Defiance

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Leon’s eyebrows nested in his hairline. He’d just swept the door open and stalked in, pretty as you please. Seen in full sun, his hair became a mass of fine golden threads over a well of rich fine brown, not mouse-colored at all. “What the hell—” he began, and caught sight of Ash crouching by my feet, still cocooned in a blanket and the bathroom’s white-tile glare. “Gott im Himmel. That’s the Broken.”

Ash’s ruined lip lifted, but he didn’t snarl. He just went very still, looking up at Leon, muscles slowly tensing. Orange flashed in his eyes.

“What’s going—” Benjamin had his hand halfway to his shoulder holster.

“Milady.” Leon folded his arms, looking down at me. “I have executed your commission. Shall I report now, or when we have privacy?”

I lay there blinking for a few seconds. Nothing made any sense. “Um.”

“I rather think privacy would be a good thing. But it’s also something you’ll want to hear soon.” A significant pause. “Very soon.”

I am lying on the floor, Leon. Obviously this has not been a good day. “Uh-huh,” I managed.

“You have to smell that.” Dibs bent over me, his thumb peeling my right eyelid up. I wanted to shove his hand away—it was my eye, dammit—but I couldn’t muster up the moxie to move. “Right? Tell me I’m not the only one.”

“Oh yes. She’s cresting and will bloom soon, the primary changes have started.” Leon stared down at me. A curious expression drifted over his face, part bitterness, part something I couldn’t define. “What happened?”

Oh, so now he wanted to know what happened. “Ash,” I whispered, and the world turned into shutterclicks of light as my eyelids fluttered.

The werwulf boy crouching at my feet made a low, unhappy sound.

“Help me get her on the bed,” Dibs said, and the shutterclicks turned into a dozy bruised darkness.

* * *

I was pretty out of it for most of that day, and even now I can’t tell what I really saw and what was . . . well, fever dreams. Or nightmares, as my body struggled to cope.

The visions were odd—brightly colored fragments, each with their own static buzz around them, like and unlike what Gran called “true-seein’s.” Clear, so clear. Technicolor bright and sharp-crisp. They had weight. The touch echoed inside my head, showing me maybe-was, is, and will-be, like it was suddenly in a space much too big for it, spinning like a mad carnival ride through time.

Christophe, leaning against a tree in a shadowed clearing. His eyes turned blowtorch-blue as he watched, and the expression on his face was chilling. Because under the set grim look of a guy watching something distasteful, there was faint, scary amusement. He watched as the struggle took place, and when it was over, his smile was a ghost of itself.

“Just get it out of my sight,” he said, and their narrow white hands lifted the other boy, his long dark coat flapping as he struggled uselessly.

Blackness, cutting between the scenes like a knife blade.

The naked boy crouched in the stone cell, his fingertips resting against the weeping wall. He coughed, his ribs heaving, and the faint shine on his skin told me he was sweating in the damp. That wasn’t a good sign. He turned his head, sharply, as if he heard something, and I saw the flash of paleness at his temple.

His eyes fired green, and Graves sniffed suspiciously. That set off another round of coughing; he spat something into a corner of the cell. I lunged forward, trying to reach him.

Another knife blade, this one loaded with static. Chop.

The white bedroom was full of golden afternoon light, and there was a body on the bed, a mess of curled hair. Dibs paced, nervously watching the Broken. The mirror watched it all, a blind eye. I was inside the reflection, screaming and pounding my fists on its slick clearness, as Nathalie leaned over the too-still body and glanced up at Ash.

Who crouched next to the bed, staring at me inside the mirror with orange-flecked eyes, like he could hear me.

Chop.

Christophe knelt motionless at the head of the stairs, staring unblinking down a filthy, dusty hall. Beside him, Benjamin also crouched, his mouth moving. Explaining something. But instead, I looked at Christophe’s hands. They hung, flexing and releasing, like he was wishing he had someone’s neck in them. And I began to feel . . . odd. Not afraid, but like I was missing something.

Chop. More maybe-was and will-be, pouring into my head like they intended to stretch out my skull. Gran’s face, wise and wrinkled; Dad spinning in a field of daisies while I shrieked with laughter, his big capable hands under my arms and the entire world rotating around us; Graves lighting a cigarette; Benjamin slumping against an alley wall and slowly going white as blood slid out of the hole in his shoulder; Augustine’s face a rictus of horror as he screamed, his arms stretched out; my mother’s face brighter than the sun, laughing as she tickled me . . .

One last image, slowing down and cramming its way into my overloaded head. It hurt, shoving its way past a confused jumble of memories and physical misery. My heart labored under the strain, climbing uphill in steady beats.

The long concrete hall stretched away into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was heading for that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling —

—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

BANG.

“Bang,” someone whispered, and hot breath touched my cheek.

I shot straight up, clawing at the air and screaming. Ash went over backward in a flurry of pale limbs. Nat, dozing on the chair she’d pulled up, shrieked and jumped to her feet. The bathroom door flew open and Dibs leapt out, wild-eyed, his little black medibag in one hand and his narrow chest furred with wiry golden hair. He was stark naked, and most of him was wringing–wet. Lather stood up in his hair, and I heard the shower running as I gasped, trying to make my lungs work. The room looked strange, every angle askew and the light somehow wrong.

I choked on glassy air. Nathalie leaned over and whomped me on the back. The blow stung, but somehow, it worked. I sucked in sweet air, blinking as the touch turned around and settled inside my skull, nestling like a feathersoft bird.

A really big bird.

“Jesus,” I husked. “What the . . .” The light was all weird, and after a moment I realized why. It was dusk- gold, not the glare of noon, lying over the room like honey, which meant I’d been out for a while.

Leon looked up from the window seat. “They’ll return soon. We need a plan.”

Nat rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, sure. A plan. How exactly is a plan going to help this situation? Get back in the shower, Dibs.”

I blushed scarlet. So did Dibs. He also squeaked and ducked back into the bathroom, banging the door shut. Nat let out a sigh my Granmama might’ve envied.

Wow. Now I knew a lot more than I ever wanted to about him.

I scrubbed at my forehead weakly. “Jesus.” I couldn’t come up with anything better to say. “What’s going on?”

“You need food. It’s not hot, but the calories will do you good.” Nat stretched, turning the movement into a graceful, coordinated rise from her chair.

Somehow she’d gotten Ash into a pair of slightly–too–big khakis and a sleeveless denim button-down. Muscle