‘I can’t believe it,’ Felix said at last. ‘Pikki Lowell almost died right in front of us.’ He looked at Asta, bewildered. Then his face hardened. ‘Asta. What was in the jar?’
Asta went cold. It was irritant. It had to be. But she was haunted by the thought of Pikki trying to leave the disciplinary hearing yesterday, Hummer blocking her way.
‘It was just irritant,’ she said. ‘I swear it, Felix. That’s all it was.’
‘Are you sure?’ His voice was as hard and pointed as a dragon’s horn.
‘That’s all it was.’ It had to be true.
‘They did this, didn’t they,’ he said. It was not a question. The way he was looking at her terrified her. He must see what a weak and stupid person she was. She had let herself get sucked into the Bruces’ cruel games, and this was the price.
Asta nodded slowly.
‘We have to tell someone, Asta.’
‘What? No! We can’t!’
‘We have to.’
Asta recoiled, her stomach turning. It was all so simple in his eyes. The Bruces had hurt someone he cared about, and now he wanted them to pay. All he had to do, he thought, was tell his friends in the boardroom about his suspicions, and they would take care of everything. Felix got what Felix wanted. Those were the rules of his reality.
Well, guess what,Asta wanted to say,your reality doesn’t mean anything anymore. We play by Hummer’s rules or we lose by them.
Asta put her hands on her knees to steady herself. ‘No, you don’t understand. There won’t be any evidence. They would just come after us next.’ Was it too late for that? Felix had been the one who’d told Pikki what Nat had said. But Pikki was nobody. It would be harder to target a Seraphin and get away with it, evidence or no evidence. Felix’s reality would protect him, just like it always did.
‘So what? We just do nothing?’ He was growing antsy.
Asta closed her eyes tight. ‘Just let me think.’
‘We can’t let them get away with it, not when Pikki almost. . .’ He jutted his jaw forward, and his eyes drifted to the track below.
‘They’re dangerous, Felix.’ Asta couldn’t deny it anymore. The Bruces weren’t just misfits or mavericks. Their abuses weren’t games. They were bad people. Whatever Asta had gained from her association with them, it wasn’t worth it. She wished she could go back to that day outside of Gem’s apartment and tell Hummer no, even if it meant she never got to Silverscale.
Felix sat quietly, watching the screens. The other spectators were clumped together here and there, gesturing and exclaiming and shaking their heads. The workers had finished removing the fireworks and Underling’s body was being carted away in the bucket of an excavator.
‘What about you?’ Felix spoke without turning his eyes from the screens.
Asta frowned, not understanding his question.
‘They’redangerous,’ he went on. ‘Are you?’
‘I never wanted anyone to get hurt.’ It was the best she could do.
‘But someone did.’
Asta locked her eyes on her helmet at her feet. He was right. Regardless of what was in the jar, she was part of this. And she had to get herself out.
But how? Who had ever said no to Hummer? Torque was a good man, and yet he stood by. Tru fought with him, but only up to a point. Then she backed down. She always backed down. Everyone did. No niece or nephew told him to fuck off. No one left Hummer’s clutches and went off to become an accountant or something. They stayed where Hummer put them and killed themselves to please him.
Even Nat. Heck, Nat had jumped off a building to win a street race– not just for the thrill of it, Asta realized now, but because she was terrified of facing her uncle if she lost. Asta was Nat’s only friend, and Asta was pretty sure that Nat had taken her to bed because Hummer had told her to. Nat was no angel, but she was onlydangerousbecause she was afraid.
Felix thought it meant something to say that someone had gotten hurt. He didn’t understand. With Hummer, someone was always getting hurt, like some law of nature.
It was like Nat said once when Asta had been complaining about her own parents. ‘Families suck. But what are you going to do, you know? Not like we get a choice.’
‘Your family’s not that bad,’ Asta had argued. ‘At least they let you do what you want. They support you.’
‘True,’ Nat had said, ‘but they’re real bastards, you know? Everyone hates us.’
