The Library After Dark: A Novel(90)

Hate us. Hate who?

Aria’s arm coils under my shoulders, every inch of her shaking. “Did you kill them, all of them?”

“Right now I’m asking the questions. Why did you bring them here?”

“I was dragged here on the world’s worst date,” Aria barks. “Check your facts.”

“Why are you here?” Piper repeats, and I realize a second late she’s addressing me. “What made you come investigate?”

Shit. Shit. Is it better or worse that she thinks she’s pointing a gun at a cop? Under my jacket my shirt’s soaked in sweat, and the roof of my mouth might crack from dryness. I stagger to my feet, my sweaty hand slipping against the glass wall. “What would you like me to say?”

“Talk to me,” Piper screams, and both of us flinch. She shifts the gun to Aria, and my body rebels. Red tinges her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose, flushes her neck scarlet. “Why would you destroy our inheritance?”

Everything stops.

Aria stares, mouth agape. Then shock transforms her face.

Shock, and fear. “Ror—Rory?”





Chapter Sixty-six


Aria

Piper’s voice has lost the slight sorority girl pitch. It’s different from when we were teens—more full-bodied—but the familiarity of it rolls like a cold wind over my skin. The lake green of her eyes is electric blue—too blue to be real, I realize—masking their actual color. Her princess-blond hair has been dyed a rich mahogany and chopped into a sleek bob, the trademark bangs dusting into her eyes now grown out.

But beneath it all, there she is. Eden Riordan. Evangeline’s granddaughter by blood, who never cared that I was suddenly grafted onto her family of wealth and legacy. My Rory, who couldn’t pronounce her own last name when we met, and so Rory we called her.

My sister in every way but blood.

“But you died,” I whisper. “As Piper. I watched…”

“The room’s dispersal system’s been broken. Maintenance has been testing it with water, instead of the actual agent.” The first tear breaks down Piper’s—Rory’s—cheek, and the faintest thread of instinct tugs at my sleeve to wipe it away. Pain builds in my throat as I remember holding her small body to me, her thin shoulders like delicate bird’s wings. “Lucky that tonight, when Wes got the drop on me and locked me in. Good a place as ever to make you think Piper died.”

Breathing hurts; I can’t get enough oxygen. “But how’d you get out? It was locked, I couldn’t—”

“No,” Jasper’s voice cuts in, hollow. “No. You’re not Eden Riordan. You can’t be.”

“They open from the inside, now,” Rory says, gaze switching to Jasper. “I had wire on me—never mind why—but I wrapped it around the handle to keep it shut.”

Something between a laugh and a sob bubbles up my throat. “You’re not dead.” Then my gaze falls on the black hole of the gun aimed at my chest, my brain spiraling out. “And you…you killed them.”

“Aria.” A blood-streaked hand closes around my arm—Jasper, forcing me to look at him. His blue eyes burn. Panic. “She can’t be Eden. Because if she is…” He’s at a loss, blinking rapidly. “If she’s Eden, who the hell are you?”

The ground wavering like water beneath my boots.

Jasper’s words ricochet like bullets in my head, the implication sinking its fangs in slowly, deeply.

Who the hell are you?

Oh my God.

“This whole time,” I finally rasp, “you thought I was a Riordan?”





Chapter Sixty-seven


Jasper

Panic carves up my throat. This can’t be happening. I can’t have gotten it so wrong.

“You thought Evangeline was my grandmother,” Aria says softly, in a daze.

Of all the disbelief, the shock, the dozens of questions ripping at me, not a single one reaches my tongue.

She lifts her chin in understanding I desperately need. “The only reason why you dragged me into this was because you thought I was a Riordan.”

“I have a picture.” I can’t tear my eyes from this stranger. “One…of the only Riordan family pictures. You’re in it. With the Riordans. I ran all the faces, and your name came back. Aria Stokes.”

Who came into existence at fifteen years old, with a name change in New York State and no indication of what it had been before. The fingerprints of the Riordans’ privacy software sealing anything from when she bore the Riordan name.

Or so I thought.

She barks a brittle laugh. “When they kicked me to the curb, I became unprotected online.” She glances at Piper—Rory, Eden, whoever she is—and a flash of wonder crosses her face again. “You’re still in the system?”

Her head bobbles in tiny nods. “It’s the only way I could leave, and be left alone.”

“Why would you be in that picture if you aren’t a Riordan?” I demand. “And you had a name change. What…?”

“Evangeline made me drop Riordan from my name,” she spits. “She let me take it when she signed the papers to foster me, after my mom died. Who was not Alice, by the way, but a housekeeper here.” A muscle in her jaw feathers, her eyes shiny and voice like cut glass. “I watched her die in a hospital bed, and when I had nothing, no one, Evangeline gave me a home and a future. A family.” Her gaze strays to Rory, and she blinks rapidly. “Until she threw me out.”