“It’s okay to not be okay,” she says. “When you’ve been through things—whatever those things are—and you don’t allow yourself to not be okay, then you only make it worse. Our problems will tear us apart if we try to ignore them. They demand attention because they need it. Now, are you okay?”
Before I even realize it, my head is turning side to side. Dallas smiles a little.
“See? Was that so hard to admit?”
She gives my hand a small squeeze, and my gaze drops to her fingers. I stiffen.
Dallas has a dent on her ring finger.
“Divorced,” she says, catching my look. “I’m starting to think the mark won’t ever fade.”
She pulls away and rubs at the spot between her knuckles, and I force myself to breathe, to remember that normal people wear rings, too—and that normal people take them off. Besides, her sleeves are pushed up and her forearms are free of Crew marks.
Dallas gets to her feet.
“I’m going to release you, on the condition that you attend counseling at Hyde. Will you do that for me?”
Agatha’s summons burns a hole in my pocket. “Yes,” I say quickly. “Fine. Okay.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” asks Mom when Dallas tells her the news. “I mean, she tried to…”
“Not to be crude, ma’am,” says Dallas, “but if she’d wanted to kill herself, she would have cut down the road, not across the street. As it is, she’s several blocks up.”
Mom looks horrified. I almost smile. She’s certainly no Colleen.
The nurse rewraps my left arm, and I change back into my school shirt, tugging the sleeve down over the bandage. I can’t hide the tape from the glass on my right palm, but that might work to my advantage. Misdirection. The worst of last night’s self-pity is gone, and right now I need to focus on surviving long enough to find out who’s framing me. Owen hasn’t won yet, I think, and then I remind myself that Owen didn’t do this. I did. Maybe Dallas was right. Maybe I need to stop denying I’m broken and work on finding the pieces.
Speaking of Dallas, she gives me a small salute on the way out and tells me to loosen the armor. The nurse who stitched and bandaged me up seems surprised by Dallas’s order to release me, but doesn’t question it—only fires off cleaning instructions and tells my parents to keep an eye on me and make sure I get some rest. She leans in and confides in my mother, loud enough for me to hear, that she doesn’t think I ever went to sleep.
Great.
There’s no sign of Eric or Sako in the hospital lobby or in the lot, and I realize with a sinking feeling that their faces are the only two I’d recognize. I know that a Crew member made the void, but I don’t know which one. The Archive keeps its members isolated—each an island—but that means I don’t know how many Crew there are in my branch, let alone what they look like.
“Come on, Mac,” calls Dad, and I realize I’m standing on the sidewalk staring at the street.
On the drive home, I feel the scratch of more letters in my pocket, and by the time we get back to the Coronado, the summons has repeated itself on the page, the letters darker, as if someone’s pressing down harder on the ledger. I turn the paper over and write the words unable to report, watching as they bleed into the page. I wait for a reply, a pardon, but the original summons only rewrites itself on the page. The message is clear, but I’m not allowed to close my bedroom door or go to the bathroom without an escort, let alone slip off to the Archive for a good old-fashioned interrogation. I don’t even have the excuse of school, since it’s Saturday. When I ask if I can go for a walk to get some fresh air, Mom looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
And maybe I have, but after an hour of trying to do homework in spite of the hovering and heavy quiet, I can’t take it anymore. I break down and text Wesley.
Save me.
Mom won’t stop pacing, and Dad finally cracks and sends her down to the café to work off some of her stress. Five minutes after that, there’s a knock on the door and Wesley’s there with a bag of pastries and a book, looking like himself—well, his summer self: black jeans, lined eyes, spiked hair—for the first time in weeks. When Dad answers the door, I watch the war between what he’s supposed to say—No visitors—and what he wants to say—Hi, Wes! What finally comes out is, “Wesley, I’m not sure now’s a good time.”
Even though Wes frowns and asks, “Has something happened?” I can tell he’s not totally in the dark. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s aware of the part where I got picked up by the cops, but not the part where I landed myself in the self-harm section of the hospital. His eyes go to my bandaged hand, and I can see the questions in them.
Dad casts a glance back at the table where I’m nursing a cup of coffee and trying not to look as tired as I feel and says, “Actually, why don’t you come in?”
Wesley takes a seat next to me, and Dad stands by the door, clearly debating his next move.
“Dad,” I say, reaching out and taking Wesley’s hand with my unbandaged one. The steady beat of his rock music fills my head. “Could we have a moment?”
Dad hovers there, looking at us.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I promise.
“I’ll keep her out of trouble, Mr. Bishop,” says Wes.
Dad smiles sadly. “I’m holding you to that,” he says. “I’ll go down and check on your mom. You’ve got ten minutes.”
When the door closes, Wes gives my fingers a small squeeze before letting go. “Did you hurt your wrist again?” he asks, nodding at my other hand.
I shake my head. “Did Amber tell you?”
“That you got arrested? Yeah.”
“It doesn’t count as an arrest unless they book you.”
Wesley arches a brow. “Spoken like a true criminal. What did you get picked up for?”
“Oh, Amber didn’t share that part?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Ah, well. Remember the guy who disappeared before Bethany? Judge Phillip? I went back to check out his house, since that’s where he vanished from. And I might have entered the place using less than legal methods.”
Wes hits the table. “You broke into a crime scene without me?”
“Be glad, Wes, or we both would have been caught.”
“We’re a team, Mac. You don’t go committing a crime without your partner in crime. Besides, if I’d been with you, we probably wouldn’t have been caught. I could have stood at the door and made wild bird sounds or something when the cops came back. And if we did get caught, our mug shots would look fabulous.”
I can’t help but smile at the thought.
“Tell me you at least found something.”
The smile slides off my lips. “I did,” I say slowly. “A void.”
Wesley’s brow knits. “I don’t understand.”
“A void. Like the one on the roof.”
“In the middle of Phillip’s living room? That doesn’t make any sense. The only way there’d be a void there is if someone made one. And they’d need a Crew key to do that.”