Chapter 34 Sloane
Sloane
Zeth’s words plague me until I give myself a migraine from overthinking them.
I wake before dawn and lie there with my head under the covers, picking at those words like a scab, wondering what the hell he meant by them.
I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter.
From the mouth of absolutely anyone else on the face of the planet, their meaning would be obvious.
And yet, from Zeth Mayfair, they could mean everything.
They could mean nothing at all. I want to pick up the phone and demand to know what the hell he was thinking, saying something like that to me.
My pride forbids it, though. And I shouldn’t want to know what he meant, anyway.
Why am I even doing this to myself ? Fuck.
Okay. I’m going to stop thinking about him.
As soon as the first rays of dawn light force their way through the bedroom blinds, I get up and shower, mentally tidying the whole mess away to deal with another time.
I’m good at that. And besides, I have a houseguest to focus on.
Lacey is an enigma. She’s up before me, sitting at the breakfast bar, spooning Lucky Charms (I don’t own any Lucky Charms) into her mouth when I come downstairs.
Out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she watches the city come to life, a lumbering gray machine, defrosting, remembering its purpose.
When she notices me, she goes rigid, her spoon clattering into her bowl.
“Sorry. I used your milk. I was hungry. I brought my own cereal, though.” She confesses like she’s committed a crime.
“That’s okay. Make yourself at home here, Lacey.
Help yourself to anything you want.” I smile to back up the statement.
I mean it. I don’t have a clue what she’s been through, but it was enough to make her want to die.
Repeatedly, in fact. I’ve seen the scars on her wrists.
A lot of them are old. She picks up the spoon again, like I’ve given her the permission she needs to continue eating.
“You’re just a resident, aren’t you?” she asks me.
Half inside the cupboard, reaching for a cereal bowl of my own, I stiffen. “Just a resident” is a strange thing to say. Becoming a resident is perhaps one of the hardest things a person can do, and Lacey makes it sound like I’m an underachiever. “Yeah, well, I guess I am,” I admit.
“How much money do you earn in a year?” She spoons her Lucky Charms to her mouth. Her teeth clack against the spoon.
“Just over forty-seven thousand,” I tell her.
Under normal circumstances, I would kick the ass of anyone who asked me that question in that particular tone of voice, but when you have psychological trauma, you get special privileges.
Lacey appears to understand this privilege as she continues with her blunt line of questioning.
“So how come you can afford this place? Up on the hill, out of the city. Killer view.”
“My grandmother left me an inheritance. A lot of money, I guess. I sank it all into this place.”
Lacey mulls this over. Eats some more of her Lucky Charms. “Are you working today?”
“No. We’re going to see my friend Pippa. You remember, the woman I told you about?”
“The shrink?”
“Yeah. She’s lovely. You’ll really like her, Lacey, I promise.
” She doesn’t look too convinced. She sulks into her cereal while I rinse a spoon, trying to think of something to say to her.
I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I need some common ground with this girl.
I catch sight of the cereal box and an idea forms—yeah, I’m pathetic, but what else am I supposed to do?
“You mind if I have some of your Lucky Charms?” Even something this small—if she feels less indebted to me, if she feels like she is doing me a favor—might ease the tension in the kitchen. She looks up at me from drawn brows, and I can tell she’s assessing me, trying to work me out.
Eventually, she whispers, “Sure,” slowly pushing the box toward me with her elbow.
I pour myself a modest bowl, making sure not to take too much. “This your favorite?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you like it so much?” I pour the milk and take a bite, trying not to pull a face. God, that’s way too sweet.
“Because of the powers,” she says.
I stand up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“The charms. Each one gives you powers.” This rings some vague and distant bell in my memory.
I look down at Lacey’s breakfast and notice that she’s separated out all of the marshmallows on the rim of her bowl, stranding them there.
Yellow, pink, and green food coloring stains the milk.
“All of the charms, they’re supposed to be good for something if you eat enough of them,” she continues.
She leans across the breakfast bar between us and scoops one of the moons out of my bowl and pops it into her mouth.
This feels like a breakthrough of sorts. I grin at her.
“Okay, Lacey. Fill me in. What do they all mean?”
She smiles nervously, preferring to look down at the table between us.
“Clovers are the one everyone knows. They give you luck, but it’s smart because you never know what kind of luck you’re going to get.
Good or bad, so…” She shrugs. “And then horseshoes, the power to speed things up. Shooting stars give you the power to fly. Hourglass to control time. Rainbows to zip from place to place.” She presses her index fingers together and then jumps them apart.
“Balloons mean you can make things float. Hearts, you can bring things back from the dead.”
I look down and I see all of the charms she mentioned sitting on the edge of her bowl, uneaten. She ate the crescent-shaped charm from my bowl—the only one she hasn’t explained. From the look of things, that’s the only one she’s eaten from her bowl, too.
“And what about the moon charm? What does that one do?” I instantly regret asking. Her face falls, shoulders curving in to form a barrier between the two of us.
“I’m not sure, actually. I forgot.” She takes a deep breath, pushing away from the counter. “You mind if I use your shower? I feel pretty gross.”
“Of course. No problem. Like I said, make yourself at home.”
She still won’t look at me as she washes her bowl and hurries from the kitchen. Once she’s gone, I can’t help myself. I look it up on my phone:
Blue Moons. The power of invisibility.