Something I Don't Know

4: insomniacs travel in packs

Late at night, I've found, is when the loft is at its most eerie. The sun's out and it's this charming, rustic place—all wood and brick and windows for walls—but then darkness settles over the city and it turns into some freaky, possibly haunted place.

When Safiya surprised Jamie and me with this place, I nearly fell down to my knees and worshipped her, considering my last apartment got blown to bits by a dragon that also kidnapped my best-friend-slash-worst-enemy. That was before I realized I don't know how to decorate stuff. Or organize stuff. That was before I realized I don't really know how to own a house at all.

Sometimes I forget I'm an adult.

The loft isn't too huge, but it does have two stories, which does a lot for privacy. Back in the apartment, there was only a thin wall between my bedroom and Jamie's pull-out couch. Now, there is a whole staircase.

I sleep on the top floor, in a full-sized bed that Safiya also financed, for some reason, and Jamie's downstairs in a room off the kitchen, a whole bedroom to himself. In the middle of the night, however, I roll over and squint at the fluorescent green numbers flashing on the face of my alarm clock—3:06—just as I hear the softest of footsteps creeping up the stairs.

I showered, I ate, I laid in bed for an hour and did nothing—but still, the events of the day seem to have rattled my brain so much that I can't get even the tiniest lick of sleep. By the sound of it, neither can the kid.

A minute later, he creaks open the door, standing just behind the threshold, looking like an apparition as the moonlight blanches his already snow-white hair. As I sit up, scrubbing a hand through what I know has already turned into monstrous bedhead, I narrow my eyes at him, realizing—as I always do when I look at him—just what a tiny thing he is. Narrow shoulders and gangly arms and round, mismatched eyes staring out of a gaunt face. I almost want to curse. Those trainers in the fighting rings did this to him. Worse, they got away with it.

He says, slowly, "Grey."

"Can't sleep?"

He nods his head. "Yeah."

"Good," I say, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and throwing the covers back. As if it knows, somehow, my tail swings up as I get to my feet, trailing behind me as I walk to the edge of the bedroom and clap a hand down on Jamie's shoulder. "Because I can't, either. C'mere. I'm gonna show you something."

He peers up at me, his golden wolf's eye narrow. "Show me something?"

"Yes, James. That is precisely what I just said."

As I head down the stairs again, I hear the arrhythmic thud of Jamie's footsteps as he follows me. He repeats, even more confused, "James?"

"Is that not where the nickname's from?"

For a moment, he doesn't answer. Then he says, "Only my dad called me that."

Something in his voice keeps me from asking much more about it, not that I need to. All he has done has cemented my motivation further.

We reach the kitchen, where it's blue-black and cold and weird, all the appliances and the dishes and that one spoon I left out on the counter after dinner frozen as if part of a still-life. The air's still laced with the left over lasagna I heated up earlier, and when I look over my shoulder, I catch Jamie wrinkling his nose.

"Oh, please," I say, waving him off. "Lasagna's delicious."

"It smells like you forgot to run the garbage disposal again," Jamie observes, and I pause in the middle of the hallway, my sock-feet nearly skidding across the wood as I do. "Did you forget to run the garbage disposal again?"