I sighed. My heart had finally resumed its normal, quiet pace, and the nausea had subsided.
Then someone spoke.
“Do you always wake up like that?”
In Hell Gate, the only reason someone came into your room was to attack or to kill. When I was a nine and waking up into a new body, Rou, Griff, or Justice would sit with me, but other than those times, no one entered a bedroom uninvited.
Finn was the only person I’d ever been comfortable enough to fall asleep next to. Everyone else—even Justice and Griff—might kill me while I was unaware.
Instinctively, I grabbed the knife, twisted around, and flung it.
I rolled off the bed, standing in a defensive posture.
Last swept her hands, conjuring. The knife hit a thin sheet of metal. It was a . . . baking sheet? She held the sheet in front of her, raised her eyebrows at the knife stuck in the middle of it, and then dropped it to the floor. It made a hollow, clattering noise.
She brushed her hands together and then said, “I’m hungry.”
I kept my hands up and my knees bent. I floated outside of myself, ready to untie her illusions. But . . . she wasn’t conjuring. She wasn’t here to attack?
The sky was the thin gray of dirty concrete, and the sun had barely peeked over the horizon. In August, the sun rose early and stayed up late. The concrete and the metal gobbled up the heat and left the city to roast even during the night. A drop of sweat trailed down my forehead and then dripped down my neck, joining the ring of sweat on my T-shirt.
Last frowned at my wrinkled clothes. They were the same ones I’d worn yesterday. I hadn’t expected to spend the entire night in Justice’s room.
I relaxed my stance. Slightly. “What are you doing here?”
There. That was nonconfrontational.
Last’s eyes narrowed. She was in a short gray linen dress, and her black hair was yanked back into a knot so tight it pulled the skin on her face. It made her look like she was constantly grimacing.
“I tried to wake you, you know. I pinched you. I poked you. I slapped you. Twice.”
I took a step forward, and she held out her hands.
“Fine. Four times. But only twice with each hand. I thought you’d appreciate it, Mari. No one should sleep so deeply they can’t be woken up when someone opens their door. If you were my creature, I’d command you to sleep more lightly. In fact . . .” She moved her hands as if to conjure, and I shook my head.
“Don’t even try it.”
“Well, why not? It’s what friends do. I’m protecting you.”
I stared at her, and she dropped her hands, but all the while, my mind was working furiously. I hadn’t woken up when she’d slapped me? Four times? That didn’t make sense. I’d been a light sleeper my whole life. A sigh at the other end of Hell Gate could wake me. The whisper of a moth’s wings could pull me from slumber. A quarter-degree change in temperature could drop me out of a dream. But Last had apparently waltzed into my room and played whack-a-mole with my face while I’d slept. Unaware.
A sleep like that could get someone killed.
“Anyway, I’m hungry.” Last strolled around Justice’s room, looking at the bed, the nightstands, and, when there was nothing else to see, at me. “I went to your kitchen, but there was no food. There was just a naked man sleeping on the table.”
She smiled as I went still.
“Oh. You like this man? You didn’t want me playing with him? It’s just the shy one. I didn’t think you’d care. He sleeps as deeply as you. Is it a creature thing?”
I rushed past her, shoving through the door and sprinting down the hall. No one was awake. Hell Gate was active from afternoon through the night, but the early-morning hours were for rest.
I burst into the kitchen. The stove was cold, the kitchen fire unlit. The lights were off, and the counters and the table had been wiped clean. Sometimes, Rou kept scones out for us to snack on. Other times, she kept out fresh-baked bread with a crock of butter and an unopened jar of her homemade strawberry jam. Usually, there was a pot of stock or a twelve-hour soup simmering on the stove. But that morning, the kitchen was empty. No warmth, no cooking smells, no sweets left out.
Just Griff naked and deathly still on the table.
Rage swept through me. I swore viciously, my voice echoing over the soot-stained stone walls.
He’d died.
