by Maggie Hall
He nodded.
I traced the scar down his neck and across his shoulder, at the lesions pearlescent against my own white skin. I didn’t know what to say.
Stellan’s fingers brushed my hand.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
The heat at the back of my eyes built up again. What this world did to people. What it’d done to this boy whose life had been far harder than mine, looking up at me with a mix of emotions in his face I wasn’t sure I understood. Wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. The fact that, despite it all, there was something in me that was telling the truth when I told Jack I didn’t want to run.
“Lean back,” I said, and splashed the warm water over his hair. Fighting the tightness in my throat left my words clipped, too cheerful. “I hurt my head like this once,” I chirped. “I was leaning over, and had left an upper cabinet open, and stood up right into the corner. Blood everywhere! It was disgusting. My mom washed it out. She always knew exactly—” I drew a ragged breath, full of tears that had been building all day that I wouldn’t, couldn’t let fall. “That’s how I know what to do. We’ll work the blood out of your hair first to get to the cut and then—and then—” My voice cracked. No more words would come out around the lump in my throat. “And then—”
I stopped when I felt Stellan’s hand close around my leg.
“And then, um, we’ll sterilize the cut,” I continued, my voice high, reedy. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but it’ll heal quickly enough if you don’t mess with it and then you’ll—then you’ll—”
Stellan stroked my knee with his thumb, calmly, firmly. Whatever had been building up for so long—the knot pulling tight, my sanity stretching thin—I felt the moment it snapped.
Once the first tear fell, it was a floodgate.
No laughing this time, just silent, steady tears, dripping salty into my mouth for what felt like a long time. The cloying orange shampoo scent, the buzz of the fluorescent light over the sink, the clack clack clack of the train tracks. The water sloshed in the basin as Stellan tilted his head up, and I could feel him looking at me.
I took a deep breath, full of the soothing, steady strokes of his thumb on the knee of my jeans and their inherent promise that I wasn’t alone but that he wasn’t going to force me to talk about it. The last almost-sob died in my throat.
“And then you’ll be okay.” I blinked the tears away, my vision cleared, and I realized that Stellan’s head was still resting heavy in my hands, my fingers still twisted in his hair, blond streaked with red, making shaky ripples in the reddening water.
I disentangled them and wiped the mascara from my face with the back of my hand, then put a little more shampoo in the water and swished it around. Stellan didn’t let go of my leg, and I didn’t move away.
“That’s not normal, about the scars,” I said, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. My voice was stronger now. “Scars are supposed to be dead tissue.”
He opened his eyes. “Nothing about not burning like a regular human being is normal,” he said. “But no, I don’t suppose scars should hurt seven years after the fact. I think in some way I always knew there was something . . . off about that. Maybe that’s why I never told anyone.”
“Nobody else knows?” I said quietly.
He shook his head. My eyes traced the scars again as I thought of everything he must have to do daily that would hurt. I let out a breath through pursed lips before leaning back over the sink, trying to find a position where I didn’t have to drape myself across his chest. “Are you okay like this?”
He rested the hand not on my knee on his stomach. “Surprisingly comfortable.”
“I’m going to try to be gentle, but tell me if it hurts.” I worked the blood out of his hair, trying not to pull on the wound itself. I wasn’t sure how well the painkillers were working. After a minute, a small, blissed-out smile came over his face, so I was pretty sure he was okay. I wiped a bead of bloody water off his forehead and gave him a nudge. “You have to stay awake.”
“Feels nice, though,” he murmured. “Feels really nice.”
“Have you never had someone do this?”
His eyes slit open and he quirked a what do you think? eyebrow.
“I fell asleep once getting my hair washed at the salon,” I confessed, trying to keep him conscious. “It was right after one of our moves, and I was really stressed and hardly sleeping. My mom took us to get haircuts and pedicures, and I passed out with my head in the sink and my feet in some lady’s hands. My mom convinced them to let me sleep for an hour. I woke up with the worst crick in my neck.”
Stellan smiled, but I could tell he was fading when his hand dropped from my leg. I tugged on his earlobe. “Hey. Wake up. Let me look at your pupils.”
“Mmm,” he sighed, but he opened his eyes. His pupils didn’t look too dilated, which I was pretty sure was good. He was quiet for a minute, then said, “That guy. The one who—is yours now. With the scar on his cheek.”
I paused, my hands in the floating blond halo of his hair, which, just for a second, reminded me so much of being underwater that my lungs ached. “Scarface. That’s what I call him.”
“He looked like someone, but I couldn’t remember who. And now I do. An Emir Keeper. Rocco. He was terminated two years ago. For—”
“Having a thing with a family member.”
Stellan nodded, and his head bobbed in my hands. “Besides the scar, he looks just like him, and I could have sworn he had an olive branch tattooed under the compass. Did you see that?”
I nodded. “That’s impossible, though, right? That Keeper is dead.”
I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t want to think about any of it. The train jolted, splashing a little water out of the sink.
“Sorry to bring it up,” Stellan said, seeing straight through me as always. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s fine,” I said shortly, but we fell into silence while I kept up the slow task of getting out the blood without making it worse. A short time later, I glanced down to make sure Stellan wasn’t asleep and found him watching me openly.
“What?” I said.
“You’re pretty.”
I rolled my eyes, and not just because right now, with mascara smeared under my eyes and my nose red from crying, I knew I was about as far from pretty as I could get. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You know exactly what.”
“It’s not an offensive thing to say.”
“No, it’s not offensive. It’s just . . .” Something about his disoriented state made me feel more open, too, like in the little bubble of tonight, I could say things I wouldn’t otherwise say. “You realize there’s no reason for you to say stuff like that, right? I get your schtick.”
His face screwed up in confusion. “What’s schtick?”
“It means I know very well that I’m just a prize to everybody in this game, and you’re no different. So yeah, I know you flirt with me for the same reason every Circle family we meet wines and dines me. And it’s not going to work. So . . . stop it.” I felt myself flush.
There was a long beat of silence. His head was clean enough, and I held his hair up and pulled the drain plug.
“I don’t think you know anything,” he mumbled, letting his eyes close again as I turned on the tap and ran warm water over his head. “You always think you’re right. But you’re not. You are not always right.”
My heart gave a strangled twist. We were quiet for a second.
“You know,” he said, “when I first met you . . .” He opened one eye, and the twist spread to my stomach as I remembered Jack, on the Dauphins’ balcony, admitting that he liked me as much as I liked him, all along. It started just like this. Don’t say it, my mind whispered. I’m not sure I can handle this. Don’t—
“
When I first met you,” Stellan said again, sleepily, “I thought you were an idiot.”
His eyes slipped back closed, and the breath whooshed out of my lungs.
“Who gets on a plane with a stranger who just pulled a knife on her?” he said. “What is wrong with you? I could have been a serial killer.”
I half sniffed, half laughed, because he was right. He let me move his head back and forth under the faucet stream.
“But that stupid, naive girl I thought you were would have gotten herself killed off a long time ago,” he finally said, his voice fading. “Or at least she would have screamed and run the other way. You’re not that much of an idiot after all.”
I paused, surprised, and turned off the tap. It took me a second to look back down at him, and when I did, he’d fallen asleep.
I let him sleep for a second while I got the first-aid kit from the cabinet. I couldn’t figure out a good way to keep a bandage on his head, so I just sprayed some antibacterial stuff on the wound and nudged him with my knee. He blinked, looking around like he’d not only forgotten the conversation we’d just been having, but like he’d forgotten where he was, too.
“Now we figure out how to keep you awake for a few more hours,” I said wearily, handing him a towel for his head.
He made a face, but followed me into our suite, where Jack was sleeping soundly on the far side of the bed, a pillow pulled over his head. I planted myself in the middle again, and Stellan climbed in next to me. I watched Jack’s back rise and fall with his breath. As I watched, he twitched, mumbling something in his sleep. I put a hand on his shoulder and he relaxed, and we sat that way, swaying with the train, while Stellan flipped channels until he found what looked like Family Feud in French. We turned the sound on to just a whisper, and over the bump and rattle of the tracks, Stellan murmured translations of the winning answers to favorite snacks for a football match and vacation spots for retirees, and the fact that 53 percent of participants said French women started to dye their hair at age forty . . .
• • •
I woke up slowly, and immediately wanted to go back to sleep. I was absurdly cozy, pressed against a warm, broad chest, and the shaft of light when I half opened one eye told me it was still early. For the first time in a long time, though, I actually felt rested. I started to shift to look at my watch, but the arms around me pulled me back in tight. “Mmm, no,” he protested sleepily in my ear. “Comfortable.” And it was; the kind of comfortable where you’d be happy to stay in that semiconscious state forever. I nuzzled back into his arms.
And then all of a sudden, I was fully awake. That was not the soft British accent I might expect to hear first thing in the morning. My eyes fluttered open. It definitely wasn’t Jack, because Jack was asleep facing me, our fingers inches away from touching, like we’d been holding hands and they’d come apart in the night.
Suddenly, everything from the day and night before came rushing back.
I bolted upright, blinking the sleep out of my eyes, my contacts sticky and dry. “You fell asleep,” I whispered to Stellan.
He blinked, too, barely awake, looking as surprised as I was at the indent in the blankets where I’d just been curled against his chest. “Apparently we fell asleep.”
I looked guiltily at Jack. Last thing I remembered, we were watching game shows and my hand was on his back.
“Lucky for you, I’m not dead. You’re not very good at babysitting.” A small smile pulled at Stellan’s lips. “Pretty great at cuddling, though.”
“Shh,” I hissed. I felt my face heat up and shot another glance at Jack. His dark brows drew down, and his mouth twitched like he was talking to someone in a dream. Without making eye contact, I whispered, “I’m going to—” I gestured with my head and made my way into the hall outside our room.
It was later than I thought. The sun had already risen, and I made my way to the space between the cars, where there were large windows on the doors. We were speeding past a vineyard, and a whitewashed stone house sat on the top of a rise behind it, and then a field of sunflowers, bright yellow, stretched as far as I could see.
I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, brushing through the tangles with my fingers. I wasn’t sure whether it was a step forward or a step back that I’d been able to sleep at all after yesterday. What’s more, I think I’d slept the whole night straight through. I couldn’t remember the last time that happened.
So I’d just have to sleep sandwiched between them for the rest of my life. That wasn’t horribly weird and wrong or anything.
A few minutes later, I turned around to footsteps. Stellan was wearing his own clothes again, slim jeans and a T-shirt, dark enough to not show dried blood. I felt myself blush again, thinking about how much of the night I must have spent with his arms wrapped around me. I wondered how we’d ended up that way, whether one of us did it accidentally or whether we just migrated together while we slept, our unconscious minds giving in to the need to hold somebody. He paused when he noticed me, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
He reached around me and hauled open the sliding door.
“Are you allowed to do that?” I backed up a few feet as the wind whipped past, like it could drag me right out the door. The sunflower fields had given way to a ravine, and the train sped along the edge of a cliff.
“Probably not.” Stellan tested his weight on one of the handholds at the door of the train, leaning out over the tracks so the wind pulled at his clothes, then leaned back in and lit a cigarette. He let a curl of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and the breeze rushing past caught it and left not even a wisp.
I made a face at the cigarette, anyway, and he made a face back.
“You seem better,” I said. He was back to his old self, not soft and fuzzy around the edges like he’d been last night. “Have you checked on your head?”
He held his cigarette out the door and leaned over for me to look at it. I only had to part his hair and take a cursory glance to realize the cut was much smaller than it had been last night. “It’s healing really quickly. Weirdly quickly.”
He pushed his hair back into place. “Maybe it’s the magic skin thing. I guess I have always healed quickly. Never thought much about it.”
I would have been interested to know more about the “magic skin thing” if we had time. Maybe in the future. If Stellan was in my future at all, I reminded myself. In just a couple days, I’d know. We’d have the second bracelet, and hopefully have the way to the tomb. If all went well, I’d trade it to Alistair for my mom, and then . . . well, then I’d decide. Whether to stay and be part of the world’s most powerful secret society, or to get off the grid and make plans to stay off forever.
I leaned against the wall and played with my necklace. When I let go, my hands were smudged with black soot. I inspected the locket, and realized there was dust coming out of the holes in the pattern. I clicked it open.
The picture inside must have gone up in flames when we heated the necklace, because now, it was nothing but ash. I only had time to draw in a surprised breath before the wind rushing by whipped the delicate pieces of my old life into the air as easily as it had the cigarette smoke.
I blinked at the empty locket for a second, then closed it slowly.
“What was in it?” Stellan said after a second.
“A picture of my mom.” I wiped the last of the ash from the design and clenched the locket in my fist, against my heart.
Stellan stood quietly for a second, then stubbed out his cigarette and sat down on the top step, folding his long legs into the small space. He patted the step next to him.
I stayed a distance back. “Open train door, sheer cliff face, no thanks.”
He curled his lip. “Really? After everything else you’ve been through, you’re scared of this?”
I had to admit, the breeze did kind of feel nice. I tried to ign
ore the plunge into the ravine and sat down next to him carefully, though I made sure to keep the hand that wasn’t clutching my necklace on the doorjamb.
“See?” Stellan said. “Perfectly safe.”
I snorted. No, it wasn’t.
Stellan rested his elbows on his knees, and we gazed out at the rocky crags of the cliff, which soon turned to fields again, then the outskirts of a city. If the train was on time, we’d be in Cannes soon. I stood up, brushing off my jeans.
Stellan stood, too, and followed me back to our compartment.
I slid open the door. Jack was, remarkably, still asleep. I put a finger to my lips.
“We don’t need to be quiet. He’s had plenty of sleep,” Stellan said. He flopped on his stomach across Jack’s side of the bed. “This is how I used to wake him up when we were younger. He’ll appreciate it.” He pulled up the ankle of Jack’s pants and yanked on his leg hairs. Jack sat straight up.
His alarm faded to annoyance when he saw Stellan. “Are you twelve years old?”
Stellan rolled off the bed, looking surprisingly chipper for someone in the aftermath of a concussion.
The speakers overhead crackled to life. There was an announcement in French, then in English. We were about to arrive in Cannes.
“I’ll wake Elodie,” Stellan said.
Jack ran both hands through his hair. He watched Stellan leave, then found me, perched at the end of the bed. “Good morning,” he said.
The greeting sounded awkward. Less like good morning and more like other things. Sorry I fell asleep and left you playing nurse. Wondering what I thought about the conversation we’d had last night, about leaving together. Maybe a little something he’d never say out loud about the three of us sleeping in the same bed.
Or maybe the awkwardness was just me.
“Good morning.” I grabbed the remote from where we must have kicked it in the night and was about to turn off a morning news program and talk to him when I realized my own face was on TV again.
It was the video of me and Takumi Mikado, but this one turned quickly to a still of me, and then a frowning reporter. I turned it up. “What are they saying?”