Mythos (The Descendants, #1)
Page 18
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Verdi woke up consumed with rage, without knowing why. He wasn’t especially angry about anything; he just felt like he wanted to kill someone.
Then the explanation came to him: Melody.
Screaming surged between his ears. He clutched his head, wishing it would stop, and staggered off the sofa, where he’d been sleeping. The screaming was coming from outside his head, too. Someone was having a fight. More precisely, it seemed Melody and Aidan might be over.
The front door to the flat slammed shut and the vengeful storm that was his sister burst toward him.
‘That bastard!’ she shouted at the top of her voice.
He so wished she would stop. It was killing him. He hated how affected he was by her moods.
‘He left me for that cheap slag,’ she spat out in his general direction.
Verdi frowned and rubbed his eyes more awake. Who was she talking about?
‘I wish you’d killed her when you had the chance,’ Melody added with venom.
The cogs churning in his brain clicked into place. ‘You mean that girl in the field?’
‘Who else?’ she threw at him. She hurled herself dramatically onto the sofa beside him, falling backward over the arm and landing at a twisted angle. ‘I can’t believe I ever trusted him. I should have known.’ She ripped one of the back cushions off the sofa and pressed it over her face, as if meaning to suffocate herself.
The rage in Verdi’s head subsided, gradually replaced with a choir that made him feel like weeping. He wasn’t sure which mood was worse.
He got to his feet. ‘Mel, you have to stop that. I can’t stand it,’ he said, on the verge of tears.
She lifted the cushion from her face and raised her head an inch to look up at her brother. Verdi was small in every way. He was shorter than her, and scrawny.
She let her head drop back to the sofa and hurled the cushion onto the floor.
‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘The only way to stop it is to make him hurt as much as he’s hurt me.’ She beat her fists on the upholstery and let out a scream of anguish.
Verdi winced. He didn’t profess to understand matters of the heart, and Melody’s reaction was particularly unsettling.
‘Would that really make you happy?’ he asked. ‘Would it bring him back?’
She jolted up so she was sitting. ‘No,’ she said, as though it was the stupidest idea she’d ever heard. ‘But I know what would. And you’re going to help me do it.’
Verdi slumped back down on the sofa next to her. The XBOX controller was on the floor, tickling his toes. He wished he could just pick it up and start playing, without incurring his sister’s wrath. For the first time, he found himself wondering if maybe it wasn’t so bad staying at home with their parents.
But as much as their parents were Descendants themselves, once they’d learned of their children’s powers, they had made it absolutely clear they weren’t to display them at any time. Such spontaneous abilities were beyond their understanding. Hell, their father had even started talking about finding a ‘cure’.
No, he most definitely didn’t want to return to that, no matter how crazy his sister was getting.
‘You have to help me,’ Melody repeated in an ominously deadpan voice.
Verdi cleared his throat, not liking where this was going. ‘Um, why, exactly?’
She turned her dishevelled head and froze him with her eyes. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll make you bawl on the floor like a little baby, film it and put it on YouTube. How’s that for incentive?’
It didn’t matter that she was eighteen. It seemed she would always be his irritating big sister.
‘Fine,’ he gave in, already certain he would come to regret his next question. ‘What do you need me to do?’
TWENTY-THREE
Seth’s appearance at Itzy’s house later that night shocked her. He looked like he’d been drinking. He smelled like it, too. In light of her mother’s habits, Itzy wasn’t impressed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed at him. ‘It’s after midnight. Mum’ll be furious if she finds you.’
‘She won’t find me,’ Seth said, pushing his way past her. ‘Is she even home?’ This was beyond his usual play at arrogance; it bordered on belligerence.
Itzy stared after him, livid, and then shut the front door behind them. ‘She’s asleep,’ she euphemised. ‘And you didn’t answer my question.’
‘What question?’ He looked confused, like he’d only just realised where he was and wasn’t sure how he’d got there.
‘Why are you here?’ she repeated herself.
Seth blinked at her stupidly. ‘Oh yeah!’ he exclaimed too loudly. ‘That’s right. See, I was at home. And the funniest thing happened to me.’
He burst out laughing, like he’d just remembered a joke he’d been told and couldn’t wait to share it.
‘See - see - all I could think of was you,’ he said. He pointed one of his long fingers at her chest. Then he poked her, and he started laughing again.
Itzy didn’t share his humour. ‘Why is that funny?’ she asked tightly.
Seth shook his head like he was dealing with a child who didn’t understand something very simple. ‘Oh, Itzy,’ he said. ‘Itzy, Itzy, Itzy…see, it’s funny because I didn’t even know you last month. So why can’t I stop thinking of you?’
His laughter was gone now, replaced with something more serious. He sounded like he truly expected her to give him an answer.
‘You’re a mess,’ Itzy declared.
Seth shrugged like maybe he agreed with this pronouncement. His eyes darted, trying to find something to rest on.
With a deep sigh, Itzy said, ‘Let me get you some water.’
She went into the kitchen and filled a glass from the tap. When she brought it back to him, she found he was gone.
But she hadn’t heard the door. So where was he?
She crept into the lounge, but he wasn’t there. With a sinking feeling, she went upstairs to her own room. He was lying on her bed, his hand on Parson Brown. He looked asleep.
She set the glass down on her desk and looked at Seth. His blond hair fell over his closed eyes, rising and falling in time with his breath. His face was all innocence when he was unconscious. All the cockiness was erased, leaving him looking fragile. For a moment, she could see the little boy he had once been.
Itzy wasn’t sure what to do about this. She’d never had a boy in her bed before, even if he was just asleep. She had no idea how she was going to explain this to her mother, if she found out.
Itzy sat next to him on the bed. She nudged him, but he didn’t stir. She nudged him again, but he would not be roused. Then she found herself just looking at him, watching the way his chest rose and fell with sleep.
He was lovely, she decided. And despite her frustrations with him, he really was nice. So why didn’t she feel that same tug on her heart when she looked at him, the way she had when she was with Aidan? What made Aidan so special?
She searched her heart and realised she knew the answer to that. It was the way he had probed without trying and somehow found the way to unlock her emotions. And it was the way he had spoken to her so candidly about himself, about things that were so personal. That was what Ash had lacked. He’d always been so good at listening, but when she tried to turn things around and get him to speak about his feelings, his secret worries, his wandering trains of thought, he had always clammed up. It felt so one-sided.
And Seth…well, he was similar, wasn’t he? Because he was charming and disarming and flirty. There was a carefree spirit to him that made her feel happy to be with him, like there was nothing worth worrying about too much and everything would be alright in the end. But he, too, didn’t share much of himself. Sometimes, he started to, but then that humour would filter back in, would mask what he had been about to reveal before he could get too deep.
&nb
sp; But not Aidan. He didn’t even know her, and he had been unhesitatingly personal with her. And he hadn’t made her feel like she owed him anything, like she had to tell him anything. For the first time, Itzy felt like she had actually shared something with a boy. Despite Aidan’s pronouncement of the evening, it was the first time she’d felt like she wasn’t caught up in a game.