A Touch Menacing by Leah Clifford

Author:Leah Clifford [Clifford, Leah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-12-31T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Sebastian was gone. Madeline, Vaughn, Erin. All the Siders she’d taken into her home. The Bound had destroyed them and burned down her house. Those should have been the things Kristen thought about as Luke pulled her down the street. But every time she tried to concentrate, the image that popped into her head was of the jar on her mantel, the tiny black monkey preserved in formaldehyde. “Petri. My monkey. They boiled him.”

Her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears. She’d been quiet in the town car Luke had summoned, but once it had dropped them off a block from his apartment, she couldn’t seem to stop talking. Luke’s grip tightened on her wrist at the words. “Yes. The dead monkey is gone, and we’re very sad. I got it the first ten fucking times you mentioned it,” he snapped.

“But they just burned him, and all my things, and they tore open that boy. He was on my lawn. And Petri. He was in a jar and— You told them about the ball, didn’t you?” He’d wanted to punish her. Have the Bound take out as many of her friends as possible in one fell swoop. “You bastard,” she said as she swung at him.

He hooked her wrist before her blow could connect. “The loss was great,” he said. “Take the grief inside you. It will make you stronger.”

“You did this to them!” she said.

His eyes caught the glare of a streetlight, red and burning. “Quite the opposite, my little orchid. All blame for this falls on the Bound.”

The fight ran out of her. “I don’t believe you.”

“No?” His laugh grated on her. “They aren’t fools. They’ve captured dozens of Siders and questioned them all as they learned how to turn them to ash. One spilled about your tinderbox. Fortunately, I, too, have my own sources. I just don’t torture Siders for information.”

Luke curled his fingers though hers. To any passersby they would look like a couple out for a stroll, but she winced at the tightness of his grip. When he spoke, she expected cruelty, for him to cut her deep while he knew she was fragile. Instead, he gently plucked a leaf from her sopping, tangled hair. “You will make the Bound pay, Kristen,” he promised.

He pressed her hand between his palms and rubbed. She could barely feel his touch, let alone any heat he generated. Her feet were numb in her heels, soaked with slush. She slipped her hand out of his without responding. They walked in silence, her heels crunching the salt scattered on the sidewalk.

Luke’s coat dropped over her shoulders. She looked up, surprised. “Put it on,” he said.

She slipped her arms into the sleeves. The thick leather wasn’t the best for warmth, but it cut the wind. Luke’s scent of spices filled her head.

As they walked the last feet to his apartment building, she watched him beside her. “There have to be others who survived. I need to go back.”

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring into the shadows of an alley.

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