Fucking pairs.
“It was following her the other night,” Aro goes on. “Who’s in possession of it?”
“I have no idea,” Hunter tells her. “I haven’t seen it in a year. I’ll ask Farrow.”
“Discreetly.”
“We should’ve told her ages ago,” Dylan chides. “She’s there a lot and alone. It was never one hundred percent safe.”
“We weren’t sure they were sneaking into the tower,” Hawke argues.
But Kade barks. “Bullshit!”
My mind races with all this new information. Two men they seem to know, but are scared of, sneak into the hideout and leave clues for them, for what? That story they’re puzzling together on the wall inside? How could they be so stupid? To put themselves in danger and me, unknowingly. It’s like I’m… Like I’m their fathers, whom they didn’t trust to not react.
Damn right, I would’ve. And I did. They’re never getting back in there.
Hawke lowers his voice. “It’s the Night Ride.”
“What?” Aro asks.
“Aro said she asked about the black Dodge,” he points out. “Carnival Tower, Rivalry Week, and The Night Ride. The next chapter.”
What does that mean?
I stand there, listening for more, but I don’t hear anything. I peek out the window, and they’re gone.
I stumble into another bounce house, wandering and lost in thought. How long has all of this been going on? Hawke talked me out of removing the mirror years ago, before I went away to college. I can’t even begin to list all the reasons I’m pissed. And who are Manas and Deacon? I’ll go back into the Tower later, see if I can make sense out of the mystery they have strung together on the wall.
Two strangers concerns me, but if my own family didn’t warn me… And who is Winslet? The girl in the photo rises to the front of my mind.
You make me wanna die.
She was pretty. Where is she now?
There’s a mystery in the tower and strangers coming and going, and my nieces and nephews don’t think I know anything.
I stand there, swaying with the bouncing, and…
They don’t think I know anything.
I smile a little.
What should I do?
Minutes pass, A.J. and James fly through, and we bounce.Maybe I’ll pull a prank of my own on Hawke and the rest. I leap high and race Noah over the rock wall and follow Farrow, both of us somersaulting through a tunnel with a water sprinkler.Maybe I’ll figure out the next chapter he talked about.
I laugh and sweat and let it go, the promise of new nights in my new house ahead of me, and for a second, I let myself stop counting the minutes.
I collapse in an orange tunnel, hair in my face, Noah’s T-shirt sticking to my skin.
The pizza. Shit.
But for some reason, I don’t vault up and out of the bounce house. Dreamy images of my—hopefully—new bedroom with the leaky roof and the raw, unvarnished floor consume my thoughts.
You make me wanna die.His whisper hits my lips.
Yes.
