Flawed (Flawed, #1)(54)

The receptionist’s face has turned scarlet behind him. She has a piece of paper in her hand, and I know it’s Tina’s contact details, and I want it so badly. If I don’t get it now, she will never give it to me. But Crevan is looking from her to me, and if he snatches the note from her hand, then it’s all over.

“Celestine,” he says, nostrils flared, as though there were a bad smell in the room. He looks at me with more hatred than I’ve ever seen in anyone. “What are you doing here?”





THIRTY-EIGHT

“WHAT AM I doing here?” I ask, and I can hear the tremble in my voice.

My obvious fear only makes him stronger, gives him an amused, patronizing look.

“I’m … I’m…” I can’t even think. I can’t lie, and I can’t come up with any reasonable explanation. I am so stupid for putting myself in this position. I feel light-headed. What would happen if I just ran? Would he chase me?

“There you are,” Pia Wang says suddenly from behind me, all business. “I was looking for you. I’m ready now.”

Just what I need, Pia and Crevan together at the same time.

She stops beside me and looks up at Crevan. “Oh, Judge Crevan, hello, how are you? Celestine and I were just about to begin the next part of our interview. Were you looking for me?” she asks me.

I look at her in surprise. She’s helping me? I nod.

The receptionist crumples up the piece of paper in her hand, and my heart drops.

“Let’s go. There’s a café around the corner,” she says. “Judge, nice to see you,” she says confidently, and leads me away.

With wobbly legs, and not a second look at Crevan in case he calls me back, I go with her. There are many narrow alleyways and cobblestoned pathways around and through the castle. Pia leads me down one and into a tiny café with five tables close together. She must have known it would be empty, and the spotty teenager behind the counter makes us our coffees and sits on a high stool and disappears into his phone. Even if he hears every word we say, I doubt he’ll care in the slightest.

By the time we’ve sat down, I’ve managed to gather myself.

“What are you doing here?” Pia asks.

“Looking for you, obviously,” I say, sarcastically. “And ta-da!”

She views me with suspicion, but if I don’t go along with her idea, then she’ll want to know why I’m really here, and I can’t tell her anything about looking for Carrick.

“I thought about your proof,” she says, looking at the teenager, then back at me.

“Right.”

“And it doesn’t hold up. You could have done that to yourself.”

I almost choke on my coffee, and she at least does seem to feel a little stupid for saying it.

“Or somebody else could have done it. There’s no proof that … he … did it.”

“There is definitely something wrong with you if you think that I would sear my own skin with a burning-hot iron without an anesthetic,” I say a little more loudly than I mean to, but she is making me so angry. We both look at the teenager, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off his phone.

“There’s just nobody who can back up your story,” she says. “Your family and Mr. Berry were all taken out of the room for the fifth brand. Nobody was in the viewing room. There’s nothing about it in the reports.”

She really doesn’t know about Carrick or Mr. Berry, and I’m sure Funar wouldn’t have told anybody that they managed to rush into the room and witness it all, seeing as it was his mistake.

“Have you talked to the guards?” I ask.

“No. But I’ve read the reports. The guards write them.”

“Yes. But did you speak to them?”

“No.”

“Interesting.” I finish the last of my coffee and stand up feeling more confident but hoping more than anything that I won’t bump into Crevan again. It’s clear that I’m putty in his hands now. “I have to get home, or my mom will be worried. You should talk to the guards. They might tell you something different. Tina, June, Bark, Funar, and Tony. You should ask for them at the front desk.”

She scrambles for a pen and writes those names down. The speed of her reaction reveals her desperation for the truth. If I can’t find them, she can do the work for me, though it doesn’t mean I can trust her to write the truth if she learns it.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I say. I put on my cap, adjust my F sleeve, and go back out into the world. I leave three voice mail messages on Mr. Berry’s phone, urgently asking him to call me.

There’s one more place I want to visit before I get home.

Part of the Flawed rules is that the Flawed aren’t allowed to be buried with their families; there’s a graveyard especially for them. The idea is that you can’t force the regular moral and ethically abiding people of society to be buried in the ground for all time alongside the Flawed. I go to the only Flawed graveyard in the city, which is surrounded by bright red railings.

There is a list of occupants at the graveyard office along with a log of their misdemeanors, part of the philosophy of being branded Flawed. Even in death, there is no escaping it. I don’t need to go to the desk to search through the logbook. It’s easy to find Clayton Byrne’s grave site. It looks like that of a celebrated martyr. There are dozens of fresh flowers and sweet-scented candles decorating one side of his grave, out of respect for a man who died so tragically. His grave site has become a place for the Flawed to come to, with hope that he is the symbol of change, that his situation will bring light to their plight. I know this because I read the dozens of notes and cards that have been left behind. Others who visit are those who feel his death is a symbol that we are all truly doomed, that there is no hope. This comes in the form of the black roses and black candles that line the other side of the grave. I look at the color and I look at the darkness, the hope and the despair, and I don’t know which side I fall on.