Neither does Mom. Her lips move, but nothing comes out.
The window isn’t digitalized for sound.
“Kit?” Niles leans back, sees my face, and spins. I’m behind his shoulder, his arm a barrier between me and her.
Then he swears.
“I can’t hear her,” I say.
He jogs forward and rubs his hand over the glass. Searches for a control point, a switch, a button. Maybe her soul.
She blinks.
“No speakers.” He slams the window with his palm.
Her face blitzes, fuzzed by the reverberation.
“No!” I tug him back and take his spot.
She’s here, right here. Under my fingertips, cheek smearing shimmers with each light drag. Her lips move, and I mimic their shape with my own.
“Ends,” I whisper.
Niles steps close. “What?”
I ignore him to sound out her words. “I have . . . tears—things, but rest—this . . . mystery, mine? They say good—good what?—three, but I really relieve—believe? In four.”
Mom cups her empty hands, raises them to her lips, and blows.
My palms tingle.
She says something else. It ends in heart.
Mine cracks.
“No,” I say.
The image fizzes, pops. The puppy returns, flopping ears and wagging tail.
“NO!” I slam the window twice as hard as Niles did. The glass reverberates. “Come back! You come back! You can’t leave this on me, you don’t have the right.” I smack the glass again and again, and then there’s an arm around my waist and a solid boy at my back.
He lifts me up, my feet swinging as he backs us away.
“No!” I kick—twist, tug. His arms are steel, his chest a wall. Lips at my ear, breath in my hair. “Kit, Kit, calm down.”
“Calm down!” I twist hard enough to break his hold. Or else his arms loosened. I face him. His hands don’t leave my waist. “I don’t have to calm down. My mother is dead and she was right there.”
Calling me brightheart, like she used to. When I was young.
I pull free of Niles. Grab my hair and get the stupid scarf instead. I toss it to the pavement. Kick it for good measure. “They’re dead.” I swing round and punch the window. My bones crunch my knuckles into my elbow, and my whole arm wails. “The Archive’s entire night crew. You heard. They had to pull that lady’s daughter out on a stretcher.”
“I know.” Niles’s behind me. Not tugging and lifting, just quiet and there. “I know.”
“She’ll never get her daughter back. She’s gone.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not okay,” I say.
“It’s not your fault.”
“She was my mom.”
“Don’t take on her sins.” His arms wrap around my waist, but I am stone and don’t move. “They aren’t yours.”
“You don’t know that,” I whisper.
“Yeah I do,” whispered back.
I twist, flatten my palm on his chest to push him away or pull him close, I can’t tell. “How?”
“Easy.” He takes my face in both hands and kisses my bruised cheek, at the heart of the ache. And it weirdly feels better, like I’m some kind of kid.
I close my eyes. “Weren’t you just yelling at me for that?”
“Because it was stupid as hell.” His mouth skims my jaw, breath and heat. Another kiss. “And brilliant. God, you’ve got guts. Hell, the second time I saw you, you—” He stops.
I open my eyes. “Got in a fight over the intercom and blackmailed my aunt? Yeah, that was great.”
His face is quiet, skirting a blankness that almost takes over but doesn’t. “Blackmail?”
“I have shit on my cousin and threatened to use it. That’s why she backed down.” I twist my fingers in his shirt. “Who does that?”
His hands fall to my shoulders. “Isn’t he the one who dosed you?”
“He hadn’t dosed me then.”
And maybe he wouldn’t have at all, without the threat.
After that, Greg probably thought it an even exchange.
I sag. Release Niles’s maligned shirt, try to smooth out the wrinkles. “Niles?”
His hands tighten. “Yeah?”
The question drags at my tongue, aches with my cheek, but the past is past and probably should stay there.
There’s only so much damage a day can handle.
I step away from him. “We should go.”
“Kit.” Tight and clipped. He stands very straight, arms listless. “Ask me. Just ask.”
Well, I guess I started this.
“What was your dad’s reputation? The one he left you with?”
Niles doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, the question caught in the air or the grid of his brain. A closed grid behind silent eyes.
“Skip it,” I say. “I wasn’t trying—”
“Appropriation,” he says. “I’d say embezzlement but it’s not about money, though he certainly takes his cut. It’s about leverage.” He grins, beautiful and twisted. “And my dad excels at leverage. Think, Decker.”
My jaw drops. “He’s not—?”
“No. Not him.” Niles jams his hands in his pockets and he looks away. “And just so we’re clear? I’m pretty damn good myself. Even outclassed Dad a time or—”
I reach for his neck, step close and kiss him. Taste his surprise, his stillness, hesitant lips belied by the hand at my hip, grasping for anchor. A brief kiss, nothing special.
It shouldn’t be this hard to breathe.