"Whatdid Itellyou?"
Her jaw sets. "I heard you. I heard everything you told me, and I'm telling you that you don't know him the way I—"
"Nessa," I say her name the way I say it when I need her to understand that what comes after it is the only thing that matters. "If you contact him again—"
"You'll what?" Her eyes flash. "What are you going to do, Theo? You've already done everything. You did everything, and he still—" She stops. Presses her lips together. Looks at her hands.
The room goes very quiet.
I set the phone on her nightstand.
I look at my sister, at the color in her face that I wanted so badly to see, and that I now understand the source of, and that is the most dangerous thing in this house tonight.
He's back.
He reached out, and she answered because she had been waiting for him to reach out since before any of this started, since before I made the decision I made, since before the hospital and the coma and everything that was supposed to be the end of it.
It wasn't the end of it.
For her, it was never going to be the end of it.
"He's going to hurt you again," I say quietly.
"You don't know that."
"I do know that."
"You don't know everything, Theo." Her voice cracks slightly on the last word, and she hates it — I can see her hating it, pressing it back down, reassembling the composure. "You think you do, but you don't."
I look at her for a long moment.
She reaches for it. "Theo—"
I look at Cody's name in the message list. At the timestamp.
He's using every piece on the board.
Including her.
I set the phone back down and have nothing to say, so I just stare at her. My sister, who has been in the dumps for weeks, is finally looking like herself.
"Be careful," I mutter.
It comes out differently than I intend — not a warning, not a threat. Just two words that mean something I don't have cleaner language for. Something that sounds almost like please.
She looks at me. The hardness in her face softens by one degree — not forgiveness, not agreement, just the specific shift that happens between two people who have loved each other theirwhole lives and are on opposite sides of something and both know it.
"Lock the door on your way out," she says.
I do.
I stand in the hallway for a moment, my hand still on the knob, the music still audible through the door, and the sound of my mother downstairs moving through the kitchen.
Cody Ravenshaw woke up and declared war.
He remembers every second of that night.
He went after Adela. He went after Serena. And now he's gone after Nessa.
