The woman fishes a gold bracelet with tiny emerald stones from her pocket. “Can you give her this when you see her? I’ve seen her wearing it before, so I recognized it.”
One look at the bracelet she hands me, and fear sets in. I close my palm around the bracelet that means too much to Juniper for her to have dropped it accidentally and not realized it was missing. “Where did the supervisor find it?”
“In the room she was cleaning.”
“Ava?” someone calls out to her, and the maid glances over her shoulder. “Sorry, I have to go back to work.”
“Thanks,” I say, and she rushes off.
Torin is frowning at the bracelet in my hand. He recognizes it too. It’s definitely June’s.
“Is it even worth going up to the fifth floor to check?” he asks.
“Probably not, but I still want to.”
“Same. Let’s go.” With the bracelet tucked in my pocket for safekeeping, we ride the elevator to the fifth floor.
As expected, there’s nothing out of the ordinary on the fifth floor. Someone must have moved Juniper’s cart that Ava said she’d left in the hallway. All the doors are closed, and raised voices and laughter drift from the hotel rooms.
“Any chance she might still be here?” Torin asks.
“I don’t know.” I’m torn about what to do. Knock on doors until someone calls security to throw us out, or head back to the apartment and hope she had an errand is back there waiting for us.
“Let’s go check out the apartment,” I eventually say. “If she’s not there, something is wrong, and we can figure out what else to do.”
Chapter 38
June
Gentle fingers probe the back of my head.
With a hiss of pain, I roll away, groaning as my head pounds to the rhythm of my heartbeat.
I blink. Then I blink twice more, but it does nothing to make my vision any brighter. It takes far too long to realize the room is as dark as I think it is, and I don’t have my eyes still closed.
A figure cloaked in shadows watches me from feet away, the whites of their eyes glimmering in the darkened room. As they reach toward me, the sweet scents of rose and strawberry drift closer.
“Don’t!” I shrink away from their touch.
The figure halts and retreats. They stand, revealing a slim silhouette as they cross the room.
A woman.
She draws the drapes aside, flooding the room with light and causing me to recoil from its harsh brightness. At no point has my head stopped pounding. I try to sit up, but my world tips.
When I blink my eyes open, I’m flat on my back, my head is woozy, and a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a blue slip dress is on her knees beside me.
The corners of her eyes crease with concern. “Are you okay?” she asks hesitantly.
I clear my throat and don’t try to sit up again. “What happened?”
“You fainted.” Her eyes flick to my forehead. “You have a lump on the back of your head, and it was bleeding before. I think that’s why.”
Trying to move my throbbing head as little as possible, I sit up and shuffle away from her. I don’t trust her, but I have the strangest sense that I know this woman, though I can’t remember when I would have met her. At Haven Academy? Is that why she seems so familiar?
Only when my back bumps the wall, as far away as I can get from her, do I let myself relax a little. “Who are you?”
“Lottie.”
