people en masse right now sheered into me with the impossibility of a glacier.
“Cas? Is that you?” Pilar poked her head in from Arthur’s room, and her face changed as she took in my appearance. “Oh my God! What happened?”
“We failed.” I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand more upright. “Does Diego have a first aid kit?”
“He does. I can get it.” She glanced down at the bandaging wrapping her own palms as she came out and shut Arthur’s door quietly behind her. “I heard, um, what Rio just said. Is he—gone?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about it. “Is everything okay here?”
“No problems. It’s been quiet. Not everyone’s awake yet; I was on Arthur duty.” She paused, then started to say something twice before plunging on with it. “Just so you know—I would have gone with you. I know Arthur’s out of danger now, but your other friend still needs you. I would have said yes.”
A transitive property of friendship. Pilar was too kindhearted for her own good.
If I’d asked … would she be dead? Or would the extra gun mean we would have been able to stave off disaster?
“Was there any sign of him?” she asked softly.
“No.” Unless he had been the person in the truck. I’d never gotten a clear look. “Checker and Simon both thought this was a bad idea.”
Pilar squished her shoulders in something like a shrug. “So was going into the mission without Simon’s help, but it meant we got Arthur back and to a hospital fast enough that he’s okay. You’re the sort of person who … when the iron’s hot, you always just go and jump on it, you know? But most of the time it works, so who am I to say we’ll get burned? Besides, we’re all going cross-eyed waiting for the other shoe to drop. I get why you pushed it.”
She was the only one, then.
“I don’t think I made us safer.” The confession slipped out, resonating in the early hour and Rio’s absence.
She looked like she wanted to say something comforting, but she couldn’t deny the truth of it. And with my failure at the ranch, what else did we have to try? The ranch gave us another real estate listing, and Checker could start hacking through the Internet jungle to try to make another opening for us … but aside from the file that had baited us to the mission, D.J. had thus far been a ghost.
And Rio had been the one looking into the Pithica angle. Rio and Simon.
Maybe that was still the right track. Teplova and Oscar and Coach, and a history we didn’t have all the parts to yet, and how they’d intersected with the explosives expert who had so viciously warped all their lives. I might have answers too, somewhere inside me—
Mocking laughter reverberated against the insides of my skull. If I dug into my own memories, I’d take myself off the gameboard right when I was trying to stand in front of nine people who mattered to me. But if I didn’t …
Wait. Besides Rio and Simon, there was one other person who’d dug a frightening amount into Halberd and Pithica. Who’d discovered enough of what they were to be scared, and had given air cover to one of their supernatural graduates. And who hadn’t shared nearly enough of what she knew.
Some wriggling discomfort wrapped itself in Tabitha’s voice—Something’s not right about her. I told myself it was only the looming prospect of confronting my own history.
“Come on, let’s get you that first aid kit,” Pilar’s voice cut in gently.
“Good,” I said. “And then we need to get Willow Grace back in here.”
“Oh.” Pilar blinked at me. “Cas, she’s already here.”
twenty-nine
“SHE IS?” Something sat strangely with me about that, unsettling and undefined. “Did Rio call her back in?”
“No, though he wasn’t happy about us letting her go home,” Pilar answered. “Said something about ‘insufficient vigilance’ or something. But no, she contacted us. When Checker told her we were still working the case, she offered to come back and help.”
Willow Grace did have her own reasons for continuing to investigate. D.J. had murdered her friend, after all. Maybe she had known Coach too … it would be worth asking her about …
I let Pilar lead me into the living room and sit me down. I registered hushed voices in the kitchen and the clink of people getting a quiet breakfast—most of the household seemed to be up despite the early hour.