Chapter 36
I rocketed upright, drawing in a gasping breath.
Where? What?
I struggled to sit and shoved frantically at the binding sheets twisted around my legs. My heart raced as fast as a charging train, and a wave of nausea swamped me.
Blinking into the bright morning light, I patted my arms, my legs, my chest. I was boiling-hot, covered in sweat, my clothes damp from perspiration.
I’d killed him.
I’d killed him again.
No.
It had been a dream.
It was only a dream.
I was in Justice’s bedroom. On his bed. The sheets were tangled as if I’d wrestled with them all night long.
There was a deep depression in the pillow.
The knife was still strapped to Justice’s headboard, just where it was when I fell asleep.
Finn hadn’t come and yanked me from bed, and I hadn’t let him die.
The reason he’d been himself last night, instead of the cruel, unrecognizable man he’d become, was because it was a dream.
I closed my eyes, ignoring the stinging pressure behind them and the sharp tickle in my throat. I clenched my hands, letting the dull morning light seep through my eyelids and paint them bloodred.
I took half a second to reacquaint myself with the feel of Jagger’s will.
It tangled through me, a forest of roots, knotted and entwined with my being.
My dream had given me a reprieve, but now, the force of Jagger’s will was back.
It felt, quite horribly, just like Jagger had said: I was a glove, worn and directed by his hand. I was his.
I sighed. My heart had finally resumed its normal, quiet pace, and the nausea had subsided.
Then someone spoke.
“Do you always wake up like that?”
In Hell Gate, the only reason someone came into your room was to attack or to kill. When I was a nine and waking up into a new body, Rou, Griff, or Justice would sit with me, but other than those times, no one entered a bedroom uninvited.
Finn was the only person I’d ever been comfortable enough to fall asleep next to. Everyone else—even Justice and Griff—might kill me while I was unaware.
Instinctively, I grabbed the knife, twisted around, and flung it.
I rolled off the bed, standing in a defensive posture.
Last swept her hands, conjuring. The knife hit a thin sheet of metal. It was a . . . baking sheet? She held the sheet in front of her, raised her eyebrows at the knife stuck in the middle of it, and then dropped it to the floor. It made a hollow, clattering noise.
She brushed her hands together and then said, “I’m hungry.”
I kept my hands up and my knees bent. I floated outside of myself, ready to untie her illusions. But . . . she wasn’t conjuring. She wasn’t here to attack?
The sky was the thin gray of dirty concrete, and the sun had barely peeked over the horizon.
In August, the sun rose early and stayed up late.
The concrete and the metal gobbled up the heat and left the city to roast even during the night.
A drop of sweat trailed down my forehead and then dripped down my neck, joining the ring of sweat on my T-shirt.
Last frowned at my wrinkled clothes. They were the same ones I’d worn yesterday. I hadn’t expected to spend the entire night in Justice’s room.
I relaxed my stance. Slightly. “What are you doing here?”
There. That was nonconfrontational.
Last’s eyes narrowed. She was in a short gray linen dress, and her black hair was yanked back into a knot so tight it pulled the skin on her face. It made her look like she was constantly grimacing.
“I tried to wake you, you know. I pinched you. I poked you. I slapped you. Twice.”
I took a step forward, and she held out her hands.
“Fine. Four times. But only twice with each hand. I thought you’d appreciate it, Mari.
No one should sleep so deeply they can’t be woken up when someone opens their door.
If you were my creature, I’d command you to sleep more lightly.
In fact . . .” She moved her hands as if to conjure, and I shook my head.
“Don’t even try it.”
“Well, why not? It’s what friends do. I’m protecting you.”
I stared at her, and she dropped her hands, but all the while, my mind was working furiously.
I hadn’t woken up when she’d slapped me?
Four times? That didn’t make sense. I’d been a light sleeper my whole life.
A sigh at the other end of Hell Gate could wake me.
The whisper of a moth’s wings could pull me from slumber.
A quarter-degree change in temperature could drop me out of a dream.
But Last had apparently waltzed into my room and played whack-a-mole with my face while I’d slept. Unaware.
A sleep like that could get someone killed.
“Anyway, I’m hungry.” Last strolled around Justice’s room, looking at the bed, the nightstands, and, when there was nothing else to see, at me. “I went to your kitchen, but there was no food. There was just a naked man sleeping on the table.”
She smiled as I went still.
“Oh. You like this man? You didn’t want me playing with him? It’s just the shy one. I didn’t think you’d care. He sleeps as deeply as you. Is it a creature thing?”
I rushed past her, shoving through the door and sprinting down the hall. No one was awake. Hell Gate was active from afternoon through the night, but the early-morning hours were for rest.
I burst into the kitchen. The stove was cold, the kitchen fire unlit.
The lights were off, and the counters and the table had been wiped clean.
Sometimes, Rou kept scones out for us to snack on.
Other times, she kept out fresh-baked bread with a crock of butter and an unopened jar of her homemade strawberry jam.
Usually, there was a pot of stock or a twelve-hour soup simmering on the stove.
But that morning, the kitchen was empty.
No warmth, no cooking smells, no sweets left out.
Just Griff naked and deathly still on the table.
Rage swept through me. I swore viciously, my voice echoing over the soot-stained stone walls.
He’d died.
Last night, Jagger had sent him out on Justice’s job, and he’d died.
“He has to learn sometime,” Jagger had said.
I kicked a wooden chair. It skidded across the room and hit the wall. It wasn’t enough. I was angry. I’d never been so angry in my life. It was a burning, poisonous fire raging through my veins.
He’d killed him.
He knew Griff wasn’t Justice. He knew he was gentle and timid and innocent. He’d sent Griff against five Clark conjurers, and . . .
I kicked the chair again. The wood splintered. Then I turned and punched the wooden table.
The pain lanced through my knuckles, and I swore.
The whole while I raged, Griff lay unmoving. He was coming back into his body. I didn’t know how long he’d been lying there or what had happened to kill him. He might be like this for hours more.
I swore, hitting the table again.
I looked down. My knuckles were raw and already bruising. The skin was torn, and blood smeared my pale skin.
“Griff,” I whispered, my throat tight, my eyes burning.
A dark rose tattoo bloomed on his wrist, with a drop of blood falling from a single thorn. He had one life left. One. Then he’d be a mine.
I clenched my hands, my knuckles stinging. The rage consumed me. It swept through my bones and settled in my chest with the drumming chant: Kill them, kill them, kill them all.
I swung around, my fists ready to punch, as Last entered the kitchen.
She smirked at my bloody knuckles and the splintered chair. “You can’t wake him either?”
I heaved in a breath, trying to push aside the red veil covering my vision.
Griff was good.
Griff was innocent.
And within days, he’d been killed—first by Finn (or an illusion of Finn), and second by the Clarks.
“Why are you here?” I asked Last again.
My voice was a dark, dangerous thing. It was the threat of a creature who’d never seen the light and stalked its prey in darkness.
Last tilted her head, listening to the undercurrents riding on the timbre of my words.
“You sound like Primus.” If she was surprised, I couldn’t tell.
She turned from my fisted, bloodied hands to the wrecked chair.
“Is that why he stares at you when he thinks no one’s watching?
Does he see himself in you, Mari? Hmm? He kills so many things.
After a while, there won’t be anything left to kill except himself. But if you’re just like him . . .”
She stared at me, a girl watching the cricket in her cage. Just like that, the rage that had so violently swept through me extinguished. My shoulders sagged, and I turned toward Griff, noting the changes in him.
When he came back, he always looked the same.
The only difference was that he always came back healthy, new, and unbroken.
It were as if the used penny had been traded in at the bank for the brand-new mint.
All the scuffs, scratches, and oxidation were wiped away, and Griff was shiny and sparkling again.
This time, there wasn’t much difference.
He hadn’t been alive for long enough to get scuffed.
But his shaggy brown hair was shiny and soft.
His skin was unblemished. When he was awake, he looked as innocent as a newborn pup.
It was his eyes. They were large, brown, and limpid.
Trusting. Maybe it was also his expression.
Even in Hell Gate, he managed to look at the world as if people, in truth, were good. As if all of us were good.
But with his eyes closed and his face wiped free of any expression, I was able to see what he’d look like without his innocence and his inner light.
His face was narrow, his cheeks hollow, his nose long.
He had thick, dark eyebrows and a cleft in his chin.
He was skinny, but with the ropy, corded muscles of an animal that ran miles chasing down its prey.
The hair on his body was sandy brown, and he had more stubble on his face than I’d ever noticed.
I’d always felt Griff looked younger than me even though he was older.
But I had to acknowledge it wasn’t his outside appearance that made it seem that way. It was what was inside him.
If he lost that innocence, he would look . . . a bit frightening, to be honest. He would look just like his father—a merciless, violent beast-man who had terrorized the eastern seaboard for centuries.
I saw with some surprise that Griff, even in human form, looked just like his father. The only difference was what was inside. I was suddenly terrified that after last night, it was gone.
First Justice.
Then Griff.
Me too?
“Mari. I’m hungry. I told you. If you’re not going to listen to me, I’ll have to punish you.”
I turned, sweeping my gaze over Last. “Excuse me?”
She smirked. “Didn’t the leggerock tell you? It’s the Clarks’ day to control you. You’re ours until nightfall.” She held her hands in front of her, clasping them joyfully. “Oh, Mari, we’re going to have so much fun.”