“Did you follow me?” I snapped.
“How much?” He asked again, his gaze on my landlord.
“Two hundred,” Mr. Seaton said. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“Consider it paid.” Dante strolled into the room. “And get out.”
“Sir, I own this establishment. I don’t know what you think—”
“Do you own that watch?” Dante jerked his chin in my direction. I clutched it tighter in response.
“Well, no but—”
“Then you have no business touching it. Or anything else in this apartment for that matter. I’ll pay the rent. I’ll pay the next three months too. Just get the fuck out.”
Mr. Seaton’s lip curled in anger, but the prospect of a three months advance must have been too great an opportunity to pass up. So he muttered a string of curses and strode from the apartment, demanding payment by the end of week and threatening to return if he didn’t receive it. He slammed the door behind him.
Dante moved forward in silence. He bent down beside me and began picking up Darius’s things one by one, placing them back into the box. I joined him a moment later, tossing the watch in first and trying not to look too hard at the rest.
“Who was it?” he asked, holding up a pair of gray sweatpants. “Boyfriend?”
“Best friend and roommate.” I tossed Darius’s only tie into the box. “He got Culled last week.”
Dante tensed. “How old was he?”
“Twenty-one.”
He swore and ran a hand through his dark hair.
“Do you…know why?” I asked, once again trying to mask the desperation in my tone. “Does the First Ring know why this Culling was different? Why them?”
“We’d have you believe we do,” he muttered. “But the truth is, my grandfather, my mother, they’re just as stumped as the rest of Sanctuary.”
I stared down into the box, at the watch glinting from where it lay beneath a pile of t-shirts.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” I asked. “No rules? Just anyone we know could be taken, and we’d have no idea until it was too late?”
“Possibly.”
I looked up at him, surprised. Darius would’ve lied. Even if he thought it was a possibility, he would’ve assured me that it wasn’t, would’ve cracked a joke and changed the subject to make me feel better. Dante didn’t. And for some reason, there was a strange comfort in his blatantness.
Dante lowered the things he’d gathered, Darius’s things, gently into the box below.
As much as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t help but remember the altercation with Olympia, the anger I’d felt emanating from him and, beneath it, despair, frustration, exhaustion.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
He looked up, his gaze locking onto mine.
“Why do you think they paired us together, the Geist?” he asked, his tone thoughtful.
I shrugged and continued to fold the clothes and place them carefully in the box. “They have a horrific sense of humor?”
He didn’t laugh. Dante just watched me for a moment, those keen green eyes boring into me. “That won’t work with me, you know. The deflection. I can sense your emotions, Adrian. And your thoughts. You can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to me.”
I looked up again, then blinked and looked away, clearing my throat.
“Why did you follow me?” I turned away from the box and strolled over to the paintings—Sophie’s—that Mr. Seaton had torn down in his quest to erase my existence from the apartment. I hung them again, fingers lingering over the rough bubbles against the canvas.
