a blood-red sweater with a V-neck. My suede ankle boots—one of three newly purchased pairs of shoes—went perfectly with it. The outfit was nowhere near as dressy as Dot’s was going to be, but I thought I looked nice, and I was warm and comfortable. A chill still hung in the March air, but so far the rain had remained trapped in the fat gray clouds above.
“Nah,” I finally answered. “I like what I’m wearing, and it’s too cold for a dress.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “But you know you’ll get drunk and start dancing and you’ll be way too hot in that later, right?”
“Well, then it’s lucky the party is only downstairs, just a short walk away from my closet with all these clothes in it.”
In place of an answer, Dot just stared at me with raised brows and pursed lips. Then, slowly, she held her hand out. Squiggles came running out of the hallway, scampered up her side, and dropped a tube of mascara in her palm.
Dot thanked her gray ferret while keeping her eyes on me, then turned to face her. “I know. She’s being sassy. I don’t like it.”
Charlie snorted and flopped the magazine down on the bed, leaning back against my multicolored, geometric-patterned sheets. I flashed him a conspiratorial smile and went over to the side table. It held a cluster of framed pictures: the one of my mother that had survived the crash, one of her with the guys’ moms, one of the five of us as kids, and one of Dot, Charlie, and I mugging for the camera. Nestled among the frames was an old, ornately carved jewelry box. It was way too heavy and bulky to have been anything I would’ve owned before, but Josh had given it to me as a Christmas gift and then promised to fill it over the next unspecified period of time.
I knew he meant forever—Variant Bonds were unbreakable—but none of us were ready to say that word out loud yet.
Alec had told me he loved me, but I hadn’t said it back, and none of the others had broached the subject. I suspected they were giving me space and letting me take the lead—as they had with the sex—but an insecure part of me also wondered if maybe they weren’t ready for that level of emotional commitment yet either. I mean, really, we’d only known each other for a year. We may have played together as kids, but I didn’t remember that.
The box only had a few items in it—a bracelet Dot had given me that same Christmas, a gold pair of earrings (I was wearing them when the plane crashed, and they were the only piece of jewelry I had from my mom), a silver caffeine molecule necklace I’d bought for myself, a few bits of costume jewelry. I lifted out the simple rod pendant that was also a panic beacon and tucked it under the fabric of my sweater. I wasn’t wearing it for protection. It was the first thing they’d given me. It may have been delivered in the worst way possible by Alec, but it was from all of them, and I’d come to love the heavy weight of it around my neck.
“What’re you wearing tonight, Dot?” I asked to distract her from further bitching about my outfit. Charlie was in jeans and a shirt-sweater combo, his black hair falling over his forehead.
“Something new.” She grinned before she got back to applying her makeup. The look she was going for tonight was heavy and dramatic—exactly her signature style before Charlie went missing. I looked forward to seeing what she came up with, even if I wasn’t entirely looking forward to the actual party.
I still hardly knew anyone that well, and with Davis Damari—my psychotic biological father whom my mother had kept us on the run from my entire life, aka the man responsible for kidnapping and torturing Charlie and dozens of other Vitals, aka one of the richest men on the planet, aka the biggest asshole to have ever lived—still underground, it felt wrong somehow to celebrate.
But Ethan insisted we had plenty of reasons, and Dot agreed wholeheartedly. My birthday was only a few days away; I’d refused to allow them to make this party all about that—not after the track record I had with birthdays—but they’d waved me off and said it was a multi-celebration. My birthday would be toasted, but so would Charlie’s safe return, our win in solving the