Текст книги "Fire Fall"

Автор книги: Bethany Frenette

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

The universe came to a sudden stop. For an instant, I didn’t breathe. Distantly, I was aware of the sun glaring down hot against my face, and the sweat beading on my forehead; I was aware of the staccato chug of a sprinkler system nearby, and the groan of an engine from down the block. But the details were mere information. They didn’t connect. I was back in Sonja’s house, feeling again that icy sense of dread that swept over me. I shivered beneath my sweat. I saw the smashed shards of the teacup, thin porcelain slivers painted lilac. In the corner: Sonja’s crumpled body, the twist of her neck. I saw Shane’s torn shirt, his unkempt hair. The bloody footprints and his bare feet. His blank, dead eyes as he looked at me. How he had smiled, showing red teeth.

“We woke the Beneath,” I repeated dully. “That’s what killed Sonja and the other elders. It wasn’t Shane.”

The Beneath.

Impossible, I wanted to say. But Iris was right. I had felt it. I had Known it, just as it had Known me.

We’ve met before, it had told me in Shane’s body, with Shane’s voice.

Iris tilted her head, her gray hair rustling against her. The triple knot swayed on its chain. “At the moment, it’s choosing to inhabit him,” she said. Her voice had lost some of its hoarseness, as though she was slowly remembering how to speak. “But it’s not going to stop with him, either. It’s gaining in power. Gathering strength.”

“And we woke it?” This was so far beyond my comprehension, I couldn’t even begin to process it. I just kept staring.

“You have to put it back to sleep,” Iris said.

“With what? A lullaby?”

Her eyes were hard. There was no smile on her face now. “Kill Gideon.”

“Right. You know, for a second there I forgot I was talking to a murdering psychopath. Thanks for the reminder.”

“You need to listen to me,” she said, almost hissing again. She took half a step toward me, and then seemed to think better of it. “Gideon is the problem, Audrey. He’s connected to the Astral Circle, just like you are. But he’s a Harrower. That means he’s also connected to the Beneath. When you released the Circle’s power, the Beneath woke up. And since then it’s been feeding. Drawing on the Circle’s energy. That power is what’s keeping it awake. Sever his connection to the Circle, and it goes back to sleep.”

“Why should I believe a word you’ve said? You don’t care about the Kin. You’ve been Beneath all this time, and now you just pop up out of nowhere and tell me to kill my best friend? For all I know, you’re still trying to get me to unseal him.”

Her face twisted into a sneer. “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything. If it were just you and your mother, I’d say let the world burn. But I won’t let it have my family. I won’t let it have my sister.”

“What is it going to do to Elspeth?” I asked, recalling Sonja’s body being dragged Beneath. We are being Harrowed, I heard Esther say.

“What it’s going to do to everyone if it isn’t stopped. You remember Valerie. Her vision. The end of the Kin. She saw what was coming. She knew it would happen here. But that Harrower you killed got it wrong. It was never about the Remnant. It was about now. It was about this.”

Valerie’s vision of the Kin’s destruction was what had begun Susannah’s search for the Remnant. It was the reason she’d come to the Cities, the reason she had gathered an army Beneath.

But Val hadn’t just seen the future, Daniel had told me.

She’d seen two.

Two futures.

The Remnant was never the one who decides it, he’d said. You are.

My mind raced, stray thoughts that reached toward understanding, and then skidded away. Memories surfaced. You set something in motion that night on Harlow Tower, Susannah had told me. That was the night Valerie had had her first vision, she’d claimed. The night she saw the doom of your Kin.

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re crazy if you think I’m killing Gideon.”

“It has to be you. You’re connected to the Circle. To him. You have to do it. You’re the only one who can.” She turned her head, listening to something beyond my hearing. In the street behind her, a blackbird stalked back and forth and then suddenly took to flight. A feather floated down on the air beneath it, blown upward by the breeze. Iris closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were white as a Harrower’s. “And you have to hurry. You have to go. You have to do it now.”

Alarm surged through me. A familiar chill crept over my skin. “What’s happening?”

“The Beneath. It’s near. Gideon is part human now—it can’t inhabit him. It’s going to unseal him. Hurry, Audrey. Go.”

I spun around, groping toward the car.

The driveway at Gideon’s house was empty. The drapes were closed, the windows dark. One of his sisters’ bicycles lay abandoned in the yard, but there was no sign of its owner. No one home, I thought at first, fighting down panic—but no, Iris had told me to go, to hurry. Whatever she’d sensed was close. And I had felt that chill of dread, that rush of horror. It was coming here. It was going to unseal Verrick.

I parked quickly, leaving the car running. I’d tried Gideon’s number as I drove, but my calls had gone unanswered. I tested the door and stepped inside when I found it unlocked. I made for the basement at half-gallop, not pausing to see if anyone else was there. Nothing mattered but getting to Gideon.

“Gideon!” I called when I reached the basement steps.

I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found him. I didn’t have a plan beyond reaching him. I would drag him to the car if I had to, and then I’d just drive. Drive and keep driving, until we were so far from the Circle that no Harrower could push through, no matter how powerful. After that, I would decide what to do. I would think of something to tell him—anything but the truth. But I’d think of it later. First I had to find him. First I had to save him.

“Gideon!” I shouted again.

“Audrey?”

Relief poured into me. I ran down the rest of the steps and pitched myself toward his room, nearly colliding with him as he opened his door and stepped through it. He looked like I’d just woken him from a nap. His hair was sticking up, and he blinked at me sleepily, rubbing his face with his hands. I grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly and drawing him toward the stairs.

He didn’t resist, but his pace was sluggish. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

I kept tugging him, urging him to move faster. “I’ll tell you later. You need to come with me. Just trust me, okay? We need to go. We need to go right now.”

“Go where?”

“I’ll explain, I promise—”

Abruptly, we were flung apart. Gideon’s hand was jerked from mine, and I found myself airborne, crashing against the wall. My shoulder took the impact, but I felt it all through me, sharp pain shooting out along my limbs. Dizzily, I groped my way back to my feet. Through the fog in my vision, I saw Shane.

My stomach plunged. My throat constricted. I had failed. Shane was going to unseal Verrick, and I couldn’t prevent it. Leon would arrive any second, I knew. And this time he wouldn’t even pause. He’d just grab me and teleport away.

“Gideon, run!” I cried.

But he couldn’t run. I knew that, even as I shouted it. There was no exit here, no avenue of escape. Shane—or the Beneath—had found him. If Gideon moved, it would follow. If he ran, it would give chase.

And it would catch him.

There was no question of that.

Gideon lay on his side, clutching his head. He made a noise, trying to pull himself to his feet. Shane stalked toward him.

His feet were still bare, I saw. The bottom ends of his jeans were brown with dried blood. Up to his ankles.

“I have heard the singing of your blood, prisoner,” the Beneath said with Shane’s voice. “I hear the drag of your chains. I am here to loosen your bonds.”

I wondered how I had ever mistaken it for Shane. I felt its malevolence in every word it uttered, every gesture it made.

“Run!” I screamed.

Gideon scrambled backward on his hands.

“You know me,” Shane said, herding him, keeping him cornered. “You’ve always known. You hide it away, you deny it. But you have felt it. You have tasted its call. The fury that feeds you. The thirst for the kill that hums in your blood. You understand who you are. This Kin-child lied to you. She speaks in untruths. She draws fictions out of air. She is not your friend. She is not your kind.”

“RUN!”

“Do you know what her kind did? What her Kin did to the girl you loved? They opened her veins. They gave her to the earth and let it gorge. I will gift you something in return. I’m going to give you vengeance. I am going to give you back your wrath.”

I struggled to my feet. Unthinking, uncaring, I hurled myself toward them.

Shane caught me one-handed, lifting me from the ground. “Your blood is not required, Kin-child.”

He tossed me backward. I hit the floor hard.

I rolled, trying to pull myself up onto my hands and failing. My arms buckled. My hands wouldn’t hold me. Something sharp sliced into my palm. I raised my head, and in the darkness of the basement, across the distance of the room, my eyes met Gideon’s. Our gazes locked.

Everything stilled. For a moment, there was no sound, no sense, no feel of the floor beneath me. I no longer saw Shane’s blood-crusted jeans or his bare feet. I saw only Gideon. In reality, it measured no more than a heartbeat, a blink, but in that moment, time was elastic. It drew us backward, across years, across memory, into a long ago morning and a sunny classroom that smelled of licorice and crayons. We were eight years old, and I was making my slow way through the door, pausing as I stepped. Gideon was there at his desk, turning to face me. I saw the light that clung to him, that beautiful, burning light, clean and shining. He smiled. I smiled. And I knew, right then.

We’re connected, I thought now. We are bound. By the blood of my father, and by the light of the Astral Circle, blazing so brightly around him. A thread drawn between us. And we would stay there, in that single stopped second. The rest of the world would go on, but we would remain. Nothing would touch us. Nothing would change.

But the heartbeat passed. Time sped forward once again. Gideon sucked in a breath. I saw a flash of understanding in his eyes, truth cutting through the fiction. He knew what he was. Somewhere inside, he’d always known. And he knew that I lied. I wanted to plead, to apologize, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. Darkness swelled across my vision. My thoughts slipped away.

The last sound I heard was Gideon screaming.

My mind slid backward into memory. Consciousness flickered and faded; I heard voices, someone speak my name. I felt arms lift me, a warm touch on my face. But I resisted. I retreated into sleep—or perhaps into Knowing. It wasn’t like a dream, drifting from thought to thought or scene to scene. It wasn’t abstract or ambiguous. Behind my eyes, images collected and took shape: thick grass stretching in every direction; insects humming in the cool, clean air; the rise of pines in the distance.

Above, the last edge of light was retreating from the night sky. I recognized the setting—the dirt road trailing off out of sight, Gram’s rusty blue truck parked in the gravel. It was our old house up north, where I’d spent the first eight years of my life in the sleepy quiet of the country. It was late summer, and the flowers that crept up toward the porch were beginning to droop and die. There was Gram, seated beside me on the porch swing. I was little, maybe six years old, my feet bare and dirty as I pulled them up onto the swing and tucked myself against Gram. She hummed a tune, stroking my hair idly. I listened to the rise and fall of the notes and the creak of our swing as it swayed.

We were watching the stars come out. Counting them, giving each a name—this one Jacky, for my grandfather, that one Lady, after our greyhound. They had names already, I knew, real names, but Gram asked why that should matter to us. The stars didn’t care. They did not belong to Earth. Some were distant suns, shining for distant planets. They were the beacons of all the cosmos, she said—pinpricks of light in the darkness, where all hope begins. And on our porch, we would name them what we wished.

“Listen, sweeting,” Gram said, her voice soft. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

It wasn’t a secret she told me, but a story.

She had told me it before. It was about my grandfather, who had died before I was born. “I wasn’t supposed to marry Jacky,” she confided, lifting her hand to tuck a stray curl of hair behind my ear. “I was engaged to his brother, George.”

I knew the details already. A wedding had been planned, and then delayed. Gram’s white dress had been left in the closet to gather dust. Then George had been killed overseas, and for two years Gram had withdrawn into herself, barely eating, barely speaking. The world outside her window had no color, she told me; food had no taste. The turn of seasons didn’t touch her. Chords strung together had no music in them.

“Jacky,” she said. “He was my lodestar. The flame that guided me home. That’s what you do when you’re lost, sweeting. You just look for the flame.”

“But he died,” I said.

Gram only smiled. “He is in the earth now, but I’m never alone. Even when we die, we’re still a part of the people who carry us. I keep him here”—she touched her heart—“and there.” She raised her arm, pointing to the horizon. I lifted my eyes to follow the motion.

But when I looked at the sky once more, all the stars were red.

I woke in my own room, in my own bed, warm blankets tucked up to my chin. Late afternoon light streamed in around me. My window was open, letting in the sound of birds, the smell of the lawn. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. As though nothing had occurred. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend nothing had.

Instead, I tried to move. My head swam. Groggy and disoriented, I groped toward the wall, pressing my hand flat against it until my vision ceased its spinning. Then, carefully, I climbed up out of the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I sat there a moment, evaluating. My shoulder ached. There was dirt on my shorts and tank top, a thin smear of blood on my arm. After taking a steadying breath, I stood and padded toward the door.

Downstairs, there were voices.

I made my way slowly, clutching at the railing. The stairs creaked as I stepped, and the voices went silent. I heard footsteps. My mother appeared, peeking her head out from the living room. Her mouth slanted downward.

“You shouldn’t be up yet,” she said.

“I need to know what happened.”

“You may need to be the one to answer that,” she said. She helped me down the last few stairs, taking hold of my arm and guiding me toward the living room. Mr. Alvarez stood inside, near the mantel. He glanced toward the door, frowning, when I entered. Leon was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, his expression blank. He didn’t look at me.

Mom settled me on the couch, then turned to Mr. Alvarez. “I would prefer to delay this until she’s feeling better, but it seems my daughter has other ideas.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. My voice squeaked out of me, sounding strange to my ears. I curled my hands, then felt a sharp pain. There was a cut across one palm, jagged and beginning to scab over. “How did I get home?”

“How do you think?” Leon said.

Mom’s brow furrowed. “You don’t remember? You seemed awake when I brought you up to bed.”

“No. I just remember passing out. And…red stars. A sky the color of blood. Dreaming.”

“I was in class,” Leon said. “It took me a minute to get out of sight to teleport. He was already gone when I found you.”

“Who?” I whispered. My heart clenched.

Mr. Alvarez turned to face me. He closed his eyes briefly. “Verrick. He’s alive, and he’s loose.”

“She knows,” Leon said.

My voice broke. “He’s Gideon.”

His face flashed before me. His crooked little grin, the dimple that sometimes appeared in his cheek. His brown eyes were warm, full of humor. I heard him say my name. I heard him scream.

Shane had warned me, I thought. When he’d still been Shane. The choice is yours, if you wish to plummet off this cliff, he’d said. I’m merely pointing out the edge.

But he’d been wrong. I’d left the ledge far behind without even realizing it. There was no ground beneath me. There was nothing left to do but fall, and keep falling.

I swallowed, feeling tears on my face. My whole body felt hot. I couldn’t seem to draw in enough air.

“How long have you known?” Mr. Alvarez said.

“Is that relevant?” Mom asked.

There didn’t seem any point in hiding it any longer. “Since the day we killed Susannah,” I said, stumbling over the words. “When I figured out who the Remnant is. Was.”

“Three months.” Mr. Alvarez sighed. “Well, we can’t do anything to change that now.”

I made an effort to brush the tears from my face, then grabbed one of the couch pillows and hugged it against me. “Will you at least tell me what happened?”

“He attacked Camille,” Leon said.

I bit my lip, looking at Mr. Alvarez. “Is she okay?” Camille was Mr. Alvarez’s ex-girlfriend, and even though they’d broken up—which may or may not have had something to do with him using her as Harrower-bait—I figured he’d be visibly upset if she’d been seriously hurt, but I didn’t let out my breath until he nodded.

“He doesn’t seem to be at his full strength,” Mr. Alvarez added. “He retreated when she fought back. But he told her who he was, and she called me.” He turned to Mom. “We don’t know where he is now. Camille said she didn’t think he’d gone Beneath, so we need to search the streets. We can’t rely on him retreating next time. Our window of opportunity here is brief.”

Their opportunity to find him and kill him. Panic surged. Fresh tears streamed down my cheeks. “It’s not his fault,” I choked out. “He’s not Verrick any longer. The Circle did something to him. It changed him. It made him into something else. He’s not just a Harrower, he’s human.”

Mr. Alvarez’s voice was gentle, but his words sliced into me. “Regardless of how he’s been living the past seventeen years, Verrick has been unsealed. Gideon is gone.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t believe that. I don’t believe that. There has to be some way to save him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be saved,” Leon answered.

My eyes snapped to his. He was looking at me finally. His face was hard and angry.

“What happened at Gideon’s house?” Mom interjected, sinking down onto the couch beside me. “How is it that he got released?”

The scene replayed before me—Gideon’s fingers clasped in mine, our hands separating, the two of us flying apart, the look in his eyes in that final second before the world dimmed around me. If I could just rearrange events, I thought, reverse and rewrite them. This time, Gideon would stand, lifting himself up from the ground. He’d walk to me, take my hand. Shane would not appear. We would reach the stairs unhindered. We’d run.

“Audrey?” Mom asked.

“It was the Beneath. It unsealed him. I don’t know how.”

Mr. Alvarez gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean, the Beneath?”

“It was the Beneath that killed the elders,” I said. The words came out in a rush. “Iris found me just before I went to Gideon’s. She said—she said the Beneath got woken somehow. And that it’s been growing in strength. That’s why there wasn’t any sign that Shane had stopped being neutral. He didn’t. It just…sort of took him over, I guess. And Gideon—the Beneath can’t inhabit him, so it unsealed him. That’s what Iris told me.”

Mr. Alvarez blinked. “A physical manifestation of the Beneath?”

“I don’t know that you want to trust anything Iris has to say,” Mom said.

I shook my head. “No. She wasn’t lying about this. It’s what she’s been trying to tell me, the whole reason she came out from Beneath,” I said. “And she’s right. I felt it, Mom. At Sonja’s house. And at Gideon’s. It was the same thing I felt when Iris and I went Beneath.”

I didn’t know how to explain it. How to describe the abyss given form, a black hole that walked and breathed. And it wasn’t just sense or feeling, either. It had a smell. A taste. I could almost taste it now, in the stifling air of the living room, with the windows open and the humidity sticking in my lungs. Rancid and sickly sweet. My stomach twisted.

My face must have conveyed what my words couldn’t, because Mr. Alvarez said, “If that’s true, I’m not sure how we’re meant to fight it.” He sighed, tapping his fingers against his leg. “The elders might have had a solution, or at least some idea if anything like this has ever happened before. Maybe the other Circles will have information.”

“We fight Harrowers,” Mom said. “As many as it takes.”

“It may take a lot,” Mr. Alvarez said. His voice was grim. “That could be why there hasn’t been any Harrower activity at the other Circles. It could be they’re all converging here.”

I thought of Susannah’s army, the demons she had gathered just beyond the edge of the Circle, waiting to surge forth once the barrier was opened. That had been bad enough. Now I imagined all the Beneath teeming with Harrowers’ bodies, a sea of scarlet and silver clawing toward the surface.

Mom must have had a similar thought. “That’s not good,” she said.

“I don’t have any evidence to back it up,” he added. “It’s just supposition.”

“A worrying supposition.”

Leon’s eyes narrowed. “And so, just like that, you’re going to forget that Verrick is running free? Do you remember what Verrick did?”

“I’m not forgetting anything, Leon,” Mom answered. “But if what Audrey says is true, we may actually have bigger problems.”

“Audrey is not an impartial source in this.”

I hopped to my feet. “You think I’m lying?”

“You’ve been lying for months.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t say anything.”

“It’s the same thing, and you know it is,” he shot back.

“Argue about this later,” Mom said.

But I didn’t stop talking. I had to make Leon understand. My hands balled into fists. “I couldn’t tell. The Kin would have killed Gideon. The elders would have killed him, the way they killed Brooke.”

My words hung in the air. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by drone of an engine from outside.

Finally, Mr. Alvarez said, “Brooke Oliver’s powers were sealed.”

I shook my head. “I asked Esther. She told me the truth.”

“Audrey…” Mom said. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Jesus.”

Mr. Alvarez stared at me. He looked as though he’d been slapped. Or like he was about to be sick. His dark eyes were huge in his face. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Though I’d grown accustomed to seeing him outside of school, I still had trouble separating Ryan Alvarez, leader of the Guardians, from the stern, no-nonsense math teacher he always presented in class. Now, abruptly, I remembered how young he actually was. Too young to lead the Kin, Esther had told me. Too raw.

Too innocent.

He swallowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Then, without saying another word, he turned and left the room.

Mom rose from the couch and followed him. “Ryan—”

He quickened his pace. I heard the front door slam and then his car roll down the driveway.

Mom stopped in the living room doorway, her hands on her hips. “Perfect,” she sighed. After a second, she turned to face Leon and me. “I need to see what I can do to handle this mess. I’m going to speak with Esther. Don’t go anywhere, either of you, until we figure out what’s going on.”

“Wait,” I said, as she headed for the door. “Just…so you’re aware. Iris is no longer Beneath. I don’t know where she went, but I think she stayed up here.”

Mom sighed again. “Any other complications you want to throw my way?”

“Esther said we’re being Harrowed.”

“Well, that isn’t a surprise at least,” she said. “If the Beneath is suddenly sentient and hijacking bodies, I doubt it’s doing it to make friends.”

I gripped my arms. “You think this is the start of a Harrowing?”

“We’re going to end it before it gets that far.”

“Are you still going to kill Shane?”

She didn’t answer. I would have said more, but I suspected I’d already used up my It’s Not His Fault argument on Gideon, and any other words of that nature would not be well-received. I watched her leave.

And then turned to face my reckoning.

We watched each other in silence, the length of the living room between us. I lingered near the edge of the couch, my fingers grazing the soft fabric of the upholstery. I wanted to go to Leon, but I sensed he would retreat if I did. There was a wary look in his eyes, and his entire body was tensed, like a deer ready to bolt. It reminded me of the night he’d first arrived in the Cities, nearly four years ago now. In the late-summer twilight, the moon above us had been hazy and glazed with heat, the stars hidden by the glow of the city. I remembered how Leon had parked his motorcycle at the end of the driveway and stepped slowly forward through the grass, a backpack slung over his shoulder. His helmet had matted his hair to his head, and in the thin half-light, the blue of his eyes had been darkened to black. There had been a hint of bewilderment within his serious expression—a sense of puzzlement, like he wasn’t certain where he was, or if he should be there. But then he’d looked at me, and we’d smiled at each other, and the lost look in his eyes had dissolved.

I studied him, noting the differences four years had brought. He was just as skinny as he’d been that night, but he was taller now, and his shoulders had broadened. His hair was shorter, though the ends still curled slightly. There was a spot of blood on his shirt, a faint streak turning brown. My blood, I realized, from when he’d found me at Gideon’s. And I knew a smile wouldn’t solve this problem.

I felt hollow. There was a sudden emptiness within me that seemed to keep growing. It had edges, sharp enough to cut. But I couldn’t explain that. I couldn’t tell him how it had felt, that morning when I had done my final reading for Gideon. To look into the blank card and see Verrick’s face. How hard I’d been trying to forget.

Eventually, I just repeated: “I couldn’t say anything.”

His jaw tightened. “No. You chose not to say anything.”

“I told you why.”

“Because the elders would have killed him. Which is exactly what needed to happen.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Leon continued before I had the chance.

“The last time he was loose, he started a Harrowing,” he said. “He threw the Kin into chaos. He slaughtered his way through the Cities. You knew who he was. You knew he was a threat. And you chose to protect him.”

My temper flared. “Of course I chose to protect him! I couldn’t even kill a Harrower. You think I’d let the Kin kill my best friend?”

“What about all the people he’s going to kill?”

His words knifed into me. I froze. My stomach plummeted. I looked away from him, keeping my focus on anything but his face: the afternoon light that lingered on the walls, Gram’s garage-sale coffee table, the worn carpet that needed replacing, the space between us. “You don’t know that will happen,” I whispered.

“What else do you think is going to happen? He was unsealed for maybe an hour before he went straight for a Guardian. Camille survived—but what about the next person he attacks? And the next? He’s not going to stop until we stop him. Every person he hurts—that’s your choice.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true.”

I felt heat on my face. Anger bubbled up once more, but anger was better than guilt. I didn’t even try to contain it. “I thought it would be okay!” I railed. “I thought he would be okay. I just wanted things to be normal. He’s not just Verrick anymore. I thought if no one found out, he’d just be able to live his life. As a human. That’s what he wanted. He didn’t want to be a Harrower. He wanted to be Kin. That’s why he was trying to do all along—to become Kin.”

“You think his intentions matter? That it somehow absolves him?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Leon’s voice was hard. “You’re saying he should get what he wants.”

“Gideon should. Gideon is innocent.”

“You can’t just erase who he is. What he did. Do you even know?” he demanded. I wouldn’t have needed a Knowing to read the fury that blazed all around him. His face was taut. I could see his fingers digging into his palms. “Twelve,” he said. “That’s the number of Guardians he killed. Eighteen. The number of Kin. Should I name them for you? I can give you two off the top of my head. Do you think they wanted to die?” He turned and stalked out of the room.

“Leon,” I said. I chased after him, catching his arm. “Wait.”

He jerked out of my grip. “Don’t.”

“Just listen to me, please,” I said. “You don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand. He killed my parents, Audrey. Do you get that? He killed my parents.” He backed away from me, into the arch of the doorway, and this time I didn’t follow.

“I know. But—”

“No. You don’t get to talk right now. He killed my parents, and you knew it, and you still chose to protect him.”

“And you want revenge, is that it? Why do you even care? You told me you hated your parents!”

I knew as soon as I spoke that it was the worst thing I could have possibly said. Leon had made that admission to me when I was upset about my own father, when he was trying to comfort me—and now I’d thrown it back in his face. I clapped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

His voice was quiet, almost inaudible. “I don’t want revenge. I wanted to be able to trust you.”

“You can trust me.”

He looked at me. It wasn’t his Hungry Puppy look, the sad eyes I always accused him of using to get his way. It was the other one, the kicked-puppy look, all lost and wounded and alone. And the most horrible part was that I was the one who had kicked him.

I was crying now, but what was worse was that he was crying. He lifted his arm to cover his face and turned away.

“Leon, I’m sorry,” I said again.

His voice was thick. “I can’t—I can’t be around you right now.”

The distance between us had turned solid. I couldn’t have crossed it if I tried. “Please don’t leave,” I sobbed.

“I…” But he didn’t say whatever he’d intended to.

He disappeared while I stood there, hugging my arms, still pleading with him to remain.