Page 24 of Redline Communion

Did this happen before?

Not to Marcus.

To somebody else.

Somebody she knew before him, before Alistair, maybe before Marazul.

I could call after her.

I don’t.

The dress pin digs into my hip again, and I don’t go back into the fitting room. I sit on the top step in a half-pinned white dress while Helena pretends not to check on me from the end of the hall. One side of the hem is longer than the other. The zipper is open halfway down my back. Every time I breathe too deeply, something pokes me.

I fish through three layers of skirt, can’t find the pin, and give up before I stab myself somewhere worse.

Here’s what I know: Marcus’s family is grieving. My mother knows why. Whatever happened to him is bad enough that she would rather let me imagine it than say it aloud.

Everything after that is guessing.

I guess anyway.

Maybe Marcus is fine. Maybe Helena meant some other boy from some other family, and Carmen only ran because this house has turned all of us strange. Maybe Marcus is sitting somewhere right now, pissed off and alive, wondering why nobody has come to get him.

I hold on to that one until my hand hurts.

I don’t believe he’s dead.

I decide it because I need to decide something, and because dead is too simple for all this whispering. Dead gets a funeral. Dead gets flowers and casseroles nobody eats. Dead has a date attached to it.

Marcus has silence.

Silence takes maintenance.

Somebody has to keep lowering their voice. Somebody has to stop answering doors. Somebody has to tell Helena what she’s allowed to say and teach my mother which questions she isn’t supposed to answer.

Helena passes me on the stairs an hour later. She doesn’t stop or look at me.

I watch her clipboard disappear around the landing and feel stupid in a way that makes me angry.

She knew while Odette was measuring me. The fabric women knew enough to shut up. Carmen knew enough to run. Cassian knew before I ever asked him anything.

I think about the folder on the hall table — cream stock, brass corners, sitting there like it had been waiting for me even though nobody ever said it was mine — and my stomach turns.

I’m still sitting there in the dress they picked for me, trying to learn the rules from what everyone refuses to say, when the pin catches my hip again.

This time I find it.

I pull it out, and a dot of blood rises through the white fabric.

I should call Odette.

Let her rush in with cold water and a white cloth before the stain sets.

Instead, I press my thumb to it and drag it across the skirt.

By the time I lift my hand, there’s a red streak across the front of the dress.

I sit there and watch it dry.