Caliga delicately nibbles a cuticle. She’s dressed in a long, flowing blouse of deep purple and tobacco-hued cigarette pants, her white hair in a bun on her head. I’m sure I look like an orphan from a fifth-world country compared to her.
“He said you’d come.” She studies her fingertips when she says this. Apparently her cuticle deserves more attention.
“I don’t really care what Micah says about me,” I mumble with my half-numbed tongue.
“You little idiot. I’m not talking about Micah.”
I snap my head up. Who is she talking about?
Tegg slips into the front seat and starts the char. In the rearview mirror, he checks on me, then glances at Caliga. “Lights out, dearest.”
“Oh, right,” she says. One hand goes to cover my eyes and they go numb, doing that rubber eyeball thing again. I blink and see nothing. The char pitches to the left and speeds up, making me sink deeply into the leather seats. Ugh, not good. My belly swirls faster than a gyroscope, and acid creeps up into the back of my mouth. I’m charsick.
“You’re nauseating,” I mumble.
“I think you take the cake, honey. Have you seen a mirror lately?”
What an annoying rhetorical question, when clearly I can’t see a thing. I turn my face away from her, trying not to squirm. The Carus kids may look frightening, but they’re not monsters. This girl is a totally different beast.
Caliga clucks her tongue. “I know what you’re thinking. You with your nose in the air.” The leather seat creaks as she leans closer. “I have news for you. You’re just like us.”
“No. I’m nothing like—”
“Me? Why, because you’re magically less illegal? Because you want to live your life your way? I’ve made a choice about how I’m going to survive. My choice.”
“Shut up, both of you. And you . . .” Tegg pauses, and I know he means me by the disgust in his voice. “Take out your holo. Now. House rules.”
I’m in no position to protest, so I wiggle it out of my earlobe and offer it to the darkness in front of me. Caliga takes it, making my hand prickly and heavy, and causing my stomach contents to swirl inside my belly again. I hear the window open, and the air whips my hair against my rubbery eyelids. I’m guessing my holo just became a gutter ornament.
“Now, what’s this? You brought us a house-warming gift?” There’s a tug at Dyl’s purse, still firmly hanging across my torso, then the squirrelly feeling of a hand rummaging inside. I can tell from the slinking, metallic sound that she’s ignored the vials and has taken my necklace.
“No!” I yell, and smack the air around me haphazardly, trying to get it back. I’m so stupid. I should have put it on, just to be safe. My non-numbed hand swings to make contact with something soft and Caliga utters a cry of surprise.
“Uh! You little piece of—” Her hand clutches my neck, and numbness starts to seep down my chest, around my rib cage.
Tegg curses. “Leave her be. Remember what SunAj said. He wants her intact.”
Caliga lets go and makes a sulky noise. “Doesn’t matter,” she mutters, making clinking sounds with my necklace. “Nothing’s yours for much longer.” I’m afraid to tell her how valuable that necklace is to me. It’s one thing to be weak; another thing to be completely helpless.
Unfortunately for me, right now I’m both.
CHAPTER 27
THE CHAR FINALLY JERKS TO A STOP. Caliga opens the door and clickity-clacks in her heels away from the char. I stumble as I get out, and Tegg grabs my arm before I hit the pavement.
“Careful.”
“Like you really mean that,” I say.
“Look,” Tegg says blandly, “I really have nothing against you. It’s not personal.”
“It’s always personal for the losers.”
“We’re all on the losing end,” he says. “We’ll give you more of a life than that crap hole you lived in.”
“Complete with getting drugged out of my brains when I don’t do what you want? Or chopped into bits?”
“I didn’t say it was perfect,” he says quietly.
My vision returns in increments. First it’s grainy and gray, then bits of light flicker in and out. We enter a transport and fly diagonally but definitely downward, beneath the surface of Neia.
I can hear and feel a faint thrumming under my feet, like an enormous heartbeat. The transport doors open to a painfully bright room where the thrumming is a bit louder, and Tegg pokes a spiny finger into my shoulder, forcing me inside.
It’s white and glossy, furnished in white designer pieces. It’s what heaven looked like in the old movies I used to watch. But it can’t be heaven, for one simple reason.
Micah is here.
He is the only dark thing in the brilliant room. Sitting on a snowy chaise that belongs in Louis XIV’s sitting room, Micah pushes off and comes to meet me. His clothes are expensive-looking, his frame perfectly proportioned for any girl with eyeballs to notice. For a minute, there is nothing but that insistent beat vibrating through the floor and into my legs, my chest.
Tegg and Caliga hang way back. Do they know what’s coming?
“I’m so glad you came,” Micah says, his voice deep and velvety. He lifts my fingers into his, gently. The warmth of his hands doesn’t hurt, but I pull them back anyway.
“You didn’t really give me a choice, did you?”
“It’s the best choice. You’re on a winning team now.”
My right hand shoots out to slap him across the jaw, as hard as my exhausted body can muster. The crusted blisters of my palm open again on impact, and Micah jerks back, touching his red-smeared cheek. Before he can process his surprise, I slap him again.
“That’s what I think of your goddamned winning team. Now let’s get this over with.”
Micah’s face goes from beautiful to terrible in a single breath. “Then let’s go.” He grabs my wrist, and it burns as if he’s holding me over a torch.
It’s unbearable. My knees buckle, but Micah doesn’t let go. My screams echo against the white walls, until I’m hearing myself in 3-D agony. Tegg coughs uncomfortably.
“C’mon Kw, that’s enough.”
Micah releases me and I crumple to the floor, cradling my wrist. The pain is white-hot, worsening instead of getting better. I open my eyes to see a bubbling mess of blisters and red skin. My brain is pounding, yelling at me to run away, undo every choice I made to get to this moment. I think of Ana and her fingertips and my sister. What have I gotten myself into?
“I’m sorry, Zelia. I didn’t want to do that.”
I suck in my tears and swallow the pain. Micah yanks my good arm without shocking me, pulling me to my feet. I am led toward the other end of the room. A panel opens to reveal a place so dark that I think the lights must be out.
One thing is unchanged since I’ve arrived, though. The incessant heartbeat of Aureus doesn’t stop. It throbs right into my brain, and I wonder if the walls have blood and guts flowing within them.
This room is four times as big as the white one. There is a man sitting in a large armchair with a gilded book in one hand, a teacup in the other. He lifts his head, turns his profile only a single degree in a glance to make sure I am who he thinks I am—the newest acquisition to Aureus—and goes back to his book. How he reads in such gloominess is beyond me.
To my right, the thick squat boy from the club sits on the floor, picking his teeth. He doesn’t look at me, and actually turns away when I step closer, as if he’s afraid to make eye contact. On the left, a girl with espresso-colored skin and a bob of black hair lies on her stomach, reading a book. She’s clothed in more black, making her a living shadow in this dark room. A pair of wraparound sunglasses covers her eyes, the same ones you see old people wear in bright sunlight. An odd thing, given how dim the room is. I wonder if this is Blink, the one Ana said swims in the black.