Crew marks.
I was right.… Oh, god, I was right. And that means a member of Crew just saw me do…this. I don’t even know what I did, but he saw it. Then again, he’s currently strangling someone in front of me. But I bet he at least remembers doing it.
The thug stops struggling, and the golden man lets his body fall to the ground.
“I hate fighting humans,” he says, brushing off his pants. “You have to work so hard not to kill them.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
His brow crinkles. “What, not even a thanks?”
“Thanks,” I say shakily.
“Welcome. Wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t lend a hand.” His eyes drift down to the man at my feet. “Not sure you needed it, though. That was quite a show.” Was it? He reaches out. “Let me see those hands.”
His fingers nearly brush my skin when I jerk away. He’s not wearing a ring.
“Ah,” he says, reading my distrust. He produces a silver band from his pocket, holding it up so I can see the three lines etched on its surface before he slides it on. This time when he holds out his hands, I reluctantly give him mine. His noise is low and steady as a heartbeat through my head.
“How did you know?” he asks, turning over my hands to check for broken bones.
“Posture. Attention. Ego.”
He smiles that half smile. “And here I figured you just saw the marks.” He runs his thumbs over my knuckles. “Or, you know, there’s the fact that we’ve met.”
I wince as he traces the bones in my hands.
“In your defense,” he adds, “we weren’t formally introduced.”
And suddenly it clicks. When Wesley and I were summoned to the Archive last month to explain how we’d allowed a teenage History to escape into the Coronado, the golden man was there. He came in late and flashed me a lazy smile. When he heard how long Wesley and I had been paired up before we let the History escape—three hours—he actually laughed. The woman with him didn’t.
“I recognized you,” I lie.
“No you didn’t,” he says simply, testing my fingers. “You thought I looked familiar, but there’s a big difference between knowing a face and placing it. Stare at anyone long enough and you’ll start to think you’ve seen them before. The name’s Eric, by the way.” He lets go of my hands. “And nothing’s broken.”
“Why have you been following me?”
He arches a brow. “Just be glad I was.”
“That’s not a good enough answer,” I snap. “Why have you been following me?”
Again, that lazy smile. “Why does anyone do anything for the Archive? Because they’re told to.”
“But why?” I press. “And who told you to?”
“Miss Bishop, I don’t think now’s the time for an interrogation,” he says, gesturing to the bodies and then back to me. I look down again at my blood-covered hands. They’re shaking, so I curl them into fists, even though it sends sparks of pain across my skin.
“I want an answer.”
Eric shrugs. “Even if it’s a lie?”
The man with the knife in his leg begins to stir.
“You should go home now,” says Eric, fetching the piece of pipe and wiping the prints with his sleeve before tossing it back to the ground. “I’ll take care of these two.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
He shrugs. “Make them disappear.” He rights my bike and walks it toward me.
“Go,” he says. “And be careful.”
My hands are still shaking as I wipe them on my shirt, mount the bike, and leave.
On the way home, as my body calms and my mind clears, the memories begin to trickle back in flashes of color and sound.
The crack of bone as my free palm came up under his nose.
The cry and the cursing and the blind slashing of the switchblade.
The snap of his knee as my shoe slammed into the side of it.
The silent moment when the switchblade tumbled from his hand into mine.
The scream as I drove it down into his thigh.
The crunch of my fist across his face as he crumbled forward. Again. And again.
Seconds, I marvel. It took only seconds to break so many things.
And even though I couldn’t remember at first, I’m not sorry I did it. Not even a little. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to make him regret the way he looked at me, like I wouldn’t be able to fight back, like I was weak. I look down at my raw knuckles as I ride. I’m not weak anymore…but what am I becoming instead?
“What happened to your hands?” shrieks Mom when I walk into the apartment. She has her phone to her ear and she says a hurried “We’ll talk later” to whoever’s on the other end before hanging up and rushing over.
“Biking accident,” I say tiredly, shrugging off my bag. It’s not a total lie, and I’m not about to tell her that I got assaulted on the way back from her delivery. She’d implode.
“Are you all right?” she asks, taking my arm. I wince, less from my wounded hands than the sudden high-pitched crackle that comes with her touch. Still, I manage not to pull free as she guides me into the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” I lie, holding my hands under the sink while she pours cool water over them. I managed to wipe off most of the blood, but the knuckles are red and raw. “You’re home early,” I say, changing the subject. “Slow day at the coffee shop?”
Mom gives me a quizzical look. “Mackenzie,” she says, “it’s nearly seven o’clock.”
My eyes drift to the windows. It’s halfway to dark. “Huh.”
“You were late, and I started to get worried. Now I see I had a good reason to be.”
“I’m fine, really.”
She cuts off the water and sets to towel-drying my hands, tutting as she unearths a bottle of rubbing alcohol from beneath the sink. It feels nice—not the rubbing alcohol, that hurts like hell, but having Mom patch me up. When I was little, I came home with all kinds of scrapes—the products of more normal childhood escapades, of course—and I’d sit on the counter and let Mom fix them. Whatever it was, she could fix it. After I became a Keeper and started hiding my wounds instead of proudly presenting them, I’d watch her fix Ben, the same worshipping expression in his eyes as she tended to his battle scars.
These days, I’m so used to hiding my cuts and bruises—so used to telling Mom I don’t need her and telling her I’m fine when I’m not—that it’s a relief not being able to hide an injury. Even if I have to lie about how it happened.
Then Dad walks in.
“What happened?” he asks, dropping his briefcase. It’s almost funny, in a sick way, their level of concern over a few cut knuckles. I hate to think how they’d react if they could see some of my larger scars, what they’d say if they knew the truth behind my broken wrist. I nearly laugh before I remember that it’s not that kind of funny.
“Biking accident,” I repeat. “I’m fine.”
“And the bike?” he asks.
“The bike’s fine, too.”
“I’d better check it out,” he says, turning toward the door.