Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 29

"You seriously expect me to believe that you don't want my kidneys after your daughter announces she's going to slowly die of renal failure? I'm her only living sibling. I'm not a geneticist but I know what that means; I'm probably the first choice as a donor because my kidney would be the least likely for her system to reject. And you probably already got all of my medical information from the kind staff at the Northern Reserve Academy," Trey hissed.

Violet smiled weakly at her father and said, "You can always count on Trey to deliver the real talk."

"Yeah. Well, like father, like son, I suppose," Mr. Simmons said with a hint of something that might have been bitterness or amusement. He pushed the envelope a little further toward Trey across the table, then removed a pen from his shirt pocket and set that down on the table as well. "Like I said, no strings. Go ahead, read it."

A long moment passed, and the time on Laura's mobile phone under the table changed to 4:24 PM. It was time for me to excuse myself, and the longer I waited, the greater the likelihood we might find ourselves in a compromised position, but I desperately wanted to make sure Trey didn't commit to anything in my absence. In slow movements, he tore the envelope open and withdrew a stapled packet of papers. The contract was ridiculously wordy. There were pages of sections followed by articles, with a Schedule A and a Schedule B attached at the back.

"You've got to be kidding," Trey said, tossing the packet down on the table. "I can't read all of this right now. I didn't go to law school."

Confident that Trey was going to refuse Mr. Simmons' offer, I cleared my throat. "Excuse me. I need to use the bathroom," I said, motioning for Trey to let me out of the booth. I caught a momentary glimpse of Henry out of the corner of my eye and immediately inferred from his expression that he knew exactly what I was about to do: make my getaway from the hotel. But he didn't say a word, and thankfully didn't raise suspicions by shadowing me across the restaurant and into the airy lobby.

Seagulls overhead called to each other as I rushed across the busy street to the place where Trey and I had agreed to meet. It was strange indeed to find myself on the opposite side of the country from where I was supposed to be at that exact moment-which was in Florida, with my dad. Once I trotted up the stairs to the portico where we had agreed to meet, I leaned against a white pillar to rest. I had no clue how Trey was going to elegantly (or inelegantly) excuse himself from that situation without Mr. Simmons following him.

The sky had become a pale shade of yellow signifying my least favorite time of day, that wasteful gap of minutes between afternoon and evening during which parents drive home from their jobs and homework gets done. I yawned in a way that made me aware of just how much every single muscle in my body ached.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. My hands and feet began tingling with anxiety.

Exhaustion fueled my panic. I began second-guessing this little plan that Trey and I had constructed. Something had obviously gone wrong. There was a chance I might have to decide between roaming Long Beach on my own, penniless, without identification and without an identity, or turn myself into the police. I should have tried to have a private word with Henry while I had the opportunity. Trey and I both should have known better than to attempt to gain the upper hand with someone as sinister as Michael Simmons, especially in our state of sleep deprivation. It was idiotic of us not to have made undoing the glamour spell that Esther had cast on me our first order of business. Even if looking like someone else had been a benefit over the last few days while we were on the run, now it was a liability if I fell into police custody.

Enough time had passed that I started making bargains for myself. First, I decided that when fifteen minutes had passed, I'd cross the street to get closer to the hotel and listen for sounds that might suggest police had been summoned. But fifteen minutes passed and during my sixteenth minute of waiting I decided that at twenty minutes I'd make a run for it back to the train station. It was close to rush hour now and far more likely that I'd be stopped for not having purchased a ticket, but I'd worry about that when the time came.