Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

MAR

“ L et me help you,” Imogen said, her voice soft.

Whether she was talking to me or to Nie, I wasn’t sure.

All I could do was stare at my fractured reflection. Just as it had when I’d first opened the box from the shelter’s doorstep, disbelief left me numb.

This couldn’t be Nie.

This couldn’t be real.

Imogen gently scooped Nie from the ground and slipped her broken pieces into my bag.

The fear that had nagged me since discovering Nie’s head the first time twisted into a darker emotion, one far more familiar—rage. It was a tsunami rushing through my veins, and I welcomed the force of destruction. There was no more need to be careful, no hope of restoring some semblance of normalcy with my clone. There was only a deep and ferocious need for revenge.

Bernadette was going to pay for what she’d done to Nie.

The weight of Nie pulled on my shoulder, heavier than she’d been before. My hands shook, a visible betrayal of the storm raging within. I knotted my fingers together until they stopped shaking, then I rose to my feet.

Imogen grabbed my wrist, making me pause. “Mar, I am so sorry this happened.”

She was always sorry, even though she’d done nothing wrong. Her heart was in the right place, but it didn’t help.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, my voice flat. “It’s Bernadette’s.”

“You can’t go raging at a reaper,” Imogen said softly.

Of course I could.

“All you’ll do is get yourself killed, and that would suck, way worse than the situation already does,” Imogen said, her eyes imploring. “You’re the only you left. I can’t lose you.”

Her smile was meek, not at all the overzealous grin that she usually wore. And that in and of itself cracked my resolve.

Imogen was right. Confronting Bernadette head on without a plan was beyond foolish. It was a death sentence.

“That’s what you’re here for,” I said. “You’re the one who can bodysnatch Bernadette. You’re her weakness. Once you do, I’ll make her regret what she did to Nie.”

Imogen winced. “What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.”

“But what if you are? Let’s get a new room. We’ll share, so it’s safe. Then you’ll take those memories that Nie’s been saving for you, and we’ll know what really happened to her.”

“I know what happened,” I said.

“Okay, sure. But what would it hurt to be totally one-hundred-percent certain? I mean, we don’t know where Birdie is anyway, so we can’t just go banging on the door again and expect that to work.” Imogen’s smile began to grow. “Plus, we might learn who killed Nie, and why they did it. That’d be super helpful, right?”

We had a better chance of learning why Bernadette had killed Nie if Imogen bodysnatched her.

But she also had a point about not knowing where to find the reaper. We could wait around her house, but I couldn’t sit still and do nothing. It was possible Bernadette wouldn’t return at all.

And there was nothing I could do to the reaper without Imogen’s help.

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine.”

“Yes.” Imogen pumped her fist. “You’re totally not going to regret this. It’ll be great and everything will work out. Promise.”

She had no way to know that.

What was I supposed to do with my anger if I couldn’t channel it into revenge?

I’d have to let it simmer like ramen broth. I had to bide my time. Then, when the moment to strike finally came, my vengeance would be all the more delicious.

I opened the hotel’s front door and stepped across the threshold into the lobby. Immediately, my ears were assaulted by a loud noise. Clanging, metal against metal, dominated what had previously been a quiet space in what sounded almost like power tools in a construction zone.

Imogen covered her ears. “What’s that noise?”

“I don’t know.” I approached the desk, inwardly wincing at every loud and erratic clang.

“Did you say something, Mar? I can’t hear you.” Imogen squinted at me and kept on covering her ears.

I wasn’t going to yell over the racket for her.

She said, “Maybe there’s a family of rats doing a jig in the pipes.”

“I hope not.” Though that might explain the orange color of the water.

As we reached the other end of the room, the source of the disturbance was revealed.

Behind the desk sat a room service cart. Atop the cart, a green creature with large ears perched, back hunched over a metal mixing bowl. In his hand was a rusty wrench, which he relentlessly beat against the sides of the bowl.

It looked exactly like Snorfy, one of the goblins I’d encountered at Piccadilly’s midnight market.

“It’s a goblin!” Imogen exclaimed with glee, dropping her hands from her ears. “Mar, a goblin!”

“I see.”

Grit hobbled through the door behind the desk to join the goblin. “Quiet, Snorfy. Guests.”

The noise immediately stopped. Snorfy kept moving his arm in jolts inside the bowl, pausing just short of hitting the wrench against the metal.

As soon as she spotted the stone sentinel, Imogen slapped a hand over her mouth.

“You’re friends with goblins,” Imogen said to Grit, with pure, barely-contained delight. “What does that make you?”

“Reception. What you need?”

“One room with two beds,” I said.

“Four-oh-nine,” Grit said to me, referring to the room I’d already rented.

This was the part where I’d be accused of trashing the place, and expected to pick up the tab. Fortunately for me, I’d paid cash for the room and hadn’t been required to provide a card for incidentals.

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t choose different lodgings, since the Mournmore was the only game in town. And if the hotel actually took cards, I would know if Nie’d stayed here, too.

“Someone broke into her room. You should call the police if you haven’t,” Imogen said. “And damage is the criminal’s fault, not Mar’s.”

Grit kept staring at me. “Four-oh-nine.”

I set the key for my previous room down on the counter. “We’d like a different room.”

“Seventy-three dollars. Cash.”

I set the money onto the counter. Grit grabbed it and shuffled over to the wall. This time he didn’t have to use his wings to reach the key. One hop got him where he was trying to go.

He slapped the key down on the desk. “New room. Three-oh-four.”

“No comment about the break-in?” Imogen asked.

I grabbed the key and Imogen’s arm, then dragged her away from there.

“What do you think that receptionist is?” she asked.

“Gargoyle.”

“Is that a thing?”

I didn’t know for certain. “There’s one missing from the roof.”

“Fascinating.”

We stepped into the elevator.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that Grit doesn’t want to talk about the damage or try to make you pay for repairs?” Imogen poked the button for the third floor.

The doors closed and the elevator began to rise.

“When fortune tips in my favor, I prefer not to question it.”

“But why?”

“Do you want to pay for a new glass door and an entire wall?”

Imogen gulped.

Maybe it wasn’t strange because Levi had already dealt with the issue. Or maybe Nevermore was simply the kind of place where these things happened. Either way, it wasn’t my problem. All I cared about was getting to our new room and convincing Imogen to bodysnatch the reaper.

No way she could refuse once Nie’s memories confirmed Bernadette’s guilt.

The new room was one floor lower than the last, and on the other side of the hall. As we entered and I turned on the light, I noted this one did not have a balcony, or any windows.

“Dark.” Imogen set her bag on the bed on the left. She yawned, took a seat on the mattress, and stretched her arms over her head.

“No balconies for monsters to climb,” I said.

Imogen nodded. “The room seems okay. Smells weird.”

“Dank and spicy,” I said. “All the rooms smell like this, apparently. Don’t drink the water from the sink.”

“What about showers? How bad is it?”

I shrugged, set my bag on the floor at the foot of the bed on the right, and put Nie’s messenger bag gently on the comforter.

The weight on my shoulder lifted. The weight on my heart remained.

The sooner I absorbed Nie, the sooner this suffering would end, probably replaced by a whole new brand of horror.

I carefully pulled down the sides of Nie’s bag. She looked…gone.

The truth waited for me inside her memories.

A storm of emotion swirled in my chest. Fear, anger, regret—I couldn’t indulge any of them. Not anymore. This had to be done. The air felt like molasses as I slowly reached my fingers out.

I touched both of Nie’s cheeks at the same time.

At the instant of contact, an icy white boulder bashed straight through my brain. I lost sensation in my body. I felt like I was falling.

I lost the piece of myself that was uniquely Mar.

I lost myself completely.