Chapter 5
The side room off the foyer was cold despite the fireplace. My father had pushed me into one of the high-backed chairs and told me to sit, and his hand stayed on the top of my shoulder, right over the bandage. The marble out there held the echo of his boots. My mother stood by the doorway under the edge of the chandelier light, her hands clasped tight around that emerald brooch like she could hold herself together if she held it hard enough.
I tried to keep my breathing even. My father was talking to someone on his phone, voice low and clipped, saying the car would handle it, saying no one needed to come inside. I wasn't listening to the words. The heat started under my palm before I realized I'd moved it.
I'd pressed my right hand over my left shoulder without thinking. Under the white gauze, the skin began to warm. Not the dull throb from before. This was sharper, brighter, like someone had lit a small bulb right against the claw marks.
Across town, he was driving. I didn't know how I knew that, but I did — the faint vibration of a car interior, daylight cutting across a dashboard, his hand shaking on the wheel.
In the rear seat of the luxury car, the mark woke up again. He'd been rubbing his wrist raw since the bedroom, since the first flash. Now the golden light came back all at once. It didn't flicker. It overexposed. The branching lines that had spread across his skin flared white-gold, so bright the interior of the car washed out. His hand trembled. He tried to close his fist around it and couldn't. The light bled between his fingers.
He gasped.
At the exact same second, I gasped.
The heat under my bandage spiked. I felt it travel down my arm in the same branching pattern, even though I couldn't see it through the gauze and the lace of my nightgown. My fingers curled against the chair arm. A soft, involuntary sound left me, and my back arched half an inch off the chair before I caught myself.
My father's hand clamped down harder instantly.
His phone call stopped mid-sentence. He looked down at me, gray beard tight, eyes narrowing.
"What's wrong with you," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Nothing," I said. My voice was too quick. "It's just — it stings."
He didn't let go. If anything his grip got more precise, fingers digging around the edge of the bandage instead of into it, holding me in place. He leaned in a little, studying my face the way he'd studied me on that white bed upstairs, like he was checking for a lie.
"You've been distracted since the car pulled away," he said quietly. "You think I don't notice?"
My mother took a half step forward from the doorway. "Let her breathe," she said. Her voice was thin but audible. "You're holding her too tight. She's pale."
He didn't look at her. "She's fine."
Under my hand, the warmth pulsed again. Fainter this time, but still there. I pressed harder, trying to smother it, trying to hide whatever light might be leaking out. I could feel my pulse hammering against my palm, and somewhere else, in that car, I knew another pulse was hammering at the same rhythm.
In the car, he stared at his wrist. The glow was fading now, retracting back into the branching lines, but his hand wouldn't stop trembling. He lifted it closer to his face, breathing hard through his nose. He'd been telling himself it was pain, confusion, maybe he'd hit his wrist on the door. Now there was no pretending. The light had overexposed the whole frame of his vision. He knew it wasn't an injury.
He whispered something. I didn't hear the word, but I felt the shape of it — my name, or maybe just a sound because he didn't have a name to put to me yet.
The connection held. Even with a mile or more and marble and glass between us, it hadn't thinned. It had gotten stronger.
My mother saw it. She was close enough now that the chandelier light caught the edge of my nightgown where the lace had slipped. Under the gauze, a faint amber glow seeped through, just at the rim of the bandage. She inhaled sharply and her hand flew to her mouth, then dropped. Her eyes met mine for a second and widened.
She didn't say anything. She glanced fast at my father, then back at my shoulder, then away, like she'd seen nothing. But her fingers tightened around her brooch again, knuckles white.
My father finally released his grip enough that I could sit forward. "You will stay here," he said, straightening up. "You will keep that hand where I can see it."
He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat, positioning himself between me and the foyer doorway. He wasn't done watching. The suspicion was there now, settled in the line of his shoulders.
I lowered my right hand slowly from my shoulder to the armrest, and the warmth dimmed but didn't disappear. It stayed low, humming under the bandage.
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In the car, the young man pressed his glowing wrist against his striped shirt to hide it, his breath still uneven, his eyes fixed on the road ahead that led back to the mansion.
We'd both felt it. We both knew it wasn't gone.
