He sighs, disappointed. “Your genre is Drama, right? Dramas deal in conceit.”
“I’ve been trying to focus on Mo’s wound. Zarlengo says all wounds—”
Rafe rubs his face like he’s being tortured. “The wound stuff is for beginners. A wound is just a premise. It’s atmosphere.”
“Artisatmosphere,” Dez says.
Rafe turns to look at her, a dare in his cobalt eyes. “Okay, Dez. What’s your wound?”
Dez flinches at his intensity. She runs her thumb over the scar on her wrist. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. What’s yours?”
“My mentor abandoned me.”
“For what? A job in the entertainment industry?” Dez remembers Zarlengo guaranteeing them the dream jobs that awaited.
“Quite the contrary,” Rafe says, his expression one of unimaginable loss.
A light bulb goes on inside of Dez. “Oh, you were … Were you in love?”
“I wish it were that simple,” Rafe says.
Dez turns away, feeling jealous and embarrassed. Is it cliché for an Acheron protégé to fall for their mentor?
“Look, I have a lot to do,” she says, “and if you’re not going to help me find this scene, just leave me to it—”
“No, I think I’d like to see Daddy in action.” Rafe reaches past her, to the space on the Lens where she’s keeping the scenes with her dad. He drags one at random to the center of the screen. It’s the last scene Dez would have shown him if she’d been given the choice.
On the screen, her father trundles toward Mo, his footsteps terrible, a wet towel gripped in his hand. It’s late and he’s been drinking; Dez can practically smell the beer soaking her Lens. And Mo made the mistake of leaving his towel on the bathroom floor.
Dez holds her breath as her father’s shadow falls over her brother’s face. He was watching Looney Tunes, a sketch about the Road Runner. She knows what’s about to happen. She remembers. And still she’s not prepared.
“No,” she whispers, reliving the horror of her father grabbing Mo off the couch, holding him up roughly by the arm. Her brother screams—
—and Dez?
Dez does exactly what she’d done at ten years old, when she ran into the living room to the sound of her brother’s cry. She runs at the person hurting Mo.
“Dez,” Rafe says. “Stop—”
But Dez can’t stop. She runs at her father until …
The floor drops out from under her.
Her stomach rises through her chest.
She flails her arms.
“Dez!!”
Rafe’s voice reaches her. How can he be so far away? He was next to her a second ago.
Now she hears the echo of his voice ricocheting in darkness.
Gone is the scene in her living room. The footage of her brother. Her father’s senseless, blistering rage. Everything in Dez’s world has become completely black.
Nothing. She sees nothing.
Until, looking down, disparate pinpricks of light blink into sight. Coming nearer in such a way that finally tells Dez beyond a shadow of a doubt:
