by Cecily White
“Don’t you die,” I ordered as I tugged the bolt out.
My dad hadn’t returned with the coffee yet, thank God. Don’t get me wrong, I really did need a boost, but the thought of having Dad around while I did it made me uncomfortable on levels I wasn’t ready to visit. Healing Jack touched me in ways I couldn’t describe. Ways I couldn’t control. Ways I didn’t want to share with anyone.
Carefully, I laid my hands over his bare chest and pulled open the Crossworld channel.
“Salve pacem.”
Every ounce of strength I possessed poured into the charm—every bit of love, every memory I had of him. Light welled inside me and hovered for a moment, tentative. The portal had drained my Crossworld energy horribly and for an awful moment I wondered, will there be enough? Will I be enough? Tears of frustration formed in my eyes as I squeezed them tighter.
Finally, painfully, it gushed at Jack.
“Yes.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Shadows from the channel slithered ugly pathways over my skin, but I kept going. Healing. Pulling. Forcing life into his body.
“What’s she doing?” Dad demanded from the doorway.
Henry smiled sadly. “What she has to.”
Under my hand, the vibrant hum of electricity pulsed, hot and vicious. It knitted his flesh together—first the deepest wounds, then the tissue surrounding, then, finally, his skin.
The whole room smelled like burned leaves and vanilla body spray; the air practically crackled with magic.
After what seemed like forever, Jack’s breathing stabilized and I collapsed beside him, the channel still lingering. Blood coated my bedspread in thick puddles, its sweet, coppery smell stinging my nose. I hated that smell. It was death. Death and magic.
I must have dozed off because I didn’t even struggle when Bud finally dragged me off Jack and wrapped a Hello Kitty blanket around me.
“Hey,” I said, drowsy. “Guess I should have stayed home from school, huh?”
“You think?” He sank onto the edge of the bed and combed the hair out of my eyes, like he used to when I was little. “You remembered it, didn’t you? The attack?”
I nodded.
“I was afraid of that.” He looked at the ground. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said honestly. The truth was, I didn’t want to think about it. If I thought too hard about it, I’d have to admit it was my fault. It was all my fault. Mom’s death. Jack’s bonding. If I had just answered Mom, none of it would have happened.
“I could have saved her,” I whispered. “If I’d been braver—”
“Baby, no,” Bud said, his lips warm against my forehead. “Don’t do that to yourself. You were seven years old. A lot of people would have died that night if not for you.”
“But she called to me. I was too scared,” I said. “God, Jack was right not to want me. I’m nothing but a coward.”
“Oh, Ami.” Bud sighed. “There are a lot of names I want to call you right now, but ‘coward’ isn’t one of them. You think a coward could have done this? You think a coward could love that boy as much as you do, even knowing you’ll lose him? Love takes courage, sweetheart, maybe more than most people know. That’s not something a coward can handle.”
Tears pricked behind my eyes, blurring Jack’s outline into a mush of white and red. How had everything gotten so screwed-up?
Bud held me as I cried—deep wracking sobs that cut through ten years. It took what felt like hours to cry it out. When he finally scooped me into his arms, all I wanted was an endless stack of pancakes and maybe a Star Wars marathon followed by a year of sleep.
The worst part was, we weren’t even safe yet. Jack still had the stupid prophecy on his head and aside from knowing the Graymason was female, we weren’t any closer to figuring out her identity.
Dad lugged me to the bathroom and sat on the toilet while I showered. I mean, he had the seat down and everything. I guess he just wanted to make sure I didn’t pass out and crack my skull open. On any other day, it would have been mortifying. Okay, scratch that. It was pretty mortifying. Not scar-my-psyche, white-padded-walls, long-term-therapy awful, but still nothing I cared to tell Lisa about.
I waited until he left before I pulled on my tank top and pajama pants, then I sat at the edge of the bathtub for a minute so I didn’t fall over. Or throw up. Henry had stripped the bed while I showered and replaced my Strawberry Shortcake bedding with Smurfs sheets.
Smurfs.
Which meant Henry was either in cahoots with Bud on the whole Sabotage-Amelie’s-Love-Life agenda, or it was time to visit Bed Bath & Beyond.
Jack lay between the sheets looking pale, yet alive. The only reminder of the gaping wound in his chest was a patch of dimpled red skin. I sat cross-legged next to him, tracing my fingers over the scar. It looked like a lily—the trademark flower of funerals. Because that’s what we needed—more foreboding.
“Hey.” I nudged his sleepy form.
No response. Good.
“We need to talk,” I said, weirdly nervous. “Since you’re kind of in my bed, and the couch sucks rocks, I’m thinking I’ll just crash here next to you, if that’s okay. I mean, I know I bug you and it wouldn’t be okay normally, but I’m hoping you’ll cut me some slack since I kinda saved your life. What do you say? Truce?”
He lay perfectly still, shadows coloring the half-moon hollows under his eyes. It was eerie how connected I still felt to him. I wasn’t ready to be apart from him yet. Oddly, the thought of saying that out loud scared me almost as much as the actual being apart from him.
I’d just curled onto the pillow when a muffled knock sounded at the door. Henry stuck his head in.
“Is this a bad time?”
I glared at him.
“Right. I just wanted you to know, I tried to call Miss Anselmo on the cell phone in your bag. No answer. Same with Miss Shaw and Mr. Marino.” He gave a deep sigh. “They could be sleeping. It’s too soon to panic.”
My heart gave a lurch at their names. Crap, Alec might already have them. They could already be dead.
Henry must have read the panic in my eyes. “Try not to worry. They’re resourceful and he’s got no reason to hurt them yet.”
Yet.
No, he might not hurt them yet, but he would soon. Another reason to feel guilty…like I needed one.
“Thanks, Henry.”
“Sleep tight.” He smiled. “If you don’t mind, your father instructed me to leave the door open.”
Yeah, that figured. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and Dad’s worried about my virtue.
Achy and tired, I slid between the cool sheets next to Jack and lifted his arm into a cradle under my head. His body hummed against my skin, warming me from the inside out. Even now, strands of golden light glimmered wherever I touched, the same glow I’d marveled at in the motel. How had I not recognized the bond? Was I a total idiot, or just tragically oblivious to all things romantic?
My fingertip sketched out a weak protection ward along the curve of his chest, but it sputtered and died.
Super.
The real Graymason could show up any minute and I was totally spent. I didn’t even know if Jack wanted me to fight. He’d been stalking death since the day I met him. What guarantee did I have that, come Saturday at dawn, he wouldn’t just walk off a cliff, eager to become victim number three hundred and twelve?
“You’re such a jerk.” I let my hand settle over his heart. “How am I supposed to save you when you won’t save yourself?”
The answer came as soon as my eyes fell shut.
…
I stood in a dark cavern, smooth rock walls rising up on all sides as if they’d been carved out by water. It took me less than a second to recognize it as the antechamber of the Great Books. Five doors arched before me, the familiar lines of their carvings barely visible in the sleepy light. Only the door with the ourbouros glowed. The Book of Lies. Brilliant white light poured out through the cracks around the door’s edge, and just as befor
e, something old and powerful urged me toward it.
With each step, the light intensified, painfully hot, until the outline of a person came into focus. I don’t know what I expected. Whatever I thought I would see, it wasn’t this.
My mother.
At least, it looked like my mother. Chestnut curls spilled down her back, her eyes bright blue. She held her arms out, shimmery white fabric flowing around her like it was no more substantial than air. Then it hit me. It wasn’t. And neither was she.
As much as I longed to run into her arms, to hear her tell me everything would be fine, I couldn’t. She was a lie.
It finds the thing you want most in the world. Wasn’t that what Jack had said?
“My mom is dead,” I told the woman. “You’re not real.”
Her eyes grew sad and she lowered her arms. “I’m as real as you want me to be.”
I watched in awe as she changed, shifting forms through every person I’d ever cared about—Bud, Lisa, Katie, Matt…even Lyle. She finally settled on Jack. Not the half-dead version I’d left beside me at home, but the Jack from my visions—beautiful and strong. My breath caught in my throat.
“This one? This is what you want?” the thing asked in Jack’s voice.
I shook my head, fighting back tears. “It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s impossible.”
But even as I said it, I remembered Jack’s words—that impossible things happen every day. And I couldn’t help wondering if, maybe, it was too soon to give up.
The Jack-thing smiled his adorable crooked smile. With that long, loping stride, he took three steps toward me and caught me in his arms. “Omelet,” he sighed. “Anything’s possible.”
Then he bent his head to my ear, and started whispering.
Ancient words.
Chapter Twenty:
Little Lies
The sound of demon hooves awakened me—a herd of hell-beasts storming the suburbs. Or possibly construction equipment from Mrs. Peabody’s renovation next door. My eyes fluttered open, scanning the room. Hello Kitty curtains, Pepto pink walls, rainbow stickers. Yup, still my room. No hell-beasts, thank God.
I stretched out on the bed, only to find empty space. Where was Jack? How long had I been asleep?
My hand slapped around in search of the alarm clock. Six p.m. Probably Friday. I tried to sit up, and immediately felt like yarking.
“I wouldn’t move too fast, if I were you.” Dane’s eternally amused voice came from the rocking chair in the corner. I turned—slower this time.
“Hey, wolf-boy. Does Jack know you’re in here?”
He gave an impish grin. “It’s a full moon tonight. What do you think?”
I’d take that as a no. Frankly, I wasn’t too worried. In my current state, no sane being would want to mate with me—even a hormonal werewolf on a lunar high. My head throbbed from dehydration and hunger. I couldn’t see my face, but dollars to donuts it resembled the hairball Lisa’s cat barfed up last week. I sniffed the air.
“Did y’all clean up, or something? It smells like ammonia in here.”
“Henry did it,” Dane explained. “Luc threatened to hire a maid service if we didn’t get rid of the blood stench. Dragging humans in at this point seemed like a bad idea.”
“Agreed.” Never underestimate a werewolf’s grasp on the obvious. “Where is Dracu-Luc, anyway? Getting cozy with the neighbors’ daughters?”
“Good guess, but no. Your house has some nasty anti-vampire wards on it. Luc was stuck outside most of the night. I think he’s back to Arianna’s errand list now,” he said. “You hungry?”
As if on cue, my stomach gave a loud rumble.
Dane chuckled. “Come on, let’s get you fed.”
It took all my resources to swing my legs out from under the covers and hobble down the wide stairs. Dane let me keep a hand on his shoulder in case I fell, and stayed close until we got to the kitchen. Judging from the rich, syrupy aromas drifting out of it, breakfast had been on for a while.
“They’re waiting for you,” he whispered. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not.”
“Really?” Dane gave me a nudge through the entry. “In that case, maybe you should be a little scared.”
Indeed, Bud and Jack sat, staring across the kitchen table at each other in complete and terrifying silence. They looked like some creepy reenactment of a western stand-off at high noon—except the streets had been replaced by a breakfast table, and the guns were swapped for waffles. As soon as I entered, Henry set down his spatula, switched off the stove, and hurried out. Clever guy.
“So,” I said, “howzitgoin’?”
More silence.
O-kay. Judging from the glare, Bud obviously knew I’d slept with Jack. Jack didn’t look too pleased, either.
My hands shook as I poured myself a cup of coffee and grabbed a plate, heaping it with waffles from the platter Henry set out. The coffee was tepid—like I cared.
Jack waited until I’d downed two giant plates of food and a quart of orange juice, then wadded up his napkin and tossed it on the table. “Bud, would you give us some privacy?”
I nearly spewed my coffee.
There is nothing—nothing—my father hates more than being dismissed in his own house. I remember one time, Elder Horowitz came over and suggested Bud “go for a walk” so he could speak to Mom in private. Dad went ballistic. His face turned purple. That little vein in his forehead started throbbing.
Hiroshima–Part Deux.
This time, astonishingly, Dad’s head did not explode. He froze for a moment and his fingers quit drumming. Finally, he stood, shooting off just the tiniest hint of a homicidal glare. “Thirty minutes,” he said. “Not one second more.”
The whole house rattled under his footsteps. After a minute, the door to his office slammed, and I swallowed my last bite of pecan danish.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said. “Blackmail? Or did you spike his herbal tea with Valium?”
Jack pushed his coffee mug away. “We need to talk.”
“You think?” Apparently, everyone had a handle on the obvious today.
Light filtered over Jack’s skin as he led me up the stairs, a low-level glow shimmering through him. I wanted to take it as a good sign—maybe he’d decided to spare my heart and not shred it into itty-bitty pieces.
“Sit down!” he ordered, when we reached my room.
Or not.
I obediently plopped on the edge of my bed and stared at the carpet. “Look, I know what you’re going to say. And before you get all pissy, you should know that I remember.”
He narrowed his gaze. “You remember?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean, not everything, obviously, but enough to get why you hate me. What I did—bonding you like that—it wasn’t fair.”
He hiked one eyebrow, but didn’t speak.
“I mean, we were just kids. It’s ridiculous to hold you to something that happened so long ago, which you never agreed to in the first place.” My voice sounded more certain than I felt, thank goodness…almost like I believed the trash coming out of my mouth. “So, since you didn’t choose this, and since there’s no one trying to kill us at the moment, I want to tell you that I absolve you.”
Jack’s evil eye intensified. “You absolve me?”
“Sure. It was only a partial bond, right? And no one expects you to honor it. So…you’re off the hook. You know, free.” I fluttered my hand in a stupid little motion, then stuck it out in front of me. “Can we still be friends?”
Okay, wow. Friends? Did that sound as lame as I think it did?
I sat there like an idiot with my hand dangling in the air while he stared at it. Of course, I wanted him to argue, to tell me I was wrong. Screw the Elders and screw the prophecy. We could run away and live in a ramshackle cabin somewhere with a weapons arsenal of our own and a two-headed guard dog, or whatever. Happily ever after, right?
“I called Chancellor Thibault,” he said, his eyes still gl
ued to my hand. “If I surrender, Alec will let your friends go. If I don’t, he’ll kill them.”
I dropped my hand. “You did what?”
“I called Chancellor—”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I said acidly. “That was obviously a rhetorical expression meaning, ‘How could anyone so smart do something so stupid?’ When is this supposed to happen?”
“Midnight,” he said, “at the gala.”
My nose wrinkled. “They’re still having that thing?”
Just goes to show what hubris the Elders are capable of. With all the diplomats and financial benefactors attending, they’d have to take the wards down. Jack and I could probably get on campus easily enough, but the place would be crawling with guards.
I folded my arms across my chest, trying not to convey how boneheaded I thought the whole idea was. “So, what’s the plan? Weapons? Explosives? Horde of flesh-eating zombies? How do we go in?”
For the briefest second, Jack’s eyes warmed. Then his game face was back. “There’s no plan, Ami. We don’t go in. I do.”
I frowned. “When I said I absolve you, that wasn’t meant as a suicide suggestion. For the moment, we’re still bonded.”
“Only partially.”
“Great, then I can partially kick your ass.” I prodded him with my toe. “Dude, you’re not going in without me. We’ll wait until Lisa and Katie are safe, then I’ll take out Alec. I can totally do it,” I insisted. “You saw what happened last night.”
“I didn’t, actually,” he said, “but Bud mentioned you were badass.”
“Bud said ‘badass’?” I asked, doubtful.
“I’m paraphrasing. What he actually said was that you make him want to start drinking again.”
Outside my window, the sky had blended to a mélange of taffy and cotton candy. It made the pink of my walls practically vibrate with color. With an almost imperceptible sigh, Jack lowered himself beside me. His skin felt warm through the thin fabric of his T-shirt, and I tried not to shiver. Already, threads of bond-light swirled between us.