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“Meet me at the bar.”
Before I could ask any more questions, she hung up. The line went dead, the phone locking shut. I dropped it. The phone clattered and slid underneath the bed. The nurse picked it up and handed it back to me. I think I said thank you. I couldn’t tell—the only sound I could hear was the pounding of blood in my skull. A raging storm between my ears. I was in human form, and still I wanted to let out a roar loud enough to blow out the windows.
I should have been ecstatic. My best friend had been cured. She was alive.
But that begged the question: why? Did it have something to do with the Crimson Ring? Had I been wrong this entire time?
It didn’t take me long at all to get to Ivory and Stone, the spot that had become our go-to hangout place before Amelia had gotten sick. It was a place where celebrities were constantly sighted, businessmen were constantly hunting, and the rich lounged in plush designer seating. Amelia and I loved coming here to get drunk off dirty martinis before figuring out where to go after, enjoying the ambiance that dripped with luxury and sex.
Opulent chandeliers cast a soft, inviting glow as I walked inside. Sleek black-and-gray marble surfaces reflected the city’s lights, while contemporary art pieces adorned the walls. I ignored it all, going straight to the booth far down the bar that had always been ours, near a corner that was shielded by a large potted fern, its vibrant green leaves fanning out to create a natural shield of privacy.
“I don’t understand,” was all I could say.
There she was, sitting in the booth, sipping on a martini, the bright green olive popping against her deep red lips. Not a single inch of her was affected by the steel. She was practically glowing. Her skin looked bright and fresh, as if she’d just come from a facial. Her eyes were equally as lit up, matching her smile. She pushed back a wave of brown hair and patted the booth.
“Sit, sit.”
“How did this happen?”
She pushed a martini glass across the stone table. “Here, I got you one. Let’s cheers first.”
I didn’t pick up the glass. I didn’t make any move, just sat there, trying to comprehend what I was witnessing.
Was this really some kind of medical miracle?
“Were you on a treatment I didn’t know about?” I asked.
“Aren’t you happy I’m, you know, not dead?” She clinked her glass against the one on the table and leaned back in the booth, taking another drink. Her hand had a slight shake to it. She set the martini glass back down, her eyes searching for something in mine.
“Of course I am. I’m just so fucking confused. Do you even know how it happened?”
“I do know.” Amelia said, “Remember what our old philosophy professor always used to say? In a world of magic and monsters, the deadliest thing is usually a secret. And I had a few of them… I’m sorry.”
I sat across from my best friend, yet I still couldn’t recognize her. Something was off. There was a sharpness to her that was never there before. It cut through the air when she looked at me.
“Does this have anything to do with the Crimson Ring?” I had to ask the question. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do in the moment, but I couldn’t keep playing these games much longer. I bounced my leg under the table as I waited for a reply. Amelia did nothing but take another sip of her martini. Her hand shook even more, some of the drink spilling over and sloshing onto the table.
“I had no other choice.”
She placed her arm on the table, palm facing up. She passed another hand across it, blue threads of mana appearing and dissolving.
An angry red ring of burning flesh appeared on her wrist. It sizzled and popped, the skin around it scabbing but never fully healing.
There. The admission that took the shape of a bullet, shredding through me.
I had been fooled. By someone who’d known me since I was a child. Someone I trusted with my life. I became light-headed. All the air in the room was siphoned out at once. Nothing filled my lungs, burning in my chest.
How? How the fuck was this happening?
“So it was you? You were the one who stole the paintings from my horde room?”
“Not me, no.” She returned her hands to her lap and kept her gaze directly ahead. Were those tears in her eyes? “But a friend of mine did, yes. I knew the family would be out, and it would be the only chance we would get. So I organized the heist. Yes. But you have to understand why. You have to understand why I’d do this.”
