They don’t hate me.
Shit, I’m not even supposed to care if people like me or not. I’m above it all. I’m a whirlwind, a destroyer of worlds.
I feel like Pandora, staring at an empty box.
Asch strokes my hair gently, working some of the tangles out of it. “Finish eating,” he encourages me.
“It’s not even good Chinese food,” I say half-heartedly. “Papa is right. Does Harmony actually have real food?”
Blaze rolls his eyes. “You’re insulting the fine cuisine in this well-established, storied city?”
“Well-established? Didn’t this town spring up around the university?” I finish off my tofu. “It’s like, a hundred years old at most.”
“Yeah, and you’re right, they don’t have any decent food.” Blaze starts laughing. “We need to get you down to New Valence so you can tryrealfood, not whatever trash they serve in New Bristol.”
My jaw drops. “You did not just insult New Bristol.”
Blaze grins back at me. “I did. I’ll say again: New Valence is a more interesting, moreculturedcity than New Bristol.”
“It really is,” Asch says calmly, sitting down on the arm of the chair I’m sitting at. “You can’t say it’s not until you’ve been there.”
River snorts. “Good luck getting her down there,” he says.
“You have to back me up here, River,” I complain. “New Bristol is the best city in the world. There’s no way NewVa has even half the stuff NB does.” I point to my dishes. “Like Chinese food. I bet the Chinese food in NewVa sucks.”
“NewVa has a great Vietnamese presence,” Asch says. “We’ll have to take you to one of those restaurants. You’ll like it better than Harmony’s Chinese food scene.”
“I don’t know. I’ve had some pretty good pho.” I smile at River. “Like the one just two blocks from high school. Rachel?—”
I stop.
Rachel loved the pho at that place. We went at least once a month, but sometimes even more often than that, if our schedules allowed. River joined us plenty of times.
River looks at me, his eyes searching. “We have… information,” he says slowly, hesitating over the words. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Information,” I repeat, my voice flat. “About Rachel?”
“Yeah.” Blaze picks up several of the empty containers and gets up. “One second. I’ll be right back. You can sit with Asch if you want.”
I don’t move as he goes to the kitchenette area. He rinses all the containers and drops them into the recycling bin.
He’s stalling.
Before I can point that out, he grabs something from the kitchen island and walks back toward us.
He hands me a file folder.
“What’s this?” I ask.
Blaze takes a seat next to Asch again. “The information.”
I don’t open it. “You just had this lying around?”
“No. I went to get it while you were sleeping,” Blaze says. He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further. “We figured… well, if we’re going to be a team, if we’re on the same page, we can’t withhold stuff from each other. From you.”
“Oh.” I stare at the file folder.
If I open it, what will I be confronted with?
