“Ava and Kallie talk about dicks all the time!” he defended. “No one would suspect a thing.”
He’s not wrong, Oberi cut in.
“Get more creative, because I’mnottalking about dicks all day,” I said.
“I’ll think of something,” he replied thoughtfully.
We reached the bottom of the tower. I turned the corner and nearly ran into someone. His shoulder slammed into mine, and I stumbled to the side. “Watch where you’re going,” I growled.
“Sorry,” he muttered meekly before scurrying away.
I scoffed as I turned back in the direction we were headed. “Someone must be new around here. No one apologizes at the Institute.”
Marcus lowered his voice. “It was Uriel. One of the Elves.”
“Oh,” I said flatly. I hadn’t officially met Uriel, but he worked the same shift as me at the factory, and I could hear him singing every now and then from a few stations over. Eddie had talked about him before. I kind of felt bad for snapping at him, but Marcus and I had more important things to worry about. “Where do you think we’ll find the girls? We have to tell them about our vision.”
“Kallie mentioned something about visiting the pool sometime,” Marcus recalled. “I think she wants to hang out with Opal.”
I nodded. “Okay. We’ll check there.”
Marcus and I had just entered the stairwell to the basement when the screaming started. We both stopped in our tracks, and Rishi ran straight into me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“No idea.” Marcus led me toward the pool, where the shouts were coming from. We crept closer to the door, and he peeked inside. “Looks like someone got busted.”
“I didn’t do it!” someone shouted, their voice wavering. “Please, it wasn’t me!”
“Witnesses say otherwise,” a gruff voice replied— one of the guards, I guessed. “Shut the hell up and quit your crying.”
We snuck inside, but the second we entered, Marcus gasped. “Goddess!”
I could hear the chatter around us. Whispers traveled all around the room, though I couldn’t hear anything beyond the guards’ shouting.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
“There’s a merman… floating in the pool.” Marcus gagged a little. “He’s not moving. There’s… so much blood coming out of his fins. It’s staining the whole pool red.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Amurder?
“Who are they blaming?” I demanded. The person was still pleading their innocence. He didn’t sound like the kind of guy who had just killed someone. He sounded terrified.
“It’s Uriel,” Marcus said breathlessly.
“That’s impossible,” I protested. “We just saw him in the hall. He couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds ahead of us.”
“Right. He couldn’t have done this,” Marcus agreed. “That looks like a vampire bite… maybe a siren.”
“Uriel’s half-vampire,” I recalled. “Eddie told me. He grew up in Forevermore, but his mom was an Elf and his dad was a vampire.”
“Which means he’s the perfect person to set up,” Marcus replied.
My hands curled into fists, and my blood boiled. “The Warden wants to make an example of the Elves. He just found his first target.”
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” Uriel screamed. “I swear, I wasn’t even in the pool when it happened!”
Before I knew what I was doing, I’d stalked forward. “Hey, get off him!”
