by Zoe Chant
“I wish I could’ve seen it. Too bad I can’t juggle.”
“I could teach you.”
“Really?” Natalie asked eagerly. “Yes, please!”
“You’re on. Anyway, the day of the big game, we brought in all our equipment in duffel bags, which luckily no one checked. Half the audience was laughing at us before we even started, and the other half wasn’t paying any attention. And then we did our act. Torches and chainsaws and all.”
He grinned at her, his eyes bright. “You would’ve loved it. Not just because it was good. It was like the sort of high school story you were looking for. First the audience stopped laughing, then they started paying attention, and at the end they cheered. Afterward, Johnny got popular. He started a gay and straight alliance club, and he ended up taking a boyfriend to the prom. They didn’t get elected prom kings, but no one dumped pig’s blood over them either, so… happy ending.”
“What about you?”
“We stayed friends. After high school, he moved to the west coast. He’s a professional magician now. Performs at the Magic Castle. He’s not a superstar, but he makes a good living and he’s very respected by other magicians. He’s married. Not to his prom date, to a guy he met in LA. I haven’t met him, but he sounds pretty great from the way Johnny talks about him.”
Natalie nudged him. “I’m very happy for Johnny, but what about you? How was your prom?”
“I didn’t go. Johnny told me about it afterward. Our juggling act was a high point for me because I made a friend, and I had so much fun learning to juggle and then actually doing it. But Johnny saw that moment where everyone cheered us as a chance to change his social status. He followed up on it and went to parties and so forth. I didn’t. I didn’t want to hang out with people I didn’t even like.”
“Did they at least stop bullying you?”
“I wasn’t ever bullied, really. Mostly, I was ignored. Anyway, the next year I qualified to do online courses at a two-year college, which meant I could skip most of the school day. My senior year, I was barely there. I skipped prom and graduation. They mailed me my certificate. See, I didn’t want to be popular, not at a place I couldn’t stand. I wanted to be somewhere else.”
They stood in silence while the puppies snuffled around in the grass. The night sky spread out overhead, vast and dark and empty.
“Let’s go back,” said Ransom.
And then Natalie got an idea. “Wait.”
Chapter 17
“Remember when I was the new girl and you were showing me Ellisville High?” Natalie asked. “You’re the new boy now, and I’m going to show you around.”
“Okay…” Ransom said doubtfully, but he stepped back into his teenage shoes. He could recall it all too well: his bad skin and height that made him painfully self-conscious, his carrot-colored hair that hadn’t darkened till college, his acute lack of comfort inside his own skin.
Natalie, however, was nothing if not comfortable within her skin. She rumpled her hair, then gave him a smile that had never been directed at him when he’d been a teenager, the nervy, flirty smile of a girl who sees a boy for the first time and likes what she sees. “Hi! I’m Natalie Nash. Welcome to Sweetwater High, home of the Huskies! Our mascot, unsurprisingly, is the Siberian husky. How do you feel about huskies?”
Amused and trying not to look at the pups, who presumably did not exist in the game, he said, “They’re objectively the world’s best dogs. And I love dogs.”
“You’re in luck!” Indicating Heidi and Wally, she said, “These little darlings here are our in-school therapy dogs. If you’re feeling down or for any other reason, you can always cuddle or play with them. You don’t need to ask permission, and no one will tell your parents.”
“That sounds like it would improve the high school experience by about a thousand percent.”
“It does,” Natalie assured him. “Of course, if you want to speak to an actual counselor, we have a human one, Wayne. We call him Wayne the Wombat, because like a wombat, he makes you smile.”
In the interest of staying in character, he suppressed the laughter welling up inside of him. Natalie was going all-out, and he loved her inventive twisting of everything terrible about Ellisville High into something good. “What’s that smell in the air?”
“We call it the Sweetwater Scent,” she replied without missing a beat. “We all have our theories, but I think it’s a mix of soft puppy fur, fresh-baked bread from the bread-baking classes that supply our cafeteria, herbs from the garden that also supplies the cafeteria, and our cafeteria chefs’ famous tomato sauce.”
“You can learn to bake bread here?”
“Absolutely. Sweetwater High may be a science and performing arts magnet school, but it also has great cooking and English classes. And don’t be put off that it doesn’t have any competitive team sports—we have world-class shooting, juggling, gymnastics, and trapeze. Swimming, too. Our pool gives our school its name.”
She pointed across the football field. “See that beautiful natural lake? It’s crystal clear, fed by mountain streams. A little chilly, but so refreshing in the summer. And if you prefer more intellectual pursuits, we have a complete laboratory for science fair projects. Also a book club, which meets in our enormous library.”
“What about prom? Do you have that?”
“Not exactly. We have morp instead—it’s prom spelled backwards. It’s like prom, but minus the social pressure and expense and conformity. We all pitch in, show up, and have a good time. You can dress up if you want to, and not if you don’t want to. No elections, no kings or queens. It’s a party where you can do whatever you want, whether it’s to dance or have pizza or go outside and look at the stars.”
Ransom put his arm around her. “Just so you know, I’m having a perfect morp.”
Dropping her teenage persona, Natalie said, “I wish I’d met you earlier.”
“Me too. Even Ellisville High, home of the Cavemen, would have been bearable if you’d been around.”
“I didn’t mean in high school. I meant a year ago. But hey… here we are now.” She melted into his arms. Her soft breasts and slim body moved against him, and his own body responded against his will. He heard a sound escape his lips, something between a growl and a moan. Natalie tilted her head back, eyes half-closed, lips parted, as if she was inviting him to kiss him. It took every ounce of self-control he had not to.
“Go on,” she murmured.
She was inviting him to.
One of his fists clenched with the effort of holding himself back, and the other trembled like a stretched wire as he stroked her silken hair. “I wish we could too. But you know we can’t. We should probably step away now.”
“I don’t care any more.” Her eyes opened all the way, reflecting the black night sky. “I’ve tried and tried to keep my distance, and it’s not working. To hell with it. Let’s seize the day. I’m crossing out the rest of my bucket list and writing KISS RANSOM at the top.”
She locked her fingers behind his head and pulled him down to her waiting lips. Stunned and tempted, he didn’t resist until he felt the sweetest, lightest brush of her lips on his.
Ransom wrenched away.
“Hey!” Natalie exclaimed. “Get back here. Don’t you want to?”
“Of course I want to!” His voice came out louder than he’d intended to, raw and ragged. He forced it down before he went on. “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. But remember Tomato Land. We have to wait.”
“Wait for what?” There was an unsettlingly harsh edge to her voice.
“For it to be safe. For you to be cured.”
“Cured!” Natalie nearly spat the word out. “Get real, Ransom. There is no cure. There’s only now. This is our chance. Come on. Take it with me.”
They faced each other across the grass with only air between them. It would be the easiest thing in the world to take one step forward, and sweep her into his arms.
He took a step back and folded his
arms across his chest. “No.”
She stared at him, incredulous and hurt. “No?”
His hellhound’s growl filled his mind. You rejected her. She’ll never forgive you. She’ll never touch you again. You’ve ruined everything.
“It could kill you!” Ransom heard himself shouting, trying to drown out his hellhound. “Why don’t you believe that I can save you?”
“Because if you could have, you would have by now!”
Because you failed, growled his hellhound. You think you’re so smart, but you can’t solve the most important problem of your life. You’re a failure and she knows it. You’re not good enough for her.
“I could bite you!” The moment the words escaped Ransom’s lips, he wanted to take them back. Sure, shifters healed faster and better, but there was no guarantee that being one would actually cure her. And more importantly, there was the reason why he’d never offered before: he’d be putting a hellhound inside of her. What good would it do to save her life if he ruined it?
But if she was this desperate, he had to at least offer her the choice. Even though it would mean telling her what his own hellhound was, so she’d know what the choice meant.
“I already tried that,” she said. “It didn’t work.”
“I know, but that was with a normal shifter. I’m a mythic shifter. It might make a difference.” He swallowed, trying to gear himself up to telling her the rest.
But she was already speaking. “I tried more than once.”
“What?”
“I had that idea too. And I knew some mythic shifters. One of them was a ruby dragon who’d come to see one of our performances. After I got my diagnosis, I contacted her. I didn’t tell her why. I just said I wanted to fly, and I knew it was safe for me because I’d already been bitten by a flying squirrel and nothing happened. I talked her into it. But nothing happened. Again.”
Natalie swallowed. Her voice came out thick with suppressed tears when she said, “It was such a disappointment. I’d gotten my hopes up, and then… Well, anyway, thanks for the offer. But I already know it won’t work.”
See, growled his hellhound. It’s hopeless. You were her last chance, and you let her down. You’ve failed her. You’re not worthy of her. You can’t save her. She’ll die and it’ll be your fault.
Ransom felt as if he was drowning in darkness. His hellhound went on and on, its sandpaper voice a litany of accusations he couldn’t deny. Natalie stood with her arms folded in a mirror of his, her lips trembling. Disappointed in him. Everything was falling to pieces. He was falling to pieces.
A furry head butted his ankle. Automatically, he scooped up Heidi and held her to his chest. She wriggled around, planted her paws on his shoulder, and licked his face. Past Heidi’s furry black-and-white head, he saw Natalie cuddling Wally.
“Forget about it.” Her voice was flat, her eyes black. He couldn’t read anything in her expression. “Let’s go back to the deal we had at the beginning, okay? I do my list, and you stick around and protect me from the wizard-scientists. Are we still good with that?”
What wizard-scientists? jeered his hellhound. We haven’t seen hair nor hide of them. The only thing she needs protection from is the one thing you can’t help her with.
At that instant, Ransom made his decision. He tried not to think about it, to keep his hellhound from catching on, but kept his wordless resolve in his heart, unbreakable as steel.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re good.”
They retraced their steps and escaped Ellisville High, which he hoped to avoid for the rest of his life. Back at the hotel room, they changed in the bathroom one by one, then got in bed and turned out the lights. Neither of them attempted to read, nor did they hold hands. But they did say goodnight. There was still that much left between them.
Ransom lay in bed, silent and motionless, waiting and listening and trying not to think. He focused on the sound of Natalie’s breathing as if he was meditating, excluding everything else from his mind. When its evenness told him she was asleep, he still waited until he heard the slow, deep breaths of stage four sleep, the deepest kind. She wouldn’t wake up now unless he shook her awake.
Still keeping his mind on her breathing and his intent buried deep inside him, he got up, padded silently to his duffel bag, and felt around inside it until his fingers closed around the vial of tincture of shiftsilver.
And then there was no concealing what he meant to do. His hellhound snarled at him, accusing him of everything under the sun.
It won’t work.
I’m the only special thing about you—you’ll destroy the one thing that makes you unique.
You’re a failure.
Everything is hopeless, and so is this.
But his hellhound’s reaction only made Ransom more determined. Now that he knew for sure that he couldn’t help Natalie by biting her, he had no more use for his hellhound. It was the worst part of him, the darkness and guilt and shame and fear and self-hatred inside of him. It made him unworthy of Natalie. It cut him down and ate away at his confidence, and that made him less likely to be able to save her if he ever did get the chance.
He had to destroy it.
Ransom went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, and sat down on the bathmat, wedging himself in between the bathtub and the sink. As his hellhound raged and snarled within him, he drew up a single drop, capped the vial, and set it down inside the bathtub. He didn’t know how fast the stuff worked, and he didn’t want to risk spilling the vial or waking Natalie with a crash.
His heart was pounding and his skin prickled with a cold sweat, but his hands were absolutely steady. Tilting his head back, he squeezed a drop of liquid silver onto his tongue. It tasted metallic and burned going down, but like whiskey rather than the fire or acid he’d been braced for. Maybe this wouldn’t be as hard as he had—
The bathroom vanished. Cold stone was beneath his bare feet. He was in a vast, dim room like a huge dungeon. Its edges vanished into darkness. Shivering, he wrapped his arms around himself, and found that he was wearing lightweight scrubs and a white lab coat. He tried to rip off the coat, but it was sewn or glued to the scrubs. It wouldn’t come free.
He stopped wrestling with the coat when a movement caught his eye. Something big and inhuman within the darkness, coming toward him.
First he saw a pair of flames within the darkness, hot and red as the pits of Hell. As the thing came closer, he saw the white gleam of fangs. The flames resolved into eyes. The hound stalked closer, big as a pony, black as coal, fiery-eyed and wreathed in smoke.
Ransom had never seen his hellhound before. He’d caught glimpses of it within the darkness of his own mind, but that was nothing compared to seeing it looming over him.
That thing is a part of me, he thought with a horror that chilled him down to the soul. And if I want to get rid of it, I have to kill it with my bare hands.
“Come on!” Ransom shouted. His voice didn’t echo, but sounded flat and small in the huge space. “If you hate me so much, come and kill me if you can!”
The hellhound sprang.
Chapter 18
Something’s wrong.
Natalie sat bolt upright in bed, abruptly wide awake, filled with the knowledge that something terrible was happening.
Ransom’s in danger.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain.
“Ransom?”
There was no answer. The motel room was dark, and she couldn’t see if he was in his bed. She flipped on the light. His bed was empty, but a line of light shone at the bottom of the closed bathroom door. Heidi was nowhere to be seen, but Wally was awake, his blue eyes fixed on the bathroom door. As she watched, he vanished.
She scrambled out of bed, ran to the bathroom door, and gave it a sharp knock. “Ransom?”
There was no reply. She tried the knob, but it was locked.
Wally reappeared at her side, followed by Heidi. Natalie’s growing alarm sharpened to fear when she saw
a smear of blood on the white fur of Heidi’s muzzle. Natalie parted the fur, looking for the injury, but there was none. It wasn’t the puppy’s blood.
“Ransom!” She banged on the door with her fist. Nothing.
Heidi vanished again, while Wally began to whine and scratch at the door. He could easily get inside if he wanted to, so Natalie was sure he was trying to tell her where to go.
“I know.” She gave the door a shove, then a kick. It shook, but didn’t give way. Ransom was undoubtedly strong enough to kick it in, but it was too sturdy for her.
There was no keyhole, so she couldn’t use her lockpicks. She fetched a credit card instead, slid it into the crack, and began maneuvering it against the latch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wally vanish again. Inside the bathroom, she could hear the puppies whining and barking, but absolutely nothing else.
The precise and delicate work of opening the door was all in her fingers, leaving her mind free to spin out scenarios of what the hell was going on inside.
He’s having such a bad migraine that he can’t even speak. (Didn’t account for the blood.)
He tripped in the dark, hit his head, and knocked himself out. (Ransom, who moved like a panther, was about as unlikely to be unable to catch himself as Natalie herself. Also, the light was on.)
He overused his powers and passed out. (Why would he do that? Because she’d driven him to desperation with her disbelief?)
The latch popped back. Natalie yanked the door open.
There was blood everywhere. On his shirt, on his face, on the edge of the bathtub. He’d somehow wedged himself between the bathtub and the sink, with his long legs stretched out across the floor. His face was very pale, and his eyes were closed.
For a panicked instant, she had no idea where to even start. She couldn’t call 911, she didn’t know where the blood was coming from, she couldn’t tell if he was even breathing—