Read Online Bad Bloods by Shannon A. Thompson - Free Book Online Page B

asked, reading the
concern on my face, but I shook my head.
    “No.” I shoved the ID in her hands. “Our plan
involves you.”
    She gripped it before looking. “What—” As her
eyes traveled down, her words stopped. She stared at the photo of
herself—her past self—and her grip turned white. For a moment, I
had forgotten she couldn’t read. She had no way of knowing her new
name was Stephanie Mackenzie Henderson. So I told her.
    I began with Michele’s premonition, how she
thought something bad would happen to Henderson, how we believed it
was a gunshot, but how it turned out to be a rumor. I continued
with Cal’s office, his history. I told her about his talking to
Alec Henderson—the real Alec Henderson—over the phone, not once but
twice, and I ended it with their plan. She was going to take
Stephanie’s place. Even though most would see Stephanie, many would
realize it was Serena and enough would suspect it. Serena’s
presence would break them all by reminding them of their cruelty
and their inability to get rid of bad bloods. Serena could save us.
She just had to agree to it.
    This is why you survived, Alec
Henderson’s words repeated in my head, too loud to continue
speaking, but it was something I wanted to say to Serena too. Maybe
we both survived for a reason, but it sounded childish and naïve to
say we could make a change when such a large city sat right in
front of us, when we were so small and invisible against it, but
Serena looked right at me—ignoring the Highlands like it was the
one that was invisible, and it was only invisible because I sat in
front of her.
    “Say something,” I managed, practically
gasping, and her bottom lip trembled, only for her to bite it. I
scooted away from her, hoping she’d look away from me and back at
the city—the place she now belonged—but her eyes followed me like
she’d never look away. “Serena—”
    “The gunshot,” she interrupted, focusing on
the one part I tried to disregard. “Is it still going to happen?”
When I didn’t respond immediately, she nodded, but her nod took her
gaze to the city. Her mouth opened, closed again, and opened once
more. “What if something bad happens to our flocks?”
    Serena never thought of herself. As little as
I knew her, I knew she wasn’t worried about something bad happening
to her. All the bad things had already happened to her. She was
thinking of the others—all the others—even my flock. That question
alone confirmed she needed to be the one to go.
    “Don’t you remember what I said?” I asked,
drawing out the question slowly, delicately. “About you taking our
stories into the future?”
    “Why are you saying that like you’re not
going to be in it?” Her misty eyes were slits.
    “Michele’s premonition—”
    “A gunshot, I remember.”
    I tried to breathe, to calm down, but my head
spun. “Something bad is going to happen, Serena.” I couldn’t lie to
her. Not even once. And the truth made her stand up.
    I leapt to my feet and grabbed her hand.
“Wait.”
    “Why should I?” she asked, her voice sharp
and loud. I wanted to respond, but I was transfixed. Her blonde
hair shot out in the wind and surrounded her like a bright aura in
paintings I’d only seen in Cal’s books. When she yanked her hand
away from me, I realized she was still holding the ID. It flickered
as it caught the city’s reflection, and I half-expected her to toss
it over the tower’s edge, but she gripped onto it. She repeated her
question, but she looked far away—like a person I couldn’t possibly
reach, like the girl in the alleyway I practically forced to stay
with me, and now, I was trying to force her to go away. That meant
abandoning her flock, her family, during a time that we knew a gun
was going to go off. Someone would probably die, and I asked her to
let it happen for a greater cause we didn’t have a premonition
about.
    She spun away. “That’s what I thought.” When
she marched for the