“That’s not how it works. And Jace shouldn’t have told you whatever. I’m tired. I’ve had a hell of a month. And us, we’re done. If you wanted to help, you shouldn’t have broken into my house. What did you expect, surprising me with roses in my living room my first day home from hospital, as if everything’s okay between us?”

The clock ticked on the wall. Normally it was too quiet to hear.

“I didn’t expect anything,” he said. “I hope you won’t push me away just because of what you think I want from you. Give me a chance to be your friend, at least.”

“Leave.”

The clock chimed. She didn’t count the hour.

“Okay,” he said, and stood. He donned his jacket, and brushed off the front of his shirt, though Kai saw no dirt there. “I’m going. You can keep the flowers.”

“I will.”

He opened the door. Outside, the night spread.

She sat in his chair, no, her chair, and watched the door close behind him. The fence gate swung shut, too, the latch settled, and she heard the cat’s whine of the wards. The house stank of dust and stale life.

The island is our prison. Bullshit. Kavekana didn’t trap anyone. People took care of that themselves.

She carried his coffee cup to the kitchen and dumped the milky dregs into the sink. She filled the mug, washed it inside and out, and left it upside down on the drying rack. The soap smell did not cut the dust, or the age, or the space. Was this what they called depression? Probably not. Drunkenness. Adulthood. She’d imagined standing here as a kid: her own house, free of family and the stink of the working harbor. Standing in skin that fit her soul. The skin felt good, and the body, but the rest of her life, she wasn’t sure.

She watched her reflection in the window glass for longer than people should, and saw inside the lines and shadows everyone she had been.

She left the kitchen, turned out the lights there and in the parlor, and walked into her bedroom, where she knelt and prayed to absent gods until sleep came for her, charged with painful dreams.

Chapter 14

14

Izza sat on her hands in the wooden chair in the bright room where the Penitent had brought her, and looked everywhere but into the cop’s eyes.

“Isobel. That’s your name, it says here. Isobel Sola. Not local.”

Not at the cop’s eyes, or his body. Bad luck to look at watchmen or Penitents. Shouldn’t have glanced over her shoulder when she was running, even. They’d taken the purse. A dumb thing to worry her, but she hoped to get some soul out of this at least.

If she got out of this.

“You’re from the Gleb, right?”

She shrugged.