“Why were you looking for Erik?”
“He’s family,” the curly one says.
“He’s my neighbor.”
“He can be both.”
None of it is a lie. That’s the thing turning me slowly inside out — I can tell none of it is a lie, and none of it is an answer. It’s like interviewing myself. Giving the truth except for the part that matters.
Trouble is enjoying this far too much. And the back of my head still says four.
I try once more. Something easy. A question that should be straightforward.
“So how long have you known Erik?”
“About four hundred,” the trap finally says.
The room doesn’t move. Nobody laughs. Nobody corrects it. Nobody does the little shuffle people do when a bit has run its course.
So I laugh. Somebody has to. Four hundred is a punchline — it’s the thing you say to rattle the jumpy girl whose door you just destroyed — and any second now one of them is going to crack and hand me the real number and we’ll all—
I’m laughing alone.
I stop laughing without meaning to because my stomach suddenly doesn’t feel right.
“Four hundred what?” I say.
Nobody answers me.
Chapter 17
Elara
I wait.
I give them every opportunity. A nice long pause, the kind where a normal person says just kidding and everybody laughs and we move on with our lives.
Still nobody answers.
I look at Erik.
Erik looks at the window. The floor. The mug in his hand. At literally anywhere that isn’t my face.
Which is how I know it’s bad. Erik looks at me. It’s the one reliable thing about him — three years of hallway nods and he has never once had trouble finding my face. Now he can’t locate it with a map and a guide.
“Okay,” I say. “Great. Love that. Super normal number. Really cleared things up.”
Erik sets the mug down and drags a hand down his face. “Right. Introductions. Should’ve led with that.”
“You think?”
He points. The one with curly hair, by the window. “Brock.”
The trap has a name now. It sounds way too trustworthy for that look in his eyes.
“Gunnar.”
Trouble lifts his mug an inch. A little toast. Like we’re old friends and he didn’t just watch me nearly combust in my own home.
