“You bitch!” he yelled, rubbing furiously at his eyes. I backed away, but he lurched toward me, grabbing blindly at my coat. He seized the collar and roughly drew me in. Pinning me against the railing of the second level, he lifted me up so that only my toes were touching the floor. I glanced at the ground below me. It was a short drop, but it certainly wasn’t one that I was going to survive without breaking a wrist or an ankle.
The boy adjusted his grip on my coat, and his hand inched closer to my throat. I ducked my head, clamped my teeth around the fleshy part of his thumb, and bit down as hard as possible.
He howled in pain and shoved himself away from me. The middle of my back slammed against the railing, and I flinched at the abrupt jolt, but Davenport’s thug was heading my way for round two. With his eyes red and streaming and the puffs of vapor pouring from his nostrils, he looked like a crazed demon bull. Trapped against the railing, I had nowhere to go other than the set of steep stairs off to my left. He crouched down and charged as if he had every intention of rugby tackling me. At the last second, I stepped to the side. Simultaneously, I seized the boy’s wrist and used his own momentum to propel him forward. When I let go, he flipped headfirst over the railing. He landed with a thunk on the grass below, and I heard the grunt that forced the breath out of his lungs.
I raced down the stairs, sparing a glance backward just to make sure the idiot was still moving. He groaned and rolled over to his side, so I took that as a sign that I hadn’t accidentally killed him and sprinted to where I’d parked Lauren’s car as quickly as the long trench coat would allow.
20
When I returned to Floorboard Lit, I still felt out of breath. I parked Lauren’s car in a secluded space beneath an oak tree then leaned my head against the steering wheel and focused on expelling the tension around my lungs. My throat felt tight, and I was finding it challenging to pull in full breaths.
The neon open sign that hung in the front window of the bookstore had gone dark. The nearby streetlight flickered, and the shadows of the oak tree’s branches reached through the windshield to wrap me in its clutches. Suddenly claustrophobic, I threw the driver’s-side door open, gulping down the cool air outside. I was scared to even glance at my watch. It would tell me that my twelve hours to find Wes were almost up. If we were going to make a deal with Flynn, it would have to happen soon.
It was this thought and nothing else that convinced me to trudge up the steps to the bookstore’s porch for the twentieth time that day. Inside, the scent of freshly ground coffee beans still lingered. I poached a leftover chocolate muffin from beneath a glass cake dome then found Lauren dozing in a shady corner of the deserted cafe, her long legs draped over one armrest of a worn leather chair and her head tipped back over the other. O’Connor’s laptop lay open and stagnant in her lap as if she’d fallen asleep while decoding more of the files. Her shoes lay abandoned on the floor beside the chair, so I nudged the soft wool of her winter socks instead.
“Lauren,” I whispered. The silence of the cafe should have been comforting, but I only felt unnerved. Lauren stirred, and O’Connor’s laptop slid off her lap. I caught it before it could hit the floor and sat down in the chair opposite Lauren’s. I typed in O’Connor’s password and found that Lauren had indeed been working vigorously to decode more of my mother’s diary entries.
April 15, 1985
I’m pregnant. God, I can’t believe I just wrote that down. Pregnant. With Anthony’s child. I should’ve realized sooner, but I was attributing all of the vomiting to stress and anxiety. How stupid can I be? I can’t believe this is happening. It’s not all awful though. I thought telling Anthony would be a bear, but he took it well. In fact, he was ecstatic. I wasn’t expecting that. Part of me was waiting for him to dump me and run back to Cat Lockwood. Instead, he picked me up and twirled me around. Yes, tall and stern Anthony Costello twirled me around like a damn ballerina. I couldn’t help but laugh. It felt so good. I mean, I know this is technically an inconvenience, but I can’t think of it as a mistake. If anything, it’s given us a good reason to get out of Waverly as soon as possible. Anthony’s already agreed. We’re leaving tonight. Together. We’re turning in the security footage to the police and then getting the hell out of here. I can’t wait to see Catherine’s name in the paper. She deserves everything that’s coming to her.
I sighed. My mind couldn’t decide what to feel as I read through my mother’s words. On one hand, I understood her. We had the same goal—to take down Catherine and the Black Raptor Society—but my mother had had more ammunition. Those security tapes would have immediately put Catherine in jail. Daddy Lockwood would have bought her freedom no doubt, but still, it was obvious that my mother’s plan to turn in Catherine and escape the Waverly campus unharmed did not come to fruition.
On the other hand, reading my mother’s diary felt like an invasion of privacy. I hadn’t known her long enough to form any lasting memories of her. She had died of a brain aneurysm when I was two. I felt far away from her words, as if I were reading them
