As though reading my mind, Quillan shook his head. “It’s out there now; no taking it back. This isn’t good, Seph.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked, feeling defensive. “Her dad just died. I mean… I won’t be laying flowers on his grave anytime soon, but that sucks. I didn’t want to fight with her.”
“I know.” His fingers wound around my wrist, squeezing gently, and the crumpled map fell from my hand—drawing my attention to the fact that I had been slowly balling it up into my fist.
He picked up the map, tucked it into my bag and took me by the shoulders, steering me toward the back of the room. I didn’t ask where we were going because I didn’t really care. Quillan could do what he wanted—we all knew it to be true. Thankfully, he only ever used his power for good.
I was pretty sure, anyway.
There was a small studio attached to the back-end of the room and I jumped a little upon walking through the doorway, because paper had crinkled beneath my feet. Quillan flicked on a light and the brightness of it reflecting from the white all around me caused another flinch. I was jumpy—as I had been for months—but all of that melted away when I realised what I was standing inside of.
“Whoa,” I gasped, moving into the center and turning in a circle.
Paper had been stuck to everything, lining up so seamlessly that each of the four walls seemed to be four large, fresh sheets of white. The ceiling and floor were also covered in paper, and I assumed that the windows had been boarded up and similarly covered, as the only sources of light were from the bare lightbulbs that dangled down on the ends of wires. At my feet lay an offering of materials—anything that I might have wished to get my hands on; but my eyes were immediately drawn to the paints. I knelt, laying a hand on a can the size of my head, an oil-based in a dark turquoise colour. With my other hand I began to skim over the plethora of brushes, pausing at one in particular. It looked too small for the paper-room, but it called to something inside of me that wanted to bleed free.
“It’s time, don’t you think?” Quillan asked me, before backing out of the room.
He was leaving me alone. Alone to face my demons, and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. I jerked away from the paintbrush, withdrawing both of my hands and shoving them deep into the pockets of my jacket, for good measure. Something small and hard brushed against my knuckle and I pulled out Silas’s phone, letting it fall to the paper floor between my knees.
I had searched it over and over and hadn’t found a single thing that might have been meant for me, or anything even partway useful. All of the pictures had been deleted, the text messages were cryptic and unexciting, and any documents that might have been stored in the phone had been wiped.
I couldn’t decide if I were angry at Quillan for shutting me in there or not. My fingers itched to paint, but my brain shrank back in fear. My valcrick had abandoned me… what if the forecasting was gone, too?
Or what if it hadn’t gone anywhere, and it showed me something horrible?
What if it showed me him?
I stood, abandoning the phone and walking to the door. I couldn’t do this. I tried the handle, but it was locked.
“Miro!” I pounded on it, but he didn’t answer. “Quillan!”
After several minutes of shouting and no reply, I stalked back to the middle of the room and sat down beside the phone. My hand flashed out instinctively for a paintbrush, which I proceeded to rap against my knee. I dug into my jeans pocket for my phone but came up empty, which meant that my phone was still inside my bag, which was back in the lecture hall. With a growl, I snatched up Silas’s phone and thumbed through the contents for the umpteenth time, moving from app to app and examining the contents of each. I hit the music button, and paused at the single song displayed there, the small hairs raising along my arms.
Why did he only have one song? I hovered my thumb over it, my eyes taking in the artist and title: Lo Fang – ‘You’re the One That I Want’.
I wanted so badly to think that it meant something, but I couldn’t allow myself any hope. I didn’t deserve it.