21. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

I felt jittery and paranoid the entire drive back to Harlow's apartment. I'd used the phone to take pictures of all the evidence, just in case, and the device felt like it weighed several tons in my pocket. What was I even going to do with it? It wasn't going to be usable in the shadow realm.

Could I really ask Harlow to help out with this? Latika had already figured out that the van belonged to Harlow, and I was confident that my half-assed excuse didn't convince her that Harlow wasn't involved.

I drove as slowly as I could without drawing attention to myself, acutely aware that keeping up with the van wasn't easy for Verner.

"Nearly there," I assured him, fretting about how he was holding up. While there were definitely things I needed to discuss with Harlow, I'd already told Verner to walk us right back into the in-between if he was feeling even a little bit low on power. I could figure out how to get a message to Harlow later—after Astrid had ripped me a new one for going behind her back.

To my surprise, Harlow was waiting outside the ground-floor apartment for us when we pulled up, and I wondered if she'd had a tracker on either the van or the phone the entire time. It hadn't even occurred to me to ask, though I couldn't exactly be mad about that, considering all she'd done for us.

"You were gone a whole twenty-four hours ," she exhaled, shutting the door behind me and locking it while Verner hovered next to me. "What the hell were you even doing?"

"Did anyone come looking for me?"

She shook her head. "They wouldn't come here anyway, would they? It's not like we knew each other. You're basically a stranger who walked into my closet." Harlow pursed her lips, looking thoughtful for a moment. " The Hunter, the Shade, and the Wardrobe ."

"Very good," I replied dryly. "Though I'm no longer a Hunter. I'm sorry we were gone longer than you thought. We had a little delay en route."

"To your mom's house?"

"You already know the answer to that."

Harlow blinked owlishly at me. "I mean, sure. I got the general direction. Are you hungry? There's some leftover Margherita pizza in the fridge for you. Want me to heat it up?"

I hesitated, not wanting to linger too long, but also needing to talk to her. Having that conversation over food felt a little less intimidating. "Yes, please."

If nothing else, I'd been living off chips and candy all day, and I was desperate for something with a bit more sustenance. I followed Harlow to the kitchen where she made quick work of reheating a very generous portion of pizza for me, and pouring a glass of apple juice. I took a few moments to freshen up—though I was craving a long hot shower—before taking a seat at the counter.

Verner stayed close, giving my cheek a brief stroke of encouragement when Harlow wasn't looking.

"So?" she prompted, sliding the plate and glass over to me. "How'd the family reunion go?"

"How do you even know that's my mom's house?" I asked curiously. "Do you have access to all their records?"

Maybe it was because Harlow was so young and fun, but I'd obviously underestimated her.

"Yes and no. I mean, they didn't technically give me access, but I do have access." She shrugged, looking pleased with herself. "They took the whole organization offline after Austin's video, but I'd made copies of everything before then anyway."

"Without the Council knowing?"

"I'm good at what I do. And they're bad at it," Harlow added. "The Council has never been great at keeping up with technology. That's partly why they brought me on board, but they clearly hate relying on my expertise. Maybe I don't give off trustworthy vibes."

"Well, you are a double agent."

She hummed in agreement. "Very true. Maybe I give off backstabbing vibes."

I watched her closely as she ate her own pizza, trying to decide if that was the case. Could I trust Harlow? I doubted that Astrid would have anything to do with her if she wasn't at least mostly trustworthy, but Harlow was Astrid's contact, not mine. All I'd done from the moment I'd appeared in her closet was impose on her.

Twisting a little in my seat, I looked at Verner, whose gaze was already trained in my direction. I needed to find my backbone before we headed back to the shadow realm, just in case he was somehow punished for my choices. I needed to be ready to assert myself, to fight for my decisions, and to fight to protect his reputation.

The ex-Hunter cohort of the shadow realm was made up of a sea of big personalities, and letting myself be swept up in the tide of them was no longer an option.

I wiped my hands on a napkin before pulling the phone out of my pocket and setting it down on the counter between Harlow and me. "There are some photos on here of evidence that is pretty damning to the Council. To Randal Jackman in particular. Evidence that I've already given to the feds."

Harlow choked on her pizza, coughing awkwardly for a moment. "To the feds ? Holy fuck, remind me not to get on your bad side."

Huh. I decided not to object to that. If I could cultivate a reputation for being a fearsome badass, I would happily embrace it.

"Look, I don't know if I'm making the right decision here or not. I want to trust you, Harlow. I want to know that this information will get to where it needs to go if the authorities don't pursue it for whatever reason. And if they do pursue it—well, I need a way of staying updated on that from the shadow realm, because I have absolutely no intention of staying here."

"Yeah, of course. Look, I'm no fan of the Council either. I told Astrid that the negotiations were a waste of time, and that I'd be here when she was ready for full anarchy. Which… maybe you beat me to it? What exactly did you get involved in?" Harlow asked, wide-eyed.

I gestured at the phone for her to take a look for herself.

Harlow stared hard at the screen as she flicked through the photos at a rapid pace. "Meera… did you even realize what you were holding on to? It's a few years old, but this… this will raze the Council to the ground. The names on here… Most of these people still serve on the Council. There are even names I recognize from other districts. This… this is a whole restructure waiting to happen."

"Do you think we're ready for that?" I asked, genuinely meaning it. If Astrid's words about Randal Jackman had been right, if getting rid of him put us in a worse position, I'd feel awful. I stood by my choice and I knew I'd done the right thing, but it didn't mean the potential consequences weren't terrifying.

Harlow blinked in surprise, dragging her gaze up to mine. "I've never really thought about it. The Council has always seemed so infallible. But if anything will bring them down… well, it's tax evasion, right? They'll subpoena the devil himself if taxes are involved."

I raised my glass of apple juice in toast to that.

"You don't seem very happy though," Harlow hedged. "You've done the hard part. You can celebrate now. Head back to the shadow realm—after you've eaten your pizza, of course—and do your victory lap."

"Let's see what the others have to say first," I muttered. "It wasn't very teamwork-makes-the-dream-work of me to come here on a renegade mission without telling anyone. I suspect they may have some thoughts about that."

Harlow's reaction was somewhat promising though. Her shock was wearing off, and now she was starting to pace the kitchen excitedly, drumming her fingers against the sides of her thighs. "Oh my god, can you imagine? This is going to be insane. I need to have cameras on all of their houses—I need footage of this. Do you think they'll get dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night by the police? I hope it's on the news. Come back from the shadow realm after they get arrested. We'll have movie night. Popcorn and federal charges."

"I don't know if you'll have time. If the Hunters clean house, you might end up next in line to take charge," I pointed out, only half joking. The existing Council members had been clinging on to their positions for years—the only young person who'd been tapped for leadership in the whole country was Astrid, before she'd turned on them. Clearing out the old guard would leave a power vacuum for a Sebastian-type candidate to swoop into. He wasn't quite as awful as the ones who were there now, I supposed.

Harlow wrinkled her nose. "Fuck that. I don't play nicely with others. Then again, I might have to, because there are a bunch of assholes I don't want anywhere near positions of power who'd be more than willing to jump in."

"You can see why the others might have mixed reactions to what I've done," I sighed. "Better the devil you know, et cetera, et cetera…"

Harlow snorted. "I hope they're not that short-sighted. This is exactly what I've been telling Astrid we needed. A fresh start. A clean slate. Pages and pages of leverage that we can hold over them for the rest of their lives."

She loaded my plate into the dishwasher while I washed my hands in the kitchen, acutely aware that I couldn't put this off any longer.

"I wish I could come back with you," Harlow said wistfully. "I wish I was down with off-grid living and could hack it in the shadow realm full-time. I've been trying to retrain my dopamine responses and be less, you know, chronically online, but it's so hard. Do you know what I mean?"

"Not really," I admitted with a sympathetic smile. "Part of avoiding everyone and everything after I was kicked out was not going online, which I appreciated even more when I got the shadow realm and didn't miss it. If it helps, one thing Tallulah is really pushing for in the negotiations is for Hunters who want to spend time in the shadow realm being able to move between the two at will. You could work here during the day and get your internet fix, then go to the shadow realm at night. Join us for dinner in the dining hall—"

"Get a shadow daddy boyfriend?" Harlow cut in, eyes wide. "Oh my god, could I do that? I guess I'd have to find someone who was cool with me coming back here during the day. But it wouldn't have to be every day. I could live like it was the Middle Ages every so often."

"Absolutely. Why not? And I'm sure you could find someone who was cool with it—every Shade is different. So are all of the relationships between ex-Hunters and Shades."

I could have sworn I could sense Verner silently letting me know that he would not be cool with it. That he absolutely wouldn't be fine with me commuting between the human realm and the shadow realm.

Then again, we weren't a couple. Were we?

No, we were friends. Friends who'd kissed and gotten naked together. And who maybe had feelings for each other.

Well, I definitely had feelings for him. But I'd already explained to him that I couldn't be a loving, supportive partner. I didn't know how. Plus, I'd dragged him on a spontaneous, multiday revenge mission in an incredibly dangerous environment for him, when he hadn't even been able to communicate with me.

Verner was a gentleman, and he'd put up with a lot of my shit. But he wasn't an idiot. At some point, he had to put himself first, and I would support that entirely. I wanted him to be happy above anything else. Far above my own happiness. I wanted his life to be beautiful, and meaningful, and easy.

Whatever it took for him to have that, I would do it happily.

Was that… love? Did I love him?

"I think it's time to go home," I said awkwardly, looking at his hovering form. Verner immediately cupped my face in agreement.

"That's so fucking cute," Harlow whispered.

It was. If only it was forever.