Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
But looking at Danny’s hand, reaching for me, there to help me up and into this uncertain future, I feel just slightly less scared. Not much. But enough.
So I step forward, place my hand in his, and commit to the unknown.
This train is nice. Like, really fucking nice. Since we’ve known Alec, we’ve been some fancy places and done some fancy things, but this… This is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Nothing. It’s insane.
The conductor who Danny keeps calling Nigel and who has yet to correct him, so he may actually be named Nigel, showed us around before we started off. It has that weird thing going on when stuff feels old and new simultaneously. According to Nigel, everything on the train is original—which means it’s all at least a hundred years old—but it feels brand new. I know it’s possible to refurbish shit, but whatever they did to bring all this into the state it’s in now must have required more than a little elbow grease. They must have had a magician on staff too or something, because it sparkles and shines and even smells new. New leather. Newly oiled wood. A hint of some kind of almost imperceptible but totally calming and barely-there perfume being pumped throughout.
And the sleeping cars. I mean…
Since we’re the only ones here, we were given our choice of where we wanted to sleep, as we’re going to be here through the night and late into tomorrow. We were offered our selection of cabins, suites, and then what Nigel called a “Grand Suite.”
“Grand” is an understatement.
It’s as big as a New York City apartment and decked out with gold-leaf wallpaper, art deco design on the carved wood headboard of the king-sized bed—which we were told is fitted with bespoke Charlotte Thomas thousand-thread-count bedsheets that have fucking twenty-two-karat gold woven into the fabric; no shit, that’s what he said—a lounge area, and a full marble bathroom with a handcrafted gold glass basin for the sink. On a train.
Obviously, that’s the suite Alec, Danny, and I selected.
There was the quickest of moments where Nigel let his propriety and stiff-upper-lip act waver just a bit when he realized that even with an entire train of options all to ourselves, the three of us planned to stay in the same room. But then he remembered himself and said, “Very good.” He asked if Eliza would be staying with us as well, but rather than responding, she just walked past us into one of the single cabins and closed the door.
Now that the train is rolling, we’ve been given the full tour, and Alec has assured a genuflecting Nigel for the tenth time that if we need anything we won’t hesitate to ring, he finally leaves us alone in the suite and we all collapse. Danny sits down heavily onto a plush, red velvet chair next to the wet bar; Alec takes a seat on the sofa, throwing his leg over the Roman arm; and I let myself fall forward onto the bed, burying my face in rare Egyptian cotton and flecks of gold. Apparently.
“Is if insahn,” I say, muffled by all the bespoke luxury.
“What?” Danny asks.
I roll over, sit up. “This is insane,” I say again. “Even for… y’know. Us.”
Danny sighs. “Depends on how you look at it, I guess,” he says. “If you look at it coming off the heels of you killing a guy, falling off a roof, losing your memory, Alec calling me, us reconnecting for the first time in like three years, having my place shot to shit and escaping to a glass house in the woods which was then also shot to shit, you blowing Alec and his brother off the edge of a cliff, you and me running away on a boat, you finding out Alec was still alive and being held in England, us going to get him, me finding out he and Eliza had a kid together, all of us rescuing him, and then his kid being kidnapped by Brasil who didn’t, as it turns out, kidnap her after all…” He takes a long breath. “I dunno. Doesn’t seem that weird, I guess.”
“Fair,” I say. We sit quietly for a moment, the rocking rumble of the train the only sound. Finally, I stand, go to a window by Danny, lift the shade. Lights streak by. Looks like we’ve just entered the Chunnel, the underground railway tunnel that connects the UK and France. We’ve been through it before, but it never ceases to amaze me.
Humans built a tunnel under the English Channel just to get people from point A to point B quicker. The kind of engineering involved is beyond my comprehension. Danny tried to explain it to me once, but I didn’t follow. He’s better at understanding how to build things than I am. My superpower has always been tearing things down.