hurt you, and I couldn’t bear it. I thought if you hated me, it would be easier for both of us.”

  “And was it…easy for you?” I bit out.

  Kaira stayed silent for several seconds. Finally, she spoke.

  “It feels like a thousand-pound weight on my chest every second of every day. It’s even there when I sleep.”

  “Kai.” The thought of her hurting like that, the way I’d been hurting for three years, was too much for me.

  Kaira looked at me. “You know how everyone always says they want to change the world?” She laughed a little. “I knew from when we were kids that you were actually going to do it. It’s one of the reasons I love you, and it was why I couldn’t be the reason you left all that behind.”

  “It wasn’t an either/or,” I argued, even though all the anger had gone out of me. “I could have contributed to the Alliance and been with you.”

  “That’s the part you never understood, Gray.” She smiled without humor. “You can’t accept that there’s any problem out there that can’t be solved with some hard work or the right approach. But this problem didn’t have a solution like that. If we kept going like we were going, someone would have figured out about us. You woul
d have either needed to go into hiding with me or face execution.” She paused long enough to take a breath. “I chose this life of existing on the fringe of society, but it isn’t for you. You were made to be in the thick of the Alliance. I loved you too much to take you away from all of that and just keep you for myself.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What would you have done when I brought unMarked refugees into our house, Gray?”

  “I—” I looked at Kaira. “I don’t know,” I said honestly.

  We didn’t speak for several seconds.

  “Everything’s different now,” I said, not knowing if it would make her feel better or worse. “I can’t go back to my old life. I am one of your refugees now.”

  Kaira glanced at me, letting me see the fierce expression in her eyes.

  “I promised you’d get your life back,” she said. “We’re going to clear your name, and then you’ll have everything you lost and then some.”

  I thought about that. I thought about the tremendous sense of accomplishment I’d felt during my last weeks at the BSMU, and the way it felt when I got the call that I’d gotten my dream job right out of college.

  And then I remembered the aching, drowning sensation that came after one of my dreams about Kaira. I thought about the part of myself that had disappeared the day I told her to get out of my life.

  I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I was angry at her, and at myself, but I couldn’t even really say why.

  What she was saying changed everything…and at the same time, it changed nothing. She had done what she’d done for my sake, but she’d still ruined my dad’s life in the process. I couldn’t forgive that. Could I?

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with this, Kaira?”

  “The same thing you should have done three years ago,” she replied, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. “Forget about me. Climb the ranks in the Alliance and become Director. Make the world better. Fall in love with a Nat.”

  “I already fell in love,” I said. “I never stopped loving you.”

  Kaira sucked in a breath.