by Everly Frost
“No. Sorry for this.”
The wash of liquid across my back preceded a bone-deep sting, so sharp that the sensation burned all the way through my lungs and out the other side of my ribcage. I launched myself off the bed in reflex and found myself crouched on the floor under the window, facing Michael. He stood very still on the other side of the room with an uncorked vial in his right hand and a stopper in his left.
It was the bottle of nectar.
Chapter Eleven
“WHAT DID you do? Michael, what did you do?”
He didn’t answer, but his alarmed expression hardened. “I’m just trying to help you, Ava.”
I drew myself up, clenching my fists. I waited for the weird to start—the pounding in my head, the blistering heat. I waited for his face to change when he saw the freak I was about to turn into. I stepped away from Josh’s quilt because the last thing I wanted was to burn anything that belonged to him. “If you gave me nectar, I swear…”
His expression cleared. He shoved the cork back on the bottle and held it up for me to see. It had writing on it and the glass was brown, not clear like the nectar bottle. “It’s methylated spirits. It’ll stop any infection.”
“Methylated spirits?” I marched over and snatched up the bottle, reading the label. I realized he was telling the truth when the inner monster didn’t make an appearance. “Why would methylated spirits stop infection?”
“It’s pure alcohol. Everyone knows alcohol kills bugs. They use it on animals.” He said it so matter-of-factly, as though he was telling me something a child would know.
“Well, I didn’t know that. And it hurt!”
“It’s supposed to. That’s the way it works.”
I wondered how he knew that stuff. I certainly didn’t have a clue what would help me and what could equally kill me when it came to chemicals. Doctors and nurses specialized in recovery domes—the administering of organic energy and hydration so the natural processes worked faster—and they dug things out of people who healed too fast over foreign objects. But I’d never heard of anyone worrying about killing bugs. Vets probably knew more about that stuff, since animals got sick and died all the time. I wondered if that’s what I was now—some kind of animal.
I scrutinized his face as I lowered my voice, pointing at the bottle. “How do you know about that?”
“I, uh…” His expression changed again, and I wished I was given a life for every time he scowled at me. His jaw ticked. “Does it matter?”
It did to me. He seemed to know a lot more about my mortality than I did. Even when he’d shrugged his shoulders as though he didn’t know a thing about stitching me up, he’d still done it. I backed away from him, shuffling my feet through the mess on the floor, pressing up against Josh’s quilt hanging over the window, wishing my suspicions would go away because he was there and he seemed to want to help me when nobody else did. “You’ve stitched someone up before, haven’t you?”
He put down the bottle, keeping his eyes on mine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to rest because that wound doesn’t look so great.”
“How would you know how to stitch someone up when there’s nobody else like me? Or am I wrong? Are there others like me?”
“Just sit down, okay? I don’t want you pulling those stitches.”
“Or what? How do you even know that’s a bad thing?”
He got a patient look on his face. “Because it makes sense. The stitches keep the wound closed so it can heal itself. You said that yourself. If you rip them open, you’ll tear your skin even more.”
“Yeah?” This time, I took a step toward him. I reached behind my back. “Why don’t I just give them a tug and see what happens?”
“You’re nuts.”
“Tell me how you know this stuff. Tell me how you know how to stitch people up and torture them with spirits.”
His jaw clenched and he didn’t answer.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Tugging now.”
“Go ahead.”
I glared at him. Heat flashed through my skin the instant I touched it. I jerked away from it, knowing I’d failed. He’d called my bluff. My hand dropped to my side and I tried to ignore the pain for long enough to make sense of the jumble in my head. “Michael, you can’t turn up at my house, out of nowhere, and suddenly expect me to trust you because I don’t. It doesn’t matter how much you think we have in common—I don’t trust you. I don’t think I ever will.”
“I know.” His voice was quiet, small. He looked across the room at me for a really long time before he exhaled and his shoulders sagged. “I had a brother too.”
“Had a brother?”
His eyes snapped to mine. “It’s not what you think. He’s not dead. Mom took him with her when she left. He was a slow healer.”
I sucked in my breath, but Michael went on. “If he hurt himself really badly, then I helped him. And yeah, I stitched him up a couple times so he’d heal better. But he wasn’t like you.”
His jaw clenched and his fingers closed around the bottle. “Mom took him away because the Bashers found out about him. They started threatening us. Mom wanted to leave, but Dad wouldn’t agree to go. He didn’t try to stop her leaving, but Cheyne did. He said she knew too much about their research. So one day I woke up and she’d left in the night. My brother’s the reason Dad started working on nectar in the first place. He went searching for a cure—disappeared for months sometimes when I was a kid. But now I don’t know what he’s doing or why, and he doesn’t tell me anything anymore.” He turned away from me, put the bottle back in the kit, and leaned on the dresser, shoulders slumped, not looking at me. His hair fell over his face in the mirror.
I stared at the floor, thinking that I shouldn’t have pushed it so far. I didn’t want to talk about my family either. The fact that Josh had known he was mortal was a secret I wouldn’t ever share with anyone. That he’d died trying to save me…
I looked everywhere but at Michael and noticed the smears of blood on the carpet where I’d walked earlier. Wanting to change the subject, I asked, “Do you think we should clean up the glass?”
“Not you. You should rest or you’re never going to heal.” He exhaled and turned around. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
He turned to leave and I thought about the near-empty kitchen downstairs. I remembered the charge card that my parents had left for me, but it wouldn’t be safe to use now. I may as well cut it up with my nail scissors.
“There’s not a lot of food,” I said.
“It’s okay, I brought some with me, just in case.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Eggs, cheese, sun-dried tomato. Do you like omelets?” He sounded wary, as though he’d asked me whether I preferred guns or swords.
“Yeah. I do.” I chilled all of a sudden, hollow. My stomach was a black pit. I rubbed my forehead. “Thanks.”
He gave me a nod and that was all before he disappeared from the room. As soon as he was gone, I crawled under the blanket. A short while later, the automatic garage door rolled up and his car grumbled inside, muffled by the walls downstairs.
I tried to decide how I felt about Michael being in the house. More than that, I wondered how long he’d stay. Having him there made my heart kick as if I was about to perform on stage. My skin still tingled from where he’d touched me. My reaction to him was like being even more alive than I already was. I rubbed my eyes and poked my head over the edge of the bed to see my duffel bag still on the floor, full of my things. I’d planned on leaving and I figured that was still a good idea. Just because Michael was there didn’t change the fact that the house wasn’t safe anymore.
My head had stopped ringing by the time I smelled cooked eggs and melted cheese. I pushed back the covers and couldn’t believe how much my mouth watered.
He didn’t say anything as he put the plate down in front of me, juggling a glass of juice onto the bedside table. He hadn’t brought up a second plate, and I aske
d, “Aren’t you having any?”
He tilted his head toward the stairs. “Mine’s in the kitchen.”
“Oh.” I blinked at my plate, not wanting to eat alone. I tried to read his expression, guessing that he either didn’t want to eat with me or he needed my permission. I didn’t know which, but I decided to take a chance. “You can bring it up here if you like.”
For a moment, he scrutinized my face. Then he shrugged and left, and I didn’t know whether or not he planned on coming back. Footsteps on the stairs a moment later answered my question.
As he entered the room, his eyes went from my face to my untouched plate. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I was waiting for you.” I bit my lip as he perched on the edge of the bed like an awkward gorilla. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to leave, I took the first mouthful and the savory flavors burst between my teeth. It practically knocked me over. “Mm-mmm. This is good.” I stuffed another huge forkful into my mouth.
The corner of his lips tugged up. His shoulders relaxed and he looked more like he belonged at the end of my bed.
I said, “You know, I honestly didn’t believe you could cook.”
He shrugged. “Since Mom left, I cook all the time—”
“Really? I figured you’d have a housekeeper. Staff. You know.”
“Dad doesn’t like strangers in the house. He likes to bring his work home.”
I was too busy eating to see his expression. “But this.” I poked my fork at it. “This is really good.”
“I can’t figure you out, Ava.”
The seriousness of his voice weighed on me and I dared to glance up—but only after cramming in another forkful. “Oh, yeah? That makes two of us.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
I swallowed. “Neither was I.”
He shook his head. “I killed your brother and you’re letting me eat with you.”
So that’s what he was thinking. I stared at the last piece of omelet. He had killed my brother. And I was letting him eat with me. I guessed on some level it didn’t make sense—sharing a meal with my brother’s murderer. But then, not a lot of my life made sense at that point. “He killed you first.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Okay.” I put my fork down and met his eyes, hoping I wouldn’t see images of Josh falling. “You didn’t know he was going to die.”
“It doesn’t matter. I meant to kill him.”
“Yes, you meant to kill him. But you didn’t mean for him to die.” My voice sounded so matter-of-fact, so sure of itself, as though there wasn’t any part of me that disagreed—no sneaky, angry thoughts in the back of my mind questioning his motives. It was true that I didn’t trust him, but I realized that I didn’t blame him anymore either. Not in that moment, with the two of us perched in my room. Maybe tomorrow would be different, but right then all I wanted to do was eat and forgive.
He shook his head. “It must have been the first time I ever felt like that. When he turned up in that Basher uniform and he stabbed me, it made me so mad. I completely lost it. I’ve never…” His eyes flickered as if he was going over it in his head. He dropped his fork and it clattered onto his plate, but he didn’t seem to notice as he put his hand to his chest. “When I died, there was just—nothing—in my ears. This silence. Just … impulses. It was like my arm moved on its own, my fingers closed on the knife, and pulled it out, and I wasn’t even in control.” He suddenly focused on the fork, snapping back into the present. His eyes sought mine. “I talk too much.”
My plate was empty. Somehow I’d finished the last bite without noticing. I avoided him as I studied the leftover swirl of melted butter. “What are you going to do now?”
He said, “I’m going to make amends.”
I bit my lip and wondered what that meant, but I let him finish his meal in silence.
He put his fork down. “I’m not going back home. If you don’t want me here, just say so and I’ll leave. But I’m never going back there. I don’t understand what my dad’s doing and I don’t want to be part of it. I can’t go back to my old life anyway.”
“I know.” I nodded toward my bag. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I guess you can come with me.” I thought of his car. “Actually, I guess I could do with a ride. But that’s up to you.”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll clean up dinner. You should get some sleep.”
His hand brushed mine as he reached for my plate, and I wondered if making amends meant waiting on me hand and foot. I dared to meet his eyes for a second. No, it was something else, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what.
He disappeared into the hall and part of me wanted to call him back, ask him how long he was going to stick around. Just tomorrow? The next day? The words stopped in my throat. I glanced at my bag again and grabbed a pair of pajamas, heading across to the bathroom.
When I got back, I was surprised to find a sleeping bag unrolled at the base of my bed, but its owner was nowhere to be seen. My eyebrows went right up. “Taking liberties.” But I found I didn’t really mind. I didn’t want to be alone.
I jumped as my phone rang, feeling my heart bang against my ribs. I checked the caller ID. “Hannah!”
Her voice was a whisper. “Ava! My parents will kill me if they find out I’m calling you. I’ve spent the weekend at the recovery center. The nurses keep whispering about viruses and bacteria—and cancer. I thought only animals got that. You wouldn’t believe how freaked out my parents are. But I had to call you. Are you okay?”
I almost started to cry. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I mean. I’m not. Not really. But I am. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Ava, I’m sorry about Josh. I can’t believe it. Nobody can. We’re all in shock.”
I didn’t know what to say. My best friend had finally called me back and I was about to turn into a blubbering mess.
“They said on the news that you were back in the recovery center. There are reporters everywhere. I was hoping I might bump into you here.”
“No.” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see it. “I’m not at the recovery center. You should never believe the news, right?”
She paused. I sensed her fidget on the other end of the line. “So, where are you? I want to see you. I want to know you’re okay.”
“Um.” My head whirled. “I’m at home, but don’t come over…” I struggled to think of a lie that would keep her away—and safe.
Her voice went quiet. “Wow, I didn’t think they’d let you stay there. I heard they evacuated everyone because they think you’re contagious. People are totally freaking out about this mortality thing.”
I took a deep breath and a plan formed in my head. “Look, I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Dance studio?”
“No.” My response was too sharp. I tried to soften my voice. “No, I can’t go back there. How about behind the café though? You know, at the bottom of the studio, in the alley. I really don’t want the reporters in my face.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“And Hannah, can you do me a big favor? Can I borrow some money?”
There was a pause.
“I promise I’ll pay it back. It’s just … everything’s kind of … I just really need your help.”
Her voice softened. “You can count on me, Ava. Tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Great.”
“Take care, Ava.”
I clicked off the phone and sagged onto the bed, ready to sleep and forget.
The darkness lifted beyond my eyelids and a sudden rush of awareness took over. Blood on the carpet. Glass in my back. My eyes shot open, but with the quilt over the window, I couldn’t tell what time it was. I slipped out of bed and padded across the floor, tripping over an arm flung around the end of my blanket.
Michael was asleep on the floor, his head resting on the rolled up butterfly quilt. He must have dragged it off the bed and over himself. No wonder I’d been cold in the ni
ght.
I watched his face, how calm he looked while everything churned inside me. Maybe if he stayed there, asleep, there would be one part of my life that was under control, one part that was peaceful. I glanced at the door where he’d wedged a chair under the handle and I could pretend—just for a moment—that my room was safe.
Then I came upon the kit and the bottle of methylated spirits resting on my dressing table, a nasty reminder. I backed away from it, running my hand over my eyes as I crept over to the window. I pulled aside the quilt and cracked open the blinds, peering down at Mrs. Hubert’s low-set, brick home. Dark gray settled over her roof, a first brief glint off the solar panels she’d had installed two weeks before. I guessed she didn’t have any idea then that final death was only a couple of weeks away.
A shadow passed behind her window. I frowned down at her living room, thinking that something moved there. That wasn’t possible. She was gone. Everybody was.
Unless…
I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the sudden tension in them. I was about to turn away from the window when there was a crack. The sound crashed through the air moments before glass and wood shattered over me.
Chapter Twelve
I HUNCHED MY BODY, curling downward and away from the falling debris. The quilt came with me, sliding to the floor, and something bit my ear.
I followed the object as it flew through the air and lodged in the wall. Then I jumped to my feet and leaped over where Michael was still asleep.
He lurched up, groggy, driven awake by the crash. “Ava!”
We collided and one of his arms came up around me, his eyes meeting mine as he pulled me against his bare chest. In one swift movement, he twisted us around, his back to the window, blocking me. My eyes widened. A shout surfaced in the back of my throat as the next bullet hit him.
Michael braced. There was another bullet—and another. With each, he pushed me away with rigid arms, spitting blood, still holding me so his body protected mine, but not so close that the bullets might speed through him to me.