Chapter 30
30
Everyone is celebrating the opening games at the Beltane bonfire, even the Artisans who came last in the tournament and won’t be moving on to the next round. I wish I could join the revelry and party with my team, but Rafe is using the distraction of absolutely everyone Beltane-ing it up to sneak around and “borrow” some equipment we’re going to need. So I can’t go. People will definitely notice that Rafe is absent, and he wants them to assume it’s because we’re together.
Instead, I head to my room to pack.
I guess not everyone is at the bonfire, because I encounter Michael exiting the library.
“Oh, hi,” he says, flustered.
“Hi,” I say back, so very eloquently.
It’s sad that things have gotten so awkward between us. But I’ve been keeping my distance ever since our last conversation. The one where I told him he should date Kaylie.
Now that I’m leaving tomorrow, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again, I suddenly regret that choice. Our last few weeks together, wasted.
“Um, great game,” he says. “Your match was really fun to watch.”
“Thanks,” I reply. There’s so much more that I want to say to him, but it’s too tangled to come out. None of it matters anyway. Michael and I have no future. If I don’t come back, I’ll never see him again. And if I do… well, if he ever finds out what I’ve done, he’ll hate me.
We both start talking at the same time.
“I should get g—”
“I wanted to tell you—”
Awkward pause.
“You first,” I say.
Michael clears his throat. “I just wanted to say that I took what you said seriously. I… needed to hear it.”
Does that mean he’s dating Kaylie now? I might actually cry.
He continues. “You were right, and I’m thankful that you didn’t hold back on confronting me about it.”
I’m not even sure which confrontation he’s talking about at this point. I guess that goes to show how much time I spend scolding the poor guy.
He runs his hand through his floppy hair, making it even more floppy. “Yeah, so, I just wanted you to know how much I value your friendship.”
“Oh. Thank you. I mean… you too.”
That was so… sweet. So why does it hurt so much?
“I’ll just…” He motions forward and then, with a last smile, heads off in the direction of the bonfire.
I head to my apartment, and when I enter, I hear Georgie humming in her room. I guess she’s not going to the bonfire either.
With everything going on, Georgie and I have hardly seen each other, and she’s seemed more than happy to keep her distance. But she showed up for me at the game today and has been a consistently amazing friend. I owe her better. Now’s the perfect time to finally speak to her. To explain that everything with Rafe is fake. Which is absolutely still true.
I’m hesitant as I knock at Georgie’s door, but she eagerly shoos me in. She’s excited about something enough that she seems to have forgotten we’ve been awkward with each other for days.
“Congratulations on your match!” She has the harp and rose of the Artisan emblem painted on one cheek and the Alchemist emblem––for me, despite everything––on her other cheek. “It was totally awesome, but there’s something I want you to see. Come look!” She claps to herself. “Cicero—”
“The guy who runs the conspiracy forum?”
“Yes!” She’s as giddy as the time Hera Earhart complimented her bow tie. “Except he isn’t a guy! I don’t know why I just assumed, but his—I mean her , I checked her pronouns—her identity was so well hidden, it took me ages to track her down. Look, this is Cicero.” Georgie gesticulates to her monitor, which has a photo of an Asian girl with thick round glasses and half of her hair shaved off. The haircut is new, but I’d recognize her anywhere. My heart swells with missing her.
“Izzy King,” I say. Nothing should surprise me anymore. But there always seems to be at least one more thing.
“You know her?” Georgie jumps up from her chair. “How? What are the chances?”
Well, now that I realize who Cicero is, the chances actually make a lot of sense. All this knowledge about the Makers? It’s more surprising that I hadn’t already considered Cicero might have connections to the Families.
“She’s an old family friend.”
“This girl knows computers, already knows we exist, and she’s cute. Can you, like, introduce us?”
“She’s a family friend.” I emphasize the word “family” for meaning. “And these days she works for Oz Tech with Nora Montaigne.”
“Oh.” Georgie’s eyebrows gradually rise as understanding dawns. “So that’s how she knows… stuff.”
“Her family, and mine, and all the others, would be furious if they knew what she was up to.” Even though I haven’t spoken to Izzy in months, she’s still one of my best friends, and I hope she’s not getting into any trouble.
Georgie stares at Izzy’s photo with wide eyes. “It’s so weird to think that the Inquisitors we hear so much about don’t actually exist. Really makes me wonder what else the Makers are wrong about. Ya know?”
I get what she means. Since the mourning day for the Fall of Naiot is approaching—it’s the day before my birthday, so I have a chance of actually remembering it—we’ve been discussing the Inquisitors at length in Foundations. The Makers talk about it as if the “strangers” mentioned in the stories are, without question, the Inquisitors.
“Yeah, I feel like they must have some other enemy out there they don’t even know about.”
Maybe the Fall of Naiot was Ozymandias Tech too?
Except now I find myself questioning whether Izzy’s warning message was about Oz Tech after all. With what I’ve learned about the Oculus and Hypatia’s abduction—could whatever she saw that scared her be related to the Families ? Could it be connected to why she left them in the first place?
But even if Oz Tech aren’t the ones who took Hypatia, they’re not innocent. They did try to take me. Twice. Leo de Montaigne roofying me to hand me over to his sister is proof of that.
I wonder for the millionth time what Izzy knows that she’s not telling me. I wish she had trusted me instead of cutting me off.
Georgie trusts me. She completely took me at my word that the Makers must be wrong about the Inquisitors.
That kind of trust deserves my honesty. I take a breath and then say, “So, about Rafe.”
She immediately stiffens, her lips pursing.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I start, with way too much guilt in my tone.
She looks at me like she can’t believe I just said that, and then she laughs. A bitter laugh. “So you weren’t wearing each other’s favors during that game we were both just at?”
“What I meant to say is—”
“Ada, you don’t have to lie to me to spare my feelings. I’m not going to tell anyone about your family either way.”
“No! Georgie! Please listen. We’re not dating or anything. It’s just practical to let people think that. We’re working together to get off the island to help Hypatia.”
“And you trust him ?”
“I… It’s complicated. But I do trust that he wants to find Hypatia. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Georgie turns away and heads into the common room. I follow her as she makes kissy noises calling for Bast. The cat, who’s lounging on the couch, completely ignores her, but Georgie picks her up and nuzzles her face into her blue fur, smearing the painted emblems on her cheeks. Bast puts up with the affection for very little time, then contorts her body out of Georgie’s arms and dashes off.
“Georgie, I never meant to hurt you. No one here gets me like you do.”
She snorts. “It’s nice pretending we ‘get each other,’ Ada.” Her tone is hurtful, but when I see she’s clearly holding back tears, my annoyance melts away. “We may both be from the same place, but you’re a Sire. Everyone respects that. You have no idea how long it took for me to get to a point where I’m tolerated—barely. At least it’s better now than it was.” She turns her face away. She’s replaced Bast with a couch pillow, and she’s clutching it to herself, curled up small on the couch. “Even the people who are nice—they see me as a stranger. I’m not at the bonfire tonight because without Hypatia and with you busy with team things, I don’t have any other friends. When you arrived… There’s a reason your room was available. None of them wanted to live with me—they don’t know how to act around me.”
“Georgie, I get it. I do.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve had one foot out the door since you got here. This is supposed to be my home . For the rest of my life. And I will never fit in. When I do occasionally manage to blend in, I sometimes wish I hadn’t, because I hear the way they talk about people from the provincial world. Like they’re less-than, like they should be feared.” She runs out of steam.
She’s right. I haven’t been here for nearly as long as her, and just today I was feeling like I truly belong. Finally I say, “I… I didn’t think…” But Georgie’s top lip is trembling, and I feel so horrible for hurting her that I’m not quite sure how to go on. What I’m supposed to say is that I’m sorry. And I am. I’m the one in the wrong here.
She’s looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to find my words. I would have stormed off and slammed the door in my face by now.
I take a deep breath. I can fix this.
But the sound of knocking interrupts us.
“Hello?” Rafe’s voice emanates through the door like a premonition of doom.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to Georgie, ignoring the way my heart begins to race at the sound of his voice. “I’ll make him go away.”
“No, it’s fine.” Her tone is a mixture of benevolence and sarcasm that I can’t even begin to parse.
I open the door. “It’s not a good time,” I say. I’m not going to let Rafe into Georgie’s personal space right now. I can grant her that one courtesy at least.
Rafe’s eyes don’t miss a thing as he assesses the scene. Georgie isn’t looking meekly away from him as she usually does. Instead she’s staring him down, obviously pissed off. He leans close as if to kiss my cheek and whispers, “I came to help you pack, and it’s a good thing because it looks like you need a chaperone so you don’t divulge things that should be kept secret , as agreed.” He then plasters on a fake smile and pushes past me.
“Well, look at you, little beauty,” Rafe says when Bastet pads over to him curiously. He reaches down to scratch her on the head in exactly the way she loves. The blue cat immediately nuzzles against Rafe’s hand and allows him to pick her up. Georgie glares at her for being such a traitor. “Looks like someone’s been illegally experimenting on you,” Rafe coos to Bast, who has nestled comfortably in the crook of his arm. She purrs so loudly I wouldn’t be shocked to find out she was also bred with a motor.
Georgie isn’t having any more of it. “Give me back my cat.” She pulls a mewling Bast away from Rafe. “I’m going to bed.” She stalks off to her room and slams the door.
“See, no risk of me telling her anything,” I say to Rafe. “No need for you to stick around.”
“Maybe your roommate is the one who stole the Ha’i stone,” Rafe muses.
“What? Of course not!”
“Why are you so sure? She clearly has a grudge against Makers, and she has a blue cat.”
I entertain the thought for a brief—very brief—moment before I shake it away.
“She has a grudge against you because you are an ass. And she has a blue cat because she rescued her.” But I’m also curious about the missing Ha’i stone; the mystery of who might have taken it has been distracting me for days. Now I wonder if Bram and Yvette took it for Nora Montaigne.
“Either way, you can’t tell her about our plan. We can’t afford anything getting in the way of us leaving tomorrow.”
“Rafe, I already told her. And you should be glad of it. Georgie’s knowledge of provincial computers is the only reason I was able to locate Hypatia.”
I watch the progression of emotions play out on his face as he takes in this information.
“You can go now.” I try to herd him toward the door.
“I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure you’re packed,” he says. “I got the equipment we need. We’ll leave at first light, and no one should notice anything is missing until midday, but hopefully we’ll be long gone by then.”
“Fine, if you insist. But you have to stay here.” I grab him by the waist and physically force him to sit down on the couch. “You are not coming into my room.”
For once I’m relieved my room is such a mess. The possible embarrassment of Rafe seeing my mayhem has a much louder voice than the one whispering dark ideas to me about what might happen if he did come in.
“Don’t overpack. Your bag needs to stay lightweight,” he whisper-yells at my back as I firmly close the door.
Oh, what a mess. Where do I even start? I’d tried to clean up. I really had. But then life got in the way. And there is nothing I loathe more than cleaning my room. Except packing. Packing is worse. Packing involves finding all the things buried in the piles.
“This is ridiculous,” Rafe calls to me. “I’m coming in.”
He is so gravdamn impatient! “Please don’t.”
I hear the doorknob turning.
Oh no. Rafe’s about to get a glimpse of my crazy. As if he didn’t already have enough scorn for me. I mean, I’ve seen his room, and it would not be an exaggeration to call him fastidious.
But when he opens the door and takes in the view, it’s not disdain I see on his face, but amusement.
“You,” he says pointedly, “keep packing.” And then he does what is positively the most mortifying thing he could possibly do.
He starts to clean up.
Within a relatively short amount of time, he’s introduced a brand-new organizational system to the room, and he’s methodically putting everything away.
I’m interrupted from my folding—okay, fine, my stuffing of unfolded things into my backpack—by the sound of Rafe clearing his throat. I look up, and he is standing by the bed, eyebrow raised, my bright pink bra dangling from his index finger.
The mortification that burns through me is so hot that it may actually melt my bones. I’m pretty sure my face is currently turning the same color as the traitorous item. I’ve been looking for that gravdamn thing, forgetting that I’d kicked it under the bed the last time a boy was in this room. Why the hell is Rafe cleaning under my bed? Doesn’t he know that’s where secrets go to stay buried?
I may never recover from this moment.
“Did you want to borrow it?” I joke, hoping to relieve the tension.
“No, thank you, but I was hoping you might pack it for our trip. It really is a lovely color.” He tosses it with perfect accuracy into my bag.
I didn’t think it was possible to blush any harder, but apparently I was wrong.
Pretty soon I’m all packed and the room looks amazing. My mind calms from being surrounded by order.
I walk Rafe to the door, and it’s awkward because it feels like he should kiss me, but there’s no one watching. Instead, I hug him, because he just cleaned my room and I’m honestly grateful. He seems surprised, but he tentatively hugs me back, friendly-like, with only the smallest fizz of tension as my ear barely grazes the skin above his collar.
Tomorrow we’re going to sneak off this island and face my family. And tonight I’ll sleep in a bed without any crumpled clothes beneath me. What a thought.