Adrian’s gaze slipped past her, darting around the front room. The tattered furniture, the stained carpet, the peeling wallpaper. Though he said nothing and his expression remained perfectly neutral, Nova had the distinct sense that her real home wasn’t adding up to be much better than the gutter he’d imagined.
Or maybe she was just being sensitive.
“Uh … you don’t want to come in, do you?”
“Okay.”
She gawked at him, horrified. “Really?”
Though he’d sounded eager before, Adrian now seemed to hesitate. “If that’s all right?”
It was certainly, absolutely not all right, and Nova struggled to think of a reason, but it occurred to her that it might be just as suspicious to send him away as it was to let him inside. Pressing her lips, she stepped back out of the doorway, her mind scouring through every object and possession in the house and trying to determine how any of it could be traced back to Nightmare or the other Anarchists. They had done little to the place since claiming it for themselves, other than a bit of surface cleaning to make it somewhat habitable.
Adrian stepped inside. Nova gulped and shut the door.
His focus went to the arrangement of photographs on the wall. He reached out and straightened one of the frames.
“Are you hungry?” Nova asked, before he could ask who any of the strangers in the photographs were. She trotted past him without waiting for an answer. Swooped one of Honey’s rhinestone hairpins off the coffee table as she passed, tucking it into her pocket. Gathered up Leroy’s old copies of Apothecary magazine and shoved them into a drawer.
“We have…” Reaching the kitchen, she opened a cupboard and found herself staring at half a dozen mason jars. “Honey.”
Adrian followed her into the kitchen and she could sense him behind her, staring into the mostly bare cupboard. She shut it and tried the next cupboard, discovering a box of unopened crackers and two cans of tuna fish. She dared not even pretend to look in the refrigerator—she’d opened it once when she first moved in and found the shelves mostly covered in mold. She hadn’t bothered to open it since.
She grabbed the box of crackers and held them up for Adrian to see.
“I’m okay, actually,” he said, and the look of confusion mixed with just a hint of pity was impossible not to notice.
Nova put the box back and shut the door. “We mostly eat out,” she said, by way of explanation.
Adrian’s eye caught on something through the back window and his brow furrowed.
Nova tensed, imagining that Ingrid was in the alley or that Honey or Leroy were in the yard. But when she looked, it was only …
Hives. And nests. And bees. Lots and lots of bees.
“That’s … um. My uncle’s?” she ventured. “He, uh … he heard there’s good money to be made in beekeeping these days. I guess honey is a pretty desirable … commodity. It’s”—she brushed a hand through the air—“sort of a new thing he’s trying out.”
Adrian’s eyes were still narrowed, but now there was humor along with the curiosity. “I’m pretty sure honey bees are the only ones that actually produce honey.”
She glanced out the window again. There were honey bees, but they were mixed together with a heady assortment of buzzing hornets and wasps, yellow jackets and even fat little bumblebees.
“I know. I know that,” she said. Then she threw up her hands, as if exasperated. “That’s what I keep trying to tell him, but he sort of does his own thing. Doesn’t always like to listen to me.”
“I’m very familiar with that feeling,” said Adrian. He grinned, and she could tell it was a look intended to comfort her, as if to say that he wasn’t judging her. That she could relax.
That, she thought, might be the funniest thing of all.
“Is your uncle home? I thought maybe I could introduce myself.”
“Oh. No. He’s … out.”
Adrian nodded. His gaze darted toward the small card table they were using as a makeshift dining table, even though Nova suspected not one meal had yet to be eaten there. There were chairs, too, but she dared not ask him to sit.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian said suddenly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
She stared at him, and though she could tell he was embarrassed, she wasn’t sure what was causing it—the sad state of her so-called home or her obvious lack of hospitality skills?
He fidgeted, tapping one knuckle idly against the countertop. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I just … was worried. When you weren’t responding to the messages…” He trailed off. Clearing his throat, he finished lamely, “Are you all right?”