He exhales, frustrated, dragging his hand over the back of his neck. “Just be careful,” he says as I turn away.
I make it a few steps before I stop and turn back. “I don’t need to be.” My voice carries, and I see a couple people turn their heads.
I turn again, pushing through the doors, but the feeling follows me outside, clinging in a way I can’t shake. Because now I can’t stop thinking about it.Since when does Jax St. Clair go out of his way to talk to me? And even stranger—since when does he care who I spend my time with? Or whether I’m being careful?
* * *
The next day at lunch, I find Ivan exactly where he always sits—far corner of the cafeteria, back to the wall, a fortress of books forming a half-circle around his tray. I didn’t mean to start sitting with him. I simply couldn’t stand the way no one else ever did.
“What’s all this for?” I ask.
Ivan barely glances up from the stack of brittle books he’s sorting through. “Research.”
“On what?” I pick one up.
“Tar,” he says simply.
I raise a brow. “Oh. That again.”
He shakes his head. “Listen to this: Real tar isn’t for roads. It’s a byproduct. Natural tar forms when organic material decomposes underground without oxygen. Plants, animals… time does the rest. It’s thick, slow and predictable.” He taps a photo in the book, and I see a glossy black pool of tar trapped between layers of rock.
“Okay,” I say, still not seeing the point.
Ivan slides another book toward me—this one open to a diagram he’s drawn himself. The Pit.Our Pit.
“That’s what’s bothering me,” he murmurs. “Real tar is made of carbon, oil residues, and decayed organic matter. It reacts to heat and pressure. It doesn’t…”
I yawn.
He nods, eyes flicking toward the floor. “What we have down there isn’t passive. It doesn’t wait. It reacts and bubbles when nothing touches it.”
A tight, involuntary chill crawls up my spine. “How do you know?”
His voice lowers. “Real tar can preserve bones for ten thousand years. But the stuff in the pit?” He points to frantic handwritten notes in the margin:
NO BONE REMAINS. ALL ORGANIC MATTER CONSUMED.
“Real tar preserves,” he whispers. “The Tar City Pit doesn’t.”
I look at him. “What’s the name of that stuff again?” I ask, sliding into the seat across from him. “The thing that stained your fingers?”
He closes a book quickly. “Silver nitrate.”
The stains are darker today, almost sunk deeper into the skin.
“Do you think the girl…” I lower my voice, “the one from the tape… touched that too? Silver nitrate?”
He looks at me. “Hard to tell,” he mumbles. “But the coincidence is driving me insane.”
“It’s driving Jax insane too,” I say before thinking.
Ivan stills. “What do you mean?”
“He mentioned it.”
“You talk to him?”
“Not much.”
