“What. The.Hell?”
He pauses. “You found my gifts.”
“You mean your poisonous granola bars of health?”
“What a strange way to say thank you,” he answers dryly, copying what I told him last night. “I told Ren not to wake you.”
Ren is standing a polite distance away, his eyes averted.
Pacing to the side, I hiss, “Don’t pin this on Ren, you candy-stealingmonster.”
Finn chuckles. His soft laughter through the phone temporarily throws me for a loop, and I forget my side-splitting hatred for him.
But it’s only for a second.
I continue to pace. “Those cotton-candy flavored chocolate bars were limited edition. They don’t even sell them anymore. I was rationing them out, so they’d last me until I died.”
“Those candies would have been thereasonyou died. Now you get to live longer. Congratulations.”
“Finn—
“I’m busy,” Finn says, his tone dropping. “Scream at Ren if you really need to get it out of your system.”
“But my candy?—”
Click.
The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone in disbelief. Did he just hang up on me?
Nostrils flaring, I pull the phone away and scream at it. “Youjerk!”
Ren blinks in discomfort. “I guess now wouldn’t be the right time to ask where you’d like me to put these?”
“Ugh!” I flounce to my bed.
My watch beeps, warning that I’m getting too agitated, but I won’t calm down. Not until I get my candy back. Since Finn wants me to live so badly, I might as well die.
You’re being irrational, J.
So what?
“I’ll just leave this here. I’ll be right outside,” Ren says, slowly lowering the case and backing away from me like I’m a rabid dog.
He folds up the sleeve of his shirt. His tattoo catches my eye. It’s extremely intricate linework, radiating outward from the wrist, forming a pattern resembling a ring of flames.
“Wait,” I blurt.
Ren freezes.
I shuffle toward him and grab his arm, turning it to the light.
The footage from the Redwood Prep cameras was fuzzy that night, but I remember the tattoo. It’s the same.
“You were there,” I whisper. “That night, someone was fighting the Grave City Crew outside Redwood Prep.” My eyes lift to his. “It was you.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
