“I didn’t mean to make you cry. At the library.” He brought his eyes back to meet hers, slowly, as if he was reserving the right at any point to jerk his gaze away.

“I love it.”

“The crying?” Nix asked, his brow wrinkling.

“No. The bookshelf.”

He knows I like books. He saw me try to stand them up. He wanted to make me happy. So he built me a bookshelf.

Now remembering to breathe wasn’t as much of a challenge as forcing her tightening chest to let her do so.

In.

And out.

In.

And out.

“Thank you, Nix. No one’s ever made me anything before.” She should have just stuck with you made me a bookshelf, because no other words really seemed to do it justice.

“You’re welcome. Claire.”

There was something in the way he spaced the words that told her he’d debated whether or not he should say her name.

Whether or not he deserved to say it.

Beautiful, broken boy. He built me a bookshelf. He can barely bring himself to say my name.

“You look tired,” she said. “You didn’t sleep at all.”

It wasn’t a question, and he shrugged in response.

“You need to sleep.” Claire couldn’t chase away his ghosts. She couldn’t change his past. She couldn’t do any of the things she’d hoped that, after a good night’s sleep, would magically just come. But she could take care of him.

Make him sleep.

Do a little something that counted big.

She slid over on the couch and gestured that he should join her. He took a step backward, and for the first time, she didn’t, even subconsciously, take it as an insult. Instead, she slipped off the couch, so that he could sit down without worrying about touching her.

“I slept. Your turn.”

After three seconds, or four, he acceded. Walked over to the couch. Sat down. “I don’t sleep,” he said, talking to himself as much as to her. “Not anymore.”

Claire wondered what—or who—he saw when he closed his eyes. “You don’t have to close your eyes. Just lie back.”

Nix did as he was told, and Claire, still feeling like there was a land mine in her stomach, like she might explode with bookshelf joy and awe at any moment, walked over to her present. Knelt down next to it. And picked a book up off the shelf. And then she sat down across the room from Nix, a mountain of space between them, and she read.

About the little prince and a rose with thorns and a wild fox that explained to the little prince what it meant to be tamed. She kept reading, the familiar words the closest thing she could manage to a lullaby.

Nix’s eyes opened wide as he realized what she was doing, and he listened raptly, as if no one had ever read him a story, as she expected no one had. And slowly, Nix’s body relaxed. His eyes closed.

And he fell asleep.

18

White floors. White room. White bed.

Nix woke up calm for the first time in his life, and he wasn’t sure why until he realized that he wasn’t in his quarters at the institute. The bed beneath him was soft, colored, and technically a futon. Sitting on the floor beside it was a girl, curled up like a cat, reading a book.

Claire. Claire’s voice. The Little Prince.

She’d read to him. The realization was sweet—so sweet that Nix couldn’t berate himself for having let her.

She’d read to him.

He’d listened.

And he’d fallen asleep. No dreams. No terror. No waking up underwater. Just … nothing. A different kind of nothing than the fade, peaceful to its exhilaration.

“You’re awake.” Claire said the words shyly, ducking her head. Nix nodded. His eyes flittered toward the shelf he’d built her. She smiled.

It was funny. He’d always thought that the best thing about being a Normal would be talking to other people, having them talk back. But not talking, that had its charms, too.

More of them, maybe, because then you didn’t have to find the words. Without making a sound, Claire dog-eared the page she was reading, shut the book, and then put it back in its place, right next to the one she’d read him the night before. Then she went into the kitchen, and when she came back, she offered him a steaming mug.

Coffee.

He took it, their fingers brushing as she transferred it from her hands to his. Then she went back into the kitchen and poured herself a cup.

He drank.

She drank.

It wasn’t until the dark liquid in their mugs sank well past the halfway mark that she spoke. “I don’t have a plan.”

That was the exact opposite of what he’d expected her to say. After the previous night, he would have followed her off the edge of a cliff if she’d asked it.

“But I do have a place.”

“A place?” Nix asked, his voice—like the coffee—warm in his throat.

She nodded.

“What kind of place?”

“Sykes’s place.” She waited, and he realized that she was waiting for him to tell her no. He didn’t, and finally, she continued. “His house. Or maybe his office. Everything else The Society has done makes sense, but killing him doesn’t.”

Nix narrowed his eyes, but she didn’t give him a chance to interrupt.

“Everything else The Society did—it’s not good and it’s not moral and I’d like to take them down for it, one by one, but their motivation makes sense. If The Society wants something and there’s someone standing in their way, they take care of the problem. But why would they kill their own plant in the Senate? Even if he was being difficult, even if he was having second thoughts …”

Nix was still stuck on the fact that Claire had said she wanted to take The Society down. And sounded like she meant it.

“If Sykes was just postponing the vote on Prop 42,” she continued, “they wouldn’t have killed him, not unless they had a backup plan. So there must have been another reason. Either he had something that they wanted, or he was going to do something that they didn’t want him to do.”

For a brief moment, Nix entertained a fantasy in which he and Claire really did take The Society down. All of it. In its entirety. The part he’d seen and the parts he was beginning to suspect that he hadn’t.

But Claire couldn’t kill, and he wouldn’t ask her to. Wouldn’t let her. If Sykes had something that The Society wanted, and if they could get it first …

Nix wondered if Ione would bargain for his freedom. For Claire’s.

“If Sykes knew something that The Society didn’t want him to know, or if he had something worth killing over—maybe we can use it.”

It was like she was reading his mind.

“For The Society to kill their own inside man, it would have to be something huge. Something that could threaten the whole operation with exposure, something that could bring the whole thing to its knees.”

Understanding washed over Nix. Claire wanted to bring The Society down, but not by killing its leaders. By exposing them.

“It would have to be something big to make a difference,” Nix said, his mind whirring with the implications. “We’re Nobodies. No one’s going to listen to us. No one’s going to care. Unless it’s something huge, they won’t look twice at anything we give them either.”

“But if it is something big …”

Nix got a taste of the thing she was offering him, and it warmed him more than the coffee. Hope. Revenge. A future that didn’t involve doing that little four-lettered thing he did best.

Maybe, once it was over—

Maybe, if he could—

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The possibilities were seductive.

“Going to Sykes’s house could be dangerous. The Society has to be looking for us, Claire.” Nix tried not to give in to the siren’s call of things he could never have. He tried to remember that no matter what he did now, there were some things he could never change.

You are what you are.

“Would the people in The Society ever guess you’d go to Sykes’s house?” Claire asked.

Nix rolled the question over in his mind. That was his advantage—and Claire’s—in this lethal game: The Society wouldn’t know what to expect. They wouldn’t be able to guess at his motivations. He’d lived under their rule his entire life, and they would have had better luck profiling a complete stranger.