LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

      The wind howled around me as I knelt in the dirt of Lady Elke’s cluttered shed, watching Tristan leave. His shadow stretching long, he trudged across the littered yard without looking back.

      All he had ever wanted to do was to keep me safe, but he couldn’t. He thought he’d failed me, that he would always fail me.

      But I was the one who had failed him.

      On shaking legs, I forced myself up and out of the shed, away from that little house with silver walls. I shuffled across the yard to the gravel driveway, where Tristan stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, head down, as Kellan lectured him. He wouldn’t lift his head to look at me.

      A black rental car sat next to Tristan’s blue one. Melanie sat in the back of the black car, huddling under a blanket. She wouldn’t look at me either.

      I needed to get Jillian’s ballet slipper and Logan’s sheet music back. They weren’t anywhere in the yard, so I pushed against the wind to Lady Elke’s house and slipped inside. Silent, shadowed and empty. Kellan’s guards must have already headed back to the APR with her. I found the ballet shoe and sheet music on the kitchen floor. Above them, a drawer was open, and it was full of silver. Utensils, ladles, spatulas. And knives. Lots of knives. They glittered and glimmered, sparkled and glowed.

      I slammed the drawer shut.

      Then I tucked the ballet shoe and the sheet music into the pocket of Tristan’s hoodie and went back outside. Time to face Tristan.

      He was still standing at the car with Kellan. “She had a vision of the nightmare Tessa has every night, and then she made it come true,” he said as I approached. “Her eye turned black, just like in Tessa’s nightmare. She said Tessa was tarnished. Tainted. She wanted to make her pay for what her parents did.”

      I nodded. I couldn’t disagree. That was exactly what had happened. “What’s going to happen to her?” I asked Kellan.

      “That woman is obviously an extremely wise and gifted psychic,” he said, “but she tried to kill my niece. We can’t risk her losing control like that again. She’s headed for the Underground.”

      “Please don’t neutralize her,” I begged. “She can find my brother and sister. She was about to tell us where they were.”

      Kellan snorted. “All inmates are neutralized, Miss Carson. I can’t do anything about it.”

      Frustration and despair roared in my ears. Once again, I’d come so close to finding Jillian and Logan, and they’d slipped away. “That’s not fair,” I said. “Nothing you do is fair. Our lives were in jeopardy today, but you didn’t shoot to kill. You only tranquilized her. If you find my brother and sister, you don’t have to kill them. Tranquilize them if you have to, but don’t kill them. Please.”

      He stared at me, speechless. I stared back, knowing my point was valid. Hypocrite, I shouted at him silently.

      Then

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