But the blood is pounding in her ears. She thinks of that night, her traumatized confusion, her unhinged vulnerability. She thinks of the whirlwind afterward—the hospital, the police, her mother’s absolute rejection of her—everything that led to Dez getting into Rafe’s obsidian jet.
Dez had left everything,everythingbehind. Because she’d been desperate. And because a stranger said her film was special, told her a top graduate school was going to give her a full ride to come and join them. He said Acheron would protect her.
Now she thinks of Moriah and Zarlengo swapping glances earlier tonight when Dez mentionedGlimpsein the director’s office. Like they’d never heard of the film Rafe said got her selected for the program. Like it didn’t matter anyway.
“Go ahead, ask Rafe,” Yael says, laughing under her breath. “God knows he can’t lie to you.”
“WHERE’S THE RIVER?”DEZ DEMANDS, storming up to the bar as Eri’s putting the closed sign in the window. When Rafe left her tonight, he had other things to do. Her best guess is that he’s at the river where they keep the frags.
At the river so deep you can dive into it.
Wiping down the counter, Eri gives Dez a nod, as if she’s glad Dez finally asked. “Head west.”
“Is he out there?”
“Where he belongs,” Eri says. “If you do this, Dez—and you need to do this—beware that the rules might change.”
“What does that mean?” Dez asks impatiently.
“Better go find out.”
Dez pushes out of the bar’s back door into still, white snow. Her rage is blinding, vibrating in her skull, and the night is cold and grim. She charges west into a stand of towering pines, her eyes adjusting to the darkness as the forest swallows her. There are no footprints in the snow to follow, but of course, Rafe would have flown. Moving quickly through the woods, she listens for running water. Hears nothing.
And then she smells it. Petrichor. He’s been here, and he’s close. She tramps through powdered drifts until she sees a dim reflective glow over the permanent night’s horizon. She follows the glow until she finds herself at the river’s edge.
She kneels down and gazes through the river’s frozen surface at …
A dozen disembodied hands of every shade and shape, tied together with an almost formless cord. Looking upriver, she sees more underwater islands made of feet, torsos, and heads.
“Dez.” Rafe’s voice startles her. She spins to find him behind her, clutching a severed forearm with a cheap gold watch fastened around the wrist. He looks at her like he knows exactly what she’s doing here. “This must look bad.”
“Rafe—”
“We’re keeping the frags here until they’re ready—”
“You lied to me.”
He tips his face up to the sky. “Do you know how much easier my life would be if I could lie to you?”
“What happened that night at the Dairy Barn?”
“Oh, we’re doing this? Okay.” Rafe bends to set the arm down on the ice. Dez watches, stunned, as it sinks through the ice as if it were water, then stills a few inches below the surface. He walks toward Dez on the frozen river, his boots clacking on the ice, his expression dangerously gorgeous. Dez hates herself for what they did earlier, for how his eyes still send a rush of hunger through her.
“Did you have something to do with it?” she makes herself ask.
“Yes.”
“Start talking,” she says through her teeth.
“I know you loved your brother, Dez. And we also both know he was a fuckup.”
“What did youdo, Rafe?” Dez chokes out.
“I simply took advantage of an opportunity that already existed by sending in a friend to help.”
“To the Dairy Barn?” Dez squints, confused. “The guy in the skull mask?”
“You don’t know this—you couldn’t possibly know this—but another, far more violent man was supposed to rob the Dairy Barn with Mo that night.”
