But I don’t know why she’s whispering. Who does she think will hear her?
The line of her throat moves as she swallows. “I want to find out where the voices are coming from,” she says, her voice shaky. “Will you help me?”
A shiver runs through me. What voices? I haven’t said much. Only Damon seems to thaw me enough to speak, but I know this is important. Important because I can help her, maybe. The way she’s been helping me.
Important because I can help Damon, who’s out with Gabriel in the bowels of the city, searching through rundown tenements and alleys for a modern-day dragon.
Smart people don’t always have perspective.
It had been a declaration. Does he love me? As a woman or as a child?
I’m not sure he knows, not sure it matters what name we put on it. It was the most unassuming gift he could have given me, one without any expectation that it would be returned. Thinking that I’m too young or maybe just too innocent to give it back.
Except I’m not the only smart person without perspective.
He knows I need him, but the truth is he needs me, too.
Avery leans close, something close to panic in her eyes. “You don’t hear them, do you?”
I’m afraid she might come apart if I tell her the truth. The house is painfully silent. It hurts me, that’s how silent it is. The lack of sound a physical presence, as if the world has become muted.
We’re underwater here.
I’m desperate to find a way to her phone. The words to confide my plan on the tip of my tongue. I don’t think she’ll want to go along with me—her faith in Gabriel is too complete.
Aid comes from one of the least likely places. One of the guards appears in the doorframe. “Someone’s at the gate,” he says, making it clear he’d rather turn them away.
Some old friend of Avery’s has come to visit her. More than a friend, if I read her hesitation right.
It would be an entertaining power play to watch—the guard who could probably bench press three hundred pounds and the young woman with her quiet control. And it’s the perfect cover for me to slip her phone beneath the pillow. My hand moves maybe two inches. Neither of them notice.
“I’ll stand outside the room,” the guard says, deference winning. “With the door open.”
Avery’s voice is kind, gracious in her victory. “Thank you.”
It takes forever for the guest to be searched for weapons. So long I’m afraid that Avery will look for her phone. I can’t let her notice that it’s under the pillow. She wouldn’t suspect me of anything, mostly because she thinks I’m half brain dead. But it would ruin my chance.
I have to distract her. “Who is he?”
“An old boyfriend,” she says, her cheeks turning pink.
“Oh.” Gabriel won’t be happy about that when he finds out.
Her eyes look lighter when she’s curious. “Do you… do you have one? A boyfriend?”
I’ve been so deep underwater that I haven’t even thought about him.
Guilt whispers through me. Brennan would have worried about me. The first night, the second. It’s been five days. Does he think I’m dead? Daddy must think so, when I left with Jonathan Scott and didn’t come back. I don’t feel as bad about that, since he’s the reason I’m in this mess.
Encased in ice, I could spare myself that acidic mixture of worry and shame. Now it comes rushing back like bile, promising that every step on land would hurt. I could transform into a human again, but I would pay the price in pain. There’s too much blood in the water to emerge unscathed.
When the security guard takes Avery away, I don’t waste any time.
The number comes from memory. My fingers don’t tremble as I dial the number. That’s the only nod to confidence. Inside I’m a mess of fear and dread and worst of all hope.
“Hello?” The hoarse word tells a long story of the past five days.
“Daddy, it’s me.”
The pause that follows hangs heavy overhead. Storm clouds. North winds. “Is it—how are—oh God, Penny. I didn’t know if you were—”
He can’t seem to finish a sentence. The worst part is that I can’t finish it for him, not with the knot in my throat. Not with the tangle in my mind, where familial love crosses accusation, a biological short-circuit.
“I’m alive,” I manage to say.
“Where are you? Can you come home?”
Home. The word pings around inside me, unable to land anywhere. In the apartment with weak locks and cracks in every window? The lumpy armchair where Daddy sits each night? The Rubik’s Cube. That had been home for a little girl desperate to find herself.
“Did you bring the money to Damon Scott?”
A terrible pause. “I looked for him, Penny. I swear I did. He went underground. Everyone said he couldn’t be found when he didn’t want to be.”
“And then you spent it.” There’s no anger in my voice, not anymore.
Only resignation.
“No,” he says, urgent and sincere. “I tried to find Jonathan Scott then, to give the money back to him. To tell him the deal was off. To find you. But he was gone, too.”
Uncertainty wraps itself around me, warm and almost… comforting. Maybe ten thousand dollars doesn’t matter in the large scheme of things, but it feels like I earned that money. It feels like it matters. “Where’s the money now?”
“It’s here. God, I’ve been so afraid that someone would know. That sounds crazy. It’s not like I could ever hold onto a dollar longer than an hour. But I just… I’ve been sitting here, keeping it, thinking you were dead.”
His voice breaks, but it doesn’t sound like the end. It sounds like a continuation.
This is where we’ve always been. I can’t walk away from the only family I have, from a person who actually cares about me. When Damon braced his body above me in his bed I had felt like a woman, grown and even sexual.
Now as I cling the phone I’m painfully aware that I’m fifteen, that my bed has pink sheets. That I’m only a girl who dreams about having her mama back.
That I want nothing more than a daddy who loves me.
Who am I to dream I could save Damon Scott?
Who am I to dream at all?
He finds me on the balcony, a wide marble-floored space with a carved stone balcony. From here I can see the expansive grounds—a lush garden and elaborate hedge maze. Rolling green hills and woods beyond. A view that carefully hides security cameras and armed patrols, an electric fence hidden in the tree line. Such deadly beauty.
I feel him before I see him, that prickling awareness that can only be Damon Scott. I’m sitting on an ornate metal chair, carving of Olympic gods cradling me with surprising comfort.
Footsteps come close and then stop. It must be my imagination that senses his heat. He’s still a few feet away at least. How can he heat me up like no one else?
“Avery says you aren’t eating,” he says finally.
She worries about me, which is sweet. I don’t really know what to do with that. I’ve had friends before, like Jessica. Even Brennan, but there’s always a careful distance. Growing up in the west side, we all know not to get too close.