But Orion caught her elbow and stopped her from running off. “Hey.”
He came to stand in front of her. Something about his expression—focused and thoughtful and serious—made her heart tumble in her chest.
He pushed a hand through his thick hair. “I enjoyed meeting your parents. I know that’s probably weird to say, but they’re really kind of great. And it was cool hearing why they nicknamed you True.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Thanks.”
Her response was too little. He was telling her, again—she thought—that he accepted all aspects, every dimension, of her. What Bradley had seen, he didn’t care for. What Orion had glimpsed, he wanted more of. And there was something breathlessly momentous in the fact that he might accept every atom of who she was and what made up her universe: her family, her skeptic’s mind, her passions.
Orion stepped a little closer, and True’s pulse picked up. His eyes were like twin stars, twinkling down at her. If Bradley had been a craggy, icy, treacherous, mountainous terrain, Orion was a summery, wooded glen where she could listen to birds chirping and feel the sun kissing her skin.
What was he going to ask her? What would she say to him in response? In that moment, anything seemed possible.
But then True blinked, glanced past Orion—and sawher.The figure in the floaty silver dress was staring at True again with that eerie blue gaze. When True locked eyes with her, she dropped something that fell to the carpet with a soft thud and then rounded the corner and vanished.
Gasping, True hurried past Orion to whatever the figure had dropped at the end of the hallway. It glinted softly in the recessed lights, nestled into the plush carpet. “It’s Wicked Wynona’s ring!” True bent down and picked it up; it lay heavy and cold in the palm of her hand, the skull grinning up at her. She rushed to peek around the corner, but the figure was gone.
Turning to Orion, who’d caught up to her (and had a very “brimming with a hundred things I want to say” expression on his face that True tried to ignore—at least for now), she said, “I think she’s leaving us clues. The scarf, the ring, and disappearing up to the balcony right here… she’s trying to tell us to go up there. Come on.”
Slipping the ring on her own finger, True climbed up the spiraling staircase, Orion at her heels. There was a small landing at the top, and, beyond it, French doors that led outside onto the spacious balcony. True plunged forward, ready to wrangle Wicked Wynona from Bradley’s blunt-fingered hands.
But the moment she was actually outside in the cool night air, True realized that wasn’t going to be possible. Bradley and two of his friends were laughing uproariously at what their fourth friend, Aiden, was up to—i.e., holding Wicked Wynona by herhair past the railing, dangling her twenty feet over the concrete patio below.
“Stop!” True yelled as Orion came up behind her, looking just as horrified as she felt. “What are youdoing?”
Bradley turned to her, still laughing, one hand around a beer can. He walked over, his grin morphing into something malicious and nasty. “Ah, if it isn’t the True-gooder, come to ruin our fun.” His words were sloppy and he smelled like yeast, a fine mist of beer hanging around his face.
True took a step back, Bradley’s words pinching at the softest, most vulnerable part of her soul, like they always did. “Just give me the mannequin, Bradley.”
Hearing her, Aiden swung Wicked Wynona back and forth like a pendulum and hooted like a deranged owl. His floppy brown hair covered one eye. “Come and get her, or she’s meeting a bloody fate on the concrete below!”
Orion stepped toward Aiden, leaving True behind with Bradley. “You don’t have to do this. Just hand her over, man. Come on.”
True wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Orion sounded like a hostage negotiator. Except, in this case, the “hostage” was an ancient pile of human hair and papier-mâché. But Bradley’s leering, smug face took any little mirth she might find in the situation and flung it off the balcony.
She tried to appeal to a solitary shred of decency that might reside in him somewhere, assuming the beer hadn’t washed it away. Speaking quickly—it didn’t look like Aiden had the surest grip on Wicked Wynona’s hair—True said, “Mr. Brightsideasked me to look after it, and I can’t give it back to him all damaged and broken. You understand, right? I mean, the mannequin’s important to me, Bradley. This isn’t some game I’m playing.”
“Dude, just give her the mannequin.” It was hard not to hear the hard edge of irritation in Orion’s otherwise-soft voice.
Bradley grinned his horrible, twisted grin. “Aww, this is precious. I think this loser here thinks he has a chance with you, True. But take it from me, you’re not even close to her type. She likes strong men who can reign her in. So run along. You don’t want to be a pathetic try-hard who can’t take a hint, do you?”
He was doing it again, hitting someone in the softest, most vulnerable parts of themselves. True could tell from the way the muscle in Orion’s jaw jumped that Bradley’s words had struck him as surely as a punch. She stepped in front of Orion. “Leave.” She spoke coldly and unequivocally, her gaze pinned on Bradley. “Right now.”
But he cocked his head. “See, now, I don’t think you get to say that to me. I have as much a right to be here as you do.” He stepped past her and headed for Wicked Wynona. “As a matter of fact, you don’t have a right to tell me not to touch this thing, either. It doesn’t even belong to you.”
True and Orion speed-walked over to the mannequin, but the boys had already surrounded it.
“What’s wrong with you?” True asked, throwing her hands up in the air. “If you’re trying to show me you’re not petty, this is not the way, Bradley.”
His blue eyes glinted at her, hard and cold. “I’m not trying to show you anything, True. You’renothingto me.”
True stepped closer to Wicked Wynona. “Good. Then step away and let me have her.”
Bradley shook his head, and Aiden crossed his arms against his chest like some kind of goon. “You had your chance, little lady.”
True wondered if there was actual steam coming out of her ears. “‘Little lady’? What century do you think we’re living in, you moron?”
Bradley snorted. “Says the girl in an eighteenth-century dress.”
