I catch sight of his bare upper half and stop dead in my tracks. Not because of his well-defined chest, but because of the violent slashes carved into it.
My breath catches, loud enough to hear.
Rafe turns around and my caught breath escapes in a gasp.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
In a rare gesture of modesty, he spreads his hand over the fresh scarring, like doing so might hide what I have already seen.
I march inside his room and pull his arm away so I can get a better look. Claw marks. A violent slash of them, straight down his chest. Pink and raised, like the wounds have only just healed.
Rafe clears his throat.
And I realize, quite suddenly, that I am touching the claw marks. As if of their own volition, my fingers have traced the length of them.
His eyes meet mine, and for a heartbeat, the air between us crackles.
I draw in a breath and step quickly away.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he says.
Heat crawls up my neck and into my ears. I think my hair might be blushing. Swallowing thickly, I take one more small step backward and repeat my question. “What happened to you?”
“My time in the Overlay wasn’t exactly a summer picnic, Selah.” He finishes buttoning his shirt. “I had an unfortunate altercation with one of Dr. Psycho’s devil dogs. Thankfully, I fared a bit better than poor Lily.”
Lily.
The reason I came.
I blink several times, as if doing so might clear away the shocking sight of his wounds.
Rafe pops his collar, then lifts an eyebrow at the paper I have in my hand. “Did you bring me something?”
I give it to him. “You said he didn’t have a face. You said it was all blurred like a burn victim.”
He stares at the charcoal sketch.
“Is that him?” I ask.
He cocks his head and examines it for a moment longer. Then he hands it back with a look of boredom. “It would appear so.”
“Lily Vandenberg drew this.”
“Fascinating,” he says, sounding utterly un-fascinated.
“But…” I hold up the drawing, bewildered. “How is that possible?”
He grabs a silk tie. “Perhaps she visited the Overlay and met the guy before the curse gobbled her up.”
My brow furrows.
It’s possible, I guess. Simon went into the Overlay. My mother went with him. It’s not that farfetched to think Lily could have done the same. But it feels wrong, like a discordant note in a familiar song.
“There’s something else,” I tell him as he knotshis tie with practiced ease. “The clock in the Vandenberg exhibit is missing.”
He feigns shock.
“You don’t think that’s odd?”
