“And he’s like all your rookies?”
My heart pounds in the silence, stomach twisting. I feel sick, a hollow grief welling up inside me. “It doesn’t matter if he’s different,” I whisper. “We’re on opposite sides. We’re enemies, he and I.”
Merendsen’s mouth shifts to a faint smile. “You’re talking to the guy marrying Lilac LaRoux,” he points out. “Nothing’s insurmountable.”
That, at least, makes me smile a little in return. “I hardly think class differences are quite the same as ‘my people try to kill his people and vice versa.’”
His smile fades. “I said I couldn’t tell you everything that happened to us on that planet. Believe me when I tell you it wasn’t just that she was rich and I was poor.”
I swallow, dropping my eyes. “You didn’t have to wash the blood of your people off her hands. Some things you just can’t live with.”
Merendsen reaches up and takes my hands, wrapping them briefly in both of his. “Some things you can’t live without.”
The girl wakes from a dream within her dream, safe in her bed above her mother’s shop.
The ghost is there, casting its soft, greenish light around her bedroom.
She sits up, but for some reason she isn’t afraid. Hovering halfway between sleep and dreams, she remembers that she’s seen it before, not only at school, not only in the alley, but everywhere.
“I know you,” she whispers, not wanting to wake her parents.
The little wisp of light sways gently, and the girl feels a shiver wrack her body, the taste of metal flooding her mouth; but this, too, is familiar, and she’s not afraid.
In between one breath and the next, the world around her changes; her wallpaper is water, her curtains seaweed, the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling now jellyfish of all shapes and sizes. She’s sitting on a bed of coral, and she can breathe the water like air. All around her is the world she dreams of, as real and vivid as life, and she laughs, delighted.
In front of her blooms a vivid purple sea anemone, and then another, and another, until there’s a road of violet leading away, into unexplored territory full of submarines and sea monsters, waiting only for her to discover it.
I HAVE NOWHERE TO GO, no time to process. I stumble as I make my way down the muddy main drag of the base, my mind churning. My clothes are still soaking, and abruptly I’m freezing, my teeth chattering. I should be trying to comprehend what Merendsen just told us, his talk of creatures from another universe—but right or wrong, the only place my mind wants to go is Jubilee. The grief starts to well up, like it’s safe to let it happen now that I know it wasn’t her hand, her gun.
But there’s so much to think through—if it wasn’t Jubilee, who was it?—and I’m surrounded by trodairí. With my thoughts flapping around like loose ends in the wind, I only stop when a soldier nearly runs into me. Our eyes meet, and I ease my weight back, lifting my hands to claim the blame. His mouth’s opening to ask a question when I turn on my heel, striding away. I shouldn’t have run out of there, the one place I was safe. I need to find somewhere to hole up and think. The soldiers who see me here, out in the open, are all going to assume I’m supposed to be here—but if any of them talk to me, what will I say?
I slip into the alleyway behind Molly’s, wishing I could look over my shoulder and see if I’ve been followed. Looking furtive is always a mistake—one of Sofia’s tips. I force my shoulders down, make myself lift my chin instead.
Easing the door open, I step inside, thinking of the stacks of crates. I can hunker down there, probably find something to eat or drink, buy myself a little time to think.
And that’s when I come face-to-face with the bartender. He’s a wall of a man, looming over me, and as I stare at him, he reaches for a bottle, hefting it meaningfully in one hand.
“Wait.” I spit the word out before I have time to think about what to say next, and stop that bottle from connecting with my temple. “Wait, I’m with Jubilee.”
That’s enough to buy me a stay of execution, but his gaze bores through me like he can see all the way to the back of my skull. See the tangled confusion inside me, the mess of questions and hurt and need. “And why’m I believing that?”