She smiled in her sleep.

Strapped to an exam table. Eyes closed. The memory came on suddenly, without mercy. Nix is cold, but he doesn’t want to wake up. He wants to stay in the dream, wants to—

The table lurches. He’s plunged downward into the tank. His eyes fly open. Water fills his nose, his mouth. If he was cold before, he’s freezing now, but it doesn’t matter—he can’t breathe—can’t move. He fights against the straps that hold him immobile, but it’s no use. His lungs are tight. He’s choking.

Drowning.

He can see familiar forms leaning over the dunk tank, their faces blurred, their expressions impassive. Ione. Ryland. They’re not going to help him. They’re going to watch him die, unless—

Less than shadow. Less than air. He forces himself to stop fighting. Stop thinking. Stop existing—and he fades.

Nix came out of the flashback to see Claire’s lips still curved up in a gentle smile. Like she hadn’t a care in the world. Like it wasn’t her fault he’d been raised the way he had. So he could protect the rest of the world from Nulls.

Still gasping for breath, Nix slammed a door on the memory and concentrated on the present. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he told the sleeping girl in front of him. “I should have let you die.”

But he hadn’t. He’d propped her up and forced her to drink water. He’d taped her ribs. He’d covered her with blankets and put them back when she kicked them off.

“If you think I’m weak, you’re wrong. If you think I care, you’re wrong.” Nobodies weren’t allowed to care. They weren’t allowed to ask questions. All they were allowed to do was kill.

Kill. Claire.

Beautiful, sleeping, breathing, dreaming Claire.

She’s shifting onto her other side. Her hair is falling into her eyes. Her legs are stretching out. The muscles in her throat are moving.

As he documented Claire’s movements, Nix felt his own throat clench. This was the most she’d moved since they’d been here, and there were sounds in her mouth, trying to get out. Not cries. Not whimpers.

Words.

“Where am I?”

It figured that one of the first words out of her mouth was I. Nulls existed at the centers of their own universes, puppeteers to hundreds of others. No one else mattered to them.

“I wish you’d stayed asleep,” Nix said, each word as sharp as broken glass. While she’d slept, he’d crooned to her. Soothed her. Said things he shouldn’t have even thought. But now she’d ruined it. Ruined everything.

“Asleep? How long have I been asleep?” Claire scrambled to a sitting position.

Claire is scared. I am scaring Claire.

Nix’s target looked frantically down at her own body. Like she’d never seen it before. Like she didn’t know how perfect it was.

Liar.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“You’re defective. You’re a monster. You got hit by a van.”

Her face went through a flurry of changes, so quickly that he could not keep up with them all: she sucked a breath in, and her entire face—eyes, cheekbones, lips—threatened to cave in on itself. Crumble.

This Null didn’t like being told she was defective.

Eventually, her lips stopped trembling and settled into a thin and desperate line, and Nix wondered how many facial expressions a single person could have. He had never wanted to touch another person’s face more.

She’s doing this to you. She’s making you think about her. She’s making you want—

“Do. Not. Move.” Nix’s voice strained against his vocal cords, like an animal caged. “Don’t try anything. Don’t think you can use your abilities to escape. I’m immune.”

If only that were true.

“My abilities? What abilities?” Her lips and eyes rearranged themselves once more, this time into an expression of pure bafflement—a testament to her abilities as an actress, the ultimate master of the art of deception. “I don’t have abilities. I’m not good at anything.”

Simple words, but they seemed hard-won. Like it hurt her to lower herself and pretend that she was nothing special.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she said. “I’m really not.” Only a Null could use that voice. Make herself sound as if part of her wished that she was the one he was looking for.

His.

Strapped to an exam table. Eyes closed. Nix forced the memory to the surface of his mind, like a man jamming his fingers down his throat to hurl.

“You can drop the act,” he said, loathing and longing battling for supremacy in his tone. “No one will ever find you here, and there’s no one within range for you to use.”

“Use? What are you talking about? Use how?”

Don’t, he told her silently. Don’t pretend you don’t know. Don’t act the innocent, unaware of the effect you have on everyone and everything.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what you’re doing to me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her voice was a whisper—tentative, scared—but the expression on her face didn’t match. Her nose was scrunched, her head tilted.

Claire is … Claire is … puzzled, Nix realized, giving name to the expression, which he hadn’t seen on the canvas of her face before. Claire finds me puzzling. I am puzzling Claire.

He rolled the thought over in his mind, letting her question go unanswered until the ugly, sordid truth—I am nothing—she’s pretending—so stupid to think that—clawed its way back into his brain, digging in deep and holding on.

His whole life had been a nightmare, and she was playing with his emotions like a cat batting at a piece of string.

“Stop. Talking.”

If she didn’t talk, she couldn’t lie—not with her mouth. Just with her body and her eyes—

“I won’t stop talking.”

There were question marks in her voice, and hesitations, and she didn’t have a right to either of them. He wanted to rip the mask off her lying face.

He wanted to touch it.

“I … I … won’t stop talking until you … until you tell me what’s going on. Who are you?”

“Stop. Talking.”

She matched his emphasis with her own. “Who. Are. You.”

Tell me, tell me, tell me, her eyes seemed to say.

He cursed. He cursed her, and he cursed himself, and she pretended to flinch at the profanity that streamed from his mouth.

Nulls don’t flinch.

To flinch, you had to feel fear. To be afraid of someone, your energy had to be marked by theirs. This Null was playing him. Again.

He needed weapons.

He needed her dead.

He’d left his knives and needles and poisons in the kitchen, out of sight. He had to stop her, before she pretended to flinch again.

Hands. Just my hands.

That was the way to kill this Null. His hands had bathed her temple. His hands had fed her. And in doing so, he’d committed a great evil—risked all the good he’d ever done, just because a Null had deigned to look him in the eye. To ask him for his name. To react to his presence—puzzled, flinching—as if he was the kind of person who could have an impact on anyone, ever.

Like he could affect a girl like her.

“I. Am. Nobody.” The words came, not in answer to her question, but in answer to the ones he was asking himself

Who do you think you are, to look at her that way? You’re nothing. She’s everything. Kill her. Now.

“You’re … you’re … someone,” Claire said. “You’re the one who brought me here. You’re the boy from my dream.” She went very pale, the blue of her veins standing out like a pattern on porcelain. “You’re the one who kills me.”

He took one step toward her and then another. She sucked in a breath and watched him move. And then, without warning, the girl he’d held and helped and saved dove back under the covers.

Like she could hide from him.

Like she could escape him.

Lies.

I’m hiding under a blanket. Claire’s heart beat viciously against her rib cage. I’m who knows where with who knows who, I just reminded the boy who brought me here that he intends to kill me, and now he’s coming toward me, murder in his eyes, and I AM HIDING UNDER A STUPID BLANKET.