Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(57)

“Marty didn’t tell you?”

“He said you were with the sheriff’s department now; that’s all,” she lies.

Luke nods.

This is not a secret agent, she realizes, or if he is, he’s super bad at it, because right now I could cut his discomfort with a knife. And he might thank me if I did.

Then she sees the stack of books on the shelf, the guides to criminal profiling and crime scene investigation. On top of them is a file folder, its thick stack of pages perilously close to sliding free, which suggests he shoved them in their current spot quickly. The top page sports a blaring headline. She can’t see the whole thing, but two of the words she can see make her stomach go cold—Mask Maker.

Tell me he’s not writing a book about serial killers, she thinks. Please, God, tell me he didn’t ask me here for some kind of interview.

“So is Altamira Sheriff’s consulting on the Mask Maker killings?”

“Oh, that. No. That’s just a little weekend reading.”

“Weekend reading?”

“Something to keep my head busy.”

“A little amateur detective work?”

“Yeah.” He stares at the floor. Swallows as if it’s painful. “I guess that’s what I am now. An amateur detective.” He says these last two words with such venom, she’s surprised he doesn’t finish them off by spitting on the floor. Whatever his reasons for getting rejected by the FBI, he’s not exactly repressing his feelings about them.

“Figure you’re here because Marty and I had some words yesterday,” Luke says.

“About me?”

“About a lot of things, but you came up.”

“And so he guilted you into this?” she asks.

“Into what?”

“Apologizing,” she says. “You are going to apologize, right?”

“Should I?”

“Yes, you should,” she says and takes a sip of Sprite.

“I didn’t expect this to be this hard.”

“Well, maybe it should be.”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he asks.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You sure you don’t want a beer?” he asks.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he says.

He ducks into the kitchen and reappears with a bottle of Heineken, wiping the evidence of his first sip from his lips with one forearm.

“You’re enjoying this?” he asks.

“What?”

“You’re smiling,” he says.

“I am?”

Luke nods and takes another sip of beer.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a crazy few days.”

“Is that what the name change is about?” he asks.

“The name change is a year old.” And even that’s more than you should say to him right now.

“I’m gonna do this, Charley.”

“Do what? Apologize?”

“Yeah. I’m just . . .”

“You’re just what?” she asks. “Working up the nerve?”

“Marty, he . . .”

“He what?”

“I don’t know; he told me apologies are all bullshit. That they’re just things we say to make ourselves feel better, and so I guess I’m trying for more here.”

“OK. You know what might make this easier? For you, I mean.”

“What?”

“You could ask me what I think you should apologize for,” she says.

Luke stares at her as if she’s an oncoming train. He swallows. “OK.”

But he says nothing, and the silence between them extends.

“Are you going to ask me, Luke?”

“What would you like me to apologize for, Tr—Charley?”

“Can I sit down?”

“Of course,” he says.

She takes a seat on the sofa’s edge, her eyes level with the file on the Mask Maker.

“Here’s the thing,” she says. She’s not measuring her words, and this makes her wonder if the drug’s giving her confidence. Not through its chemistry but through the knowledge that it’s there, waiting to deploy if she’s attacked. “There was like a day or two, when I first got here, after school started, where I thought things might be normal. I think some of it was ’cause I was older and I looked different from the girl on the book covers. It’d been a year since I’d done an appearance or an interview or anything like that. And I thought, wow. Maybe, just maybe, for these last two years of high school, I’m going to get a taste. A taste of what everyone else has gotten. A taste of normal.

“And then you started up. European History. Last period. I got called on and you didn’t. Then you tried to jump in on me. But you didn’t know the answer, and so Ms. Stockton told you to be quiet, and you got embarrassed. And that’s when it all began. Every day, every time we were together. Every chance you got. Nobody in that school called me Burning Girl until you did, and once you started, they never stopped. And I guess what I want to know is why?”

He’s staring into his beer bottle, circling the rim with one finger. His breaths are labored things that make his chest rise and fall, but it sounds like he’s drawing them through his nose. Right now his jaw’s entirely too tense for him to breathe through his mouth.