Juno's words about Cassian sat in the dark with us, and I still could not work out if they made me safer or not.
She moved to stand, and my hand shot out and caught her sleeve before the rest of me agreed to it.
Marnie: Wait.
She got herself settled again without a word. That quiet was her giving me room to breathe.
The pipes ticked. The wind pushed at the back door like it wanted in.
Juno: Take your time. I've got nowhere to be at two in the morning.
Marnie: I think I killed someone.
She did not flinch. Her mug stayed level and her eyes stayed on my face.
Juno: Right. Say the name.
Marnie: Ellis Ward. On the sea wall in Pellon.
I had not said it out loud to a living soul. My voice came out like it belonged to somebody else.
Marnie: He put his hands on me and I got him off with a bit of the wall. He went down on the stones.
Marnie: There was blood. A lot of it. And I ran and I never looked back.
Juno: Did you check if he was breathing?
Marnie: No.
Juno: Then you don't know. You think you did it. That's not the same thing.
Marnie: I don't know, and that's the worst of it. But there are nights I'm glad I hit him.
Marnie: What kind of person is glad?
Juno's hand closed round my wrist and squeezed, hard enough that it properly hurt.
Juno: Say what you are. The words they use. Not the pretty ones.
Marnie: They call me a psycho bitch, and they're right. I put a hot iron in a girl's face and left a boy bleeding on the cold stones.
It came out flat, like something I had read off a wall in the Gannet hallway a hundred times.
Juno: Now the rule. If police come to my door because of you, I hand you over myself. I won't even blink.
Juno: I've got a business and a brother and people who lean on me. You get me?
Marnie: I get you.
I believed her. I believed every word, and for once it did not feel like the floor going out from under me.
She let go. There were red half-moons on my wrist where her fingers had been, and I looked at them and did not mind.
Juno: Same rule went for me at seventeen. Nobody blinked for me either.
Juno: So that's it, then. We're the same, you and me. Two girls who hit first because nobody ever hit for them.
Something in my chest let go. Something I had been holding up since the sea wall, and it dropped so fast I nearly made a noise.
Juno: You're Sadie Croft in this building, and I'm not going to flinch. Not unless you give me a reason.
Juno: Now get some sleep. You look like something the tide brought in.
The door clicked shut behind her. I stayed flat on my back under that grey blanket and stared at the ceiling without blinking.
The shaking had stopped in my hands. It had simply moved somewhere else, and now it was sitting behind the door.
The door moved. Not Juno. A tall shape in a dark coat with his hands in his pockets, standing like he had been there the whole time.
Cassian: Juno's cousin.
His voice was flat. His eyes went over the cot and the blanket, then stopped on my face and stayed.
Cassian: Sadie Croft.
He said the name like it was a coat that did not fit, and I could smell the cold off his coat from where I sat.
Cassian: I'll ask you once. Who are you?
My mouth opened, and every lie I had ever practised went straight out of my head.
Juno had handed me a name. This man wanted the one underneath it.