"Better?" he asks eventually.
"No. Maybe. Don't know." I wipe my face with my sleeve. "Your shirt's ruined."
"Already was."
"Now it's worse."
"Marginally."
That startles a small laugh out of me.
We sit in the shadow bubble. Somehow he knows how to fold fitted sheets. His hands steady where mine shake.
"You need sleep," he says finally.
"The floor has diseases. I saw something growing."
"Not on the floor."
Shadows shift and form something bed-shaped, raised and solid.
"Shadow furniture? You can make furniture? Have you always been able to do this?"
"Apparently."
We're still not talking about it—the crying, his arm around me, how we're hidden together.
"Thank you. For the apartment. For letting me get things."
He nods, starts to leave, stops.
"The pillow. You were right about my neck."
Then he's gone, but some shadows remain. Darker than regular dark.
"This is weird," I tell them. "Are you reporting back?"
They don't respond. Probably for the best.
I make a nest with sheets from home, curling on shadow furniture that's surprisingly solid for something that shouldn't exist. Something crashes elsewhere. Too tired to care.
"Tomorrow's problem," I whisper.
My last thought: Mrs. Harwicke's portrait alone in my abandoned studio, glaring at nothing with her honest nose. Good. Let her glare.
The shadows stay while I sleep. Somewhere in this disease-ridden warehouse, forty criminals try to survive in a place actively trying to kill us all.
Chapter 15
My shadows report she's drooling on the pillow she insisted I needed. The expensive one. For my neck that's been aching for years. Two hours and seventeen minutes of sleep, which I know because the shadows count her breaths like they're getting paid for it.
I should be sleeping. Haven't closed my eyes in four days. Maybe five. But there's work in the basement, and by work I mean making the Tide Runner understand what happens when you kill seventeen of mine.
The basement's worse than the main floor. Water damage creating rust patterns that look like dried blood. Convenient.
Corven's where I left him six hours ago. Still breathing despite his feet. The toes went first—shadow blades cut through bone when you solidify them right. Clean cuts if you know the angles.
"Evening." I pull up the chair Olivia brought down here. For humanitarian reasons. So they could sit while being questioned. She said questioned like we have conversations.
