That infernal scrape of bone was like nails dragged over slate. Teeth gritted, he said, “Yes.”
“Because of the bone shard.”
The snowy night slipped past the window in spotlit flurries. He readjusted his seat and tried his best not to look like someone whose skeleton was currently attempting to climb clean out of his body. “Yes,” he said again.
“And how does that work, exactly?”
He checked his watch. “I don’t think I’m comfortable having this conversation in the back of a taxicab.”
“Is there a time youwouldbe comfortable talking about this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to consult my calendar.”
Her eyes flashed with an unholy fire. “Price, I swear to God.” Her hand fell to her lap with a twitch, as if she were considering slapping him. “Please don’t be yourself right now.”
He fiddled with a button on his coat. “Who else would you like me to be?”
She let out a groan that was, he felt, needlessly theatric. With a huff, she turned back to the window. The cabbie shot them another discerning glance in the rearview as he rounded the corner, weaving in and out of slippery roundabouts.
“I don’t know why I bother,” Colton heard her mutter, and he wasn’t entirely sure if she was speaking to herself or answering the voice inside her.
He’d tell her everything, in time. About the Apostle. About the Priory. About Liam. About the pledge they all made, the thin lip of Hell they’d found in the outskirts of Chicago. About nine-year-old Colton, who’d thrashed his way through the frozen Cocytus itself to lay himself at her feet. Drawn to her, drawn to her, the way every other dead, shivering thing drew in close.
A winter’s queen.
A graveyard’s queen.
The Apostle would have eaten her alive if he’d discovered what she’d managed to do. He’d have opened her up like a little tin toy. A doll with an incubus keeping warm beneath her skin. And so, Colton buried Meeker’s body deep in the woods. He’d thrown up his breakfast, kneecaps snarled in the knotted roots of an ancient elm, his hands calloused from hours of shoveling earth gone hard with frost.
The cab took another turn, careening sharply into the November-dazzled lights of Newbury Street. With the squeal of brakes, the driver pulled off to a no-parking zone. Several horns honked as they wove around them, tires leaving black gashes in the slow-gathering snow. The cabbie turned around to peer at them. His voice was thick with a Saugus brogue.
“Here work?”
“Here is perfect,” Colton said, leaning forward to hand over a tip. “Thanks a lot.”
He slid out into the snow and jogged around to the other side to get the door. Lane burst out in a fury, clutching the strap of her purse as though it were a shield. She didn’t look at him. Not as she trudged through the dirtied heap of snow along the curb. Not as she nearly lost her footing along the old brick pavers. Colton fell into step alongside her, offering his arm. She declined, and the snub stung as if she’d slapped him.
The gallery was located on the third floor of an old brick building packed with whitewashed mortar. Tucked between a coffee bistro and a consignment shop. The double doors were solid, heavy oak, and the hinge creaked as Colton pulled the right door open. Stepping aside, he held it wide for Lane to pass through. She regarded him coldly, as if he were offering up a rat.
“After you,” he said.
She pushed past him, pulling open the door on the left. The noisy click of her heels followed her into the lamplit foyer. The severed shard jostled repeatedly against her as she walked, thud, thud, thudding in a way that made his blood roar in his ears.
He caught up with her at the elevator, where she was working silently and indignantly to peel off her coat. Wordlessly, he helped her shrug out of it. She spun away from him in an angry pirouette. Like he was Midas, his touch gilded poison. One ankle wobbled precariously over tile as she struggled to reposition the thin strap of her bag.
He was grateful for her momentary distraction, aware that he was staring.
She stood before him in a long-sleeved dress of fitted black velvet, the hem interrupted by a subtle slit up her left thigh. He slung her coat into the crook of his elbow and cleared his throat as quietly as he knew how. The sound ricocheted through the foyer like a gunshot.
“That’s not the dress I gave you.”
“Oh?” She glanced down at herself as if she’d only just noticed, smoothing her hands over the flat of her stomach, the velvety protrusion of her hipbones. “I guess it isn’t,” she said, her tone dismissive.
The elevator doors opened and she turned on her heel, crossing into the lift without a backward glance. He didn’t know what made him snap—that incessant scrape of the shard against her skin or her unearned fury—but by the time the doors shut behind him, the hammering of his heart against his chest rendered him incapable of rational thought.
In front of him, Lane stood in the wide, rusted mirror. Her clutch sat balanced on the flat-plated handrail. Her attention was trained on reapplying the deep mauve of her lipstick.
Without thinking it through, he jammed the emergency stop. The elevator gave a sickening lurch and then juddered to a standstill. The emergency light clicked on overhead. Instantly, the little space was flooded red as blood. Lane glanced up only briefly before continuing her application.
