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Both of their eyes go wide at the sight.
“May I?” Crane asks, delicately snatching the bottle from me before I have a chance to tell him anything. He turns it over in his palm. “This could come in handy.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to start using it like opium,” I say.
He gives me a steady look. “As much as I would love to get back on the pipe and smoke my problems away, right now I need to be as sharp as a knife.” He jerks his head over at Brom. “This man, however, could probably use some sedation from time to time.”
“Is this how it’s going to go from now on?” Brom glowers at him. “The chains weren’t enough, now you’re going to drug me?”
“With your consent, of course,” Crane says with a dashing smile, placing the bottle on the desk.
“What happened earlier, about the history teacher?” I ask. “Did you talk to her?”
Crane shakes his head, licking his fingers in such a way that I feel a flare of heat at my core. Not helpful given the circumstances. “No,” he says. “She’s nowhere to be found.” He eyes Brom. “I hope she’s not about to get in trouble for teaching you what she did.”
“Why would she?” Brom asks. “None of the Sisters were there. Just the students.”
“Do you have any artwork on the walls of that classroom?” Crane asks. “I’m just thinking about the painting in Ms. Choi’s room. Is it entirely unreasonable to think that they can spy on people through the eyes of others?”
“I don’t want to think about that,” I say anxiously, sitting down on the bed. “There’s already too much happening, my brain can’t even take it all.”
Crane sits down next to me, then Brom sits on the other side. It feels nice to be sandwiched between them, even in a non-sexual way. It feels like we’re stronger like this, like a unit.
“One thing at a time, Kat,” Crane says to me, and I rest my head on his shoulder while Brom takes my hand in his and squeezes. I squeeze it back. “That’s all we can do. But there are three of us, so that means three things at a time, really.”
“All I know is that I’m going to that supper with my mother on the weekend,” I say.
“What?” Crane says stiffly. “You are not.”
“I am,” I tell him, lifting my head to meet his indignant eyes. “And Brom is coming with me.”
Those eyes widen. “He is not.”
“Crane,” Brom warns.
“He is,” I tell Crane. “I need to talk to Famke, now more than ever. And it’s supper. Three p.m. she said. It’s early enough that we’ll get back before nightfall.”
“I’m going with you,” he huffs.
“No,” I tell him adamantly. “You’re not. My mother said she’d shoot you, and I believe her and, despite my feelings about her, I don’t want you to get into some standoff. You’re staying here. I’ll go with Brom. I’ll talk to Famke. While we’re at supper I’ll try to get some information out of my mother, then we’ll come back. Even if it means we have to leave abruptly, we will.”
Crane leans over me to look at Brom. “That means I have to trust this fellow over here with your life. That means you’ll have to trust him with your life.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” Brom counters darkly.
“To be honest, Brom, you’re making it a lot harder these days,” Crane says.
At that, Brom drops my hand and gets to his feet, staring down at us. “Why don’t you tell her what you really want to tell her, Crane? I know you’re waiting for the right time to throw me under the cart. Why don’t you tell Kat the truth? Both of our truths.”
My stomach twists and I hold my breath. “What truth?” I manage to say.
Crane gives Brom a look that could incinerate someone on the spot.
Then Crane looks away, running a hand through his hair, and lets out a heavy, despondent sigh that I feel in my bones.
“There’s something I need to tell you, Kat,” Crane says in a gravelly voice, towering over me as he gets to his feet. “Something I’ve been meaning to tell you but…it’s gotten away on me.”
“Alright,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking, wondering what awful thing this is going to be. “Do tell.”
“When your aunt Leona called me into her office, she warned me to stay away from you,” he says, pacing back and forth across the room, hands behind his back. “As you know, idle threats don’t do much for me. She said I would lose my job as a professor here at the school, but that didn’t seem worth holding onto if I couldn’t have you.”
I’m touched at his devotion to me, but…
“I knew I could quit at any time, until she told me she had something on me that would prevent me from quitting. Something she’s always had on me. And I knew it too, I knew that she was aware of it, but I never thought she would throw it in my face.”
