“I’m sorry. Rou—Roumelade—she’s a water spirit. She’s like a mom to me. So I know what it’s like to have a hole where a mom should be and someone who almost, but not quite, fits there.”
“Droona didn’t fill a hole. She had her own space.”
“I’m sorry.”
He tilted his head so I couldn’t see his expression and pulled a slice of pizza from the box. He carefully peeled off the basil.
“Does she know who I am?”
“Mom?”
I nodded.
“Yeah. Just don’t be hurt if she doesn’t hug, kiss, cry. She’s not like that. She might not speak to you for weeks or months, even if you’re in the same house. Don’t be hurt. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I took another bite of the pizza. It was cooling, and the melted cheese was pulling off in long strings. After I swallowed, I took a long drink of water.
“I won’t be hurt,” I said finally. And I shrugged when Jacob gave me a surprised look. “I won’t. Rou always tells me, ‘See people as they are. Don’t try to make someone something they’re not.’ It wouldn’t be right to expect her to be anyone but who she is. What about you?”
He tilted his head, so I gestured to him. “You. Who are you besides the Ward—assassin, boogeyman, sister-killer, mind-melter, most powerful heir to ever live?”
He was smiling by the end of my recitation. “When I was little, I used to pretend you were still with us. I’d stay up late talking to you. Tell you about the books I was reading. The frogs I’d caught in the Harlem Meer. The illusions I’d made. I stopped when I was . . .” His eyes narrowed, counting back. “When I turned nine. But even after, whenever Dad sent me out to remove a threat to you, or to make sure you were safe on the leggerock’s errands, I always . . . I always thought of you as family. My sister. Not just blood but . . .”
“It must’ve been lonely.”
He didn’t say anything.
Then I looked at him more closely. “You assassinated threats? To me?”
His green eyes went dark. “A truth seer must not be suffered to live. Isn’t that what they say? Anytime there was a rumor, Dad sent me to clean it up.”
“And you followed me on jobs?”
He smiled. “Only until you stopped dying. You were sloppy when you were young. The jackaltooth? The Clark incident when you knocked over their shelf full of glass ornaments? Primus almost caught you then—I had to make him trip over a rug and bloody his nose. That Bard job when you stole into their entryway and nabbed a button? It took days of mental coercion before the Bard believed the dry cleaner had lost it during a washing. What’s so funny?”
I was smiling so wide my cheeks hurt. Then my smile dropped. “And Finn? Luvic?”
He shook his head. “Luvic isn’t going to be around long.”
My shoulders dropped.
“And Finn?”
“I don’t know. I think he made the wrong choice and it’s come back to haunt him. He’s dangerous. It’s . . . Just like Dad, I’ve played out every move. There’s a million ways we all die, and only one where we live.”
I sighed. Those were not good odds. “What’s the move where we all live?”
The right edge of Jacob’s lips lifted. “I didn’t say all of us live.”
That’s right, he’d said we all die, or we—meaning he and I?—live.
“And?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. If the leggerock breaks these walls . . .” He nodded to the obsidian walls surrounding us. “I have another idea.”
I raised my eyebrows.
He stood and pulled a medical device through the walls. The machine came up to his lower chest. It was on caster wheels, and he rolled it across the floor. There were knobs, dials, tubes, and pumps. It even had a touch screen.
