“I’m not harder.”
We reached the L station at the end of the line. I stood and offered my hand, and she took it. Hers was slim as spun glass while mine had grown thick and rough, veins roping the skin. Her fingers twined through mine, tight.
Out in the rain we ran, immediately drenched but not letting go. In the station we broke through the commuter rush and found a place against a wall. I pushed her to the subway tile, lifted her face. Her skin was lacquered with rain. This close I saw that the hazel of her eyes was a fine weave of green and gold, a splash of sun on autumn grass. My mind knew I should stop but my body was its own creature.
Tamsin made a fist in my wet shirt. “Do you think less of me, Renard?”
“How could I? You hurt someone who deserved it.”
“Not for the hurt I’ve caused. For the hurt I took, because I’m weak.”
My hands framed her jaw, olive against umber. We’d both been hurt by men. I could never victim-blame someone else, but I could blame myself. And did. For letting it happen. For letting him get away with it.
For letting him walk free in the world, able to do it to others.
“Being hurt doesn’t make you weak,” I said.
“Oh, rubbish. Be real with me. You feel weak, too. It fuels you.”
At the ridge of her jaw, her pulse fluttered against my palms like butterfly wings. “Maybe it does.”
“Good. Gather it. Hoard it. Keep it close to your heart.” Her body lifted off the wall, rising to mine. “We’re going to use it to kill someone.”
———
Tamsin took the photos, and Ingrid plotted his movements. Together they drew a map of Adam’s life in the city, a dark web looping in on itself over and over. Old haunts and hangouts. The basketball court at Corgan, where Ingrid had played. A coffee shop all four of us had frequented till Inge deliberately knocked a scalding mug of tea into Jay’s lap. A network of memories.
Adam was looking for me. The me I used to be.
A girl who no longer existed.
Tam reported dutifully to Laney. We didn’t tell her about the flowers, the threat. That Ingrid was one of us now. This wasn’t Black Iris business, anyway—this was personal. And I trusted Delaney Keating about as much as a feral wolf among sheep.
Laney knew things I didn’t. Something made her keep an eye on Adam while she kept me in the dark. Something stayed her hand against Crito. She could’ve tracked him down, taken care of him.
But she waited.
Tamsin’s reports revealed no clue as to why.
If I could trust them.
“She needs a code name,” Tam said one night.
Ingrid gave that slow, glacial smile. “Like Cressida, betrayer of Troilus?”
“I liked the sound of it. It has no meaning.”
“Caeneus has meaning. Figured it out yet? Or are you still deluding yourself that he’ll tell you?”
“Ingrid,” I said.
Tam shrugged. “I think Frigid Cunt would suit you, personally.”
“Tamsin,” I said.
They smiled at each other.
“I like her.” Inge’s eyes were hard, unblinking. “She’s a tough little nut.”
Later, I cornered Ingrid in a dark hall, out of earshot.
“Can you at least try to be human around Tam?”
“Am I supposed to be happy you’re moving on?”
My teeth ground. “You moved on, too. Don’t be a hypocrite.”
“None of mine had potential.” Ingrid leaned against the wall, sighing. “I’ll be a good girl.”
“Just be my fucking friend.”
“I don’t know how anymore. All I know is how to be the crazy ex.”
The words jarred us both. Too real. I started to raise my hand, to speak. To reconnect.
Then Ingrid said, “Don’t fuck her in the house. Or I’ll watch.”
She left me there in the shadows, unsettled.
Days passed, growing grayer, colder, and still we stalked him, watching.
Like Laney, we were waiting, too.
———
Nothing makes you feel quite so godlike as the bench press. Flat on your back, feet on the floor, pushing that barbell up like you’ve got the whole planet in the palms of your hands—the power is intoxicating.
I finished my set and gazed out the windows of Armin’s gym. Redbrick warehouses stretched to the horizon, quaint ironwork clinging to walls like bits of fragmented typesetting. All the factories had converted to tech and media firms, crafting only bytes, information. A city of industry now a city of imaginary things. In the abandoned places, beneath pelts of dust and in shafts of light splitting through broken glass, there was an air of melancholy about the way things used to be.
I knew that feeling.
Chicago was me. It had been built for other things, torn down, burned, rebuilt. Beneath the cement skin and neon veins it hid blood-soaked slaughter yards, pipes made of poisonous lead. A secret history. Sometimes the old bones showed through, reminding you: I was made for other things. Design isn’t destiny.
From an aluminum sky came the first November snowflakes.