Tom stared at his feet, and I saw the emotions playing out over his face: the shock, and then the wonder, the awe as he considered all that this would mean for Bellanger, for the Homestead. Standing here covered in my own blood, I felt powerful, my shape in the world changing in Tom’s eyes. Tom felt small to me, like everyone else had diminished in response to my own potential.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “You don’t trust me?”
“You’ve been a huge help.” Emily’s prophecy darted through my head. “But I don’t understand all of this myself yet. I wanted to know more before I shared it with everyone—”
“I’m not just anyone. I thought I was your friend.”
“It means more to me and to Cate and Isabelle than it does to you,” I said, an edge of impatience.
“Sure.” Tom rubbed at the back of his neck. “But that doesn’t mean you had to do it to me.” There was a wounded, frayed quality to his voice. “You—you used your … powers against that fucking monster who had me tied up, and you used them against me.”
Like they were the same. “I did what I had to do to save us,” I said carefully. “It wasn’t personal.”
“I would’ve helped you, Josie. Willingly. Don’t you know that?”
“Yeah, but Tom—you told them that Cate was in the house. You told those men that there were three of us. I wasn’t sure whose side you were on.”
“Yours,” Tom said at once. “Yours. You didn’t give me the chance to prove it. You know I’m not like them, right? You have to know that.”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to keep us all safe.”
Tom sighed, nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“Truce?”
He softened, looking exhausted. “Sure.”
From inside the drugstore bag, a woman smiled at me. Kneeling, I dug through the supplies: boxes of dye, different colors and brands, identical-looking models showing off icy blond curls, a vampiric black bob. Several pairs of cheap sunglasses. Scissors. “What is all this?” I asked. “Disguises?”
Tom was watching me, creases between his eyebrows. “About Chicago—we can’t go back the way we planned. A man is dead. None of us will be able to go back to our normal lives, not until—”
“I know.” He was so earnest, as if he were having to do his duty and break my heart. “You don’t think I realized that already? Look, honestly, it was stupid to even pretend I was going back to Chicago. I was so angry at my mother, but … I understand now. She might’ve been backed into a corner. I need to hear her side.”
Tom didn’t answer for a second. “You think she might’ve been justified in killing two people and putting an innocent man behind bars?”
My temper flared. “Short truce, huh?”
“Sorry. I know it’s hard to see your mother in that light, but we’re supposed to be looking for the truth here. For her sake and for Bellanger’s.”
My view of Bellanger had shifted in painful, disorienting ways. Like looking into a funhouse mirror and seeing just enough familiar features that the warped parts—the taffy-pull neck and distorted mouth—were even more grotesque. I loved the parts of Bellanger I still recognized. I hated the parts I didn’t know. And those two extremes existed too close to each other. It made me wonder what version of Bellanger my mother had suddenly seen in 1977, after working with him for years, trusting him with her body and her life and her dream.
“Bellanger is still important to me,” I said, “but I want to know more about my mom and Patricia starting the Homestead. The custody battle. If my mother was grappling with all that too, then maybe … I don’t know. What I felt last night…” What I’d felt was a rage that’d made even the unthinkable options seem, for a moment, like the only way forward. “We’ll know more when we talk to her in person.”
“I’m still committed to finding Margaret,” Tom said. “I hope you know that. No need to—I don’t know, enchant me or hypnotize me or whatever you call that.”
“Is that why you’re wearing the sunglasses? So I can’t do anything to you?” I reached for the shades, half teasing, and Tom flinched back. I stopped, seeing myself in the dark lenses of his sunglasses as he must see me now, my unwavering eyes.
“Not really,” Tom said, and pulled his glasses off to reveal the mottled bruise surrounding his eye. “No need to draw unwanted attention.”