The Violet Hour by Whitney A. Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

the crowd, looking for him.
    “I’m not sure,” I whispered.
    “Everything you touch is a disaster,” she hissed, her voice scalding.
    She was right. I’d known what this foray could mean and I did it anyway. I was selfish.
    “We’re getting out of here.” Dora stepped between us, defending me. “All of us. Taxi. Pronto.”
    She took my hand and tugged at Stubin’s sleeve. He leapt into action.
    “I’m on it. Taxi! Taxi!” Stubin started waving like a madman and charged down the street. We followed him, melting away from the crowd, as sirens approached, like dandelion seeds scattered on the wind.
    As we tottered down the street, I looked back. A broken little piece of me hoped to see Adam combing through the wreckage for me, desperately wanting to tell me it was all a big mistake
    But all I saw were anarchy signs, and in my heart and mind the reckless unnamed anarchy of Her. The one I couldn’t stop, closing in around me. Blotting me out until I ceased to exist.

    As usual, the ride to the top was lonely.
    Tonight, it was just me and my warped reflection in the stainless steel elevator, watching the number creep up, up, up while Muzak assaulted my gray matter. We’d tried the service elevator and it was out of order. Which probably meant the Watch was on to our disappearing act.
    I considered whether to go camp outside Adam’s door until he returned. Demand that he speak to me. Try to explain the unexplainable. Make him see that I was still the girl he spent those endless summer nights with in the carriage house.
    Until Mercy’s phone lit up with a text.
    “It’s from him—it’s from Adam!” she screamed. She thumbed her way through the words, biting her lip in concentration.
    “He wants me to meet him in his room,” she said, aiming the words at me like a gun.
    I felt nauseated. After what had passed between us tonight, how could he run to her? But the more I thought about it, how could he not?
    The bell dinged. Everyone but me was getting off. I wasn’t going to fight Mercy for Adam’s attention. He didn’t deserve to have me barging in on his life and destroying it. Still, my fingers itched at my side and my cheeks burned.
    Dora looked at me reluctantly as she and Stubin stepped off the elevator after Mercy, who practically sprinted away to meet Adam. “Are you sure you don’t want us to go up with you?” she asked. “Make sure you get there okay?”
    I looked at her hand firmly ensconced in Stubin’s. It had taken me all night to realize it, wrapped up in my own self-involved world as I’d been, but I was really excited for Dora. She had an actual boyfriend. A boyfriend with a rock-star pedigree. Someone to care about her and love her.
    I shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen to me on an elevator ride?”
    Her beetle-brows drew together in a frown as the doors slid shut. She knew I was taking the fall for the rest of us, and she also knew I wasn’t going to let it happen any other way. I’d instigated this mess, and there wasn’t any point in taking the rest of them down with me. Besides, there was always the off-chance I’d be able to sneak past a sleeping sentinel and get away with the whole fiasco scot-free.
    I noticed my reflection in the metal doors of the elevator—something was off. The image smirked back at me. Then she winked.
    Ting.
    I jumped backward as my reflection split in two and the doors slid open. I’m seriously losing it , I thought as I stepped onto the dimly lit hallway. Silence. The stress was playing tricks on my mind … or something.
    A thread of light crept out from beneath the mahogany doors of the master suite where the General was sure to be slaving away at his desk, answering pleas from devoted followers or revising his next speech. Maybe nighttime would soften him into something more closely resembling the father I used to know, the man who was little more than a memory these days. The father who had me ever-present at his side, who used to