by Vicki Keire
He left quickly enough that my boot bounced harmlessly off the door instead of his face.
***
I shrank as far back against the wall as possible, and invoked every deity I knew that Dr. Christian would remain benignly ignorant of my tardy, assignment-less presence. So far, so good. I’d texted Amberlyn from the parking lot, begging her to try and create a distraction. She’d texted back that Dr. Christian hadn’t yet taken roll and was very occupied demonstrating a particular crosshatching technique he’d used for some famous drawing of his. She even told me which side of the classroom to slink into in order to avoid notice.
I kept working my way down the list of deities, just in case.
“So you can see,” Dr. Christian announced in his booming professor’s voice, the one that made every female head and some of the male ones lean forward attentively, “that by arranging the lines just so,” he magnified a portion of a flower petal, “the leaves retain the slightly grainy look of live Calla lilies.”
A collective sigh went up from the class. I rolled my eyes. Dr. Christian didn’t affect me as he did most of my classmates. I recognized his artistic talent and knew I had a lot to learn from him, but I just didn’t feel the need to swoon over his model-perfect looks every time he opened his mouth. In fact, I found his plastic perfection kind of creepy.
Instead, I let my mind wander back to my car ride with Logan. He’d given me a steady, if a bit shaky, one-armed hug as soon as I jumped in the car, which he’d kept running so I’d be warm. He immediately shoved greasy pizza into my hands and another cup of coffee. I wouldn’t eat, though; I had something to say, first.
“I’m sorry,” we both blurted at the exact same time, then burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry,” I insisted through a mouthful of cheese. “I’ve been whiny and self-centered and a terrible brat. If I could, I’d spank myself.”
“I’m sorry,” Logan sighed, gunning through a yellow light. “I shouldn’t have said all of those things to you last night. I was scared.”
“God, me too.” I chased cheese with coffee. “I’m still scared. We’d be fools if we weren’t.” I gave up on the pizza in favor of tanking up on as much coffee as I could before creeping into Dr. Christian’s class. “But, Logan, what I really want to apologize for is the way I’ve been treating you. Or not treating you. For pushing you away. I never meant to hurt you. I’ve been having trouble dealing.”
His long, thin fingers looked positively skeletal as they tightened around the steering wheel. “No. You don’t owe me any apologies. I haven’t exactly been forthcoming with you, either. I pushed you away because I wanted to shelter you. You’re my little sister, and I wanted to protect you.” He reached out to tuck one escaped strand of unbrushed hair behind my ear. I’d twisted the rest up into a messy knot at the nape of my neck. As soon as he touched me, I got an odd cold feeling at the base of my shoulder blades.
“What do you mean, Logan? What are you trying to protect me from?”
We’d reached the school in record time. For once, I cursed my brother’s daredevil driving. Normally, it delighted me. He sighed and pulled me into another one-sided embrace. “Nothing pressing, Caspia. You just get to class, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk more after the Festival on the Square.”
I stuck my head back in the half-rolled down window and eyed him dubiously. “Promise?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. I promise, oh ye who are about to face Hell’s wrath for being late to class.”
I rolled my eyes right back at him. “You’re not mad? About,” I took a deep breath. “Ethan?” I squeaked.
Logan placed both hands very carefully on his lap. He looked me straight in the eye. “I watched Ethan rip out what looked like a demon’s heart for you, Caspia. More than one heart, in fact. He saved your life, probably both of our lives, and whatever he is, he’s not made of Darkness. But more importantly,” he grinned. “Abigail likes him, and she hates almost everyone, so he must be ok.”
“Ok?” a sonorous baritone voice echoed from across the room. I blinked. I could see tiny dust motes floating peacefully in a slant of sunlight hitting the desks in front of mine.
Desks. Oh, hell.
“I said, are you ok, Miss Chastain?” This time, Dr. Christian’s rumbling lecture voice was followed by a chorus of prissy little giggles, like minions worshipping their master. I tried to stuff down twin feelings of disgust and alarm.
“Oh, yes, Dr. Christian. Thanks.”
“Excellent. I was afraid we’d lost you back there.” His smile was kind, even concerned, but something about it just didn’t seem sincere to me. I gave him a small smile back, hoping he would leave me alone. “So, would you be so kind?”
I took several deep, centering breaths, trying to make sense of what he was saying. Every face in the room turned expectantly towards me. I searched desperately for Amberlyn, but she looked back at me with the same horrified expectation many of the other students shared. No help there. Just what in the hell was I supposed to do? I realized I had been sweating, even though it was cold, all the way in the back of the class. “I’m sorry, Dr. Christian, but I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I finally admitted, waiting for the chorus of giggles that was sure to follow. I was not disappointed.
Dr. Christian smiled his tolerant academe’s smile and left the podium. He beckoned at me to come forward with a graceful sweep of his pale hand. “I merely requested that you share what you have been so feverishly drawing with the rest of the class, my dear,” he drawled softly, with the barest hint of an accent I couldn’t quite place. “After all, you have been quite absorbed in your work since you slipped in fifteen minutes late.” The class, predictably, tittered, but I was beyond caring as I felt the blood drain from my face.
I stared at Dr. Christian across a sea of rapt faces, realizing for the first time that I held a watercolor pencil in my left hand. I touched the surface of my desk with my bandaged right hand quickly, but not before I felt an open drawing pad and an entire box of pastel pencils. Something icy, with sharp feral claws, ate its way through the lining of my stomach. I knew without looking I had done it again. Once again I had used the gifts of my Nephilim blood to draw a prophecy. Dr. Christian’s dark blue eyes caught mine and held them. I dared not look down. My drawing hand was injured; with any luck, I’d drawn nothing more than barely recognizable squiggles.
Then Dr. Christian smiled at me, slow and soft and wild, and I knew two things all at once: I was afraid to look at the thing I had drawn, because it was prophecy and probably damning. Dr. Christian was going to look at it, too, and there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do about it.
I started my slow walk down to his desk like a condemned man on his way to dice with the devil. I pressed the drawing pad close against my chest, cradling it there, both arms wrapped around it. I felt a bizarre need to protect it from this man, and from public exposure in general. I thought desperately of fainting, or even just running, but that pair of dark blue eyes compelled me onward as surely as if he held a loaded weapon. “It’s probably not very good,” I heard myself say. “I hurt my wrist, you see.” I nodded towards it, unwilling to uncross my arms for even a second.
If Ethan was sculpted stone, this man was living fire, every delicate bone catching the light in such a way as to create shifting pockets of shadow when he moved. Hair so golden it could not be called blond framed eyes so deeply blue they almost drowned out the irises. His impossibly finely boned fingers steepled together under his chin. “Yes. I see that. How did you acquire that injury, Caspia?”
“Um.” Blue, blue eyes like the lake Logan and I like to swim in. In the summer. When it was hot. The lake would be freezing cold, even then. I blinked. What the hell? What was wrong with me? “Uh, I fell.” Keep it simple.
A perfect, arched eyebrow expressed doubt in one expressive motion. “I see.” But I could hear the whisper underneath his words, calling me a liar, making me doubt myself, doubt my gift, my instincts.
I should just relax and tell him about things, this man with the freezing soothing eyes.
What the bloody hell? Internal alarms were going off. I swallowed convulsively. “I was just practicing. With my left hand. I can’t draw at all, with my left hand. I’m sorry, Dr. Christian.”
He smiled and gave a tiny shrug, as if to say, such things happen among friends. Only we weren’t friends, of that I was desperately certain. I stood in front of him and it was as if we were in a bubble. There was no sound, no time. He held out his hand for my drawing and I recognized the color of his eyes.
They were the color of fire at the very center, when it burns so hot it’s almost white.
I watched my hand hold out my drawing. I watched him take it and lay it carefully on the table between us. I watched as his eyes caught and burned, crackling with that fire I had just recognized. The air even smelled like burning. “Oh my,” Dr. Christian said, smoothing out my drawing on his desk. “Oh my dear Caspia. What talent you have.”
In full color, using the sure, graceful strokes of watercolor pencils, I had drawn fighting Nephilim, facing each other across some kind of open space. Two Dark Nephilim had their backs to me. All I could see were two pairs of massive, gaping planes of darkness, and across from them stood Ethan, similarly battered, but glowing nonetheless with some fierce inner light. I frowned and leaned in closer, because in my drawing, Ethan had no planes of light on his back. His wings were gone, and he was badly injured.
In the middle of the open space, caught between them all, was me.
I held something tight against my chest. I couldn’t tell what it was, except that it was made of light, and shone so brightly I turned my face slightly away from it in the drawing, as if it was too bright to look at directly. I half-knelt, one leg flat on the ground, the other bent as if I was trying to rise with my burden. With my other hand I pointed straight at the sky, towards a line of darkness. My mouth was open as if I was screaming.
“Amazing,” Dr. Christian breathed, directly over my shoulder. I did my best to ignore him and tried to absorb every detail of the drawing instead.
I seemed to be wearing a loose dress of some kind. That was good; I didn’t own anything like that, so I would recognize it if it showed up in my future. It was also just as likely that I was pulling the line of darkness down towards me. I leaned in even closer; there was a familiar shape to the darkness, if I could just place it. Why couldn’t I place it?
“…Qualify you for a scholarship,” Dr. Christian said. He put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped, shocked back into the here and now. His hand was as cold as I had imagined his eyes to be. The classroom was empty.
“What?” I said, thoroughly confused. Where had everyone gone?
“Oh, don’t be modest, Miss Chastain. Your achievement is truly breathtaking. The committee meets at seven next Thursday. We’ll look forward to seeing you then.” Dr. Christian smiled at me. He had perfectly even white teeth. A nice smile, I thought absently. He ran his hand up my forearm. I shivered. “Are you quite alright, Miss Chastain? Perhaps you need assistance getting to your next class. You are injured, after all.”
The desks were arranged on risers. I stumbled on the very first one, on my way to get my books. I felt sleepy and confused. How had I missed the bell ringing? Why didn’t Amberlyn wait for me? His chilly hand caught my forearm instantly. “Oh, I’m fine,” I said, and stumbled again. His cold hand settled against the curve of my spine.
“I insist,” he said, scooping up my knapsack and purse. He put my drawing pad into my knapsack, and then draped it over my arm as if I was an invalid and walked me to the classroom door. “And, Miss Chastain? Do try and take care of yourself between now and when the scholarship committee meets. No more clumsy accidents, hmm?”
Wait, I thought. Wait a damn minute. “Scholarship? What about my drawing?”
“Well, you have to meet the rest of the committee, of course.” A sharp note crept into his voice then. “I have to keep your drawing to show the rest of the committee. I told you that part already.” He said the words carefully, enunciating as if talking to a toddler. “You have to come to my office for your interview, at seven next Thursday. You can have it back then.”
Looking into his chilly blue eyes, I suddenly felt tired and cold, exactly as if I had been swimming for hours in the cold water of the lake with Logan. “Seven on Thursday,” I heard myself repeat. “In your office.” I stared at him as he nodded once, satisfied, and spun on the heel of his expensive Italian shoe and marched away.
I barely managed to stagger out of the classroom and into an empty bench. I leaned back against the wall. I was so tired. I would close my eyes for just a second...
I don’t know how long I slept on the bench in the hall. When I woke, my cell phone lay underneath my knapsack. I’d been using it for a pillow. I guess that’s how I missed all four calls from home. Confused and apprehensive, I dialed back. “Logan? It’s me. Can you come get me?”
“Thank goodness, Cas. We were just about to come looking for you. I thought maybe you were with Amberlyn, but when I called, she said she thought you already left.”
I frowned at the phone. “What? Amberlyn ditched me after Dr. Christian totally humiliated me in Drawing II. What do you mean, you’ve been waiting?”
A short silence. “Sweetie, it’s late afternoon already. Your last class ended an hour ago. Amberlyn thought you left for home already, or she would have waited. Are you feeling ok?”
I stared at the phone in my hand, and at the rapidly emptying halls. What the hell had happened to me? Did I just fall asleep on a bench? I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my head. “Um, no. I guess not. So, can you come get me?”
“I’m on my way.”
“I love you, Logan.”
“Me too, caterpillar.”
“Don’t you dare call me that in front of Ethan,” I hissed. Male laughter echoed in the background.
“Too late,” Logan said smugly. “He heard.”
“You. Will. Pay.” I growled, low and deadly.
Logan sighed, sounding cheerful and long suffering. “Well, yes. I was planning on it. There is a party on the square tonight, after all. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of ways to make me pay. Literally, of course.”
Chapter Twelve:
The Orchard
We didn’t speak much on the drive home. I knew I must have looked alarmingly bad because Logan didn’t even complain once when I played the same song over and over. He hated it when I did that. After our third listening of my current favorite obscure band, I eyed him sideways. “Aren’t you even going to mock me? I mean, I appreciate the play time and all, but I kinda miss the insults.”
He snorted but kept his eyes on the road. “You look awful, Cas.”
And that was it. I should have guessed much worse was in store.
Ethan stood in shadow at the top of the second landing, his arms crossed, body squared and perfectly still. I couldn’t see his expression, but his eyes watched me as I walked slowly up one stair after the other. I actually had to concentrate. My feet felt heavy, as if I was wearing waterlogged socks. About halfway up, I looked up at him. His blue green eyes were clouded, like the surface of a pond in early morning, skimmed over with fog. I felt Logan’s slight hand on my shoulder. “We were really worried,” he whispered in my ear.
“Oh,” I said, as the fog grew thicker over Ethan’s eyes. I put one foot in front of the other and wondered what emotion he hid from me. “I’m sorry.”
Ethan’s arms snapped down to his sides as if he were reaching for a hidden set of pistols. He threw his head back; I could see the tendons of his neck, straining, standing out. His nostrils flared. The long stairway up to our apartment was shadowy no longer. Lightening whipped across Ethan’s eyes, through the screen of fog, and twin planes of Light unfurled behind him where normal people have shadows. His fingers curled into claws. His voice, when he spoke, was underlined with the deep bass of distant thunder.
“Where. Have. You. Been?” he demanded, holding himself completely still.
I tried to answer him. I really did. But so many thoughts fought for dominion over my tongue that what came out was some kind of bastard pidgin dementia. He was beautiful. He was terrifying. He was furious. He would never hurt me. He wasn’t Asheroth. He reminded me of Asheroth. I wanted to paint him. I wanted him to go back to being normal and almost human. I wanted to stare at him a while longer. Most of all, I wanted things to make sense.
“I don’t know because something happened at school after Dr. Christian humiliated me in front of everyone and it made me really tired but did you know I can draw really well with my left hand and then I woke up on a bench all tired out for no reason so I called home and I wish I could paint you just like you are now even though you look like you hate me and why are you so angry at me?” I sat heavily down on the stairs after my last good loud yell. I hadn’t taken a breath during my whole demented tirade and was actually quite dizzy. I felt Logan’s soft, sweatshirt clad shoulder lean up against me. He’d taken the step just below mine.
“Come on,” he urged, nudging me with his tennis shoe. “Let’s go up. He’s just worried.”
“Nuh-uh.” I swept my eyes sideways at Ethan. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” His light was blinding. Someone would notice soon. But perhaps, Whitfield being what it was, that didn’t matter.
I knew Ethan moved fast. I had seen, or rather, seen the evidence of it, plenty of times before. But this was different. All at once, I was surrounded by Light. Light, and Ethan’s arms.
“Logan,” he said. I couldn’t see my brother anywhere. His Light was too bright. “Please wait for us inside your apartment. The wards are strong there; you will be safe. I must take your sister somewhere for a moment.”