A perfect mistake, she amended as she pointed at the chair for him to put her panties back down so she could pick them up. “Jack, what do you think about Silas?”

Jack snorted. “You think he’s a mistake, too, babe,” Jack said, which made sense since, as her intuition, he wouldn’t know anything she didn’t already.

But it was still nice hearing Jack say it.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

“Canada?” Taf’s hand extended out the car’s window to Silas, who was standing resolutely on the curb, fake IDs in hand. The short spring coat he’d gotten from Karley was open to show his pinstripe shirt and tie. Karley, apparently, hadn’t thrown anything away. The tips of his hair from under his hat shifted in the faint breeze off the river, and his freshly shaven face was reddened from more than the cold. Angry, he wouldn’t look at Peri, stewing in the backseat.

“We can’t go to Canada. Peri needs her talismans,” Taf complained as she took Howard’s new ID and passed it over. “And what about the list? It’s our ticket back into the alliance. We can do this. Peri is fine!”

“Fine” was a relative term, but compared to the comatose, confused state she’d been in last night, yes, Peri was fine—and not happy about Silas’s argument because it made her feel vulnerable and she was tired of feeling like a porcelain princess. She, Taf, and Howard had already come up with a rough plan to access her apartment. It had evolved in the scant hour when Silas had been arranging their new IDs. It didn’t involve let’s-do-nothing Silas. Slipping him was step one.

Silas squinted down the street. It was noisy with early-morning deliveries and pedestrians, and he pulled his hat lower when a harmless, low-Q drone hummed over the parked cars. “Opti is camped out at her apartment,” he said as he handed in a second package. Taf took it, glanced at it, then handed it to Peri in the back. “We can try in a few weeks when they aren’t as attentive.”

Sara Washington? Couldn’t he come up with something better? Peri thought sourly as she eyed her new ID. Getting the pictures off their phones turned into passable IDs had been more difficult than it needed to be, since Silas had insisted on the enhanced driver’s license that functioned as a passport for ground travel between Michigan and Canada. All the better to hide you, my dear.

“Who put you in charge?” Taf protested. “It’s over ’cause you say so? Bull cookies! We need to do this before Opti finds the list themselves.”

Peri kicked at the back of Taf’s seat. In the front, Howard leaned across the center console. “Peri needs some time to recover,” he said, squinting meaningfully. “You’re going to hurt her feelings if you don’t shut up.”

Taf hesitated, then exhaled. “Fine. I like snow. Canada might be nice.”

“You’re coming with me,” Silas said, and Peri exchanged a worried look with Howard through the rearviewmirror. “Howard can get Peri settled.”

“Whoa. Wait a moment. Where are you going?” Taf protested as Silas opened her door.

“We are going back to the alliance to try to clear up a few misconceptions,” he muttered. “They don’t like that I’m withholding you from them.”

Scooting across the long backseat, Peri rested the flats of her arms on the open window and leaned out to the curb as Taf shut her door, jerking it right out of Silas’s grip. “You’re going to the alliance?” Peri asked as she looked for a lie. Explaining to the alliance what had happened wasn’t a bad idea, but it might just be a ruse allowing him to search her apartment without her.

“I am not going back,” Taf muttered, a flush creeping up the back of her neck. “My mother can just eat green eggs and fart. She was going to give you to Opti,” she said, locking her door when Silas tried to open it again. “My mother!”

“So come back with me and explain to them why that was a bad idea.” Silas’s dress shoes scraped the salt-rimed sidewalk. “Out. Come on. Time to do the grown-up thing and talk to your mom. Howard can get Peri across the bridge.”

It was a good plan, but Peri’s eyes narrowed as she read Silas’s tells: the slight hunch to his shoulders, the tightness of his lips, the way he was swallowing his words. Damn it, Silas knew. He knew she was going to make a play for her apartment with or without him and was chipping away at her resources.

“Silas …,” Taf complained.

“Just go,” Howard grumbled, and after a long moment, the young woman got out in a huff. Peri tried to find a neutral expression so as not to look as if her plan was coming apart.

“I’m sorry for having put your mental health at risk for a chance to bring Opti down,” Silas said, and she snorted at his apparent sincerity. “I have to talk to the alliance before they start coming for us. Me. But don’t hesitate to call if you have any issues with, ah, your intuition. I’ll contact you in a week. It’s not over. I’ll be back.”

“I don’t know why you think me being there is going to help,” Taf said as she zipped up her leather jacket and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I pointed my daddy’s rifle at her.”

“But you didn’t shoot her,” Silas said, almost smiling.

“True.”

Peri jumped, startled, when Jack, coming straight from her subconscious, lifted the handle of the backseat door on the street and slid in next to her. “Silas is a good liar. Almost as good as me,” Jack said as he slammed the door and settled himself behind Howard—which was really weird, since the car door never really opened and the wind never truly gusted, even if she had a sudden chill and had to tuck her hair back. It was her mind inventing a way for him to be there, and it was kind of freaking her out.