“Vale said something to me,” I say. “That I’ll never go home, even if that is my deal.”
He considers me. “There’s an old saying. ‘You can’t ever go home again.’ Which isn’t true, of course. You can go home—but what the saying really means is that home might not have changed, but you will have.” He gives me a steady look. “Are you the same person you were three years ago?”
No. No, I’m not. That girl was light and airy, confident in her abilities and her future.
I still have some of that confidence. Okay, maybe it’s bordering on arrogance. But I have changed. I’m harder, angrier. But I’m also more careful, more wary.
But how I feel about my family—that is my foundation. When everything else I am crumbles, that love will remain.
“The thing about being a wraith,” says Prefect, “is that you get used to working in the shadows. And not all work done in the shadows is ignoble.”
I scoff.
“Well, some of it is,” he says, conceding my point without shame. “But tell me, Augusta. How many people were in that building today?”
I shrug. “I dunno. Didn’t really do a head count.”
“There were over two hundred.” One of his tattooed clocks begins to blink gently and he touches a finger to it. It flares green for a moment, then goes back to its normal gold. “And how many people would have died if Hannah Vale had been allowed to sell her information? Thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands.” He leans toward me, eyes intent. “You stopped that.”
For once, I don’t know what to say.
Prefect has no such problem. “Wraiths do things that others cannot. And when a person’s sentence is up, some decide not to return to a normal life. They stay with ISD instead. Because we can do great things, sometimes. And an old life can be a shackle to leave behind, rather than a goal to return to.”
“Am I going home?” I ask quietly. It’s as close as I cancome to asking if ISD will uphold our deal. “When this is all over?”
Prefect meets my eyes, his gaze unwavering. “If you want to.”
I spent the last three years trying to atone. Numbing myself with work and jobs, with new cities and new faces. And if I was a little too reckless on a job, I could blame that on being an impulsive criminal.
But maybe it was always fear.
Fear that even if I do survive my ten years, if I do manage to claw my way back to my old life, that old life won’t want me anymore.
My family won’t want me anymore.
I can still feel the light squeeze of Nonna’s fingers on my shoulder.Come back, when you can.
It won’t be the same. I’m not the same—and they won’t be, either.
I look at Prefect. Really look at him. At the boyish cast to his features, the shadows beneath his eyes, the rumpled dark hair and the raised scar from his temple to his hairline.
Not everyone gets second chances.
But some people do.
Prefect rises to his feet.
Steve is hurrying by, carrying a box of evidence. Without so much as hesitating, Prefect takes hold of Steve’s tie. Steve skids to a halt rather than allow himself to be strangled. “Sir?”
Prefect loosens that tie, slips it over Steve’s head, andthen settles it around his own empty collar. “Back to work,” says Prefect.
Bewildered and tie-less, Steve hastens away.
With a practiced hand, Prefect straightens his new tie. He looks more himself with it.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ve got work to do.”
I push myself to my feet.
