Chapter 57
“Gertie’s right,” Sebastian said as we walked away from Ogden Hall. “You have to report Faraday.”
I didn’t answer. Everything in the tower had exhausted me—the glares of the pod, Gertie’s long-ago manipulations, Sebastian spilling our secret.
But Gertie was one of us now. Another careless, careening scaremonger.
Sebastian took my silence as an argument.
“It doesn’t matter what Faraday says about you, Jess. Ordinaries always talk nonsense.”
I shook my head. “They’ll know it isn’t nonsense. I can’t even shoot an arrow straight.”
“All the more reason to follow the rules. Give them what they want.”
“Does that include us?”
He came to a halt, his eyes showing too much. I wanted to take his hand, but even under this pall of smoke, someone might see us.
“Gertie guessed,” he said. “That’s how she is. But no one else needs to know.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give them Faraday.”
Instead of us. This was ours, not the family’s.
But the thought of Orrin looming behind Faraday on a dark pathway made me sick. Somehow I cared about her too.
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“For a first infraction? Nothing dramatic. Does she have pets?”
I shook my head. “Just the brothers. No point in hurting them—she’d think that was hilarious.”
“A fingernail, then. No warning.”
I imagined the footpath at night, Cyrus with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. A grab of the wrist, a quick jerk.
No time for accusations or explanations.
“Fine,” I said, and pulled out my family phone. “See you at dinner?”
“Not till later. I have something off campus.”
I looked up, expecting more.
He didn’t give it. “Physics has a party tonight. Should be done by eleven.”
“Sure.” The Physics Lounge had comfortable couches, and science parties always stocked lots of the cheap wine Sebastian liked.
“Midnight Physics exam, then,” he said with a wave, and I felt an ache of loneliness as he walked away.
Veronica picked up on the second ring.
“Faraday had an issue with her little brother,” I began. “She pulled a wrack on him.”
“And how did she know such a thing existed?”
“The business partner,” I said, realizing that there were several infractions to be punished here.
I answered Veronica’s questions honestly, without emotion—even when she asked if Faraday was likely to repeat her transgression. I walked in circles around the empty, smoky Quad, not wanting to bring this conversation into the purified air of Lavernick.
“Well done,” Veronica said as she ended the call, something she rarely told me. Did she know I wanted reassurance? That this phone call had cost me something?
I couldn’t be alone. I decided to work in the Sun Parlor, which was always crowded since the fires.
Drinks at Riley’s Bar with Regina and Kumar, then dinner together in the Senior Commons.
Leopold had declined to join us, nervous about being seen in public with other carers.
Poker with the girls until I went to see Sebastian.
Any spare moments could be filled by texting Tom about what Faraday had done. He’d be amused—until he saw her missing fingernail, or black eye, or limp. Or would that only amuse him more?
I climbed the stairs of Lavernick to get my books and laptop. The top-floor hallway was empty, the girls mostly still in bed this early.
But when I reached my door, I froze.
On the knob, dangling from its silver chain, was the crow skull Sebastian had given me.
I stood there a long time.
It should have been incinerated, along with Jessica Anderson’s clothes, her bone collection, everything she’d ever owned. Garrett would never keep evidence.
I reached for the skull, held it in my hand, as light as paper. In one of the photographs in the media, the skull was faintly visible around Jessica Anderson’s neck. I’d worn it on my first date with Hiromi, the closing night of Chef Sam’s restaurant.
Was this a test? Erasure without care?
I could crush it, but my hand didn’t close. The empty eye sockets stared at me. The plague-doctor beak, black with keratin, sharp as a needle against the flesh of my palm.
I lifted the necklace and placed it around my neck, just to feel the skull’s gentle weight—
—and it was summer again. The heat baking the black tar roof of Hiromi’s studio. The growl of window air conditioners, the earthy scent of public compost bins, the rush of air through the street grates when subways passed beneath.
Her palm, wrapped around iced coffee in sweating plastic, then placed against the back of my neck, sending a chorus of shivers down my spine.
Her lips against mine.
“Hi, babe,” Frankie said on her way to the bathroom, a towel over her shoulder.
My hand covered the crow skull, but Frankie had barely glanced at me. The bathroom door swung closed behind her.
A tear trickled down my cheek.
I was failing this test. Overflowing with care, overwhelmed by memories, I would fail all the tests from now on.
All those times Sebastian walked away, it wasn’t only him I was missing.
I’d been worried about sacrificing Faraday to my family, but they were already here, inside the walls of Helshire. The skull was a reminder of all my mistakes in New York, especially loving Hiromi. The tests would keep coming, to make sure I could stand up under interrogation.
I could not. Which meant that Sebastian and the other caretakers were in danger. I had to leave, to draw my family’s attention away.
Now.
Inside my room, I grabbed my bug-out bag from the top shelf of the closet. It was in disrepair—the energy bars past their eat-by dates, the flashlight batteries corroded. But there were hand warmers, a first aid kit, a pair of $100 bills, a metal water bottle, a camping knife.
Enough to disappear.
I shoved underwear and T-shirts into the bag, grabbed a jacket—it was turning cold next week—and the bottle of pills that kept me from having more seizures. What else?
Standing at my closet door, the world spun. I had so little of my own. My money, my clothes, my name—all of it belonged to the family.
Where was I supposed to go? Where would I sleep tonight?
In the dark, alone.
I shook off that thought—there were always empty houses—and went into the bathroom to fill the water bottle. The air was steamy from Frankie in the shower.
I was standing at the sink when she came out, wrapped in a towel, pink-skinned and shiny. She went to the little hutches where we kept our toiletries.
She stood next to me, combing her wet hair in the mirror.
“So that girl found you.”
I turned to her. “What girl?”
“The one who was hanging around this morning, looking for you.” Frankie’s eyes went to the crow skull. “She was wearing that.”
My heart stumbled again. “It was hanging from my door.”
“Creepy,” Frankie said. “We all thought she was kind of weird.”
“How, exactly?”
“She wasn’t sure about your name. And she had this blurry picture on her phone. Looked like you before the crash, but with jet-black hair.”
“I’ve never dyed my hair,” I said carefully. “Did you get her name?”
Frankie shook her head. “Don’t think she goes here—I’d remember. Really tall, like, taller than you. Cool clothes, pink hair. Figured she was a visiting teacher, except you’d never take an art class, which is definitely what she’d be teaching.”
The water bottle ran over in my hand.
I turned the tap off.
“Said she met you in New York this summer,” Frankie kept going. “But weren’t you in LA?”
“The whole time.” That’s what I’d told my hallmates, to distance myself from the missing Jessica Anderson.
“Like I said, super weird.” Frankie gave me a big smile. “Maybe you’ve got a doppelg?nger!”
She put the hairbrush back into her hutch, and padded out of the bathroom.
I took a long drink from the water bottle. I wasn’t running—not yet.
My family had nothing to do with leaving the crow skull on my door, because they’d never had it. At some point I’d left the skull in Hiromi’s apartment, or in her studio.
Crystal had her own set of keys.