Page 12 of Nothing More

Cass made a dismissive gesture and shrugged out of her jacket – a dark green to match the pleated skirt, tights, and tie of her uniform – tossed it haphazardly over a chair, and came to perch on the edge of Raven’s desk, one booted foot swinging like a much younger girl’s. How she’d managed to be a part of this family, and wind up seventeen and still somehow so innocent, Raven couldn’t know; it was likely they’d all babied her along the way, sheltered her from Devin’s taint.

“Do you know Tracy?” Cassandra asked, eyes fairly sparkling in the golden afternoon light, bursting with the sort of excitement reserved for Christmas morning in young children, and salacious gossip in teenagers.

Raven had had Miles run background checks on the parents of all Cassandra’s friends – but knew nothing of the friends themselves. A blur of shiny hair and bright laughter. “Of course. The Chapman girl?”

“Ugh.” Cass rolled her eyes. “TracyEvans. Her dad’s in antiquities?”

“Oh. Right.” Raven had bought a vase from him a few weeks before, currently heaped with white lilies on the table in her entryway at home. She made acarry ongesture.

“Okay. So.” Cass wriggled and resettled, and Raven could tell this was to be a long and winding story.

Movement over at the coffee cart caught her attention: Toly refilling his cup for the – fourth? – time that day. Her stomach twisted, empty and sour, and her gaze wandered next to her own empty teacup, perched beside her open laptop.

“–at the museum,” Cass was saying, “and she – are you listening?”

“What? Yes. Absolutely, darling. At the museum.” When she fixed her gaze on her sister’s face, she found that her field of vision had become sparkly at the edges. Blood sugar, most likely. Her stomach gave another twist, and she thought she should at least have a little something. She’d seen packets of chocolate biscuits on the cart earlier.

Cassandra’s lips compressed in an expression Raven had most often seen in the mirror. Then she proceeded. “Well, there’s a new exhibit of pop art, and Tracy wanted me to see…”

More movement, this time right beside her. She tensed, but didn’t jump, because the movement was accompanied by a gentle wash of familiar scent: the Hugo Boss cologne Ian had gifted Toly – mostly as a joke, she was sure. He’d pulled a bottle from his coat pocket weeks ago and tossed it offhand across the room; Toly had caught it, and frowned, holding it out away from himself as if it was a grenade he was thinking of throwing back.

“It’s what I wear,” Ian had said, and grinned. “It’s not enough to simply look the part, darling. You have to smell it, too.”

Toly had looked flatly between man and cologne, and muttered darkly in Russian. But when he’d shown up the next morning, she’d caught a whiff of it as she passed him, and he’d worn it ever since.

He took his job seriously – just as he seemed to take everything.

A full, steaming paper cup of coffee landed on her blotter, the caramel color of the perfect splash of cream. Then a packet of chocolate biscuits, wrapper crinkling as his long fingers released it; the light caught the silver ring he wore, the edge of a tattoo that peeked from beneath it.

Raven took a measured breath and let it out slowly before she turned her head. Toly’s side was to her, head turned a fraction so he could meet her gaze, his as enigmatic and closed-off as ever. She allowed a brief smile of thanks, and he nodded and moved away.

“Oh,” Cass said, cutting her own story off – thank God, because Raven hadn’t digested a word of it – “hi, Toly.”

Raven had picked up the cup and paused with it halfway to her mouth. Blinked at her sister. “I’m sorry. Did you justsimper?”

Cassandra flushed red up to the roots of her hair, instantly and comically. “What?” she asked, eyes flying wide. “What? No, I didn’t – I don’t – who evensays simper?”

Miles, who’d come back into the room after Smith left and had been installed on the chaise with his computer and more crumb-producing snacks ever since, let out a low chuckle and said, “Take off the E and R. It’s just ‘simp’ now.”

Cassandra gasped, whirled, and let out a glad shriek when she spotted her brother.

Miles grinned and slid his laptop to the side. Opened his arms in a showy way. “Surprise!”

Cassandra shrieked again and launched herself across the room at him.

Raven smiled as she watched their reunion: the tight hug, and the hair-tousling, which left Cass shrieking for another reason. They instantly fell into a rapid-fire, young-person conversation that left her feeling a billion years old. She sipped her coffee and sagged back in her chair, grateful to no longer be the center of anyone’s attention.

“She didn’t know he was coming?”

Well. Almost no one’s attention. Toly didn’t count.

Or, rather, he did, but his attention didn’t threaten to give her a migraine, the way Cass’s story had been about to.

She searched him out, and found him in his usual spot on the wall, slouching. Beautiful. Completely untouchable. God, she wanted to dress him and push him down a runway; his anger would radiate in the loveliest way, natural rather than taught and faked, in the way of most male models. What was it about all these knife-wielding boys that lent themselves to high fashion?

What did it say about her that she thought that?

“No,” she answered his question a beat too late. “It isn’t that I don’t trust my sister, but…”