My favorite ice cream was mint chocolate chip, but Griff was allergic to chocolate, so I’d bought his favorites: butter pecan and lemon sherbet.
At first, I thought he was going to ignore me. He stared over the East River at a boat passing under the bridge, cutting through the blue and white lights reflecting in the water. They rippled and danced like fairy lights, disturbing the figments trapped below.
My hand wavered, the spoon bobbing. My arms felt as if iron chains were wound around them. Griff finally glanced at the spoon and then frowned at my shaking arm.
“What happened to you?”
I shrugged. “Nine hours of lockpicking.”
He didn’t take the spoon right away. We both knew what it was. An unspoken apology when a real one couldn’t be given.
He sighed, and his shoulders drooped. To his right, the stone grotesque I’d flown on snarled at us in frozen menace. Maybe if I listened hard enough, I’d be able to hear its growl right before it returned to stone.
My arm shook again, the muscles protesting. Griff shook his head, his shaggy hair fanning in the wind, and then he grabbed the spoon.
The weight on my chest fell away, and I leaned back, breathing in the night air.
Griff peeled open the butter pecan and stuck his spoon in. The ice cream was already melting in the heat. The sun baked the rooftop all day long, and the black tar paper soaked it in. At night, the roof was still subtropical in its warmth.
He made a happy noise and then shoveled the ice cream in his mouth. He was always starving when he landed in a new body. I was sure Rou had fed him a huge meal, but on Griff’s first day back, his stomach was a barrel without a bottom.
I opened the lemon sherbet and scooped out a melting spoonful. It was tart and bright and tasted like lemon squeezed over sugar and ice. My mouth puckered, and I smiled. It was night, and I was eating sunshine.
Griff reached over, knocked my spoon aside, and stole a bite.
I bumped my shoulder against his, and he smiled.
“I heard you this morning. In the kitchen.”
“Well . . .” I took another bite, letting the tart taste coat my tongue. “It felt like my fault.”
“Don’t say that.” His voice was pleading and earnest. It was the phrase he always used. Don’t say that. Rou always told him not saying something didn’t make it less true.
“I . . .” He sighed and set the butter pecan on the ledge. It was already nearly gone—there was just a pile of creamy soup in the bottom. “It’s not your fault. Did you know, I was always jealous of Justice?”
I looked at him quickly. He was?
He nodded. “Yeah. Funny, right? From the start, he was always sent off on jobs. Jagger’s secret missions. If you needed something done, all you had to do was ask Justice. The slipshots were afraid of him. The growlings avoided him. Even Jagger treated him with respect. I always envied him. No one respected me. No one feared me. Even one-day-old slipshots attacked me until they learned Justice or Jagger would come after them if they tried anything. I know . . .” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes. His small smile was tinged with irony. It was so far from his usual expression that it startled me. He nodded. “I know you’ll tell me you like me as I am. Or . . . you would’ve, before you became a mine. Back when you cared.”
“Griff—”
He shook his head and held up his hand to stop me. “No. Don’t lie. I saw it in Justice. I saw it in you. You always forget half of me is my father. I can smell the stone in your blood. The hate. You don’t smell like . . . You used to smell like a field of violets tilting toward the sun. Now you smell like a cold, empty stone room. Justice changed from a cedar forest to blood on the edge of a knife. But even then, I still envied him. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to be seen as more than . . .” He shrugged. “Me. The lure who isn’t good for anything but bait. I resented him.”
He took the lemon sherbet from me and dug out a spoonful. His mouth puckered at the tartness.
My hands were numb from holding the cartoon. I flexed them, bringing back blood.
“You left him in the Den, Mari.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Why? Because Luvic had yanked me out before I could go after him. Because the Merchant wouldn’t open the wall to let me back in. Because Jagger had ordered me to leave him.
When I spoke, the words Jagger had commanded left me. “Because he isn’t worth saving.”
Startled, I stared at the river, the black water cutting through the land, the lights beating a pulse on the waves.
