Revelations (18 page)

“Thanks,” Mandy said as she put it on. “I’m sorry, you guys. I-” She gasped, and her eyes opened so wide,
Anthony could see the whites all the way around her irises.

“What’s happening to her?” Jesse cried. Mandy’s right hand was twitching, and Anthony could see the muscles in
her throat moving up and down.

“I don’t know,” Aiden answered. He leaned closeto Mandy. “Can you hear me? Mandy.” He gave her shoulders a
light shake, and Mandy shuddered, her eyelids fluttering.

“I saw my sister,” she said, her voice trembling. “No, I
was
my sister. For a minute I was really her, Emma. I was
sitting on Betsy Helf’s bed-that’s my sister’s best friend-drinking a peach Snapple and trying to do a geometry
problem.”

Mandy jerked off the sweater. “This is hers, Emma’s. Is that why it happened?”

“Very likely,” Aiden answered. “I’ve seen a similar case.”

“Case. Thanks,” Mandy mumbled.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” Aiden began.

“So you put on your sister’s sweater and you
were
her. You saw where she was and what she was doing,”

Anthony interrupted Aiden, his eyes locked on Mandy. “If you could do that with something of Rae’s, maybe we
could track her down.”

“Let’s try it,” Mandy said, still sounding a little dazed. “That was the point of this whole thing, right?”

“Are you okay to do it?” Jesse asked. “Do you need to rest?”

“No. We don’t know what’s happening to Rae. I can rest after,” Mandy answered.

Tough little girl,
Anthony thought. He liked her.

Not as much as Jesse obviously did, but he liked her. “Come on. We’ll take my car to Rae’s, and I’ll get something
of hers.” “I just need to write a note for my dad.” Mandy grabbed a notepad off the counter by the phone, scribbled
something, then stuck the note to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a doughnut. “Okay, ready.”

Anthony led the way outside and over to his car.
We’re going to find her,
he told himself as he started toward Rae’s
house.
She’s going to be okay.
Jesse, Aiden, and Mandy talked a little on the ride, but Anthony didn’t join in. All his
thoughts were on Rae. It felt like it took forever, but about fifteen minutes later he pulled up in front of the Voights’.

“Be right back,” he said; then he jumped out of the car and ran up to the front door. He managed to ring the doorbell
only once this time. Rae’s dad seemed surprised to see him.

“Hi. I know Rae’s still out of town, but I realized I left a book in Rae’s room when she was helping me study,”

Anthony said, speaking so quickly, his words almost slammed into each other. “You mind if I go get it? Test
tomorrow.”

“You know the way,” Mr. Voight said. He stepped back and let Anthony into the house.

“Thanks,” Anthony said over his shoulder as he rushed down the hall. He burst into Rae’s room andgrabbed a
sweater out of the hamper in her closet. He wasn’t sure if Mandy needed something that had been worn recently,
but he figured it couldn’t hurt. “Thanks again,” Anthony called as he bolted out of the house with Rae’s sweater
stuffed under his shirt. He heard Mr. Voight call something in reply, but he was going too fast to register exactly
what. Didn’t matter. He had to get the sweater to Mandy so he could get to Rae.

“Here you go.” Anthony climbed in the car, slid the sweater out from under his shirt, and passed it to Mandy. She
cradled it to her chest. “Do you need to put it on?” he asked.

But Mandy was already gone, her eyes wide and staring. She brought her right hand up to her throat and made a
slicing motion. And then she screamed, the sound bouncing off the walls of the car and jolting through Anthony’s
bones.

Jesse jerked the sweater away from Mandy. “Hey, Mandy, Mandy. You’re okay. You’re sitting in the car with me.

With us,” he corrected himself.

Mandy’s eyelids did the fluttering thing, then Anthony could see her come back into her body. It sounded weird,
but that was how it looked to him. “What?” he asked, struggling to keep the urgency out of his voice. “What’d you
see? Did you see Rae?”

“I
was
her,” Mandy answered. She rubbed herneck with both hands. “And you guys, Rae was trying to kill herself.

We-she-had a knife in her hand, and she was cutting her throat.”

“Rae wouldn’t do that. No way,” Anthony burst out.

“Did you see Yana?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah. She was there. Just watching Rae. She wasn’t doing anything to stop her,” Mandy answered. “But it wasn’t
Yana holding the knife. It was definitely Rae.”

“Can you remember anything that would tell us where she was?” Aiden asked.

Mandy shook her head. “I saw a section of a beat-up place, a cabin, I think. But that’s it.” She picked up the
sweater. “Let me try once more-”

And she was gone again. Anthony stared at her throat, praying he wouldn’t see that slicing motion again. It took
him a few seconds to realize that this time Mandy’s feet were moving. Jerking back and forth. Then Mandy’s breath
started to come in harsh pants.

Aiden pulled the sweater out of her grasp. “I was running,” Mandy said when she’d recovered. “I mean, Rae was
running. Running down a rutted dirt path. She got away somehow.”

“What did you see? Anything could be important. A kind of tree. A car. Anything,” Aiden told her.

“I climbed over a fence. Then I fell. I was looking up at the fence. I mean
Rae
was looking up at the fence.” She
shook her head, obviously still overwhelmed by what was happening to her. “There was a sign on it,” she went on.

“It said ‘private property.’”

“That’s it?” Anthony burst out. He didn’t mean to sound angry, but he did. Mandy didn’t seem to notice. Or she
didn’t care.

“There was a name, too,” she continued. “Morton. But that’s it. That’s all I saw.”

Rae found herself staring up at Yana for the second time. God, she hated that, seeing Yana smirking down at her.

She wished she could claw the little smile right off Yana’s face. Of course, she couldn’t move. Not a muscle. One of
Yana’s thought implants had taken care of that.

“Very good escape attempt, Rae,” Yana said. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think you had the upper-body strength to
make it over the fence. Guess you had a real adrenaline rush going, huh?”

Rae wouldn’t have answered even if she had control of the muscles in her lips and tongue. What was the point?

“I think we’ll stay out here for a little while so you can enjoy the beautiful day, your last day,” Yanawent on.

“Nobody ever comes down that road, so we’ll have the place to ourselves. Then when you get hungry, we’ll go
inside and I’ll fix you lunch. I found a yummy box of rat poison under the sink.”

Rae felt tears sting her eyes. She wanted to blink them away-she didn’t want Yana to see-but she didn’t even have
the muscle control to do that. All she could do was lie at Yana’s feet. Paralyzed. Helpless. As good as dead.

Anthony climbed the chain-link fence. Then he followed the bumpy dirt road, keeping under the cover of the trees
alongside it.
She’s going to be here,
he told himself.
Yana won’t have moved her because there’s no way Yana can

know that we uncovered the location of her cousin’s hunting cabin.
Once Mandy had gotten the name Morton,
Aiden had used his “source,” whoever that was, to do the rest.

“Score,” he whispered when he rounded a bend in the road and saw Yana’s VW Bug. It was parked in the shade
across from a cabin that looked like it could be reduced to splinters if you breathed on it too hard. As he looked
closer, he noticed a big dent in the front of the Bug. It looked like Yana had plowed the thing head-on into something
very big, and very heavy. Was Raein the car when that happened? Mandy hadn’t said anything about a car or an
accident…

Focus,
he commanded himself. He had to get to that cabin. Crouching as low as he could, Anthony crossed the
clearing in front of the cabin and positioned himself under one of the windows. It was a pretty big one, which was
kind of weird for such a crummy little place. But Anthony wasn’t complaining. He wanted to see as much as he
could. Maybe he’d even get an idea what Yana’s power was. That would be
helpful.
He wasn’t loving the idea of
trying to get Rae out of there without knowing what Yana could do.

Anthony raised his head just enough to look into the window. The first thing his eyes found was Rae. He checked
her neck. There were a bunch of scratches running across it. They could have been made with a knife, but only if it
was used with almost no pressure.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Then his ribs collapsed against his heart. Rae had picked
up a spoon and was digging it into a box of rat poison. She was going to eat it.

He didn’t think. He didn’t plan. He let his body do the thinking. Anthony charged to the door of the cabin and
yanked on it. Locked. He wheeled around and moved into position a few feet from the bigwindow. He could see Rae
and Yana staring at him. He didn’t care. He ripped off his shirt, wrapped it around his head, then blindly launched
himself at the window. He landed hard on the cabin floor, glass raining down around him.

Before he could stand up, Rae was at his side. “Are you okay?” she cried, her voice trembling.

“I’m fine. And I’m getting you out of here.” Anthony got to his feet without slicing his hands to pieces on the glass.

He thought he had a few cuts here and there, but who cared? He’d found Rae. He reached out and took her by the
hand. “You going to try and stop us?” he asked Yana.

“No,” Yana answered. But she was smiling. What did she have planned? Didn’t matter. Anthony took a step toward
the door, pulling Rae with him.

Stop! Bring her to the table!

The thought was so forceful that Anthony’s body jerked. “What?” Rae demanded. He didn’t answer. He picked her
up in his arms. Then he turned away from the cabin door and started walking toward Yana.

That’s right. Bring her to the table and put her back in her chair .

“Anthony, no!” Rae shouted. “Yana’s controlling you. Can’t you feel it?”

God, Rae was right.
Anthony hadn’t even realizedthe thought that had gotten his body moving wasn’t his own. He
tried to stop his legs from moving, but it was like the wires running between his brain and body had been cut. He
had a new brain. Yana’s brain.

Rae began to struggle, twisting in his arms.
Yeah, do it. Get away,
he thought, the sound of his own inner voice a
whisper compared to the commands he’d gotten from Yana.

Hold her tighter !

Anthony’s arms immediately cinched closer around Rae. She bucked and squirmed and kicked. But she wasn’t
anywhere near as strong as he was. He kept walking until he reached the chair Rae’d been sitting in when he
peeked through the window. He set her down and held her in place.

Tie her up! Tie her tight!

Anthony scanned the room for something to use as binds. “Looking for this?” Yana asked as she tossed him a
length of rope.

“Don’t, Anthony. Don’t do it. You’re stronger than she is,” Rae told him.

But he wasn’t. He was a puppet. And Yana had her hand inside him, controlling every move. Methodically he tied
Rae’s feet to the bottom of the chair, then he brought the rope up and laced her torso to the chair rungs. He heard
her give a littlegasp of pain as the rough rope bit into her. He jerked the rope tighter. He had to.

“Good boy, Anthony,” Yana said. “Now it’s time to feed Rae. Take that box of rat poison and make her eat a nice big
spoonful!”

Feed her the poison !

Anthony focused all his mental energy on keeping his hands at his sides. He could feel his muscles twitching with
the effort of resisting. But still he grabbed the box and scooped out a heaping spoonful of the poison. Then he
crouched down next to Rae and brought the spoon to her lips. She twisted her head away. He followed with the
spoon.

Force her mouth open!

With his free hand Anthony grabbed Rae’s jaw and pried open her mouth. His heart screamed as he brought the
poison to her open mouth.
I’m going to kill her,
he thought.
I’m going to kill Rae.
He felt something hot and wet run
down his face and realized he was crying.

Rae tried to lock her teeth, but Anthony’s grip was too strong. She could smell the bitterness of the poison, almost
taste it.
I’m going to die. Right now. I’m going to die.

She locked eyes with Anthony. His face was what she wanted as her last memory. A salty ballformed in her throat
as she realized there were tears streaking down his cheeks.
Look at me,
she willed him.
Look into my eyes. I

understand. It’s not your fault.

I love you.

The thought exploded inside her with a rush of heat. She could practically feel her veins glowing gold. She loved
him. Let him see it. Let him know.