The backyard was pitch-black, except for the light from the pool. I’d come out here to be alone, but as I approached the water, it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one looking for refuge.
Celine Delacroix was swimming laps.
As I went closer, I saw that she’d turned on the black light. Like the rest of the house, the pool had been designed to facilitate our training. The outline of a body glowed at the bottom of the pool. Spatter patterns—visible only under the black light—marred the pool’s edge.
Months ago, Dean had shown me this. He’d tried to convince me to leave the Naturals program. He’d told me that murder and chaos wasn’t a language that anyone should want to speak.
Realizing that she wasn’t alone, Celine turned toward me, treading water. “No offense,” she said, “but you all really suck at hiding the fact that you work for the FBI.”
This girl was Michael’s sister. She was safe here. But if she hung around, she might not be for long.
“You should leave,” I told her. “Go back to school.”
Celine swam to the edge and pulled herself out of the pool, the water clinging to her body. She had to have been freezing, but didn’t shiver. “I’ve never excelled at should.”
I’d heard Michael say the same thing—more than once. “Are you okay?” Celine asked.
“No.” I didn’t bother elaborating and turned the question around on her. “Are you?”
She sat down next to the pool, allowing her legs to dangle in the water, tilting her head back toward the sky. “I’m trying this new thing,” she told me. “Ultimate honesty. No more secrets. No more lies.” This was the girl from the painting—the one who painted her self-portrait with a knife. “So, in answer to your question, Cassie, I’m not okay. I am incredibly and quite possibly irreversibly screwed-up. That’s what happens when you figure out at the ripe old age of seven that your father isn’t your father—and that his best friend is. That’s what happens when, at the age of fourteen, your mother drunkenly
admits to your biological father that you’re his. And that’s what happens when said biological father finally figures out that you know and corners you in your own studio to tell you that your dad—the man who raised you, his business partner and supposed friend—ruined you. That you would be so much more if he’d been the one in control. That, if he’d had the chance, he could have stamped the bad blood out of you when you were young, just like he did for his son.”
Bad blood. I could imagine Thatcher Townsend saying the words, could imagine him beating out of Michael the weaknesses he saw in himself. And then I thought of Laurel—the way she was being raised, the things she was expected to do.
The blood belongs to the Pythia. The blood belongs to Nine.
“How did you find out?” I asked, my voice hoarse, trying to concentrate on the present and not what my actions had cost the one person in this world that I’d sworn to protect. “When you were seven, how did you find out that Thatcher Townsend was your father?”
“I looked at his face,” Celine said simply. “And I looked at my own—not just the features, not my eyes or my lips or my nose, but the basic underlying facial structure. The bones.”
I searched Celine’s face for a resemblance to Michael’s father, but I couldn’t see it.
Celine must have sensed some skepticism. “I never forget a face. I can take one look at a person and know exactly what their facial bones look like underneath the skin. Creepy, I know, but what can I say?” She shrugged. “I’m a natural.”
My breath caught in my throat. Celine didn’t know the details of the program—why the FBI had brought us here, what we could do. She didn’t know what it meant to be a Natural, capital N. But I thought of Michael saying that ever since they were kids, she’d only drawn faces, of the digital photo she’d created of her and Michael. She’d taken a photograph of them as kids, and she’d mentally fast-forwarded with stunning accuracy.
There’s software that does age progressions. Sloane’s statement echoed in my head, and I thought about the role that genes had played in making each of us Naturals what we were. Our environments had honed our gifts—but the seed had been there from the beginning.
And Celine was Michael’s sister.
“I meant it when I said you should leave,” I told Celine, my voice sandpaper-rough in my throat. “But before you do, I need a favor.”
