While Dwayne tried to auction off scratch-and-wins, I pocketed the cash I’d stolen from his wallet, snuck out the back door, and took off into the night. Two problems immediately arose: my internal GPS failing me, and Dwayne failing to provide his foster son with a winter coat despite Canadian winters averaging roughly a billion degrees below zero.

So I ended up lost in a blizzard for over an hour without a proper jacket.

As I kicked my bare legs in the hypothermic water, I hoped this freezing cold experience turned out better. My thirteen-year-old self did survive. I even made it to the bus station, but the ticket kiosk lady pegged me for a runaway and, instead of selling me a ticket, called the cops.

I ended up right back where I began: in a bedroom with three other foster kids, wishing I was free. Thanks, kiosk lady.

My arm caught on a frond of slimy seaweed and I cringed. Kicking harder, I sliced a path through the marine vegetation. When my hand contacted another surface, it was the rocky bottom. Thank god.

I got my legs under me, only to realize my feet were entirely numb. After a few missteps, I waded out of the water and collapsed on a grassy patch at the tree line, puffing for air through violent shivers. My fingers were so frozen that untying the garbage bag from my wrist was impossible. I ripped it open and yanked out my clothes, which were, by some miracle, still dry.

Once I was dressed and my extremities had begun to warm up, pins and needles assaulted my nerves. I balled my hands into fists and shook my legs out, trying to drive the blood back into my veins, all the while gauging the surrounding landscape.

I was at the bottom of a hill, which was just awesome. A good ol’ uphill stroll was exactly what I needed right now. Ugh.

Once the burning sensation in my feet subsided, I started my trek toward civilization. Back toward the city and crowds of people and, undoubtedly, back toward danger. But also, I hoped, toward freedom.

Chapter Fourteen

When I stumbled into the twenty-four-hour convenience store, soaking wet and shivering, the eighteen-year-old behind the counter would’ve been on the phone to the cops in an instant—if that’s what I’d let him see.

Instead of the trembling, hunched-over mess that I was, I showed the clerk an upright and thoroughly dry version of myself. The hallucination Kit smiled in greeting and ambled into the beef jerky section.

Meanwhile, I stood just inside the door, rubbing my hands together and dripping water on the floor. After all that effort to keep my clothes dry, it’d started pouring rain three minutes after my exit from the ocean. Mother Nature had a cruel sense of humor.

My ribs felt like they were covered in frost, but I didn’t let that interfere with the hallucination I was projecting into the clerk’s mind. While I remained invisible, my doppelganger somberly debated between Butter Mesquite and Chicago Smoke jerky, his head bobbing back and forth.

I could thank Douchebag Dwayne for my mastery of this skill, which I’d affectionately dubbed Split Kit. It’d started out as a trick in school—fooling my teachers into thinking I was paying attention while I doodled or read a book. It wasn’t until I met Dwayne and his swinging fists that I learned to make myself entirely invisible.

As I sent fake-Kit toward the candy aisle, I tiptoed around the counter to join the clerk. His cell phone sat beside the register, and I made the device invisible as I palmed it. I prodded the screen. No passcode. Perfect.

Retreating to the corner, I sent fake-Kit in the opposite direction—though not toward the cooler doors with their shiny glass. Reflections were way too tricky to pull off while distracted.

Dialing the number I’d memorized three days ago, I lifted the phone to my ear. It rang. And rang … and rang and rang. Finally, it went to voicemail, and my heart sank.

“Jenkins, it’s Kit,” I murmured in a low tone so my voice wouldn’t carry to the clerk. “I escaped. I’m at a convenience store south of Deep Cove. On Dollarton Highway, I think. If you can find me, I could use your help.”

As I disconnected the call, I realized the clerk was squinting at fake-Kit in confusion. Shit on a stick. I was losing my grip on the hallucination and its uncanniness was coming through.

Hurrying into the nearest aisle, I stuffed my pockets full of Slim Jims, Sour Patch Kids, and a couple bottles of water. Meanwhile, fake-Kit approached the clerk.

“Hey,” he asked casually, “do you know where the nearest hotel is?”

The clerk frowned. “The closest one is by the cove. Or back toward town. I think there’s one by Capilano.”

“Nothing closer?”

“Nah, man.”

Damn it. I couldn’t go back to Deep Cove because there was an excellent chance that Lienna and Agent Cutter were hunting for me in that area. Capilano was a long way away.

Fake-Kit wished him a good night, then we both exited and coalesced into a single entity.

Pulling my hood over my head against the steady rain, I crossed the parking lot back toward the sidewalk. If Jenkins came through for me, this was where he’d show up, so I didn’t want to go far.

Half a block down the street, a bus stop with a glass-walled shelter posed under a yellow streetlight. Good enough. I hurried into the shelter and collapsed onto the bench, rain drumming against the metal roof. My shoulders, which had been squeezed up around my ears to keep out the chill, relaxed, and I tore into a Slim Jim.

In my other hand was the phone I’d stolen, and I stared at it, fighting the sick feeling in my gut. I’d called a virtual stranger for help … because there was no one else. Maggie and Quentin had been my only friends.

If I called Lienna and asked her to help me, what would she say?

I snorted quietly. She’d probably turn me into a legless poodle through the phone line out of pure rage. I’d betrayed her like the slimy crook she’d assumed I was from the very start.

Betrayed, though … that was a harsh word. Tricked, yes. Hung out to dry, sure. But betrayed? I rifled through my internal thesaurus for a better option. Before we’d almost died in Rigel’s secret office, and before she’d taken me to my apartment and we’d watched a movie, and before she’d vouched for me in front of Blythe, I wouldn’t have worried about the best descriptor for my actions. But now?

My stomach turned over, unhappy with the Slim Jim. Or maybe that squirmy feeling was guilt.

I didn’t feel guilty for saving my own ass, though. Ditching unpleasant situations and vanishing into the night was my go-to survival move.

You’re an orphan with no family to speak of, and the only people willing to take you in are abusive shit stains? Run away.

The foster system can’t figure out what to do with you because, unbeknownst to everyone—including you—you’re a freaky mythic and you weird everyone out? Run away.

The law firm you work for turns out to be run by money-grubbing conmen and collapses? Definitely run away.

Some people might call it cowardly, but I call it self-preservation. And it’d never bothered me before. Maybe I’d trampled over Lienna’s burgeoning trust and small kindnesses on my way to freedom, but what else could I have done? Waited to see if the MPD would execute me?

Determinedly munching on my ill-gotten snacks, I turned my thoughts toward a topic that didn’t make my gut twitch. Like Maggie’s strange behavior. And Quentin’s asshole behavior—not that Quentin being an asshole was a surprise.