“Just give him time,” Mom said.
There weren’t any sightings of Gideon or Shane over the next few days. Though the Guardians were on alert, and I knew Mickey was sending Mom any suspicious reports, both of them appeared to be lying low.
Then, Tuesday night, I arrived home from martial arts—where I’d gone in an attempt to clear my head—to find Tink sitting on my porch.
She was perched on the top step, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her hands. She glanced up when she saw me but otherwise didn’t move.
“How did you get here?” I asked, looking around and not seeing her car.
“I walked.”
“From your apartment?” Though it wasn’t precisely on the moon, it wasn’t what I’d normally have considered walking distance—especially since Tink was wearing flip-flops. Her short hair had been blown into whorls by the wind. There was a smudge of dirt on her yellow sundress.
“I wasn’t really intending to,” she said. “I just found myself here. If you want to give me a ride home, I won’t complain.”
I sat down beside her on the steps. The light was fading in the west, and little moths fluttered around us. Tink lowered her hand to flick a June bug off the porch, sending it sailing into the yard. She let out a soft sigh.
“You heard about Gideon,” I said. Not a question.
“You knew,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “Believe me. I didn’t even want to know. Please don’t be angry. I can’t have you mad at me, too.”
She was quiet a long time. She wrapped her arms around her knees—then sat up, straightening her shoulders. “Well, what are we doing about it? What’s our plan?”
I wasn’t certain what reaction I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. I blinked at her. “Our plan?”
“To fix Gideon.”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” I admitted. Or even if it were possible.
“But you’re working on it, right? Because I am not fighting him. I don’t care. I couldn’t deal with that.”
“Iris says I have to kill him.”
“And we’re taking the advice of your psychotic, Harrower-dating cousin since…when?”
“We’re not,” I assured her. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
“Intervention? Exorcism?”
“It’s not like that. He’s not possessed. He’s…” I didn’t want to speak it. I’d been trying so hard not to believe it.
Tink said it for me. “He’s Verrick. I know. But can’t we just—seal him again?”
“He was linked to my father the first time. That was the reason it worked. They sealed both of them. I was trying to find information from Sonja, when she…”
“Oh.” She rubbed at her face with her hands. “God. This is so messed up.”
I stared down at the cement beneath my feet, the edge of green where the steps met the lawn, and breathed in the clean scent of the soil. A moth landed on my shorts, then floated back into the darkness with a dusty beating of wings. I thought of patterns, the way Gram had said that moments intersected, each connecting to the next, reaching endlessly back into the past. Not fate, she’d said. Reaction. And you couldn’t alter the past, but you could decide how you would react.
This moment stretched backward seventeen years, to Harlow Tower gleaming under an inky sky. Maybe further. Maybe all the way back to the moment the Old Race had first crossed over from the Beneath and locked it away behind the Circles, leaving it in bottomless darkness. They’d taken the light with them, Gram had said. The very last pinprick of light. And they had taught Harrowers hate when they did.
That was all it was. Push and pull. Reaction and reaction. Another circle we were caught within. Gideon’s eyes flashed before me. Frightened. Accusing.
He wanted to be Kin, I thought.
“It was always messed up,” I whispered. “We just didn’t know it.”
Tink sighed again. “Well, if we’re going to be miserable, we should at least be miserable together.”
“I take it that means you’re sleeping over?”
“Yep.”
I supposed that was preferable to another night spent staring at my phone. I rose to my feet, stretching my arms upward above my head. Tink paused to brush the dirt from her dress, and then we made our way inside. I saw the shine of tears on her face, but she wiped them away quickly. We stepped into the house, heading for the kitchen, and then paused in the hallway when we heard Mom and Mr. Alvarez arguing.
“Ryan, this isn’t like you,” Mom was saying.
“I told her she was safe. I told her I would protect her.” There was a long pause. His voice sounded strange. Thick. “And I delivered her to them.”
He must have asked Esther about Brooke, I realized.
“I know,” Mom said gently. “And you can’t undo it. But the Guardians need you. You can’t just fall apart.”
His words came out in a snarl. “They don’t need me. We’ll be all right as long as we’ve got Morning Star to save us. You just need to know where, right? You solve it. You fix it. I’m done.”
Tink and I looked at each other. Her eyes went wide as Mr. Alvarez came stalking out of the room past us, hardly sparing us a glance.
His face was haggard, his eyes red-rimmed. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing two days ago—dark gray jeans and a faded T-shirt. I wonder if he’d slept in them, or if he just hadn’t slept. Dark stubble covered his jaw.
Tink turned to follow him when he opened the front door. “You’re quitting? You can’t quit!”
He swung toward her. “You know what, Brewster? I was wrong. This whole time, I’ve been wrong. You don’t want to be a Guardian? Then don’t. Make your own goddamn choice.”
He disappeared as the door hit the frame with a resounding slam.
“Um, holy shit,” Tink said.
I nodded, feeling a bit stunned.
Mom stepped out from the living room. “You all right, girls?”
“Did that just happen?” I asked, jerking my head toward the door.
“He’ll cool down,” Mom said.
“I don’t know. He seemed pretty pissed.”
Not that I blamed him. He’d been the one who brought Brooke to the elders. He had been the only one she’d trusted to help her. He’d told her the elders would protect her, and they’d murdered her instead.
“That was not pissed,” Tink said. “I have seen that guy pissed, and that was not it. That was nuclear meltdown.”
“Who’s going to lead the Guardians?” I asked.
“Ryan will come to his senses,” Mom insisted.
The look on Tink’s face said she was less convinced. I had to agree with her. Mr. Alvarez did not do things by half. Susannah had nearly killed him, and he’d still not only figured out her plan, he’d run off from the hospital to help coordinate a counterattack. If he said he was quitting, he meant it.
But I still found it difficult to fathom. I remembered the first time I’d seen him, that sleepy, almost-forgotten moment when I’d seen him drive up the long road to our old house and step out onto the driveway, his black hair catching the sun. The day he’d told Mom that the Kin needed her, and asked her to come home. He hadn’t just led the Guardians—he’d stitched them back together.
We didn’t have time to dwell on it further. Mom’s phone rang, and when she quickly disappeared into the kitchen, I could tell the news wasn’t good. Tink and I waited on the staircase, and as soon as Mom hung up, we hurried to the kitchen.
The call had been from Mickey, she said.
Although the Kin had cleaned up—or covered up—the scene at Sonja’s house before any suspicion of foul play had occurred, they hadn’t been as lucky with the other two elders. The police had found the homes of Deirdre and Julia bloodstained and wrecked, and had been quick to link the two.