I turned to where she pointed, but I only saw a blond man ducking around a building and disappearing.
She grinned over at us. “I think someone’s been having fun.”
Then Luvic stilled, and his arm around my shoulder tightened. “Mari?”
“Yeah?” I asked, my heart pounding at the sudden seriousness in his voice.
“Have you seen Finn since the games?”
I glanced up at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was peering through the crowd.
“Twice.”
“How’d it go?”
Hmm.
“First I tried to blow him up. Then I stabbed him.”
Luvic let out a laughing breath. “That might explain why he looks like he wants to kill us.”
Last perked up. “The Smith’s here too?”
Luvic jerked his head toward the subway tunnel.
My breath caught when I saw him. He was a block away, entangled in the mess of pedestrians and rushing emergency workers. He strode toward us, his face hard, his mouth twisted. He eyed Luvic’s arm around my shoulder. His eyes narrowed, and the edges of his mouth turned up, forming a smile I’d never seen on him before. It made my heart stutter and lurch, like a deer taken down by a wolf.
A chill rushed over my skin, replacing the afternoon’s heat with ice. There was something wrong. I’d never seen Finn look like this. I used to say Wolfgang moved like a shark through water, but Finn was more terrifying than that. He wasn’t a shark in the shadows below; he was the unknown monster lurking in the dark. The thing that grabbed people and devoured them without a sound. I shuddered, and when Finn’s predatory gaze focused on me, Luvic swore.
Next to us, Last giggled, kissed her fingers, and waved at Finn.
“I once stabbed a date,” she said. “He didn’t like it, so I killed him. But Mari, I think the Smith liked you stabbing him. He looks obsessed.”
Not in a good way.
“You probably shouldn’t have done it,” she said, “unless you’re into revenge torture. Is that what you like?”
I swallowed, my throat horribly dry. I couldn’t look away from Finn. I was searching his features for knots, for ropes, for illusion. This couldn’t be him. He’d never look at me like . . . like he wanted to devour my screams and bathe in my pain. Like he lived to hate me.
“Is that Finn?” Luvic asked in a low whisper, maybe hoping it was someone else cloaked in illusion.
“Yes. It’s him,” I said, my voice breaking. “He’s . . . he hates us. Me.”
I could feel it rolling off him like heat radiating from the sidewalk on a scorching summer day. Worse. It was the heat of hell’s coals, peeling the skin off your bones.
My heart thudded.
Was that what it took? A death. A stabbing. A crown. Was that what had made the man who’d promised to love me into the next life hate me with a burning rage I could feel in my soul?
I blew out a shuddering breath, and Finn, only half a block away, smiled.
“If we kill him,” Last asked, bouncing on her toes, “could we move into his house? Mine burned down.”
She tapped her thumb and fingers together.
“No,” Luvic said. “We’re not going to engage. This isn’t the time. We’ll be civil. No stabbing. No fighting. No conjuring. Just . . . nod and walk on by. Nod and walk on by.”
I clutched the glass bottle of Furtig. Just nod and walk on by. Okay.
