Hell, no.
Gaëlle stands and begins to wind her ridiculously long scarf around her neck. “I’ve got to get back. If I see or hear anything, I’ll let you know.” After three loops, the yellow yarn still hangs to her knees.
Adrien stands, too. “I’ll walk you home. Goodnight, Rainier. Cadence.” He sends her a smile that stains her cadaverously-pale cheeks pink.
While Gaëlle winds another coil of scarf around her neck, I pick up my coat that’s slipped off the back of the couch and puddled on the floor like tar. I spear my arms through but don’t bother with the gloves. Cadence accompanies us to the foyer, or rather walks Adrien and Gaëlle to the door while I trail behind my new squad.
What a team we make—a preppy professor, a woman with a yarn fetish, and a girl way too pure of heart for all this bullshit. The ultimate underdogs.
To think my life is in their hands.
My ever-practical mind reels to my cell of a dorm room. I need sheets and towels. Although I have my pride, I doubt the village has a twenty-four-sevenCarrefour, and since my pimp jewel prevents me from leaving this godforsaken town, I ask Cadence if I can borrow linens.
When she scrunches her forehead, I say, “You’ll get them back in two weeks. Either I’ll be dead or I’ll be gone.”
Shaking her head, she sighs. “Just follow me.”
12
Cadence
“For someone so convinced about making their own luck, you’re awfully pessimistic,” I tell Slate as I lead him through the kitchen.
“Just being realistic.”
“We have fifteen days ahead of us.”
“Two weeks to find four magical leaves that might curse me to death before we even reunite them. Realistically speaking, I’d have better odds jumping off a plane with a faulty parachute and surviving than accomplishing this mission with the three of you.”
“Just because we aren’t deceitful thieves doesn’t mean we’re useless.”
He gives me the side-eye.
“You’re not going to die in fifteen days, Slate.” Hopefully, though, he is going to leave.
His head keeps swiveling from side to side as he takes in my house, probably mapping it out for a future heist. His gaze lingers on the light fixture over the dining room table, a sculptural piece made of bronze maple leaves interspersed with glass ones.
“Maman cast the bronze leaves. She was a sculptor. She also made that little tree on the living room table.”
Slate glides his attention back to me. “She had a lot of talent.”
I nod.
“Did you inherit it?”
“Ha. No. I’m a paint-by-number sort of girl.” As I stare at her work of art, I can’t help but ask the dreaded question, the one I’m sure Papa would never answer. At least, not truthfully. “Did she suffer a lot in the end?”
Slate is quiet for so long I start to suspect the worst. “No. The Bloodstone leaked such a high dose of poison into her veins, she went quickly.”
My heart squeezes. “I can’t even imagine how hard that whole period must’ve been for my father. It must kill him to see the ring out of hiding.”
Slate’s lips contort as though he’s biting back words.
I sigh. “Just say what you’re thinking.”
“He was going to dig it out himself, so it must not bethatdifficult.”
“Why do you think the worst of him?”
