Eventually I ease out of the chair to return to my bedroom. The corridor is cold and devoid of light, but voices float down from the fourth floor. My ever-present craving for answers flares. It still outweighs everything else, including any notions of love. I know it’s dangerous. I know it has the power to destroy.
I’m climbing the stairs without another thought, making my way down the hallway to the door opposite Calvin’s room. When a floorboard groans underneath me, I freeze, waiting for my heart to calm. I approach the doorway with caution. It’s closed, and I can’t decipher anything through the bass of Calvin’s voice.
If he catches me, I can’t be sure he won’t lock me up again, but the possibility of information is worth it. I mold myself into the corner next to the door and squat down to wait. For what, I don’t know.
Calvin’s voice stops and starts, as though he’s on the phone. The door opens without warning, spilling light into the hallway.
“It’s downstairs,” Norman says. “Give me a minute.”
Norman leaves the door ajar. There’s soft clicking from the room as I stand slowly but deliberately, wrap my hand around the doorframe, and incline my head through it.
What I see causes breath to stick in my throat, zaps my saliva, leaves me bone dry. Blood drains from my muscles as the resolve to stay upright vanishes. The world undulates, flips over, is somehow upside down. The pain of my nails digging into the wood tells me this is real. Calvin holds a mask. The charcoal, pebbled rubber covering his body looks unexpectedly soft and forgiving this close. He’s dressed in a uniform I’ve seen glimpses of in the media but even if I hadn’t, I would still know it. He’s dressed exactly like Hero.
37
Calvin
My belt locks into place, and I snatch a notepad from the desk to review the address. Not surprising that I’m called to the East Side again. I shake my head, wondering if this cycle of me versus them will ever end.
Norman’s gasp in the hallway causes me to whip around. The door is wide open, and an ashen Cataline is in the room, looking on the verge of vomiting.
There is nothing but red. She is misted with it. The room is unnaturally hot and alive with fury as I charge toward her. I barely register Norman between us, shouting at me to calm down as I shove him aside and grasp her shoulders. “What are you doing in here?”
Her entire body twitches. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Master—”
“Enough!” I yell at Norman as I give her a hard shake. “I warned you about—”
“Sneaking around?” she asks, low and even. “You gave me no choice. Answer my question. Why are you wearing that?”
“Who do you think you are demanding anything from me?”
Her expression remains eerily passive as she takes my anger. My grip is too tight on her arms, but she doesn’t even flinch.
“You have to tell her the truth,” Norman says. “Please, let go of her.”
I’m inhaling and exhaling at an unnatural pace, willing my hands to loosen, but I can’t tell if they do. Regardless, her eyes are cool and focused on mine.
“Why are you dressed like him?”
“Listen to me. Go back to bed and forget what you’ve seen. It’s for your own good. I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”
“Fuck you.”
I snatch her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “I’ve had enough of your smart mouth. Another word, and I will beat that attitude right out of you.”
“Calvin,” Norman exclaims.
“Shut up. She knows what she got herself into. This is your fault for coddling her all the time.”
“I don’t care if you beat me half to death,” Cataline says as if she were commenting on the weather. “Just tell me why. Why are you wearing Hero’s armor, Calvin?”
I release her chin and raise my hand. Norman latches onto my arm, knowing full well he could never stop me.
“You’re a disgrace to that suit,” she says. “You’re not even worth the dirt under Hero’s shoe.”
My palm connects hard with her face, and she takes two steps back.
Her face is turned away, her hand covering her cheek. She looks at me in slow motion. “Why are you wearing that? Why am I here?”
My hands dive into my hair and pull. “I can’t tell you. Stop asking.”
“I’ve done everything you’ve asked,” she says through gritted teeth. “You’ve taken everything from me. Give me this. Tell me this isn’t true. Tell me there’s been a mistake. Tell me—”
“I can’t,” I say.
“When can you?”
“Never.”
She stares at me as the room is sucked into a deafening silence. The incredulity in her face melts away until there’s nothing there. “Never?” she repeats in a choked whisper.
“No. Information is a privilege you haven’t earned. Even if you had, I wouldn’t give it to you.”
She takes more steps away until her back collides with the wall. She stands there silently quaking with a blank expression until bolting from the room.
As her bare feet slap down the hallway, I shake my head and look at Norman. “Watch her closely while I’m gone tonight.”
“Master Parish, don’t you see what you’re doing? I beg you, tell her the truth. You’re causing more damage than the Cartel ever could.”
I snort. “You don’t know the lengths they’d go through to get to me. They’re the enemy. Not me.”
“You hit her.”
I glare at him, the asteroid of anger burning through me again. My ears prick when I hear a dense thud. “What was that?”
Norman’s head tilts. “What?”
“That noise.”
“I don’t hear anything, sir.”
It comes again, and I walk toward the door. “What the . . . ?”
The sound of shattering glass has me sprinting down the hallway, flying down the steps two at a time. Cataline’s door is locked, so I burst through it, sending splintered wood all over the floor. The room is black and freezing. My eyes sharpen on her immediately. Through the broken window, wind swirls white gauze curtains around her as she drags a shard of glass up her forearm, a bloody trail in its wake.
“Cataline, what—”
“Stop. Stay away from me.” She switches hands, and red drops spill over her glowing white skin. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. I’m so done.”
I step toward her.
“Stop,” she says. “Or I will drive this into my heart right now.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. Put that down, and we can talk.”
She throws the shard on the ground and screams, “I want to die. As long as I’m here, I’m already dead. Just let me do it!”
“You don’t want that,” I say with as much calm as I can muster. My heart is in my ears, and my blood is pumping as I take more steps. “You’re in shock.”
She tears at her hair with disjointed claws, smearing blood over her face. Glass crunches under her feet as she backs up against the windowsill. “I’d rather be dead than stay here another minute with no answers.”
“Cataline, my Sparrow, I will give you your answers. Just come to me.”
“Are you Hero?” she asks.
I suddenly understand the fear of all my victims. It combines into a mass in my chest and grows inside me. Fear that she’ll jump. Fear of the truth. If I tell her, her hate for me will be a living, breathing thing. I swallow it down. “Yes.”
“Oh, God,” she moans up at the ceiling. “Why? He was supposed to save me. Why?”
She climbs backward onto the cushioned seat with her palm out. “Stay back. You've done enough. You can’t fuck with me anymore.”
I ignore her, sprinting as she falls backward out the window.
38
Cataline
My skin is sucked around my bones like shrink-wrap. I’m dry, like I’ve cried and bled everything from myself. I can’t escape the overpowering smell of blood, the metal-in-my-mouth taste, the thickness of it smeared over my hands and in my hair. Every choice that mattered was taken away from me. Only one was ever truly mine.