‘What?’ Nico manages, but both Marguerite and I are ignoring him now.
I sigh. ‘In the middle of the night before our fifth birthday, we got out of bed and snuck down to the kitchen and ate our birthday cake.’
Her lips part and then she shakes her head – and she’s right. Someone could have got that out of one of the staff. Or our dad could have told someone – he thought it was hilarious. Mom didn’t.
‘And I told you we had to finish it, because if you leave out an unfinished meal, it attracts ghosts,’ I continue. ‘So we both kept eating until we nearly threw up.’ That part only the two of us could know. Marguerite stares at me, and I give her some jazz hands. ‘Surprise?’
‘You’re meant to be on Earth,’ she whispers. For my sister to say something as bleedingly obvious as that, she must berattled. ‘Nico,’ she snaps. ‘Out.’
‘Marguerite,’ he says, his tone a warning all by itself.
‘Out,’ she says again, not taking her eyes off me. A moment later, I hear the door close behind him. Damn, that guy moves silently.
‘I know I’m meant to be on Earth,’ I say. ‘I wanted …’ But I fall silent instead of finishing my sentence. I wanted to force a confrontation. To elbow her aside and slot myself into her place as Mom’s heir. Power, in my own right. I sure didn’t come to play happy families. I’m a Graves, after all.
Marguerite has spent five years and more cementing herselfas Mom’s sidekick. If she ends me now, her competition will be gone and nobody will ever have to know.
But something strange is happening. Her expression starts to soften, the crease between her brows smoothing away, one hand coming up to hold the end of her braid, like she did when we were kids. ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she whispers.
And then my sister practically vaults the desk, throwing herself at me, wrapping her arms around me, burying her face in my shoulder. Bewildered, I lift my arms and wrap them around her carefully in return.
I dreamed of this for years – of being together, of being two halves of the same whole. And now she’s here again. She’s real.
‘You should have told me you were coming,’ she mumbles into my filthy shirt. ‘I could have helped.’ Keeping hold of my shoulders, she draws back to look me in the eye. ‘But … you didn’t trust me?’
Of course not! Mom abandoned me and you never once reached out, so clearly the situation suited you fine. You made yourself her only child and now you’re ready to steal my half of our inheritance.But this isn’t the moment for truth. I don’t want to risk a lie, though – that’s dangerous, around someone who knows me so well. ‘It was hard to know what to think,’ is where I settle.
‘Please.’ She snorts. ‘Hunter, I never left you.They’rethe ones who separated us. And I told her that with Dad gone, you were alone. I told her you had to come here.’
My brain’s slowly folding in on itself and I don’t know how to make words right now. She’spleased to see me?
Marguerite squeezes my shoulders, drinks in my face. ‘You didn’t think you’d be welcome,’ she says softly.
‘No, I asked,’ I say quietly. ‘I asked Mom to let me come here, over and over, even before Dad died. She said no.’
‘Because she’s good at business, but she’s terrible at family,’ Marguerite whispers. ‘I hate that you were alone back on Earth. Hunter, it wasneverme who shut you out.’ She’s fierce as she speaks. ‘That was all Mom.’
‘Why did she do it?’ I hate how pitiful that question sounds. But IknowI was as capable as Marguerite when we were young. I’ve never understood why my mother would just discard me, and now, faced with the chance to ask …
‘I think you reminded her of Dad,’ Marguerite says, still gazing at me, as though she’s looking for that resemblance. ‘Hunter, I begged her to let me see you. For years. I know what she is as well as you do. But if we work together, Graves can be ours. There’s room for both of us in this. You’re my brother.’
‘Marguerite, I—’ My heart strains and contracts almost painfully, my tiredness washing over me in a wave. I’m so tired. I don’t know what to believe. ‘That time in London, I was miserable without you, and you …’
A shadow crosses her face, like clouds across the sun. ‘Wait,’ she says slowly, her grip on my shoulders tightening. ‘Wait, Hunter. No. You thought it wasme? That I was cutting you off?’ Her eyes widen in visible shock. ‘That one time we talked,youhung up onme!’
‘You were partying in a hotel suite!’ The words burst out of me.
‘What, I was supposed to be dead?’ she snaps. ‘I was trying to be normal. I was trying to show Mom I was fine, so she’d give me more freedom, so I could get to you.’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘Hunter, you’re mybrother. And I was a kid when she yanked me away. It wasn’t like Dad was willing to let go of you. I would never have left you if I wasn’t forced.Never.’
And now that memory of her in the hotel suite, eyes bright with laughter as she answered the vid call, is dimming alongside the memory of the way they had to peel her off me when they separated us. The way she jumped over the desk just now the moment she knew it was me.
It’s like there are two versions of Marguerite standing in front of me, side by side. There’s the girl I grew up with, and the ruthless creature she became. Or that Ithoughtshe became.
But the more she talks, the more that certainty fades away. The easier it is to see the girl who was once my other half.
My brain tells me to go for it – that Marguerite’s standing here, offering me everything I wanted.
My heart’s fighting itself. It tried to love Mom, and she never loved me back. It did love Dad, and then one day he was gone. And outside is Cleo – it tried to trust her, and she lied about who she was.
