Snapping the chain of my necklace, I ripped the obsidian pendant free as I launched myself at her. The move must have caught her off guard, because she didn’t move and took the brunt of my weight as I crashed into her, slamming the obsidian into her chest. Skin gave way with a sickening suction sound. Wet warmth met my fist as April started to topple backward—
Suddenly, I was in the air.
Flying backward, I slammed into the wall beside the window. Air punched out of my lungs as I fell forward, my knees cracking off the tile. I caught myself a second before face-planting on the dirty, nasty-as-hell floor. Panting, I lifted my head and stared through the strands of hair.
The obsidian pendant was stuck in her upper-left chest, too high to have hit her heart. Dammit.
Dark, inky blood spotted her white sweater as she reached up and gripped the obsidian. “Really? Obsidian?” She dropped it on the floor. “Do you think I’m an Arum? Because if so, that’s kind of insulting.”
I pushed down the panic crawling up my chest, threatening to choke me. “What the hell are you?”
April moved so fast.
One second she was standing by the sinks and the next she was kneeling in front of me, her fingers curled around my chin, forcing my head back. “I’ll give you one good hint.”
Her fingers dug into my chin as she reached around to her back pocket and pulled something out. For a moment, I almost didn’t recognize what she was holding between her slim fingers.
It was a picture.
A photo of a little blond girl with a man—a man I’d been told these last four years was my father—and a woman I knew as my mother.
It was one of the missing pictures from the photo album.
Holy crap. “You were in the house—you took the photos.”
“Yeah, it was me.” April flicked the picture at me, and I flinched as it smacked me in the face and then fluttered to the floor. “I suspected it was you after you started defending the Luxen, so then I helped myself to your house and found these photos. Interesting. That girl looks a little like you, so I thought maybe it was you. Weirder shit has happened, you know? But then you started hanging out with that Origin. Luc.”
My heart was racing so fast as she leaned in. Her lips brushed the corners of mine as she spoke. “I wasn’t supposed to be exposed yet. I had my purpose. You’ve already figured out what that is, but you went ahead and ruined it with that stupid camera of yours.” Her grip tightened, causing me to cry out. “You have no idea how much trouble I got in for that.”
There was no way I could speak with her fingers digging into my jaw, holding me in place. I threw everything I felt into my glare. Every ounce of hate and fury poured out of me.
“So, what do I call you? You’re obviously not Evie Dasher. That’s what I can’t figure out,” she continued, and I had no idea what she was babbling about. “Who the hell are you? That makes you very, very interesting to me.” She laughed. “But we’ll know soon. Everything that I’ve done, that we’re doing, is the price of the greater good. A war is coming, Evie. The great war—the only war—and we will level the playing field.”
April sounded insane.
“We are going to make the world a better place.” April let go of my chin, and I fell back. “You and me.”
“The only thing I’m going to do is straight up kill you.”
April cocked her head to the side. “You aren’t killing anyone.”
“I killed your mother,” I spat, barely recognizing the voice inside me. “Shot her right in the head.”
She snorted. “That wasn’t my mother. That was my handler. And I didn’t say that out loud.”
A chill swept down my spine. “What?”
Smiling at me as if we were gossiping about a juicy secret, she rose, and her eyes turned pitch-black, all except for her pupils. They glowed white as she pulled something out of her front pocket. What she held in her hand looked like a key fob.
I lurched to my feet, ignoring the flare of pain that shot down my back.
“Time to wake up.” She pressed her finger on the key fob. “Whoever you are.”
My world exploded.24Sharp, stinging pain exploded along the base of my skull, stealing the next breath I took and knocking my legs out from underneath me.
Clutching my head, I went down, but I didn’t feel the impact with the floor.
Pressure built inside my skull, and I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The pain came in waves and waves, sparking through my brain and starting fires along the synapses. My brain was on fire. I could feel it burning through my skull as I rolled onto my side, curling into a ball.