Rayner adjusts the door on his shoulder and says nothing, and the small one looks up at him, and up, and goes quiet.
But the big one plants his feet, and that’s the wrong note. He’s scared — I can see the swallow from here — and he’s holding ground anyway, and men like this don’t hold ground they can’t keep unless holding ground is the whole job.
And behind them all, the fourth one checks his phone again. Third time since we stopped. It’s the only thing on this street I can’t explain.
The phone buzzes.
He doesn’t like what it says.
That’s when I realize why they’re standing here. They’re not here to win. They’re not even here to fight. They’re spread across a sidewalk between us and her building, buying somebody time.
“They’re a delay. Kyle is up there,” I say, nodding to the apartment.
Erik goes still in a way I have seen exactly twice in all the years I’ve known him, and both times something ended shortly after.
The big one’s face confirms it — the flinch of a man watching the plan die out loud. And then, down the block, the door of her building swings open, and the plan walks out of it holding his own face.
Kyle. Moving fast, head down, one hand pressed to his cheek, and even from here the smell reaches me and I put my hand on Erik’s arm and say the only word that matters first.
“Not hers.”
The blood is not hers. Erik’s chest is moving like he’s about to lose it and I say it again, “Not hers,” and I watch him choose her over Kyle in real time — because Kyle is right there, bleeding and slow and alone, and Erik looks at him for a breath and then spends none of it on him. He’s already moving for the building.
We all are. The four in front of us stop mattering. We go through the gaps between them and nobody slows us down. The small oneswings anyway — loyal to the last, and Rayner catches his fist out of the air one-handed, door still balanced on his shoulder, and sets him down on a bus bench like it’s not the kid’s fault.
Kyle sees us coming. To his credit, some deep animal part of him understands immediately and completely, and he’s gone down the side street. His crew folding after him to cover it.
Good, let them go.
I saw it. Four lines down his cheek. Parallel, clean, close together. Something clawed him, and he came out of her building wearing it.
Which means he got in. With Leif on watch.
That’s worse — Leif said he had her. Leif does not say that lightly and Leif does not miss. So either he stopped it, which is why Kyle is still walking, or Kyle got past him.
And that’s just absurd.
We go up the stairs at a run, door and all, and spill into her hallway, and Erik is first, and he stops so hard I nearly put the hardware bags through him.
Her doorway is open, because of course it is, the door is on Rayner’s shoulder.
Standing in the middle of the empty frame, parked facing out at the hallway —
her vacuum.
Huh.
Then from somewhere inside, her voice, too bright.
“Oh good, you’re back! Everything’s fine!”
I have read people for centuries, and I can tell you with certainty that everything is not fine.
Chapter 26
Elara
“Oh good, you’re back! Everything’s fine!”
