“Renovating.”
He found the bent forks on the carpet and looked toward the upside-down man. “Were you trying to unpick the rope?”
“Only a little bit.”
He grabbed me by my throat. Unfortunately, it was not a very strong grip, just enough to cause me to jolt. “I told you torelax.”
A knock pounded at the door.
Both of us turned to glance at the front door to the apartment.
A quiet pressed into the air.
“Dig.” A voice called on the other side. “It’s Glory.”
Dig’s shoulders lost their tension, he kept his hand around my throat and twisted his face to the door. “Come in.”
The door opened and the small, slender, dark haired young woman I had seen at his other hideout came in. Wearing her aviator sunglasses, she looked at me, to the spare room where the back wall held a painted portrait of myself and then to Dig with his hand around my throat.
“Hello.” I smiled, pulling on Dig’s hand around my throat, trying to make him squeeze me. “How are you?”
She ignored me. “I just need some water.”
Dig nodded.
She walked over to the kitchen sink and filled up her water bottle and strode back out, closing the front door.
“So, that's your sister?” I asked.
Dig kept his hand around my throat. “My half-sister, Glory.”
“Aw, that’s nice.”
“Yeah, she’s a nice person.”
“What’s she doing in the Battle?”
“She got charged with murdering all of the people she connected with.”
“She sounds really nice.”
“She didn’t do it.”
“A twist, how fun.”
“And now she’s stuck in here being hunted down by her current Soulmate who’s a psycho. She can’t hide from him because he can find her with his heart, which means she’s permanently on the run. I try to help her out when I can.”
“Family holiday. Magnus and I sometimes go to Spain in the summer.”
“What’s happening?” The upside-down man called out. “I can’t see over there, and I can’t hear anything. Girl, did you kill Dig? Did you get free?”
Dig let my throat go and walked into the spare room and punched the upside-down man in his temple, knocking him unconscious, and marched back over, snatching the bouquet of wildflowers off the ground and handed them to me. “I got these for you.”
I took them. “Thank you.”
“And these.” He flipped through the facemasks, cocking his head to read them. “You like the retinol ones?”
“Are there any with hyaluronic acid?”
