I move behind the counter, bust the lock, and open its sliding back wide. Dig through the shallow boxes, cushioned displays, and hanging racks. I sort and pull. Check and recheck. Scan the same three shelves three times.
It’s not here. Not Mom’s bracelet, not Yonni’s pendant. Which makes no sense, because this is where all the pricey stuff is kept.
All the stuff that’s on display.
Shit.
The room stretches, vast and frantic. The bracelet could be anywhere. It could be somewhere else entirely. A back office? His private collection?
Another customer’s pocket.
The floor sways. I brace my hands against the counter, arms straight and legs locked.
“No, you don’t,” I say. “You don’t pass out. You go over, wake him up, and ask.”
Because that worked so well last time.
My arms shake. They’re heavy. Everything’s heavy. My head weighs as much as a planet and wants to rotate more.
I’m going to fall over.
Not until I reach Decker, I won’t. He’s not that far. Just the other side of the House. Room. Whatever.
I round the counter and walk in a semistraight line. Manage not to step on anything. Not even Decker, spread-eagled and bloody.
He has a pulse. I checked. I remember checking.
I check again.
Somewhere down the hall a door scrapes, swooshes, and slams.
“Decker!” Deep, unknown, and male. “Where the hell are you, man? We were supposed to meet an hour ago.”
My heart jumps through my throat and out my ears.
I move, trinkets scattering with my sliding feet.
Loud, too loud, there’s nowhere to step that isn’t loud.
“Decker?”
I hit the wall by the door and slam the lights off just as the door opens.
A man steps in, biceps inches from my nose. He has big, massive, both-my-hands-together-couldn’t-wrap-around-them arms. I only come up to his shoulder.
I really am going to be sick.
He steps past me into the dark. “God dammit—stop with the games, Dec. I know you’re here.” His forearm rises and he half turns, reaching for me, the wall, the light.
I bolt.
“What the—?”
My legs are heavy, but my feet don’t care. I burn through the hall, pass door after door. Footsteps behind, harsh and gaining.
I hit the exit with my forearms. The long, horizontal handle flattening as I spill into the alley. I nearly slam into the wall opposite, elbow scraping stone as I skid a turn.
Fingers claw my back but slide off after a beat or three. A harsh grunt, a thud—maybe him hitting a wall. I don’t know, I don’t turn.
I run.
I collapse against the wall. A wall. Somewhere. I don’t know where. I don’t know— Stop, think.
I ran maybe four blocks, all toward home.
“East 5th.” My chest heaves air too hot to swallow. “I’m in East 5th.”
With no bracelet, few reds, and a highly pissed Decker—who now has motivation enough to get me before the Brinkers do.
I’ll have to go back.
I press my forehead into the ridged stone, hands flat on either side. My toes are numb. And my elbows, which is weird. I shouldn’t be awake right now, my whole body’s an exclamation to that point.
I can’t fight off a muscle man like this. Or Decker, who’s probably awake by now.
Which means he can tell me about the bracelet.
Without the bracelet, we’re all screwed.
I turn back. Push myself along the walkway, my sweaty hand streaking the windows of darkened storefronts.
“Kit?”
I spin and collapse into the glass.
Niles stands across the street, mouth open and staring. He’s still in his rumpled button-up, though he seems a bit more together. Must be the smoothed hair.
He jogs across the empty street. “God, I’ve been looking everywhere! Where the hell did you—Kit.”
Then he’s here, at my shoulder. A magically materialized being.
“You’re bleeding!” he says.
I lean into his chest and don’t say a word.
“Kit? Kit.” He pushes my hair off my shoulder, too busy checking my neck to hug me back.
Or kiss me. A kiss would be nice.
Niles raises his fingers. They’re bloody. Some of the blood is more blue than red. He sniffs them. Tastes one.
“Ew,” I say.
He stares like it’s the most incredible thing he’s ever heard. Or the most frightening. Incredibly frightening?
“How are you even standing right now?” he asks.
“Feet, toes, legs, bones.”
And all of them have places to be.
I bypass him, whole body sliding along the window. He fills the space ahead, so we’re leaning on the window together, and holds up his smeared hand. “This is avirimal.”
The one dosing agent even Greg wouldn’t deal in.
Well . . . shit.
“You don’t know that,” I say. “How can you know that?”
“It tastes like makieberris,” he says.
“Wait—you know what avirimal tastes like?”
“My dad told me.”
And his dad was into “appropriation.” Hell, he probably appropriated doses. Very dose appropriate.
I giggle.
Niles rubs my arms. “Can you feel your elbows?”
“Why would I want to?”
He snorts, grin flashing out before he bites it back. “God, only you. Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk.” I shake him off. “Go home.”
“Home? Home? I find you in East 5th—”
“One district over.”
“Dosed to hell—”
“I’m awake, aren’t I?”
“And bleeding.”