dio above a laundromat that hummed until eleven and started again at five, and

eyes. Stress hallucination, hers, not his, brought on by hearing her father's name out of a stranger's mouth for the first time in

ctual trash talk, and she told herself that was proof she'd imag

e, dark hair scraped into a bun, wearing a lanyard that read TEAM PR in block letters. "I'm Iris

Athletic

Rhys's had, the specific attention of someone deciding how much to say. "Simon Ha

new my

lightly, but there was a weight underneath it, the careful weight of someon

oes tha

e went a little brittle. "Nothing. Bad joke. Look, I've got a scrum in ten, but if you want the re

, which seemed to be the house style around here: say someth

lling herself she wasn't going to go looking f

s equipment bag left half in the doorway, and the cold air she'd felt yesterday rolled

bout her father's name coming up more than it

an the arena's foundation should have allowed. She counted turns instead of steps, telling herself she'd go one more f

A circular room with a domed skylight cut straight up through solid concrete, currently shuttered, that had to be for moonlight, the

AHAN

name, Wes Callahan, the brot

'd come through, except they weren't standing quite like men anymore, shoulders hunched wrong, hands curling into something th

his voice came out wrong too, gravel dragged through

ion she'd built for herself over the last twenty-four hours collapsed at once, contacts and fluorescent lights and stress hallucinations, gone, bec

felt more than heard, sealing her into the room with both of them, and the last thing she registered before her vision started to gray