Defy Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,29

without incident.”

I want to scream.

Instead, I make a weak, choking sound. Tears spill fast down my cheeks and my mother stands there, her fingers small and foreign on my face, and I see, but cannot feel, the enormous needle going into the soft flesh at my temple. She empties and refills the syringe what feels like a thousand times, and each time it’s like being submerged underwater, like I’m slowly drowning, suffocating over and over again and never allowed to die. I lie there, helpless and mute, caught in an agony so excruciating I no longer breathe, but rasp, as she leans over me to watch.

“You’re right,” she says softly. “Maybe this is cruel. Maybe it would’ve been kinder to simply let you die. But this isn’t about you, Ella. This is about me. And right now,” she says, stroking my hair, “this is what I need.”

Kenji

The whole thing happens so quickly it takes me a second to register exactly what went down.

Delalieu is dead.

Delalieu is dead and Anderson is alive.

Anderson is back from the dead.

I mean, right now he’s flat on the ground, buried under the weight of every single piece of furniture in this room. Castle stares, intently, from across the space, and when I hear Anderson wheezing, I realize Castle isn’t trying to kill him; he’s only using the furniture to contain him.

I inch closer to the crowd forming around Anderson’s gasping figure. And then I notice, with a start, that Adam is pressed up against the wall like a statue, his face frozen in horror.

My heart breaks for him.

I’m so glad Adam dragged James off to bed hours ago. So glad that kid doesn’t have to see any of this right now.

Castle finally makes his way across the room. He’s standing a few feet away from Anderson’s prone figure when he asks the question we’re all thinking:

“How are you still alive?”

Anderson attempts a smile. It comes out crooked. Crazy. “You know what’s always been so great about you, Castle?” He says Castle’s name like it’s funny, like he’s saying it out loud for the first time. He takes a tight, uneven breath. “You’re so predictable. You like to collect strays. You love a good sob story.”

Anderson cries out with a sudden, rough exhalation, and I realize Castle probably turned up the pressure. When Anderson catches his breath, he says, “You’re an idiot. You’re an idiot for trusting so easily.”

Another harsh, painful gasp.

“Who do you think called me here?” he says, struggling to speak now. “Who do you think has been keeping me apprised”—another strained breath—“of every single thing you’ve been discussing?”

I freeze.

A horrible, sick feeling gathers in my chest.

We all turn, as a group, to face Nazeera. She’s standing apart from everyone else, the personification of calm, collected intensity. She has no expression on her face. She looks at me like I might be a wall.

For a split second I feel so dizzy I think I might actually pass out.

Wishful thinking.

That’s it—that’s the thing that does it. A room full of extremely powerful people and yet, it’s this moment, this brief, barely there moment of shock that ruins us all. I feel the needle in my neck before I even register what’s happening, and I have only a few seconds to scan the room—glimpsing the horror on my friends’ faces—before I fall.

Warner

I’m sitting in my office listening to an old record when I get the call. I worry, at first, that it might be Lena, begging me to come back to her, but my feeling of revulsion quickly transforms to hate when I hear the voice on the line. My father. He wants me downstairs.

The mere sound of his voice fills me with a feeling so violent it takes me a minute to control myself.

Two years away.

Two years becoming the monster my father always wanted me to be. I glance in the mirror, loathing myself with a new, profound intensity I’d never before experienced. Every morning I wake up hoping only to die. To be done with this life, with these days.

He knew, when he made that deal, what he was asking me to do. I didn’t. I was sixteen, still young enough to believe in hope, and he took advantage of my naiveté. He knew what it would do to me. He knew it would break me. And it was all he’d ever wanted.

My soul.

I sold my soul for a few years with my mother, and now, after everything, I don’t even know if it’ll