by Nicole Maggi
“I definitely don’t think I’m ready for that yet,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the pair of black lace panties Bree had just packed.
Bree muttered something about the weather as she held up another sweater.
“Alessia, I have those keys,” Cal said, crossing the room to me. He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and slid two of them off. “This one opens the side door of the school,” he said, holding up a shiny gold key first, then a small silver one. “And this opens the storage room. Just make sure you lock both doors when you leave.”
“Does the school have an alarm system?”
“Nah.” He pressed both the keys into my hand. “There shouldn’t be anyone around, but if someone stops you, just tell them you’re a friend of mine.”
“How do you have these?”
“I design all the sets for the school plays. I’m there late at night a lot.”
“Is there anything you don’t do at that school?”
“Apparently, I don’t attend classes anymore, since I got Called,” he said with a laugh.
“What’s that for?” Bree asked. She nodded at the keys and tossed something into the growing pile of clothes in the corner. Jenny growled and began to clean all of the messes Bree had made around the room.
“Oh. I’m—” I toyed with the keys. “I’m meeting Jonah tonight. He was at school today.”
“He was?” She lowered the makeup bag she’d picked up and stared at me. “Is he okay?”
I nodded. “He’s staying at Pratt’s house. And apparently there’s a Malandante at school keeping an eye on him.”
“Bet it’s Principal Morrissey.” Bree ran her hand through her hair. “Maybe I should come tonight to check in with Jonah too. Since I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“It’s not Principal Morrissey,” I said. “And, um, don’t come.” I looked away from her.
“But what if I don’t—?”
“You will,” I said, still avoiding her eyes. “I just, um, need to see him on my own.” Heat flared in my cheeks.
“Gross,” Bree said, a wicked grin widening her mouth. “At least try to get some information out of him before you do the nasty.”
“Oh, my God!” I buried my face in my hands. “Why is everyone obsessed with sex?”
“I’m not,” Bree said and returned to packing her makeup.
“I’m not,” Jenny said. I rolled my eyes at her. “Okay, yeah, that’s a lie.”
Cal wisely said nothing; he just cleared his throat and backed out of the room. I shook my head and got my backpack. It was hours and hours until midnight; I thought I might as well fill the time with homework so my GPA didn’t go down the tubes along with everything else.
Jenny turned to Bree. “Hey, there’s a bunch of travel-size stuff in the bathroom. Top drawer of the cabinet. Help yourself.”
“Awesome, thanks.” Bree grabbed her makeup bag and dodged out of the room.
The instant she was gone, Jenny sat down next to me. “Okay, listen. The best way out of the house is through the back door. Watch out for the third step on the back stairs; it creaks. You’ll have to go around the living room, but hopefully Heath will be asleep. Don’t use the front door. It makes a racket when it opens.”
“Thanks.”
“And Lessi?” She pointed at the bottom drawer of her nightstand. “Take a condom.”
“We are not going to have sex!” I yelled, throwing my hands up.
She laughed. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“You sound just like Bree,” I told her.
I had no intention of having sex with Jonah that night, no matter what Jenny or Bree said. But my heart thudded against my ribs as the minutes ticked with agonizing slowness toward midnight. At last the clock read 11:30. I slid out of my bunk, tiptoed over Bree’s sleeping form, and reached for the doorknob. “Have fun,” Jenny whispered from her bunk. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Which pretty much gives me free rein,” I whispered back.
Carrying my boots in my hand, I crept down the hall to the back stairs. I kept to the right on the third step and it stayed silent. When I reached the first floor, I hugged the wall as I skirted the living room.
Firelight flickered from the hearth in the living room. Shadows moved across the wall opposite me. I froze. Two silhouettes danced in rhythm, arching and bending. Voices whispered across the room. My curiosity got the better of me. I stepped away from the wall just enough so that I could see the floor in front of the fireplace.
Heath and Nerina lay on the rug, their naked bodies wrapped around each other. I clapped my hand to my mouth and backed away fast. They were in too deep to even know I was there, to know anything was going on around them at all. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to unsee what I’d just seen, but their embrace blazed on the back of my eyelids. The way he held her, like she was the most precious, beautiful creature on earth.
And to him, she was.
I turned and fled to the back door, not caring if anyone heard me. Once outside, the cold slapped me like an angry lover. I pulled my boots on and barreled to my mom’s truck, thrust the key into the ignition, and turned it on. I hugged the steering wheel and bent forward until my forehead touched the cool leather.
I breathed hard in and out, the cold freezing like icicles inside my nose. Well, fine. If Heath could spend the night with his forbidden love, then so could I.
I blasted the heat and backed out the driveway without even checking the rearview mirror. At this hour, the streets of Twin Willows were empty, and I ran right through the one red light in the middle of town. The road curved and bent until I got to Willow Heights and then I drove seventy miles an hour to the high school.
A dark figure stood next to the side door. I parked the car at the curb and bolted out, didn’t stop moving until I was with him. “Come on,” I breathed, twisting in his arms to get the door open.
Inside, the air was close. We’d come in the back of the dark auditorium, and a short walk led us to the storage room. My fingers trembled as I unlocked it. Jonah flicked on the light when I opened the door.
Harsh fluorescents flooded the room with bright white light. Backdrops from various shows were stacked upright against the walls: a fancy restaurant with a chandelier, a Renaissance villa, a red-roofed barn. Random pieces of furniture populated the rest of the room: tables, high-backed dining chairs, overstuffed sofas, and a daybed draped in red velvet. I turned away from Jonah, breathing hard, and turned off the fluorescents. “Too much light,” I whispered. As soon as my eyes adjusted and I could see the outline of his face, I went to him.
The space between us closed into nothing. He dug his fingers into my hair and covered my mouth with his. I peeled my coat off and then his, feeling the hardness of his shoulders with the palms of my hands. I stroked down his back, down, down. He groaned and with one swift motion lifted me into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist and let him carry me backwards until we fell with a crash onto the velvet-covered daybed.
Jonah pressed the length of his body against mine, the heat of him burning through every layer of my winter clothing. It wasn’t close enough. The distance of wool and denim was going to kill me. I trailed my lips from his ear to the base of his throat, feeling the pulse of him there. I pushed him up off me slightly, reached for the hem of his sweater, and pulled it over his head.
Clothing came off with breakneck speed, shoes and belts unbuckled, skin kissed the instant it was bared. We stretched long on the daybed, him in just his boxers, me in my bra and panties, and curled into each other. He was so warm, it could’ve been ten degrees below zero in that room and still I would’ve been on fire. He kissed in a line down my neck, my collarbone, my stomach, and pulled my underwear off, growling a little like the Panther inside him. I squirmed, wanting at once to shy away from the exquisite torture that flooded my body and to dive in headfirst. God, they were right . . . I was going to have sex with Jonah Wolfe tonight.
; My spine arched as his mouth loved every inch of my skin. I struggled to breathe as he rose to lie next to me, his eyes so soft on my face that I wanted to die and be buried in them. “I love you,” I managed to say.
His arms came tight around me. “I love you too,” he murmured into my hair. I twined my legs through his, bringing him closer, close enough that I could feel how much he wanted me. I tilted upward and kissed him long and slow.
“Do you have something?” I asked into his mouth.
He pulled away and kissed my forehead, the arch of my brow, my cheek. “No,” he said softly, “but that’s not why we’re not going to make love tonight.”
I jerked back, but he cradled me closer. Now I was the one being held like I was the most precious creature on earth. As I looked into his eyes, their green glow so warm on my face, I realized that to him, I was. Everything squeezed tight inside me, my veins overflowing with love. “It’s okay,” I said. “I want to.”
“I do, too,” he said, his voice strangled. “God, I do.” He dipped his head and smothered my face and neck with kisses. His hands gripped me tight and I could feel him tremble, like there was an earthquake inside him that he couldn’t contain.
“Then why not?”
He held my gaze for a long minute. “Because I don’t deserve you. Not yet.”
I laid my hand on his cheek. “I’m not a saint either, Jonah. We’re both human. We’ve both made mistakes.”
Jonah reached up and took my hand, weaving our fingers together. “I’ve made significantly more mistakes than you have, Alessia.” Still, always, the way he said my name sent ripples through me. “When I’ve done enough good things to make up for those, then I’ll be worthy of you.”
I breathed in deep, the smell of sawdust mingled with Jonah’s scent of pine and spice. “Okay,” I whispered, and drew him down so that we lay tangled together, his head on my chest. My heart cracked beneath his cheek, like a tiny fracture in a blown-glass ball. “Okay,” I said again, and waited for the dawn—both outside and within—to come.
Chapter Twelve
A Trip to the Other Side of the World
Bree
I had to hand it to the Concilio Celeste; they’d invested their money wisely. So wisely, in fact, that Nerina was able to charter a private jet to take us to Tibet.
I’d been on my fair share of private jets. The Guild had flown us on their company jet many times. It really was true that once you go first class—or private—you never go back. I secretly thanked the Concilio’s accountant that we weren’t flying coach to Lhasa.
“Adamo, Magdalena, and Cecilia are meeting us there,” Nerina said as the plane lifted into the air.
“Sounds like the cast of Mob Wives,” I said.
Nerina pointed sharply at my face. “I don’t want to hear any of your sarcasm when we are with the Concilio.”
“But I can’t help it,” I said. “It’s just who I am.”
“Well, you’d better hope they’re so impressed with your abilities that they overlook it.” Nerina pulled a bag stuffed with files onto the seat next to her and rifled through it.
“Are they all as old as you?”
“No. Magdalena is the youngest. She’s a little over two hundred years old. Cecilia is about a hundred years younger than me. Adamo is older than me—he’s over five hundred.”
“Tell me again why the rest of the Concilio isn’t showing up to take a site we’ve never had control of.”
Nerina peered out the window into the black night. “It’s too risky to leave the sites we do control without Concilio backup. With only half of Concilio Argento in Tibet, we should be evenly matched.”
“And then there’s me against the Rabbit,” I muttered. I guessed everyone was counting on me to be able to deal with him on my own. But I’d gone up against the Rabbit twice and won only once.
Nerina opened one of the files she’d pulled from her bag and tilted her seat back. “Try to get some sleep, Bree. Once we get to Lhasa, things will move very fast.”
One thing I’d learned in the last several years of crisscrossing the globe was how to sleep anytime, anywhere. I reclined my seat until it was nearly flat and pulled one of the soft, fluffy blankets over me. The whoosh and hum of the engine beneath me was like an old familiar lullaby. I fell asleep quickly, but my overactive mind kept me only barely below the surface, jumbled images twisting themselves into vivid dreams.
It felt like only a moment had passed when a jolt and a long shudder woke me. I rose up on one elbow. Artificial orange light flooded into the plane. “We’re in Vancouver to refuel,” Nerina said, glancing up from the file she was reading. It was a different file than the one she’d been looking at when we’d left Bangor; there was a small stack of them next to her. “We still have a long way to go.”
“Shouldn’t you get some sleep too?”
Nerina ran her hand through her long, snaky hair. “I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”
“Well, we have no idea what we’re up against in Tibet,” I said. “That’s enough to keep anyone awake.”
The cabin door opened, and the pilot walked in. “We’ll be taking off in just a few minutes, ma’am,” he said and headed into the cockpit.
Nerina narrowed her gaze in the direction the pilot had gone. “Did he just call me ma’am? That hurts.”
I laughed and snuggled down into my blanket. I tried to close my eyes as we taxied then sped down the runway and lifted back into the air. But there wouldn’t be any more sleep for me on this flight. At last I sighed and sat back up.
“It’s not just Tibet,” Nerina said. I looked over at her. She stared out the window, watching the dark clouds shift over the wings of the plane. “That’s not the only thing that’s keeping me awake.”
It didn’t take a genius to know what—or whom—she was talking about. “Heath.”
She nodded, still not looking at me. “We, ah, reconnected last night.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “You don’t need to use euphemisms with me.” I sat forward in my seat. “So while we were all blissfully asleep, you two were doing it in the living room?”
“Must you be so crass, Bree?” Nerina rubbed her temples. “It was wrong. We can’t go down that path again. It will only end in heartbreak. The Concilio . . .”
“Screw the Concilio.” I pounded my fist against the side of my seat. “This is totally unfair of them.”
“No, it is not. They are trying to save me from the consequences. As they have saved me so many times before.” She spoke the last sentence almost to herself. I raised my eyebrows. She faced me. “I would do anything for the Concilio, Bree. You have no idea what I owe them. No idea.”
I would’ve gone another round with the Rabbit to find out exactly what she owed them, but I stayed silent.
“And yet . . . how can they ask me to live for the rest of eternity without love? Even if it is only for a brief moment in my long immortal life, don’t I deserve to have the kind of soul-shattering love that we all dream of?” She turned her head to the window again. A tiny tear glinted in the corner of her eye. “I am made from two halves. One that would do anything for her family. And one that only wants to love Heath. I have become so used to these two sides of me that I cannot imagine living one without the other.”
I understood her better than she knew, maybe even better than she understood herself. It wasn’t just the Concilio that kept her from Heath. It was the fear of what came after. After that one moment was over and Heath was long gone and she was still alive forever. I knew that because, minus the immortality, it was the same thing that kept me from making friends at any of the schools we’d gone to over the last seven years, from having a real boyfriend. The same reason I knew I’d never do more than flirt with Cal. Sooner or later, everyone leaves. Especially me.
Still, if it were me, I’d tell the Concilio to go screw themselves and have fun while it lasted with Heath.
The descent into Lhasa was rocky. I tried not to look at the ja
gged mountaintops just outside the window or notice how ridiculously tiny the airstrip looked. At last we hit the ground with a bump that nearly knocked me out of my seat. I followed Nerina off the plane and through the throng of tourists in the airport. A group of Patagonia-clad Everest wannabes clustered near the entrance. I wondered how many of them would actually summit, and how many would die trying.
Once out of the airport, Nerina headed straight for two wrinkled old men who stood next to a couple of rickety mopeds. “Ah, Nerina!” they cried, greeting her first with little bows and then big hugs.
“This is Jintao and Quinglin,” Nerina told me. “They’ll be our Sherpas up to the temple. Their two families have been friends of the Clan here for generations. Climb on.”
I eyed the moped she gestured to with trepidation. I was all for thrill-seeking, but the thing looked like it was going to fall apart two miles up the road. “Isn’t the Temple at the site controlled by the Malandanti?”
“The Benandanti Clan has another temple not far from the Temple site that they use as their home base.” Nerina secured her bag in the little luggage compartment on the back of the moped and settled herself on the seat behind Quinglin. I stored my own bag away and, taking a deep breath, swung my leg over the moped. If I’d been Alessia, I probably would’ve crossed myself.
“You ready?” Jintao asked me. I nodded and tightened my arms around his waist. He stepped on the throttle and the moped roared to life. We zipped away from the airport and into the mountains.
After a little while, I began to forget that I was on the back of a deathmobile and take in the sheer magnificence of my surroundings. Mountains rose up on either side of the twisty road, their peaks so high I had to crane my neck back to see the top. Fat clouds drifted across the blue sky, which seemed so close I had only to stretch my arm up to touch it. And the air . . . I hadn’t really gotten to enjoy how fresh it was when I’d shadow-walked here. The taste of copper and water, of all the elements mixed into one, was strong medicine on my tongue. “The air here is amazing!” I shouted into Jintao’s ear.