Page 20 of Redline Communion

That lands exactly where he means it to, and I don’t give him the satisfaction of showing it.

“He barely knows her. He’s never even met her.”

“That’s precisely why he’s coming.” A small, humorless almost-smile. “You should be glad. Good for you to watch somebody else do this job for once. Might teach you something.”

I don’t have anything to say to that that won’t get me in worse trouble than I’m already in, so I don’t.

I find out the rest by accident, the way I find out most of what actually matters in this family: standing outside Dominic’s office ten minutes later, waiting on the elevator, when his voice carries through the door he didn’t fully close. He’s on the phone, and I don’t catch who with; what matters is the sentence that lands on the back of my neck like a hand, casual and certain and not meant for me at all.

“—the one she’s supposed to choose. Or his father will be disappointed.”

I don’t move, and for a second I don’t breathe either.

His father.

Not Alistair, and not Dominic talking about me, Nico, Cassian, or Ash. Somebody else’s father, and somebody else’s son, which means Nico isn’t the only one coming. He’s not coming to visit. He’s coming to watch somebody audition for a place beside her, and somebody has already decided how it’s supposed to end.

I’m supposed to stand there and let it happen while I film her laughing at something Ash said, log it, hand it over, and call it a job.

The elevator opens, and I get in. I don’t remember pressing the button for the ground floor, but the numbers start falling anyway.

It was never a job to me, not the way Dominic means it. Not the bike, not the first honest conversation either of us had in weeks, not the night she fell asleep against my shoulder and I sat there for two hours without moving because I didn’t want to be the reason she woke up. None of that shows up in a photo, and none of it is what Cassian is asking for. So whatever I hand over from here isn’t going to be real. It’ll be a version of her small enough to fit in a file.

I get in the car and don’t start it right away. I sit there in the parking structure, hands on the wheel, jaw tight enough to ache, running the same four seconds of Dominic’s voice on a loop until it stops meaning anything and becomes noise.

Eventually, I turn the key.

I don’t feel any better for having waited.

Chapter six

Whisper Down the Row

Lorelei

Offering prep turns out to mean a woman named Odette measuring me for a dress I didn’t agree to want.

That’s the irritating part. It’s beautiful. Not beautiful enough to make me forget nobody asked whether I wanted to wear it, but beautiful enough that I’m annoyed at myself for noticing the way the fabric falls or how the color makes my skin look warmer in the mirror.

The fitting room used to be a guest suite before somebody decided guests didn’t need it as badly as family traditions did. The bed is gone, replaced by two dress forms and a standing mirror tall enough to show me every angle I didn’t ask for. Somebody kept the bedside tables, though. One holds a silver tray of pins. The other has a lamp shaped like a swan that looks embarrassed to still be here.

“Arms up,” Odette says around the pins between her teeth.

I lift them.

She tugs the dress into place, and I stare at the ceiling while she works. There’s a water stain above the old curtain rod that looks a little like Florida if Florida had been kicked in the side. I focus on that instead of wondering how many girls have stood here before me doing exactly this — arms up, mouth shut, waiting for somebody else to decide when they’re finished.

The room is full of people pretending not to watch. Helena stands by the door with a clipboard tucked against her chest. Two women I don’t have names for are adjusting fabric on a second dress form nobody has explained. Carmen is in the corner chair, one ankle crossed over the other, turning her wedding ring around her finger, which she’s been doing a lot lately, half here and half wherever she goes when this house gets too close.

Odette kneels to fix the hem.

“Don’t move.”

“I wasn’t planning an escape.”

“You were thinking about one.”

“Is it that obvious?”