“See!” yelled the owner over the music. “This is exactly what I mean. You people can’t treat this place as some kind of drop-in center. I’m running a business. I don’t want to be involved in this…this…I mean, Christ!” He gestured sharply in my direction. “She looks like roadkill!”
I looked at Lincoln.
“You do look pretty bad.” He smiled.
“I’ll go to the bathroom and clean up. I’m sorry,” I said to the owner.
“Well, shit. Don’t go into the girls’ bathroom looking like that.” He ground his jaw. “You can come upstairs.”
I looked at Griffin and Lincoln, suddenly feeling a different type of uncomfortable.
“Yes, yes!” he jumped in, before any of us could say anything. “You can all damn well come.” He stormed off down the long side of the bar and through an unmarked door at the end, sparing us a hurry the hell up glance.
We trudged up the stairs to a short hallway with three doors, Griffin filling us in as we walked. “His name is Dapper. He’s some kind of Seer. I’m still not clear on the details, but I do know that he can see what we all are. He seems to be able to see auras that surround people. I think he can pretty much identify anything supernatural.”
“That’s handy. Who’s he playing for?” Lincoln asked.
Griffin clicked his tongue. “Well, that’s the problem. He’s a bench warmer with no intention of changing status.”
“Could be worse,” Lincoln said.
“True.”
Lincoln eyed me again. “You holding up?”
“I’m good,” I said, my vision blurring.
“She’s lying,” Griffin said without even turning to look at me.
“Hey,” I protested. It was bad manners to use our powers against each other unless it was a must.
“Sorry,” Griffin said.
“Now who’s lying?” I mumbled.
“Come on!” called Dapper impatiently, standing in an open doorway. He took up most of the space. I struggled to categorize Dapper, his manicured presentation of pants and black shirt slightly at odds with his rough mannerisms. But the thing that really threw me: his belt was diamond-studded.
He led us into his apartment. Hades was elaborately decorated with slashes of rich color and lots of sparkle, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to see the overtly feminine, elegant decor upstairs, but still, I marveled. Dark wooden floorboards were covered with fluffy cream shag rugs and heavy modern furniture that could only be Italian—being the daughter of an architect meant only one type of magazine on the coffee table at home. I came from a world of interior design. It was immaculate and warm at the same time.
Dapper flicked switches, lighting up the living room and hallway to reveal a narrow walkway lined with books—all hardcover, all old, none that I recognized. He stomped his way down the hall, directing me to the bathroom, while Griffin and Lincoln lingered by the doorway arguing in hushed tones. I was about to walk back to them and find out what was going on, but then they both looked at me. Whatever they were disagreeing about, it had something to do with me.
Great.
I turned back toward the bathroom and Dapper.
“Who else lives up here?” I asked, accepting the fresh towel he handed me.
“No one,” Dapper said.
“But the other doors?”
“My office and an apartment.”
“No one lives in it?” I thought he wasn’t going to answer as he looked at me like the very unwanted houseguest I was, but he did.
“It’s just for the bar staff. Sometimes by the time they finish work, it’s too late or they’re too drunk. I let them use it. It keeps them out of my space.”
Lincoln came up behind Dapper and motioned to pass by. “Do you mind?”
“What? You need to go in and hold her hand?”
Lincoln laughed. “No, but I would like to go in and heal her.”
Dapper looked at me, then to Lincoln. “Yeah, right,” he scoffed, walking away. Lincoln laughed again. I went pink.
I balanced on the edge of the oversized bath feeling nauseous and nervous. The line between what was caused by injury and what was a product of my overactive emotions was rapidly blurring. Sharing bathroom space with someone was sacred.
“I’ve never had to heal anything this bad before,” he said, sitting beside me. He sounded a little uneasy too.
My eyes took in my reflection in one of the three full-length mirrors in the king-size bathroom. Dapper was totally vain.
“Oh,” I said, looking at my bloodied face and neck. My ear was still trickling fresh blood, and when I twisted to try to examine the back of my neck, which had been pummeled into the gravel, Lincoln stopped me.
“Trust me.”
“Oh,” I said again. Then, refusing to look too weak, I shrugged it off. “Okay, well…do your thing.”
“You know I won’t be able to heal these completely,” Lincoln said, looking down at his intertwined hands and twisting his fingers. “Griffin…”
When he didn’t elaborate, I raised my eyebrows. “Griffin what?”
“He suggested that…” He blew out a breath. “He thought it might be best to see if you can…” But he couldn’t find the words and was starting to look like he might up and bolt.
Then I realized why he was looking so impish. Oh. My. Days. I flashed back to the one time I had healed Lincoln. To the way we connected, the feeling of my power working its way from my body into his. How together, we healed.
Together—kiss together.
“You want me to…” I danced a finger between us.
“It might help you. When you healed me after Onyx, it seemed like you healed your own injuries at the same time, and since your abilities are so much stronger…”
“Yeah,” I agreed, forcing nonchalance. “I mean…we should try. I think it might work…” Actually, I had no idea.
He gave a pained smile. “I want you to be healed and I think this will help, but I don’t want you to do anything that…Griffin doesn’t understand.”
He was right about that. No one but us knew how deep the feelings went—how impossible they were to resist.
“So…you don’t think we should?” I asked, now feeling the blush of embarrassment.
“No. I think we should. If it means healing you and…if you’re okay with it.”
I couldn’t speak.
My mouth had gone dry and I was already panicking that it would be too dry to kiss—if that was what was about to happen. But then I got it.
He was making sure I wouldn’t go all schoolgirl on him—because in the end, we still couldn’t be together. But just the idea of having a moment of closeness with him—even if only for medicinal purposes—was too tempting to deny.
“Don’t panic, Linc. It’s hands-on doctoring—nothing more,” I said, trying to muster a believable smile. Liar, liar, pants on fire!
Lincoln’s eyes nearly burned a hole in me. He was looking to see if I was telling the truth, and for a moment I thought he looked a little disappointed.
He reached gently for my face. “Okay,” he said, already moving toward me. His eyes were cast down until just before our lips met and then, as if he couldn’t stop them, they met mine…and locked. Eyes are the windows to the soul—they can say so much in just a brief moment.
His lips smoothly met mine, and gently, his hands went to my shoulders. I couldn’t stop my eyes closing. As if I had to close myself away from the world—just him and me.
Do you close your eyes when it is for healing? When it isn’t meant to mean anything…but does?
I could tell he was concentrating on his power, working hard to heal me. I tried to clear my head and do the same. I stopped thinking about his delicious lips that fit perfectly with mine, pushed aside the feeling of heat rising from him and of sharing the sa
me air, and found my power, tucked deep within me, simmering gently.
At first, my power seemed to reach out to Lincoln, searching for any sign of injury or malfunction. Once satisfied, it turned inward. I could follow it independently, even though it was part of me. When it found Lincoln’s power already within me, the two joined forces and became one, accelerating the process, healing me almost instantly.
I felt Lincoln’s sharp intake of breath. I pressed nearer, drinking in our rare closeness, craving more. Just a few seconds more, a few precious, stolen moments.
He pulled back a fraction. “Violet.”
“Hmm,” I murmured, just wanting him closer again.
He jolted back, away from me. “Violet, stop! You’re healed.”
“Oh,” I said, as if it were news to me. I shuffled back, averting my gaze, even though I so desperately wanted to look at him and search his eyes. I needed to know why it had been so easy for him to pull away when it had proved so impossible for me.
The quiet in the room amplified each of my heavy breaths, leaving me so…exposed. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it.
“Could you feel how—” I started.
“Our powers joined?” he finished.
I assessed myself in the mirror. All sign of injury was gone, bar the dried blood.
“Yeah.” I chanced a glance in his direction, hoping my face wouldn’t give away everything I was feeling.
He nodded and smiled at me, showing a little awe.
“It’s amazing. I feel completely…fresh.”
He stood but then sat back down and ran his hand through his hair.
“You know,” he went on, “we can’t.”
“What?”
“The kiss. It was healing, Vi, and soon you’ll learn how to heal without needing to…It wasn’t, you know…It doesn’t count.”
His words were like a sharp slap across the face. I dropped my head. “Yeah. No…I…I…” Shit shit shit. “I didn’t think it…No…I don’t want it to…I…”
But before I could talk myself into more of a stupor, his hand went to my face, silencing me. His thumb smudged my cheekbone with just the right amount of pressure to make my heart gallop and my breath catch as it only ever did for him.
He was absolutely right.
The healing kiss doesn’t count at all.
I bit down on my lip as he looked at me, my hazel eyes so inferior to his brilliant green, which now seemed unable to hide his desire.
Bang, bang, bang!
“If ya haven’t fixed her by now, she’s broken for good! Get out of my bathroom!” Dapper yelled.
Lincoln dropped his hand from my face and looked horrified with himself. I swallowed back the pain and feigned sudden interest in my fingernails.
“Vi, I…” He stood up, then spun back quickly to look at me. “You see! This is why! Griffin doesn’t understand.” He turned and all but flew out of the bathroom.
I wanted to scream when he closed the door behind him.
Why can’t we be together?
He’d always said that Grigori partners have no future together. He told me it’s not allowed—that it weakens us or something. The thing is, for all the times he’d said it, I couldn’t fully believe it. How could I possibly feel this way about one person and there not be any hope? Was it really that easy for Lincoln to just deny what we both knew was there? Then, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and cringed, tugging at my blood-caked hair.
No wonder he ran.
“Guard yourself from lying; there is he who deceives and there is he who is deceived.”
Sextus
By the time we got back to Lincoln’s place, it was almost midnight, which was much later than I had planned. Not only was it a school night, but it was also past a reasonable hour to get home, and though Dad was spectacularly efficient at being oblivious, I didn’t particularly love going behind his back. If he knew half of what was going on in my life—well, he’d already had his share of heartbreak.
Dapper, it turned out, hadn’t warmed to us at all. After letting us use his bathroom and engaging in a brief conversation in which he pointed out—in clear and offensive language—he was not about to get involved in our wars and if an exile came into his bar looking for a drink, then that was exactly what he was going to get, he threw us out.
According to Dapper, that was that.
I tended to agree. I didn’t revel in the idea of him being involved either, but Griffin still held out hope for some reason. He saw an important place for Dapper, and he was the boss, after all.
I changed into the spare set of clothes I now kept at Lincoln’s for nights like tonight—sadly, not for the mornings. This change of clothes revolved purely around the not-wanting-to-be-seen-by-my-father-and-neighbors-covered-in-blood premise. Lincoln tried but failed to get me to eat some sandwiches he’d made while I was changing. I was still too mad with myself over my earlier failings, still too sick to my stomach with fear that I may never be able to use my dagger, and too embarrassed that I couldn’t stop replaying our kiss in my mind. But I did gratefully accept the aspirin. My headache was returning.
Lincoln seemed distracted too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something had had him on edge since the fight, and I knew whatever it was, he didn’t want to talk about it. When we were about to get into his Volvo four-wheel-drive for the ride home, he rushed me into the car and looked around as if he were expecting something to happen.
“Linc? Everything okay?”
He pulled himself away from whatever he was straining to see in the dark. “Fine. Just want to get you home. You have to be up for school in a few hours.”
I let it go. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that we can’t always say everything when others want it. If he had something to say, I had to trust that he’d tell me soon. Unlike last time.
“Don’t remind me.” I cringed, hoping the few hours’ sleep I was going to get would be enough to stop my pounding head.
Lincoln and I had turned over a new leaf. It hadn’t been easy forgiving him. But then, he had a lot to forgive me for too, and despite everything else, I knew I needed him in my life. The few weeks we had gone not talking to or seeing each other had felt like surviving without lungs.
• • •
When I got home, I went through the all-too-common process of slowly turning my key in the lock, trying to avoid the loud click. Once inside, I started to sneak quietly down the hall. Then I saw Dad’s bedroom door was ajar and his light was on. I knew what that meant. But still, for a moment, I pretended. I held my breath, let a little fear of discovery seep into my chest. I slipped out of my shoes and then headed to my room, my socks sliding along the wooden floor. If Dad caught me coming home at this hour, I would definitely be busted and I couldn’t afford that, not now.
As I passed the crack of light that escaped his door, I slumped and blew out a breath. Of course, I’d known he wasn’t really there—probably not even home from work yet. I let my mind wander for a moment, fantasizing like I used to when I was younger. I imagined coming home from school, Mom greeting me at the door wearing an apron and the smell of home-baked chocolate-chip cookies filling the air. Dad would be sitting on the couch, feet up, in jeans and a shirt because he’d already been home from work for a while and had showered and changed. But now, as I tried to pull on an age-old fantasy that I’d played over in my mind thousands of times, it was blurred and out of focus. Knowing what I now knew about my mother, well…Even if she hadn’t died, that fantasy would have been pretty much impossible. There would have to be this cloud in the room with us—somewhere to hide the lies.
I shook my head roughly, forcing myself back to the real world. I didn’t need to go there right now. I just had to accept that Dad and I were both leading double lives. He was happier that we didn’t overlap. Safer too.
• • •
The next day basically consisted of one long headache only made worse by starting off with chemistry—which for the life of me, I have no idea why I chose as an elective subject. I spent close to two hours pretending that I cared about the different elements that combined to give precious stones their unique characteristics. Miss Stallad was running around the room like this was the most exciting lesson she’d given all year. She buzzed around, explaining that she’d had a wave of inspiration that morning and had daringly diverted from the standard textbook for this class. She was on some kind of high, almost euphoric. At least PE was after lunch.
Normally, I love PE. Despite my supernatural qualities, unlike Steph, I’m not equipped with the genius gene. Art and PE have always been my favorites, and I’ve always done well in them. But staring out at the red athletics track that had been set up with a full four hundred meters of hurdles, I felt light-headed.
On the surface, Lincoln and I had jointly managed to heal me. No one would ever know I’d been sporting a horrific flesh wound just last night. But whether it was the blood loss still causing side effects or just my psyche lagging behind the speedy recovery, I wasn’t feeling up to par.
When Lydia Skilton pranced past me in her baby pink velour tracksuit with matching towel draped over her shoulder, sipping her water bottle as if she were lining up for the race that was going to set her apart or something, I forced myself onto the starting line.
It wasn’t just me. No one liked Lydia, and I suspected she preferred it that way. In any case, she wasn’t going to beat me.
• • •
Hurdles were a bad idea.
After PE, I sat in the locker room and tried to swallow back the lactic acid, which normally didn’t even affect me these days, and tried to move through the competitive guilt.
Steph found me there after I didn’t turn up for English class.
“So how bad is it, scale of one to ten?” she questioned, not bothering with anything else.
“Four,” I said, then waved a hand through the air. “Three.”
“I’ll take that as an eight. Vi, you aren’t superwoman, you know.”
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