“Where are you going?” Parker asks, voice thick with sleep as I slip past him.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, rubbing his back and hoping he won’t wake up fully. I take the robe out of Nina’s hands and put it on as I follow her into the hall. A sliver of apprehension runs up my spine, considering bad things usually happen to me when someone leads me away from the guys, but I tell myself I’ll be fine as long as we’re still inside the athletic department. I’ve killed someone since she and Arabella tried to drown me, right?
“What are you doing here?” I ask the second the door closes behind me.
“Helping you, not that you’re grateful,” she says with a snide little edge I don’t remember.
“Helping again?” The last time she did, my vacation home burned to the ground. Don’t mind me if I’m looking for more fires. “Why would you help me?”
This has to be a trap of some kind. When we were friends, she was far from the charitable type. The idea that now, after everything, she’s being genuine is laughable. She laughs nervously, her shoulders hitching as if my question makes her a little uncomfortable. “Would you believe me if I told you I noticed how much you’ve changed?”
I laugh. The girl she once knew is buried beneath a pile of traumas so deep she can’t even breathe. Yes, I know I couldn’t be more different from the spoiled little rich girl she used to know, but it doesn’t make me happy. I’m stronger because I’ve been forged in pain. And whoever I am now, I can’t believe for one second that’s why she’d be inclined to help me.
“I’m serious,” she insists. “I won’t pretend for one minute that I’m not going to use you and your guys for whatever I want or need. You’re so rich it shouldn’t bother you much. But?—”
“But what? You like your money train, now?” I demand, accidentally letting all the hurt of her treatment over the past year slip into my voice. I need to remember that girl I’m mad at isn’t even real. None of it was.
Nina’s eyes flick to the door where we left the guys, and her lips curve into a smile. Her eyebrow raises salaciously as she takes the wordtrainto a different meaning. “Money train, that’s what I’m calling you all. Choo-choo.”
“Be serious,” I insist, really pissed now that I’m up and cold speaking to her when I could be back in bed with the guys. Everything that’s happened this year has taught me that the little moments are the ones that need to be treasured most and the ones that are easiest to take for granted.
“After you put the stiletto through his eye? I like my money train a whole lot more.” Her tone is almost flattering.
It’s demented to like someone more because they committed murder, but Nina is obviously not the normal kind of girl. She rolls her shoulders back, looking uncomfortable. Her eyes shift from me to the room, and for the first time ever, I think I’m seeing the real her.
Nina looks around, making sure we have no witnesses, before she turns and presses something into my palm, closing her hand on top of mine. “Be smart. Don’t tell anyone you have this.Especially them.”
She steps back, quietly waiting for my reaction. In my palm, I find a heavy key in a chain. The old wrought iron catches my attention. It curves and loops at the top, a design undoubtedly belonging to Bellthorn. I raise it in front of me, turning away from Nina until the cathedral-like windows shine their eerie light behind it.
“Where does this lead?” I ask.
“You need a place to stay, right?” Her eyebrows arch.
“Yes, but what does one have to do with the other?”
“How many doors lead to the Offering room?” she asks, and I’ve always hated this style of teaching.
“Five,” I say.
She rolls her eyes when I don’t get what she’s saying quickly enough. “It opens the last door. The one belonging to the fifth family.”
“You’re telling me this opens the last door into the Offering’s room?” I ask.
“No, it leads in from the hallway, genius.”
I blush. “The guys don’t have keys.”
“The fifth family was gone before they installed the palm readers. Why fix up an abandoned room?” she whispers.
I look at the key in my hand. “How do you even know all of that?”
“How doyounot know anything at all?” She looks extremely disappointed in me. I have the urge to laugh. “You slept in that room, you had them all come and go, and you never asked any questions?”
“I asked some questions!” I insist, though I have to admit to myself they were few and far between the dickings.
“Not enough,” she scoffs, knowing what I’m thinking already. “Listen to me, don’t tellanyoneyou have this.”
“You stole this?” I shoot her a look.
