Conditions.
Stell slid Marcella’s invitation through the fiberglass slot. “Will this work?”
Eli took the card, his eyes dancing across the words.
“Yes,” he said, “I think it will.”
IV
THE NIGHT BEFORE
MERIT
VICTOR needed a drink.
He spotted a bleak stretch of low buildings, bland, forgettable, a bar sandwiched between them, and started across the street, digging his cell from his pocket.
Mitch answered on the second ring.
“We were getting worried. What happened with Dumont?”
“It was a trap,” said Victor flatly. “He was only human.”
Mitch swore. “EON?”
“Indeed,” said Victor. “I got away, but I won’t risk leading them back to the Kingsley.”
“Is that him?” called Syd in the background. “What happened?”
“Should we leave?” asked Mitch.
Yes, thought Victor. But they couldn’t. Not now. The movement would only draw EON’s further attention. They’d set their trap at the hospital, lain in wait. They’d gotten Victor to come to them, which meant they hadn’t been able to find him. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Did they already know about Sydney? What would happen if they found her instead?
“Stay in the apartment,” he said. “Don’t answer the door. Don’t let anyone in. Call me if you notice anything or anyone outside.”
“What about you?” asked Mitch.
But Victor didn’t have an answer to that question yet, so instead he hung up and stepped into the bar. It was a dive, poorly lit and more than half-empty. He ordered a whiskey and settled into a booth along the back wall where he could keep an eye on the bar’s only door and the handful of patrons while he waited.
Victor had pocketed a battered paperback from the center console of the ambulance—now he dug it out, along with a black felt pen, and let the broken spine fall open under his hand.
Old habits. The pen cut a steady path, blacking out the first line, and then the second. He felt his pulse slow with each erasure, each measure of text reduced to a solid black streak. The first word was always the hardest to find. Now and then, he searched for a specific one, and then erased the text around it, but most of the time, though Victor was loath to admit it, even to himself, the practice felt less like a physical act than a metaphysical one.
He let the pen skate across the page, waiting for a word to stop its path. He cut through pride, fall, change, before finally coming to a stop at the word find. His pen skipped over a solo a two lines later, then continued down the page until it found way.
Victor was running out of time, and out of leads, but he wasn’t giving up.
Sydney, Mitch, Dominic—they all behaved as though surrender were a risk, an option. But it wasn’t. Some fractional part of Victor wished he could stop trying, stop fighting, but it simply wasn’t in him. That same stubborn will to survive, the very trait that first made him into an EO, now prevented him from acquiescing. From admitting defeat.
Whatever’s happened to you, however you’re hurt, you’ve done it to yourself.
That’s what Campbell had said. And the EO was right. Victor had always been the master of his fate. He had climbed onto that steel table. He had coerced Angie into flipping the switch. He had goaded Eli into killing him five years before, knowing Sydney would bring him back.
Every action had been his own design, every step his own making.
If there was a way out of this, he would find it.
If there wasn’t, he would make one himself.
The bar’s only door swung open, and a few moments later Victor heard a voice, the words lost in the crowd, but the accent unmistakable.
He looked up.
There was a small, brunette woman with fox-sharp features leaning across the bar. He’d never seen the person before, but Victor knew it was her—the woman from the strip club. The concerned Samaritan from the alley, too. And of course, most recently, the doctor who’d helped him escape EON. It wasn’t just the accent that Victor recognized. It was the look in the woman’s eyes—behind her eyes, really—as she glanced toward him, the mischievous smile that lit her face. If it was her face.
They were an EO—that much was obvious.
He watched as the shapeshifter took up their drink and headed toward him.
“Is this seat taken?” Again, that lilting voice.
“That depends,” said Victor. “The Glass Tower—was that the first time we met?”
A wry smile cut across the vulpine face. “It was.”
“But not the last.”
“No,” said the EO, sinking into the chair across from him. “Not the last.”
Victor curled his fingers around his glass. “Who are you?”
“Think of me as a kind of guardian angel. You can call me June.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Ah,” said June wistfully, “real is a murky thing, for someone like me.”
The woman sat forward, and as she did, she changed. There was no hinge, no transition—the brunette girl dissolved, replaced by strawberry curls and dark blue eyes in a heart-shaped face.
“Do you like it?” asked June, as if she were asking his opinion of a new dress, not a distorted reflection of the only girl Victor had ever loved. “It’s the best I can do, considering the real one is dead.”
“Change,” said Victor tersely.
“Aw,” June sulked. “But I picked her just for you.”
“Change,” he ordered.
The blue-eyed gaze leveled on him, a challenge, a dare. Victor rose to meet it. His fingers twitched as he took hold of her nerves, turned the dial in her chest—but if the woman felt any pain, it didn’t register on her face. Her power—somehow it was shielding her.
“Sorry,” said June with a wan smile. “You can’t hurt me.”
A faint emphasis on the last word.
Victor leaned forward. “I don’t need to.”
He splayed his hand across the worn wood table, pinning her body to the chair.
A faint crease formed between June’s eyes, the only hint of struggle as she fought his hold.
“There are so many nerves in a human body,” said Victor. “Pain is only one of the possible signals. A single instrument in a symphony.”
A smirk fought its way onto the girl’s mouth. “But how long do you think you can hold me? An hour? A day? Until your next death? I wonder, which one of us will give up first?”
They were at an impasse.
Victor let go.
June exhaled, rolling her neck. As she did, the girl with the strawberry curls fell away, replaced by the brunette she’d been wearing before. “There. All better?”
“Why have you been following me?” asked Victor.
“I have a vested interest,” said June. “And I’m not the only one. There’s an EO in this city who would very much like to meet you. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.”
Marcella Riggins.
The EO currently treating Merit like her own personal playground. The one who, against all odds, had yet to burn out.
“I see,” said Victor slowly. “So you’re just the messenger.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed June’s face. “Hardly.”
“And why,” he asked, “would I want to meet with Marcella?”
June shrugged. “Curiosity? The fact you’ve got nothing to lose? Or maybe—you’ll do it for Sydney’s sake.”
Victor’s expression darkened. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”
“No,” said June, and for once there was no mischief, no malice, in her voice. Her expression was open, honest. She hadn’t changed faces, but the difference was just as striking. “I do care what happens to that girl.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“Everyone’s got secrets, Victor. Even our darling Syd. How do you think I found you today at Merit Central? She looks out for you, and you should be doing the same for her. I know you’re sick. I’ve seen you die. And we both know Sydney’s got a long life ahead. What happens when you’re not around to protect her?” The earnestness dissolved, replaced once more by that wry twist of the lips, that sly glint of light behind the eyes. “She’s a powerful girl, our Syd. She’ll need allies when you’re gone, and we both know you already killed her first choice.”
Victor looked down into his drink. “Is that what Marcella is, then? An ally?”
“Marcella,” said June pointedly, “is powerful.”
“What exactly is her power?”
“Come see for yourself.”
June swiped the battered paperback and pen.
“Tomorrow,” she said, scribbling the details on the inside cover. “And just so you know,” she added, rising. “When Marcella makes an offer, she only does it once.” She nudged the book back toward him.
“Don’t waste it.”
V
THE NIGHT BEFORE
FIRST AND WHITE
JUNE hummed softly as the elevator rose.
When she reached the top floor, she found two men in dark suits standing outside the penthouse door. They were new, and one had the poor sense to try to stop her as she passed.