“You and Zephyr voted against me,” I pointed out. “Because I was raised by humans.”
“We voted against you because you are an unknown element. As such, you are a risk to security at a time when security is paramount. Prove that we’re wrong. Help us, Darcy.”
I hesitated. “What makes you think Meridian’s planning an attack?”
Savannah gave me an irritable look that accused me of playing innocent. “In the past few days, there have been reports that Veldt is training Shades not to be afraid of fire. To use it.”
I remembered the IBI flamethrowers in the practice room. I remembered how, when I first met Orion, he’d been impressed by my (mostly faked) nonchalance over torches. “Fire freaks me out, Savannah. Sometimes I lose my mind when I see it. Even the smell … what makes you think I’d ever play with it?”
“All I know is that if Meridian has a plan, Orion’s part of it. And if he is, you are,” she said meaningfully.
I smacked a hand against my forehead. “Why does everyone think we’re a couple?”
Savannah blinked. “That’s what he’s told everyone.”
“Well, we’re not.”
“Then you should have no problem telling us what he’s planning with that troublemaking mother of his.”
I studied Savannah. I liked her, and liked what she was saying. I got wistful at the thought that humans and Shades in this world might find a way to live together, that Conn and I could actually go out on a date. We could grab some deep-dish pizza and nestle into a puffy-seated booth and let the whole world see us together.
But Savannah’s words still could be a trap. She could be working with Meridian, and this could be a lie designed to lure me into betraying myself. Even if it wasn’t, there were a lot of shadows in the Archives. A lot of places for Shades to hide.
“Sorry,” I told her. “I really don’t know anything. Can I look around in Section 8L?”
Savannah slammed her hands down on the desk. “Do whatever you want. But don’t think you fool me.”
I slunk guiltily away, ducking down an aisle and out of Savannah’s sight as quickly as I could. I rummaged through a tray of silver spoons, hoping that the noise might convince Savannah that all I cared about was finding more stuff to decorate my room. My fingers plucked out a spoon painted with a bird.
I missed home. I’d always thought my life was messy and hodgepodge, something pieced together by a year here, a year there. Now, though, my old life looked pretty simple. I studied the bird spoon and thought about that roll of money stuffed into Marsha’s tea tin. I thought about who got second chances, and who didn’t, and why. I wondered if Marsha would give me a second chance. Maybe she’d take me back. Maybe I could help her. Help her save up for whatever it was. I could set aside some of my money from working at the Jumping Bean. Marsha probably wanted to buy a new car, I bet. Hers was a heap of rust.
I slipped the bird spoon into my pocket and tried to focus on hopeful things.
Friday, I thought, and Conn.
But there was a problem with counting down the days until I’d see Conn. The closer I got to Friday, the closer I got to New Year’s Eve and Meridian’s plan.
37
A light snow was falling through the dark when I knocked at Conn’s door, and I could feel individual snowflakes as they tingled on my skin. I focused on that, on each cold pinprick, instead of on my nervousness, which seemed ready to eat me alive from the inside out.
Conn threw open the door, and lamplight from the studio poured onto the back porch. “Come in,” he said in that stiff, formal way that I now recognized meant something was troubling him and he was trying to hide it.
Conn’s apartment was warm. He had cleaned the gears and tools off the table and packed them into an open cardboard box that lay next to the mattress on the floor. A primed, stretched canvas rested against a wall, and on the floor beside it was a can of turpentine and a wooden palette. Exactly what I had asked for. I set my box of paints and brushes on the table.
Conn ducked into the kitchen and bustled around like someone trying to make noise. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like,” he said, “so I got lots of vegetables.” He tugged open the little refrigerator and began stacking eggplants, zucchini, and tomatoes on the bar.
“Conn, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Um. Actually … I’m a horrible cook. I once set this kitchen on fire.” He clapped a hand over his mouth. “I did not just say that.”
“Conn, you can talk about fire around me.” I studied him. Was … whatever it was … anxiety about cooking? Maybe that was part of it, but I got the sense that Conn was playing that up in order to distract me from something more serious. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He set a cutting board on the bar with a clatter.
“I can leave,” I offered.
“No,” he immediately said. “It’s … well. It’s Kellford.”
“Just say it.”
“In 1997, Kellford was part of the Vox Squad.”
I couldn’t find my voice. “Torture,” I finally said.
“Yes,” said Conn. “Voxing … it’s a separate division of the IBI. Field agents don’t usually do it.” His eyes begged me to understand something.
“You don’t do it.”
Relief flashed across his features. Then it disappeared. “No, but what does it matter?” he said bitterly. “I’ve made arrests. I knew what might happen after.”
Ruthless, that’s what Ivers had called him. I remembered the Conn I’d seen on the first day of school, when he was a nameless stranger who had radiated a danger I had willfully ignored.
But he was different now, and so was I.
Weren’t we?
“Kellford joined the squad in 1995,” Conn said, “and was promoted the following year. Apparently”—his voice was hard—“he excelled at his job. But in the winter of 1997, he was put on probation. He was stripped of his rank and exiled to desk duty for a long time. It’s only been in the last few years that he was allowed back in the field. Whatever he did wrong, it’s classified. But it happened right after Ravenswood.”
I choked out, “You think I had something to do with Ravenswood.”
“No. Darcy, no. You were a child. You couldn’t have been part of the attack.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.”
“Then what do you think happened to me?”
He set his palms on the bar. Took a deep breath. “There was a dragnet after Ravenswood. For months, the IBI did anything and everything to pull in as many Shades as they could. It’s easy—easier—to arrest Shade children, but it’s usually frowned upon. They’re children, after all. It looks bad to the public—even to people who think that there’s no such thing as an innocent Shade, because if the IBI hauls in kids it looks like we can’t handle someone our own size. But the city wouldn’t have cared about any of that after Ravenswood. I think you got picked up. I think that Kellford … hurt you, and that’s why you can’t remember.”
I shook my head. “That’s not possible.”
Conn leaned across the bar, grabbed the collar of my shirt, and roughly pulled it aside, exposing the scar on my neck. “Then what is that?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
He let go, his fingertips brushing my collarbone. His hand fell to his side.
“The DCFS did a medical exam,” I said, because something had to be said or my face would betray how his brief touch shimmered inside me. “Psych exams, too. I was fine. Amnesiac, but fine.”
“If you can’t remember what happened to you, you clearly weren’t fine.”
“Well, the only way I can know is to talk to Kellford. Did you get his address?”
“No.”
Conn wasn’t the type to forget a promise. Now, was he the type to tell a lie in order to prevent some damsel-in-distressing?
Oh, yeah.
“I don’t believe you,” I told him. “And I will talk to Kellford. Either it
’ll be at his home or at the IBI, surrounded by your oh-so-friendly co-workers.”
Conn hesitated. Then he grabbed a small pad of paper, scribbled on it, and ripped off the top sheet. He offered it. “Consider taking me with you.”
“I’ll consider it.” I slipped the paper into my pants pocket, where it rested against the bird spoon I’d taken from the Archives.
I sat on the stool at the bar. “Do you need help?” I pointed at the vegetables and cutting board.
“Um.”
“Don’t be too proud to beg.”
Conn relaxed, maybe as glad as I was to send the topics of Kellford and Ravenswood back to their shadowy corners. “Well,” he said, “I could use a little direction. Maybe you could…”
“Boss you around?”
“Please?”
“Sure,” I said. “First, don’t lie to me. Even if it’s in the name of some totally pointless chivalry. If I decide to let you tag along to see Kellford, and if any kind of fracas goes down, you are going to be the one at risk, you with your skin and bones and flesh. Not the girl who can ghost.”
“You’re not invulnerable.”
“Conn.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
“Second, let’s see what you’ve got in those cabinets.” I hopped down from the stool and went into the kitchen. It was a small space, and I could smell soap on Conn’s body. Something earthy, yet light. Green tea, maybe. I breathed it in. There was a slight crisp scent, too—mint—and below all this was something rich and elemental and uniquely Conn. The scent seeped inside me.
This close, his skin had a glowy damp quality. Fresh from a shower.
I went still, and the same aware stillness came over Conn. He watched me with darkened eyes.
I turned away. I stood on tiptoe to open a cabinet door, and my bare arm brushed Conn’s shoulder. He shivered.
Steady, I told myself. That shiver could have been mere surprise. Even if it wasn’t … it was hard to block out the memory of our only kiss and how it had twisted into disaster. “I see.” My voice was oddly even. It didn’t sound the way I felt. “You’ve got pasta, pasta, and”—I opened another cabinet—“more pasta. I guess we’re making pasta.” I eyed the two-plate stove. “What is that, gas or electric? I don’t do gas. No open flames.”
“It runs on magnetic energy.”
“Of course it does. You’ll handle that, then. In the meantime, chop the eggplant into one-inch cubes and salt them. I’ll be mixing paints.”
Conn humbly accepted his servitude. I fetched the palette and turpentine, then pulled the stool up to the table, where I squeezed oils out of their tubes and onto the thin platter of the palette. I blended colors, mixing in turpentine to thin the paint. The chemical tang cleared my head.
Conn stood in the kitchen at the bar, chopping. “How’d you learn to cook?” he asked.
“The house mothers at my group home taught me when I was about thirteen. They were really big on survival skills. Cooking. Cleaning. Doing laundry. Sewing buttons onto clothes. That kind of thing. Sounds very 1950s housewife, I know, but it was partly to give us something to do. Some of those girls had problems—serious problems, not like me—and they would go off the rails if they didn’t have chores and a structure to their lives. And those girls taught me some pretty useful skills, too.”
“Like what?”
“How to hotwire a car. Steal. Commit credit card fraud. Break into—or out of—locked buildings.”
Conn’s knife paused in mid-chop.
“Relax, Officer.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t do that stuff. Er … most of it. But it’s good to have lots of tools in your toolbox, you know? In case sewing buttons can’t bust you out of an underground jail cell guarded by inhuman creatures.”
Conn gave me a narrow look. “Underground. So the Sanctuary is underground.”
I winced. I shouldn’t have let that slip. Conn could never know the location of the Sanctuary, because as much as I wanted to trust him completely, I couldn’t. Not only because he had once betrayed me. I now knew that Conn had an honorable streak in him a mile wide, and if he decided that giving the location to the IBI and helping them mount an assault on the Sanctuary was the Right Thing to Do, he might choose that over any … attachment, or whatever, to me.
I used to be afraid of Conn. Now I was afraid of his Right Things.
“Don’t ask,” I told him. “I won’t tell you.”
There was a silence.
I broke it. I sailed right past any more discussion of the Sanctuary. “The house moms also wanted us to learn how to take care of ourselves,” I said, picking up the thread of our earlier conversation, “since when we turn eighteen, we’re on our own.”
Conn swept the eggplant into a bowl and doused the cubes with salt.
“Work the salt in with your fingers,” I told him. “Spread it evenly.”
He shook his head.
“What?” I said. “You told me to boss you around.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that the foster care system in the Alter sounds horrible.”
“Our system sounds horrible? What about yours? They tattooed you, like you were a member of a gang. The Orphan Crips, or something.”
“That’s for our own good.”
I spluttered.
“Really,” he said. “It’s to help bring runaways home. What happens to runaways? The same thing, in your world and mine. Abuse. Prostitution. Homelessness. Sometimes they get arrested, and then they claim they’ve got no one to take care of them, because they feel alone, and they’re too proud to admit that the state is their legal guardian.”
“Fine. That tattoo is great for runaways, but what about you? You’ve still got ink on your skin and I’m betting that O comes with a stigma.”
“I don’t mind.” Conn shrugged. “It stands for orphan. That’s what I am.”
“And in this world, you never had the chance to be anything but that.” I was getting angry on Conn’s behalf. “You said that adoption isn’t allowed here. So no family for you. Ever. Plus, they made you become an IBI agent. They took away your chances to be anything but what they wanted you to be. How can you possibly say that the DCFS is worse?”
Conn stabbed into a tomato. “When I graduated from the Academy, I had a career. When you turn eighteen, you’ll have a high school diploma and nowhere to live.”
That sounded stark and dire … and kind of mean, too. I inhaled sharply, ready to say something starker and direr and meaner. But then it occurred to me that maybe I already had, and that the resentment in Conn’s voice was for me. It seemed as much on my behalf as my anger had been for him.
I let out my breath. “You are massacring the tomatoes.”
He glanced down at the mess on the cutting board. “Oh. Sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I turned back to the blobs of paint fanned out on my palette, which was starting to look like a flat, lopsided flower with multicolored petals. I gave Conn a few more culinary commands, and soon the pasta sauce was bubbling on the stove.
“Come here,” I said. “Sit on the bed.”
“The bed?”
“You have only one stool, and I need it.” I dragged the stool into the middle of the room, propped the canvas against it so that it served as an easel, and sat cross-legged in front of it on the floor, with a good view of Conn on the mattress when I peeked around the edge of the canvas.
“You should sit on the bed,” he said. “I’ll sit on the floor.”
“I like the floor. It’s good for my posture.”
“Your posture’s perfect.”
“Conn. Sit still.” I reached for a stub of charcoal.
“But—”
“I thought I was the one giving the orders tonight.”
“That was just for cooking.”
“I seem to recall that I offered to boss you around, generally, and you said, ‘please.’” I sketched the rough outlines of the portrait, my charcoal rasping against the canvas.
&n
bsp; Conn leaned back on one elbow. The look he gave me was downright roguish. “All right. I’ll do whatever you say tonight.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. Except—”
“There’s always an except.”
“In exchange, I’d like for you to do one thing I ask of you.”
My charcoal skidded to a stop. “One thing?”
“One thing.”
“I’m not going to tell you where the Sanctuary is.”
“I’m not going to ask you where the Sanctuary is.”
I pushed the canvas aside so I could look Conn full in the face. “Then what is it?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t make me do something if I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
“All right,” I said. “Deal.”
He smiled, and my charcoal leaped to the canvas to capture the curve of his cheek.
I pulled the canvas back in front of me so that he couldn’t see my face.
“So…” I heard him say. “What do I do for the portrait? Should I … I don’t know. Sit in a certain way?”
“No, just sit. You can move around for now. I’ll tell you when you can’t.” I traced the line of his neck, the shadow of his jaw, that tricky quirk of his broken nose. Straight brows, almond-shaped eyes. Sometimes I glanced up at him. My eyes always danced away first, back to the canvas and the other Conn coming to life underneath my fingertips.
Then I dipped my brush into pale gold and began to paint.
Thin washes of color, shining wetly on the canvas. Broad strokes. Shadows. The way the light shifts a color out of itself, back into itself, and then into something entirely new. I listened to the smooth slap of my brush and Conn’s quiet rustles as I fleshed out a face I almost didn’t recognize. And of course I didn’t, not yet, because I was only painting the base layer, so all I had then were vague shapes of color.
Conn and I were blanketed by a cozy kind of almost silence. The radiator hissed and clanked, the sauce simmered, and my brush swept over the canvas. I settled into a trance.