“This is a trap,” she says to him. “Lumines knows about this, don’t they?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he replies.
“Answer my question, Ari.”
“They don’t know about this place.”
She tilts her head at him skeptically, and he can tell that she’s considering his answer. “How can I believe you?”
He shrugs, even though a shiver of anticipation is still running through his body. “The burden of proof is not on me. Believe what you wish.”
“You’re playing a game with me.”
“And aren’t you? Isn’t that all this is?”
“Then what should we do, Ari?” She taps her gun against her leg, and he leans toward the archway, ready to put his hand against the stone. “There’s no good reason for me not to kill you right now. Will would be pleased. Why shouldn’t I?”
The fact that Sam says Will—instead of Diamond—interests Ari, and his soul stirs, wanting to dig for more information. He puts his hand against the archway’s stone. Sam tenses at his gesture, but he goes ahead with a transmutation anyway, changing a layer of the stone into a steel knife with a hilt of marble. He holds the blade down by his side and takes a slow step toward her.
“That’s quite an assumption, that you could do it,” he answers. “I’d say we’re equally capable of destroying each other.”
She doesn’t back away as he approaches her, nor does she lift her gun to point it at him again. But so long as he remains out of reach, she has the advantage. Still, Ari keeps walking.
He finally stops before her. Only a foot of space separates them now. Sam’s hand is tight against her gun, her finger resting on its trigger. Ari grips his knife firmly at his side. Now they are both within range to kill. They stare at each other, as if each daring the other to make the first move. Ari’s heart pounds at their little game.
“Will doesn’t know I’m here,” she finally says.
Again, Will. Not Diamond. Ari’s intuition flickers at the way she’s wording her phrases, and he wonders how much Will has been running things behind the scenes lately. He decides to try a new tactic.
“I hope he’s recovering well,” he says.
At that, she lifts a brow wryly. “Do you?”
“It wasn’t my decision to attack him.”
“Well, they paid for it with their lives.”
“Yes,” he says. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”
She doesn’t answer right away. They haven’t seen each other in five years, but he can still sense when the conversation between them has halted, when Sam no longer wants to tell him something. She must have been involved with the killings of the Lumines crewmen. And if he could wager money on it, he’s willing to bet that she had never taken a life before that.
A wave crashes, the sound filling the air. When it ebbs, she finally says, “You look different, Ari.”
He takes in her moon-bright hair and her dark, calculating eyes, and feels that old ache tug hard in his chest. He tries to imagine the girl he once knew melting a man’s skin into the floor of a bathroom.
“You look,” he answers, “like something is haunting you.”
He hits true, because her gaze shutters. “I’m fine,” she says.
He lowers his hand and his voice. “Sam,” he says quietly, and notices the way she flinches at the sound of her name, as if she doesn’t hear it often. “I know you had no choice.”
She scowls at him. “I didn’t come here for you to patronize me.”
“I’m just stating a fact. Diamond manages your decisions, I get it.”
Sam stiffens, and he can tell his words are turning her wary. “Diamond has better things to do than that,” she says.
“What better things does she have to do than run her empire by utilizing her new Mozart?” he presses. “Because that’s what we’ve seen, unexplained incursions into our territory and leaks of our schedules. Diamond has been sending you to do that, hasn’t she?”
