“I’M REALLY GLAD you decided to stay.” Watt leaned against the door, reluctant to say good-bye to Leda. He didn’t want her to leave, didn’t want this charmed moment between them to be over.
“I know. But I really have to go,” she said, and smiled. There was a new bloom of color to her cheeks, a translucent liquid glow shining through her skin. When she was like this—when she was happy—Leda was more magnetic and beautiful than anyone in the world.
“Leda—”
She turned to him expectantly, and Watt swallowed. His throat felt dry.
“Thank you for trusting me again. For letting me back in.”
Leda sighed and sank back onto his bed. She pulled up one leg to cross it over her ankle, seeming lost in thought. “Did I ever tell you why my parents sent me to rehab?” she murmured.
Watt shook his head.
Leda bit her lip and looked down, hunching her shoulders forward as if to ward off a blow. “After I learned that Eris was my half sister, I went to a really dark place, until one night I overdosed. I don’t even remember what I took—I didn’t actually think it was that much, but anyway . . .”
Leda’s voice sounded haunted at the memory. “When I finally woke up, I was on top of my bed, fully dressed. I guess I’d cut myself at some point, because there was blood all over my shirt and on my hands. I didn’t remember anything, Watt.” She stared determinedly down to avoid looking at him. “I had no idea where I had been the past twenty-four hours.”
“Leda. I’m so sorry.” Watt remembered the hollow, haunted look in Leda’s eyes when she’d come back from rehab and broke up with him. He had never realized how drastically she veered off the deep end.
Watt, Nadia’s words cut into his consciousness. You need to find out when this happened.
He was so deeply shocked by Leda’s story that he didn’t even question Nadia. “When was this, Leda?”
“I don’t know. A couple of days before I went to rehab. The first week of February, I guess?”
Mariel died that week, Nadia reminded him, very gently. Leda has a block of time that she can’t account for—after which she woke up covered in blood—during the same few days that Mariel was killed.
There was a sudden ringing in Watt’s ears, as if the entire world had spun wildly on its axis and then ground to an abrupt halt. No.
“Watt? What is it?”
Leda had gone on a horrific drug-fueled spiral after learning that Eris had been her half sister—which was right around the time that Mariel had died.
Maybe Watt had seen this coming, in a blind, subconscious way, as if the truth were around a corner that he refused to turn. He thought of all those times he’d paused, thinking over Mariel’s death—all those unsettling moments when the story hadn’t quite fit, and how his mind lingered over it, puzzling out the pieces. The answer had been there, but Watt never saw it because he didn’t want to see it.
No, he told himself again. He hadn’t seen it because it was impossible. Leda was many things, ruthless and willful and passionate, but a cold-blooded killer wasn’t one of them. He’d seen Leda push Eris; he knew she’d never meant to kill her—that it was an accident.
But now that the doubt was in his brain, he couldn’t prevent it from worming even deeper. Wouldn’t Leda do anything to protect the people she loved? If she thought Mariel was coming after her friends—if she thought Mariel was going to destroy Avery and Rylin and Watt—she might have killed Mariel in the middle of her wild, drugged-out bender and then blacked it out, her own mind shielding her from what she had done.
Nadia, he thought silently. Are you saying that Leda might have killed Mariel and doesn’t remember it?
I’m just pointing out the pieces of evidence, Watt. I’m not drawing any conclusions.
Watt felt nauseous, but he had to ask.
“Leda. Do you think that you could have killed Mariel?”