“Suit yourself,” Dotty said.
Robert led me out of the room and down the hallway toward my bedroom. I stopped midway between the living area and the darker reaches of the hall.
He might be Abraham’s friend, but I did not know the man.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked.
“You will come with me to someplace more”—he glanced at the living room behind me with disdain—“private.”
There was something really off with him. Sure, I didn’t know him all that well, but every instinct in my body was screaming that something was wrong. Really wrong. And, sure, I could take care of myself in a fight, but I was not dumb enough to go somewhere private with a man I’d barely met when my instincts were pushing the needle to red.
“Actually, I’m very tired,” I said. “Apologies, Robert, but I’m going to say my good nights and go to bed now.”
I took a step to move past him, and he reached out and grabbed my hand.
“You go nowhere without my permission, stitch,” he snarled.
26
This, now, is something even the Houses do not know. The Wings of Mercury experiment did more than create the galvanized. It altered time, but not in the way Alveré Case had predicted it would.—2184
—from the journal of L.U.C.
“If you don’t let go of my arm, I will break yours,” I said calmly.
“You dare?—”
“Robert,” Welton called out. “We’ve dealt you a hand. Come on over before we decide your antisocial behavior is because you’re trying to hide something. We have ways to get you to talk, you know.”
He squeezed my arm a little harder before letting go. “We will speak tomorrow, after you have rested.”
“Sure,” I said.
No way in hell.
He walked away and I stood there taking ten or thirty breaths to tie down my anger.
He had threatened me. He had treated me like something he owned, called me stitch.
I didn’t care that he was Abraham’s friend. He was not mine.
I strode down to the bedroom, locked the door, then took a shower, letting heat and water wash away the anger in me. I quickly toweled off, dried my hair, and slipped into the silky gray nightgown I found in my luggage. Just in case, I placed my boots right by the bed, easy to get into, and my revolver on top of the quilt next to me. I wrapped my arm through the duffel.
If I had to run in the middle of the night, I’d be ready.
Even though I was tired, my thoughts raced. It might have been rude of me not to tell everyone I was going to bed for the night, but manners be damned. I wanted as far away from Robert, January, and Helen as I could get. Hell, right now I wanted as far away from here, and anything that had to do with galvanized and Houses, as I could get.
But we still hadn’t found Quinten.
“Tilly,” a voice whispered.
I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead, shocked into stillness, fear sweat prickling across my face and chest. Someone was in my room. The thin blue light coming in through the window meant it was already dawn.
I had fallen asleep.
“Tilly,” the voice whispered again by the partially open window.
Someone wasn’t in the room; they were just outside it.
