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There was further giggling out in the receiving area. “Our stares are well averted,” one of the two of them replied.
Jabon’s eyes sparkled with delight. “The Black Dagger Brother Rhage makes an impression, does he not. As does the Black Dagger Brother Darius.”
Rhage ground his molars, and his brother seemed likewise annoyed. The response, meanwhile, from the females was immediate. From out of the corner of his eye, Rhage noted the way the pair leaned around the parlor’s jambs and regarded him and his fellow fighter with burning interest.
Propriety was apparently relative. Depending upon the social status of that which was of offense.
Shaking his head, Rhage thought, Truly, I should have stayed abed.
Talk about sleeping with one eye open.
As Nyx sat propped up against the damp wall of the carved-out cave, her feet stretched toward the pool, her clothes back on, her hair still wet in the braid she’d put it in, she decided she’d never truly thought about the expression. Kind of like “life is a highway,” the words were the sort of thing you heard from time to time. Read in a magazine article. Caught in the middle of the chapter of a book—or at the beginning of one. Like all other stock phrases, however, the combination of words was so overused that it ceased to really mean anything. Plus, if you dissected it, the whole clause fell apart. Unless someone propped your lid open with a toothpick, the fact pattern behind the saying couldn’t get off the ground. And at any rate, if somebody had done that to you, you wouldn’t be sleeping. You’d be taking out the toothpick and thanking them for the effort with a knuckle sandwich.
Okay, so there was another useless set of words that just didn’t frickin’ work: “Knuckle” and “sandwich.”
Whatever. Her eyes—both of them—were closed, and she was aware of losing track of time’s passing so she must have been getting a little sleep. Talk about interruptions, though. Her awareness, her senses, her prickling, adrenaline-fueled paranoia, was a Geiger counter going off constantly.
There were a lot of false positives.
Sounds, real or imagined. Smells, real. Shifts in temperature or draft, real but ultimately indicative of nothing.
Every time she was roused, her eyes shot over to Jack.
On the far side of the pool, he was in the same position she was, his body at a right angle to the wall’s verticality, his thick and heavy legs out in front of him, his broad shoulders taking up a hell of a lot of space.
As her lids popped open for the hundred and seventy-fifth time, she wasn’t sure what exactly had gotten her attention, but like tracing the vapor trails of ubiquitous vernacular sayings in her head, the “huh-what?” had turned into kind of a game. Fun, fun.
When there was nothing alarming—prisoners, guards—coming at her, and Jack wasn’t reacting to anything, she closed her lids again.
But there was no slipping back into one-eyed sleep this time.
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Did the same with her arms. Cracked her neck.
Glancing around, she wanted to know exactly what had disturbed her, as if the answer would bring some kind of peace. Or at least unplug the adrenaline hose that was hooked up to her heart muscle.
The only thing that came back at her was the way Jack had answered her question.
What did you do?
We don’t ask those questions down here.
After he’d spoken the words, he had headed over to where he was now to sit down. For a while thereafter, he’d reported on things relevant to their situation: Guard schedules. How much more time they had to wait. How he was going to check at given intervals to keep track of where they were with the shifts.
She hadn’t followed much of it. And she’d had the sense that neither had he.
And now they were here, pretending to snooze. Or at least she was. He looked like he was actually asleep, although he had to be used to the catnap routine by now.
Jesus. A hundred years down here. She still couldn’t comprehend it.
Unzipping the front pocket on her windbreaker, she took out her phone and turned it on. As the unit booted up, she braced herself for learning that only ten minutes had passed. And also if it was ten hours later and now they had to go.
When the time came up, it had been six hours since she’d checked last, and she was surprised that she had no real reaction at the news flash. Then again, it didn’t come with a call to action, did it. There was no jumping up and going to that place with the names. The Wall.
Turning the phone back off, she had never once, in fifty years, considered the idea that her sister was dead. Not once. She still refused to believe it was possible. In her mind, she saw herself going up to a flat plane of engraved names, checking down the list, and finding absolutely no Janelles. And when that happened? She knew what was up next.
