The Helford Trials (Helford #3)

Chapter Five

Valerie locked herself in her hotel room the moment we returned from the trial, but, by some minor miracle (and probably a helping of Helford charm), a handful of hours later Meade was able to coax her out with the promise of a distraction. When she emerged, she was dressed in a more casual outfit of jeans and a sweater, and her face showed that she hadn't been crying, as I had expected. Really, that seemed even worse.

My father was on a phone call when we passed him by just outside of the hotel on the busy Manhattan sidewalk. He watched us walk away curiously, but did not ask. I wondered if he didn't ask because he thought we were independent, believe we could handle ourselves, or just didn't care anymore. I was inclined to believe the first two assumptions, and hate him a little more for the possibility of the third.

I had been to Manhattan only once before, back not long after I lost my family and my father was terrified of leaving me alone, refusing to let me out of his sight. I remembered being taken aback by the gray, understanding entirely when my father called it a concrete jungle. I was used to Paris and old narrow streets, and walking into Times Square nearly made my world turn upside down. It wasn't long ago that the Underground had tried to hide my father and I on the outskirts of this city, before it fell apart and we couldn't look each other in the eye anymore, and we went our separate ways from the city where Caitie had told me with a folded crane that she was alive. Flashing lights and rushing traffic and roaring noise—back then, I thought it was amazing; now, I looked at it, and I called it the perfect cover.

Everything has changed since Helford came into my life. I don't know if I would ever be able to look at something and not think of how it might be viewed in a killer's perspective.

That seemed an entirely untrue concept for Valerie and Meade—or, if they couldn't turn off that extra sense, they hid it much better than I felt that I did. Meade took a deep breath of city air and let it out suddenly like breathing was nothing but a kindness; Valerie tilted her head up to the sky, pitch black, all the stars lost in the bright buzz of the city. She looked so sad, so lost. Like she thought that the darkness might come down and consume her, and take her away, until she couldn't feel anything anymore.

Maybe she would have preferred that. I didn't know a lot of things about Valerie. I was still trying to learn them and I knew I would never truly understand. The judge had looked at her with pity around the eyes when she mentioned Valerie's past mental trouble, and I couldn't help but to wonder if it was weighing on Valerie now like a heavy fog she couldn't shake away.

We walked in silence for a long time before Meade finally asked, rather mildly, "Where are we going?"

"Does it matter?" Valerie demanded, eyes following all of the people that passed by. "We're just passing through. We can go anywhere, and no one would even see us."

I looked over at her. Her eyes didn't speak a word, and her expression said even less.

"Well, I see us," Meade pointed out with a strict frown, "and I'm bloody lost. Who do I have to kill for a pint?"

I turned to him, a little disturbed by his easy turn of phrase. He smiled at me sheepishly, a little too amused to be truly sorry.

"Force of habit," he said, and I wondered passingly if he meant the habit to be those turns of phrase, or killing people. Valerie didn't even look at us, her hands shoved into her back pockets as she carefully avoided the people walking past us. It was like she couldn't even hear us.

"I hear music," she said, and, after a moment of continuing walking down the street, we found it—a small Irish pub, filled with people and bleeding with music and loud voices talking over each other and thundering with laughter. We exchanged a glance before drifting in, maneuvering through the crowd and to a spot on the counter with one bar stool free. Valerie immediately slipped onto it, winking at us in a way that was more revived that I just rolled my eyes in response, a little relieved to see that she seemed like she would be alright.