A sinking feeling of wrongness overtook her. The longer she stayed in the Society, the more volatile everything became. The mansion and Jo were like two chemicals that should never meet. But they had been mixed, and now Jo had to figure out how to handle the explosive reaction before it put everything around her into meltdown.
Perhaps Wayne had been right after all.
She turned to stop him, to apologize. She wanted to tell him sorry, for real, and that she wanted to find a way out of the Society together. But her voice froze in her throat just as Wayne had seemingly frozen in his tracks.
For in the doorway stood a tall, silver-haired man.
Jo tensed at the sight of Snow, searching his face and taking him in. He looked as he always had, primped and polished in a way that not even Wayne could achieve with his suits or Eslar with his unnatural grace. He was a stark contrast to the room’s other two occupants, rumpled and hunched. It was as if the man was trying to be a paragon of composure—untouchable to the rest of them in the throes of their grief. Gone was the man who had shared one last breakfast with them as a team.
Distant once more.
Jo barely recognized him as the lover she’d come to know in what now almost seemed like a distant dream. She worked to squelch the hope trying to flare in her chest at the mere sight of him because she knew better, she knew he was not here to be a balm to them.
He was here for the last thing any of them wanted, something Jo recognized with terrifying clarity. And as if to prove her silent worries true, Snow wasted no time in addressing her and Wayne with exactly the nightmare written all over his face.
“Gather the team and meet me in the briefing room in five,” he said. Jo searched for a tremor in his tone, a crack in his facade, anything, but his face was as blank and hollow as his voice.
The silence that followed those words was like the silence in the aftermath of an explosion.
“Are youkidding me?” Wayne blew up with a shout. “Have you no decency?”
“Nico’s been dead for barely a week, and you think you can just ask us tokeep going?” Her heart felt like it was crumbling, her stomach dropping at the momentary flash of pain on Snow’s face that gave way quickly to a complete lack of emotion. Yet it didn’t stop the almost dizzying frustration. “No more, Snow, please. Just stop this for a minute, can’t you? At least give us all time togrieve.”
But as if he hadn’t just heard their panic, their sorrow, as if he hadn’t just witnessed their vehement reluctance, Snow straightened his back, looking over them like the mighty demigod he claimed to be.
“As members of the Society of Wishes, you will do as you are told.”
For a beat, she let that sink in, the atmosphere wrapping cold around Jo’s limbs. Wayne seemed to be impervious to the invisible binds.
“Like Nico did as he was told?” he fired venomously.
Another beat, another agonizing silence, and then Snow turned away. “You have your orders,” he said, as detached as Jo had ever heard him. “Gather the team.”
Jo slumped slightly, face dropping to stare at the scattered shards of the mug Wayne had smacked from her hands. Sure, it was easy for her to shout objections, act as if she had any say in the matter. But the demands of the actual members of the Society had little more weight than the hot air they were made of. When their choices were to grant wishes or stop existing, what else were they supposed to do?
Chapter 2
Too Soon
Her mental state was in tatters.
Her body felt heavy, splintered. Her joints popped with every step, worn to agony by the tension of mourning that she’d carried in her limbs for days. For a being outside of reality, immune to human necessities, Jo knew in that moment that she had never known such exhaustion.
She regretted having not gone to Snow in the limited time they’d had for grief. Maybe, if she had, she would understand something? Perhaps there was some insight she lost because she’d spent all her valuable time—all six days of it—mourning the death of her friend. At the very least, she might have been able to see the man who had been working his way into her heart underneath the cold and distant facade he was currently sporting.
But his mental state now was an enigma to her. Was this all an act? Or had he really and truly broken, shattering differently but just as irrevocably as the rest of them?
Thinking of going to him merely renewed old frustrations. Snow was a pawn as much as she was, as much as all of them were. He couldn’t undo the magic that bound them, even if he wanted to—she had enough faith in the goodness of the man to know that. She also knew he was speaking the truth when it came to not being able to choose the wishes. He was helpless to do anything more than try to keep them alive, and watch.
At once, Jo forced herself to recount every look of devastation on his face, every sorrowful attempt to keep her at arm’s length out of what she could only assume was guilt for his circumstances. She committed to memory every time he’d caved to her touch and let slip apologies in breathy whispers into her ear. This wasn’t his fault; he was a victim too, no matter how hard he tried to convince them all otherwise.
Yes, Jo’s jaw popped as she clenched her teeth. Snow was trapped in this game. And if he wasn’t the ringleader, that meant someone else was—and she would do whatever it took to uncover the truth.
The doors of the briefing room opened to the cold gray of the inexplicable light source that hovered over the center table. It cast long shadows behind the chairs—eight in total. One would remain heartbreakingly empty. And one . . . one was already occupied.
Pan sat, leaning back in her chair almost to the point of tipping. Her feet were propped on the table, crossed at the ankles, and her hands were folded over her stomach. The hem of wide-legged pants draped from her knees, little red bows up the back dangling ribbon to the floor. The woman-child tilted her head to the side, looking at Jo as she entered, chiffon and lace floating about from her ruffled turquoise top as she moved.
“About time you got here!” With the flourish of a giggle, Pan uncrossed her legs and tipped her chair forward. “Where’s the rest of them?” Jo couldn’t help but flinch; the woman’s cheery tone was like nails on the chalkboard of the Society’s collectively despondent attitude.
