Chapter 12 · Switch Twelve

"It's not stuck. It's dead." I slam the heel of my hand against switch eleven again and get nothing back, not even the little click that means the breaker's thinking about it. "Why is it dead, Vale?"

He doesn't answer right away. That's the part that scares me more than the switch.

"Vale." I turn around. He's not looking at the panel. He's looking at me, jaw doing the thing it does right before he says something I'm not going to like. "You killed it."

"I rerouted it." Flat. Careful. The voice of a man reading a script he wrote for himself an hour ago. "Before Rhys called back. Before he got a second shot at recording you walking out that door with your face doing whatever it's doing right now."

"My face is doing furious. Get better at reading it." I shove past him, run my fingers along the seam where the override housing meets the wall, hunting for a manual pin, a fuse, anything. My knuckle catches the metal edge, sharp and stupid, and I don't stop to look at it. "You don't get to decide when I leave a room.