Chapter Twenty-Five
I lag behind as Griffin forges across the quad toward Lucasson, my fingers skittering over my phone: Accident G headed to room return item use east stairs I will stall.
Vik texts back: We’re not done.
C can let you back in GO.
My pulse beats unpleasantly in my throat. I pocket my phone and stride forward till I’m in step with Griffin. “Sorry,” he says.
I pause. “About?”
“Mirabel.”
“Mirabel’s a gunner, not a Real Housewife. She didn’t throw punch at me. Austin’s drunk ass knocked her arm.”
Griffin smiles. “Whatever you say.”
The longer I keep Griffin talking, the more time Vik has to return the keycard. I need to rattle Griffin. Stop him in his tracks.
An idea hits me.
I turn and cross my arms, facing Griffin down. Not coincidentally, I’m now blocking his way to Lucasson. “Can I ask you a question?”
He grins. “You seem determined to. Sure, go ahead.”
“How do you see yourself in flickerstate?”
His face snaps from amusement to cold clarity. “How do you see yourself?”
“Hellfire.”
“And how did you see me?” He asks like he wants to confirm something he already knows.
“Blood,” I admit. “A whirlpool of blood. But what we see in flickerstate—it’s just our brains processing an experience they can’t digest in a raw state into something they can.”
“The processing is an interpretation. Interpretation always tells us something.”
“If you say so. How do you see your nav?”
Griffin looks out over the dark quad. “I only ever see what the people I’m navigating with see. Like I’m telepathic. I take on their interpretation.”
I frown. “Why don’t you want anyone to know?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“You think… You think it means you have no sense of self. You get shape and content from the people around you. Otherwise, you’re a…”
“Void.” He looks at me challengingly.
I look back unfazed. “You maybe jumped to conclusions. Just because you can’t see yourself, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to see.”
His jaw softens with surprise. “That’s what Dr. Langmore said when I told her.”
“You told her? When?”
“In her junior seminar on practical applications of nav. Or, well, afterward. The night before, my dad called and told me Candace had been bitten. You know Lady C likes to pretend she hates me, but we’ve been friends since we were two.
After my mom left, I would sit by myself at preschool, and Candace would come sit with me.
Share her juice. And so when I heard that she might die, I kept thinking, if I had just been there when…
” He grimaces. “Anyway, after seminar, Dr. Langmore pulled me aside and asked me if something was bothering me, and I—I lost my shit. Told her about Candace, about my flickerstate, about everything.”
I know what Griffin means, how he felt when he got the call. If I’d had training, if I’d been smarter, I could have banished the beasts before they reached my dad. “Was Dr. Langmore…nice?”
If she wasn’t, I’m going to find her and kick her in the shins.
“I mean, not warm and fuzzy. But she told my teachers to give me extensions so I could fly home the next day. She called my dad to say she was sorry.” Griffin smiles, unsteady and warm. “Hey, I don’t mind the heart-to-heart, but can we walk? Wet tuxedo pants are not a treat to stand around in.”
We’ve talked for five or so minutes. Enough time for Vik to sprint across campus and up the Lucasson stairs? Doubtful. Crap. I should keep stalling, but how? I match Griffin step for step toward Lucasson.
“Can I ask you a different kind of question?” he says.
“Sure.” Any breath he spends talking is breath he can’t spend speeding up.
“Why’d you say yes to me?”
“I thought you had healthy self-esteem. Do you have trouble coming up with reasons?”
Griffin grins. “I can think of a hundred. I want to know your reason.”
We enter Lucasson and hike to the second-floor stairwell, dark wood with a square blue carpet covering its creaky center.
We’re so close now. I can’t let Griffin find his keycard missing.
I definitely can’t let him stumble on Vik slipping the keycard back into his sock drawer.
I have to admit something shocking enough to freeze him in place.
Something he’ll know is genuinely risky for me to tell him.
Time to roll the dice.
I stop on the landing and listen. No footsteps on the stairs. I turn and face Griffin head-on. “I give you lots of flack. Which you mostly deserve. But we—we click. Despite the flack.”
“Because of the flack.”
“Sure, masochist. Point is, you know why I’d say yes.”
“Maybe. But then the question is why you almost said no.”
“Because I resent you. Your sister healed. And my—” I take a stabbing breath. I’m playacting my pain for Griffin, but playacting it hurts. “My dad hasn’t.”
Griffin’s face turns bleak. He steps close and pitches his voice low. “How many bites?”
“Nine,” I whisper. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t. I promise. I’m so sorry.” He means it. But “sorry” is also a placeholder, a rote response while his mind whirs through the implications. “You heard the Highwall cure rumors. You came to the Academy for that. For your dad.”
My mouth tastes sour. “Then I failed.”
“You didn’t fail. Your team did.”
Or maybe I failed my team. If I’d been honest with Candace earlier, with Bree ever—
“I don’t believe the rumors about a cure in the Archive. If Highwall had a cure, why not share it? She’d have raked in money and glory.” He looks down at our feet, toe to toe. “But if there might be other ways to cure your dad, would you want to explore them? No matter what?”
My throat tightens. With horror? Or anticipation? “You mean, whatever cured Candace.”
“I don’t know what cured Candace,” he says. “But maybe I could find out. Do you want me to try?”
I swallow and nod.
I’m not sure what I’m doing. Am I just buying Vik precious minutes? Or am I trying to find another path to a cure if the Archive doesn’t yield one? I can’t afford whatever the Academy’s selling. But if Griffin can pry the secret out of his father, maybe I won’t need millions.
“Okay,” Griffin says. “Give me a week.”
After that too intense exchange, laughter bubbles from my mouth, a strange breathless release. Griffin starts chuckling too. In a second we’re hysterical, giggling at nothing.
Soon our hysterics die out, but Griffin’s chuckling a little when he says, “I do really need to change. These wet socks feel dire.”
If I keep stalling, after my partial confession, he’ll guess something’s up. “Onward march.”
We’ve just entered the third-floor hall when the door to the nearest block opens. Vik walks out.
I panic—Griffin will guess—but my panic makes no sense. Griffin knows Vik lives on this floor, lives with him on this floor. Why would he find Vik coming out of their block suspicious?
“Where you headed?” Griffin asks.
“Back to the Archive,” Vik says. You’d never guess from his calm response that he’s just returned Griffin’s stolen property and is going to rifle through Griffin’s Archive section.
You’d never guess, either, that until recently he and I were kissing anywhere we got the chance, in the woods mostly, but also on the basketball courts, in empty classrooms, in the all-gender bathroom on the foreign language building’s first floor.
His eyes pass over me with none of the heat I saw earlier.
Inside my glam dress, I feel as cold and heavy as a statue.
“Nose to the grindstone, huh?” Griffin says.
“Yeah. See you later?”
Griffin shakes his head. “Dance lasts till eleven. I turn into a pumpkin if I’m not in bed by midnight.”
“All right. Griffin. Norah.” Vik walks past without a backward glance.
I tell myself that his indifference is an act. I mean, he’s my coconspirator in theft. I need him to act cool and casual so Griffin doesn’t notice something’s up. But it still hurts that he can stroll on past without even looking at me, while I’m on a whole weird date with some other guy.
“Shall we?” I say to Griffin, as lively as I can.
Griffin and Vik’s block has the same layout as mine: a large common room with a window overlooking the quad.
Griffin disappears into the double. That means Vik sleeps in the single.
I peer at his closed door. Behind it is a place I’ve never seen.
What furniture has he added to the bed, the desk, and the dresser the Academy provides?
A bookshelf, maybe? Has he hung posters on the walls?
What color are his sheets? I can’t picture anything.
When I try, the bookshelf is short, tall, gone; the walls populate with framed objects and depopulate; the sheets flicker through white, gray, blue, black.
I make myself stop. I go stare out the window. Through the glass, lamps shake out sugary light. Figures in rich fabrics cross the quad, phone screens flashing off velvets and sequins. I observe, but I can’t concentrate. I’ve set two plans running. Which will cross the finish line?
Determination burns cold under my skin. I shudder.
Griffin’s door creaks open. He stands on the threshold wearing dry pants and shoes, an exact match for the ones Mirabel soaked.
I wonder idly why he ever felt he needed more than one tuxedo until I notice his face.
He’s looking at me. Not like he did when he saw me in the hall, with amused appreciation, but with a certain edge.
“Still want to go back to the formal?” he asks.
I glance over his shoulder into his dark bedroom: sheets slippery smooth and black with the lights off, no bookshelf in sight. I wonder how many girls he’s asked a similar question, standing in the same spot. I wonder what he predicts I’ll do.
I turn away. “Come on. Let’s go laugh at people dancing.”