Shadowed

XII. Revelations

"I thought they hadn't seen you, Shane," says Angella. Her tone is sharp, and she wields her words like knives. 

My breath hitches in my throat, but I keep my face calm. I won't show the panic I feel, even if I'm inwardly cursing myself and my own stupidity.

I open my mouth, scrambling to find something—anything to say, any lie that will successfully remove me from the trap I've dug myself into, but nothing comes to my lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse Abby. Her head tilts sideways as she looks at me, and a slight smirk tugs at her lips. She's silent, but her eyes say everything. 

You can't hide from the truth forever. You had this coming. This is what happens to liars.

I know I'm a liar. I've been one for decades, every time someone asked my name. My age. Where I was from. And in the beginning, it was to protect me, to keep anyone from my old life from finding me. 

At first, it hurt to pretend I was someone else. The Rowan who sneaked out to go to parties, the Rowan who slipped through Jeremy's window in the middle of the night for a cigarette and a kiss before stealing back into my parents' house, he wasn't gone yet. 

But in the end, I was still unchanging, never growing taller, my face staying young and rounded. And once I realized I couldn't die, that I'd be trapped on Earth forever as everyone around me grew old and withered away, I knew it would hurt me worse to hold on. I had to leave everything behind, a clean break, and the last tie to be cut was my identity. 

If I kept the name Rowan Shapiro, someone could trace me to the boy who disappeared from the hellhole, the one who dropped out of college and smoked too much and had a boyfriend and vanished years ago, leaving nothing behind but pools of dark red blood. I couldn't go back. It would break me, destroy what's left of me—and when you're in a body that can't be broken, the worst torture is to be trapped with a shattered mind forever. And so I lied.

Lily Grace and Jeremy are sixty years old now. They're grey-haired, beginning to stoop, their fingers growing brittle, their eyes growing weaker. And here I am. Fifteen and trying to forget them. I don't want to see them again, not now. 

I lied so I would never have to. It would hurt too badly. To see them age, move on with life, while I stayed here frozen like a fly trapped in amber, helpless and miserable. And it's been years, long enough to convince myself that they've forgotten me. 

My lying is done serving its purpose. They were selfish lies, only meant to keep my own pain at bay as long as I could. But I made the decision to open my doors to pain. I can't be selective. I have to let myself feel the old aches, wounds that never healed over.

Or else I'll be broken forever, I think, my eyes straying to the thin white scars on my wrists.

Besides, they deserve to know. There's so much mystery surrounding the Hunters and Angella. Why they're here. What they want. 

I don't know what they want me for. But I do know why they're here, and as long as we're in danger, everyone else should know that too. Secrets are all fine and good when they're not hurting anybody, but there's already two dead and Hunters searching for us right now. Keeping my secret could hurt someone.

Abby folds her arms, half-smiling, as Angella's pale eyes bore into me, hostile, suspicious. 

I can tell it's a mask. The cracks in it are small, but they're there. Her hands shake ever so slightly. She's biting her lip, an anxious tic. Her fear and her grief are still completely present.

But it's a very good mask, I think as she narrows her eyes. 

I won't be intimidated by her. I face Angella, letting her hear the steel in my voice.