No matter how much I needed to.
“Eden.”
I sighed before I even turned to look at him. “Do you really not have anything better to do than follow me around?”
Phil hesitated, the steady beat of his footsteps coming to an end behind me. “I wasn’t following you.”
“So you just go out to eat by yourself now?”
“I followed you a little bit.”
“Feel free to move along then. The only danger here is from my clogging arteries.”
He shifted nervously from foot to foot. “Then what are you doing out here?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want him to think he could be right, but if I didn’t tell him, I worried I wouldn’t have anyone else to tell. “It’s a little gross, isn’t it?”
I didn’t have to specify. He looked through the window and found Zach and his disciples easily. They took up the whole bar. “This is the better side of what humans do. Right now, they’re excited. Hopeful. But they won’t always be.”
“It sounds like you’re afraid of them.”
“Absolutely. Humans are dangerous.”
I rolled my eyes. “This coming from a guy who could suck the life out of a person like a milkshake?”
“One human. But in the case of dozens of humans knowing just where to hit me…I don’t know how well I would fare then.”
One of Zach’s disciples wobbled on her drunken feet and pitched face-first into the floor. I felt a nagging shame for worrying about them, myself. “They do look quite intimidating.”
“I know they do not look like much, but I can tell you from experience that there is nothing so formidable, nothing so illogical, as a scared human.” He stepped toward me. “I worried when you didn’t come to class.”
“Well, you found me. I’ve been here. Eating.”
“Is there a chance, you might want to…leave?”
“No,” I insisted. “No, not at all. I wouldn’t want to leave Zach anyway. He’s having the best day of his life in there.” Even as I said it, I couldn’t keep the grimace off my face when I looked through the window and found my friend in the throes of hysteria with his posse.
Of course, Phil noticed. “He will still be here tomorrow.”
“So will you.”
“But which one of us will be more fun?”
“Don’t get too big in the head, Bronwyn, you’re not that fun.”
He extended his arms, smile inching upward into his cheek. “So will you walk or do I have to carry you?”
“If those are my only two options, I’ll go willingly.”
He scrutinized me with a funny kind of smile as I stepped closer. “You don’t want to say goodbye?”
I glanced back through the window. Zach fell over his disciples’ laps like human cushions, pillowing his head with a stranger’s arm. “He won’t even realize I’m gone.”
Phil didn’t disagree.
He grasped my hand, pulling me after him through the parking lot toward a gleaming black Mustang. My eye gravitated backward, through the window, and onto the group I’d left behind. Zach’s arm outstretched over the two people beside him in the booth, other hand grasping that of the girl across from him.
“Where are we going?”
“I could bring you to the shop?”
“My parents are not going to like that I skipped.”
“Three’s already come and gone. They’d never have to know.” He shrugged. “But I could take you to my home.”
I blanched. “Your place. Okay. Your place is…fine.”
15. Church
The house looked much…plainer than I anticipated.
It was big, I never would’ve expected less, but where I’d expected flames, dark shadows, and ghosts, the Bronwyn household was a humble, white building with fresh paint and shudders just like all the other buildings on the street. The front yard’s landscaping looked impeccable; I might’ve even called it better than the neighbors’.
And yet, it looked so much worse. In its origins, I could tell the roof pointed upward into a steeple and the front-most window shined a rainbow of colors. Stained glass.
“You live in a church?” I deadpanned.
Phil smiled. “Who says we don’t have a sense of humor?”
“Certainly not me.”
He pulled into the empty driveway. I struggled to keep my jaw closed as he led me into the building behind those stained-glass doors. For a family that could afford to live in a house this big, I’d expected glamor. I’d expected expensive artwork, or at least some antique furniture.
Instead, I got…nothing.
While an attempt had been made to turn a church that had clearly been built nearer the start of the twentieth century than the end into a suitable living environment, it was also abundantly clear that work had not finished. The pews were gone, replaced by shining hardwood floors. The altar had been artfully crafted into a kitchen island at the far end of the open room.
Aside from the four walls around us, nothing stood to separate one room from another.
And everything was so dark. Despite the rainbow of color painting the windows, very little light penetrated the glass and no lamps or fixtures occupied any of the darkest corners. Even worse, the house was completely devoid of furniture. Not a single chair or couch or picture frame occupied the space.
“You didn’t bring me here to murder me, did you?”
“I should be more worried than you.”
He entered ahead of me, crossing the room to the soundtrack of echoing footsteps. I held back in the doorway, not entirely convinced. “Where’s the bed?”
“I don’t have one.”
I snickered, waiting for a punchline that didn’t come. “Lost in transit?”
“Never had one.”
“But…why?”
He gave me a knowing smile. “I guess you will see.”
I followed him to an unpainted door set into the furthest wall. Behind it, a dark corridor led into a steep set of spiral stairs. “What’s down there?”
“We live down there.”
“In the basement?”
He took my hand, urging me to continue, but I fought to stand back. Phil held his hands up in surrender. “Do you remember what I told you this morning?”
“You’d keep me safe.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Even from mice and roaches?”
“Even from mice and roaches.”
Stepping carefully down the stairs after him, I held tight to Phil with one hand and felt for the wall with the other. Without light, the steps seemed to go on forever. “What the hell do you do down here anyway?”
“It’s safer.”
“Safe from what?” I trailed off with the sudden appearance of white light at the bottom of the shaft. The spiral ended in an entirely nondescript hallway, lined on one side by three steel doors. A line of hanging lights provided all illumination, casting the white walls in a harsh glow. “What the hell is this? A penitentiary?”
Phil smirked. “In the night, we are more vulnerable to…human interference. We take precautions to avoid such possibilities.”
He led me ahead, passing a door that was hanging open to reveal a room lined with canvas. Each one reflected the same man, although from a different angle every time. In some, he smiled, in others, he slept or smoked or frowned down at a book in concentration.
I held back, though he tried to urge me along. A brief step into the room revealed that the ceiling had not gone uncovered, either.
“Not much to see here, I’m afraid. This is—”
“Lily’s room.”
“How’d you know?”
I backed out of the room. The more I stared at the young man, the more haunting those eyes became. Doll eyes. They followed me. “I’ve seen him before. In her sketches.”
He didn’t try to explain it. “My room is next door.”
This time, I let him drag me along to a door that was already closed and locked. He tapped a code into the keypad under the
handle and the steel gave way with a metallic sigh. And then banged against the armrest of a couch.
Phil’s room looked very much more lived in than his sister’s. For one, at least the couch could’ve provided sleeping arrangements. For another, the copy of Julius Caesar that lay open on the couch at least hinted that someone had been here sometime this year. A brand-new bookshelf of thick oak wood abutted the opposite wall, occupied by only a shelf and a half’s worth of books.
I stepped fully into the room and toward the bookshelf, fingers probing over the spines of Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello… “You live…here?”
He smiled, as if privy to some inside joke. “Most nights.”
I froze on a very used copy of Romeo and Juliet. Pulling it from its place, I probed the flawless cover for some hint of injury, but it had clearly been well taken care of, aside from the punishment taken by the spine. Will alone had to be holding it together now.
I held it out for him. “Your favorite?”
“Yours.”
Nodding along, I opened the book and threw myself into the couch. “It’s awfully comfy.”
He took the book off the couch cushion, skimming the first few lines before he shut it with a thwack.
“How are you liking them?”
“I compare them but I don’t have a personal taste. Romeo and Juliet is…nice.”
I scoffed, “You don’t sound convinced.”
“I disagree with some of the ideas Shakespeare presents.”
“What ideas? That teenagers would find love in three days? Different time, I guess.”
Phil lowered himself onto the opposite arm of the couch. He barely looked at me. “I just…you said…I know I’m making myself out to be a hypocrite. I just think of love as something…else.”
I sat up, entreating him silently to continue.
“I don’t think age could make a difference. You merely have to differentiate what it is that you see. For Romeo, a boy in love with one he would’ve paid off for some reciprocation, seeing a girl in a room and shifting those attentions so quickly is mere lust. And so with Juliet.”
Nodding, I countered. “I agree. By today’s standards anyway. I mean…what is love but whatever we say it is?”
“I think what love is, is the coming together of similar goals.” He made full on eye contact with me and my heart sped. “Like…if what you really want—what you really need—is a light at the end of the tunnel, a change, a hope, and you see in her that hope…At first, you can admire her drive. Her ambition. Her ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but, eventually, she becomes it. One is associated with the other. Until all there is…is her.”
I chewed on my inner cheek, legs quaking. “You got all that from Romeo and Juliet?”
“Call it a study in human interaction,” he managed a grimace. “I have plenty of evidence.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. “Love is subjective. What we believe it is, is what it is to us. If, to Romeo, love is a beautiful face who would adore him above all others, then he loved her.”
“And for you? What do you think love is?”
“I imagine it would be a comforting presence. Someone I don’t have to overthink.” I shrugged it off but my eye gravitated toward him, as usual. He stared back, hyper-focused. “But, never been in love, couldn’t tell you.”
It made me wonder, though…could he? If he had his own ideas, did that mean he knew what it felt like? I wanted to believe so but who was I to imagine that I would even be the object of his affections if such a thing were true?
…Because if I thought they could be for anyone else, my heart fell into my feet. Because if someone else were on his mind while he sat here with me, debating the concept of love, my heart might just break.
But I couldn’t ask. And I didn’t want to know.
“Edy,” he wrung his hands, head dropped. “I have to…I have to tell you something.”
“Anything,” I breathed.
“I told you I would be honest with you. And I will. But I’m afraid I haven’t always been honest with you.”
“I know, Phil. I was there for it.”
“I know you know but I…” he struggled through the words, “want to make it right. You asked me about Roland and I wouldn’t tell you.”
With a valiant effort at keeping the judgement off my face, I waited for him to continue.
“Roland was born in a time of war. The Crusades.”
I winced, running through the years in my head to no avail. “How many years ago was that?”
“Hard to say. The wars lasted two whole centuries. I wasn’t in any suitable frame of mind to know after my rebirth whether it was the head or tail-end.”
“Did you fight?”
“I did. Didn’t want to, but plenty of us went into it without bloodshed on our minds.”
I frowned. “Why did you go, then?”
“They were wars fought in the name of God. We did it for favor. Especially those of us who sinned.”
When he didn’t go on, I found myself leaning in, hanging on his every breath. “And you sinned?”
Phil shook his head, lip catching between his teeth. “Grievously.”
“What kinds of things?” I smiled. Because I didn’t grasp his words or because I didn’t believe them, I didn’t know.
He found my eyes and held them, looking more devastated with every second that passed. Finally, he shook his head. He forced a bright smile. “That doesn’t matter, right? It’s in the past. The past doesn’t matter.”
“I guess not.”
“Because people can change. Mortals can change. Mortals can be better.”
I shrugged. “O…of course they can.”
“Because mortals grow. They learn. They…” He slammed his fist into the wall, lip curling back in a snarl he directed toward the ground. It came in such stark contrast to the calm of our recent conversation that I jumped. “Damn it, Eden. Stop looking at me like that!”
My jaw bobbed, floundering for something to say. I fully expected to withdraw into myself, tongue-tied and silent, as I hated confrontation, but the feeling that surfaced didn’t feel like my nerves. Rather, a hot, self-righteous anger. I took a wide step away. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He flinched with his surprise, then the scowl melted away into shame. “Your eyes.”
“What about them?”
He reached for my hand but I held it just out of reach. “I have never felt so ashamed of myself as the moments when I look into your eyes and see…”
“See what?”
“Me. And you’re not afraid. You look at me with this awe that I hate!”
I flushed bright red. I must’ve been very obvious, after all. “So…so that’s a bad thing? Because it’s attention? Or because it’s me?”
“No! No, no. Edy, I am closer to you than I have been to any other mortal in all of my years. I have an affection for you that my kind shouldn’t…couldn’t ever have.”
I didn’t dare think that could make me special. “So, what is it?”
“I don’t deserve it. I can see the awe in your eyes. I can feel the innocence wafting off you and it…it makes me angry.”
“I don’t think it wafts off me.”
“No, it doesn’t—it came out wrong.” Phil sighed, laying the tips of his fingers over my knuckles. “When I touch a person’s skin, I can feel what they are feeling. I can tell what kind of a person they are. What terrible things lie in the dark recesses of their soul. And I’ve seen that there are always terrible things hiding in their souls.” He smiled humorlessly, glancing down at the place where our flesh met. “But when I touch you, I can feel…naïve. Like a child would see the world, I imagine. Your heart is a crystal-clear lake. No shadows. No secrets. No guile.”
His skin, though rough and scaly, blazed a trail of heat across my cheek that ran straight down to my knees, making them wobble. As if he could tell, his eyelids drooped. The thumb on my temple s
tilled in mid-circle.
Then I remembered. He could tell.
Jerking backward, I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked skyward. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’d like to give you something. I never wanted to be a mortal again, Eden. Not in all my years. But, if saving your life means living a normal, mortal life, then I have no regrets.” He pulled a packet of seeds from his pocket. The wrapper read, Camellia.
“You do realize that I live in a flower shop…right?”
“You don’t have these. I checked.”
“Forgive me if I don’t trust the guy who can’t tell the difference between lavender and hyacinth.”
“You know, Graves, it’s been a fun run, but I think I’ll have to kill you now.”
I snickered. “I remember Christmas passing two months ago. What’s the occasion?”
“It’s my birthday,” he smiled. “My first mortal birthday. And you are my first mortal friend. I can think of no one else I should celebrate with.”
“What does that mean?”
He held up his hand to show me flawless skin. With opposite forefinger raised, he drew a line across his palm with his fingernail.
Blood flowed from the widening expanse of his cut.
Instinct made me yank his hand closer. “It’s not healing. Why isn’t it healing?”
“I have never been weaker.” He flexed his fingers. “I haven’t fed. And a great deal of my essence has been going to…outside means.”
His blood ran red, just like mine. “How long has it been?”
“Since before the accident. I’m running on empty.”
The unwelcome image of Phil, purpled with burns and bleeding, made me nauseous. Then his long, foreboding body, laid out in a coffin. “E…Empty? What do you mean empty? How empty?”
“I’m not healing anymore. Soon I will start to age, like you do. So long as I do not feed and you don’t fall victim to anymore accidents, it’s possible I could finish out a normal mortal life.”
“Possible? Why just possible?”
He leaned against the passenger’s side door. “It’s never happened before.” His non-maimed hand trailed over my arm. “I can feel your worry. It’s unnecessary. I feel…good about the opportunity to live as you’ve told me to. Morally.”
The Amaryllis Page 17