“No. It was what they wanted me to talk to you about. But it wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I don’t know.” She just stood there and he could hear both their breathing and someone running, a few streets away. “I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing, I guess.” She pushed the black box at him. “So do you want your ring back or not?”

“I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t take anything from you, even if it used to belong to me.”

She put the ring back in her pocket. She looked more beautiful than ever. His heart was in tatters. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? What do you think you have to be sorry for?”

“Ernesto says I betrayed my lover—meaning you—and I have to come to terms with that. Even if you were building a doomsday machine, it doesn’t change that fact.”

“It wasn’t a doomsday machine,” Laurence said again.

He looked at the Caddy nestled in her hand and forearm, providing meager illumination to the dark world as it woke up. The Caddy was purring, probably syncing with the one in Laurence’s bedroom, and checking for real-time updates from the nearest server. How much of Peregrine was in the Caddies and how much was in some secure facilities hidden around the world where the Caddies drew their updates from? Why had Peregrine warned him obliquely that Patricia was on her way? With not enough time to make a break for it, but enough time to freak out?

They just stood there, neither of them talking at all, until the streetlights came back on. The sudden lurch from pitch darkness to yellow brightness felt like the sun had popped up all at once—except the light was weaker and there was no warmth. They were both jolted out of their mutual reverie.

“Okay,” Patricia said. “Take care of yourself. Hard times are coming. Harder times, I mean. I’ll see you around.”

“No,” Laurence said. “You won’t.”

Chapter 32

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