Your One & Only(21)

“Oh!” she exclaimed, flinging the book to where it landed, for a third time, on the floor.

She was secretly pleased when this time Jack jumped at her outburst. He scowled at her, then fished the book from under the desk. It had landed face-down with the spine bent. He carefully flattened the pages and closed the book, then took up his own again.

She had no idea what time it was, but surely this interminable night was almost over. She couldn’t tolerate being stuck here anymore. If he liked reading that jumble of nonsense, he really was a strange creature.

“How can you read those things?” she said, gesturing to his books, horrified by the sheer number he’d collected. None of it made any sense. “Anyway, these books should be in the Tunnels. I don’t think you’re even supposed to have them.”

He shrugged, unconcerned.

“And you read them?”

“Of course. You read, don’t you?”

“All the Altheas do. But we read textbooks and essays. That thing.” She indicated the book he still held in his hand, pointing to it like she would to a spider. He held it like it was something precious. “It’s . . . awful.”

“Then don’t read it.”

“The Council said you were intelligent. You don’t actually believe a dog can tell a story, do you?”

She hated the way he shook his head, like she was the one being dimwitted.

“It’s not real, obviously. It’s made up.”

“It is made up. It’s lies. You’re reading about things that never actually happened.” Althea crossed her arms. “Seems like a waste of time to me.”

“Never mind,” he said, turning his back to her. “Stare at the wall the rest of the night for all I care.”

“It’s a better way to spend the night than reading about flying dogs.”

“They’re not—” he said, then shook his head in frustration and went back to his book. “Forget it.”



Althea must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, the lights flickered on in the lab and shocked exclamations came from outside the door. When she opened her eyes, the lab workers—mostly Nylas and Kates—were in the room and staring at her and Jack, aghast. She stood to find Samuel-299, the one on the Council, looking sternly at them both, as if she’d had something to do with this mess.

“Finally,” Jack muttered. He winced as he stood, sore from having sat on the hard floor all night. Without a glance at her or Samuel-299, he lay where she’d been on the cot, his back to the rest of the room. He was going to fall asleep, just like that. If he could dismiss her so easily after she’d been stuck there all night, she was capable of the same.

“Jack,” Samuel-299 said, glancing from Althea to him, “what’s going on? What’s an Althea doing here?”

Jack pretended he’d heard nothing, his eyes already closed.

Althea smoothed the wrinkles from her Pairing robe, inexplicably embarrassed to still be wearing them the morning after the ceremony.

“Althea,” Samuel-299 said. His eyes wandered to her wrist, which she moved to cover with her shawl. “Althea-310, is it? What happened? How’d you get in here?”

Carson-312 had been a jerk, but there was no point in telling on him to the Samuel. They weren’t children. She could handle the Carsons. “It was a dumb prank,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, drawing the word out. “Are you all right? It was a Pairing night. Did anything . . . happen?”

A muffled sound came from the cot, and Althea narrowed her eyes at Jack’s back. Did the Samuel actually think . . . and did the human just scoff? She turned to Samuel-299. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just ask that.”

Althea knew she shouldn’t talk this way to a Gen-290, but she was tired and achy. The Pairing, Hassan, Carson-312, the endless night—it was all too much. She was mad at the Carsons for being jerks and annoyed at Samuel-299 for his implication. She was mad at herself for the situation she was in. And everything about Jack was incredibly irritating.

“So you didn’t . . .” Samuel-299 said, his voice trailing off.

She looked at the Samuel pointedly and smoothed her robe once more. “I’m tired, I just want to go home.” She nodded toward the bed. “If he wants to be alone so badly, let him.”

Samuel-299 rubbed his hand across his face and Althea noticed for the first time how haggard he looked. It set him apart from the other Gen-290s, who didn’t have those circles under their eyes.

“You didn’t get along, then?”

Jack’s back was turned. He hadn’t even pulled a blanket over himself. His knees were bent, and his arms folded across his chest. She knew his sleep was feigned and that he was listening to hear what she said. Well then, fine.

“The subject is not what I’d call well-socialized,” she said, immediately pleased with her turn of phrase. She usually wasn’t mean-spirited, but all night he hadn’t been the least bit friendly, or made any effort to put her at ease. He acted like she and the rest of Vispera—you people, he’d said—were beneath him. Beneath a human.

Jack hugged his arms a bit tighter across his chest, and something in that slight motion gave her a stab of guilt. After all, she’d probably made things harder for him, too.