Page 63 of The Scarlet Veil

Coco throws her head back with a dry, humorless laugh. “You’vebeen suffering? You do realize she only fled because of you and your secrets?” She moves forward then, lithe as a serpent, while Lou rises from the bed with another frown. It looks strange on her freckled face. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d just told her the fucking truth. What were you trying to prove?”

Jean Luc’s hand clenches upon the Balisarda’s hilt. “In case you haven’t realized, she didn’t flee. She waskidnapped, which means I had every right to try to protect—”

“No, you didn’t, Jean,” Lou says. “None of us did. We were wrong.”

And I know I should agree with her. I should open my mouth and defend myself—I should assert my presence somehow—but none of them can hear me. And I don’t have the energy to fight, anyway. Perhaps I never have.That’s it, I realize, momentarily triumphant at the realization.That’s the one.

The singular emotion washing through me as I sit upon this bed. Uponmybed.

Exhaustion.

I feel exhausted.

Now that I’ve acknowledged it, other emotions roll forth like a storm breaking at sea, but for once, I have the ability to stifle them. And it feels like Heaven. I am able to simply watch, entranced, as the three people I care about most in this world argue over me—about where I should or shouldn’t have been that night, what I should or shouldn’t have been doing. Their voices grow angrier with each word, louder, until they resemble not my friends at all but complete and total strangers. I don’t recognize them.

I don’t recognize myself.

One thing, however, is for certain: whatever I was doing, I was doing it wrong.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” Jean Luc says at last, shaking his head and glaring at them. The muscles in his shoulders, his arms, radiate tension as he forces himself to lean against the door. To inhale, to exhale. To disengage from this pointless argument.

“Nor did we.” Lou crosses her arms in response, and one of the buttons instantly pops off Jean Luc’s coat, landing between their feet. “Just know if wewerereally fighting, Coco and I would win.”

“Sure you would.” Jean Luc picks up his button, pressing it between his fingers as he glances down either side of the hallway. He won’t meet my friends’ eyes now. And he won’t look past them into the room. “The quilt,” he says at last, sighing. “Célie brought it here from her nursery. It should help you scry.”

Lou glances back at it. “Of course. It’s the only thing not in that hideous shade of blue.”

“You should have more respect for the huntsmen. They’ve all volunteered to help with the search. Even the new recruits have joined.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Lou offers him a mocking hand. “I’ll have respectaftermy friend is found. Does that work for you?”

“I’mtrying.” Jean Luc drags his own hand down his face, and the tension in his body deflates abruptly. “I love her, all right? You know how much I love her.”

Retreating to seize the quilt, Coco holds it tightly against her chest. Her eyes still threaten violence. “Well, she isn’t in this room, so feel free to look elsewhere.”

“Yes, I’m not sure the right tactic for a search and rescue is to linger in doorways.” Lou taps her foot against the floor, and it sounds like thunder seconds before another lightning strike. “What do youwant, Jean?”

Jean Luc clenches his jaw. His gaze lingers on the quilt in Coco’s hands. Then— “There’s been a new development.”

“What?” Coco jolts forward at the words, stumbling slightly—the first time I’ve ever seen her do so—and knocks into Lou, who steadies her with an anxious hand and wide eyes.

“Where is she?” Lou whispers. “What have you heard?”

Jean Luc peels his own eyes away from my quilt and meets their gazes at last. His brow furrows. “It isn’t about Célie. It’s—” He swallows. “It’s about your family’s grimoire, Cosette. It’s missing. Someone has—they’ve stolen it,” he finishes quietly.

Coco stares at him for several seconds.

Then she curses—loudly and viciously—as Lou blasts a wave of anger through the room. My books fall off the shelf, one by one by one, and crash into a heap on the floor. My lockpicks roll under the bed and out of sight. I leap to my feet, racing to collect them, but—I swipe at them desperately—my fingers pass straightthrough the metal. I try again. And again. Each time, my hands refuse to find purchase, and tiny needles of cold spike through my skin.

It seems I can’t touch anything here.

Why can’t I touch anything here?

And for that matter—why can’t they hear me? Why can’t theyseeme? Why can’t I speak to them at all?

My own frustration breaks free at the last, and I kick at the spine of a leather-bound fairy tale. To my surprise, it moves—just a little, just enough to ruffle the pages. Not enough for anyone to notice, however. And I... I feel angry at that. Andsad. And—and—

A dozen more emotions converge like a wave crashing inside my chest, powerful enough to break my focus. To snap like a band in my belly, pulling me—somewhere else. Somewherenot here. It blurs my vision until the scene before me—until Lou, Coco, Jean Luc, my room—bleed into a rainbow of black and gray. I grapple for purchase on anything I can reach, reaching for the desk, the bed, even the floor with a desperate cry. Because I can’t leave yet. My friends are looking for me, andI can’t leave.

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