Page 113

At worst, Lex will be the one to take it.

So I begin walking.

I don’t know at first where I’m going. My feet lead me south because that seems like the thing to do. The palace is South. The strip club. Campus. Spa. My brothers.Her.

I walk for so long that it grows dark, the streetlights popping on around me. The rain becomes a part of the weight of me, dragging me closer and closer to the earth. By the time I get anywhere recognizable, it feels like a million pounds of water has seeped through my clothes, and my feet are numb.

It’s cold.

It’s only when I find myself in the old diner parking lot that this wildly spinning compass in my chest fixes on a direction. I don’t even pause over the invisible territory line, stepping over it like it’s just another crack.

* * *

The loftaboveRoyal Inkhas a weird smell.

I wander around for a few minutes, trying to reorient the scale in my head. From the cameras Charlie stashed in the building across the street, this place looks small. In person, it’s big and empty, a throw rug, a couch, an armchair, and a coffee table. There are no trinkets or baubles. Her laptop is resting half-closed on the arm of the couch, the charging cord draped dangerously around a lamp, but other than that and a throw blanket, it’d be easy to think no one lived here at all.

Idly, I detangle the charging cord before moving to the kitchen, noting the clean countertop and a single bowl resting in the sink.

A wall over, the pipes whine as the shower cuts off.

It’s only then that I allow myself to enter the bedroom, gaze passing over the rumpled bed. The sheets are pink, which strikes me as odd. I stand numbly as I watch myself drip a splatter of water into the cotton, blossoming out like blood.

Behind me, her gasp cleaves through the silence like an arrow.

“Security here is shit,” I say, my voice jagged and unfamiliar. “I gained entry in three minutes flat.” When I turn to look at her, I’m expecting the fear. The way she’s clutching the towel to her body. The wideness of her eyes. The paleness of her cheeks.

I’mnotexpecting the relief that seeps into her face when she realizes it’s me. “Pace?” she says, shoulders falling. “God, I thought you were that old serial killer Lav keeps plastering articles about all over the walls.” The relief doesn’t last. She lunges for me, slamming a fist in my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing here? If anyone catches you, all hell is going to break loose!” Each word is punctuated by another pound of her fist.

I take each of them limply, frowning. “You washed your hair.”

Nothing is going right.

She releases a tight, frustrated growl, flicking water from her fist. “Why are you so soaked?”

“Because I walked here.”

Her eyes bug out. “From East End?”

“From North Side.”

She just looks more confused. “What? Why?What?”

Collapsing, I land heavily against the mattress, feeling like my chest is caving in. “Everything is so fucked up. The Calc deadline. The parking ticket. I left my gun in Adeline’s safe.” I glance at her, feeling sick. “Then I forgot to tell you how pretty you looked at the spa.” I prop my elbows on my knees, dropping my face into my hands. “Plus, my car got towed, along with my phone and my wallet, all so I could find out—” The words get caught somewhere in my esophagus. Pushing them out feels like being strangled. “I think I killed my mother.”

There’s a long stretch where I struggle to breathe. I inhale these tiny, ineffectual gulps, and the truth is, it hurts. Like, physically. Right in my sternum. What the fuck is that? I haven't felt like this since those early days in prison, waiting for the next shove or fight, so alert that it drained me. Now, it hits me like a sack of bricks, banging ruthlessly against my ribcage.

I think I might die.

“Pace, calm down.” Her voice flutters in and out like a butterfly’s wings. “Hey, look at me. Can you look at me?”

I shake my head, unwilling to lift it from my hands.

“Okay,” she says, voice gentle.

Gentle, I hear in Effie’s approximation of Verity's voice.Gentle, gentle.

“You’re having a panic attack or something. Just… here.” There’s the soft shifting of fabric and then something over my head. The towel. Verity is wringing the rain from my hair. “Let’s get all these heavy things off you.”