Things We Can't Say

6: I don't think you'd taste very good.

I hardly sleep—I can try to blame it on the numerous times Jamie kicks me in the shins throughout the night, but I know most of the fault lies with my own head. I can't shut it off, this furious whirlwind of thoughts, like a centrifuge gone wildly out of control. I'm thinking about the Sorcerer's Circus, reduced to cinders. I'm thinking about Alonso, the gleam of his gun from the shadows of his inside pocket. I'm thinking about my mother, and the Ghost Wolf, and if they really are one and the same.

When day breaks again I feel like I've aged ten years. I climb soundlessly out of bed, fumbling around in the dark for a jacket and my hat. I flick my phone screen on, harsh white light slicing into my eyes. I'm supposed to meet Alonso at a cafe in town in ten minutes. I don't want to, but I don't have a choice.

My hand is on the doorknob, a sliver of yellow hallway light oozing into the shadow, when a rustling noise makes my ears perk.

I glimpse over my shoulder, and Jamie's sitting up, his hair a tousle of frizzy white atop his head as he blinks at me with sleep-weary eyes. "Vy?" He blinks a few more times. "But it's so early. Where are you going?"

And for a second I almost tell him—about Alonso and what he said about our mother, about the deal I had to make. Maybe it would be better, I think for that second, if we were both on the same page.

But then I look at him again, still half-asleep, a slim crust of drool down his chin, and I can't. To take that image he has of Mom, the kindhearted yet outspoken woman that did everything in her power to protect us the night of the raid—I still remember her busting down my bedroom door, sweeping me up in her arms—and annihilate it...it just doesn't feel right. Maybe I'm not so sure anymore, but he is. I can't allow that to change.

So I sigh, sparing him a timorous smile. "Just...into town, for a second. To get some things?"

"Oh," he murmurs, the words barely intelligible. "Do you...want me to go with you?"

"Jamie, you're still tired," I say. I ease the door shut again, striding over to ruffle his already mussed hair. "You should stay here and get some rest. Yesterday was crazy."

He frowns at me, in a very exaggerated sense that reminds me a bit of a cartoon character. "I'm not tired."

"You are."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Okay. Keep arguing with me and I'll thwack you with a pillow again. Do you want to be pillow-thwacked?"

Jamie shrugs, nonchalant. "It's not like it hurt."

"Oh, you little—"

I reach for the pillow anyway, and Jamie shrieks, and then I'm yelling at him to shut up, people are sleeping! and we're trying (and failing) to stifle our laughter and for a second, we're kids again, no knowledge of anything in the world but a great open forest smelling of pine and earth, and the moon sitting high above it all like a watchful goddess.

If I hadn't made up my mind before, I've certainly made it up now.

I give the pillow a perfunctory fluff, resting it beneath his head instead. "Go back to sleep, dude. You look like you need it."

Jamie beams. "Thanks!"

"That wasn't a compliment."

Jamie frowns. "Oh."

I roll my eyes. "Be back in a jiffy," I say, and then my eyebrows furrow, because I'm trying to remember when's the last time I ever heard anyone say the word jiffy, and I step out into the hall.