as good at making me believe her as her twin’s had been … I made a mental note to talk to Rio about it in depth. And to actually listen to him this time.
But if we could believe her, that meant Teplova’s changed people were all still out there, but separate. Powerful in their own roles, more than they should have been, but not being harnessed together to take down countries.
Small favors.
At least we had a partial client list. I’d have Checker set up some kind of system to keep an eye on them.
And when I started to drill Willow Grace about what to tell the authorities, to my surprise she agreed immediately to burying most of the events.
“You aren’t tempted to write another book?” I said.
“Not at the expense of my career. This one would have to be posthumous,” she said. “Warning every single place I’ve been in the prior six months of a possible attack may already end me.”
I’d passed on Fifer’s motive when we’d shared information—after all, Willow Grace was the person best-suited to making sure none of Fifer’s devices had already found their way into a dangerous position. “What do you mean?” I said. “With your connections, you’ll be taken seriously.”
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her wet hair framed a bruised face that was skeletal with lost weight, and she was the very definition of fragile loveliness. “I’m not worried about being taken seriously. But some people will want to spin this to make me responsible, and I’ll need to spin them back.”
Despite her grim trepidation, I didn’t envy those people.
* * *
RIO INSISTED on driving me back to Simon’s hospital as soon as we were done at Willow Grace’s.
Despite Rio walking me in, I hesitated at the door to the room, my hand hovering near the handle. “I’ve been thinking,” I said.
Rio lifted an eyebrow.
“Maybe I should go see Professor Halliday, before I let Simon put everything back.”
I got both eyebrows now.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “She wants me to do math with her. She’s been bugging me about it since I’ve known her. I can’t, not like she wants, but…”
I’d always shut down her requests entirely before. Because I was afraid.
Because I knew I’d run up against that mental block, the one that always stopped me, the missing parts of myself. Because I didn’t want to limp along as the slow second fiddle, the one only filling in the gaps in Sonya’s breakthroughs.
Better not to try than to be that, right?
Except now … well, maybe it would only be a shadow of what I should be able to do, but it would be something. Something real, something I could be proud of, a thing that meant something instead of just money or kicking people in the head all the time. Something that wasn’t only about cash or bullets.
“Would it be so bad?” I said softly. “Not to fear anything?”
Not to fear Valarmathi cackling in the back of my head, waiting to tear down my sanity? Not to fear Simon’s fingers trawling through my memories as if he owned them? Not to fear that I was only one footstep away from fucking up and becoming the same sort of monster Fifer had wanted to twist me into?
To be someone who could have friends without teetering on a knife point, and maybe do some math, and discover some small things that would make the world more knowledgeable rather than bloodier?
“Cas,” Rio said. He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, the pressure light. “You can inquire with Simon. But he tells me remaining in such a state would be very dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said, conscious of the irony.
He let his hand drop. “I will not force you, Cas. But I would request of you that you let Simon repair this.”
It had always been hard for me to go against Rio. I sighed and reached for the door again. “I do listen to you, you know.”
“I am aware,” Rio said. I wasn’t looking toward him anymore, but for some reason, the words sounded remote, resigned, as if he wanted to pry them out of their truthfulness but had no leverage to try.
forty-one
SIMON MANAGED to fix up both Pilar and me in short order, but after that, his health was too bad for him to bug me for brain sessions for a couple of weeks. This was both good and bad, considering I hated but needed them.
Valarmathi chittered in the background.