Skandal by Lindsay Smith Page B

needle in an earthquake.
    Or on a lie detector test.
    Donna, Cindy, and I all stare at Anna—I don’t know the exact nature of Cindy’s powers yet, but there’s no way she could have missed that eerie, inhuman wave of thought. Anna slows her frantic dabbing at her sweater until her measured motions match the steady beat of her thoughts. Then she stops altogether.
    She looks around the table at us, soaked napkin slipping out of her fingers.
    And runs from the room.

 
    CHAPTER 8
    BY THE TIME the phone operators connect Senator Saxton with the building security desk, Anna is long gone, and Cindy and Saxton both occupy about three telephones each while they coordinate phone calls with the Capitol Police, the CIA, Saxton’s protective detail, the FBI agents combing through his house, and other assorted entities, agencies, and personalities.
    Donna and I sit at the conference table, waiting for the adults to finish talking/shouting/screaming into their octopus collection of phone receivers. I’m buzzing with frantic energy. But we can do nothing until orders trickle down from above. Following the rules—like Valentin and I agreed, like Winnie reprimanded. But each time one of the phones lined up on Saxton’s desk rings, we both jump, muscles firing like pistons to launch us into action.
    “So, Jules.” Donna fidgets with her jewelry. “You know, it’s okay to, like, talk. You don’t have to pretend you’re a statue.”
    I give her a granite stare. She only ever seems at ease when she’s filling a perfectly good silence with the sound of her own voice. “What am I meant to discuss?”
    “The weather, or what you’re thinking about, or—or anything, really, is better than sitting there looking like you think I’m gonna pull a knife on you.” She smiles, lopsided. “Are all you Russians so unemotional?”
    “Why would we show our emotions?” I ask.
    She groans and bonks her head back against the wall. “This is what I mean! Okay, I know how to get you talking.” Her grin twists into my ribs. “Tell me all about you and Valentin. How did you two meet?”
    And she wonders why we Russians don’t share much of ourselves. “When we were both prisoners of the KGB,” I say.
    “Oh. Right.” Donna shuts up for a minute, but then she’s at me again, prying me with a new conversational tactic like I’m a lock she’s trying to pick. I wonder what she’s trying to pry out of my mind. “It must be great being back with your dad again, huh? My father —” she draws it out, like she’s suddenly affecting a British drawl—“is a movie producer in Hollywood. I hardly ever get to see him now that I’m on the opposite coast.”
    “What about your mother?” I ask. If she’d rather talk about herself, then I’d rather not field unanswerable questions.
    Donna’s gaze sinks down to her hand. “Oh, she’s around enough. You know—here and there.”
    Thankfully, Cindy interrupts our conversational stalemate, sinking into the chair across from us with a sigh. She pops open her clutch and pulls a slender deck of cards. They’re not playing cards, but have strange illustrations on the faces unlike any playing cards I’ve seen. “A moment, girls, before we go.” After shuffling the cards, she fans them out faceup on the table and drums her nails. I can hear her blues song through the table, though it’s nearly swallowed up in the electrical currents’ static, like a distant radio station. After a long moment she selects one from the heap.
    “Four of wands,” she says to no one in particular. She pinches the bridge of her nose, then stuffs the cards back into her clutch and turns to Senator Saxton. “Sorry, senator. It would appear that I’ll need a few more favors from you.”
    He groans. “I have to sleep in a hotel room under armed guard tonight because of your damned meddling as it is. What more could you possibly want from me?”
    Cindy’s smile doesn’t so much as twitch. “Miss Willoughsby