Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(24)

It kills me to leave it behind, but I have no choice. I follow the Triton girl down the sloping floor and up to the stage. People are throwing things at us, mostly plastic bottles, but I see a chair cushion whiz past my head and know how this all ends. The mob isn’t going to let us leave. They think I took their homes from them. They believe Arcade and I brought the monsters that destroyed their lives.

Bex pushes through the crowd and grabs me by the wrist.

“I have your phone. I was trying to locate the camp for you so you could see how dangerous it is. I wanted you to be prepared. I wanted to make sure you would survive because, you see, that’s what I do. I’m Bex, the best friend. But you don’t need me now, do you? You’ve got your magic mitten and you can move a mud puddle, so who needs Bex?”

“That’s not true!” I cry.

Arcade grabs my hand and yanks me away. “Come, she is human. She does not understand.”

“I’m human!” I shout at her.

“No, you are not,” Arcade snaps. “You are Alpha. Your mother is Sirena. You have never been human, Lyric Walker. You have only pretended. Your real people need you, and it is time to embrace your blood.”

Arcade storms off backstage. I hear her snap the lock off the grate and lift the lid that leads to the drainage pipe. Bex and I stare at each other the whole time. I know she wants me to tell Arcade she’s full of crap, but I can’t. Part of what she is saying about me is true. I am not human, entirely. There are Alpha and half-human children locked in Tempest, too. They are my responsibility. Arcade is right. Bex can’t understand and she can’t help.

Something in her eyes shuts down, replaced with what I used to call “the hand grenade,” that moment when Bex Conrad stops playing nice. I’ve never had it hurled at me, but I’ve seen it explode in other people’s faces. Now the pin has been pulled.

Out of her pocket comes my phone.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” she says, aiming her eyes and words right at my face. “Tell Arcade why the phone is so important to you.”

Tick. She’s talking about the picture of Fathom.

“Bex, no,” I whisper.

“Tell her what you’ve been hiding from her!” she shouts.

Tick. She’s going to do it. She’s going to bust me.

“Arcade, Lyric has a photograph of your dead fiancé!” she shouts.

Arcade comes around the curtain.

“A photograph?”

“A picture,” Bex explains. “Her phone can capture images of other people and save them even when the person is gone.”

Tick. She’s flipping through the files.

“Bex, don’t,” I beg.

But she won’t listen. She’s hands the phone to Arcade, then crosses her arms in defiance.

“I can’t believe you were going to abandon me,” she whispers.

Tick. Arcade takes the phone and looks down into the screen. For a long time her face is stone, frozen by confusion, but then her features give way to real emotions: pain, grief, and despair. I see feelings slamming into one another, and the destruction is too great to hide behind her steely Triton demeanor.

She turns her attention to me, and everything gets hot, like she can start fires with her eyes. “He was my selfsame,” she says.

“And the second he died, you moved on!” I shout, surprised by my own fury. “Why do you suddenly care about some picture? You had a whole lifetime with him, and you tossed him out with the trash. I only had him for two weeks. I loved him!”

“You did not have him then . . .”

In one effortless movement, she snaps my phone in half. The broken pieces fall to the ground. Her boot heel grinds them into the pavement. Glass and chemicals and hardware spread like the guts of some electronic insect.

“ . . . and you do not have him now.”

I look down at the mess on the floor. I’m no longer embarrassed by what I hid, or ashamed of how important it was to me. I don’t feel sympathy for her or sadness. All I feel is anger. My glove glows blue, and I aim it right at her. She does the same to me.

“All right, stop it,” Bex says, suddenly the peacemaker. I almost laugh.

Arcade lunges at me, and in my shock I fall backwards onto the hardwood floor, a happy accident as I watch her blades slice the air mere inches from my face. The mob shrieks, and suddenly they are racing back the way they came, trampling the slow ones in their paths.

“Leave her alone, Arcade!” Bex shouts.

I force a waterspout up through the antique floorboards, and it catches Arcade so hard, her body is flung toward the ceiling. She slams into it with a sickening smack, then falls back down, crashing through the stage and creating a massive hole. I hear pipes bursting, and more crashes come from below.

I barely have time to stand when Arcade leaps up through the hole and lands on the balls of her feet.

“You are a vile, selfish parasite, Lyric Walker. My life has become a whirlpool of indignities ever since I encountered you. You have been scheming behind my back, disrespecting my role as his future queen. You think of no one but yourself.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, either of you,” I say, looking back and forth from Arcade to Bex.

“We part ways here, filth,” she says through heavy breaths. “I will not dishonor myself by fighting at your side. I will go to Tempest alone. Do not follow me, or I will kill you.”