FOR TWO WEEKS, I STARED AT THE GPS APP. GINNY BOUGHT ME A stylus at the Apple Store in Calgary so I could use the screen on Sadie's phone because my dead fingers wouldn't work it, and two days later, I just ended up buying an iPhone of my own to use with the stylus. I wanted to be able to stare at it on my own.
Sam went everywhere, crossed the globe in a matter of days, and then repeated the adventure. But she showed up night after night on Boulevard Malesherbes in Paris, only after spending an hour or so two blocks down. A restaurant and then a hotel. So these two blocks in Paris, they were my best guess as to where he could be.
I replayed the scene I'd seen inside Sadie's head, she in a gown she wouldn't wear, in a setting reserved for her dream life with my brother, Raven touching her in a manner he had no business touching her. I was still mad at her for not telling us, but mad wouldn't get us anywhere. The stakes were real, and our situation was desperate now. I was fixated on the news Noah told me. What he had likely discovered was that Survivors turned human for a moment before they died. But Sadie would hear that they turned human at all, and that would be enough for her to twist this information in her brain until she convinced herself that she should try to do it. And then she'd end up killing herself, for real this time. We had talked her out of death quests because we got her to value life over death. But humanity had always been her Holy Grail. A grail that suddenly seemed to exist.
Now that the threat was real, Sadie needed protection. The real kind.
I can't say what I hoped to find when I projected into an alleyway outside the Waldorf Madeline in Paris, the hotel that stood at 12 Boulevard Malesherbes. Or what I hoped to find when I walked two blocks down to the R Café, where Sam sat night after night. But when I saw Alexander Raven alone in a booth in that god-forsaken mink coat he'd been wearing both times we'd seen him, I knew I had to do something.
I just didn't know it would be this.
He saw me coming, and he smiled, the muscles in his face slowly giving way, one after the other. He'd smiled too many times for one set of skin to handle.
"Marcus," he said pleasantly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"We need to talk," I said.
"But of course. My date should be joining me soon. That won't be awkward for you, will it?"
"Why should it? You two aren't exclusive, unless what you do to unwilling girls in their dreams doesn't count," I spat. Every fiber. It took every fiber of my being not to jump the table and strangle him, just for my own satisfaction. Even if it wouldn't kill him.
"So she finally told you about the dreams?" he mused. He dipped a pale, languid finger into his water glass and then rubbed the edge to make a whirring pitch.
"She didn't tell me anything," I said. "I figured it out."
"I'm sure you did," he grinned.
"What did you do with Abigail Williams?" I asked.
"Killed her, of course. But that's not why you really came here, is it, Marcus? To ask me a question you knew the answer to?" he grinned. His smile was sickening.
"No, it isn't."
"Then why did you come?"
"I want you to leave her alone," I said. I could hardly trust my own voice. It was wavering, and it never did that.
"I can't, Marcus. Sadie is too important," he said. "I already lost Sky to Sam's jealous temper, so Sadie is all I have left."
"She isn't yours," I said.
"Well she isn't yours," he mused. "I suspect she thinks she's just her own person, but that's a fallacy we just tell ourselves. She'll get over it soon enough."
"Leave her alone, Raven. Make it a fair fight. I can't fuck with your head, so stop fucking with hers," I said.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," he said. He rubbed the water glass again. The sound was unnerving, which I'm sure was its point.
"Of course you can do it. You just won't, without motivation."
This got his attention. "You think you can offer something that would make me change my course of action?"
"I'd like to think so, Raven."
"Alexander," he corrected me.
I grimaced. "Fine, Alexander. Let's make a deal."