by Gwen Hayes
He looked sheepish and adorable. And then he looked wolfish quite suddenly. “You look amazing in firelight.”
The roller coaster of emotions Haden kept me on dipped suddenly, leaving my stomach behind me. I hadn’t looked in a mirror in about eight hours—I’m sure my appearance was anything but amazing, considering the night we’d had—but the way he looked at me took my breath. “Are you hungry?” I asked, my voice huskier than it should have been.
Haden’s eyebrows raised in question and then he winked at me. “Famished. I’ve been trying to get you to eat something all night.”
We warmed leftovers and ate in front of the fire. Haden distracted me by summarizing his favorite alien movies and at some point I began to feel . . . normal again. He made a nest for us with pillows and afghans from the couch, and I curled into his side to get a short nap before going back to the hospital. I fell asleep quickly, my exhaustion winning the battle over worrying—at least temporarily.
I dreamt of the place Haden had taken me where rose petals fell like snow from the sky. It was easier now to tell the difference between my dreams and my nocturnal traveling to other realms, though that razor’s edge between sleep and dreams would always keep me wary.
In my dream, I climbed the steps into the candlelit gazebo. In the middle, a large bed covered in yards of white fabric and pillows beckoned to me invitingly. I had to use the two-step riser because the mattress was so high off the ground. I sank into the fluffy softness, pulling the quilt around my shoulders. It was heaven. My limbs grew heavy and I drifted peacefully, aware somehow that I was so tired, I was even dreaming about falling asleep.
At some point, I rolled to the center of my dream bed, surprised to feel Haden’s bare chest against my cheek. Even in my dream I blushed furiously. He smelled delicious, like the spices of a fine tea shop and vanilla. His chest was firm and warm and his arm slid around me, pulling me tighter into him. I felt safe, cherished, and love blossomed from my heart, growing into concentric circles until I tingled everywhere.
I rubbed my cheek against his skin. It was my dream, after all—I could do whatever I wanted. My innate shyness faded as new, daring feelings sparked. I traced his skin with my finger, bolder than I’d ever been. He groaned appreciatively. I rose to an elbow to find him looking at me.
“Don’t stop,” he said. “You’re the most wonderful dream in the world.”
“You’re still wearing the talisman I gave you.” I touched the stone with the pad of my finger. It had been my mother’s necklace once, but we’d used a spell to turn it into a talisman based on a cryptic vision of Varnie’s before I’d gone to Under. I’d given it to Haden, not knowing if I’d ever see him again.
“I’ve only taken it off once.” He captured my hand and kissed my fingers. “I’m sentimental.” He grinned and telegraphed some very lascivious thoughts at me with his eyes. “It makes me feel close to you, like I’m wearing you against my skin.”
That sounded like a very good idea to me. Haden rolled me to my back, covering me with his body, the weight of him so foreign, but familiar. I ached for him, feeling hollow wherever he wasn’t touching me.
He kissed me, thorough kisses that ignited every nerve with need. I sank deeper into the mattress, pulling him closer and closer. His eyes were impossibly dark, predatory in the assessment of his quarry.
I blinked lazily and the candles flickered, bringing a new focus to my surroundings. The bed was gone, the gazebo faded, reality surfaced. Once again I was back in my house, covered by Haden’s body and little else.
I gasped, shocked, and whispered his name hoarsely.
He shook himself out of his sleepy state and threw himself off me. I snatched a cast-off afghan to cover myself. My top was gone.
We stared at each other, both of us panting and wild-eyed. We’d come very close, too close, to letting loose a dangerous demon.
He crab-walked a few feet farther from me. “I’m so sorry. . . . Did I? Did we?”
I shook my head.
“It was close. God, I was practically forcing myself on you.”
I shook my head again. “No, you weren’t. I thought I was dreaming. I was . . . You were . . . Well, I wasn’t trying to push you away. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He laughed harshly. “So we had the same dream, then.”
Haden still looked a little wild, like he wasn’t all the way back from the dream. His hair stood up in places. His aura glowed a bright crimson, pulsing with energy.
His aura.
“Haden!” I exclaimed. “I can see your soul!”
He’d wondered and worried, at times, about his soul. We knew he had one from his experience of being separated from his demon side—but it was still a constant anxiety for him. It was the thing he wanted most—to be human—and he clung to it, grasped at it. He could lose it, I thought. If his demon side ever took over completely, his grasp on his soul could slip.
I crawled to him, carefully holding the blanket to my chest with one hand and tracing the outline of his essence with the other. “It’s beautiful,” I said, in awe.
It mesmerized me. No wonder demons coveted our souls so much.
“You’re crying,” he said, wiping a tear from my cheek.
I couldn’t actually touch the color that surrounded him, but I ran my hand over the outline of it, feeling a small vibration of energy. “Haden, it’s just so extraordinary.”
“This is the first time you’ve seen it?” He swallowed hard. I could tell he was trying to suppress his reaction, but he trembled slightly and his gaze practically burned holes into mine.
I nodded. “My vision of auras comes and goes. Do you see them all the time?”
“No—I don’t see them at all. I don’t need to see souls to . . . well, feed from them. Tell me about mine? Please?”
I studied the glow around his head. “It’s a very bright red, flecked with gold. Not a yellow gold but metallic shards of light. It’s very strong, Haden. You definitely have a soul.” I met his eyes again. “It’s beautiful. . . . Did I already say that?”
Haden hooked his hand behind my neck and pulled me towards him, resting his forehead against mine. We both closed our eyes, and I’d never felt so in-the-moment in my life.
My mother had been a reckless girl. Her spirit was indomitable, but her body hadn’t been. As much as my father loved her, he’d never forgiven her for putting herself at risk without thinking things through. I used to long to break free from his domination and be more like the mother I never knew—but now I understood consequences.
From the start, it had all been leading up to this moment—this bleak, bittersweet moment in which I realized the depth of my heart, the weight of my love, and the harsh reality of my life.
“I think you should go,” I said, every word struggling to get past my lips because I didn’t want to say them.
He pulled back and looked at me, confusion on his face. “I’m not leaving you alone. We’ll be stronger—it will be fine.”
I pulled back, putting more distance between us. We would never be strong enough—I knew that now. The consequences of following my desires with abandon had already cost too much. “I won’t be responsible for you losing your human soul, not after everything we’ve been through. We can’t be together, Haden. It’s not going to get easier the longer we’re together; it’s just going to continue getting more and more difficult until we bend so far that we break. I won’t be the weapon Mara uses to destroy you.”
He reached out, but I jerked away. The smolder in his eyes warned me of his unhappiness. “Stop it. This is ludicrous. We haven’t been to hell and back for you to get scared and cut loose now.”
“I’m not the same girl you fell in love with, Haden.”
“What are you talking about?”
My father already paid with his life. . . . I wouldn’t take anyone else with me on my descent. “I’ve changed. I’m changing more every day. I’m not good anymore.”
“Sweetheart,
you are good. It’s not you. . . . It’s what she did to you. But we can get through this.”
I shook my head. “I think we should break up.”
His eyebrows raised in question. “Are you insane?”
“We can’t take any more chances. I know we can’t cut all ties until we’ve figured out what to do about Mara and my father . . . but we need to be strictly platonic from here on out. We can’t be together alone ever again.” I stifled a sob. “We were never going to make it as a couple, Haden. You know that. You tried to tell me from the beginning, but I was too hardheaded to listen. You were right all along.”
His eyes searched mine as if he was looking for a crack in my resolve, but I remained firm. I packed ice around my heart, feeling it get cooler and cooler as I retreated into my self-imposed isolation. The cold burned and bit harshly, but I knew I’d survive it. After all, I’d watched my father do it all my life.
“Theia,” Haden pleaded, “I agree that we shouldn’t be alone for a while, but I’ll never accept that we aren’t meant to be together. We’re not breaking up.”
I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest to keep them from reaching out. “We have to, Haden.” It was the only way I could make sure I didn’t ruin his life. I didn’t trust myself anymore. “It’s not going to work between us. It’s better to break up now, get it over with, than to drag it out and cause more heartbreak.”
“More heartbreak? You think you could hurt me more than you are right now?” His eyes were wet with unshed tears. “You really believe that we can just turn off our feelings. Just like that.” He paused. “Maybe you can. Maybe you’re more like your father than I thought.”
I let the sting find its mark. The burn made it easier to stay the course. “Just go, Haden. I’ll be fine alone.”
He slipped his shoes on, shaking his head at me. “I don’t know how you can be so cold to me after what we were just doing. But I get the message. You don’t think we’re worth fighting for.”
I wanted to take it back, to throw myself into his arms and to believe the lie that it would all work out. But I could never chance his soul, not again, so I stayed quiet.
He left without another word and the house grew colder and colder. I found my violin and played until dawn, until the muscles in my neck and shoulders felt like lead. Until my body ached as much as my heart.
A girl doesn’t escape a blood oath with a demon. I understood that now. I might not be trapped in Under, but Under would always be trapped within me.
CHAPTER NINE
I roamed Under alone.
It was dark and quiet and I waded, nightgown and all, into the river of tears wondering why my own failed to fall. Oh, I missed Haden. It ached around the hole in my heart until I thought I would split open, but I didn’t cry.
I didn’t cry for my father, who didn’t wake, who probably never would.
I didn’t cry for the pieces of me I was sloughing off as I became more and more aware of the awakening demon inside.
I had no tears of my own, it seemed, and so I waded farther into the river that was fed by weeping mothers and let their tears seep into me from the outside in. I began to float on my back and watched the stars dance above me, forming intricate flights of fancy as they dashed across the night. The burns on my hand healed in the water, leaving no scars. I didn’t expect the same for my heart.
When I’d had enough of floating, I walked the darkness; it too seeped into my skin. The shadows didn’t scare me, even when they drew away from the objects they were meant to shade and stretched towards me in menace. The night flowers on the ground, huge and lush with calyxes in colors of magenta and amethyst, were carnivorous, with razor-sharp petals. They blatantly tried to lure me near them and leered at me as I passed. I walked across a path of broken glass as if it were nothing but a pretty trail that glittered under the double moons.
Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, I began to sense all the ways I’d been made new. I was timeless and strong, and I could feel my untapped power coursing through me as I walked through a forest of trees so monstrous that their tops could not be seen.
I came across a girl in the wooded glen. She was maybe ten years old. Her pajamas had pictures of sheep and her hair was a nest of tangles. I wondered if she twisted the locks around her finger in her sleep, like I did at her age.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She swallowed hard; there was a faint pattern from her pillow left on her cheek. Her slumber had been deep before she arrived here. “I don’t know.” She looked me up and down a few times. “Are you a princess?”
“Why would you say that?”
“You’re so beautiful and shiny,” she answered, so seriously that I was taken aback. “Your hair is pretty.”
I looked at my clothes, amazed to see that I was wearing the ball gown Mara had chosen for me the night she tried to wed me to Haden against both our wills.
“What’s your name?”
“Veronica,” she answered.
“I don’t think you should be here, Veronica.”
“Why?”
“It’s not safe.”
“But you’re here.”
I chuckled. “It’s not safe for me either.”
“I don’t know how to get home,” she said, squeezing her teddy bear tighter. “I don’t like it here.”
“You have to wake up to go home.”
Her large eyes looked at me with such trust, as if I could send her home.
And I could. I knew in my bones that I could do it, and how. I didn’t want to. But I knew that if I didn’t, Mara would. And there would be no tender mercy for the small child.
I closed my eyes and Veronica shrieked as her teddy bear in her arms turned into a huge rat. It had beady red eyes and a sickening long tail. Veronica screamed for her mother and she disappeared like an extinguished flame. She woke up.
I’d fed my first nightmare.
* * *
The rest of the weekend passed with no change in my father’s condition.
I knew I should tell my friends about going to Under, but I didn’t even tell them about breaking up with Haden. I felt so alone, so confused, but I didn’t want to drag them into my shame. And I was so very ashamed. What had I become?
I’d frightened that child. Given her a fear that might change her forever. Would she be unnaturally terrified of rodents now? Would her teddy bear cease to bring her any comfort after I’d tainted it with a nightmare? What had possessed me to . . . no, I knew what possessed me. But why hadn’t I fought it? Why had I succumbed as if it were my duty somehow? Maybe . . . it was?
When they kicked me out of the waiting room Saturday night, I couldn’t force myself to go back to the big, empty house. There were several texts on my phone from Pete inviting me to a party. I really wasn’t in the mood for one, but I knew that if I went home I would call Haden. I needed to find a way to break myself of that habit, so I met Pete outside a house I didn’t recognize, not too far from my own.
He met me out front so I wouldn’t have to walk in alone. I looked at the front door dubiously. “It sounds pretty wild in there.”
He put his arm around me—in a friendly way—and led me up the walk. “It’s been a great party. A bunch of our parents went on a cruise together, so . . . we decided to have a progressive dinner.”
“Progressive dinner?”
Pete laughed. “We have a different course at each house. We had salad at my house a little while ago—Bloody Marys. This is Jake’s house. You met him the other night. We’re having Beefeater gin here for the main course. Dessert is Jell-O shooters at Noelle’s.”
“Wow,” I said. “Is it wise to mix alcohol like that?”
“I don’t plan on being wise until I’m at least thirty,” Pete answered and led me into the house.
The bass was so loud that the walls were vibrating. Someone walked by passing out red cups. I sniffed and made a face, which made Pete laugh. He said something that I couldn�
�t hear, so he pulled me through the rest of the house until we got farther away from the speakers.
“Is it too much?” he asked.
“A little,” I admitted. “I’m not really in the mood for a party. I shouldn’t have come.”
“I’m glad you did.” He reached to touch my cheek, but I backed up. “You’re different. I don’t know—I never really noticed you before, but now it’s like I can’t stop thinking about you.”
The blood left my face in a cold rush. “Pete . . . I hope you didn’t think— I just want to be friends.”
“I was afraid of that.”
I set my drink down. There was no way I was drinking whatever Beefeater gin was. “I should go. It was a mistake coming here.”
“No . . . wait. Stay. I’ll keep my hands to myself—I promise. You really look like you need to have a good time. Come on. I’ll teach you how to play quarters. You’ll probably beat everyone, since you’re the only sober person here. It’ll be fun. Stay?”
I nodded and Pete took me into the dining room, where everyone was bouncing coins off a sticky table that probably cost more than Donny’s car. He was right—I was good. And whenever someone chose me to drink on their turn, I sipped from a water bottle. They thought I was amusing, not boring as I’d feared, even though I wasn’t getting drunk.
Suddenly, although the music still played, it felt like a hush had come over the room. Haden stood in the entryway. I’d wondered how it would feel, the first time we saw each other after the breakup. My heart kicked as it always did when I saw him, but the set of his features froze me in place. His eyes found mine and I raised my chin. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. He squared his jaw and smiled at me, though it wasn’t a real smile. It was the one he used on other people, people he didn’t know or care for.
The boys around me shifted in their chairs nervously. It seemed as if they were each fighting an inner battle to stay or go. Haden was scarier than they knew and it wasn’t fair of me to put them in a bad position.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong and yet somehow I felt guilty. Haden and I continued our wordless staring while the fear in those around us became stronger. I could smell it.