by Lee Nichols
I giggled. It was true. A narcissist can never have a functioning relationship with another self-absorbed person. “Half the girls in school have crushes on you.”
“Or on my money,” he said. “Maybe I should go for Britta. She’s more interesting since she grew horns and a tail.”
“Ugh. I couldn’t bear that.”
“Then who, Emma?” He considered me. “Bennett’s in New York, and he always makes you cry. You aren’t really taken, are you?”
A rough voice came from the direction of the kitchen. “Yes. She’s taken.”
Bennett stood in the doorway, looking pale, red-eyed, and furious. His black long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans hung on his emaciated frame. Even after talking to Simon, I still had hoped that he’d cut down on the Asarum, but instead he’d upped his dose.
“Bennett,” I said, cautiously.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“What does it look like?” I said, pointing to our Latin texts. “We’re studying for a test.”
He casually glared at Harry. “Is that how you play it, Armitage?”
Harry didn’t back down. He tilted his head and grinned. “Well, it’s not my looks she’s after.”
“I’m not after anything.” I jumped up and crossed the room to Bennett. “What is up with you? Harry isn’t into me.”
“Yeah, I am,” Harry piped up. “Who wouldn’t be? Am I right, Stern?”
“Harry!” I said over my shoulder. “Not helping!”
“Your boyfriend’s an addict,” he said, dropping his habitual lightness. “Look at him, he’s jonesing right now, out of his mind. What’s he on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “A stupid Chinese herb. It only affects ghostkeepers. Gives them more power.”
Harry stepped closer to us. “You feeling strong, Bennett? Ready to beat the world?”
“Get out of my face,” Bennett snarled.
“Or what? You’re going to hit me?” Harry asked. “You can fool Emma, but you can’t fool me. I’ve been there.”
“Harry, shut up!” I said.
And I realized that’s what Harry wanted. He wanted to goad Bennett into hitting him. Harry wasn’t strong or athletic, but he was smart and brave. He saw that Bennett was an addict and wanted to show me what that meant.
He was trying to protect me by making Bennett beat him up.
I put my hands on Bennett’s chest and shoved him away from Harry, into the kitchen. “Stop this right now,” I told him. “This isn’t you.”
“I saw you. You were laughing and—”
“What—I’m not supposed to laugh when you’re not here?”
“No.” He rubbed a trembling hand over his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m so tired.”
As we stood there, I felt waves of spectral energy coming off him, building and cresting and crashing across the room. I felt the pulling gravity of his need, of his hunger for power, almost like a—almost like a wraith wanting to feed.
“Go upstairs,” I told him. “Wait for me.”
He shook his head like he was trying to shake away confusion. “Don’t leave me, I can’t—”
“I’ll be there,” I said gently. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
He pushed through the kitchen door into the hall, and I hoped that he didn’t notice Anatole and Celeste flinching from him.
I went back to Harry in the solarium. “I’m sorry about that, but you shouldn’t—”
“Don’t trust him, Emma. Whatever you think you two have, he’s got other needs now.”
“No. He’s fine—he’ll be fine. It’s just an herb, Harry, it’s not like—”
“Emma, that was hard-core and you know it.” He repacked his Latin text and Droid in his cargo bag and slipped it across his body as he rose. “Just watch yourself, okay?”
“You didn’t have to try to get beat up just to show me how bad it is.”
“We all have our strengths.” He placed his hands palms-together over his chest and said, “Namaste.”
That surprised a smile from me. “Oh, shut up.”
“I mean it, though,” he said, as he headed outside.
I thought about what it meant. “With love.” And I was happy to have him as a friend.
10
What’s Bennett’s favorite food? I asked Anatole. Something you can whip up really quick?
Anatole pursed his lips. Well, there iz beef bourguignon.
Pfft, Celeste said. That takez all day to cook.
He always like ze crepe, Anatole mused.
Oui! Celeste agreed. With ze chocolat and Cointreau.
I impatiently watched Celeste heating the pan over the huge Wolf stove while Anatole organized eggs, milk, and flour for the batter. And I lamented, not for the first time, how little I knew about Bennett. I mean, I knew the big things, but not the details. Like, how could I not know what his favorite food was?
Anatole spooned batter into the cast-iron skillet, and after a moment he expertly flipped it and added a layer of Nutella. He started to added a capful of Cointreau, but I stopped him.
Not that, I said. He doesn’t need anything more like that.
Anatole nodded, then scooped the crepe onto a plate and folded it into quarters. It had a sweet aroma that I hoped would entice Bennett to eat.
I thanked them and took the plate upstairs to find Bennett pacing in his attic room, tapping some indecipherable rhythm on his thigh as he walked. I checked for earbuds, but he was tapping to some random beat in his head.
“Let’s go,” he said, when he saw me. “You and me, right now.” He laid his hands on my shoulders. “We don’t need anyone else. We can find his ashes together. End this all. We can do it.”
“Bennett, I can’t do anything with you this close—you smell like Asarum.” It was a sickly sweet, almost rotten, gingery odor. I ducked from under his arms, ignoring the hurt look on his face. “Let’s stick with the plan. I’ll use the ring to search. You guard me. Okay?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, confused and exhausted. “I don’t know, Emma, what to do. I thought—if I could be with you, everything would be all right. But it’s not, is it?”
I’d never seen him so unsure. He was normally so self-confident it came off as arrogance, unless you knew him. Knew how much he would do for the ones he loved. Like me.
I grabbed his hand, and he tried to pull away. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Just stay with me now. Let me take care of you. I brought you something to eat. Anatole said it was one of your favorites.”
He stared at the plate. “Crepes. Those are my favorite.” He sounded like he was no longer sure. He took a bite, then set the fork down. “I’ll finish it later,” he said, which we both knew was a lie.
“Bennett, you have to eat,” I said.
“I need to rest first. Can I hold you?” he asked. “Would that be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t really want to be held. Not with that whirlpool of power swirling around him. He lay with his back against the headboard and I settled in the crook of his arm. He squeezed me for a moment, then closed his eyes.
“Is it true, what Harry said?” he asked, his eyes still closed. “That you’re always crying about me.”
“Not always.”
“He’s a good friend, standing up to me like that. You bring out the best in people.”
Not in you, I thought.
And as if he could read my mind, he said, “Even in me.”
His breathing began to even out as he fell asleep. But as I lay there against his bony frame, trying to ignore the unhealthy power burning through him, tears streamed down my cheeks. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Love shouldn’t make you miserable. You should feel at home in your boyfriend’s arms, sheltered and safe, not worried and guilty.
This was all my fault, and there was only one thing I could do about it. And it wouldn’t make either of us any happier.
…
I doze
d for a time, and when I woke I found Bennett standing at the window, staring into the darkness. He looked lean and dangerous—like a stranger.
I watched him for a minute before I spoke. “You’ve taken this whole bad-boy thing too far.”
He stiffened. “Is that what you think this is? An act?” He turned toward me. “I love you, Emma, and I’m doing this—”
“No! Don’t say it. You’re not doing this for me. You’re not killing yourself for me.”
“I’m doing this to kill Neos. To help you kill him. I’m doing this for my sister and my parents, for Martha, Yoshiro, and the others. And yeah, maybe I’m doing this for myself, because you’re not the only one with a destiny.”
Something about his tone stopped me for a moment. “You … Simon thinks we have a secret. But it’s you, isn’t it? What’s your secret, Bennett?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said, his eyes downcast.
“You swore to always tell me the truth.”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m just not going to tell you.”
I choked back tears as the truth hit me. “You think you’re going to die.”
“We’re fighting Neos,” he said, his blue eyes cold. “Any of us might die.”
“No. No, you’re planning on—” I swallowed. “I can’t even say it. I won’t forgive you, Bennett. If you leave me, I will not forgive you.”
“I’m learning, Emma.” His blue eyes brightened. “I’ve learned to use the Asarum to absorb power, I can use it to—”
“No!” I snapped. “Stop taking the Asarum, or … I can’t see you like this.”
The words hung in the air almost like his power, sickening and impossible to ignore.
“So this is it?” he said, after a long moment. “You’re done waiting for me?”
“I’m not done waiting for you, Bennett. I’ll never be done. But this isn’t you.”
I expected anger and disappointment. What I didn’t anticipate was his picking up the antique wooden chair and smashing it against the wall until it shattered. Then he hurled the standing mirror across the room and flung his bookshelf to the floor, and probably would’ve totaled the room if his parents hadn’t raced inside the attic, drawn by the noise.
“What is going on here?” Mr. Stern asked.
“We’re breaking up,” Bennett said. “You should be happy.”
A look crossed between his parents that I couldn’t even begin to discern. Mostly because I couldn’t handle my own emotions. This is what I wanted, right? If we weren’t together, he could stop taking the Asarum. That’s all that mattered, I told myself, as Bennett shoved past them and down the rickety stairs.
“Are you okay?” Mrs. Stern asked me.
I nodded. I hadn’t been afraid that he’d hurt me—he never would—but the mirror shattering had made a sickening noise, and his anger was so raw and out of control. I’d only ever seen him this furious around wraiths. And it was hard not to feel superstitious about the mirror. We really didn’t need more bad luck.
“That was my great-grandfather’s chair,” Mr. Stern said mournfully.
“Honestly, John, I don’t think broken furniture is our biggest problem,” Mrs. Stern said, but I felt her summoning Celeste, who appeared instantly with a broom and dustpan.
Celeste flashed a me a wide-eyed look of surprise and empathy before kneeling to clean the mess. Splintered wood and shards of glass were scattered over the attic floor.
When Mrs. Stern tried to comfort me, I told her I needed time alone. As they left, I stood at the attic window, watching Bennett’s Land Rover peel out over the gravel drive. My heart thumped inside me, feeling like it was going to burst from my chest.
Then I noticed a metal canister on the bedside table beside my phone. It was a box of loose-leaf chai tea, from a fancy tea shop in Manhattan. And when I scrolled through my phone, I saw that Bennett had added ten more apps and a playlist of twenty new songs. Instead of being happy, I only felt worse.
I didn’t go to school the next day. Simon never would’ve let me get away with that, but the Sterns either didn’t care or were stuck in the mire of their own depression. How would I know? I never even left my room.
Natalie and Lukas both knocked. I’d learned my lesson, though, and shoved my chair under the handle so Natalie couldn’t barge in. I heard her trying to talk Lukas into smashing in, but he refused. Either he didn’t want to get in trouble with the Sterns, or he understood I just wanted to be alone. It was more of a guy reaction to a problem. I’d noticed girls often liked to cry and relive every moment of distress with a friend. I wasn’t that kind of girl.
Instead, I listened to Bennett’s songs over and over. I kept my laptop in bed with me so I could look up the lyrics online and memorize them. One of the songs was about how life had no music “before you.” That’s how I felt, like all the music and color had gone out of the world. Sometimes a song could really hit you, even if it was from an artist who usually sang about her lady parts.
But I also wasn’t the kind of girl who was destroyed by a breakup, so the next morning I got dressed and went looking for Mrs. Stern.
She wasn’t having coffee in the breakfast nook, so I grabbed a cup of tea and went to find her in her office. The room was elegant and feminine, with botanical prints displayed along the beige walls, delicate shelves holding books and a seashell collection, and a large white desk in the center of the room. Mrs. Stern sat behind it, tapping on her laptop. She glanced up over her navy blue reading glasses when she heard me enter.
Maybe it was the glasses, but she didn’t appear her usual polished self. There were circles under her eyes and her normally sleek ponytail frizzily escaped its rubber band.
“Have you heard from him?” I asked.
“No,” she answered.
“I’m sorry about … everything.”
“You’ve done nothing to apologize for.”
“I need a written excuse,” I said. “For missing school yesterday.”
I half expected her to say, “Oh, you missed a day?” but instead she said, “I called and told them you were ill.” She eyed my uniform. “Looks like I don’t need to call again this morning?”
I shook my head and stood there a moment longer, waiting for I don’t know what. Something about Bennett, I guess. How much we both worried and cared about him.
Instead, she said, “Lukas and I will guard you while you search the grounds tonight.”
“Then shouldn’t I stay home today and rest up?” I asked, hopefully.
“You rested enough yesterday,” she said.
“Could you name all the parts of the eye?” a voice whispered into my ear.
I spun, my heart pounding—and saw a kid from AP Biology standing next to me. We were in the Lame Lounge, digging through our lockers after a test I’d been unprepared for.
“Huh?” I said. “What?”
“The eye,” he repeated, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “I think I mixed up the sclera and ciliary body.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I got confused, too.” I’d confused him with a ghost I imagined whispering in my ear.
Then again, a lot of things were confusing me. Like every time we looked at a diagram of an eyeball, I thought of the empty sockets of wraiths, as though someone had plucked out their eyes for a biology exam.
The bio kid had said something I missed, so I said, “Oh. Um, what?”
He ducked his head and scuttled away, like I’d brushed him off. I kept having conversations like that all day, my mind on ghosts—and on figuring out how I’d search the grounds tonight in my ghostly form.
I decided to start in the attic and make my way down through the school, checking all the places that weren’t accessible to the living. But meanwhile, I’d keep searching. So at lunch, I checked a little-used classroom that Harry had suggested. “There’s a closet in back that’s so creepy I almost didn’t drink there.”
“Almost?” I’d said.
“Well, nobody ever bot
hered me,” he’d explained. “So I just drank until I stopped noticing the stench of sulfur.”
He’d been kidding about the sulfur, but not the creepiness. And when I stepped inside the closet, I found out why. It was haunted.
By a cat. Yeah, a dead cat. I’d never seen a ghost animal before.
Here, kitty, kitty, I said, making clicking noises with my tongue.
It jumped me. I screamed as it clawed its way up my chest. Like any ghost, it had the ability to burn me, and its claws dug through my uniform like hot needles jabbing my skin.
Without thinking, I grabbed hold of it. Big mistake. My hands started burning, and the ghost cat dug in even deeper until I unraveled it with a bolt of dispelling energy. I practically fell out of the closet, unbuttoning my shirt to check my wounds and finding little fiery marks along my ribs.
And that’s how Harry found me. “Good lord, Vaile,” he said. “Keep your shirt on.”
“Ow, ow, it hurts,” I said, not caring that he could see my bra.
Once he realized I wasn’t kidding, he turned serious. “Do you need to go to the hospital again?” he asked, acting very gentlemanly about my exposed underwear.
“No, I’m fine. It was just a cat.”
“Was it on fire?” he asked, perplexed.
“It was a ghost.”
“A ghost cat,” he said blankly.
“Ow. Yes, in the closet. It probably attacked you the whole time you were in there. You just couldn’t feel it.”
“Emma,” he said, “I’d like to go on record as saying that your life is seriously messed up.”
“I know.” Then I started giggling. “Wait’ll I tell Ben—” I stopped laughing. You don’t call the guy you dumped to tell him you found a ghost cat in a closet.
“How is he?” Harry asked. “What happened after I left?”
“We broke up.”
“Good.”
“Not good.” I exhaled. “Bennett needs me and I told him to go away. That I didn’t want him like this. What kind of person does that?”
Harry stepped closer, concern etched in that odd, aristocratic face. “A good person. He’s hurting and he’s hooked, true. But the first step in recovery is—”