When I reach the Lucent Community section of the academy’s library, nothing’s waiting for me except the few bookcases of spiralbound record books. I turn slowly, thumbs hooked in my pockets, posture relaxed. Just browsing the shelves, nothing more.
Behind my nonchalant façade, tension twists through my chest.
Elodietoldme to meet her here. Where is she?
It’s just like her to leave me waiting while she takes her time, isn’t it?
I don’t even know why she picked this spot or if there’s information I could get started looking up. I followed her command like she’s got me on a leash?—
A quiver through my palm brings my head swinging around. The blazing pang that shot up my arm last night and drew me to my newly sparked match has faded over the lastseveral hours, but my sense of her presence wakes up when she’s nearby.
Elodie slips into view with a furtive glance over her shoulder. Her dark green eyes light up when she sees me, a grateful smile crossing her lips, and all my disparaging thoughts dissolve in the warm glow that floods my body.
This is my match. The person who’s meant for me. Every particle of my body resonates with the rightness of it—and nudges me to embrace it.
I have to stiffen my legs against the urge to step forward and wrap my arms around her, to enfold her in a literal embrace. I’m a little worried I wouldn’t know how to let go.
I have to remember that she is still Elodie Devine. No matter what’s happened between us in the past few weeks—and even that has been far from idyllic—it doesn’t erase the years of rivalry between us.
She’s my fated mate, but how much can I trust her? Because I don’t think she completely trustsme.
Elodie comes to a stop a couple of feet away, close enough that I could touch her with a lift of my arm but far enough not to invite the contact. I clench my hand.
A deeper consideration tugs at my gut like a snagged claw.
How much should I be indulging any of the headier emotions sweeping through me? Because when my family finds out who my match is…
I shove that thought away. It doesn’t seem fair to make a decision about that when her life is literally on the line.
What kind of heartless scalder would abandon his match to a murderer?
Elodie glides her gloved fingers over the spiral bindings, tugging one volume and another out to check the labels on the covers. When she speaks, without looking at me, it’s in little more than a whisper. “Thanks for coming. I wanted to talk to you before you go to The Eclipse, and I wasn’t sure if you were planningto today. This seemed like a discreet enough spot to talk.”
And apparently she did have things to look up, not that she’s bothering to explain that even while she’s doing the looking.
I nod as if this is a totally normal conversation. “I’m going to head over as soon as we’re done talking. I assume I’m most likely to hear something significant right after Kenneth’s disappearance.”
“Good point.” Her gaze ticks toward me alongside another little smile, and my pulse jumps with a giddiness that’s totally out of proportion to the tiny show of affection. “There’s something—someone—else you should pay attention to. I found out that the company that made Kenneth’s knife is run by the Tadros family.”
I frown. “The Tadroses will all be club members, but I don’t think I’ve seen any of them there except Grady and occasionally his dad.”
“So pay attention to him.”
It’s hard to imagine the cavalier 16thyear who laughs about how the professors finesse his grades out of “due respect” committing himself to anything as serious as a murderous conspiracy. But even as that thought passes through my head, memories click into place of the times I caught Elodie at the club in her attendant disguise.
Outside a room Grady and his friends had ducked into to enjoy their latest score of enhanced pills or powder. Hovering near him when he held court in the lounge.
I look right at her, studying her expression. “You already suspected something about him. Was he who you came to the club to spy on?”
Elodie’s jaw tightens, enough to tell me I’m reasonably close to the mark. “I’ve been looking into a lot of people. Now we have an extra reason to wonder about him.”
“What was the firstreason?”
Her lips part and then press flat for a second before she answers. “I’m not sure. Just an inkling, things I overheard. Nothing definite.”
Is she fucking with me? “You didn’t risk a huge scandal and go to the trouble of sneaking into that placethree timesjust on an inkling.”
Elodie makes a pained face at me, as if it bothers her that she isn’t telling me. Which is infuriating, because if it bothers her so much, she could justtell me.