Chapter 9
I’m lying on the bed with Bob curled against my thigh, running my fingers through his wiry fur, when a knock on the door makes me jump. Bob’s head snaps up. His body goes rigid as he decides whether to bark.
I open the door, but it’s not Griffin standing on the other side.
DJ has traded her button-down for a butter yellow T-shirt, and her shoulder-length blonde hair is down with a couple of tiny braids tied in.
She’s wearing a bunch of gold rings and bracelets, and her nails are painted clear with pink sparkles.
I count seven piercings in both of her ears, but she has more.
“You’ve been in here so long I was starting to think you made a run for it—honestly, that’s what I almost did the first day I got here—not that this place isn’t great, but it’s a lot to take in and sometimes, when things are overwhelming, the logical response is to flee—so I get it.
” She takes a huge breath before dropping her eyes to the ground. “Is this the famous Bob?”
Bob glares up at DJ from between my feet like he expects her to stab me or something. I guess he has good reason to assume that, given the past couple of days.
“You know his name?” I ask.
“Donny told me—he said you have a ‘small but formidable canine companion,’ which were his words, not mine—although I have to say, formidable is a perfect description for him. I mean, look at that face—he’s clearly plotting something—probably world domination.”
I like her. A lot.
“Do you ever stop to breathe when you talk?” I ask.
“Rarely.” She sticks her hand out to me. “I’m DJ. It stands for Daisy Jane, but that’s the name my father gave me, and I don’t like my father, so everyone calls me DJ.”
I take her hand. Her grip is strong for someone so wiry that she looks like she could be lifted off the ground by a big balloon.
“I’m Eden,” I say, although she clearly knows this.
“I know. I got you some stuff.” She hoists up a shopping bag, its handles stretching from its weight.
“Shampoo, conditioner, my favorite brand of exfoliating scrub—also some T-shirts and sweatpants—they’re all mediums—I asked Nico what your size was and he said small, which is such a typical boy thing to say and completely unhelpful—small could mean anything from extra small to large depending on the brand and fit.
Also, I got you dog treats. Bob deserves to be welcomed, too. ”
I stare at the bag, then at her. Mom used to pick up things like this while she was out running errands and surprise me with them after school. Candy bars. Fuzzy socks. Those big-eyed Beanie Babies.
I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “You went shopping for me?”
“Donny mentioned you were, uh—” She pauses, and I realize she’s trying to come up with a gentle way to say ‘homeless.’
I save her the trouble. “Living in the five-star hotel parked in the driveway?”
“Yes.” DJ’s face brightens. “I figured you might need some basics.”
I take the bag and peek inside to find the brand of shampoo and conditioner that smells like vanilla and makes my hair so silky but is too expensive for me to justify.
The T-shirts are cotton and all brightly colored like the ones I used to love wearing as a kid, even though I have no idea how she’d know that.
“Thank you. Really. This is—” I have to stop because my voice is sounding thick, so I clear it and try again. “How much do I owe you?”
“Consider it your welcome package,” she says. “I may have gotten a little carried away in the personal care aisle and bought enough that you won’t have to go shopping for months—unless you tend to fly through conditioner, like I do. Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted a tour of the house?”
Nico calling me ‘chatty’ feels especially rich now that I’ve met DJ, but there’s something so nice about the way she fills the space between us with words. I get the sense there will be no need for me to fill a silence and then accidentally put my foot in my mouth. She’ll always know what to say.
“Sure,” I say.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” DJ says.
“Zoey almost made me cry when I joined the team and asked her for a tour—she didn’t even say anything—just glared at me—she still tells me to my face that I’m annoying, but whatever.
” She lowers her voice, glancing over her shoulder. “Did you meet Griffin yet?”
Something about the careful way she says his name, like she’s expecting whatever I say to be bad, makes me want to joke about it. “The very clothed, and very scrawny blond?”
DJ’s hand flies up to her mouth, but she’s already laughing behind her hand. “He was naked when you met?”
Technically, I was half-naked when I first met all of them, so I’m hardly in a position to judge. “Not fully, but he’d just gotten out of the shower.”
“He’s such an idiot, ignore him—he’d flirt with a houseplant if it leaned close enough.” DJ rolls her eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out of her head, then jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “You ready for the tour?”
I nod and glance back at Bob, who’s curled up into a ball on the pile of my dirty clothes. He looks so comfortable that I don’t want to wake him up to come with me, so I step out and close the door behind me.
“So, this is the living room,” she says, as we reach the bottom of the stairs.
“Obviously.” She smiles, heading for the entryway, but stops when she realizes I’m not following.
I was too tired to get a good look when Donny brought me through this morning.
I practically ran through when I took Bob out to pee, telling myself it was for his sake, but when he was done, I rushed him back to my room just as fast, if not faster, and then I was too busy embarrassing myself by eavesdropping on the very people I was so scared of bumping into.
I feel my cheeks heat at the memory. I don’t want DJ to see, so I turn and examine the wall.
Beige.
There’s wall-to-wall shag carpet that’s soft under my socks.
Sitting beside the staircase is a leather armchair with blankets draped over it, looking so comfortable I want to curl up in it and go to sleep again.
There are three windows, all facing the front of the house.
Under them is a sagging blue plaid couch.
It’s a good thing nobody was silently stretched out over it during my stealth mission, or they would’ve locked eyes with me the second I peeked around the corner. Maybe that would have been better.
In front of the couch is a coffee table covered in water stains, a fake potted plant, some miscellaneous papers, and an open can of Red Bull. A huge TV is mounted on the wall opposite the couch.
“This is where we hang out and watch movies—sometimes, we have team meetings in here, if we’re going for more of a casual vibe that day.” She leads me down the hallway. “Donny’s office is through there—all the way at the end of the hall is the kitchen.”
I glimpse Griffin standing with his back turned over the stove. The smell of garlic and melted cheese hits me, making my stomach growl so loud that DJ stops mid-step, side-eyeing me.
“Was that your stomach?”
“Guilty.”
She tells me they’ll get me fed ASAP, then brings me down another hallway branching off the main one right in front of the kitchen.
DJ flips on a light to reveal a mudroom.
One wall is lined with ten gunmetal gray lockers, and six are labeled with names handwritten on metal plates: DONALD, NICO, DJ, GRIFFIN, BENJAMIN, and ZOEY.
“This is our prep room,” DJ says, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “I know a lot of this stuff looks like it could be used to lobotomize you, but Donny developed it all himself.”
DJ bounces over to a laundry hamper, where a pile of black fabric sits in a heap.
“These are our uniforms.” She bends over to grab one and shakes it out, revealing a full-body black jumpsuit that looks like a skin-tight version of something Dad would’ve worn under his tactical gear.
“There are super thin iron plates woven between the layers of fabric. We wear these under our regular clothes when we’re in the field. ”
The memory of Nico in the Walmart parking lot surfaces: him leaning against that van with his hands in his pockets, telling me they actually do have matching jumpsuits. One corner of his mouth lifted when he said it, daring me to believe him. I thought he was being sarcastic.
A syrupy happiness spreads through me thinking about it, and I clamp my mouth shut to keep a goofy smile from taking over my whole face.
DJ pulls out another jumpsuit from the pile, and I suddenly forget what I was smiling about. Three long slashes run from shoulder to waist, the fabric shredded as if something with claws had taken a swipe at whoever was wearing it. Jagged pieces of metal protrude between the inner and outer layers.
It gets hard to swallow. “What happened to the person wearing that?”
“You mean me?” DJ holds up the suit like it’s a trophy.
“I’m still alive—last I checked—but Griff went through two suits last month alone—he has this habit of getting way too close to ghosts during extractions—and Nico shredded one of his suits last summer when a Fragment used his arm as a chew toy.
He only needed twelve stitches, so that was pretty good. Considering.”
I try to keep my face neutral, like hearing that Nico got his arm mauled by a ghost and only needed twelve stitches is totally normal information to receive.
This is what I signed up for. This is the job. People get hurt here. People almost die here. One person already has.
I dig my nails into my palm and force my face to behave. “What’s a Fragment?”