Storm (Swipe Series)

now Erin was doing her best to tune out the rest of it. She already knew how slim her chances were; hearing Hailey throw blame around at this point was hardly going to help.
    So instead, Erin rested back on the bed, closing her eyes and absorbing another bout of fever pain. She thought of Iggy. She thought of her parents back in Beacon. She thought of Spokie and the good times she’d had chasing the Dust with Logan out by Slog Row . . . and she stayed in that daydream, happily, all the way until the heavy door clicked and clanged at the edge of the basement, far past the veil of darkness before her.
    She heard the rush of air against an insulated seal, the sound of the metal sliding open, the squeak of sneakers against the concrete floor. Together, the commotion pulled her quickly back to reality.
    “Arianna?” Erin called, a little nervous.
    “No. It’s me.”
    “Logan!” Her voice lifted with surprise.
    “Mind if I join you down here? I can’t take much more of the arguing upstairs.”
    “Sure—yeah,” Erin said, trying to sit up a little. “I’m not exactly busy.”
    Logan entered the glow of the medical equipment and frowned when he saw Erin’s face.
    “That bad, huh?” Erin asked.
    “You’ve looked better.”
    Erin tried to laugh, but the pressure against her temples pounded hard and quieted her fast.
    “So am I hearing things right?” she asked after a minute. “Did Peck really run off to the Sierra Library?”
    “Of course he did.” Logan laughed. “You kidding? After all the times he talked about it on our drive out west? The biggest collection in the country, every banned pre-Unity classic you can think of? Peck can’t turn down the chance to pick up a book even under normal circumstances. Now that we’re fighting a ‘real war,’ according to him, his reading list is about a mile long.”
    “What war? We’re not fighting any war.”
    “Yeah, well, you know Peck.” Logan shrugged. “He can be . . . dramatic. I think really the poor guy’s just been starved for literature ever since the Spokie warehouse was burned down back on the night of—”
    “‘Was burned down’?” Erin laughed. “The passive tense, Logan? Really? That’s very generous of you.” She closed her eyes, but her amusement didn’t fade.
    “Okay, fine—ever since you burned the warehouse down and chased us all out of Spokie. That better? You happy now?”
    “Anytime you show a little backbone, I’m happy,” Erin teased.
    “Yeah, great, thanks. Nice to see you’re feeling like your charming old self again,” Logan said, gesturing to the medical equipment and whatever fancy ways it had of making her feel better.
    “Don’t worry—I’m not,” Erin assured him, and that quieted things down a bit.
    It’d been months since the two of them had spent any real time together. Between Logan’s escape to Acheron and Erin’s delirium all throughout the road trip here, Logan realized now that this was the first real conversation he’d had with her since his birthday—the same night Logan dodged his Pledge and went Markless and watched his whole life come crashing down all around him—many eventful months ago. Looking at Erin now, he wondered briefly if he’d forgotten how to talk to her.
    It used to be so easy, back in Spokie, last fall. Down here, things had changed. The dim basement air was still for a long time.
    “Kinda cool, these artifacts, at least,” Logan said, pointing to the storage shelves.
    But behind Erin, Logan caught a glimpse of a tank full of spiders, each spinning tangles of deformed webs under the influence of what could only have been some strange series of drugs. He wondered how tight the tank’s lid was. He wondered about all the things he wasn’t seeing, in the dark, all around him. His skin started to crawl. And he quickly dropped that line of conversation.
    “You know . . . Logan . . . for what it’s worth . . . I really am sorry I chased you out of Spokie,” Erin said. Her eyes were still closed, but any amusement in her face was gone now. “I shouldn’t have done that, I think, looking back on it. I’d take that night back, if I could.”
    The sudden sense of contrition caught Logan off guard. Apologies weren’t exactly in Erin’s wheelhouse, and this particular one had the distinctive, rancid scent of deathbed air about it. “Stop it,” Logan said. “We don’t need to talk like that.”
    But Erin laughed at him. “Like what? Earnestly?”
    Yeah , Logan