“Nina was the name The Bear gave me.” She shudders, the movement violent enough to notice. “So no way did I want to keep using it after we escaped. Athena had been Kenda’s idea.” Athena continues fiddling with her pendant. “The goddess of wisdom, war, and the crafts had been thought of as courageous. Kenda said anyone who had survived what I had was definitely courageous.”
Kenda was right about that. “The name’s fitting for you.” I sit in the middle of the couch. “Did Kenda give that to you? The pendant?” I point at it.
Athena blinks, her eyes red from crying. “It’s a locket. She gave it to me the morning she was killed but didn’t have a chance to put any photos in it. We were going to do that when we got to California.” She lifts her feet onto the chair and hugs her legs, her shoulders slumped forward.
“Why don’t we fix that?” I head for my office and return with twosmall, newly printed pictures of Peony and Kenda. I grab scissors from the kitchen drawer.
Athena hands me the pendant, her curiosity-widened eyes watching me.
I sit on the couch, open the locket, and remove one of the stock photos. I put it on Peony’s photo, a template for cutting her picture.
Tiny handwritten numbers stare at me from the back of the generic photo.
Without my reading glasses on, they look blurry.
“What are the numbers for?” I show them to Athena.
She shakes her head, her pale eyebrows disappearing under her bangs. “I have no idea.”
I grab my reading glasses from the office and return to the couch. This time, when the numbers aren’t so blurry, they make more sense. “They look like longitude and latitude directions. And possibly a lock combination.” And now that I have my glasses on, there’s no denying they’re written in Kenda’s handwriting.
The part of me that loves solving mysteries in the books I read, who as a kid would talk through plots with Zara for the books we read together…that part of me sits up and takes notice. Gets excited at what the numbers could mean.
I log them into my phone to see where they take me. They are exactly what I was thinking. The first two sets are longitude and latitude directions.
Hope plunges straight to my heart and spreads through my body. And for the first time in three days, a tiny amount of ice inside me thaws.
I dial Noah’s cell phone. “I think I might have something.”
58
ZARA
“Zawa!”Peony’s gut-wrenching wail breaks through the brain fog, and I slowly blink open my eyes. Sunlight pours onto the bed from the window, the thick prisonlike bars painting ominous shadows on my body. The steady beat of Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” plays from what sounds like several rooms away. The title, my new mantra.
I groan at the intense pain holding my body hostage and push up to sit a little too fast. I wince at the pain and frantically scan the nondescript room with two twin beds. “Peony?” Her name tumbles past my lips in an anguished cry.
My gaze settles on the playpen next to the window. The top of Peony’s tear-streaked face peers at me from above the rim.
“I’m here, Princess Peony.” I shuffle over to her, my muscles stiff and uncooperative, and I pick her up. My body responds unkindly to the movement, screaming vicious, silent curses.
I cuddle her, trying to reassure her without words that everything will be okay. I’ll protect her. I’ll keep her safe.
Peony clutches to me. I’m Poppy’s replacement, a role I take seriously.
“It’ll be okay.” I close my eyes against the lie and press a soft kiss to her tear-salted cheek. I rock her, and her crying slows to a light sob.
Blurry-eyed memories trickle in of arriving at a house, the New Orleans heat and humidity embracing me like a long-lost friend distraught at the turn of events. Memories of being escorted to this room, being told a list of rules I can’t remember. Of a girl who couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old bringing food for Peony and me. Of her telling me to rest up, she would be back later.
The bedroom door opens, and the girl from earlier walks into the room.
Tilly’s long golden-blond hair is twisted up in a messy top knot. She’s wearing extremely short shorts and a crop top that reveals more than it hides, and she has the same odd mark I’ve seen on Athena’s body, just below her collarbone. The mark that resembles the letters T and B turned sideways.
Tilly smiles at Peony, whose sobs have lulled to gentle hiccupping. “Hi, Peony. Do you remember me? You’ve gotten so big since I last saw you.” She tickles Peony’s side, drawing a sweet, tear-dampened giggle from her.
I frown, unable to take my gaze from the mark under her collarbone. What are the chances it’s just a coincidence they have the same scar?
Scar—or brand?
