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I look at the screen and ask again.
You awake?
The message has been delivered, but there’s still no damn answer. I know he’s probably asleep, but something feels off.
Jerking up from the bench, I call him.
It rings four times, then five, and then his voice comes on, doing the cheerful thing he recorded two years ago, when he still had the breath to be cheerful. I hang up before it finishes.
My eyes start to burn. Good Light, something is wrong, and I’m here when I should have been at home. And I’m not because some stupid part of me feared, or hoped, or both, that Asher Clement the Third would come looking for me again to... what? Propose to me again?
I have completely lost it.
Climbing the fence back into the city, I start running.
I call again, but it gives me those same four rings. The same voice. The same memories of better times.
Pick up, Onyx. Pick up.
The third time it doesn’t even ring. His recorded voice comes straight into my ear, eighteen and delighted with himself, and tears drip onto my chin as I pull the slate away and stop in the middle of the road, scrolling for Mrs. Varga’s number.
She answers on the second ring. “Jade?”
“Mrs. Varga,” I pant.
“It’s past midnight.”
“I know, I know. Is your light on?”
“It is now.” Something rustles. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened, I think. But can you knock on my door for me?”
“Now?”
“Please.”
I hear her get up, the chair scrape, and the small grunt she makes when standing, the one she’d murder me for mentioning. Then her door opens, her slippers slap against the concrete landing, and it takes eleven seconds to reach ours.
I count each one.
She knocks. “Onyx, love. It’s me. Onyx?”
I wait another ten seconds. “Use your keys.”
“Jade—”
“Use your keys, Mrs. Varga.”
“The door’s open.” Her voice changes. “Jade, the door’s already open.”
“Is he in bed?”
Her slippers start moving again, slower now as she makes her way through our flat. By then, I’m running into our neighborhood, hearing her reach his room through the slate.
“Onyx?” she calls.
“Mrs. Varga?”
