Page 81 of Bad Blood

I switched from second person to third, playing this game the way I would have when I was young.Michael is reading me. Lia is next to Dean, pretending that she’s not worried. Sloane is counting—the tiles on the floor, the cracks in the wall, the number of patrons in the room all around her.

I opened my eyes, and the room swam around me. I thought, at first, that there were tears in my eyes, that thinking of the family I’d found in the program had broken the dam inside of me and let in the grief for my family of blood.

But the room didn’t stop spinning. It stayed blurred. I opened my mouth to say something, but words wouldn’t come. My tongue felt thick. I was dizzy, nauseous.

My right hand found its way to the cup of coffee.

The coffee, I thought, unable to form the words out loud. Even my thoughts were scrambled. I tried to stand up, but fell. I grabbed for the booth, and my hand hit Celine’s thigh instead.

She didn’t move.

She’s slumped over. Unconscious. I fought my way to my feet. The world kept spinning, but as I stumbled forward, I realized—the room was silent. No one was talking. No one was coming to help me.

Dean and Lia, Michael and Sloane—they were slumped in their booths, too.

Unconscious, I thought.Or…or…

Someone caught me under my armpits. “Easy there.” Ree’s voice came to me from a great distance. I tried to tell her, tried to make my mouth say the word, but I couldn’t.

Poison.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you did for Melody—or for Sarah.” As the world went black, Ree leaned down. “But all must be tested,” she whispered. “All must be found worthy.”

Iwoke up in darkness. The floor beneath me was cold and made of stone. My head hurt. My body hurt—and that was when I remembered.

Ree. The coffee. All of the others, slumped over…

I tried to push myself to my feet, but couldn’t stand. My body felt heavy and numb, like my limbs belonged to someone else.

“It will wear off.”

My head snapped up as my eyes searched through the darkness for the source of that voice. I heard the strike of a lighter, and a second later, a torch flamed to life on the wall.

Ree stood before me, looking every bit the woman I remembered.No-nonsense. Warm.

“You’re one of them?” I meant it as a statement, but the words came out a question.

“Iwasretired.” Ree obliged me with an answer. “Until my former apprentice got himself killed.” She gave me a look. “I understand I have you to thank for that.”

“You recruited Nightshade.”

She snorted. “Nightshade. Boy always did have notions—but I owed his grandfather, and the old man was insistent that I choose him as my heir.”

“You owed Malcolm Lowell.” My brain whirred. “Because he was the one who brought you to the Masters’ attention.”

Ree smiled fondly. “I was younger then. My no-good husband had left me. My no-good daughter was already showing signs of being her father’s daughter. Malcolm started coming by the diner. Never was a man as good at seeing secrets as that one.”

Secrets. Like the fact that you had a homicidal streak.

“Malcolm saw something in me,” Ree continued softly. “He asked me what I would do if I ever saw Sarah’s father again.”

The man who left you, pregnant and alone.

“You would have killed him.” The feeling was starting to come back into my body. I became hyperaware of the world around me—the rough stone floor, the crackling of the fire, the shackles on the wall. “He left you, and people who leave deserve what they get.”

Ree shook her head fondly. “You always did favor your mama—good at reading people.”

You tried to help my mom, and she left. She didn’t even say good-bye. I thought back to Michael’s read on Ree the first time we’d met her. He’d said that Ree had been fond of my mother, but that there was anger there, too.