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When Darien got home, the house was quiet and dark, the others fast asleep or out collecting.
He pulled himself up the stairs, hand gripping the rail, booted feet dragging. He didn’t bother turning on any lights. He could see just fine, his hellseher vision nearly as sharp in the dark as it was during the day. Moonlight filtered through the windows and skylights, glimmering off the chandelier in the entrance hall. The ticking of various clocks filled the house. Down in the kitchen, Mortifer slept on the fridge, his quiet breathing reaching Darien from all the way up here.
Darien slowed his pace as he passed Loren’s old suite. The door was ajar, the room empty. He didn’t look inside. He continued down the hallway to his own suite, right next to hers.
The door was half-shut. He pushed it open, the handle hitting the wall with a dull thud.
For a long time, he stared into the dark and vacant room. The place felt cold, just like his heart. He’d hardly slept since Loren left, and whenever he did sleep it was usually when he passed out from exhaustion on one of the couches downstairs. Not a single night had been spent in this bed since she’d left. The sheets were still rumpled from when she’d last slept in them, her slippers still under the bed, untouched. A sliver of moonlight cut through the spotless glass of the mirror on the wall, drawing attention to his torn expression, the tension in his stance.
He destroyed the mirror first.
Quick as a strike of lightning, he crossed the room, shattering the glass with his fists. Animalistic roars tore out of him as he struck, shards cutting open his knuckles, tiny bits of the mirror slicing into his cheeks and neck. He completely obliterated his reflection, crushing every shard of glass with his fists and boots, until nothing but fine dust remained.
By the time he’d moved onto the curtain rods, ripping them right out of the walls, screws and bolts flying through the room, he blacked out.
He didn’t come to again until he was thumping down the staircase, chest heaving with frantic breaths. Blood dripped from the stinging wounds in his hands, staining the carpet.
He passed out on the couch in the library. Even while he slept, his heart didn’t slow. It pounded so hard it woke him up several times throughout the long night, his whole chest aching as if all that glass he’d shattered was embedded in his lungs. The sun took forever to rise. As soon as it was up, he would be out of here again.
It was the worst night he’d had in months. The worst night he’d lived through since wrecking his date with Loren under the stars.
This house didn’t feel like a home anymore, now that she was gone.
51
It was barely eight a.m. when Loren made it to Mordred and Penelope’s.
As soon as she got there, she unlocked the shop, hurried across the cluttered floor, past the curious plants who turned in their pots to watch her, and slipped out the back door. Luckily, Mordred and Penelope, who were working today’s shift, had not yet arrived. If they saw her here, they would surely ask a bunch of nosy questions she couldn’t answer.
She called for another taxi, telling the starter who answered to get the driver to pick her up in the alley behind the apothecary, the lane barely wide enough for a single vehicle.
“You want to be picked up in the alley?” the woman on the other end asked, gum smacking in her teeth. Phones trilled in the background.
“Yes,” Loren said, keeping her voice down. The cooks who worked the kitchen in the Golden Onion—the restaurant beside the apothecary—were beginning their food prep, the aroma of sautéed onion and garlic floating through cracked—open windows. “Just tell him I’ll be waiting for him behind Mordred and Penelope’s.”
There was a pause. And then the starter said, “Alright. He should be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you.” She hung up, turned off the device, and slipped it into her pocket.
Coming here first was one extra step in her day, but she wouldn’t risk the imperator’s men, who had tailed her the whole way here, learning about her real destination. This was the safest way to go about this, even if it was a waste of time and extra cab fare.
She waited in that narrow alley, Singer standing at her side. Rosy sunlight streamed between the buildings in the distance. It glimmered off windows and cars zipping around the block, the cadences of different engines mingling together to create a piece of urban music that floated through the streets.
As Loren waited, she shed her white cardigan and tied it around her waist. Another day of unpredictable weather in a wildly unpredictable city. Even Singer was panting, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
She heard Mordred and Penelope arrive to open the apothecary. Their voices drifted through the windows of the staff room way up top.
When they slid one of those windows open, Loren flattened herself against the scorching wall of the alley. The twins were watering Mr. Crispy. One of his loose leaves fluttered down, where it landed on the back step, not far from where Loren stood.
A moment later, the twins vanished downstairs. Loren was careful to keep away from the tiny window in the back door.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about the Veil,” she said to Singer as she fanned the droplets of perspiration on her face. Pedestrians walked by the mouth of the alley, carrying frozen coffees and iced teas in plastic cups marked with the logo of the Terra Café. “Do you, buddy?”
Singer peeked at her with one glowing eye, a low whine slipping through his chops.
“That’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” She snapped her fingers. “Let’s get you back inside my shadow before we spook the driver.” She was still careful to keep Singer hidden whenever she went out alone; the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself, and a human with a Familiar was sure to draw the wrong kind. Luckily, Ethan and his pals had said nothing about Singer to the other students at AA, at least as far as she knew, nor had they bothered her since that night at the pool. But she had the feeling it wasn’t the last time she would have to deal with them.
