I blink at her. “Why not?”
Her stare floods with disbelief. “Because they can track your spending on that.”
“Oh.”
I throw a frown down at the card, then reluctantly toss it back into the drawer.
I fish out the jewellery instead and cram it all into the slot of my overnight bag. The pocket jangles and clinks, the phial and syringe I stole from the storeroom knocking together.
Serena packs better than I do—more efficiently.
She moves with brisk determination, like she’s planned this over a hundred times in her head, and there’s no room for hesitation.
The urgency is in my bated breaths as I sling the bag strap over my head, letting it rest across my chest.
The weight of the travel bag tilts me.
Serena clasps her satchel shut, brand new—and so the smell of the leather reaches me across the dorm.
The perfume of possibly the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
Worms coil and slap in my stomach.
Waiting, I stand, bouncing on the balls of my heels, my bottom lip chewed relentlessly in my bite.
I stare at the grandfather clock.
“Forty minutes until the gondolas stop.”
It took us too long to get out of detention.
The door was locked, trapping us in the room, and we had to climb out of the window onto the ledge and side-step along the narrow terrace for the main infirmary. Then it was a whole chunk of time spent on waiting for the infirmary to be clear before we could climb in through the windows.
But once we did, we high tailed it across the academy to the dorm.
Now, between the curfew and dinner in the mess hall, and the gondolas shutting down soon, and if we have to make it through a crowd in the atrium, we are wasting time we don’t have.
Serena still hasn’t done the illusion.
She flings the satchel strap over her shoulder and tugs back from the bed.
My heart lurches—
But she doesn’t move for me.
She races for the bottom of the wardrobe, sticks her hand under it and feels around for something.
The whooshing breath I release puffs my cheeks.
I throw a look at Courtney’s bed. Curtains drawn, wide open, just like they were when I got out of bed for the worst lunch of my life.
She could’ve given me a head’s up, but she didn’t.
A warning that the article was coming out this weekend could’ve spared me from a whooping in the phone booth corridor.
I spare a moody look on the thick drapes.
Serena is a whirl of dark shadows moving for me. Her hand steals mine on the way to the door, and I’m yanked alongside her.
