“Exceeded.”
“Ha! Excellent.” She grabs Nelle’s hand and kneads her palm, her knuckles, rolling them between her fingers. “Interesting,” she murmurs. “You are interesting.”
“What is she doing?” Nelle asks Sade.
He slumps back against the wall, clutching his water bottle. “Witchy shit.”
When Chika opens her eyes, dark brown, framed by thick lashes, they pierce through Nelle.
“Your heart is broken.”
Nelle pulls her hand back, tingling from the touch. “How do you—”
“Don’t force it back together,” Chika interrupts. “You’re used to wounds healing fast, but this one will take time.”
Sweat beads on the back of Nelle’s neck. The room closes in, getting darker.
“Promise me,” Chika says. “Promise me you’ll give it the time it requires.”
“Sure, yeah.” Nelle smiles.Please stop staring at me like you can see through me.She holds out her pinkie. “I promise.”
In the dark of the night, in the bedrooms of random men, Nelle has considered using her ink to write James back into her life. She doesn’t know what would happen, whether he would appear before her, or some fake version of him, only as real as a wish or a dream. Only as real as herself.
Nelle is in a café in Tokyo when she moves with her mind for the first time. She picks up her drink, forgets to grab her journal from the canvas bag over her shoulder, and thinks,Go outside, as absently as she would think to breathe. Blood slugs through her veins, ink powering her movements, and she steps outside, into the sunlight and concrete. Easy.
For twenty-one years, she was caged. Quill broke her, locked her away, and lied to her abouteverything. All those years, she could have written for herself with no consequences. She could have learned to build that muscle, to strengthen herself, and by the time she met James, she could have already had total autonomy over her body.
What would that life have looked like? Too late now to know.
At last, she is free, and she has nowhere to go.
November ends. Nelle huddles into her collar and braves the gray London street. She has no idea where in the city she is, but she doesn’t care. Power thrashes like a chained tiger inside her as she stalks down the puddled sidewalk.
So adept at controlling herself now, she only needs a thought to move. And she has learned, from city to city, to create masterfully using ink and paper. A few written words, and she can conjure anything.
This is true power,she thinks.True freedom.
She feels so distant from the laughing Nelle that splashed in the sea with James, who screamed at Quill to burn his house down, who dipped a brush in a cup of coffee and painted a flying palomino in a single sleepless night.
A double-decker bus rolls past her, splattering gutter sludge. Her red raincoat is stained, her face dirt smeared, long hair matted. She desperately needs a bath and a hairbrush. Bubbles, candles, a book. Or even James ...
She shakes the name away. Stupid name.Stupid.
A burly man barrels toward Nelle in a black suit, designer shoes splashing in a half-frozen puddle. He slams into her and she stumbles back, the air knocked from her lungs.
Without stopping, he says, under his breath, “Piece o’ homeless shite.”
Nelle glares after him. “Slip and break your neck, motherfucker.”
The words leave her mouth with a puff of steam. Fired like a gun. Ink pumping, listening, cashing out her command.
Stop! Stop! I didn’t mean—
A puddle sits in the man’s path, suddenly iced over. Nelle’s heart stops as the man steps on it and slips, his legs flying. His tie floats off his chest, his briefcase drops, and he falls backward.
Sometimes a thought is just a thought,Nelle lies to herself. Like she didn’t feel that power course through her body, like she didn’t just watch that puddle freeze.
The man hits the pavement with a crunch, and Nelle jerks away from his twisted neck, his starry eyes. She turns on her heel, sprinting in the opposite direction.
