Chapter 24: The Luna

The card said: Spend this one on yourself. You never needed my name on it.

I read it three times in the lamplight, sitting on the edge of the bed in Tiernan's shirt.

"He's leaving," I said.

"He's not leaving." Tiernan pulled the quilt over my knees. "He's stopped hiding."

I looked at the envelope.

Under the flap, in the old thick paper, was something I had missed.

It was a key, and a slip with an address in the valley where the Ashworth house had stood.

I held it for a while.

Then I put it in the drawer next to the locket.

Tiernan didn't ask me what I'd do with it.

A week later, the great hall was full again.

This time there were no council tables, only trestles loaded with food.

A band of three off-duty security analysts played in the corner, and Dane carried a keg on one shoulder.

Roxy stood on a chair near the head of the room with a glass in her fist.

Her cheeks were flushed.

She had been told a story about a very large, very private family and an inheritance.

She had decided to believe all of it, because I was in it.

"Everybody shut up!" she shouted. "I have a toast!"

Three hundred people shut up.

Roxy blinked at them.

"Wow," she said. "Okay. These are the best-trained guests I've ever had."

I put my face in my hands.

"I have known Stevie Larkin for nine years," Roxy said. "She is five feet tall."

"She once fixed my laptop with a paper clip and a grudge."

Keep reading free with an account. Start From Broke Technician to Luna from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.