Page 51 of Lessons in Power

“You look nice.” Ivy sounded more suspicious than complimentary as she assessed my outfit. I was wearing black jeans and a loose gray top—both items she’d purchased on my behalf.

“I’m going to a party,” I said. There was no point in lying to Ivy—not when the truth would cover my goal for this evening just as well.

“What kind of party?” Ivy asked.

The kind where I’m hoping to gather clues about John Thomas’s murder.

I grabbed my phone and house keys and shot Ivy a dry look. “Are we really doing this?”

“The thing where I ask a teenager in my custody where and with whom she’s spending the evening?” Ivy countered. “Yes, we really are doing this.”

“Henry Marquette is picking me up.” I stuck to issuing true statements, one after the other. “Vivvie is meeting us at the party. A lot of people from school will be there. It’s been a rough week.” That was an understatement, and Ivy knew it. “People need a way to forget,” I told Ivy, willing her to think that when I saidpeople, I meant me. “Even if it’s just for one night.”

“Will Asher be there?” Ivy knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t exactly the party-going type. She wasn’t concerned about me letting loose and getting into typical teenage trouble. She was concerned about ulterior motives.

Smart woman.

“Asher was suspended,” I told her. “Half the school thinks he might be a murderer. I really don’t think he’s going to be making an appearance tonight.”

Ivy stared at me for several seconds, assessing the truth of those words.

“Are we done here?” I asked.

Ivy held my gaze for another second or two and then nodded. As I turned toward the door, the expression on her face wavered slightly. She looked tired.Weary, I thought.Brittle.

And then I saw the bruise on her wrist.

I went very still. The bruise snaked out from underneath her sleeve, purplish blue.Fresh.I closed the space between us in a heartbeat.

“You’re hurt,” I said. I’d been focused on the party, on Asher, on keeping Ivy from figuring out what I was up to. I hadn’t registered the fact that she had something to hide, too.

“I’m fine,” Ivy told me.

I grabbed her hand as gingerly as I could. “You’re not fine.”

Ivy with a bomb strapped to her chest. Ivy on the verge of dying, because of me.The memories came suddenly and without warning. I felt like a claustrophobic person in a shrinking room, like there was a weight on my chest that wouldn’t let up until it had succeeded in crushing my lungs.

Ivy caught my chin in her hand. “Look at me.” She repeated the words, again and again, until my eyes focused. “I’m fine, Tessie,” she said softly. “I was trying to get a rise out of someone, and I succeeded. She grabbed my wrist, but I’m fine.”

She.

“You went to see Daniela Nicolae,” I said. I’d known that Ivy had intended to interrogate the terrorist. I’d known she wanted answers. “You went to see a known terrorist and deliberately baited her into hurting you?” My voice went up a notch in volume and pitch.

Ivy tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and then let her hand fall away from my face. “I was trying to bait her intotalking,” Ivy clarified. “The physical attack took me by surprise.”

There was enough grit in Ivy’s voice to tell me that Daniela Nicolae wouldn’t be taking her off guard again.

“Did she tell you anything?” I asked. “About Senza Nome?”

About who shot the president?

Ivy’s expression went dangerously neutral, impossible to read.

She told you something, I thought.Something that upset you. Something you think might be dangerous for me to hear.

“Enjoy your party, Tessie.” Ivy shut the door on that topic of conversation. “Go. Be a normal teenager for once.”

I didn’t tell her that given what she did—and what I had every intention of doing tonight myself—normalwas probably a relative term.