Vengeful (Villains #2)(28)
Dol lay on the floor beside him, awake, eyes shining in the dark, tail swishing softly at her arrival.
As Sydney padded across the apartment, the dog rose and followed in her wake, padding down the hall to her room and climbing up onto her bed without invitation. Syd eased the door shut and slumped back against it.
A few moments later she heard the soft scrape of furniture, the sound of Victor rising, the soft tread of his own steps as he passed her door, and closed his own.
He hadn’t been asleep, she realized.
Victor had simply been waiting for Syd to come home.
XVII
FOUR WEEKS AGO
HALLOWAY
IT was late, but Sydney wasn’t tired yet—too much sugar in her blood, too many thoughts in her head—and besides, she needed to see the birthday out as well as in.
It was tradition.
A memory, like a splinter—of Syd trying to stay awake as the minutes ticked toward midnight. Serena poking her in the ribs every time she started to doze.
Come on, Syd. You’re almost there. It’s bad luck to fall asleep. Get up and dance with me.
Sydney shook her head, trying to dislodge her sister’s voice. She turned in a slow circle before the mirror, letting her blue hair fan around her face, and then tugged off the wig and undid the clips beneath. Her natural hair—a curtain of straight white-blond—came free, falling almost to her shoulders.
Syd caught her reflection again, but this time out of the corner of her eye.
Sometimes, if she squinted a little, she could almost, almost see someone else in the mirror.
Someone with sharper cheekbones, fuller lips, a mouth tugged into a sly grin. The ghost of her sister. An echo. But then the illusion would falter, and Sydney’s eyes would come back into focus, and all she would see was a girl playing dress-up.
*
SYDNEY shed the red bomber jacket and unlaced the steel-toed boots, turning her attention to Victor’s gift. She took up the blue box and carried it to the room’s small desk. Dol watched from the floor as she carefully lifted the box’s lid, examining the contents. The bird’s small skeleton was immaculate, intact. It looked like something out of a natural history museum—knowing Victor, it probably was.
Syd sat down, ran her fingers thoughtfully over the bird’s wing, and wondered how old it was. The longer a thing had been dead, she’d learned, the harder it was to bring back. And the less of it remained, the more brittle its life was. So likely to crumble, or break, and when it did, it was gone forever. No second chances.
Nothing to grab hold of.
Sydney glanced at the red metal tin beside her bed. And then she took up a pair of tweezers and began removing bones, erasing the bird one piece at a time, until only a few fragments remained. The long bone at the top of one wing. A section of the spine. The heel of one foot.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, resting her hand on the partial skeleton.
And then, she reached.
At first she felt nothing beyond the bones under her palm. But she imagined herself reaching further, deeper, past the bird and the case and the desk, plunging her hand down into cold, empty space.
Her lungs began to ache. The chill spread through her fingers and up her arms, sharp and biting, and when she breathed out she could feel the plume of cold, like fog, on her lips. Light danced—far off and faint—behind her eyes, and her fingers brushed something, the barest hint of a thread. Syd pulled gently, gingerly. She kept her eyes closed, but she could feel the small skeleton beginning to rebuild, the ripple of muscle, of skin, the blush of feathers.
Almost—
But then she pulled just a little too hard.
The thread vanished.
The fragile light behind her eyes went out.
Sydney blinked, withdrew her hand, and saw the remains of the bird, its fragile skeleton now beyond repair. The bones—so carefully arranged in their velvet—were split and broken, the pile she’d set aside caving in, crumbling under their own weight.
She still wasn’t strong enough.
Still wasn’t ready.
When she moved to touch the bones, they fell apart, leaving only an ashy streak on the blue velvet lining, a pile of dust on her desk.
Ruined, thought Sydney, sweeping the remains into the trash.
XVIII
FOUR WEEKS AGO
MERIT CENTRAL HOSPITAL
I will ruin you.
I will ruin.
I will.
I—
Marcella opened her eyes.
She was greeted by sterile fluorescent lights, the antiseptic smell of scrubbed surfaces, and the papery thread count of hospital sheets. Marcella knew she shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t even be alive. But her pulse registered, a wavering green line on the machine beside her head, inexorable proof that she was. She drew a deep breath, and then cringed. Her lungs and throat felt raw, her skull pounding even through the high-grade painkillers being piped into her veins.
Marcella tested her fingers and toes, rolled her head gingerly side to side with calm precision and—she commended herself—startling composure. She had long ago learned to compartmentalize her feelings, shove the inconvenient and the unbecoming into the back of her mind like an old dress in a dark closet.
Her fingers crept along the sheets, and she tried to pull herself up, but at the slightest movement she was assaulted by her own body—her bruised and broken ribs, her burned and blistered skin. Marcella had also learned to embrace the various stings and aches and sears that went hand in hand with maintaining her appearance.