by C. J. Valles
I stare at him in revulsion.
“Absolutely not!”
“Are you so certain of that?”
“Yes!” I fume.
“Eventually you’ll see that time and circumstance change many things.”
I have pressing questions that I need answered, but I’m so angry and disturbed right now that the thought of sitting here and continuing to have a civil conversation has me almost in tears. With my fingernails digging into my left palm, I force myself to slow my breathing.
“I just want to know what I’m up against.”
“There are many beings still seeking to gain purchase in this world, some of them very powerful.”
“And you’ve run out of human lives to trade?”
“In short, yes.”
“Which means something is going to pop out of the shadows, and that will be the end of me …”
“No. I would never allow that to happen,” he says plainly.
“I don’t get it. Why? What do you care?”
“I’ve told you. I do not wish to spend eternity alone. Instead, I have searched for companions to share it with.”
“Human companions?” I ask woodenly.
“Yes.”
My ears begin to pulse with the sound of my heartbeat. Edith Rousseau. The elderly French woman living alone in the castle on the hill.
“Madame Rousseau—what is she to you?”
“I met Edith when she was a girl about your age. She was working her parents’ farm. She was lovely, angelic, full of life.”
An image of Mrs. Rousseau as a teenager hits me full force—it was her I saw in my dream, only younger.
“What is she to you?” I repeat sharply.
“Over her lifetime, she has been my sister, mother, grandmother.”
My stomach twists.
“So, you’ve stolen her life!”
“Quite the opposite. I’ve given her everything she could ever want.”
“You lied to her.”
He smiles.
“When we first met, she imagined I was an angel.”
Frighteningly, I can see how she would think that. I might have thought the same of both Alex and Ever if I believed in things like that.
“And now? Does she even know what you are?”
He shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t burden her with that knowledge.”
“And this is what you want me to be? A pet to keep—until I die of old age? Are you nuts?”
“You, Wren, are different, which is why I’ve searched so long for you.”
Before I’m even aware of what I’m doing, the chair has skidded out from behind me. I turn and run to the table where Audra and Chasen are sitting.
“Take me home. Now.”
I turn back and see Alex sitting alone at the table. Then two hands grip mine and everything goes black one more time. I cough, and when I open my eyes, it’s Ever’s face that I see. I’m in an unfamiliar room, but when my eyes focus on the far wall, I know instantly where I am. There are paintings and shelves of books everywhere. This is Ever’s room. With his help, I sit up, and he hands me a bottle of liquid. I drink it without hesitation. Then I sit quietly for several seconds. When I’m sure I won’t throw up, I rise from the sofa and walk over to the oil painting on the wall. It’s my face staring back at me, only it’s a perfect version of me—the portrait that I never thought I would see.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“Like you.”
He’s standing just behind me when I turn to face him.
“He said there’s a war coming. Is he right? Is that true?”
Ever doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are grim. I think I have my answer.
“We hope it won’t come to that,” he says finally.
“But it could?” I demand.
He nods.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wren, I’ve brought so much down upon you. Can you blame me for wanting to protect you from it?”
I think of my mom and my friends and wanting to protect them at any cost.
“No. But I still wish you had told me.”
From my own self-involved bubble, I had started to assume that I was at the center of this. Now I see how far off I’ve been. In reality, I’ve been standing at the very edge of something vast, dark, and unfathomable.
“The possibility of war is what we continue to fight against,” Ever says wearily. “But your love—the hope it’s brought me—has been the one bright spot of my existence.”
8: Lose My Life
I lie awake in bed after Ever brings me home, and I’m still staring at the ceiling when my mom gets home. When she comes to check in on me, I sit up and turn on my lamp. Smiling, she comes over and sits on the edge of the bed and talks about work. I laugh and study her face. She’s always been there for me, taken care of me. The thought that one of my decisions or something from my life could affect her scares me. She yawns and gets up, and I roll over and shut my eyes when she turns out the light. But I can’t sleep. Sitting up, I go over to the computer and click the mouse. On the Web, I search for a French translation site and type in La Rapière, the name of the restaurant I sat in only hours ago. The word in English is virtually identical.
Rapier: a two-edged sword used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. Take the good with the bad. I’ve heard these expressions before, but I had never paid much attention to them. Getting back into bed, I close my eyes and wait to fall asleep. The last thing I remember as I drift off is the picture of the rapier—the slender blade, pointed at the tip and razor-sharp on both sides.
When my eyes open at the sound of my alarm, I’m paralyzed by conflicting emotions. Part of me is holding tight to the relief I felt realizing that I was still alive after stepping through the mirror. The other part of me feels vacant, like my hope for a happy ending just got swept out from under me, only to be replaced with cold dread.
The coming war. That’s what Alex said last night. Not potential, not possible—coming. Inevitable.
My phone buzzes. I roll over to pick it up and see a text from Ashley asking if I’m planning on shopping for a dress in this century—a little reminder of the fact that I am going to the spring dance. Ash wants to know if I need help picking something out, and I’m relieved to have someone more dress savvy than myself to act as a consultant. I write her a quick note back. Then, getting out of bed, I calculate the long list of things that I want to get done today. Very pedestrian, human-type things. Laundry, my paper on Poe, Algebra, a run. I sigh when I remember the one thing that has dropped off my list completely: finding a car to call my own.
Going down the hall to the bathroom, I brush my teeth, but I don’t bother getting dressed. On the way downstairs to find breakfast, I see my mom’s door is open and her bed is made. When I get to the kitchen, there’s a note on the counter that says she went to meet someone downtown for brunch. I put a load of laundry in the wash and then come back to scan the refrigerator’s contents. I sigh. I’m sick of cereal.
With a smile, I begin taking out ingredients to make blueberry muffins, which I haven’t done in forever. Cutting open the bag to the muffin mix, I pour the contents into a metal bowl and add the water, oil, and an egg. When I’ve mixed everything, I drain the can of blueberries and add them. I remember my mom used to let me lick the batter until she started worrying about salmonella poisoning.
Rifling through the cupboards for a muffin tin, I have a flash of Madame Rousseau alone in her chateau—eternally waiting, like Penelope in The Odyssey. Is she lonely? Does she wonder if Alexandre will return? And does she still believe he’s an angel?
I walk over to the kitchen window and look outside. The rain clouds have dispersed, but the sunlight is weak, fragile. Like it will disappear at any moment. With a sudden flash of desperation, I want the clouds back. I want to hide beneath them, wrap myself in the consistency they offer. This feeble hal
f-light makes me feel bare, exposed. I sit down at the kitchen table, and when the timer goes off, I grab a mitt from the drawer and open the oven door.
The smell of freshly baked muffins causes my stomach to growl, and I burn my fingers plucking the muffins out of the tin and dropping them onto the cooling rack. Taking out the milk and butter, I carry my glass and plate to the table and try as hard as I can to get the image of Madame Rousseau doing the same thing out of my head. But instead, I catch myself wondering if that will be me in another seventy years—ancient and inextricably linked to a deranged immortal.
No. It won’t, I tell myself. I refuse to be that.
When I’m finished eating, I clean up my dishes and put the muffins in a container. As soon as I’ve loaded the clothes into the dryer, I head to my room and set out my books in the order of how much time I have to spend in each class. It annoys me that I have to pour most of my energy into something I don’t even like. I wish I loved math, because maybe then every second spent studying wouldn’t feel so grueling.
Sitting at my desk, I force myself to work until my eyes are stinging from staring at equations for too long. Then I switch to my poetry paper. I tend to do that when I can’t focus—go back and forth between two opposing classes before one or the other can make me crazy.
Still, even though English is my favorite subject, sometimes I hate it almost as much as I hate math. Guessing what some long dead author or poet meant by a particular phrase is interesting, but really, does anybody know for sure what was going on in the author’s head? I mean, I can barely keep my own thoughts and emotions straight, and I’m supposed to know what Edgar Allan Poe was thinking? Maybe it would be possible if he were still alive and I could snoop around in his head. But he’s not alive. And besides, sometimes I just want to read something and enjoy it, not analyze it to death.
I glance at the time on my computer. It’s almost noon—and I haven’t had so much as a single thought about immortals or my own mortality, which makes me realize how badly I needed this. A normal day. A day where I feel like I own my life, complete with my very normal human concerns. When I hear my mom’s car pull into the driveway, I hastily throw my poetry anthology on the desk and dump my algebra textbook into my bag. By the time I get to the kitchen, my mom is already eating one of the muffins.
“You baked this morning? That was very productive of you,” she smiles.
“Yeah. Cold cereal just wasn’t cutting it.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, honey! I should have asked if you wanted to come with me this morning.”
Should I tell her? she wonders silently.
I look away, deciding it’s best to avoid being sideswiped by whatever my mom isn’t telling me. I don’t think I can handle any additional surprises right now.
“That’s all right. I needed the sleep,” I smile.
More accurately, the last thing I need is to have to try to pretend how normal I am in front of some co-worker of my mom’s.
“Judging from your outfit, I’d say you’re right,” she laughs, pointing at my pajamas.
I stick out my tongue.
“For your information, I was just about to change to go for a run. … You want to have lunch after I get back—or did you just have breakfast?”
“No, I’ve been gone awhile. That sounds good.”
I nod and kiss her on the cheek before going back upstairs to get changed. Just as I’m tying my shoelaces, there’s a knock at the front door. My adrenaline starts pumping, and I get to the top of the stairs just in time to see my mom letting Audra inside. I have to keep my mouth from hanging open when Audra reaches out and hugs my mom. Then I remember that she stopped by while I was “sick.” She’s dressed in fashionable exercise gear again, and when I start walking downstairs, she looks up at me and smiles.
“Are you ready?” she says brightly.
My mom looks beyond thrilled that I’ve found another questionably high-school-aged-looking human to interact with. Little does she know that a growing number of my social interactions are with non-humans. Audra and I step outside, and as soon as my mom closes the door behind us, my smile fades.
“Did Ever tell you I was going for a run?” I ask, bristling with annoyance.
She nods as we take off into a slow jog, and I frown.
“Is he always in everybody’s head?” I snap.
I bite my lip when I hear how defensive I sound. But after feeling like I had a day to myself, her arrival has left me feeling a little spied on. Audra laughs.
“That I will never understand. You humans thinking everyone is so interested in every last thought you have. Ever is very powerful, and while he may pick up a great deal, it’s not as though he’s considering and judging each passing thought. How tedious!” She pauses and looks over at me. “He does care for you, though. That much I know. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have sent me to human-sit.”
I scoff at this.
“All right. First off, I do not think anyone—supernatural or not—is spending all their time watching or judging me. If anything is watching over what I do, it’s my conscience. And second—does that mean that you’re less powerful than Ever? You know, since you can’t read minds like he does?”
I smile cheerfully, happy to land a punch after her human-sitting comment. I don’t actually think that Audra is any less powerful than Ever. Far from it. She seems quite capable of leveling all of humanity simply with the power of her ice-cold stare.
“Your train of logic is very unusual for a human,” she muses.
“So I’ve been told.”
Without warning, Audra grips my arm, and it suddenly feels like I’ve been thrust into a bubble—there’s no wind, no cold. I look around and see that everything around us is eerily still, like someone pressed a pause button. I try to take a breath before realizing there’s also no air. Suddenly I’m suffocating. When she releases her hold on my arm, I gulp air and stare at her.
“Do you still think I’m less powerful than Ever?” she smiles wickedly.
“Actually, I never did,” I smirk in between breaths. “Did you just freeze time?”
I start jogging again, but my legs are still unsteady beneath me.
“I simply triggered a localized aberration in time. It may have seemed to you like time stopped. In actuality, human reality just slowed.”
“Yeah, to a stop!”
“Briefly. It can be very useful, though.”
“Like Ever’s reading minds?”
She nods.
“I have another question … if you don’t mind.”
“I will answer if I can.”
“Ever said … he told me he could, well, change me. To be more like you. The thing is—I don’t even really understand how that’s possible. I mean, I’m human. End of story, right?”
My lungs are burning, so I slow to a walk. Audra slows to my pace even though I’m sure she could keep running indefinitely.
“Have you noticed anything different about Persephone?” she asks.
I nod slowly as I think about the one time I’ve met her.
“She’s beautiful like the rest of you, but she’s paler.” I pause to think. “And she seems a little older, but then so does Alistair.”
I shake my head when she laughs.
“What?”
“We tease him about that. After we crossed into this dimension and took form, Alistair’s human approximation looked just a bit older than the rest of us, which has had its benefits.”
“And Persephone?” I prod.
Audra pauses.
“She was at one time human. Like you.”
We’ve reached the front stairs of my house. I plunk down on the top step, and Audra folds herself next to me like she’s curtsying at the end of a ballet recital.
“She was human?” I gasp.
“And she and Alistair fell in love.”
“So … he changed her? Then, it is possible.”
I look down at my hands, unsure of how I feel about this.
Her tone causes me to look up.
“Your mind is much more resilient than that of other humans, but it doesn’t mean that you would survive the change intact.”
I swallow.
“Which means Ever thinks I’m going to die—sooner rather than later. That’s why he offered. Because he thinks it’s my best chance of surviving.”
“He doesn’t want to lose you, and I think it would destroy a part of him if he thought he could save you but didn’t.”
I don’t tell her, but my plan is to save myself. I’m not sure how, but I have to believe there’s a way to protect those around me and not die trying. The first time—when Alex took Ashley—I went in blind, willing to sacrifice myself, only because I saw no other alternative that didn’t risk someone else’s life. But the experience has taught me something important.
Everyone wants something. What I want is my life, my freedom. And maybe I have to play the game better—meaning better than Alex and whatever else is coming for me—in order to win.
I stand up, sweaty and disheveled while Audra looks like she’s about to shoot a commercial for some over-rated fitness product—the type where you know the girl in the ad already looked like a goddess without ever having touched the device she’s being paid to sell. I look across the street at her silver sports car, which means she drove here rather than materializing. When she stands to leave, I get up and walk to the front door. I hate to admit it, but after only two runs together, it’s beginning to feel like a ritual. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that Audra isn’t as overjoyed with our quality time, but I could be wrong. In the kitchen, my mom is putting the finishing touches on some sandwiches.
“Audra’s not staying for lunch?” she asks.
My first thought is: Why would she? She doesn’t need to eat. Then I quickly try to think of a normal response, one that won’t make me sound crazy.
“She has a group project.”
“Too bad. She seems like a very nice girl.”
I smile and nod. The two separate worlds I’ve been navigating since I met Ever seem to be coming closer and closer to colliding. And the more I find out about Ever’s world, the more I think that I’ll always be a danger to the people closest to me. Going over to the refrigerator, I take out the water pitcher, fill two glasses, and join my mom. Just as I sit down, she jumps up.