FOUR

BUT… YOU KNOW HOW MANY humans there are in London, right?” Sophie had to ask, even though she hated being the hope crusher. “It’s a huge city. Like, millions and millions of people.”

And the man that Keefe had drawn was a pretty generic-looking British guy—from his bright ginger hair down to the elbow patches on his blazer. There were probably ten men on every block who looked similar to him—not that wandering the zillions of London streets trying to find someone more unique would honestly be much easier.

“That’s where Dex comes in,” Keefe said, snapping the silver notebook shut with a smug grin. “I did some research—which, uh, don’t tell the Forklenator about, by the way. I’ll never hear the end of it if he finds out—and it turns out, London has lots of surveillance cameras. So Dex is going to hack into their system and set it up to search for anyone who looks like my drawing. He says the art is detailed enough that he should be able to find an exact match—and it’ll tell him which camera caught the image, so we’ll know right where the guy is. All Dex needs is a few minutes with one of their computers so he can do his thing, and then we just sit back and wait for the alerts to go off.”

Sophie wanted to point out that they were assuming the guy was still living in London, and he could’ve easily moved away in the years that had passed. But her brain was too busy getting stuck on something that was probably way less important.

“You’ve been working on this with Dex?”

She managed to leave off the “without me.” But the unspoken words still felt like they were staring them down, demanding to be acknowledged.

Keefe tapped his fingers against the spine of the silver notebook. “Well… I needed a Technopath. And Dex is the best.”

“He is,” Sophie agreed.

He was also her best friend.

And she knew it wasn’t fair to feel left out after all the times she’d chosen to hide what she was working on from everybody. But that didn’t stop a piece of her heart from turning very prickly.

“I was going to tell you,” Keefe assured her.

“When?”

“Soon.”

That didn’t feel like a good enough answer—and Keefe must’ve known it, because he reminded her again, “You’ve been super busy. I haven’t seen you in over a week.”

“Well, I would’ve been here if you’d told me what you were doing! And if Dex has to go to London, you’re going to need me to teleport him there.”

Sandor cleared his throat.

“We’ll figure out how to bring you along if we have to,” she promised.

“You will,” Sandor agreed. “There is no ‘if.’ ”

“And that’s what we were already planning on,” Keefe told her, which didn’t make Sophie feel any better. If anything, it kinda proved that they’d been waiting until they had to clue her in.

“It also would’ve been way faster if you’d let me project your memories for you,” she pointed out, feeling more tempted than ever to grab the gold notebook and steal a good long look at everything he was hiding.

She snatched the brown one instead.

Keefe cringed as she flipped to the first carefully sketched memory—but didn’t try to stop her.

He also didn’t offer to let her start helping him now that she knew what he was working on, she noticed—but then she didn’t care anymore, because his art was even more amazing than she’d expected. He’d used a medium she didn’t recognize—not paint, but the colors were too vibrant for pencil, and the details seemed to shift with the way the light hit the paper. It felt like she was actually watching Keefe sneak through the grounds of Foxfire at night, carrying a wiggling green creature, and playing tackle bramble with Fitz while Biana cheered them on, and sitting with all of the Vackers, gazing at the colorful flames of an aurenflare. The drawing after that showed Lord Cassius covered in some sort of thick, sticky slime. And the rest of the pages seemed to be blank, save for a barely started pencil sketch toward the middle of the notebook, where the bodies had only been vaguely blocked out. It was impossible to tell who the figures were, but the memory looked like it might have taken place in Keefe’s favorite ditching spot at Foxfire.

“I haven’t spent as much time on my happy memories,” Keefe explained quietly, “since they never have my mom in them, so they’re not as important, you know?”

The raw truth in those words softened some of the prickles in Sophie’s chest. And she was about to hand back the notebook when a sketch hidden near the end caught her attention—a drawing she was surprised to recognize herself in.

She sat with Keefe on the staircase at Havenfield, the light from the chandelier forming a soft halo around her as she leaned toward him, clinging to his hand while he turned away, his eyes slightly watery. It didn’t look like a happy scene, and it took her a second to realize she was seeing the moment she’d told him what little she’d learned from Fintan about Keefe’s shattered London memory. But underneath the sketch, in neat, bold letters, he’d written the words she remembered telling him that day:

Lots of people care about you, Keefe.

 

“We do,” she said quietly. “And we can help if you let us. I can help.

Keefe cleared his throat. “I know.”

“Then why are you keeping me away?”

He took the brown notebook from her and added it back to the pile with the green and gold. “I’m not. It’s just…”

“That’s not an answer,” she pointed out when he didn’t continue. “And that’s the second time you’ve stopped yourself from telling me something.”

“Is it?”

“Yep—and don’t even try the whole answering-questions-with-questions thing on me.”

He tore a hand through his hair. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Seems like it is, if it’s making you not trust me.”

“I never said I don’t trust you.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s pretty obvious.”

Ro clicked her tongue. “Hmm. This sounds a lot like something I warned you would happen, doesn’t it, Hunkyhair?”

Keefe shot her a withering glare before turning back to Sophie. “I do trust you. I’m just…”

His voice trailed off, and the prickliness in Sophie’s heart came back with a vengeance. “Please tell me what’s wrong. Did I do something, or say something, or…?”

Keefe dragged a hand down his face, making a sound that would probably be best described as “frustrated ferret.” “It’s not you. I’m just… trying to do the right thing.”

“What does that mean?” She glanced at Ro for translation when Keefe stayed silent.

“Don’t look at me,” Ro told her. “I’ve never understood it.”

Keefe sank onto the bed, making more ferret noises. “It means… it’s different now, you know?”

“Not really,” Sophie admitted.

Unless he meant… Fitz.

Or her and Fitz.

That was the only thing that was different.