by Meg Kassel
“Um. Oh dear. We’re still here,” says an awkward voice from the doorway.
We turn, remembering Lacey and Deno. I don’t know what’s more shocking—that Reece turned from crow to boy in front of my friends and I’m standing here kissing him moments later, or the fact that they’re composed about it. A normal person would be climbing the walls. “Oh. Very sorry about that.” A blush heats my cheeks. “I don’t even know where to start explaining all…this.” I gesture to Reece, who rolls his shoulders.
Lacey shifts her gaze from Reece to me. “A portion of our town is destroyed. There are creatures running around with bees in their mouths, stinging people and infecting them with some sort of psychosis-inducing venom. Speaking for myself…” She points to Reece. “This is the least of my worries.”
Deno narrows one eye. “Aside from my coarse language.”
“I always worry about you, Deno.” She gives him a blinding smile. “Or I should say, Daniel.”
Deno blinks at her as if she just said all that in a foreign language. “What’s with you?”
“My God, you cannot be that dense.” Reece rakes a hand through his damp hair. “She likes you, and if you have half a brain, you’ll like her back and do your best to not screw it up. Later, though. Let’s survive the night first.”
Lacey’s cheeks pinken, but she appears pleased with Reece’s assessment. Deno still looks vaguely confused.
Reece reinforces the throw blanket around his waist and stretches. His spine pops and crunches with each bend and twist. He groans, with pain or relief, I can’t tell. His grimace could mean either.
“Easy does it, man.” Deno’s pained gaze swings from Lacey to Reece. “Does it hurt when you…do that?”
“What? Change into a person? It’s excruciating.” Reece rolls his shoulder, unleashing another series of grinding pops. We all groan at the sound. “It’s still the least awful aspect of my curse.” He looks at me, an apology pulling down his brow. “We can’t stay here. Rafette has enlisted the help of a few other Beekeepers who have arrived. It won’t take them long to look for us here.”
“I thought they didn’t work together,” I say.
“They don’t, usually. Maybe they want to see if his plan can work. If there is a way to break the Beekeeper curse,” Reece replies, and for the first time, there’s worry in his eyes. Perhaps he’s no longer certain that Rafette’s scheme is impossible.
My heart drops. “How long?”
He shrugs. “They checked here a few hours ago. They will circle back when they’ve exhausted their efforts elsewhere.”
“Who is coming here?” Lacey asks. “The Beekeepers?”
Reece nods.
“Okay.” Deno scrubs his hands over his face. “What do they want?”
Reece sighs. “Me.”
Deno blinks at him. “You?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why you?” Deno smirks. “One of them have the hots for you?”
Reece raises his brows to Lacey. “You seem like a smart girl. Are you sure about this guy?”
Lacey bites down on a laugh, but Deno’s face goes red. “Yeah, ha-ha. But it’s a real question. Why are they after you? And what does that mean for us?”
Reece sobers instantly. “Rafette believes his curse is transferrable to harbingers. I have no clue about the mechanics of this, but he’s convinced that if he can force me to accept his curse, his own soul can be set free. It doesn’t mean anything to you and Lacey. You both got caught in the middle.”
“And what’s Angie’s role in all this?” Lacey asks.
Reece’s jaw clenches. “Rafette thinks that if he can get his hands on Angie, I’ll go along with his plan in return for her freedom. Frankly, I’m more worried about him stinging her. I don’t plan to let Rafette anywhere near her. I’ll protect Angie until Rafette leaves—and he’ll have to leave—and then I’ll depart with my harbinger family.”
Deno lets out a breath. “So you didn’t break up because he tried to—”
“No, Deno,” I snap. “Ugh.”
“Tried to what?” Reece’s brows knit in confusion.
“Nothing,” I grind out, sending Deno a killing look.
“That’s just so sad.” Tears brighten Lacey’s eyes. “You really can’t stay, Reece?”
“No,” Reece says. “It’s a struggle to stay in human form as it is. The curse is fighting me, pressing me to fly.”
“That’s terrible.” Lacey frowns at him, as if any of this were his choice. “That’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah. It totally sucks,” Deno says. “But like he said, we’re being hunted by Bee-guys right now, and Lacey and I are not going to let them win here. So how do we defeat them?”
Reece looks amused. “We don’t. They’re more powerful than harbingers. And they’re true immortals. They can’t be killed by any known means.”
“What are their weaknesses?” Deno persists. “Do they have any?”
Reece tilts his head, thinks. “Well, after a disaster, they leave quickly. They can’t tolerate the change in energy. They can’t go underground, either. It bugs them out for some reason. They have no mental abilities that we know of, like telepathy or anything. We can sense when they’re near, but it doesn’t go the other way, as far as we know.” He shrugs. “That’s it, I think.”
“So we wait them out,” Deno says. “All of us. We stick together.”
Reece studies him for a moment, then nods. “But we can’t stay here. If they choose to attack, their bees will find a way inside. I’ll know if Rafette is on his way, but we need to keep moving, find someplace better hidden.”
“No.” I wag my finger between Deno and Lacey. “You two are getting out of here. On the first rescue helicopter we see.”
Lacey’s eyes widen. “We won’t leave you.”
I shake my head firmly. “I appreciate that, but I need you two to be safe. This isn’t your fight.”
Lacey’s eyes narrow. “How exactly is it yours?”
I don’t like this question. I bite my bottom lip and search for a way around it. There isn’t one, and I won’t start lying to my friends now, after all this uncomfortable truthfulness. I won’t insult them that way. “My mother was stung by a Beekeeper.” Breathe. It’s not so bad, saying it out loud. “It’s what killed her, ultimately.”
Deno’s gaze goes sharp. “But she never hurt you. She never acted like the people out there, setting fires and attacking for no reason.”
“She became addicted to opiates.” I rub the dull ache in my ankle. “We lived in a Volkswagen van, and she told fortunes for a living. She died of a drug overdose.”
“But she never hurt you, did she?” He leans forward. “She never beat you or anything.”
Lacey gives him an odd look. “Deno, what…?”
“It’s okay,” I say to her. “No, she never beat me, but her behavior was abusive. You can’t use drugs like she did and give a kid a healthy life. You can’t—” I drag in a knotted breath and close my eyes. Let my heart rate ease back to normal. “Look, if they sting me, I’ll make sure I’m not a danger to anyone. I’ll check myself into an institution or something.” I don’t want to think about the “or something.”
“They’re not going to sting you,” Reece says.
“You keep saying that,” I say. “How do you know?”
He studies me with tired eyes. Eyes that have seen so many terrible things. “Because the last time Rafette stung a harbinger’s loved one, it did not achieve the desired result.”
Loved one. My heart bumps around under my ribs, painful and thrilling and, as Lacey so aptly put it, tragic. “What do you mean?”
Reece’s voice goes gentle. “Destroying your mother’s mind did not free the Beekeeper of his curse. Hank didn’t take on Rafette’s curse.” He rolls a shoulder, and the joint pops in place. He lets out a relieved sigh. “Rafette may be sociopathic, but he learned from his mistakes.”
I swallow t
hrough a suddenly parched throat. “So what are they going to do to me instead?”
“Nothing. They’re not going to get near you.”
“But if they—”
“I don’t know what they’d do, okay?” he says. “I’m not a sociopath.”
“Are you sure?” Deno tosses out with another smirk. “You feed off the dead.”
Reece turns to Deno, eyes hard and black. He looks ferocious, even with a rainbow throw blanket knotted around his waist. Deno shrinks back.
“I’m a lot of things, Daniel,” Reece enunciates each word through his teeth. “Feeding on death energy is not a choice for me any more than eating food is for you. I don’t know what that makes me, but I’m not a sadist. I don’t hurt people.” He turns toward the stairs. “Don’t compare me to a Beekeeper again.”
Reece lopes up the stairs. The instant he’s out of sight, I turn to Deno. “What was that about?”
Deno rests his head in his tense fingertips. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I guess I’m overtired.”
“Fine, be overtired,” I say. “But don’t be an ass, too.”
“That wasn’t nice, Deen.” Lacey shakes her head. “Come on. Let’s pack up some food and water. If Beekeepers are coming, we need to move.”
Deno gets to his feet and follows after her like a scolded child.
I look at the stairs and sigh. Reece. It’s important we don’t drag Deno and Lacey into this game of manhunt. We can’t “stick together,” as Deno said. I don’t understand why Reece agreed with that statement.
I find Reece in the upstairs bathroom, scrubbing water over his face. He looks up. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I lean a hip against the doorframe. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He braces his hands on either side of the sink. Droplets drip from his wet hair into the water with rhythmic plops.
“I don’t remember Deno being so provoking,” he says.
“Me, either. He says he’s tired.”
“Yeah.” Reece lets the water drain and pulls a towel off the rack. He dries his face, then loops the towel around his neck.
I raise a brow. “That’s my towel, you know.”
Of course he knows. It’s my bathroom. And if he wasn’t sure, the dozens of skin and hair products crowding the sink would give him a clue. Although, in fairness, my dad’s collection rivals mine.
A smile curves Reece’s lips. He crowds me against the doorframe. “I know. It smells like you.”
My heart trips over itself, picks up the pace. “Ew. Before or after a shower?”
“After, of course.” His hands encircle my waist. Heat emanates from him, still abnormal for a person, but it’s not the intense burn of earlier.
“I, uh… Hmm.” My thoughts unravel. What did I come up here to talk to him about? It was important. Really…important.
Oh, right. I let out a frustrated groan. “Reece, Lacey and Deno need to get out of Cadence with some human rescuers, and you need to take off. Go back to your group and disappear.” My throat threatens to shut down around the words. He can’t know how hard they are to say. “If they think we broke up and you don’t care about me, they’ll give up pursuing you.”
“It’s too late to make them think I don’t care about you.” His hands slide around my waist, trace up the bumps of my spine. “I will always care about you.”
I suck in a sharp breath, inhaling the scent of woods and earth and my cucumber-melon cleanser he must have washed his face with. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?” His voice is husky. “I fell in love with you when we were six. No matter what happens, that’s the truth. You should know it.”
My heart swells and knots, pushes so hard against my ribs I fear they’ll snap. “I can’t take it, Reece.” The words rip out in a rasp. “When this is all over, you’ll be gone. Forever. And I have to go on. Finish high school. Go to college. Hopefully, make a life.”
His gaze slides over my face. Pain tightens his features, quickly disguised. “Yes. All those things and more.”
A tear slides down my cheek. He wipes it away with his thumb. “Right. Well, how am I supposed to do that if I can’t stop being in love with you?”
His hand stills. “You’re in love with me?”
Seriously? I press down the urge to hit him. “And you called Deno dense?”
“Deno’s right—I do feed off the dead. I’m unnatural. Disgusting. An abomin—”
I shut him up by closing the space between us and pressing my fingertips to his lips. “Say one more nasty thing about yourself and I’ll clobber you.”
Reece pulls me up against his bare chest. There aren’t even words for this feeling. It’s need and longing and a hearty dose of desperation. Thoughts spill away as he lowers his head. His lips brush against mine in the whisper of a kiss. It’s different from any other. It tastes of certainty and sadness and promises that can never be made. It drags me under, like floodwaters from a broken dam.
Too soon, he eases back, breath harsh against my cheek as his hands slide to my hips. Then, with what looks like colossal effort, he pushes himself away from me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, shivering with rejection.
He rests his forehead against mine. “Everything. Your friends are downstairs. Rafette is on our heels and I—” He leans back, rubs tense hands over his face. “I’m up here kissing you like we have all the time in the world.”
I draw in a deep breath. Downstairs, I can hear Lacey playing the piano. A long, plaintive melody rising above the hum of the generator.
I should be thankful he’s so flipping considerate, but with my heart beating out of my chest and my head spinning like a top, I can’t quite manage it. “Right.”
He edges past me, into the hall. A flush rides high on his cheeks, and he doesn’t meet my gaze. “Go ahead and wash up. I’m going to borrow some of your dad’s clothes.”
My lips move and sound comes out. I’m not sure how. “Yeah. Sure.”
I close the bathroom door and dunk my head under cold running water until my face is numb. Now, with water burning my sinuses, I see his wisdom in stopping our kiss. It just pisses me off that there is never a good time for Reece and me. Probably never will be. And I’m so tired of remembering that little fact.
I peel off my filthy clothes like they’re a layer of rotting skin. I ball them up and stuff them in the wastebasket. I definitely don’t smell like my clean towel. The shower beckons me to blow through the fuel in the generator and take a long, hot one. Instead, I use a washcloth and cold water to scrub off what filth I can.
After, I pad down the hall in a towel to my room. Reece isn’t in there. I look around my room in a state of disorientation, but not because it’s different. It’s so much the same, I don’t know what to make of it. The pile of laundry lays half in, mostly out of the hamper. A knotted mess of headphone wires and power cords I’ve been meaning to untangle sits next to my bed. Necklaces hang off my cluttered vanity mirror. It’s all so very much the same.
But the owner of this room is not the same.
I put on clean underwear. Jeans. A black sweater. Warm socks and the hiking boots I wear on the trails. I lay back on the bed, sighing as my body sinks into the mattress and exhaustion smashes me across the head. The bed is a cool purple paradise, and I’m so tired. The thought of crawling under the rumpled covers and sleeping for a week makes my body ache with a very different kind of longing than it had a few minutes ago in Reece’s arms.
He appears in my doorway, composed and dressed in a pair of my dad’s designer jeans and a snug thermal shirt. “I didn’t stop kissing you because I wanted to. I hope you know that.”
I gaze at the ceiling. “I know.”
“Maybe one day…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know—”
I hold up a hand. “Stop. Just…stop. Don’t pretend we’ll ever be together. You know we won’t.”
He comes forward and sits on the mattress next to me. His hands close on mine, tightly
. “I remember those times we spent together when we were little kids. I thought—no, wished so hard it hurt—that I could be a normal boy and see you every day. That I could walk to school with you and sit with you at lunch. Watch you change. Grow up with you.” His lips curve gently, at the corners. “I’d give anything to be a normal guy for you, Angie.”
“You did get to go to school with me,” I say.
“That’s true,” he says with a smile. “I’ll carry these memories with me for the rest of my existence, however long that is.”
I sit up with a strangled sob and wrap my arms around him. His arms loop around me and pull me close, and his heart beats firm and steady against my cheek. The rise and fall of his breathing, so ordinary. So human. But he’s not. I must not pretend otherwise. Not when a short while ago, I watched a crow transform into this boy I’m embracing.
This boy I cannot keep, no matter how much I want to.
With effort, I sit up and shift away from him. I wipe at an errant tear with rubbery fingers. “Let’s go. We need to go.”
Downstairs, the piano stops abruptly. Outside, a chorus of crows begins to shriek.
35- the bus ride
“Angie!” Lacey yells. “Someone’s here!”
Rafette is here.
Reece and I practically fly downstairs. My ankle gives out, and I trip on the last step, but he catches me and swings me to the floor. “Kitchen.”
“Wha—?” My question turns into a yelp as glass shatters somewhere in the house.
He grabs my hand and yanks me forward as the security system screams to life. The alarm is ear-splitting and pointless. The alarm signal won’t reach dispatch with all the communication lines down. Even if it did, no one would come. Not to an evacuated town with a whole bunch of other alarms going off everywhere. Figures make shifting shadows at the windows. I don’t know how many, surrounding the house like a pack of wolves. A swarm of bees.
Surrounded. I stumble after Reece, stomach sinking, into the kitchen. Deno holds open the door for us, and Reece slams it behind us. Lacey trembles, clutching a stuffed backpack to her chest. Roger leans against my leg, looking like a predator. He barks, teeth bared to the gums.