19. POST-POSAL
A mouthful of champagne nearly shot out through my nose. Grimm’s fingers dug into my shoulder, and I glanced aside to find him staring ahead while nodding. Not the least bit surprised. He could have looked disappointed, at least. It was a shitty proposal. Preston hadn’t even bothered to kneel.
A check of Holland’s reaction found her typically pale face more so. Her eyes darted from the ring box to Preston’s face and back again. After three years of dating, marriage was the natural next step for most humans, but we witches moved at a slower pace. Twenty-seven years made Holland a very young witch, not likely ready to sign up for a sixty-year commitment to a human who would die and leave her a still-young widow.
But, if Preston’s speech made anything clear, it was that this was not a love match. He had wasted no words on her beauty or worth outside of her political leanings. Theirs was a business arrangement. Maybe that changed things in her mind. Then again, judging by her lingering shock and lack of response, maybe it didn’t.
The crowd seemed trapped in a state of expectation while Holland leaned in and whispered in Preston’s ear. None of us had any hope of hearing what she said, but Preston smiled. He pulled the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger, then held her hand in the air for all to see. Despite his enthusiasm, her expression barely changed. Scared stiff.
“Cheers!” he shouted, and everyone tipped their glasses back.
Holland stayed beside her new fiancé, flocked by a sudden receiving line of well-wishers. The entire guest list rushed forward to offer congratulations.
I pressed my drink into Grimm’s chest and took the opportunity to move away from him, joining the throng before the half-happy couple. After a few minutes of waiting, I reached the pair.
Preston found me with a wide smile. “Fitch. Glad you could make it.”
Holland was tied up with another woman marveling over her ring, so I couldn’t move along quickly. Left without options, I grinned back at the ambassador.
“Big win for you, huh, buddy?” I cocked my head and gave him a quick onceover. “How old are you, like thirty?”
His smooth face creased. “Uh, thirty-three. Why?”
I shrugged. “Just thinking about the future when you’ll be a crusty old grandpa with a fine-ass wife. You’ll be in a care home, and she’ll barely be in her prime. Every man’s dream, am I right? ”
Preston’s wrinkles of concern deepened. “Right…” He looked aside, as ready to be rid of me as I was him.
We were both spared by Holland freeing up, and I scooted down the line with a wave and parting comment. “Congratulations, etcetera. Hope you have lots of human babies. Asshat.” That last part was a grumble, and he probably didn’t hear it, but I didn’t mind if he did.
When I slid in front of Holland, she grabbed both my hands and pulled me close. “Can you get me out of here?” she asked, her eyes wide and pleading. “Now?”
I glanced at the wall of French doors near where Grimm stood. A pang of guilt struck me for stealing this moment from Maximus. Even if Preston was a douche, it was still a big event.
“Wanna go outside?” I asked Holland. “Because if I don’t get a smoke soon, I’m gonna lose my shit.”
She bobbed her head. “Outside is fine.”
Clearing a path was as easy as spreading my hands. Force walled up to divide the crowd so we could pass through. Preston gawked as I stole away with his fiancée, onto the deck and into the cold night.
Having dropped my crumpled cig somewhere in the house, I fished out a fresh one the second the door closed behind us. Holland didn’t stop, passing the lounge chairs and table and down the stairs to the path that led toward the water. After lighting up and filling my lungs with smoke, I chased after her.
We made it to the moonlit track where Holland kicked off her heels, losing a few inches of height so the hem of her gown dragged through the packed dirt. The longer we walked, the more I wondered if she’d only wanted me to secure her passage out of the home, and now I was horning in on what was meant to be a solitary moment.
Finally, I asked, “You want privacy?”
She shook her head, luminous white locks swinging. “Not if you don’t mind staying.”
“I don’t mind.”
With her focus straight ahead, I let mine wander out across the hobby docks where sailboats bobbed. Beyond that, a lighthouse stood in the distance, beaming in steady rotations.
Holland hugged her arms around herself, trying to warm her bare arms and shoulders. I took the hint to shrug out of my suit coat and offer it to her.
She stopped moving and gave me the first eye contact since her plea inside. “Thank you,” she said. Her will to keep walking seemed to weaken, and she stayed in place, wrapping the jacket tightly around herself as she swayed side to side.
“So, I’m guessing the proposal was a surprise.” I flicked the ash off my cigarette.
She grimaced. “Was it that obvious?”
I chuckled, replaying the moment in my mind. “You looked… less than thrilled.”
Wind rushed across the waves and rustled trees that had yet to lose their leaves for the season. Behind us, several houses down, the Lyle home was aglow with golden light from every window and glass door.
“I should have seen it coming.” Holland sighed. “He even asked what kind of ring I liked.”
“That’s a surprise. He strikes me as the kind of guy who tells you what you like.”
“Well...” She raised her left hand to the faint light. The diamond solitaire glittered. It was a sizeable stone, not that I’d expected any less. “This isn’t what I picked,” she confessed.
I snorted through my next drag. “Jackass.”
Her gaze turned on me, weary. “I know you don’t like him.”
“I don’t like anybody.” I bounced one shoulder. “What matters is do you like him?”
She continued to stare, but her expression shifted to one of amusement. “Giving relationship advice now, are we?”
“Hell, no.” I scoffed. “The only relationship advice I have is to do the opposite of whatever I do. I haven’t dated anybody since…” Since her. But I couldn’t say that.
Holland waited until it became clear I had no intention of finishing my statement to ask, “Why not?”
Before the Bloody Hex, I’d thought about those things. My dad sat me down for “the talk” about sex and dating. But the freshman formal—complete with a limo service, dinner, and flowers for Holland—had been my first and last foray into romance. While other teenagers were making out in movie theaters or sharing a blanket on the bleachers at the varsity football game, I was tagging along for brothel trips and practicing my pickup game at the bar.
I could ask Nash out. Go somewhere that wasn’t the bar or his bedroom for once. The Capitol was paying me again, so I had funds. Maybe he’d like a nice dinner at a steakhouse or something. We could go to the movies. I almost laughed at the thought.
Our lives were getting stranger, Donovan even said so, and that made everything normal feel absurd.
After a long moment, I answered, “Just… never came up, I guess.”
Holland hummed a soft sound. “That’s sad.”
“Sad?” I laughed. “I’m not the one hiding from a profession of compatibility and a party in my honor.” My gesture to the house far behind us drew her gaze.
“‘Profession of compatibility?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
I drew down on the cigarette, and smoke coiled from my nostrils as I exhaled. “It means it’s work to him. You’re a job. A wise business decision.”
I couldn’t mistake the pain that flashed across her face.
“You think that?” she asked.
“It was in the subtext. What he didn’t say.”
“Which is?”
A final drag finished the cig, and I flicked the spent butt into the dirt before meeting Holland’s beseeching eyes. “That he loves you,” I said. “That you make his life better. Make him happy. He didn’t say he wanted to marry you because he couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. He said you gave him purpose and goals .” My mock emphasis and finger quotes around those last words made my disdain clear.
Her nose scrunched. “Purpose is a good thing.”
“If that’s what you want, Investigator.”
My shrug seemed to aggravate her, and she huffed a breath. “Don’t you remember how that feels? I know your dad did it to you, too. You had a role to play. Expectations to fill.”
“Still do,” I muttered.
We fell into quiet again, staring across the water. Waves shimmered with white speckles of stars.
“Speaking of expectations,” Holland began at length, “you have to stop giving me hell at work.”
I remembered Grimm’s mention of her call. Ratting me out to her boss or complaining about stress to her father, the end result was the same. I meant what I said in response, that I wished she would fire me. Especially after talking to Briggs and Nancy tonight. In all my time with the gang, and of all the horrific shit I had to feel bad about, infiltrating the Capitol as a backstabbing double agent ranked high on the list.
It was the closest I’d ever been to my purpose because Holland was right, my dad did it, too. He lined out my future for me. He wanted me to do something noble and good, and he would be ashamed of what I’d become.
As for the dissension in the ranks at work, that was less the product of my guilt and more self-defense against a certain investigator.
“Tell Tobin the same,” I grumbled. “The guy lives to infuriate me.”
“He’s afraid of you,” Holland replied as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why?”
She laughed. “You have to ask? Vesper and Felix have come around, though. He’ll get there. ”
The ground quivered with a tremor so slight I thought I imagined it. When a second ripple chased it, more intense than the first, Holland and I spun toward the house we’d left behind.
“Another earthquake?” I asked the investigator, but she was already gone.
The wooden boards of the deck popped and cracked as I sprinted across them. The back doors were open and spilling over with panicked people, leaving me like a salmon fighting the current upstream. Inside, the quaking continued. Walls spiderwebbed, and items toppled off of shelves, adding the sounds of glass shattering to the cacophony.
Holland directed traffic with shouts and waves. A few feet from her, Vesper stood atop a tall cocktail table, pointing people toward the exits.
Upon seeing me, she barked a command, “Make yourself useful, Farrow!”
Doing what?
I wasn’t sure why I’d come in here when everyone was trying to get out. Not to mention the chaos was uncomfortably similar to the Thorngate prison break, not an experience I cared to repeat. I had one idea, though. I knew—at least, I assumed—this act of nature was far from natural. While the investigators dealt with the side effects, I could go straight to the source.
Lights that had earlier been welcoming and warm now flickered, casting long shadows of bodies crashing into each other in uncontrolled pandemonium. These upper-class citizens behaved no better than a bunch of convicts with freedom on the line. Elbows were thrown, people shoved into splintering walls, and one man ran face-first into me, nearly taking us both to the ground.
Rapid breaths rattled my chest as I steadied myself and then helped the other man up. He didn’t waste time with thanks or a backward glance before bolting past. As I rounded the corner into the entry hall, a chasm tore across the floor. The spreading line zigzagged from the front door, toppling the people jammed in the doorway.
With cries and yelps, they piled on the floor, effectively blocking the exit. While they floundered, I grabbed them with mental force and pushed their bodies to the sides of the hall so I could pass. The canyon in the floor yawned wider and I straddled it with one foot on either side as I dashed across the threshold and onto the front porch.
On the front lawn, Felix stood with his gun drawn and aimed at a figure buzzing in the sky between the trees. Hair blonder than mine and the fact that he was flying made him unmistakably Ezrah Everett, aeromancer and one of the new Hex members picked up at the recruiting rally. His twin brother, Ethan, was nowhere in sight.
Ezrah dipped and soared, too busy dive-bombing the party guests to notice the investigator ready to blow him out of the sky. Or maybe Felix was lucky enough to remain unseen, a tactical advantage I ruined as I called to him over the noise of the crowd .
“Well?” I said as I approached. “Take him down! Wing him or some shit.”
Felix adjusted his grip on the pistol while his attention fixed on Ezrah. “He doesn’t have wings.”
I gaped at him, incredulous. “And you don’t have to be so damn literal. Just shoot him!”
While the investigator continued to stand and stare, I stepped closer, battling the urge to sight down the gun barrel myself. “Take the shot,” I told him. “I bet you never miss.”
“I can’t shoot him!” Felix’s voice rose in volume and pitch. “He hasn’t done anything!”
Terrorizing the guests was something. Distracting us from finding his brother, who was doubtless at the heart of this mess, was something, too.
Felix’s reluctance, the conditioned flinch response that had been the demise of so many investigators, drummed up impatience in me.
“This is what’s wrong with you law-abiding Capitol brown nosers,” I spat. “I’ll do it.”
I threw out a lasso of thought that caught Ezrah by one foot. His expression went stunned right before I yanked downward, dragging him to the ground like an angel plummeting from heaven. He crashed into the roof of a parked car, setting off an alarm of honks and flashing lights.
I turned toward Felix, whose pistol now hung limply at his side. “Come on, we need to ask him where his brother is.”
“His brother?” the investigator echoed.
The ground shuddered as well-dressed women staggered past in their high heels. I had yet to see Grimm, and I wondered how he felt about rogue Hex members trashing his shiny new mansion. He had much bigger concerns now than cigarette smell.
We reached the dented car cradling Ezrah Everett’s body. I climbed onto the front bumper of the late model sedan to walk up the hood, arms outstretched to steady myself through aftershocks from the earthquake.
“You knocked him out,” Felix said from where he stood beside the passenger door.
“And I can wake him up.” I stepped onto the car’s roof to crouch over Ezrah’s battered body. “Rise and shine, flyboy.” I patted his cheek with the back of my hand. “The nice investigator has some questions for you.”
I realized belatedly that the Everett twins—like the rest of the auxiliary Hex members—had no use for me. If given the opportunity to sell me out to Felix, Ezrah might just take it. I paused hunched over him, unsure if rousing him was worth the risk.
“Farrow!” A female voice screeched from the house.
I rose to stand on the sedan’s buckled roof and looked back toward the mansion, where Vesper waved.
“Get your scrawny ass in here!” she shouted. “We need your help!”
My face pinched as I glanced from her to Felix and back again.
“Arrest him.” I stabbed a finger at the unconscious man. “Find out where his brother is. Or ask your Magic Ball. Yes or no questions only, though. Might be a bit of a process.”
Felix nodded mutely, and I left him to it.