Page 82 of The Narrow

“Except for you. You’re here,” I say.

“For her.” Her gaze grows distant. “I would do anything for Grace. We were made for each other, she and I. No one ever loved each other like we did. Maybe that’s how I can escape. For a little while, at least. But it always pulls me back.” Her voice is melancholy, but there’s a core of rage behind it.

“What you showed me from that night...”

“Don’t,” she says sharply. Her hand drops from my face. “Don’t talk about that. I don’t like to think about it. It makes me—it makes it—” She shudders, and blood oozes into the air behind her skull. She gasps, lunging forward. Her lips catch mine.

Now there is pain. A quick pulse of it at the base of my spine, and where she kisses me there’s a burst that sends me rocking back, but she holds me, her hand tangled in my hair, and cradles my head against her chest.

“Shh. No, Eden, I’m sorry, shh. It’s hard, holding on. I can’t think about those things. You can’t make me think about them, okay?”

I gasp, sagging against her. I almost made her lose herself. I almost made her die all over again. She’s trying to be whole, trying to keep from hurting me.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whisper, frantic to make her believe me so she won’t leave.

She sinks down into a crouch in front of me, her hands on my knees. “It’s okay. You didn’t know,” she says. “Just don’t do it again.”

“I won’t. I promise,” I tell her. She beams. I feel bruised from her kiss, but that smile is beautiful. And when she rises up and touches her lips softly to mine, I don’t draw away. Not at first. I cannot deny the pull she has on me, the aching current of need. I can’t tell if it is hers or mine. With her wounds knitted, life in her eyes and even faint color in her cheeks, she is beautiful, but Del’s voice and face and touch are fresh in my mind. “What are you doing?” I whisper.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Her fingertips trace a slow path along the inside of my knee.

“I’m not her. I’m not Grace,” I say, and she makes a softah.

“I know. But I’ve been so alone, Eden. And you bring me back to life,” she whispers.

Her presence makes the air electric. The energy before a storm. She’s going to kiss me again. And that’s like a storm, too, inevitable and powerful. “I’m with someone,” I say.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she says. Her hand in my hair tightens. The pressure pulls back my head, bares my throat, and her lips and tongue and teeth are there, and I make a soft noise that she must take as agreement because then she’s kissing me again, pushing me back onto the bed.

“Wait. Stop,” I manage, and get a hand between us. It rests over her unbeating heart.

She looks down at me curiously. “What’s wrong, Eden?” she asks. Cold water drips onto my chest, my neck, making me flinch.

“I told you. I’m with someone,” I say. Am I? We haven’t talked about what we are to each other. As if defining it might make this fragile thing slip away.

“And you would rather be kissing her,” she says. She bends, nips my jaw. “You would rather be touching her.” Her cool palm slides up under my shirt, ghosting across my belly, and I suck in a startled breath. “Have you tasted her? Have you slept with her? Has she told you that she loves you, the way she told me?”

Alarmed, I try to rise, but she’s straddling my torso now, pinning me to the bed. Her eyes are wild with something I can’t name—grief and longing and rage and hunger.

“The way she told you? Delphine?” I ask.

“Grace,” she says. “You’re the girl who lives in her house. You’re the one that helps them keep her from me.”

I shake my head. “She’s not Grace. Her name is Delphine. Del.”

She bends. Presses her brow to mine, her hand wrappedaround the back of my skull. The pressure is almost painful. Not quite. She hums in the back of her throat. “I’m remembering so much now. They took her name and who she was and they hid her away like a princess in a tower, but it won’t work. We’ll find our way back to each other. We always do.”

As the last words fade, so does she. I’m alone.

I shiver, cold water on my skin everywhere she touched me.

28

MADELYN FOURNIER DOESN’Tanswer the door at first. But I look up into the camera above me, my feet planted. “We need to talk about Grace and Delphine,” I say.

The silence lingers long enough that I doubt for a moment that Madelyn even knows I’m there. But at last the speaker in the doorbell turns on. “Come inside,” Madelyn says, and the lock pad gives a blat. I didn’t know she could access it remotely, but I’m not surprised. The tiny FellTech logo stamped on the metal is a clear reminder of how closely everything here is monitored and connected.

The routine of changing is second nature. My own clothes are gone, of course—delivered to Westmore as promised. It’s back to the school sweats. As it was the first day I met her, Madelyn’s door is left open a crack so that she won’t have to get up to answer. She sits on the couch, her long legs crossed and her gaze on some distant point to the side.

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