Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con #3)(65)

“LOOK TO THE STARS! LOOK TO THE STARS AND SEE! FIND OUT WHERE YOU BELONG! AND FIGHT FOR IT, FIGHT FOR IT, FIGHT FOR LOVE IN A STARFIELD, A STARFIELD, A STARFIELD OF LIGHT.”

…The theme song to Starfield?

I sit up and hesitantly approach my window. Other people are coming out onto their balconies and peeking out of their apartments toward the blaring music in the lot beneath us. And there Quinn and Annie stand with a boom box pointed at my apartment.

I quickly abandon my window and head for the door, stumbling into my shoes as I leave the apartment, and come up to the railing on the side. I try to push away the tears flooding my eyes, but I can’t seem to, and the next I know they’ve abandoned the boom box and both of them are wrapping their arms around me.

So tightly, I’m not scared of rattling apart anymore. I come undone in their arms, and I know they’ll be there to keep me in one piece.





THE LIBRARY IS EMPTY WITHOUT HER.

I should feel angry, but I don’t. I just feel…hollow.

Our bags are packed. We’re just waiting for the car now. Everything else in this house—the smaller things, the TV, the gaming console, Elias’s cooking supplies—will be boxed up by a moving company and shipped back to LA within the next few days.

My fingers find the part of the bookshelf where The Starless Throne should be, but I know Rosie still has it with her.

We all occupy space for such a short period of time, even though sometimes it feels like eternity. We’re here, and then gone, and our stuff stays behind. The things that we used, the things that we loved, the things that we treasured, and adored, and despised. Those trinkets exist far longer than we do, and I’ve always imagined them as that—just things. To be bought, sold, gathered.

But things, it seems, can persevere. Small things. Treasured things. A favorite book, an old battered album, a DVD of an old sci-fi TV series passed from father to daughter. They can cast a spell to ensure that people you’ve never met will miss you when you’re gone.

I’ve never met Rosie’s mother, but when I run my fingers along the spines of her collection, I miss her.

And…and I still have my mother around.

I’m just too afraid to talk to her, because I know she’s disappointed in me, and I know she knows I can be better than I am. I just never was, and never cared to be, so I got scared. And when my stepfather sent me here, I thought that since she didn’t stop him—she didn’t like me anymore.

That, perhaps, she’s done with trying to see the good in me.

Whatever little good she saw to begin with.

There’s a knock on the library door, and Elias pokes his head in. “The car’ll be here in about an hour. Is everything you’re taking in the hallway, mijo?”

“Yeah,” I reply softly. “First day of freedom, doesn’t it taste great?”

“Well, of course, but we don’t have to leave, you know.”

It seems like an innocent proposition, but I can’t stay here, either. I don’t belong here; I figured out that much yesterday with those cockroaches at my doorstep. Isn’t that the worst kind of twist? Your parents cast you off to some no-name town to get you out of the way for a while, and you end up liking it. Or, at least, not hating it.

I doubt they expected that twist.

“I can’t stay here forever,” I reply, and flash him a grin. “Besides, when my stepfather steps down, who’ll be there to inherit Kolossal Pictures? Sansa?”

At the mention of her name, my dog perks up on the floor and sticks out her tongue. She wags her tail gently, and it thumps on the rug.

Elias sighs and scrubs her behind the head. “Right. Okay. Just so you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

I have to be.

When he leaves, I sit down in one of the wingback chairs and take out my phone. My mother dominates the missed calls—almost all of them—so it isn’t very hard to find her phone number.

With a deep breath, I call her.

The phone rings once—twice—before she answers, honey and light and sweet. “Darling!”

I don’t realize how good it is to hear her voice until I do, and my throat tightens.

“Hi, Mum,” I reply softly.

“Oh, darling, I’m so glad you gave me a ring,” she says. “You know, after I saw what the gossip was about, I was going to ring you again but I figured—well, I’m glad you called. Are you okay? Is Elias feeding you well? How was your birthday yesterday?—”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt, my voice breaking.

“Oh, darling, you’ve nothing to apologize for,” she replies, and her voice is understanding and soft, and that’s it. Those are the words I didn’t know I needed to hear, but when I finally do my eyes sting, and I press the palm of my hand into my eye. My breath hitches, and I can’t remember the last time I cried, but it feels like a string inside me has finally come undone, the tension gone. “I love you, darling, and I can’t wait to see you home,” she adds, and I can imagine her sitting at the dining room table at home, twirling a lock of her graying blond hair, a thousand-piece puzzle stretched out in front of her. “Gregory stepped out for a moment, but he would love to talk to you, too—I can ask him to give you a ring after Shabbos?”

I hesitate, tightening my grip on my phone. “I would like that.”