I thought for a long while, before my nightly ritual of soothing myself to sleep with daydreams, about messaging him to ask about it.
Then Gray’s face swam into my mind, and I didn’t.
CHAPTER
NINE
LELAND
Case Hammond:Who’s tracking the great tit?
Leland Stray:Try that again.
Case Hammond:Fine. The GOLDFINCH.
Leland Stray:Ember’s fine. Stop worrying.
Case Hammond:Funny how that doesn’t help.
Leland Stray:Go back to bed.
Leland,” Jaxan says, straightening his tie in the drawing room mirror. “Stay.”
I sit across from the fireplace, glad I picked a decently comfortable piece of furniture to sit on before he commanded me to be stationary. Wind shakes the windows, confronting me with old memories — standing with my forehead pressed to the glass, staring for hours, the tall, waving grass the only movement across acres of overgrown land.
A few minutes later, the door chimes. Jaxan’s doorman shows Farrah Prolix, the Council’s official reporter, into the wood-clad room. Her large, fuchsia satchel sits high on her shoulder, so I expect her camera to come flying out of it any minute now.
It’s early. Two hours until I have to report to Odessa Hall to hear statements about Trist. Jaxan knows I can’t do two hours with Farrah. I can’t do twominutes. Probably why he invited her here.
Jaxan turns like an axe swing. “Farrah,” he says, his eyes steeled to the boldness of the smug smile she gives him. “Take a seat across from the Truth-Teller.”
His doorman recedes back into the reception area, closing the heavy wooden pocket doors behind him.
“You have an hour to get what you need from him. What did you say this magazine was?The Most Powerful Witch in Everden?”
“Most Eligible Bachelor,” Farrah corrects, pursing her lips.
I get angry from the sight of her mouth alone, wideset, with unnaturally thin, pink lips, and a proclivity for repeating the same uninsightful thing instead of listening and thinking. Not only that, but, when she repeats herself, she always raises her voice in agitation, like she thinksyouare the frustrating part of the conversation.
She’s twenty-five but looks thirty-seven. Her clothes are bright but boring. She applies her makeup with a heavy hand and smiles way too much for someone clearly unhappy. Her light-brown hair is the unflattering color of a field mouse, her mid-length hairstyle too long for her square-shaped face. Or too short. It’s hard to find anything nice to say when I hate everything about her. Starting with her capacity to stand around and do nothing as four witches are dying right in front of her. She wasn’t smiling, but there was glee.
“Send me the draft before printing,” Jaxan says to her before leaving.
She uses the first half of her allotted time to take pictures of me for the issue. I wonder how she got her job. One would think the Council’s reporter would know how to conduct an interview, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t believe in questions. Or answers. She believes in stories, ones that involve her writing whatever the hell she wants in the papers, getting most of it wrong.
“Write what you want,” I tell her when she opens her mouth tosay something. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“You were hand-selected for this prestigious issue,” she says in her way of speaking that is both too fast and too slow. The words are far apart, but her sentences are continuous, so no one can get a word in. “The Most Eligible Bacheloris an honor that should be respected, and you should be grateful to be given this rare opportunity that not everyone in Everden will get.”
Oh yeah? That how superlatives work? Had no idea.
I tap the armrest while she scrolls through her notes on her transmitter. A hard, cold rain pelts the windows, relentless and bitter. On the other side of them, the tall grass I used to dream someone was shearing their way through to get to me bends to the wind.
The drawing room is wide and rectangular, in the style of one of only a few pre-Sundering buildings in Everden, still retaining all the original espresso-toned millwork. Curtains hang heavy, and the cold, gray light filtering in from outside washes out the small amount of warmth generated by the fire. Were the chandelier tofall, glass would hail down on Farrah, hopefully causing several fatal lacerations. She hasn’t realized this yet though. She shifts on the leather cushions, making herself at home.
“It seems you need a reminder that this is the designated time, based on what I’m sure you know are highly historic practices of cooperating with the Council’s reporter, where you’re required to provide me the answers to the questions I ask.”
“Have you asked one?” I ask, shutting down the urge to also ask where she learned to form sentences, and to tell her I’m not required to answer her, and maybe she should spend less time darkening her eyebrows and more time reading up on the law.
