Chapter 601: How to Be Caught

Addison's apartment smelled like chemical warfare and cherry candy.

She'd taped newspaper across the bathroom floor in overlapping sheets, the edges sealed with blue painter's tape that she'd applied with the same territorial focus she brought to claiming lollipop territory in the cafeteria vending machine. The bathroom itself was twice the size of mine because second-years in Obsidian got actual square footage, and Addison had filled the extra space with a wall-mounted speaker currently blasting something that sounded like a garbage disposal eating a guitar solo at a volume designed to sterilize small insects.

Three coffee jellies sat on the sink in a neat row, their dark amber contents catching the overhead light through plastic lids. Each one had a tiny paper flag stuck through the top with a number written in black Sharpie. One. Two. Three.

"Those are my hostages," Addison said without turning around. She stood at the counter in black bike shorts and a tank top that hung off one shoulder, purple highlights catching the fluorescent light as she mixed dye in a plastic bowl with a brush that looked like it belonged in a painter's studio. Her violet contacts were in. Her black lipstick was fresh. The lollipop stick jutted from the corner of her mouth at a forty-five degree angle, which in Addison's body language meant business hours were open and all complaints would be filed directly into the trash. "Sit on the stool. Don't talk. If you move, you end up with a stripe and I will not fix it."

I sat on the stool she'd positioned in front of the mirror.

The stool placed me at eye level with the counter, which placed me at eye level with Addison's hip, which placed me in a situation where the old version of me would have run Snake Eyes reflexively and the current version simply noticed the way her bike shorts rode up when she shifted her weight and filed the information under "things that make existing worthwhile."

"Shirt off." She snapped a latex glove over her left hand, then her right. "Dye bleeds through cotton and that henley cost Aurora two hundred credits and she will invoice me if I ruin it."

I pulled the shirt over my head and dropped it on the closed toilet seat. The mirror showed me from the chest up, four pale leopard scars running diagonal from collarbone to ribs, a collection of bite marks in various stages of healing that mapped the geography of the past week like a topological survey, and brown hair that fell past my ears in a way that Addison had been complaining about since Ventura.

Addison picked up the dye bowl and positioned herself behind me. Her reflection appeared over my shoulder in the mirror, her face framed by my head, her violet eyes narrowed in concentration as she began sectioning my hair with the tail of a comb. She worked fast and quiet for the first minute, painting dye from the roots outward in long confident strokes that left my scalp tingling with chemical warmth.

"I saw the forum thread." Her voice came from behind me but her eyes found mine in the mirror. "Eight hundred and thirty-one replies. Somebody made a poll about whether Davenport's sweater was stolen or gifted and the stolen camp is winning by four hundred votes."

"Belle voted gifted."

"Belle voted wrong." Addison sectioned another strip of hair and painted it with strokes that pulled at my scalp just hard enough to register. "The sweater was stolen. I recognize a theft when I see one because Aurora stole my favorite flannel in sophomore year and I haven't forgiven her."

"You're still holding a grudge about a flannel?"

"I'm holding a grudge about a principle." She pulled the comb through harder than necessary. "Fox sent me the security footage of you carrying Davenport down the switchback at five in the morning and I watched it nine times because Aurora made me and then three more times because I couldn't stop."

The dye brush paused against my temple. Her reflection in the mirror held something complicated between the purple highlights and the black lipstick, something that lived underneath the goth armor and the scythe manifestation and the forty-plus knife collection displayed like art on her bedroom wall.

"I'm not jealous of Davenport." Addison resumed painting with careful attention to the hairline behind my ear. "Davenport has a nine-page contract and a lawyer and a family name that opens doors by existing. Davenport walked across a helipad barefoot and made her own father retreat. Davenport has S-rank fire and a trust fund that has a trust fund and a body that makes guild scouts forget their own names."

She set the dye bowl on the counter and picked up a new section of hair, working it between gloved fingers to ensure full coverage. The chemical smell was getting stronger, and the overhead fluorescent gave everything a greenish cast that made the coffee jellies look like they belonged in a laboratory.

"I'm jealous of how easy she made it look to be caught."

The words dropped into the bathroom like a stone into still water.

Addison kept working. Her hands did not shake and her face did not change, because Addison Baxter had spent her entire life turning vulnerability into aggression before anyone could see the soft part underneath, and this sentence had slipped through her defenses like a knife between ribs.

"Davenport stood on concrete with no shoes and her father six feet away and you grabbed her and you carried her down a hill and she let you. She let you pick her up. She let you put her down. She let the whole forum see it and her ears turned red and she walked off barefoot." Addison's voice stayed level, which was how I knew she was holding something down with both hands. "I walked through a hospital in a trench coat and lingerie to keep you alive and nobody took a picture. I sat in a dungeon I built myself and let you tie me to a frame and I screamed your name into a gag and the only person who knows is you and Aurora and a crystal plate in Santa Barbara that thinks my ring is beautiful."