The Book Eaters(103)

“I need to go back out,” she said, careful to sound casual. “I think I’ve dropped my phone on the beach. Will you be all right here?”

His gaze flickered briefly at the mini fridge. “I’ll be fine.”

Devon frowned. “For the last bloody time, you’re barely four years old, you don’t need—and cannot drink—any lager. Touch that fridge and I’m chucking out the Game Boy.”

“Okay, okay.” He scowled. “I won’t have any.”

“Good lad.”

Back out to the promenade, the sweetly darkening streets speckled with lights and laughter. Brighton did not want to sleep.

The beach, however, had emptied of people. Humans had enough sense to retreat from a cold, dark ocean they couldn’t safely swim in. Devon huddled into herself, a habit she’d acquired over recent weeks in a bid to look shorter, and slouched down to the shorefront beneath the Palace Pier. She stumbled across the rocks in her unnecessary human sandals, the hems of her jeans already damp from trailing over wet ground.

Jarrow was waiting.

No hiding or skulking this time; he simply stood at the water’s edge, hands in pockets. Almost motionless. The hoodie was gone, replaced by a nondescript bomber jacket of an out-of-date style better suited to a man twice his age. His curls were shorn into a military buzz cut. The beard was new and unruly.

He also wasn’t alone. Next to him stood a tallish woman, feet bare. Her dark hair was bound in a Victorian bun and she wore a crocheted shawl like a Jane Austen heroine, albeit with Mediterranean coloring.

This, surely, was Victoria, the invisible presence whose vivacious personality had been stamped all over the games room at Easterbrook Manor.

“Hey,” Jarrow said, without turning around. “Been a while.”

Devon opened her mouth to say something sensible, and burst into tears.

Nearly four years since that fraught bedside good-bye and she was again unable to speak, this time hiccup-crying into her sleeve. Everything circling back, cycling round. The months of planning and silence; her uncertainty over his commitment; mutual courage, shared resolve. The long separation.

And in that time, what had she become, seen, done? Did he still know who she was—did she still know who he was? Their relationship was so fractured and disparate that she hardly dared call it a friendship at all.

Pull it together, Devon told herself, and wiped her nose on an already-soggy sleeve. “Sorry. How are you? I’m really sorry.”

“Dunno what you’re sorry for.” Jarrow scooped up a stone and skipped it badly across the uneven salt water. “We’re just enjoying nature. A nice, peaceful chat. Aren’t we, Vic?”

Victoria Easterbrook nodded. Her gaze looked out over the sea; she seemed perpetually lost in thought.

“This is my sister, by the way,” he said. “I’ve told her about you, and she was happy to come.”

“Pleased to meet you, Vic.” Devon cleared her throat, composure regrowing second by second.

Dark brown eyes met her gaze, then flicked away. Victoria said, with obvious effort, “Evening.”

“We have good days and bad days,” Jarrow said. “But she’s feeling better than she did a few years ago—that’s what she says, anyway.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better,” Devon said, addressing the other woman. Privately, she wondered whether today was good or bad, and what the reverse looked like. To Jarrow, she added, “How’s exile, princeling?”

He groaned. “Boring and privileged. Stifling. I do IT stuff. They still let me play games. Mostly, though, I get to see Vic. That’s the main thing.”

“Eye-Tea? Is that some kind of drink?”

“What? No, IT stands for information technology. Computers and the Internet and shit. The Families are trying to get hip with voice-to-speech programs. It’s a way of writing without writing, you know?”

Devon shrugged. She didn’t know. “I’m glad you’re here. The knights are intermittently watching. I hope you don’t get in trouble.”

“Me too.” Jarrow bent and gathered a handful of too-sharp pebbles in both hands, rattling them absentmindedly. “Sorry I didn’t call sooner. Got the package, didn’t open it, forgot about it, finally looked in it. And then took me a while to work up the courage to call, once I found your message and realized you were the sender. Also took me time to find a phone.” He sighed, tumbling the pebbles back to the beach.

Victoria, despite her silence, angled her shoulders in their direction, listening intently.

“It doesn’t matter,” Devon said, the agony of past months already washing out of her. “You’re here now. I’m grateful.”

“I promised I’d get in touch. Couldn’t leave you hanging.”

“Bullshit. You absolutely could have done, and no one would have faulted you for it. I’m your brother’s killer, after all.” The last bit she said with a wrench of bitterness.

A satisfied smile ghosted Victoria’s face, though it faded quickly.

“I don’t believe that rumor for a second,” Jarrow said. “That said, if you feel like telling me what really went down, I wouldn’t mind hearing it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

She did mind, but he deserved the truth.