Her gloved hand goes to the gleaming gold below her throat. He snaps his fingers, and her jaw tightens as she gives the gold thread a swift tug, breaking it, and places the key in his palm. He considers it a moment.
And then he drives the metal into Agatha’s chest.
He doesn’t turn the key, but stands there, gripping her shoulder with one hand and the gold stem with the other, staring into her eyes while the room holds its breath. His lips move as he whispers something to her, so softly I can barely hear.
“You disappoint me.”
And then, as quickly as he struck, he withdraws the key, and Agatha gasps for breath.
“Get out,” he says, and she doesn’t hesitate, but turns, clutching her front, and hurries from the room, her cream-colored coat rippling behind her.
As the door closes behind her, Director Hale sighs and takes his seat, setting Agatha’s key on the table before him. The room is deathly still. Roland’s eyes are on the table. Dallas’s are on the floor.
But mine are on Hale.
“It may be true that nothing’s lost,” he says, “but everything must end. When is in my hands. I’d caution you to remember that, Miss Bishop.” He turns to Dallas. “See that she gets home safely.”
“Sir,” I say. “Please. What about Wesley?”
He waves a hand at the door. “He’s out there somewhere. Go find him.”
It’s all I can do not to shout Wesley’s name as I hurry down the hall and into the atrium, breaking into a run as the antechamber comes into sight—and with it, Wesley. He’s cut and bloody, swaying a little but still standing, his hands on his head. Patrick waits on one side of him and Lisa on the other, and the Crew who brought me in waits behind him, and I don’t care about any of them.
I run, and he looks up and sees me as I make it through the doors, and his hands fall from his head just in time to wrap around me.
We are both bruised and broken, wincing at the other’s touch even as we pull each other closer. My arms are tight around his waist, and his are tight around my shoulders. And when he presses his lips into the curve of my throat, I can feel his tears on my skin.
“You are an idiot,” I say, even as I guide his face and mouth to mine. I kiss him, not gently, but desperately. Desperately, because he’s worth it—because life is terrifying and short and I don’t know what will happen. All I know is that here and now, I am still alive, and I want to be with Wesley Ayers. Here and now I want to feel his arms wrapped around me. I want to feel his lips on mine. I want to feel his life tangling with mine. Here and now is all we have, and I want to make it worth whatever happens next.
I tighten my grip on Wes enough to make him break off his kiss with a gasp.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my lips hovering over his.
“I’m not,” he breathes, pulling me closer and kissing me deeper. I’m still afraid of caring—of breaking, of losing—but now there is something else matching the fear stride for stride: want.
“You said you trusted me,” I say.
“You said you were in the science hall. I guess we’re even.” He pulls me back toward him. “What happened tonight, Mac?” he whispers, lips against my jaw.
“I’ll tell you later,” I whisper back.
I can feel him smile tiredly against my cheek. “I’ll hold you to it.” His lips brush mine again, but someone clears her throat, and I force myself to pull away from Wesley’s kiss. Dallas is standing there waiting.
“All right, you two,” she says. “Plenty of time for that. Right now I have to get you back to school.” She’s standing by the desk, and for the first time I notice the smoldering wreckage of the ledger.
“What happened?” I ask.
“The only thing Owen Chris Clarke achieved was an act of vandalism,” says Lisa, gesturing to the book. “He burned it.”
Dallas shakes her head and gestures to the door. The Crew who dragged me is standing there, and I tense when I see him.
“No hard feelings,” he says.
“I’m sure,” I say, Wesley’s hand tangling with mine.
“Just doing my job.” But he smiles when he says it. It’s not a gentle smile, and I’m reminded of the things that filled his noise—the fun of the hunt.
“I’d tell you not to be such an ass, Zachary,” says Dallas, brushing him away from the door, “but it would be a waste of my breath. I don’t know how Felicia tolerates you.” And with that she turns her key, the door opens onto sirens and darkness, and Wesley and I follow Dallas back onto Hyde’s campus.
In the Outer, Wesley’s noise pours through my head, a tangle of want and love, relief and shock and fear. I don’t know what’s singing across my skin, but I don’t pull away. I trust him with it.
Most of the buildings look all right—though the fire ate away a good deal of the ivy—but the field with its streamers and lanterns and booths is a charred black mess.
“Is everyone okay?”
“A few burns here, a few stitches there, but everyone will live.”
My eyes slide from her face to her clothing. The black of her cotton shirt is crusted darker with blood, its stain streaking across her exposed skin. “Everyone except Eric,” I say as she leads us around the scorched scene and toward the front gate. “That’s why you were late.”
She nods grimly. “I tried to get his body into one of the flare-up fires before the emergency vehicles got here. Make it look like an accident.”
“And Sako?” I ask.
Dallas rubs her hands together, and blood flakes off to the ground below. “She took off. I sent Zachary’s partner, Felicia, to find her.”
“I think I broke her nose,” says Wesley.
Dallas gives him a once-over. “It looks like she got in a few good hits.”
“So you’re Crew, too?” I ask as she leads us toward the burned remains of the festival.
“No,” says Dallas. “I’m what you might call a field assessor. It’s my job to make sure everything and everyone ticks and tocks the way they should.”
“And if they don’t?” asks Wes.
She shrugs. “If they belong to the Archive, I turn them in. If they belong to the Outer, I fix them myself.”
“You make alterations,” I say. “Wipe memories.”
“When I have to,” she says. “It’s my job to clean up. I already took care of that cop, Kinney. I’ll have to send Crew in to get the evidence, but at least I carved you out of his head. As far as he knows, the explosions are what knocked him out.”
So many questions are rolling through my mind, but we reach the front gates, which have been pried open. Everyone’s corralled there, and two firemen rush over.
“Where did you three come from?” one demands.
“These two got trapped under one of the booths,” says Dallas, her tone shifting effortlessly to one of authority. “I can’t believe you didn’t find them sooner. Better make sure they’re both okay.”
And before they can ask who she is and what she’s doing there, she turns and ducks under the yellow tape that’s been strung up across the gate and vanishes into the swell of students and teachers and parents that fill the lot. EMTs pull Wes and me apart to check us out, and I slide my ring back on, amazed by how quickly I’ve become accustomed to the world without it.
The EMT looks me over. Most of my injuries I can blame on the booth that apparently collapsed on top of us, but the wire marks on my wrists are harder to explain. I’m lucky that there are too many people who need looking after and not enough people to do it; the EMT listens when I tell him I’ll be okay and lets me go.