She had to take breaths, to stop herself setting something on fire. But it was all right—so did he. He went to stand up, on the bed still, then sat back down. Put his hands in his hair, and made two fists, and couldn’t seem to get them back out.
And she could see his teeth.
He snapped them together, as she watched.
Like he was thinking of a certain throat between them.
Though that did seem to bring him back down to earth. Now was not the time for biting. It was the time for thinking this thing through. “So she knows what I am. And she thinks it’s disgusting,” he started to theorize.
But something about that didn’t seem complete to her.
“It can’t just be that. It isn’t just that. There are other things—”
“The way she used to shut you down. Like that time you said the beings who lived in Calabaraia should be the ones to decide. That they should be able to welcome who they want to their world, not the other way around. Not based on some test that some stuffy authority designed, to let who they approved of see. You said it should be dismantled, that itcouldbe,” he rushed out, voice thick with passion and fury. Then he seemed to rememberone last thing, one final touch that put it all into place. And he went to tell her that, too. “And when you did, she replied—”
“People have been beheaded for less, Miss Langley,” she finished for him.
Then Bram was on his feet. Already pulling on his jeans.
He did it so fast he put them on backward and had to start again.
But she stopped him, before he could. She clicked her fingers. And when that didn’t work, she clapped her hands, as close to his face as she could get. “Hey hothead, we needproofbefore we go to someone with this.”
“And who exactly do you think we’re going to?”
“I don’t know. Anyone who will listen to us.”
“Darling, I’m not doing this so we can plead our case with a magical justice system that doesn’t exist. I’m doing it so I can unearth who murdered you and then murder them. Maybe after some light torture. Or heavy torture, depending on how much they beg for their lives,” he said, so matter-of-factly she couldn’t help looking a little aghast. She went to say something, too, something about his soul and stains and if that was okay. But he got there first. “Don’t look at me like that, Lil. There’s no other choice. This is what we will have to do, and you need to understand that. And understand something else, too: that me being willing to find proof first is all the magnanimity either you or I owe.”
And after that, she had to say: He had a pretty good point.
“All right,” she told him. “I’m in.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She knew he hated the idea as soon as she said it. But she had no idea how much he hated it until Anaya burst into her dorm room at ten past midnight, ready to murder her for the crime of never telling best friends what perilous danger you are secretly in, and instead of Bram immediately lying his ass off about everything that had happened, he told her it all in great and explicit detail.
Then demanded Anaya order her to see sense.
“Go on. Tell her that breaking into Hargreaves’s office in the dead of night is foolhardy and strictly forbidden by me. And by you, a person she might actually listen to,” he said. And somehow instead of collapsing under the weight of the most unhinged story to ever exist, Anaya gave her alook.
“He’s right, you know. You’ll get into her office, and it’ll eat you.”
She had to throw up her hands. “Oh, comeon. All you’re going to do after he spills that great mess of nonsense is gang up on me?”
“Well, that great mess of nonsense is you not being murdered by a secretly evil Professor Hargreaves. Or not so secretly to be honest, because, well, she did just let a werewolf eat a student right in front of us,” Anaya said. Then seemed to process a bunch of stuff all at once, and turned to Bram in a rush of glee and shock. “Oh mygod, is that why you got yourself bumped to theremedial classes? So you could make sure a werewolf didn’t eat her? It is, isn’t it? That’s why you threw her into a tree! You know, I thought that was weird at the time.”
But Mina had to make an incredulous noise for that. “You did not.”
“Did so. Why did you think I’ve been so accepting of you and him having some kind of weird thing? It was obvious you had freaky soulmate-bond nonsense going on. I have totally read this book before.”
“If you had, could you not have just clued me in a little?”
“I did try. In fact, sometimes it felt as if I could almost tell that you wer—” Anaya started to say. But just as she got to the point, the delighted light in her eyes seemed to darken. It turned inward, slowly, and her breath caught in her throat.
It was like seeing her own expression in a mirror, when she’d realized.
And sure enough, sure enough, a moment later Anaya spoke the confirmation into the suddenly brimming-with-tense-energy air. “I’m someone else, too, aren’t I? Somehow,I’msomeone else, too,” she said, and now the air fairly near crackled.
