We followed Svenja. Logan and I hung as far back as we could, and I whispered to him about what happened with Ajit and the slip pill. I figured he’d understand, considering he’d done basically the same thing while looking for a hacker. He reached back and grabbed my hand. I took it. I almost tripped in the dark, and his hand shot out to steady me.
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” he said over his shoulder. I stopped at the word. We.
It was stupid how much better that sentence made me feel, even when I knew how badly things were falling apart.
I kept my eyes on the back of Logan’s neck and ran into him when he stopped suddenly. He reached around, both steadying me and pulling me to him in one movement. We were on a ledge, ten feet above a room at least as tall as the dunk tank we’d landed in. Ahead of us was a window that reached from floor to ceiling, overlooking the expanse of Rearden Falls. Purple fog hung outside, twisting just enough so that we could catch glimpses of city lights below. Snow-covered trees shot up on either side, like sentries in the dark. I hadn’t realized how late it was. The floor was still stone, just like the other three walls, and the main sources of light were three fires burning in black metal fire pits set throughout the room.
“What is this?” Logan asked.
“An abandoned mine from the failed coal boom that we’ve converted into one of our many safe houses,” Svenja explained. “When they couldn’t find coal, they gutted this place until they found gemstones. Garnet, emerald, things like that.” She turned to the wall. “The glass is one-sided with texturized pixel technology. From the outside, it looks like a rock face. You can see the main road up the mountain from here. It gives us a strategic advantage.”
“How many of these places do you have?” Logan asked, his eyes wide.
“The Haunt is everywhere. We’ve got hundreds of cells like this in the US. Thousands worldwide, but I won’t get more specific than that.” Svenja smiled. Her teeth were slightly crooked in the front. She wore her smile well, as though she knew exactly what it could do to people.
We edged around the smaller fire pits that lined the walls until we came to another stone doorway cut into the left side of the room.
“Your room is in there, but I’ll take you to the canteen first. There’s an extra bed, but I assumed you two share one?” she asked. I coughed.
“Oh, we’re not together. No. We’re just . . . we’re not together,” I stuttered.
Logan coughed too, and I squeezed my hand into a fist.
Svenja turned around, oblivious to my mortification as she yanked open a door to reveal a ladder.
The canteen was a little smaller than the main room above and was more richly decorated. It had a kitchenette against the back wall and catwalk railing laced above, leading into small doorways high up in the corners. Christmas lights hung across the expanse of the whole thing, and oriental rugs were layered all over the floor. An octagonal poker table sat in the middle, placed underneath the square opening of the catwalk. Margaret and Ajit sat at the table.
Svenja came down after us.
“Okay,” she said, squeezing past me and making her way to the kitchenette in the back. “Here’s a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and some protein bars and sandwiches.”
She brought two paper bags out from the other side of the counter.
“Don’t forget to tell them that turndown service is from nine to ten,” Margaret cracked, bringing a tin cup to her lips.
Svenja stopped, her head whipping to Margaret. “Excuse me for wanting to treat people like they’re worth more than fodder for body count.”
Ajit sighed. “Don’t listen to her, Svenja.”
“Thank you,” Logan said, reaching out for the bag. I didn’t reach for mine, and Logan took it for me. I crossed my arms and glared at Ajit.
“We’re grateful,” Logan said finally. I continued to glower at Ajit, who took a pull from his cup, unbothered.
There was a silence as Svenja clasped her hands and bounced on her toes.
“Well. It’s been real weird, guys,” Logan said, turning around to the ladder.
“You didn’t ask them to play?” Ajit asked.
“They can’t handle it, Ajit,” Margaret said.
I stopped.
I knew we should keep walking.
I shouldn’t ask what she was talking about. I shouldn’t—
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
Logan must have been thinking the same thing, because he let out a loud exhale as he turned around.
“She’s talking about a game called Medusa,” Ajit said, as he walked over to a cabinet against the wall and pulled cups and an amber liquor bottle from the shelves. “You look down at the table. On the count of three, you meet someone’s eyes. If they’re looking away, you’re safe. If they’re looking back at you, you both take the shot.”
He came back to the table and set five glasses on the wood.
“But we make it a little more interesting,” Svenja added, sitting down at the table and crossing her legs. “You take a shot, and you tell a secret.”
I froze at the words. “You mean you tell your secret?” I asked. I regretted opening my mouth in the first place.
Svenja pursed her lips. “We tell parts. Pieces. Glimpses.”
“So I’m here to . . . what, add the danger? The loaded chamber in Russian Roulette just in case telling me kills you?” Logan asked.
“It’s hardly danger. The chances of you having anything to do with our Wounded is, statistically speaking, zero,” Ajit chimed in.
Logan nodded, letting his head drop before looking over to me. “I think you were right, Margaret. I think that that game sounds like a bit much for us,” he said, turning.
Relief flooded my limbs as I turned and followed him to the ladder. We were at the base of it when Margaret’s voice rang out. “I thought you might say that. But I think I have something that could change your mind,” she said. We turned.
Svenja’s lips clenched down into a thin line, but she got up and disappeared through a side door.
Margaret reached back, pulling a laptop off the shelf behind her and opening it. She cocked an eyebrow at Logan and beckoned him forward with a crook of her finger.
With a wary glance at me, he walked over to the table.
I followed, the pit of my stomach clenching tighter with each step.
“You spent six weeks at Northwood Hospital four years ago, did you not?”
Logan stopped. He held his head a little higher, his face tightening. “Yes.”
Margaret turned the computer to face us.
For a half second, the screen was black, with small, almost indistinguishable numbers and lime green Xs on a grid. She quickly hit a button, and a black-and-white video filled a screen.
Even through the pixels, I could see Logan in a hospital bed, wrapped and bruised, an oxygen mask on his face.
“What the hell is this?” I asked through clenched teeth.
Margaret leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.
“Security footage,” she said, meeting my eyes.
“What does this have to do with your stupid game?” I asked.
Margaret smirked and looked like she was going to say something, but Ajit set his cup down. “We had Svenja look closer at it. What was in the hospital database had been edited.”
Logan went very still beside me. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“If Svenja says it was edited, then it was edited. She might be a walking glitter bomb, but there is not a better security footage analyst in this entire continent,” Margaret shot back.
“Someone cut a minute and a half from the original. It wasn’t hard to find the markers,” Ajit explained to Logan. “This is what you saw at fourteen hundred hours,” he said.
It was the hospital room, with Logan lying in the bed.
“Now watch the cabinet at the far corner.”
One second it was closed. The next, it was open. There was no footage of it moving. It just wasn’t, and then it was.
Logan stepped closer to the table.
Margaret reached over and hit enter.
“Luckily, we have the real version.”
Logan lay in the bed.
Then someone walked into the room.
His hair was dark, and he wore a light windbreaker jacket—it was impossible to tell the color from the black-and-white footage. He stopped when he saw Logan in the bed.
The man wiped a hand over his mouth. As he walked farther into the room, I could see that he was holding a leather jacket. It looked like Logan’s.
He walked around the side of the bed, and I held my breath.
Show me your face. Show me your face.
And then he did.
Sam MacDonald gently reached over and took Logan’s hand in his. The quality of the video was terrible, but I could see him peer at the chart next to Logan’s bed. Then he walked over to the cabinet and opened it, setting the jacket inside. His body blocked the view of the shelf, but Sam’s arms moved like he was opening something. Like he was reaching deep inside the shelf.
I looked over at Logan, who watched the footage with wide eyes.
“Do you remember what was in that cabinet?” Margaret asked, closing the laptop.
“My bag. It had been beside me on the front porch when they—when I ran into the guys,” Logan answered.
Margaret looked to the door, and, as if on cue, Svenja walked through.
She carried a worn red, white, and blue duffle bag, which she set gently on the table. Her expression was drawn, like she was an unwilling part of this plan.
Logan tensed when he saw it.
“I thought my uncle threw it out with my clothes. They were too . . .” He stopped, and then recommitted to his words. “Too bloody. But I had some files in there I hadn’t been able to look through.”
Ajit shook his head. “It was in his attic, up in Wrecks. We searched it when we found this footage. It’s been in our evidence lockup.”
Margaret sat back, her eyes fixed on Logan. “And it’s yours, if you win Medusa. Don’t you want to see what Sam thought was so important?”
“How do you know when we win?” I asked.
Svenja held her hands out. “You outlast us.”
“I thought you said there wasn’t any real danger,” Logan said.
“It’s not a fight to the death, Logan,” Svenja laughed.
Margaret leaned forward. “Though I can’t rule it out. I don’t recommend trying to outdrink us.”
Logan nodded. “Whatever’s in the bag can’t have been that important if you’re willing to give it back,” he said.
“Maybe not to us. Not for what we’re doing. But you might find it interesting.” Ajit locked his eyes on Logan. “Are you in?”
Logan nodded, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly as he cocked his jaw to the side. “Almost,” he said, looking over at me. He turned back to Ajit. “You also have to give Eerie back the money she gave you for the slip pill.”
Ajit raised his eyebrows. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised I’d told Logan or amused at his nerve for bringing it up.
“With interest,” Logan pushed.
“The offer is what it is, boyo. Take it or leave it,” Margaret spat.
“We’ll do it,” I said. Whatever was in that bag could be important, and it could be his only chance to find some answers.
Logan shook his head, his eyes still locked on Ajit’s. “Nope. A thousand bucks in the pot, or we don’t play.”
Margaret moved to say something else, but Ajit got up and disappeared through a side door. A moment later, he reappeared with two tightly bundled rolls of cash. “We have plenty of money,” he explained, looking to me. “But we take it because it’s a measure of how desperate a Hushed is. And when a Hushed is desperate, the Haunt considers it our business to know why. You’d be surprised by how much we learn just by walking through gas stations and talking to those looking for help.”
He dropped the money in the center of the table.
“If you win, it’s yours. With my apologies for wasting your time, madam.”
I met his eyes with a steely glare. I didn’t want his apology. The money, though. The money could help.
Logan eyed me, and I nodded. We sat down at the table.
“Don’t get anywhere near anything dangerous, okay?” he said in a low voice. I understood what he meant. He didn’t want me to get too close to my secret. He didn’t have to warn me; I had no intention of telling the truth.
“Your boyfriend isn’t as stupid as he looks,” Margaret said. Of course she’d heard that.
“They’re not together, Margaret,” Svenja piped in cheerfully, her eyes narrowing as she looked at her friend. “And you should be the first person to stop assuming everyone is together, now. It’s so old school.”
“So is the phrase ‘old school,’” Margaret shot back.
“Thanks, Svenja,” Logan said, a hint of sarcasm riding his breathy voice.
Margaret looked between us as Ajit set my glass in front of me.
“This is going to be fun.”
* * *
I have always hated the taste of alcohol, and when I grabbed the glass and the smell drifted up to my nose, I was already cursing this plan.
“One! Two! Three! Medusa!” Ajit called.
We looked up.
Logan locked eyes with Margaret, and I looked at Svenja. She was looking away, and I took a deep breath. If I was going to keep up, I needed to get lucky.
Logan drank his shot, his fingers nimbly spinning the glass as he sat it back down. He held his arms out.
“Secrets, right? Just plain ol’ secrets?”
“Stop stalling, Winspeare,” Margaret snapped.
He leaned back in his chair, though he kept his hands spread wide over the table.
“Obviously, you know I spent six weeks in the hospital after a couple of thugs beat the shit out of me.”
“Get to the point,” Margaret said, her voice filled with irritation.
“But you don’t know that I was cleared to leave after three and a half. The extra two and a half were because I was scared.”
Silence slid over the room as Logan reached over and grabbed the bottle from the center of the table.
“I tanked the physical therapy sessions on purpose, until they threatened to call a psych ward for an evaluation.”
They all looked at him. I half expected a snide comment from Margaret, but they were silent.
Ajit took a voluntary drink. “Well. To psych evals,” he joked.
Logan laughed, and it sounded genuine. Svenja smiled and joined, and I found myself smiling reluctantly.
And it went on. One, two, three.
I kept mine simple.
I belong to a man . . . I had no idea.
I could ruin two or more people. Maybe, it was a safe bet.
I looked around to see if they could tell I was lying, but it didn’t seem like it.
An hour later, I had bits of pieces of information that gave me glimpses and tastes of the legacies behind the strangers at the table. I tried to take in everything, from the flick of Ajit’s wrist as he adjusted his sleeve to the way Svenja explained how she’d stirred in a ruined palace off the coast of the Baltic Sea.
But it was Logan I kept coming back to.
There was a flush in his cheeks, and he smiled as Ajit cracked a joke and Svenja poured another shot.
And there was nothing sharp about him, then. He’d shown the torn, crumpled part of himself, and the vulnerability suited him somehow.
Margaret drank almost every time. She was loose with her words, spilling bits of her story in her brash Irish brogue. She’d stirred in a barn in the late eighteenth century in southern Ireland, deep in a stable that had been forgotten in the stench of the all-consuming famine that covered the land. I felt a tug of reluctant respect. She was old—much older than any Hushed I had ever met.
She was all sharp edges and ends, resting her hands on the table with her nails curled against the wood.
One, two, three, Medusa.
Logan and Margaret locked eyes.
She killed the shot.
“Three men found me a minute after I stirred. I had more fat on me than they’d seen on a woman in years.” She enunciated the words like they were individual tacks she loved throwing into the air. “Some of my periphery included some hand-to-hand combat, so those poor bastards had no idea what was happening until they were all on the floor, covered in decades-old shit.”
One, two, three, Medusa.
Logan leaned forward.
“My father was having an affair.” His words slurred, slightly. “Affairs, actually. One of the many things I found out about him during my mom’s trial. I tracked one of his mistresses down once. She lived a few miles outside of town.”
“Why did you track her down?” Ajit asked.
Logan smiled, like he was embarrassed about his younger hopes. The shots were finally taking effect.
“I was hoping I’d be able to . . . I don’t know. Talk to her? Get her perspective. She threatened to call the police. I never told anyone about it.”
One, two, three, Medusa.
Margaret and I locked eyes. She smiled as she tipped the glass into her mouth.
“No more periphery stories. They’re depressing and against the rules,” Svenja said loudly, only slightly slurring her words.
Margaret sighed. “Everything about me is depressing, Svenja. I’m Irish.”
Svenja glared, and Margaret turned back to me. “My secret belongs to a man who has monuments built to him. He killed more people in ten years than you’d speak to in a lifetime.”
She sat the bottle down and turned to me, as though I could deliver the punch line to her favorite joke. There was nothing I could say that could match her pain. The only thing worse than living with a memory that festered and haunted was this. Staring into the eyes of someone who looked at me as though I would never be strong enough to endure the hell they endured. That I, with my blond hair and wide blue eyes, could never understand a darkness so deep it felt like it breathed. She was looking at me like that now.
“Go ahead, girlie. Tell me how sad it is when your favorite conditioner is out of stock at Target,” Margaret sneered.
Fabian would’ve seen the shift in the way I held my shoulders. He would’ve reached over and told me that it wasn’t worth it. But Fabian wasn’t there.
“My brother found me, naked. Huddled. Everything was ash. He’d been shot in the leg.” My voice shook as I told the first hint of truth I’d told all night.
Margaret’s lip curled.
“And you played Florence Nightingale, and everything was well. For me, the morning light only made things worse,” she said.
Logan reached over, his fingers grasping my thigh. It was not the grip of a drunk. He squeezed twice, a warning.
That’s when I realized he was only pretending that the shots affected him.
“The Pull is hard for everyone,” Svenja said to Margaret.
“I’m not talking about the fucking Pull,” Margaret hissed. “I’m talking about walking barefoot in the rain until your feet bleed, stepping over bodies in the road while checking to see if their shoes would fit and give you any relief. Eating month-old bread that’s rotted black on the inside because your only other option is tree bark. Considering all that, keeping what I knew was the easiest thing in the world.”
Ajit shook his head.
“What?” she snapped.
“Margaret likes to act like the rest of us stirred in a bubble bath, surrounded by an assortment of chocolates,” Ajit said, looking at Logan. I was starting to see past the man I met in the gas station. Ajit was the balance between Svenja and Margaret—the one who kept the peace.
Margaret looked at me expectantly.
And maybe it was the whiskey, drifting through my veins like anchors, slowing down everything but my rage. Or maybe it was that the smell of ash floated through my nose. I leaned forward. Logan’s hand grasped mine under the table and squeezed twice. Stop, it said. I yanked my hand from his, hard.
“Everyone died, the night I stirred. Everyone,” I said. “Do not look at me like I know nothing.”
It was stupid. I knew as I spoke the words that it was stupid. Then Margaret smiled.
What had I said?
Shit.
Everything was ash. Everyone died.
Logan’s fake drunk act dropped for half a second, long enough for me to see the concern in his eyes. He swayed, slightly, letting the drunken persona slip back into place.
“Touchy, ain’t she?” he asked, turning his glass upside down. “I think maybe I should walk her back up and make sure she gets to her quarters—”
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting him off.
Margaret sipped from her shot glass and smiled at me. She’d wanted me to say it. She’d dropped my guard and I’d taken the bait, like an idiot. Then I saw him.
Up top, on the catwalk, deep in the shadow.
Railius.
He’d watched the whole thing. Even in the dark I could see his eyes, narrowing when they met mine. Stripping me, my muscles, my bones, my breath, every fucking thing he knew everything I’d told him everything.
I pulled my eyes downward. Ajit was saying something, but I didn’t really hear him.
They’d planned this. This whole thing. It wasn’t for Logan—it was for me.
Just like that, any haze I felt from the whiskey evaporated from my veins. I was clearheaded, and all there was was panic.
They knew I’d been lying, and they wanted to know what I knew.
* * *
I was silent the rest of the game, and, by some miracle, I didn’t have to drink again.
Svenja turned her glass over thirty minutes later and walked, wavering only slightly, to the kitchenette.
They must have gotten what they wanted from us, because Margaret eventually tipped her shot glass over less than an hour later and sat back, a catlike grin fixed on her face.
Then Ajit.
“Fair and square,” Svenja said, returning and dropping Logan’s gym bag onto the table as she sat in her seat, a giant glass of water in her other hand. She handed me the cash, and I clamped my fingers tightly over it.
Margaret’s grin flicked up on the side of her mouth, and I shook my head.
“You have something to say, Eerie?” Margaret said, her voice mockingly soft. “Or maybe you’ve said it all already?” she purred. I looked down at my lap and clenched my jaw.
“You won’t be happy until you’ve made every Hushed say everything they need to say. That’s what you do. Get them to say what you want them to say, right? Send them out to die like dogs? Is that what you want from me?” I spat.
“Watch your mouth,” Margaret said. Logan shifted, leaning closer to me.
“Excuse me. I suppose my hostage etiquette needs some work,” I said.
I chanced a look over at him.
“Eerie,” he started. His eyes were wide and filled with a meaningful glance, but I looked away.
“You think because we let you sit with us that I wouldn’t be able to gut you and not even remember your face after?” Margaret asked, leaning back in her chair.
“Okay. We’ve all had a few, here—” Logan interjected.
“—let’s just take a deep breath? We don’t have to get along forever. Just for now.” Svenja cut him off, holding both her hands up.
“You act like you’re trying to save the Hushed but all you do is use them to your own ends. You’re liars,” I growled.
Margaret leaned forward. Her deep brown eyes looked almost black, and her cheekbones sharpened as she sucked her cheeks in, her nostrils flaring as she fought to calm herself down.
“Eerie,” Logan said again, reaching for my hand. I shoved him off.
I stood, and so did she.
I wanted Margaret to come at me. She’d shred me. I didn’t really care. Something reckless was knocking around my chest like a caged bird and I just wanted to hit something.
Logan stood next to me, but it was Ajit who spoke.
“We have a code never to harm one of our own.”
Ajit stood, stepping aside and pushing the chair in. He took a step closer to me. “But I swear to you, if you want a fight, we’ll give you one.”
Logan stepped between us. I didn’t even see him move. He wasn’t there and then he was, his nose inches from Ajit’s. Gone was the easy-going peacemaker. He was so tense he seemed to vibrate.
“Step away,” Logan said, his voice low and ragged. It was different than when he’d fought with the cops. There had been a lit rage then. This was kindling. A promise.
Over Logan’s shoulder, I saw Ajit’s eye flicker, assessing the threat.
“I think we’re done for the night,” Svenja said quietly from behind us.
“Yes,” Ajit said, taking a step back. “I think you’re right.”