The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"What are you doing?" Cole says.

Wings frantically thump inside my chest.

Did she hear us?

Does she know about Roan?

Panic flashes through my brain, turning everything white. She can't know, she can't . . .

The memory of Fletcher's voice, coldly threatening, cuts through the panic, and everything inside me goes strangely still and calm.

Maybe Cole has overheard everything.

Maybe she knows my most precious secret.

But I know hers too.

And hers is worse than mine because no one in the CC knows who Roan is. Cole has absolutely zero proof he even exists, and even though I have no proof about her and Fletcher, I'll bet that if I tell someone like Ripley, then Fletcher will still be investigated. Cole won't want that.

"Why are you always hanging out down here?" Cole asks.

Okay, so she can't have seen or heard Roan, otherwise she would have brought it up by now, but still it must have been a close call. If she had come here a minute earlier, she almost certainly would have heard us.

I shrug. "I like time to myself. I always have done. Why do you care?"

"You go down here every day and you never take any of your little friends with you," she says.

"I didn't realise you were watching me so much. Should I be flattered or annoyed?" I say, rolling my eyes.

I expect her to make a Frankenstein comment, but she just stares at me.

"What are you doing here?" she says.

"Not that it's any of your business but I like to look beyond the fence and think about what I might do after the Trials."

A shadow flickered across Cole's face.

I'm starting to get annoyed. "What do you want?"

"Nothing," she mutters.

"Then why did you come down here? Why are you interrogating me?"

Cole doesn't answer. I get the feeling that she's teetering on the edge of a cliff; she wants to say something, but she can't bring herself to do it, and this isn't the first time we've been here. I don't know whether I should prompt her to finish or not.

"Cole?" I test the waters.

I'm sure she's finally going to spit out whatever it is she's keeping locked up inside, but then she snaps her mouth shut, turns around and starts walking away.

She really confuses me, but she worries me too, because I think that whatever she's not saying is something important.

But there's no point chasing after her – I can't force her to talk.

Besides, I've been so caught up in Roan these last two hours that I've forgotten something. I haven't checked Boots's traps today.

I hang back, waiting until there's more distance between me and Cole before pushing my way back through the bushes, to where my little traps are waiting. They've caught two mice, and I wrap both little bodies in leaves before sliding them into my pocket.

When I emerge back through the bushes, I realise that Cole has stopped and is looking back at me, suspicion written across her face.

Even though I know that she can't see anything through the thick screen of bushes, my chest still clenches. Her behaviour lately is stranger than ever, and if I didn't know about her and Fletcher, I would just have ignored it.