“How is it?”
Kevin chewed a while longer, then swallowed it with effort.
“Tough,” he said. “And kind of, I don’t know, bloody-tasting?”
Glenn’s stomach turned. “Uck.”
Kevin’s face darkened, the muscles of his jaw tensed. He shook his head. “We probably still have a lot of walking to do,” he said as he dug in. “Who knows when we’ll eat next. Don’t see how we can be choosy.”
Glenn poked through the stew. The bloody wildness of it rose to her nostrils. Glenn pushed the bits of meat and gristle to the side of the plate and ate the vegetables and broth as quickly as she could, washing it down with gulps from her tankard.
“So, what do we do next?”
“Stay the night,” Glenn said. “What else would we do?”
“And tomorrow?”
“Wait for Aamon and then go.”
“And if he doesn’t come?”
Glenn’s spoon hovered over the mess in front of her. She saw the horde of men rushing toward them. Aamon’s wounds.
“He’ll come,” she said.
“But — ”
“If he’s not here in the morning, we keep going to Bethany. He’ll find us there. Then we destroy the bracelet and go home.”
Glenn glared until Kevin looked away. He pushed the food
around his plate, then turned to watch the room behind them. When he was done, he leaned across the table toward Glenn.
“Maybe Opal can help you,” he said. “She told me what the
bracelet could do to the Magistra. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use it to help people instead of — ”
“Kevin.”
“You saw what Garen Tom did to that boy. He did that because of her. The Magistra. And Opal’s son and his friends. That’s all because of her.”
“I know that.”
“If we had a way to stop her — ”
“I said no!”
A ripple of quiet went through the room around them. Kevin
stared hard at her, his lips a thin line. Finally he shook his head and attacked what was left of his food.
Glenn pushed her plate away to get rid of the smell of flesh as the musicians started up another song, this one even louder and faster than the first. When Kevin had cleaned the plate, he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, a smear of the bloody stew on his chin.
The waitress appeared at their table. “Can I get you anything else, dears?”
“Sure,” Glenn answered, getting up from the table. “Slaughter whatever you have in the kitchen and toss it on his plate. Don’t even bother to cook it.”
Glenn left without a backward look and trundled up rickety stairs to the second floor. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, automatically searching for a light switch. She pulled them back with a frustrated grunt and kept going.
The landing she came to was dimly lit with candles placed in little alcoves along the walls. Glenn snatched one up, hissing as a molten bit of wax singed her fingers, and made her way through the smoky murk to the only open door she could find.
The glow from her candle illuminated a mostly bare room with just a window and a small wood-frame bed and table. Glenn lit a few other candles she found and sat on the mattress. It crunched beneath her, releasing a musty, haylike smell. The noise from downstairs came up through the floorboards, garbled but no softer.
Glenn longed for a shower. She was nearly entombed in sweat, river water, and dirt. Her muscles ached. All she needed was hot water and soap and steam to make them unfold. How did people live like this?
She pulled off her coat and fell back onto the bed, looking up at the plain wood of the ceiling. She tried to see galaxies of stars in the swirl of the wood’s grain, planets in its knots, but the image wouldn’t hold. She longed for the feel of Hopkins nestled beside her, his small body vibrating as he purred, but thinking of him only brought to mind Aamon’s face and a fresh stab of remorse.
“Hey.”
Glenn bolted upright. A man was standing in the open door, a dark figure illuminated in the candlelight. It took a moment for Glenn to realize it was Kevin. “Oh,” he said, leaning back into the hall.
“There’s only the one bed. I can sleep outside.”
“No!” she said quickly. No matter what she felt about Kevin she couldn’t imagine being left alone in that strange place. “One of us can take the floor. It’ll be fine.”
Kevin stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Well …
you should take the bed.”
“No, you can — ”
“Hey, who’s the jerk who let you pilot that boat all night? Take the bed, Morgan. Seriously.”
Glenn settled onto the mattress as Kevin crossed the room and sat down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. He pulled his boots off, then collapsed against the plaster wall with an exhausted sigh.
His face was ashen and deeply lined. He yawned and brushed the stubble on his head back and forth under his palm.
“Guess I cut it a little uneven, huh?”
Kevin shrugged. “I keep expecting it to be there, I guess.”
“How’s your side?” Glenn asked.
“Better. Opal gave me some different stuff. Wouldn’t have made it this far if she didn’t.”
“Good,” Glenn said. “Maybe without you constantly whining
about your gunshot wound we’ll actually be able to make some time.”
Kevin looked up at her, surprise quickly growing into a wide smile and a small laugh that Glenn was happy to echo. His face lit up, so distinctly Kevin. In that moment there didn’t seem to be a trace of Cort in him.
Maybe it was never even there, Glenn thought. Maybe it was all in my head.
Below them, the violinist finished the song with a flourish, and the patrons of the inn shouted their appreciation. Heavy treads moved from the tables to the bar and back again. The front door opened and closed and the bar grew more silent in stages.
“Look,” Glenn said. “Downstairs and all — the fighting — it’s stupid. We’re just … we’ll be fine. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”
Kevin pulled a spare blanket off the end of the bed and lay down on the floor. Glenn drew the covers aside and laid down too. The mattress was thin, but the blankets were heavy and warm.
It struck her how close they were, him lying just inches from her.
Glenn leaned over the side. Kevin was flat on his back, cramped in the tiny space, his eyes shut. She saw him as he was only days ago after she had stayed after school to help him study and they’d tramped through Berringford Homes together, and then as he was sitting at a train platform, a haze of snow blowing between them.
It struck Glenn how their whole life had been made up of such little things. Homework. Teachers. Tests. Names of bands. The sound of each other’s voices bouncing back and forth between them like a game. How when he looked at her, his body close, his brown eyes black in the dark, there was a swell in her chest that she had to force down, terrified it would rise up and overtake her.
Were they really little things? she wondered. Or am I just seeing them from far away?
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
It was Glenn’s own voice, but she barely recognized it. Her arm snaked out and drew the covers back. Kevin lay motionless in the dark.
“It’s too cold,” she said. “And we need to rest. Come on.”
There was a rustle. The blankets rose and fell and then, after a long pause, there was Kevin’s warmth filling the bed next to her. She was on her back and he was on his. A narrow corridor of air was all that separated her body from his. Glenn thought of a line of surface tension resting on top of a lake, a thin membrane riding between air and sky on one side and the dark shifting depths below. She remembered placing her hand on the flat of Opal’s wall that night and seeing that illusion for what it was for the first time.
Nothing is separate, she thought. Everything is one thing.