Page 68 of Chaos

“Fine.” She spins on her heel, and after an awkward pause, he excuses himself and runs after her.

“I do not want to think about what’s going on there,” Shasta says as soon as they’re gone, her headphones held loose between her fingers. “I heard that right, didn’t I? Shitsy and Cain?”

“She certainly acted like there was something going on there. So did he.” I push the final box of ant poison to the back of the shelf. Cain, and maybe Mitsy, cleaned while I was gone, and I’ve been putting everything back where it belongsall morning. “Why is Shitsy always trying to take over my life? I’m not imagining that, am I?”

“Mmm. Maybe? She’s got it for Yorke, but everyone’s going to at some point. You’ll have to get used to that.”

“I’m more jealous about my plants,” I say, but it’s a lie. I don’t like when Mitsy helps Shane with his physical therapy either. I just don’t like her, period, and I especially don’t like her near my people.

Or here.

This room might be the best one in all of Thornewood. It was always warmed by the thermal springs, so even in the winter, it stays hot in here, and the smell, thickly green, damp and earthy. It always calms me.

And from the beginning it’s been my place, well, mine and Cain’s, but he spends more time up on the rooftop bar running numbers and making planting charts.

Shasta slides her headphones back on, and I grab a spray-bottle irritably and mist my orchids. Everything about life since I got back feels wrong.

I’m still terrified Yorke’s going to kill Ben and get himself arrested. Thornewood is full of soldiers. Ruby is dead. The food sucks. And stupid Mitsy has been in my greenhouse.

One of the pigeons croo-croo-croossoothinglyin their cage, which has been stashed in the corner while we figure out what to do with them.

I round a bend in the row of aisles, passing through the fronds of a very happy fiddle leaf fig, and find Colleen standing in the open doorway.

I set down my spray bottle.

Shasta must have seen me go still, because she tugs off her headphones, coiling the wire around her fingers. “What is it?”

She pricks an ear toward Colleen who’s standing in the doorway. Unsmiling.

My heart thunders in my ears.

What if Colleen’s about to say she’s arresting Yorke?

It can’t be that. Can it?

He and I still haven’t talked about Scraggle. But there hasn’t been time.

Or about Maybe.

I found out, and then he got shot.

We haven’t talked about what to do about Ben, or how Thornewood feels like it’s slowly spinning the wrong way down a toilet.

And Auden expects Santa to come any day now.

I eek out a croaky, “Hi.”

“Can I come in?” Colleen’s holding a clipboard against her chest.

I push at the folded sleeve of Yorke’s shirt I threw on this morning. “Sure.”

I hover awkwardly next to Shasta as Colleen strides through the aisles between the tables that guests of the hotel would have dined on before the plague. They’re dark wrought iron like you’d expect in an old Victorian greenhouse just like this one. She touches the long, slim length of an avocado leaf as she passes the row of them in their pots.

“What’s going on?” Shasta asks, pushing a pair of heart-shaped glasses up her nose. “Remember, people, I can’t see anything.”

“I actually came to speak with Frankie.” Colleen eyes the stack of antique CDs on Shasta’s lap with interest.

“Uhhh … I’ll just put my …” Shasta points at her ears, and then tucks her earphones back on.

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