only did he have to suffer through a broken heart and debilitating betrayal, but now he was having hallucinations of Nightmare, too?
Nightmare. He realized how fitting the alias had become.
Teeth clenching, he made his way back to the entryway. “This is pointless,” he muttered as he brushed past Ruby and Oscar. “Let’s get back to headquarters, see how Danna’s doing.”
He nearly crashed into a figure on the sidewalk. He drew back, startled. “Oh, sorry, Magpie,” he said, taking in the girl’s dust mask and perpetual scowl. “I was distracted.” He gestured indifferently toward the house. “Should be an easy one. There’s not a whole lot left to clean up.”
Shoulders hunched, he started to move around her.
“You must feel pretty dumb.”
He froze. A mixture of anger and embarrassment welled up in him at Maggie’s haughty tone. He wanted a quick retort to come to him, but that desire fizzled fast with the unavoidable truth. “Yep,” he muttered. “Among other things.”
Magpie leaned against a stair rail. Across the street, two more members of the cleanup crew were milling around a Renegade-issued van, unpacking crates of supplies.
“I never did like her,” said Magpie.
He gritted his teeth, recalling the way Nova had bristled every time Magpie was around. “I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual.”
“I did like that bracelet, though.” Magpie pulled down the dust mask as her gaze fixed on Adrian’s tight-closed fist. He recoiled instinctively. “What are you planning on doing with it, anyway?”
He looked down, and with some reluctance peeled open his fingers. Nova’s bracelet glinted up at him. The delicate coppery filigree that had encircled her wrist from the day he’d known her, and probably long before. The clasp he’d once fixed himself, before he had any idea who Nova was, what she was.
What she would mean to him.
And there was the star. Glowing faintly, casting its golden light on the dust that speckled the air around him. It was warm to the touch and there had been times since he’d taken it off Nova’s wrist that he could have sworn there was a pulse to it, almost as though it were alive.
He wanted to know why Nova had taken it from the statue in his basement. He wanted to know what it was, what it could do, and how it had come to exist at all. It hadn’t been in the painting, but it had been in Nova’s dream, the one he’d done his best to re-create.
It all made his head spin.
More than any of that, though, a deep part of him wanted to get rid of the thing and never see it again. Even holding it now, remembering that night in his handcrafted jungle, Nova breathing softly as she fell asleep in his arms, made his blood run cold.
She was Nightmare. She’d been Nightmare all along.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, clenching his fist over the bracelet again, cutting off the star’s light. “Give it over to Artifacts, I guess.”
“You can give it to me,” said Magpie, in a tone that was a little too rushed, a little too insistent.
Adrian tensed.
Realizing that she’d moved uncomfortably close, Magpie took a hasty step back. “I mean, to take in to HQ. I’ll submit it with the rest of … you know, whatever we find here today. Get it cataloged and … whatever. I can take care of it for you.”
Adrian’s fingers tightened. A subtle instinct warned him not to let the bracelet go. There was a meaning to it that he hadn’t uncovered yet.
Also, there was something about Magpie’s expression. A hint of desperation that unnerved him. A whisper of intuition told him she was lying. Would she really submit it to HQ?
Magpie’s hope darkened into a scowl and she held out her hand, palm up. “Come on, Sketch. This is my job, not yours.”
He stared down at her hand and found that small argument surprisingly persuasive. She was a part of the cleanup crew. She was a Renegade.
And he loathed the idea of carrying this star around for a moment longer.
“I doubt you’ll find anything else to take in,” he said. “But I guess that doesn’t matter.” Smothering his reluctance, he dropped the bracelet into her palm. Her hand snatched it back immediately, as if she was afraid he’d change his mind. “Don’t lose it. That bracelet meant something to No—Nightmare. It could be important to our investigation.”
Magpie’s frown didn’t budge. “Do you think I’m new at this?” She tucked the bracelet into a pouch on the leg of