After several long seconds, Winter had whispered shakily, I can’t do this.

  Leo had looked quietly at him, then away. When Winter started stammering out a reason, he shook his head. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Leo had said.

  His tone was so soft and so easy. Winter had felt too ashamed to confess that all he could think about were the people who wouldn’t be out in the audience. His mother. His brother. He knew he was about to step into uncharted waters, and he’d have to do it alone.

  They’ll all see me, he’d murmured. What if they don’t like what they see?

  Leo studied his face for a moment. He hadn’t been the chatty, overly eager, teasing friend then; he’d looked thoughtful and serious, his gaze penetrating. Hey, he’d said at last. Look at me.

  Reluctantly, Winter had lifted his gaze to his friend. He’d hoped the low light in the closet didn’t reveal the gloss of tears in his eyes.

  Winter, Leo had said, the people who did come today are all here for you.

  Winter looked skeptically at him.

  Leo smiled. The entire world is about to fall in love with you. I promise.

  A few minutes later, Leo had stood and held a hand down to him. Winter had taken it, letting him pull him up. By the time they headed out to the stage, Leo had returned to his usual self, explaining to a frantic Claire that he’d helped Winter fix a wardrobe malfunction and then giving everyone a slew of advice on helpful hacks for repairing clothes on the fly.

  The memory faded, and the lapping of pool water around Winter returned. By the couches, Leo was giving him an encouraging smile, and Winter felt a rush of gratitude.

  “Just be yourself,” Leo now said. “No big deal.”

  To Winter’s relief, Dameon seemed to drop his suspicion, too, as he reached for another cube of cheese.

  Panacea had told him to just be himself, too. So Winter tried to settle into the comfort of that. If he let himself, he could forget that he was here for Panacea at all. That this was just another concert, and just another sleepless night on tour.

  The smile on Eli Morrison’s face appeared in his thoughts, and the unpleasant churn in his stomach returned.

  A faint click came from the other side of the house.

  The melodies Winter was quietly composing in the back of his head cut off. He bolted upright, waves splashing against the sides of the pool, at the same time Leo’s and Dameon’s heads swiveled in sync toward the door.

  Sydney’s figure materialized from the darkness of the main foyer, her blond hair dampened with rain.

  “Hey, Ashley,” Leo said with a wave of his hand.

  Winter felt some of the tension ebb from his body at the sight of her. Then he took in her expression.

  Something had gone wrong.

  He was careful not to show it on his face. Instead, he made a show of rubbing water out of his eyes as the boys both called out their greetings to her. Sydney headed over, then stopped near the stairs and put her hands in her pockets, waiting hesitantly.

  “Didn’t want to bother you guys,” she said.

  Dameon shot Leo a look, and the two exchanged a subtle nod. Then Dameon stood up, stretching. “We should be calling it a night, anyway,” he replied. “We have a pretty early rehearsal.”

  “Eight A.M.,” Leo added. “No rest for the jet-lagged.” He stood up and followed in Dameon’s wake, nodding once in Winter’s direction. “You too. If you show up later than us tomorrow, you have to wear a white leotard to the after-party.”

  Winter couldn’t help cracking a smile. “Deal.”

  He watched the boys leave. When the front door finally closed behind them, Sydney walked over to sit beside him at the edge of the pool. He was suddenly aware of being nearly naked in front of her.

  So what? It was just Sydney. Still, he noticed her gaze hitching for a beat on his chest, then quickly skipping away.

  “Hey,” he whispered as she leaned her head down toward him. “What happened?”

  Sydney’s voice was barely perceptible. “We’ve got a problem,” she replied.

  13

  What Haunts the Heart

  Sydney had the uncanny ability to know when she was dreaming, but not the power to shake herself awake.

  Tonight, she was back at the local hospital in Havenville, sitting in her mother’s room. She could hear the steady beeping of the heart monitor droning in her ears, smell the tang of phenol cleaner clinging to the air, feel the bed’s stiff hospital sheets as she rested her elbows against them. When she looked down at her feet, she saw that she was wearing her ratty old boots from when she was fourteen.

  Everything in her wanted to shrink away. She hated, hated, hated remembering. Hated that she couldn’t stop her brain from going here. Hated that small things on a mission could trigger these dreams. Hated that she couldn’t run far enough from them. Hated that she couldn’t break out of them.

  What had set her off this time? The sudden reminder of her mortality as she did the failed run to the mailbox? The tense conversation she’d had with Winter after she returned, as they figured out what to do next? The planning of a new drop right before she’d gone to bed?

  The dream world around her was so visceral that she couldn’t shake the possibility that it was real. Sydney could feel her mother shifting in bed, could hear the soft groan escape the woman’s lips, could see her mother’s face, the wrinkles, the pale, trembling skin, the furrow line between her brows. She’d still been so young, but the sickness had aged her twenty years.

  “Ah, Syd,” her mother whispered. Sydney’s name came out cracked and grated, like salt out of a grinder.

  Sydney adjusted her own position, wincing at the stiffness in her body. “Yes, Mama?” she asked. “Do you need me to get you anything?”

  Her mother didn’t answer right away. When she did, she said, “How long are you planning to stay?”

  Sydney had already been on vigil here alone for three straight days and nights. Her soul was tired, and she had homework to make up.

  “I don’t know,” Sydney answered. “But I’m still here for now.”

  Her mother’s eyes cracked open a sliver, and Sydney saw a glimpse of dark blue irises tilted toward her. “No.” She shook her head once. “I mean, how long are you planning to stay here? In this town?”

  Sydney didn’t know how to answer, because she didn’t understand the question. “You mean, for how many years?”

  Her mother sighed and closed her eyes. “Leave when you can,” she whispered. “There’s nothing for you in this place.”

  Sydney wanted to scream at her. How could she leave? Her mother was here. Where would she go? If Sydney ever left, it would mean that her mother wasn’t around anymore, and that would mean she had died. And Sydney didn’t want to think about that.

  “What about Dad and Matt?” she asked.

  Her mother made a small sound in her throat. “Don’t stay for them,” she murmured.

  Sydney could feel the frustration rising in her tired chest. She didn’t understand where this conversation was going. Her father existed mostly on the periphery of her life, true—a man she caught glimpses of whenever he staggered home after a twelve-hour shift, the smell of pigs’ blood clinging to every part of his body. The times he did notice her usually involved a drunken rage—once screaming at her for watching gibberish and leaving the TV on a foreign-language channel, once lunging at her with a knife for knocking over his beer, once slapping her at dinner when she said she wanted to know what was out there, beyond their town.

  Why? He’d leaned against the table and pointed his fork at her. You’re too good for us?

  She’d cradled her stinging cheek. Her brother Matt had snickered.

  What a useless mouth to feed you are, her father had said. Just like your mother.

  Existing in that town sometimes felt to her like being trapped in mud. But sometimes in the summer, when both Dad and Matt were out of the house and her mother came home early from work, she would take Sydney out for ice cream and pick a spot by the river where they could see freight trains crossing the bridge. It was Sydney’s favorite memory in the world, those warm days with the sound of insects buzzing around them, mosquito repellent sticky on her skin, and the thought of leaving that behind, of never again sitting by the river with her mother, a chocolate-covered spoon pressed against her tongue, was unbearable to her.

  So to hear her mother saying this now—leave this place, leave Dad and Matt—felt a little like a rejection of her life. That nothing in this town had ever mattered to Sydney. That her father and brother weren’t worth staying for. That her mother was acknowledging something she had never acknowledged before.

  Sydney swallowed hard and shifted against the hospital sheets. “Okay, Mama,” she said, because it was the only good thing to say.

  Her mother nodded idly. Sydney couldn’t be sure that she would even remember this conversation, or if the drugs were dragging her into sleep. “That’s good,” she whispered. “Stay with me a little longer now. I’m cold tonight.”

  Sydney nodded, her eyelids drooping. God, she was so tired. She knew Dad and Matt wouldn’t be coming here anytime soon—Matt was out with friends for the weekend, and Dad had extra shifts. But she couldn’t stay any longer without going home.

  “I’ll just be gone a little while, Mom,” she heard herself say. “Then I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Her mother didn’t answer. After a while, when it seemed like she’d drifted off, Sydney snuck quietly out.

  It was snowing that night, and her boots crunched softly down the white street. The air nipped at her cheeks and stung in her chest. She’d started to feel the occasional spasms in her lungs over the past year, although she never told her mother about them. She never told anybody. Maybe if the secret stayed with her, the potential diagnosis couldn’t be real. If she pretended it was all in her head, then maybe it was, maybe she hadn’t inherited it.

  Sydney had only been home for an hour when she got the call from the hospital. She could feel the floorboards beneath her creak, as if the house were shifting with her in grief.

  I’m so deeply sorry to inform you that your mother has passed away …

  The dream shifted several weeks into the future, after the funeral had passed. It was a cold enough day that school had been canceled, so Sydney went for a walk down the main street several blocks from her house. Her head was tucked like a turtle into the scarf wrapped thickly around her neck. A freak storm had left the world around her bitterly cold, encasing everything in a chrysalis of ice.

  She didn’t really know where she was going. The wind swirled around her, cutting straight through her jeans and sending spikes of pain down her lungs.

  Eventually, she ducked into the pharmacy to get warm. Several homeless people were clustered outside the sliding glass doors, savoring the heat that would momentarily waft over whenever the doors opened. They shifted as Sydney stepped in.

  She wandered the aisles for a while, no money in her pocket, not really sure how long she’d be allowed to loiter before they told her to move along. Her heart hung in a low, constant state of grief, and her mind was elsewhere, far from this town. She could feel the pain stretch tight in her chest, her lungs still aching from the cold outside.

  Over by the checkout counter, she could hear a family chattering away. Sydney peeked between the aisles and saw a teenage boy standing with his parents. His father placed a hand protectively on the boy’s shoulder. His mother leaned down to cup the boy’s face in her hands, her smile genuine, her face glowing.

  As Sydney watched them, she could feel her anger rising, cresting over her sadness. She wasn’t sure why. They’d done nothing wrong. But the fury made the walls close in around her. She could see the pharmacy’s aisles narrowing, the cash registers fusing together, everything around her moving inward until she felt like she was being buried alive.

  Tears stung her eyes. Maybe the boy had his own hidden pains. But maybe he’d also never known a day when his father waved a knife in his face, had never stood vigil beside his mother’s hospital bed. Maybe he already had plans for an entire future laid out before him, while Sydney slowly withered away in this place, cowering every time she heard her father step through the door, hiding from her brother so she wouldn’t have to endure his insults.

  Leave this place, her mother had whispered to her.

  But where could Sydney go? How would she get the money to leave?

  And what did other people do to deserve love? A good life?

  Was a life still worth anything? Did it still matter to dream big?

  Sydney felt the unfairness of it all flood her limbs until her fingers tingled. She glanced again at the family by the checkout counter. Then, through her film of tears, she looked at the goods on the aisle in front of her. Vitamins. Cold medicine. Allergy sprays.

  She didn’t know exactly why the urge hit her, or why she didn’t bother stopping it. Maybe she was just tired of everyone else getting to have what they wanted. Maybe she was tired of grieving, of being left behind, of being trapped.

  Maybe this was to balance out the unfairness.

  Whatever the reason, she reached out and grabbed one of the bottles of allergy medicine and shoved it into the inner pocket of her coat.

  Her hand was there and gone in less than a second.

  She could feel the round bottle pressing against her side. It felt amazing. Her heart hammered as she glanced toward the clerks, who didn’t even seem to notice she was here.

  She snatched a case of aspirin.

  Snatched two boxes of nasal spray.

  Then she shoved her hands in her pockets and headed back out toward the entrance.

  She expected the alarms to go off. But then the glass doors slid open for her. She stepped through, the homeless people shifting on either side of the entrance. No alarm.

  She walked stiffly, fear lodged in her throat, waiting for the sound of a clerk yelling at her to stop. Her hands were clammy with cold sweat in her pockets, and her teeth were chattering.

  But no one came running after her. She turned the corner, and no one came. She crossed the street and went another block, and no one came.

  The crushing anguish that pressed against her heart suddenly gave way to a tide of nauseating euphoria. The stolen medication tucked inside her heavy coat bounced against her side, pills clinking in their bottles.

  Goddamn, that felt so good.

  Her teeth chattered from the rush. She hated herself.

  But more than that, she knew she would rather hate herself than bear the pain a second longer.

  And she knew she would do everything in her power to steal again.

  * * *

  Sydney shot up in bed, gasping, her body prickling with sweat, her hands still tingling from the rush of her theft. Tears smeared her vision. She looked around wildly, wondering if she’d heard a noise, if the cops were waiting outside for her. If she’d see the rhythmic flash of blue and red lights by the window. But her room stayed empty.

  She wasn’t back in Havenville. She wasn’t reliving her mother’s death and the start of her shoplifting. She was just in Kensington, on the night before their mission was supposed to kick into high gear.

  But her stomach still churned with sickness, a concoction of grief and anger.

  After another long moment, Sydney pulled herself into a sitting position and buried her face in her palms, then wiped her tears away. Moonlight poured across her bed in a diagonal band, outlining her figure and mess of hair in weak blue light. She wished she could call Sauda or Niall, as if their guidance could once again steer her out of the darkness of her own mind.

  The sound of a creak in the floorboards snapped her out of her reverie. She turned her head automatically in the direction of the wall. She had heard that sound in her dream right before waking up—the groan of the floor. That must have been what woke her up.

  After a moment came the faintest thud of footsteps downstairs. Winter was awake.

  Sydney swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up silently, then moved like a cat across the room to her door, where she pulled it open by the faintest hair. Over the curving stairway, she saw Winter walking around downstairs, barefoot. He was still dressed in his nightclothes, a plain white shirt and gray sleep pants that hung low at his hips, so that when he reached up to run his hand through his mess of hair, he revealed a sliver of his slanting hip bones.

  Annoyance and desire flitted through her. She found herself watching him quietly from above. What was he doing awake at this hour, anyway? He stopped to stare out the window for a long time, the moonlight stretching his shadow long behind him. Then he turned away, hands tucked in his pant pockets, and did little sweeps with his feet in half arcs as if he were slow dancing across the floor with himself.

  She looked on, hypnotized by the quiet grace of his body. As he moved, he tilted his head up slightly and, with his eyes closed, maneuvered his turns into an effortless pirouette, spinning in silence on one perfectly arched foot, his hands still in his pockets. Her lips parted, and in this moment, she forgot herself. Ballet training, she recalled about him. Then his leg dropped again and he stepped smoothly back into a walk.

  There was sadness etched into the lines of his body tonight, something she occasionally recognized from his performances. It gave him that secret pull, an aching vulnerability hidden behind the wink and the sidelong smile. As if he both desperately needed the spotlight and yet couldn’t bear the attention. There was no one else here, and yet, even now, he looked like a star, like he couldn’t help but burn so bright that even the air was drawn to him, that the moon yearned to illuminate him.