Page 28 of We Are the Match
When I leave Thea’s, I keep my hood low as rain batters me.
It will be worth it when all this is done.
That is enough to propel me forward. That is enough to carry me through this dark, rain-soaked night. Helen will be mine, and the Family will fall.
My hand moves to my pocket instinctively, searching for the poppy.
Zarek’s fixers will start researching the queens, some of them exploring the forensics, picking apart the remnants of the explosive and tracing its origin. The others will comb the islands. Still others will be on secure lines talking to connections on the mainland, in all the dark corners of the continent and beyond.
They have the might of the Family, of blood and money and power going back decades.
But I have something they do not.
I know the smell that surrounded me before the grenade went off—the TNT was mixed with something, something that was used on Troy. I recognize the smell—solidox and sugar—and I knew the girls who once used them for their bombs.
When I finally return to my apartment, I am bone-tired.
I tread lightly, kick my boots off at the door, and then—
Stop.
There is a scent here that does not belong.
A note of vanilla, a note of poppies, a note of—
Helen is standing in the bedroom doorway, hair loose around her shoulders. She has one of my blankets draped over her, and her lips are parted, chest heaving slightly as if she is winded, or nervous.
I drop my rain-soaked jacket with a wetthump. “Helen,” I say. “What thefuckare you doing in my apartment?”
Chapter 8
Helen
Paris has a knife in her hand, she smells of TNT, and she is dripping wet.
“Um,” I say. “Hello, Paris.”
She snorts. “That’s not an answer.”
“I came,” I say finally. “Because I need toknow. And because I think you can help me.”
The other fixers, the ones who work for my father, have been around long enough to know that they are to keep me away from the work of this world. If I asked for updates, for answers, they would simply call my father. Everyone keeps me at arm’s length. Everyone keeps me in the dark.
But Paris isn’t one of us, and Paris doesn’t know that. So Paris will let me work with her, and if she does—whenshe does—I can convince her to help me escape.
“What do you need to know?” Paris is shrugging off wet clothes and moving around the cramped studio, but her eyes track me as she goes, as if I am a threat she must not turn her back on—or prey she is determined to catch. “And what do you want from me?”
It isn’t that I care, not entirely, about who bombed my party. I am a target wherever I go; I have been a target before in my own home.
“I—I just want to know,” I repeat. “More about the attack. All of it. I want to be part of your investigation.”
She runs a hand through her short hair, tousling it, her rings catching the light as she moves.
“You want to work together.” Paris says the words like they are weapons. And then she crosses the room in long, confident strides, stops so close in front of me that I can see her throat bob slightly as she swallows. Can see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. “But why would I need you, Helen of the gods?”
“I think—” I swallow hard, watching the rise and fall of her chest as I do. I almost feel drunk, unsteady just because of the proximity to Paris’s magnetism. “I think we can be of use to one another,” I finish finally.
Paris tilts her head to one side, amusement in her eyes as her gaze roves down my face, lingering at my lips. “All right,” she says. “I’ll bite. What is it you propose?”
