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“Your mother—”
“I already knew she was one, and everyone knows my cousins who died in that riot weren’t angels. Johnny pulled up the news footage. I saw what they did. It’s a humiliation, Lila. My family… Am I a wolf too?”
“Gods, no,” Lila said, squeezing her hand.
“Your mother was right about my family, about my breeding.” Tears spilled once again over Alex’s cheeks. “We’re all—”
“Human. You’ve all made decisions.”
“Mine have sucked lately. You have no idea how badly.”
“I can assure you that mine have been worse. You know we’re going to have to keep tabs on Simon, don’t you?”
Alex sat up with a start. “Lila, he’d never—”
“Oracle’s light, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean we’ll have to make sure he doesn’t start thinking like you. It’ll eat at him.”
“I already talked to him. I said that nothing he told you made a difference. You’d already begun poking around.” She sniffled into her handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. A small smile crept to her face. “So who’s the guy?”
“Ms. Wilson.”
“Come on, tell me.”
Lila stood up and retrieved her palm. “He’s no one you know.”
“That’s not good enough,” Alex whined, trying to grin. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“I’m going to keep asking. You’ll get grouchy and annoyed and eventually you’ll give in. Why not skip to the end?”
“You can ask as many times as you want. As long as my mother doesn’t, I’m happy.”
“She won’t hear it from me. I’m not going to pretend that we’ll be best friends again, but I wouldn’t betray you like that.”
After an awkward silence, Alex finally slipped from the room.
Chapter 25
Lila watched the crimson maple leaves flutter and tremble through the glass walls of the morning room. Johnny and his group of workborn knelt among them on the gravel path, pulling out weeds and pruning. They all wore thin coats and thick gloves.
New Bristol had finally embraced autumn once more. The heat wave had finally broken.
It was far colder inside the morning room, though and not as beautiful. Light streamed through the glass walls, casting errant sunbeams on the floor, the scattered light splitting into reds and blues on the wood.
Lila sipped her juice in silence, wincing when a drop stung her wounded hand, free from her bandages and gloves at last. Her skin looked ugly and broken, but at least she could feel her spoon and glass for the first time in almost two weeks.
Her parents barely looked up from their plates.
That worked for her. She didn’t feel much like talking. Bleary-eyed from research the night before, she’d barely managed three hours of sleep.
She had little to show for her effort. She’d taken a deeper look into the alien game’s code, recognizing that it wasn’t a virus and it didn’t transmit password or account information. After nodding off a few times, she’d hopped up for coffee, then hacked into Chief Shaw’s reports. No new developments had occurred in Rebecca’s case. It seemed Chief Vance’s men had spent the morning trying to track down Ms. Royce and her tea. Instead, they’d tracked down her body. She’d been killed in a car accident. One car, one pole.
Murdered, by Lila’s estimation, though Chief Vance didn’t think it likely. After all, the drugs were in the chocolate. There was absolutely no reason to suspect that Ms. Royce was involved. They’d passed her death onto another team for investigation and focused on the hot chocolate and the rest of the staff at FPS, assuming one of them had given out Rebecca’s location.
Very sloppy.
Frustrated but not surprised, Lila had pulled up the game’s code once more, intent on digging further into the game.
