If I hadn’t been knocked so off-center I would’ve drawn and fired then and there, in broad daylight. Instead, like an idiot, I engaged. “No fucking shit, you bastard. I will never be safe in a world where you exist.”
He stood there motionless, hands in the air. His eyes tracked rapidly over my face. I sensed him comparing images: the girl he’d last seen, the boy before him. The person he’d hurt and the person who was going to hurt him back, over, and over, and over.
“You sound so different,” he said softly.
My teeth gritted. Otherwise I would shriek.
Adam’s arms trembled, straining. “Look, there’ll be time for this later. I came to warn you.”
“Get the fuck out of my sight.”
“Ren.” My name in his mouth struck like a sucker punch. “You are not safe. She’s destroying you.”
I drew the gun. “Get the fuck. Out of my sight.”
“Ren, listen to me—”
“Stop fucking saying that.” Safety off. Raise and aim. “Leave before I kill you.”
He took several hasty steps back. “Okay. I’m just going to—”
“Turn around. Walk away.”
My voice was deeper than his now. It rang out over the pavement, hard as steel.
Obediently, he turned. Without another word he walked off.
I put the gun in my coat. When he was a speck at the end of the block, I turned in the other direction and ran.
———
In a blind fervor I crossed street after street, taking random turns through a maze of metal and stone. Lights flashed senselessly, devoid of meaning. There was nowhere to run that was safe but I kept moving anyway.
My phone was ringing.
Her.
“Thank fucking God you answered.” Ingrid’s voice was distant, windswept. Car tires crackled on pavement. “I need your help. Please.”
I breathed deeply. “What happened?”
“I’m being followed.”
I stopped in the middle of a sidewalk. Nearby a traffic light clicked from yellow to red, unsettlingly loud. “By who?”
“Who do you think? Your fucking psycho girlfriend.”
“Where are you?”
“On my way home.”
“Don’t go home.”
“No shit.” She sighed. “What the fuck should I do?”
I clutched the bottle in my pocket.
Truth was like a kaleidoscope. With every twist, it looked totally different. All the bits rearranged themselves, some coming clear, others growing obscure. But in the end it was the same pieces every time. All that changed was how you saw them.
“Come meet me at Umbra,” I said.
Long pause. “Black Iris is there.”
“I know. And Inge?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring Norah with you.”
———
Umbra, a place of undoings and endings. We always came back here to fall apart. The place where Laney had ripped Armin’s heart out, where a blonde and a brunette had ruined me. It devoured its own.
The bouncers eyed me coldly.
That would change, I thought. In time.
As I moved through the crowd heads turned, whispers swirling. It’s him, it’s him. How damning it seemed, the pronoun I once longed for. I kept my chin up, refusing to be cowed. Let them see my face. Let them see me unafraid, standing against the lie.
Soon they’d understand.
On my way downstairs, my phone vibrated.
TAMSIN: Here yet?
I froze on the marble steps. My pulse clogged my throat.
REN: Yes
REN: Is she with you?
No answer. Then, a photo:
Ingrid, sitting in a pool of warm candlelight. Hair in her face as she glowered at the camera. Wrists and ankles taped to the chair.
REN: Don’t hurt her, Tam TAMSIN: Oh, I won’t TAMSIN: We’re saving her for you I took the steps two at a time.
At the bottom I sprinted, my heart gunning wildly. The door to the Black Iris meeting chamber was shut. I hauled it open, remembering Adam inside, defenseless.
How badly I’d wanted to hurt him.
How badly I wanted to hurt her now.
Tamsin turned, gun in hand. It hung at her thigh and she didn’t raise it. Her face wore that wry, savvy expression I found so lovely. Ingrid’s face was a total blank. A cipher, a zero.
I closed the door.
“Where’s Laney?” I said.
“Upstairs, with the others. Waiting.” Tamsin stepped aside. “This is yours, Ren.”
Ingrid watched me approach.
On the court, when we stood side by side, people feared us. They knew how strong we were together. I’d spent years learning her: first her mind, when we were young, its inexorable clockwork, its sharp steel gears clicking, clicking. Then her body, in adolescence. The unrealness of its beauty, her paper-white skin, her boy-straight bones. Then, when we moved away from home, I finally learned her heart. That crag of cruel ice lying beneath still water, a thing that would shipwreck whatever came near it.
I had feared her all this time, too. Her power over me. Her cold, jagged love.
I still feared her now.
“Ingrid,” I said, and it came out a croon.
She watched me kneel at her feet. Watched me draw the Beretta, lay it on the floor, and push.
Tam caught it beneath her heel.
“Don’t let me use that,” I said.
“She bloody deserves it.”
“I know.”